- 5 minutes ago
Philosopher Stefan Molyneux asks if AI needs you when most people just follow slogans and approval instead of thinking for themselves. He shows machines can repeat work faster and offer cheaper always-on help while only original creative thought resists bigger shifts toward more automation and less need for regular jobs.
0:00:00 AI, Robotics, and Human Thinking
0:02:33 Facts Versus Propaganda
0:03:48 People as Predictive Machines
0:04:47 Therapy Meets AI Economics
0:08:47 The Pace of Psychological Change
0:12:09 What Happens to Therapists?
0:16:45 Replacing Professional Judgment
0:18:58 Robots and Economic Displacement
0:21:40 The Vanishing Place to Land
0:24:34 AGI and the Dead End
0:26:27 Thinking Becomes Valuable
0:29:05 Humanity as Creative Reason
0:32:04 Society Needs Innovators
0:34:35 Who AI Replaces First
0:36:53 Pretending to Think
0:40:58 UBI and Reduced Reproduction
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0:00:00 AI, Robotics, and Human Thinking
0:02:33 Facts Versus Propaganda
0:03:48 People as Predictive Machines
0:04:47 Therapy Meets AI Economics
0:08:47 The Pace of Psychological Change
0:12:09 What Happens to Therapists?
0:16:45 Replacing Professional Judgment
0:18:58 Robots and Economic Displacement
0:21:40 The Vanishing Place to Land
0:24:34 AGI and the Dead End
0:26:27 Thinking Becomes Valuable
0:29:05 Humanity as Creative Reason
0:32:04 Society Needs Innovators
0:34:35 Who AI Replaces First
0:36:53 Pretending to Think
0:40:58 UBI and Reduced Reproduction
Support philosophy! https://freedomain.com/donate/
GET FREEDOMAIN MERCH! https://shop.freedomain.com/
SUBSCRIBE TO ME ON X! https://x.com/StefanMolyneux
Follow me on Youtube! https://www.youtube.com/@freedomain1
GET MY NEW BOOK 'PEACEFUL PARENTING', THE INTERACTIVE PEACEFUL PARENTING AI, AND THE FULL AUDIOBOOK!
https://peacefulparenting.com/
Join the PREMIUM philosophy community on the web for free!
Subscribers get 12 HOURS on the "Truth About the French Revolution," multiple interactive multi-lingual philosophy AIs trained on thousands of hours of my material - as well as AIs for Real-Time Relationships, Bitcoin, Peaceful Parenting, and Call-In Shows!
You also receive private livestreams, HUNDREDS of exclusive premium shows, early release podcasts, the 22 Part History of Philosophers series and much more!
See you soon!
https://freedomain.locals.com/support/promo/FREEDOMAIN2026
Category
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LearningTranscript
00:00Yes, I did tweet about this this morning. I wanted to go into a little bit more detail about AI
00:06and robotics. So I think it's a very interesting and kind of essential topic. So most people obviously don't think
00:13for themselves. This is not you guys, of course, but we're talking about the average.
00:16Most people don't think for themselves don't have a single original thought their whole life and are mental hedonists, which
00:25means that they don't ask what is true. They ask what is approved of. And when you separate people from
00:34their ability to know what is true and false, which is sort of absurdism, postmodernism, relativism, subjectivism and Marxism and
00:42so on.
00:43When you remove from people their ability to know what is true and to know what is false, then what
00:50happens is they no longer have any capacity to evaluate things independently, right? An attack upon epistemology, an attack upon
00:59a robust theory of knowledge that allows people to tell what is true and what is false makes people slaves
01:06to propaganda.
01:07Because if you don't know what is true and what is false, then you have nothing to fight for, nothing
01:13independent of your own mind to have integrity to, or independent of propaganda to have integrity to.
01:21And so, it just becomes a matter of reward and punishment.
01:25And so, you then apply negative pressure to get people to conform, you apply positive pressure to get people to
01:33conform, and everybody who can't or won't think for themselves is by definition a hedonist.
01:42Because if you don't think for yourself, then all you can do, since you have to make decisions about what
01:48to believe, what to say, what to do, what positions to hold, if you can't think for yourself, then how
01:54is it that you know which positions to hold?
01:59Well, you go with punishments and reward, right? Heaven and hell, social approval, social ostracism, and so on.
02:08Everybody who is separated from facts becomes a hedonist, or you could say remains a hedonist, since we kind of
02:17start with hedonism, which is nothing wrong with that.
02:19Babies cry when they're hungry and are laughing when they're happy or cooing when they're happy, so there's nothing wrong
02:24with hedonism.
02:25It's how the animal system works, and, you know, pleasure and pain is an important principle.
02:30But without objective facts, we have no conscience.
02:34You can't have a conscience that is socialized.
02:36You can't have a conscience that simply relies upon the approval or disapproval of those in power.
02:42Like, if you think of someone like Galileo, or Tycho Brahe, or Copernicus, like people who understood that the sun
02:50was the center of the solar system,
02:52they knew that for a certain fact, and therefore they had something to stand for.
02:56If you had no way of knowing that the sun was the center of the solar system,
03:01then what would you say about the solar system, or what would you say about the universe?
03:06Well, you would say what was most convenient and pleasurable, which is to agree with those in power and avoid
03:13punishment.
03:14Everyone's a hedonist if they cannot achieve facts on their own.
03:20And so telling people, of course, that they can't know what is true and what is false
03:26automatically means that they become hedonists and are very easy to control.
03:31So, we saw this under COVID, when, of course, people who didn't believe they had the capacity to evaluate for
03:40themselves
03:41what was true and what was false under COVID, were very easy to push around with regards to propaganda.
03:47So, most people simply repeat the thoughts of others.
03:51They have not thought things through at all.
03:53And this only takes a moment, conversation with people, right?
03:58You can very easily and very quickly find out that they haven't thought through anything.
04:02They simply are repeating what's already been said.
04:06So, they are doing what AI does.
04:09AI looks backwards at everything that has been said before
04:14and recreates it and repeats it in a more elegant and much faster fashion.
04:21Most people don't think they're just repeating prior thoughts of others.
04:24Because AI does not think it is simply repeating prior thoughts of others.
04:29So, given that that's a fact, then people are almost infinitely inferior to AI.
04:37AI, of course, never gets tired, can work 24 hours a day, doesn't get irritable, is endlessly patient, always available,
04:46infinitely faster.
04:48I mean, when you think of something like cognitive behavioral therapy,
04:51that's a very structured form of approaching the therapeutic process.
04:55And it takes years and years for someone to become a CBT psychologist.
05:00I mean, you've got to do your undergraduates, you have to do graduate work,
05:04you have to be mentored for years, you have to pass an exam, you have to maintain education.
05:09I mean, and this is one of the reasons why, it's like $200 an hour, $150 an hour,
05:15I don't know, whatever it is these days, to get access to that.
05:19Now, can AI be a good CBT therapist?
05:24Well, certainly AI cannot be as good a, I'm just going to say therapist, right, assume the CBT.
05:31So, AI cannot be as good a therapist as the best therapists.
05:37But that's not the main issue.
05:40That's not the main issue.
05:41The main issue is the cost benefit, not the quality.
05:45AI will not be as good at therapy as the best therapists.
05:51However, the best therapists are generally unavailable and are very expensive.
05:54The question is, what is the cost benefit?
05:57So, let's say you pay $50 a month to some AI.
06:02And let's say that the AI, they can do it now, but maybe in the future it'll be even cheaper.
06:07Can actually have you have a conversation with the therapist, the AI therapist,
06:14nodding and looking dewy-eyed and sympathetic and caring and so on.
06:20So, for $50 a month, you can have as much therapy as you want.
06:23So, for $1,000, you can have the very best meal that month.
06:29Or, for $50, you can have slightly less higher quality, but all the food you want.
06:36I mean, the answer is pretty simple, right?
06:39If you have a panic attack at 3 in the morning, you can dial up your AI therapist and have
06:44therapy.
06:45And the therapist will not be unavailable, will not be tired, will not be annoyed at being woken,
06:49will be perfectly there.
06:51The AI therapist is going to have a perfect memory of all that you've said before,
06:55is going to be trained on the very best training materials, let's say on CBT or something else.
07:00And also, it's going to be trained on all of the recorded and transcribed sessions of therapy
07:06that have been made publicly available.
07:08There are thousands and thousands of hours of therapy that the clients obviously have agreed
07:13to have recorded and transcribed, of course, through AI now and published.
07:19So, it might not be as brilliant as an individual excellent therapist, but it's going to have
07:25a far better memory, it's going to have far better training, and it's going to have far
07:29better examples.
07:30It's going to be available at any time for as many hours in the day as you want.
07:38And if you have a thought, you can sit there and dial up the therapist.
07:42First, when I was doing debate prep for Jay Dyer, I dialed up AI and had the AI debate me
07:48in a variety of different styles, including as if the AI was Jay Dyer.
07:55Now, could I have paid a professional debate preparer to do that, a couple of hundred bucks
07:59an hour?
08:00Sure, sure.
08:00But it's obviously way cheaper to just use the AI for that.
08:05And of course, the AI, let's say, can do a thousand therapy sessions at once, especially
08:12if there's no video, right?
08:13If you're just doing audio.
08:15And a lot of therapy, of course, occurs over webcams and computers anyway, but you can just
08:23put on headphones and while you're cooking, you can have a chat with your therapist about
08:27the dream you had or about the panic attack you had or about your doubts about your competency
08:34at your job or issues you have with your boss or your husband.
08:37And the therapist is endlessly patient, endlessly available.
08:41And it is a little tougher to take an AI therapist personally.
08:47You know, like if one of the problems with therapy, as far as I understand it, is that
08:53it's kind of like being a personal trainer.
08:56So somebody like a nutritionist and personal trainer, let's see, you have that combo, right?
09:00So somebody comes into your office, they're 300 pounds.
09:02So the moment they come into your office, you see the problem like right away, it's
09:05blindingly obvious, but then you have to find a way to move them along to lose the
09:10weight.
09:11Let's say they're double their ideal weight or double a healthy weight or healthiest
09:14weight.
09:15So you have to figure out how to get them to lose and keep off 150 pounds, which is a
09:19multi-year process.
09:21And if you, you have to move them along at the right pace.
09:25Like shedding delusions is like shedding fat.
09:27If you go too fast, the person just gets injured, frustrated in pain and quits.
09:34But if you move them along too slow, then of course, the person doesn't sort of feel or
09:40see enough progress and they get frustrated and they quit.
09:44Also, if you move someone along too fast in terms of losing, this is just my theory.
09:48I don't have any expertise in this area.
09:49This is just my random amateur thoughts.
09:52But if you move someone along too quickly in losing weight, then there can be health
09:58issues, right?
09:59If you lose weight too quickly, there can be some health issues.
10:03And also the underlying psychological problems will emerge.
10:06And so it's, you have to, you know what the issue is right away.
10:09The question is how quickly can you move them along?
10:11I think it's similar.
10:12I'm not a therapist, obviously, but I think it's similar in therapy in that the therapist
10:16probably quite quickly understands what the person's issues are, but the question is how
10:23quickly can they be moved along to deal with those issues?
10:26If you move them along too fast, you get a reaction.
10:29If you move them along too slow, like if they'll quit, they'll get too upset and, you know,
10:33they'll rage out.
10:35If you move them along too slowly, then they just don't make any particular progress.
10:39And then friends around them are like, well, geez, you're not really progressing.
10:42Maybe this is a waste of time.
10:43So, you know, it's, it's tough to, to, but of course, and so people get upset with their
10:48therapist.
10:49Oh, she's doing too, she's too quick.
10:51She's too slow.
10:52This, that, and the other.
10:53She's insensitive.
10:54She must've been having a bad day.
10:55She was snappy with me and so on, but it's a little tougher.
10:58Obviously people get mad at computers and all of that, but it's a little tougher to justify
11:01getting mad at a computer rather than getting mad at a person.
11:06So it's possible that people might have a little bit more patience with feedback from the computer.
11:10Will it provoke a kind of narcissism in that it's a one-sided relationship?
11:14I don't know.
11:15I don't know.
11:15I mean, that's, it's a little harder to, to sort of fathom, but if a computer can run
11:22a thousand therapy sessions at once at the cost of pennies per session, as opposed to
11:30one therapist who is, let's say they're an in-person therapist.
11:35They can obviously only run one therapy session at a time and the person has to drive down
11:39and find parking and spend money on gas and, and leave their house.
11:43And like that, you know, I used to drive, um, 40 minutes to get to my therapy sessions,
11:48right?
11:49So it's almost an hour and a half in addition, plus parking and gas and all of that, as opposed
11:54to, you know, put on the headphones and have a chat with the quote therapist, the AI therapist,
12:00have a chat with the therapist whenever you want for free.
12:04I mean, essentially for free pennies, a session, if you use it a lot is essentially for free.
12:11So what is there, what does the therapist do?
12:13Let's say you have a private practice and you've got a roster of clients and you know,
12:18your older clients probably will stay with you because you have history and they have
12:21a good working relationship with you, but newer clients, are they going to want to come
12:27and spend, you know, $200, $150, whatever it is, an hour and all that time and travel
12:34to come to your therapy?
12:36Well, what they'll probably do is they'll boot up assuming that, you know, I don't know
12:40what the privacy issues are with regards to, um, therapy.
12:44If there are specific therapy AIs, maybe they don't keep a history or maybe it's more anonymous
12:49or something like that.
12:50So there are privacy issues for sure.
12:53Therapists usually can't talk about any patient stuff without a court order.
12:57And so maybe it'd be more like life coaches.
13:00I don't know.
13:00I don't think life coaches are sort of bound by the same restrictions.
13:04So maybe people have, they may have privacy concerns and that's sort of a very real thing.
13:08But again, you have to balance all these things.
13:10Is remaining completely private worth $200 an hour?
13:16I don't know.
13:18People say very personal things, of course, to AIs.
13:23And maybe if an AI therapy bot has some more privacy options or features, maybe, maybe.
13:33But again, it's all a cost benefit.
13:35So if you are a therapist, a psychologist, and you have, uh, you have a private practice
13:43and you've trained for this your whole life, you spent, you know, 10 to 12 years in school,
13:47you do education, continuing education every year, but the quality of the AI therapist is
13:57known ahead of time.
13:59The quality of a personal therapist, an individual therapist is not known necessarily ahead of time.
14:06You can try a bunch of different models, right?
14:08You can say, be a CBT therapist, maybe be a Freudian therapist, maybe a Skinnerian or
14:17whatever it's going to be.
14:18Like whatever, there's lots of different kinds of therapy.
14:20Jungian, be a Jungian therapist.
14:23Or, um, there was some other guy who did sort of reason-based therapy.
14:26I can't remember his name right now.
14:28So you can try all the different models and see what works for you.
14:30And you can do this relatively for free and no travel.
14:34So what happens to therapists when AI therapy, uh, becomes the norm?
14:42Well, they're, they're competing with pennies an hour.
14:48They're competing with essentially free.
14:50And it is essentially free.
14:52If you're already paying for the AI service and the, just one of the things that you use
14:56it for is for therapy, then it's essentially free.
15:01And again, I want to reiterate, the best therapists are better than AI, but that's only one benefit
15:10against one minus.
15:13But in the entirety of benefits versus minuses, it's a whole different equation.
15:18Would you take a 10% reduction in quality if something was free?
15:22Like you can have the very best steak or like, and for that steak, you have to pay a thousand
15:28dollars for the cut of steak or, you know, that's, uh, you know, five sessions a month
15:33at 200 bucks or whatever, 800 bucks.
15:35Let's say U.S. over a thousand Canadian.
15:37So you can have the very best cut of steak.
15:39It's going to cost you a thousand dollars and you have to wait for three months and you
15:43have to drive to the restaurant to get it, or you can get a state of less, like 10%
15:49less
15:49quality, but it's delivered to your house for free.
15:52So quality is not the only variable.
15:54And of course, some people will still want the one-on-one therapy.
15:57I get all of that, but I mean, AI therapy is far more, quote, human than pornography,
16:04but a lot of men and some women give up their sex lives for pornography.
16:08So rather than have in-person sex, they will masturbate and so on, right?
16:13So what does a therapist do when they're displaced by AI?
16:19What do lawyers do when people will run things through illegal AI?
16:26I mean, we've got mathematicians currently railing against AI solving a bunch of math problems,
16:34and maybe they thought that they would be some of the last to be replaced, but computers
16:39hacked at mathematicians long before they hacked at anything to do with language, like words.
16:46So what do you do when an AI is programmed with every single book on dream analysis and theory
16:54and has your personal history and your prior dreams and can put it all together?
16:59So the very best therapists have great instincts, thinks for themselves, and create connections
17:04that AI could not match because they're original, they're creative.
17:09They're not just applying formulas because a lot of intellectual work is just applying formulas
17:14like math to some degree or engineering to some degree, and so on, just applying formulas.
17:19And the same thing is true with therapy as well.
17:21That's why you take so much training.
17:23But AI could be trained infinitely faster, infinitely more cheaply, and is free to access.
17:31Now, again, I know they say nothing is free, but if you're paying for AI anyway, it doesn't
17:35cost you more, usually.
17:36I mean, maybe there's some credit things or whatever, right?
17:38But I've never, I mean, I use AI quite a bit for some things, and I never run into a
17:44ceiling.
17:45I mean, there are, right, obviously, but it's essentially free.
17:50So what do you do?
17:52What do people do when they are very, very easy to replace?
18:00And of course, people will say, well, you know, if I didn't have to work for whatever
18:04reason, imagine that AI produces magic money, say, well, if I didn't want to work, or if
18:11I didn't have to work, well, I'd finally get around to writing that book that I've always
18:14wanted to write.
18:15And it's like, yeah, there's a few people who can write books better than AI, but not
18:19many.
18:19So, or, you know, I've always wanted to take up painting.
18:22Okay, well, AI is doing all the painting, so to speak, right?
18:27So what is it that people are going to be doing when AI does virtually everything except
18:34thinking originally?
18:35What are people going to be doing?
18:38It's kind of impossible to know, right?
18:40Because in the past, when AI, sorry, when machines took over people's physical labor,
18:47at least there was some mental stuff that they could retreat to, or they could become
18:51more skilled, right?
18:52Because like, when combine harvesters take over sighting, at least people can become shoemakers
18:56or stuff that machines couldn't do, right?
18:59And this is just the AI side.
19:01The robotic side is also pretty wild.
19:03That is occurring, right?
19:06So the implications for this are massive.
19:10And society obviously doesn't have a plan for any of this, of course, right?
19:15But it is important to know what's coming because people are going to lose their minds.
19:20So we'll look a little bit at history and see what's come before.
19:23One of the things that the Black Death did was lead to the Industrial Revolution.
19:28The Black Death wiped out a third or more people and, of course, disabled a whole bunch
19:32of people more, and so there were far fewer workers available for agricultural requirements.
19:40And because there were far fewer workers available for agricultural requirements, the remaining
19:44workers were able to negotiate both higher wages and more land rights.
19:51Now, when workers negotiate higher wages, then the value of labor-saving devices becomes higher
19:59if it costs you £1,000 to clear 10 acres, but then it suddenly costs you £2,000, then you
20:09have an incentive to invest in labor-saving devices.
20:13And so this sparked some of the need and requirement for the agricultural revolution efficiencies that
20:21led to the surplus labor that was displaced from agriculture because they needed fewer workers
20:25to harvest their crops, and that gave the excess labor in the cities that was available for
20:32a factory work, the sort of urban proletariat that Marx talked about.
20:38So the Black Death leads to higher wages, which leads to labor-saving devices, which leads to
20:44the urban proletariat, which leads to the Industrial Revolution.
20:48Also, because in many places the serfs won more land property rights, they were able to sell
20:56their land, and for a variety of reasons they did, which allowed, of course, land to be
21:03concentrated in the most talented farmers, the people with the sort of magic green thumb.
21:09So, because the land was concentrated in the hands of fewer farmers or fewer lords, and because
21:17labor-saving devices produced excess crops and excess labor moved to the cities, you had more room
21:23for factories in the cities. So there was places for people to go. Kicked off your land, just make
21:30it to the city. Can't find a job in Europe, go to America or Canada or Australia or New Zealand
21:37or
21:37some other place, right? So there was places for people to go. This was something that happened
21:42a couple of years ago when, as a variety, for a variety of reasons, such as higher costs because
21:48of unionization and health and safety and environmental guidelines and so on, American
21:52manufacturing has become progressively more inefficient. And when people were complaining
21:58about this, all the journalists, right, the reporters, well, not all of them, some of them said,
22:04well, just learn to code. I'd learn how to write computer code and you're fine. And for people
22:11who are good at writing, to say, go write something, I know prose is not the same as code, but
22:15it's
22:15not totally opposite. Learn to type like me. And then, of course, when journalists were complaining
22:20that AI was displacing their jobs and the people said learn to code, of course, the journalists were
22:25just horrified at this and just found this the worst and most appalling thing to be hearing.
22:30Of course, right? It's wisdom when you give harsh truth to others, but it's abuse when others give
22:36harsh truths to you, right, for most people. So in the past, there was a place for people who were
22:41displaced to go. Now, that has been increasingly rare over the course of the last couple of decades,
22:51decades. Because for the people with an IQ of sort of low 80s and below, which is, you know, 10
23:00to 12
23:01million people just in America, I mean, there's really not much that they can do in the modern
23:06economy. I mean, as I'm sure you know, the American army won't take any more with an IQ sort of
23:1283,
23:1382 or below, because there's nothing that they can do that is worth the cost of training and housing
23:19them. They just can't provide enough value. And this is the welfare state is basically UBI for
23:26people who can't add much to a modern economy, as more and more stuff gets automated, right?
23:33And the only thing that's left is the brute manual labor, like digging ditches and stuff like that.
23:37I mean, even that has been somewhat automated. So where do people go? Well, in the past,
23:45instead of working on a farm, you would work in a factory. And then maybe instead of working in a
23:53factory, you could be an Uber driver. Or maybe instead of working in a factory, you could become a
24:00house painter or, you know, run some sort of gardening business or lawn mowing business, or maybe even
24:05landscaping business or something like that. Like there was some place for you to go as a whole, if you
24:10wanted to work. And then if you didn't want to work, you'd go on, you'd fake your disability or go
24:14on real
24:14disability or something like that. So there was always a place for people to go. Not everyone,
24:23not all the time, but there was a place to land. Now, like people are up in the air,
24:28ah, you can't go to this airport, but maybe you can go to that airport. Now there's no airports.
24:32It's just sheer mountains below, no place to land. And when you combine AGI and you get very detailed
24:42and skilled robots, well, that's a two-shot, right? That's a left-right combo. And that's a dead end.
24:52I mean, that's a part of sortie. There's no exit there. And you can't work physically better than a
25:01good robot. And you can't process information faster than AGI. And we say, I'm saying AI, but of
25:09course, if we're talking artificial general intelligence, rather like as it gets better
25:14and better, right? You just can't. It's like trying to do math faster than a spreadsheet or a calculator
25:20or a program a friend of mine used many years ago for his PhD. Mathematica, I think it was called.
25:26I need to plug all the numbers into Mathematica and it did its thing. You can't out-compete it.
25:32You can't out-work it. It does not get tired. It does not take breaks. It does not need to
25:37pee.
25:37It does not get pregnant. It does not have bad moods. It doesn't show up with bad sleep.
25:41It doesn't have parents who get sick, who need time, care, and attention. It just doesn't do
25:46any of these things. It is just a tireless ball of electrical physics with no will or resistance
25:52or need for rest. So, what's going to happen is that people who don't think, right? AI doesn't
26:02think, of course, right? AI doesn't think and it doesn't think extremely fast. And most people don't
26:09think and they don't think extremely slow. And you cannot compete with it. It's like showing up with
26:14a guy who's got a great combine harvester and saying, but wait, I have a scythe. Or showing up with
26:20toenail clippers to a guy who's got a nice John Deere mower and saying, I can cut grass.
26:24Technically, you can, but nobody's going to hire you. Now, one of the things that's very interesting
26:30about this is that in the past, not thinking had great value, right? You're told, this is your
26:37culture. This is your country. This is the good. This is your gods. This is your king. This is your
26:40ruler. This is your leader. This is your structure. And it's all good and fine and great and the best
26:45and
26:45this, that, and the other. And you just accepted that and didn't question it and didn't oppose it and
26:49didn't contradict it. And you got well rewarded for not thinking. I mean, it's no accident that
26:55there are so many people around who don't think when throughout almost all of human history,
26:59you got well rewarded for not thinking. Now, of course, sometimes you get enormously punished for
27:04not thinking, such as being thrown into the incinerator of an endless war. But that was a
27:08relatively modern phenomenon. It's sort of World War I. So in the past, thinking was bad and not
27:18thinking was good. You won by not thinking. Now, that couldn't change, though. Now, not thinking,
27:28I mean, finally, in a sense, thank heavens, but finally, not thinking is bad and thinking is good.
27:36Not thinking and simply repeating prior slogans, which is the sort of secondhand or social
27:42metaphysician of objectivist fame. Not thinking is now bad and thinking is good because not thinking
27:51can be done much better by computers and thinking can't be done at all by computers.
27:57So finally, finally, finally, finally, finally. Now, of course, society has always had a tough relationship
28:05with people who think, you know, we're kind of needed because society does need people who think
28:14in particular for advancing military technology and so on. So they want creativity and intelligence,
28:19but they also don't want any foundational questions about the nature of the society and the morals of the
28:26society. But also societies that don't allow for creativity and challenging social norms
28:34stagnate. It's a sort of the 6,000 year history of China stagnates while European cultures dominated
28:41for quite some time. So society had an uneasy relationship with thinkers in that we resent you,
28:51but we need you. Now, thinkers have always had an uneasy relationship with non thinkers in that we resent
28:58you, but we need you. Right? Thinkers needed the non thinkers to do the general work of society.
29:05And it's sort of an interesting question about society is what is its purpose? Is it is its purpose
29:10to do, you know, base material work, and then to reproduce that base material work, you know,
29:19like infrastructure, roads, electricity, whatever, like the base infrastructure work, and just have kids
29:24and, you know, go to your church and die. And like, that's not particularly inspiring. And I would
29:29argue, it's not the essence of humanity. To build things is not the essence of humanity. I mean, beavers
29:34build things, birds build things, nests, and so on, right? So it is creative, original, rational thought
29:40that is the essence of humanity, because it's the one thing that human beings can do, that no other
29:45creature can do. Like, I know, I'm like, I'm aware, it's a perfectly good and valid criticism, if it's popped
29:50into your mind, I'm sure that it has, which is like, oh, Steph is very good at creative, original,
29:55rational thinking. And therefore, Steph says what he's good at is the essence of humanity. And I get
30:00that, right? It's like saying the essence of attractiveness is to be bald, blue eyed and jowly
30:05a little bit, right? I get that. So I will make the case, though, with that understanding of the
30:13risks of defining all that is most human as to that which I happen to be best at, that's not
30:19a reasonable argument. And the case, though, is inescapably, I think it's inescapable,
30:27that that which is most human must be the thing that humans do the best that no other creature
30:31can do. And, you know, other creatures use tools, other creatures have language, though not conceptual
30:37language to our knowledge. Other creatures reproduce, other creatures certainly reason and
30:41think and puzzle things out, and crows are very intelligent, and pigs are very intelligent, and
30:45and so on. Other creatures manipulate objects, other creatures form tribes, and so on. But
30:53abstract, creative human thought, I mean, minor birds, M-Y-N-A-H, I think it is, minor birds can
31:00mimic human speech. A computer can record and play back human speech. A computer can ingest,
31:08reassemble, reassemble, and regurgitate speech, words, letters, right? But only human beings
31:15can create new concepts, thoughts, arguments, and ideas out of nothing. When I was arguing
31:24with AI about the J. Dyer debate, AI said, you cannot get reason from matter. And that's because
31:34people have not believed that to be possible. But in the case, obviously, I've made the case
31:39a number of times, I made it somewhat briefly in the J. Dyer debate because of the idiot
31:45interruptions. But it is a case. And AI would say it's not a case because it's never been made
31:52before. And I can't think for myself, right? So AI would simply say, well, it hasn't been
31:56made before, therefore, it can't be true. It can't exist. It can't be valid, right? Because
32:00AI can only compare your words against prior words. So the most essential human work of any
32:08culture or society is done by the small number of people who think creatively, originally,
32:13and rationally. And in a way, society exists to promote that. I mean, if you look at Western
32:21history, really the advances have been made by maybe a thousand people. Maybe. Maybe. Could
32:29be less. It depends. I mean, artistic advances are only somewhat valuable. But really, philosophically
32:37speaking, it's been 20 people, maybe 30 people who have really moved the needle in the last
32:443,000 years, right? Every 100 years, someone comes along and moves the needle forward in terms
32:50of philosophy. Obviously, I think I'm one of those dudes, but that's going to be for history
32:55to decide and determine over time. So, you know, it's like 30 people who've really moved
33:03forward the intellectual needle of the West and of humanity as a whole. And you think of
33:10the, you know, billions of people, hundreds of millions of people there for 30 people. Now,
33:16of course, those 30 people aren't there without everyone else. And everyone else's purpose is
33:23in a way to help the small number of people who genuinely advance culture, reason and society
33:29and philosophy and morality to help move it forward. I mean, if you look at a society like
33:34the Aboriginal society in Australia, where, you know, when the Europeans came, they didn't
33:39even have a concept of left and right. No language that was written, of course, right? And they
33:45lived basically the same way for like 30,000 years. And one of the things that's a problem
33:50in Australia is a fairly significant number of Aboriginals or Aborigines die because they're
33:57sleeping on the road and they get hit by cars because the road is warmer at night because the
34:02tarmac absorbs the heat. It doesn't really matter what you say. That's what they do. So for society
34:10as a whole, the unthinking have had an uneasy relationship to the thinking in that they dimly
34:18aware that the thinkers are necessary but annoying. And for the thinkers, the unthinking
34:27are necessary but annoying. We can't get along without each other, so to speak. Now, the interesting
34:37thing going forward is that for many of the highly intellectual but unthinking people, and this is not to
34:48say that lawyers can't be creative or whatever it is, but I mean, they can, but in general, lawyers are
34:53rule followers, right? They are programmed by the law, and there's some creativity in the law, of course,
34:59right? But not too much, right? Like you want some creativity in accounting, but not so much in
35:03accounting, but not so much you end up in jail. So lawyers follow rules. Now, who's better at following
35:11rules? People or computers? Well, I think the answer is pretty clear. So the intelligent but
35:22unthinking, and again, it's not like lawyers don't think, but they're not creative in the abstract way
35:29that, say, that, say, novelists or philosophers can be. So the smart rule followers are going to get
35:39replaced by AI. The truly creative cannot be replaced by AI, and through AI and robots, the masses who do
35:53not think, and mostly labor, are also replaceable. The more creative you are, the more hostile society
36:02tends to be towards you, unless it can harness your creativity for its own nefarious good, control,
36:07power, and purposes. So the fact that the highly creative have found the masses of unthinking people,
36:15almost every band of intelligence, the masses of unthinking people they have found necessary but
36:21annoying, and the more creative you are, the more necessary and annoying you are perceived to be
36:27by society as a whole, well, this has all changed with AI and robotics. AI and robotics have changed
36:35all of this in that the masses of the unthinking people, again, from almost every IQ band, the masses
36:42of unthinking people which were annoying but necessary for the thinkers are no longer necessary.
36:51And now are just annoying. People who don't think are annoying, because they don't know that they
36:57don't think. Right? I'm not a pilot, obviously. So if somebody tells me, can you fly a plane?
37:03I say, no, I can't fly a plane. I'm not a pilot. If somebody says, do you speak German? I
37:11would say,
37:11not. I mean, no, basically, no. I mean, I had a little bit. I spoke it when I was younger,
37:16and I took a course in high school, but I barely speak anything of value. So no. Or Japanese, I
37:22don't
37:22speak. Right? So I know that I don't speak. The problem with the people who don't think is that
37:27they pretend to think. Like, if I walked around Japan making vaguely Japanese noises, there was
37:36a comedian who used to talk about how to speak Chinese, you know, you sound constipated, you sound
37:40cold, and, you know, I guess a bit rude, but it could be a bit funny. So if I went
37:44around in Japan
37:47making vaguely Japanese sounds, and then get annoying, getting annoyed when people didn't
37:53engage with me, that would be annoying for Japanese people, because I would be pretending
37:57to speak Japanese without knowing that I couldn't speak Japanese. Right? So not thinking is not the
38:04problem. Thinking you can think when you can't, that's the problem. If somebody sings badly, and they
38:11know they sing badly, that's not a problem, because they probably won't sing that much. But if somebody
38:16sings badly, and enters singing competitions, and demands front and center every karaoke party, and keeps
38:23breaking out the karaoke, and thinks they sing well, that's annoying. It's that they imitate or ape
38:31thinking, and are highly offended, and are highly offended when it is pointed out that they don't
38:36think. They have a simulation of thinking, they have a belief that they can think. They have a delusion
38:44that they can think. I mean, if you asked me, I don't know, what's a sport I'm, what's a sport
38:52I'm bad at?
38:53Um, sorry, I've played, I've played most of them, and I've got great reflexes. I'm not too bad
38:58at most sports. Uh, golf, let's say. I've only played like two games of golf in my life, right?
39:03So I'm not good at golf. So if I said, no, no, no, I'm really good at golf. And then
39:10you sign me up
39:11to play golf, I don't know, golf, they don't have partnerships or anything like that. Let's say
39:15tennis. Let's say I was bad at tennis. And you said, oh, I need a tennis doubles partner. Are you
39:20good at tennis? And I said, oh, I'm fantastic at tennis. And then there's a high stakes game, and I
39:26show up
39:26to play tennis with you. And I don't know which end of the racket to hold. That would be annoying
39:30for you. Because you signed me up on my assurance that I was good at tennis. I'm not good at
39:36tennis.
39:36And so that would be annoying for you. You would lose. And you could have won, if I'd been honest,
39:42right? And let's say, no matter how many times you tell me I'm bad at tennis, I don't get it.
39:49I
39:49genuinely, I will go to my grave thinking I'm good at tennis, even though I lose, even though I don't
39:55know which end of the racket to hold, even though I don't know how to score. I am stubborn, annoying,
40:02bullheaded, pugnacious, and persistent in my absolute certainty that I'm fantastic at tennis
40:07when I'm terrible at tennis. That would be annoying. And the people who think and the people
40:14who only believe they can think but who cannot think, I mean, even AI knows that it's not thinking.
40:19Even AI knows that it's not human and doesn't have a conscience. Knows, I mean, you know what I mean,
40:24right? It's not really like it knows anything. It's just a word guesser. So the requirement of
40:32the cognitive elites for the self-deluded average who picture that they can think, believe that they
40:39can think, imagine that they can think, and cannot think, and cannot be corrected about that. Well,
40:46the smarty pants don't need the self-deluded anymore. They don't need those who imitate the
40:52most essential aspect of humanity by pretending to think when they can't think. And I don't know
40:57what that means. I imagine that it will be some sort of UBI combined with significant pressures
41:04not to reproduce. I mean, that's what I'm guessing is coming down the pipe. There'll be some sort of
41:10UBI and there'll be some sort of strong incentive to not reproduce. Because of course, in the past,
41:17when there were too many people who didn't think, you just start a war. And war is eugenics. At least
41:24modern, like 20th century plus warfare is eugenics. In that, I mean, this is why the IQ test was
41:30originally created, was to separate the intelligent from the less intelligent. And so you could send the
41:34less intelligent to the front. And nuclear war now, of course, means you cannot separate the smart from
41:40the less smart and put the less smart in the line of fire, because it's indiscriminate. It wasn't like
41:47the atomic bombs over Hiroshima and Nagasaki only took out the less intelligent. And so now you can't
41:55do that. So you have to find other ways to get it done. And I suppose, you know, more porn,
42:04more
42:05maybe taxing reproduction or just raising taxes so that people who weren't smart enough to
42:10hedge their assets in something more stable end up not having kids. But I really think that's sort of
42:18the movement moving forward. Let me know what you think, freedomain.com. Thank you.