Michelangelo’s David, Jordan Peterson on Maturity, Gold & Life’s Forks | Yaron Brook Show - Yaron Brook Show

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:05):
Fundamental principles. I love READO, rational, self interest, and individual lost.
This is the Ran Brook Show. Oh right, everybody, welcome
to your Welcome to your own Brook show. On this

(00:26):
h last day of August. It's Sunday, August thirty first.
I hope everybody is having a great weekend and uh
looking forward to September. It's hard to believe, right, twenty
twenty five, going back like that anyway, as you can see,
I am still in Flaant, still in uh doing my

(00:48):
shows out of the airbnb. We'll be moving to my
office starting tomorrow, So tomorrow we'll get uh to a
regular location. Office times will still be changing kind of
day to day, anywhere between two I think and two
and five pm East Coast time will be the shows

(01:10):
for the rest of the week. And as I said,
they will be from my office that I rendered especially
to do the shows. So, as many of you know,
I am in fluence, and today I did something I've
been here a couple of days, and today I did

(01:31):
something I always do influence And as I went to
see Michaelangelo is David. I don't think that surprises any
of you. You know, you know the real love I
have for that that sculpture, and as always, it is
all inspiring. It is just it's just a fantastic experience

(01:53):
to be with, to be with David, And I thought
I talk a little bit about David at the beginning
of the show today. Then we will we'll talk about
the question yesterday. I think that Michael asks about maturity
and Jordan Peterson. I found some video of Jordan Peterson,

(02:15):
two different videos of Jordan Peterson talking about maturity.

Speaker 2 (02:18):
Uh.

Speaker 1 (02:18):
Then I not necessarily aligned one and with the other.
So we'll talk about both of those and we'll talk
a little bit more about maturity, about time perspective on
time and uh uh you know, so we'll just we'll
just dig in a little bit on that issue. And
again I'll show you a couple of videos of Jordan's
talking about this. Uh. And then on a completely different tangent,

(02:43):
we're going to talk about inflation. U a place inflation.
And so somebody wrote a lengthy critique of my analysis
of gen z And and the the wealth that they
have and you know, the income over the last forty

(03:06):
fifty years or whatever, and and what they did is
they critique was based on, well, if we measure everything
in gold, then we're not better off than we were
forty years ago. So I want to I want to
comment on that because I think it's an interesting issue
and I think a lot of people can have real
confusion about the role gold plays today in our economy.

(03:28):
And then finally, I have a long olde review of
a book, Folks on the Road by Larry red Key,
and maybe I'm mispronouncing his name, by Larry that he
paid me to do a review I don't know, a
year ago, and I haven't done it. So we're gonna

(03:49):
We're gonna do three quarters of it today. So it's
it's a book of short stories. We'll cover the first
three short stories from the book in the review today,
So that that's the program. It's not hugely intense. It's
a Sunday It's it's a little light and fun and
hopefully interesting for all of you guys. And maybe these

(04:11):
also make some good showed videos. Anyway, let's jump into
Michael and Angel's David, and let me just say this.
You cannot, you really cannot have an appreciation for any sculpture,
any sculpture. But suddenly, for David, without seeing it in person,
that is photos don't do a sculpture justice because the's

(04:34):
two dimensional and and and you don't get to see
it in life. Most so, I think than painting, because
painting are two dimensional, two dimensional, Seeing a painting life
still matters because you get the texture, you get the
real colors, you get the effect of the lighting. Like vermia,

(04:54):
you cannot appreciate vermia from a book. Seeing the paintings
in person is a different experience because the projection of
light in the painting is is what the painting is
about to a large extent with romia, and that you
can really only appreciate when you see the painting. And
with a sculpture, it's three dimensional. It's it's in a space,

(05:16):
and you can't really appreciate it without experiencing it in
real life. Now, after you experience it in real life,
you can really admire the photographs. And the photographs often
provide you with details that you would you didn't see
when you saw the sculpture up close, Dramatic lighting, all
of that can add hugely to the experience, but it's

(05:40):
it's never the same as actually seeing the sculpture in person.
So that's some one second is size matters size matters.
It's it has. Michelangelo's David has a presence because of

(06:02):
the quality, but also because of just the shift size
of the sculpture that you cannot get from a small replica,
even if it's a great, really really good, perfect replica,
I mean it was the whole sculpture is sculptured to
be this particular size and to be looked at looking up.

(06:27):
So again, you can't appreciate it by seeing small replicas,
I mean, and most replicas are really bad. And then finally,
what's really amazing is I've seen many replicas of many
I've seen four four replicas michelangel As David in real

(06:49):
life size, in the size of the original. There's one
in Las Vegas at Caesars Palace. If you're in Las Vegas,
it sees the palace is worth going to see it.
There's one at the Victorian and Albert Museum in London,
again if you're there. There's also a replica of Moses
real life at the also Michelangelo's Moses at the Victorian Albert,

(07:13):
and that's what we're seeing. And then there are two
in Florence. In Florence itself, there's one at the piazza
where the original used to be until they decided, i think,
very very smartly to protect it from the elements the
weather by putting it indoors and really creating a space

(07:35):
for it. And then there's a fourth one in Florence,
up on a hill overlooking overlooking the city. So there
are actually four replicas and they're all magnificent and they're
all amazing, and they're all beautiful and they're all stunning
and all of that. And when you walk into that
Kademia and see the original, it's just a different experience.

(08:01):
There's something about the marble that comes alive. All the
other replicas are casts in I think some kind of
marble dust or something like that. This is the original
carved sculpture in Carebra marble that Michelangelo worked on, and
even if you don't know all that, it just has

(08:23):
a completely different feel to its sense to it. It
just it's like it's it's also beautifully placed and beautifully
lit right at the Academia in Florence, but it is
it just has a life of its own, and it

(08:44):
really it's as if it's projecting light and marble is
just a beautiful material and when you see marble, and
you compare it to like a casting of marble dust
or some other kind of stone. There's a huge advance.
The Mobel itself is very good. So there are very

(09:06):
few artworks but literally worth traveling just to see, just
an artwork, going around the world to see it. This
is one of them, right And now, of course it's
in France, where there's probably another fifty to one hundredth worth,
you know, worth expending significant time to see. But it's

(09:28):
worth traveling to Florence just to see the michelangelost David
and then you can also go and see all the
other great stuff that's here. Rome is another destination. It's
worth it. The Louver maybe, you know, but they are
not many. There are many that are worth just traveling
just for that, and this suddenly is one of them.
It is. It's stunning. The sculpture itself is you know,

(09:57):
Michelangelo carved it, you know, when he was in his
early twenties. He was born in fourteen seventy five and
this was called between fifteen oh one and fifteen oh four,
so in his a kind of late twenties. He was
twenty five when he started it. It is, you know,

(10:18):
obviously heroic, dramatic, but it has a calm to it,
a resoluteness to it that is truly inspiring. This is
a young, beautiful, beautiful man. I mean, the muscles, the

(10:39):
tone of the body, everything about the body is just magnificent.
It's not super detailed. There's detail there like that. You
can see the veins and the arms and stuff, but
it's not super intricate. It's just stylized. You know enough
you see these powerful muscles and you can you know,

(11:02):
and they and everything. The whole body is tense and
ready for action. And he's got this beautiful, beautiful pose.
You know, he's got one leg leaning uh, stretch off
forward is uh. A weight is on the back leg Uh.
It's it's relaxed, tense at the same time and ready

(11:27):
for action, ready for action. The the uh, the tosso,
the abs, the back, it's just all beautifully perfectly done,
not not you know, it's not like what is it.
You know some of the sculptures you see, I don't know,
like the Atlas in New York. You see all the

(11:48):
muscles and super stylized and no, this is this is
a real human being, you know, powerful human being. A
you know, the image of a perfect human be, you
know physically, and then you've got this. But again, the

(12:08):
way he stands, the way you know, the way, the
way to shifted, the way his body is tense and
ready for action. All of that conveys values, conveys ideas,
and you see that face, the face of concentration, determination, commitment, readiness.

(12:35):
There's no fear there there is, but there is focus,
intense focus on the task at hand. And even if
you know nothing about David and Goliath and the story
of David Goliath, it doesn't matter. You get everything you
need to know from the sculpture itself, as you do
from every great work of art. You get it from

(12:55):
the work of art itself. You don't need too much
of the backstory. This was a commission David. It was
a commission that was Michelangelo took from the from the
city of our Florence that wanted a sculpture of a David.

(13:16):
It was a block of marble that had come from Carrera.
Two other sculptors had tried to cove it and started
coving it, and they deemed a marble to flawed to continue.
Michelangel in spite of that in spite of obvious flaws
in the marble that these two other two sculptors, experienced
sculptors are identified, decided to go ahead with the project,

(13:39):
and indeed he did. He carved the whole thing. Originally,
the statue was supposed to be at the top of
the duomo, you know, was supposed to be way up
and once but once you know, people saw the sculpture itself,
they said, oh no, you don't want it up there,
and they basically put it right at center, at the

(14:00):
heart of public life in Florence. And it was basically
it was basically there for three hundred years until the
nineteenth century when it was when they decided to move
it indoors somewhere, and they ultimately picked the location where
it is at today for preservation and protecting. It's amazing

(14:26):
that it turns out that it's sat in a box
of twenty five years before it was ultimately installed. For
twenty five years nobody had access to the day. Now
a cast was made of it. And the reason a
cast was made of it is that they lugged the
cast around different places in Florence to see how it
would look in order to figure out where it should

(14:50):
be ultimately placed, and they used a cast for that,
leaving the original in the palazzo. And once they decided,
of course, they created it up moved it. It's not
that far. It's a what a fifteen minute walk maybe
twenty minutes fifteen minute walk I think, from the Academia

(15:11):
to the palazza what it originally was, and it's been
there since kind of the late nineteenth century. Again, the
cast that they originally used in order to figure out
where to put it is used in that palazzo. And
the two other casts were made that I know of,
one for the Victorian Albert Museum and the other one

(15:32):
for the other David up up in the in the hills,
overlooking overlooking flows. What else can I take? You tell
you about Michaelangelo's David Again worth being here to see it?
Easily spend a half an hour forty five minutes just
looking at the David, just being inspired by it. There's

(15:55):
so many angles, so just going around, luckily you can
get a three hundred and sixty a view of the sculpture.
I have my favorite angles that I like to look
at it. I've been there so many times, I'm not
sure how many I mean five six times. I think,

(16:15):
I think that's right that and I'm so familiar with
it because my wife actually said at some point it's
like visiting a relative. You know, we know him. You know,
we got pictures of it all over our house, and

(16:36):
we visit every time we're in Florence, and we visit,
try to visit often. So it's very and it's still
in spite of all that familiarity when you take the
corner from the entrance and you walk and you take
the turn and there were he is at the end
of the corridor in front of you, full size, in
his full magnificence. It's breathtaking. So encourage everybody, Uh you're

(17:04):
on wolves for life. Go see Michaelangelo's David. Make it
a point in your life to uh to check him out.
Check him out. Let me see something on second. Yeah.

(17:28):
During the my wife just reminded me that during the
Second World War, you know, the Italy was being bombed
by the Allies, and a lot of effort was put
to the to the credit of the people preserving the
arts all over Italy, a lot of effort was put
and this is true in other parts of Europe as well,

(17:51):
but in Italy, especially as the Allies were bombing, A
lot of effort was put in into preserving the odd
works and to protecting them. This was a high priority
for the Italians. I don't know if this was voted
from the top. I don't know if this was the
initiative of the curators. My guess would be it was
the initiatives and museums and the curators, and they made

(18:15):
her warwak efforts to save out all over Italy. And
during the war they created a special protective casing was
built around it just in case the building was bombed
or if the building was damaged. They didn't try to
move him, but they so they built kind of a
bunk up around him to protect him, to protect the

(18:39):
sculpture from the bombing. I don't think the building. I
don't know that much of Florence was bombed. I know
Rome was definitely bombed. Naples, we were in Naples, was
definitely bombed. Some buildings will completely destroyed. Some churches with
some magnificent artworks were definitely destroyed. But I don't know.

(19:02):
I don't know, and I don't think Florence was bombed.
I don't think the Vatican was bombed, and that's why
those artworks have all survived. But I do know those
bombing going on in Rome itself. Anyway, with the trip,
if you're in Europe, it's easy, it's cheap. Get on
a train, get on an airplane. Airplanes tickets in Europe

(19:25):
are amazingly cheap if you're willing to fly coach. But
if the United States, you know, make the effort of
putting together, taking some time aside and traveling to Italy
and spending a few days in Florence, and and David
of course should be on the list of things. And

(19:46):
as we explore Florence, I'll give you other other places
I recommend going. The other thing that's amazing in the
Academia is there are six unfinished sculptures by my Elangelo,
four from Julius, the second Pope Julius, the seconds tomb,
those plan and two other unfinished works. And it really is.

(20:12):
I mean, it's tragic and sad that they were never finished,
because they would have been magnificent. Uh there are four uh,
four sculptures that are sculptures of slaves, of which the
two that were actually finished are at the Louver. Dying
slave is one of them at the Louver Museum, so
we know the quality of the ones that were finished,

(20:34):
and they just magnificent, just absolutely magnificent, so stirring, so emotional,
so revealing of the artists values. But I'll say in
a turmoil, uh, and these would have been the same.
I mean, the bodies are twisted in interesting, interesting ways

(20:54):
that the mus the muscles that you can see what
they could have and would have been, and of course
you can appreciate, you can appreciate what they are even unfinished,
just the kind of power and strength, but also the
torment there was involved that Michaelangelo is conveying in these cultures.

(21:16):
Michaelangel had a particularly later in life, had a very
very different sense of life than Michelangelo as David, in
a sense that his religion and a sense caught up
with him, I think, and he struggled between he had
a real mind body that dichotomy, and there's a real
struggle between the physical nature of reality and the nature

(21:40):
of the soul that wants to escape the body and
his in his you know, in a Christian terminology. But
it's so beautiful, it's so magnificent, you could I think
anybody can appreciate it, even if not holding a similar
philosophical view, and which you can also yet is you

(22:01):
can actually see the chisel marks on the unfinished work
and you can get a sense. I mean, you have
to be really good at this, but my wife is
so she figured she saw in it, she learned from
it kind of his technique of how we actually did
these sculptures, and it's it's truly fascinating. Anyway, highly recommend

(22:26):
seeing those as well, seeing the tour it the Louver.
Anything by Michaelangelo is worth seeing. But is David and
his Pieta and the two Dying Slaves those in the
Two Slaves at the Louver. I think those are the
four sculptures that are absolute musts in a lifetime. So
and the Pieta is sad because you can't get very

(22:47):
close to it. They put it behind bulletproof grass and
it's hard to get to it's hard to really see.
That's one way you should see it. But then look
at pictures because there's some really good photographs of it
where you really to get to appreciate the details of it.
But again encourage you to check out check out David David.

(23:08):
You can get up pretty close, pretty close all right, Yeah,
if you have any any questions about Florence, about art,
about Michaelangelo, about David, about any of these things, feel
free to jump into the super chat and ask over there. Again,
the super Chats a great way for you to kind

(23:30):
of dictate the show because I get to answer your
questions whatever you want to talk about. So please step
in and participate. And also by participating, you get to
support the show, which is which is great because we
are a show funded by contributions from you. All right,

(23:55):
Yesterday we had a question but for Mike about maturity
and what maturity is, and he quoted Jordan Peterson as
talking about maturity as involving responsibility for another human being,
and in particular, you know something about maturity, and this

(24:17):
is actually a quote from Jordan, as we'll see in
a minute, like maturity can only be achieved by being
a parent. Only when you take responsibility of a child
can you actually achieve maturity? And I thought, you know,
and I think that's wrong. And we talked about it
a little bit yesterday, and so I went and looked
for the Jordan Peterson video, and while looking for that,

(24:39):
I find another Jordan Peterson video about maturity. And this
one's actually pretty good. That is, I think this one
is while he doesn't use the language that I would use,
and we'll talk about that. I'll play it for you.
It is. It's quite good in terms of what he
thinks maturity entails, and I actually agree with it. So

(25:02):
I thought i'd show you that because and then I'll
show you a video where he talks about maturity being
requiring if you are having children. But so we'll watch
both of those and see kind of the difference. I
guess sometimes Jordan, depends on the context, has approached a

(25:23):
particular problem. I'm not sure it's as a when these
two were made, I do think that, Yeah, I don't
know which one was made first. I could guess I
could guess that the one we're gonna watch first was
made a while ago, and the other one is a
more recent one where you see a little bit of

(25:45):
a change in Jordan's perspective on things. So let me
see if I can play this for you. Now, let
me know about sound if the sound is coming across. Okay,
this is one of those short videos. It's got a
its dimensions, a kind of step. So this is Jordan predecients.
Just talking about maturity. I'm gonna play I think I'll
play the whole thing. I think I'm gonna mute my

(26:06):
microphone so you don't hear it twice once coming out
of Although I should have won headphones and then we
wouldn't have had this problem. But I don't actually like
doing the show with headphones. But anyway, I'm gonna mute
my mic so you don't hear it twice, and we're
gonna we're gonna play it, and we'll play it and
then we'll comment on it once it's done. Let me

(26:28):
mute my mic.

Speaker 3 (26:34):
It's the difference between a mature person and an immature person. Well,
first of all, hope that we can all agree that
there is a difference between like a toddler and a
responsible adult, you know, because otherwise.

Speaker 1 (26:46):
Why would we grow up? Okay?

Speaker 3 (26:47):
So what characterized is a toddler? Well, a toddler is
characterized by is that by a sequence of wins?

Speaker 1 (26:53):
Okay?

Speaker 2 (26:54):
So why is that character productive?

Speaker 3 (26:55):
Well, because the dogglar wants what he wants right now,
no matter what.

Speaker 2 (27:00):
Okay, So what does that mean, no matter what you means,
no matter what it costs his futureself and know what
matter what it costs other people. Okay, so why is
that bad? Well, if you betray your future self, you die.
And if you can't get along with other people, then
well then you don't.

Speaker 3 (27:15):
You can't engage in reciprocal altruism for example.

Speaker 1 (27:18):
So what do you try to do when.

Speaker 3 (27:20):
You socialize children is that you extend their purview so
that as their cortex integrates, they're able to regulate their
impulse with in accordance with their future self and with
other people.

Speaker 2 (27:31):
Right, So that's like.

Speaker 3 (27:32):
The definition of maturity. What's the difference between a mature person?

Speaker 1 (27:40):
All right? So he just gave us what he believes
is the definition of maturity, and uh, you know, for
the most part, I agree a todd Love At Todd
Love places his immediate gratification immediate gratification as his primary.

(28:02):
Maturity involves being able to delay gratification. Maturity involves being
able to look into the future, think about future consequences,
and adjust your behavior in the present based on future consequences.
Maturity involves having a hierarchy of values, understanding that one

(28:27):
must give up a lower value to get a higher
value in a trade. I think immaturity. You want the
higher value without the low giving up anything without giving
up the lower value. So for example, you want to
have the nice a car or the nice home without
having to do the work to earn the money to

(28:49):
be able to achieve the nice car the nice home.
So you're not involved. You don't see the value in trade.
What he calls reciprocal altruism, I'll just call it trade.
It's not recipical altruism that involves other people. It's the
issue of trade, and it's the issue of earning things.
Earning things that requires time. So maturity is really the

(29:13):
ability to project oneself into the future, think rationally and
basically decide on actions in the present, taking the future
into the account. So you know they've done these I
think tests with children. And if you put a piece

(29:34):
of chocolate in front of a child and you say,
you can have this piece of chocolate anytime you want,
but if you can wait and not eat it for
half an hour or an hour, whatever, you get two
pieces of chocolate. See if you can resist your impulse
to eat it right now. It's tasty, it's good, then
you will be rewarded with an extra chocolate. Most children

(29:56):
will eat the chocolate right now. They cannot project into
the future and control themselves based on the idea that
I will have two in the future. It's the burden
in the hand. I want the burden ad right. But
it's not an issue of trust, it's an issue of
cognitive ability. Projecting into the future requires cognition. Maturity involves

(30:20):
being able to project into the future, being able to
consider future outcomes and consider what he calls your future self.
It's about being able to control your whims. So maturity
involves being able to control your whims and being able
to be a rational being. And again, children, you know,

(30:46):
there's certain capacities that they don't have, and one of
the roles of a parent is to teach them and
to guide them, and to show them.

Speaker 4 (30:54):
The value of waiting, the value of delayed gratific the
value of trading, the value of seeing life over time,
not just in an instant, and of course the value
of not living by whim but living by reason, living

(31:19):
by thought, living rationally.

Speaker 1 (31:22):
I think Jordan captures some of that, at least in
his what he calls a definition. It's not really a definition,
you know. It's in this minute video that he presents.
I think that's a much better presentation of maturity than
what we heard that Michael quoted yesterday, and we'll see

(31:46):
we'll see another version of it today. So again, maturity
is the ability to be rational, the ability to project
into the future and to guide one's actions in the
present based on a higher che values with the future
taken into account. That is, future outcomes, the thought of

(32:08):
future outcomes, including the ability to trade with other people
and the consequence of that trade. It is immature just
the one stuff without thinking about the cost, without thinking
about the cost, or without thinking about the work required,
the values required in order to attain that stuff. Maturity

(32:29):
involves understanding that wanting something doesn't make it happen, that
wanting something achieving something requires certain steps. Those steps have
to be taken in order to achieve the thing once
one desires. Right, let me show you the other video,

(32:51):
because this one's I think in some senses this is
maybe a later shout and Peterson chi more mature. I'm
just going to resize the window. I think that's good,
Joan Peterson, and I think this is now very different

(33:11):
and it's I I I it's interesting that that the
his perspective is so different within a few years, it
would be my guess this is a year ago. I'm
not sure when that other video is made.

Speaker 3 (33:23):
One of the things I've got trouble for saying, which
is true anyways, is that you don't grow up till
you have kids. And people who don't have kids who
think they're growing up take exception to them.

Speaker 1 (33:33):
And I can understand why, but I.

Speaker 3 (33:35):
Don't really care, because you're not mature until someone matters
more than you do. And that unless there's something wrong
with you, like seriously wrong, and that happens to people.
If you have kids, that will happen to you. You know,
you might say you could be committed to something else
with equal intensity. It's like, yeah, maybe I doubt it,
but maybe you know, there might be one person in

(33:56):
a thousand who's capable of taking on a burden that's
equivalent let's say, to care for a child in some
other form, care for an ailing relative, for example, or
or maybe even sacrificial love for a husband or a wife.
Fair what maturity does that give you?

Speaker 1 (34:18):
Yeah, I mean, I think this is quite a different Jordan.
This is a Jordan that's much more focused about burden
much more focused about the other. Again, maturity is about
loving somebody else more than you love yourself. It's about
placing other people above you, or somebody above you. And
he recognizes that's such anybody, and he actually qualifies it

(34:39):
is He thinks it's only it can only be possible
with a child, and therefore only a child. Only by
having a child can you achieve maturity. He's gone away
from the differentiating immature for mature through this prism of uh,

(35:02):
whim worshiping instant gratification versus being more rational and taking
into account time and time preference and the rewards of
adult groups. All right, I forgot to put the volume
on right there was no audio. Sorry, I'm muting myself

(35:24):
and didn't unmute myself. God, So this is a very
different Jordan Peterson. This is a Jordan Peterson much more
interested in in in burden, in in difficulty, in you know,
the struggle. Also Jordan Peterson that's much more focused on uh,

(35:47):
the idea of the other, that is of you know,
you've got to you reached a higher form of life.
You will the highest form of maturity when you love
or you care about somebody else more than you care
about yourself, and since he doesn't believe you could really

(36:08):
do that unless it's with a child, you can never
really achieve that level of maturity. Now, I given credit
for not thinking that we should all go around loving
our neighbor, you know, as much as we do ourselves,
and more so that he limited just with children. But
it's all other focused, responsibility, burden focused. He's gone away

(36:29):
from the idea. The maturity is about this, the difference
between being a wim worshiping, instant gratification creature and a
creature capable of rational, long term thinking and taking into
account the future and taking into account delayed gratification and
the benefits of the layed gratification. That is. That's a

(36:54):
very kind of different place of emphasis, which is interesting.
I don't know why that change happened, but it is
a significant change. I think I prefer the first Jordan
Peterson significantly. I think I think basically in much of
what he said in the first he's wrong against some

(37:15):
other terminology. He's right in terms of kind of the
emphasis in terms of what maturity means, in terms of
his intent is to a large extent right on right.

(37:36):
So you know what we're seeing now is this more
You got to go through the rough and gritty. You've
got to really you know, And if you don't have children,
you can never attain maturity. That just is wrong, That
is just makes no sense. And it's this idea that

(37:57):
you have to there's some elevated state that you reach
when you care for somebody more than you care for yourself.
And I mean this is this is him recommitting to altruism,
recommitting to to an altruistic philosophy and altruistic ideology, which

(38:20):
I don't think was fun and center for him in
in his I guess original uh you know when you
originally originally became famous. So he has changed, he has
he has changed.

Speaker 5 (38:39):
Uh.

Speaker 1 (38:39):
So Yeah, I think maturity is an important concept. It's
obviously something that we expect adults to achieve. It's something
that we definitely, uh have the capacity to achieve. I mean,
children don't have the frontal you know, the the QUOTEXT.
They don't have that part of the brain that allows

(39:03):
them to think into the future and to really plan
and to consider, and they can't be fully rational. But
once you achieve a certain age, this is the expectation
that should be placed on you. That is what maturity
engage evolves and to a large and I think an
educational system that does not emphasize that does not emphasize thinking,

(39:25):
does not emphasize values higher keyre values, how to deal
with values, that does not emphasize trade in the assets
of trade, does not emphasize thinking long term about your
own wellbeing, about your own values, which is what your
own well being means, your own values, and figuring out
what's more important, what's less again, higher kere of values.

(39:47):
It shouldn't be surprising that as we emphasize more and
more emotion, more and more whim we get we get
kids that are less and less able. We get people
who are less and less able in our culture to
achieve maturity, or that it takes them longer to achieve
that maturity or I mean this is the sense in

(40:10):
which Jodan Peterson is right about the children. Children force
you into that recognition, at least to some extent. I
think work does as well. Like if you don't feed
your kids, something really bad is going to happen, and
it's pretty obvious, and it's pretty quick and it's pretty instant,
and you figure it out if you know I think

(40:35):
the same thing is true at work. If you fail
in your work, nobody cares about your feelings, your emotions,
your state of mind. I mean, you fail enough times,
you fail you out. So there is a you know,
kids who grow up and enter their twenties and they're

(40:56):
still immature, and that many of them Americans are very
immature in the twenties. Reality kind of knocks them over
their head. And the reality of having kids, and the
reality of the reality of getting fired from work, the
reality of life, the kind of burdens and struggles that

(41:19):
Jordan Peterson talks about. They will knock sense into you,
that is true, and people become mature in a sense
that they start taking into account the future. In that
sense of maturity. Yeah, you know, having kids will knock
sense into you, but that's not ideal. That's not the
purpose of having kids, and that is not the only

(41:43):
way to achieve the maturity. You can achieve mature just
by being a rational human being and by taking your
value seriously. All right, let's see what do I want

(42:04):
to do? Yes, we've gotten another topic, all right, So, yeah,
maturity is an interesting issue. Time is an interesting issue.
Attitude towar it's time my interesting issues. We'll talk about
those issues more in the future. I want to talk
about gold. A lot of people have this perception that

(42:25):
gold is a measure of inflation. The price of gold
is a measure inflation. So, for example, the price of
gold when the US went off the gold standard final
for the final time in nineteen seventy one, was thirty
five dollars an ounce. Today it's four hundred and sixty four.
It's basically one hundred times more than it was back then.

(42:49):
And what people say is that's a real measure inflation,
and that means that the dollar is worth one hundredth
of what it was worth in nineteen seventy one. Now
that's just not true in terms of purchasing power. It's
just you know, luxuality. The price of gold does not

(43:09):
match real inflation. Now, how do you measure real inflation
and in terms of inflating of the money supply? I
don't know, but maybe it's empt two. But it's not gold.
If what you mean by inflation is price increases, inflation,

(43:31):
you know, gold does not match price increases. So somebody
took somebody who believes that gold is the real measure
of the value of money. The real value measure of
the value of dollar is how much gold you can buy.
If you do that, and you take wages today, like
I've shown you graphs of average wages going up, all

(43:53):
the wages going up, and they've gone up since the
mid nineteen nineties, really since nineteen ninety four, they've gone
up steadily, according to according to pretty much every measure.
But what he was saying is, look, that's using conventional
price inflation measures like the PCE, which is what I

(44:14):
was using, the personal Consumption indicts personal consumption expenditure or
something like that. Anyway, and he was saying, you should
use gold. And if you use gold, people are a
lot poorer today, a lot poorer today. They make a
lot less money then they made back then. And yeah,

(44:38):
that's true, and things are a lot more expensive, a
lot more expensive than they were back then. And I
was like, okay, but that can't be right. I mean,
it's just not it just doesn't reflect reality. Gold is
not a measure of the inflation we've had. It's priced

(45:00):
dy does not reflect the inflation we've had. It's a
speculative asset. It's not money today. It's a speculative asset
and has a specultive asset, a lot of factors going
to the valuation of gold. So I figured, Okay, why
don't we make this personal. I know how much money
I made in nineteen ninety four, nineteen ninety four, yes,

(45:23):
and I know how much money I made today, you know,
And I can divide the amount of money I made
in nineteen ninety four, buy the price of gold, and
that'll give me how much ounces of gold I made
in nineteen ninety four. And in nineteen ninety four, you know,

(45:45):
I basically made one hundred and sixty seven ounces of gold.
That was my annual salary. One hundred and sixty seven
ounces of gold, right, Yes, one hundred and sixty seven
times three hundred and eighty four gives you sixty four thousand,
which is about my salary in nineteen ninety four. Well,
if I take the price of goal today, let me

(46:07):
just do this, one said, if I take the price
of goal today, what would my salary today have to
be for me just to have the same lifestyle, right,
the same purchasing power as I did back then, I'd
have to have, you know, one hundred and sixty seven
ounces times right, three thousand, four hundred and sixty four

(46:33):
dollars pounds. So in order for me not to just
stay the same same purchasing power over the last since
nineteen ninety one, which is what thirty one years ago, right,
I would have to make today five hundred and seventy eight,
four hundred and eighty eight dollars just to have the

(46:57):
same standard of living as I had back then. Now
that's nuts, that's completely insane. Five hundred and seventy four
hundred and eighty eight dollars buys me a ton more,
I mean not even close a ton more than it
did than sixty four thousand dollars did in nineteen eighty four.

(47:18):
The cost of living has not gone up ten x.
It's gone up two x, but it's not gone up
ten x. Housing maybe's gone up three gs, it's not
gone up ten x. Gold has gone up ten x.
It's gone from three hundred and eighty four dollars an

(47:39):
ounce to four hundred and sixty four dollars an ounce.
So gold is not tracking my cost of living. It's
not tracking cost of housing, it's not tracking the cost
of groceries. It's certainly not tracking the cost of computers.
Which has gone down dramatically. How many ounces as a

(48:00):
gold does a computer cost today less than one? How
many ounces does a gold do the computer cost back
in nineteen ninety four ten gone down by ninety percent
of gold terms. So, you know, the idea that you

(48:21):
can measure the cost of living and the value of
your wages by turning it into you know, the gold
equivalent is just nonsense. Gold is a hedge, Gold is
a protection. Gold is a speculative asset. Gold is an
emergency fund. Gold is not a measure of inflation, either

(48:45):
monetary inflation or price inflation. And it's not a measure
of you know, the increase in the cost of living.
It's just bogus to think of it that way. So, yeah,
you know what. I read his critique of the thing.
It didn't seem right, and then I ran my own numbers,

(49:06):
and it's obvious it was obviously just nonsense. So for
all you gold bugs out there, I'm sorry, it's just
not what you think it is. You know, I'm all
for gold, you know, a huge respect for gold, and
you should have some gold in your portfolio. It's a

(49:26):
great investment. It's an important investment. It provides obviously in
inflation hedge, but it does much more than just inflation
because it's gone up much faster than inflation. Inflation has
gone up. Price inflation has gone up about one hundred
percent since nineteen ninety four, eighty nine percent or ninety
percent on the PCE basis, one hundred and eighteen percent

(49:47):
on the CPI and basis I'd take ninety percent. And
generally people think inflation is higher than it really is
because they don't take into account the increased qualityity of goods.
As we saw, the price of television's basically gone down
ninety percent. The price of computers has gone down much

(50:09):
more than that. If you're take innock on quality and
the price of an iPhone, well, you couldn't have an iPhone,
So how do you even measure that in terms of
in terms of standard living, quality of life? So, yeah,
it is what it is, all right, let's see, so

(50:30):
hopefully that is that is useful. But again, things are
not as bad as you think they are, you know,
in terms of in terms of finances, in terms of
cost of living, inters of all these things. By the way,
housing house prices are gone up in the United States
in nineteen eighty four till today. On average average across

(50:52):
the entire country, it's one hundred and thirty seven percent.
So that's higher than CPI, which is one hundred and
eighteen percent, higher than PC which is basically ninety percent.
But it's not like it's basically house prices are more
than doubled. If you live in California, home prices have
gone up two hundred and seventy six percent. And this

(51:12):
is why the whole housing issue, and that means it's
gone up more than double, you know, just called it inflation,
price inflation. The entire housing problem is a problem of
the coasts. It's a problem of lack of supply in California,

(51:36):
in Washington, Oregon, in New York, in Boston, in some
other countries, other counties and cities where zoning is restricted
building that are desirable to live in. I don't know,
maybe maybe Denver, but I don't think prices have gone
up that much in Denver. But it's a huge California issue.

(51:59):
But that's all initiative supply. All right, Hopefully that was helpful.
All right, let's jump in with my review of Folks
in the World. So Folks in the Road was written
by a support of this show. It is you can
get on an Amazon It's Folks in the Road. It's

(52:22):
actually that's a good title. I mean generally a good
title choices, right, folks in the Road representing choices. It's
a book of short stories, the basically four short stories,
and in the book I've read three of the four.
So this is not a review of the fourth. I'll

(52:43):
try to read the fourth next few weeks and provide
a review of it. So let me first say that,
you know, this is just my and I'm going to
say subjective and I really do you mean subjective response
to these short stories. I'm not an expert on literature.

(53:06):
I'm not an expert on writing, you know. Indeed, I
don't think of all the arts, this is one I
have probably the least I mean the least knowledge of.
Put it that way, So take it for what it's worth.
Larry wanted me to do this in spite of I've

(53:27):
given that caveat many many times, and people are still
wanting me to do this, maybe partially because this is
advertising for the books. And I did review mirra Ben's
short story. Was it a year ago? It's been a
long time. I think maybe two years ago. So I
agreed to to do Larry's. But again, literature not my

(53:49):
strong suit. Not my strong suit, so take that into account.
All right, So three stories we're going to talk about today.
The first is called the Picture Hitter, the pinch Hitter,
and the Trout And this is really like a falling
in love story. It's a romantic story. Man and woman
just basically two characters in the whole in the whole thing.
I mean, there's there's another character, but really the whole

(54:11):
story is just two people. It's about a kind of
a a baseball player at the end of his career
going trout fishing and falling for a woman who's there
trout fishing. And I think the story is really this video. Okay.

(54:32):
By the way, all right, let me know if the
video is okay. I'm getting some signals here that it
might not be. But you guys are the final arbiturs
of where the video works or not. Where you are anyway,

(54:53):
I found that the story quite, you know, quite well written. Interesting.
I think you have to have some appreciation for baseball
and fly fishing. I have no appreciation for fly fishing.
I think if you did, you would probably enjoy the
story even more. I do know and appreciate baseball, so

(55:15):
I think that at least resonated with me that part
of it, the fly fishing pot less. But still I
still found the story quite engaging and believable in terms
of the kind of the love angle, the falling in
love original. I'd never read anything like it. I don't

(55:38):
know if a story like it, I think it worked again,
it would work more if I knew more about fly fishing,
because some of it's the intricacy of that. But yeah,
I think it's really it's well written, an original and
entertaining and kind of gives you a nice warm feeling

(55:59):
at the ends. So it's it's it's good. I like
it the I think the characters are well drawn, again,
particularly if you know baseball and you kind of know
the pinch hitter end of Korea, what that entails. If
you know a little bit about baseball, I think that
gives it. It gives it color, and I think Larry

(56:21):
does a really good job of characterization both both the
baseball player and the woman he falls for. She's a
little bit more abstract, you get to know her a
little bit less, but still I think characterization is good
and and I found it and entertaining and you know,

(56:42):
worthwhile story to read again. The Folks on the Road
by Larry Radkey are a d t k E R
A d t k E. You could find the book
of short stories on Amazon. It's self published by Larry.
The second story is about two homeless guys, both of

(57:08):
them homeless for different reasons. I won't give it away.
It's another part problem with literatures. You don't want to
give you don't want to give the story away. I
think the first one it's easy because anyway, this is
a story of two homeless guys who go on to
kind of a quest like a like an adventure. Uh.
And they they're both there. So there's there's a little

(57:37):
bit of a political message here, or maybe a lot
of a political message here about COVID and and this
is this is a story about two homeless guys during COVID,
and COVID plays a role in one of them becoming homeless.
The other one is homeless because or just just giving

(57:57):
up on life in a sense because of government regulation
of medicine. So so there's that angle. There's a kind
of a clearly uh, anti authoritarian government angle to all
of this. Uh. I found the story itself, like the
the the quest, the adventure they go on, and and

(58:18):
just the characters, the two characters, quite interesting and fun.
I'm curious where Larry got the idea for this, and
and the details, all the details of it as well
are quite entertaining and interesting. Uh. And I don't know
where he got the idea, way he got all of that?
They you know where you got all of that from?
They go uh uh uh try to hunt ducks in

(58:40):
in the in the in the Los Angeles River, uh,
you know. And and the sense of desperation, in the
sense of kind of homelessness, of giving up on life,
I think is well captured. And of course this quest
is a quest that teaches them both about life and
about the values and causes them to rethink, rethink their values,

(59:04):
and recommit to living if you will. And I think
that's done fairly effectively. And I think it's convincing that
this adventure question on how it evolves, would have a
real impact on their lives. It's not just frivolous, that
it would really cause them to rethink it and turn

(59:26):
their lives around. So I enjoyed that aspect. I enjoyed
the characterization. The two men are interesting. I found the
politics a little bit like, you know, I don't know.
I don't want to say preachy, because it's not it.
Maybe I'm just sensitive to trying to convey a political

(59:47):
message in a good story. I think that could be
and this will be a theme because I think that's
a problem with the story as well. I think it
be toned down a little bit it and you still
get the same effect, and you still get the same
impact on the fewer in terms of in terms of

(01:00:10):
the characters, because that's what matters here. It's the characters,
the adventure and their ability to change their life. I
mean that value judgment is so much more important than
you know, the political causes that are being discussed here.
I think that goes over people's heads. And for non

(01:00:32):
objectives reader it would be confusing and maybe they'd missed
a lot of the point. They'd get maybe upset at
some of the political statements and then miss I think
the story and the interest in the story, but again,
it's much of it is really well written. And the

(01:00:53):
descriptions of La and of the adventure in the La
River and the ducks and I mean really good. UH
and and the character is interesting, So again I recommend
it's called Blind Wager. It's like a blind wager, a bet.
And then finally Old Man on Old Rebellion. UH. This

(01:01:14):
one's more explicitly political. It's about a rancher who's who's
dealing with the California regulators. He's trying to preserve his property,
and you know, he kills he kills a wolf, and
of course the wolf is uh is an indigered species
and the government's coming after him. And it has really

(01:01:38):
at the very end it has elements of science fiction
and UH and the beginning of kind of a big
battle for freedom and liberty and UH an inspiration. I
found it a little bit too much in that respect,
in in in the if you will science fiction part

(01:02:00):
of it, I think they are again. The best writing here,
I think is when there's a description of the values
at stake, the description of the individuals and the struggles
they are facing, the choices that they have to make.
Like the description the early part of the story where

(01:02:23):
the guy shot the wolf and now realizes he's in trouble,
I think is I think is the best part of it.
So you know, so again super originally way it comes
up with these ideas, it's super original. It's a little,

(01:02:43):
you know, a little bit I think difficult to really
get into in terms of believability, in terms of the characters,
in terms of what happens, particularly in the final parts
of it, to really get too excited about this, to
get you know, to really get in into the story itself.
But I think it's enjoyable. Again, original, interesting characters and

(01:03:11):
although a little less developed than I think the previous two.
And if you're in for you know, the good guys
fighting back against government bureaucrats and government regulations and government controls. Yeah,
this is a story for you, the beginnings of a revolution,
just the very, very very beginnings of a revolution. This

(01:03:33):
might get you excited. There's a little bit of a
John gold skulch you know hints in there as well.
So yeah, I think I think a lot of people
would enjoy it. I found it less esthetically pleasing than
the first two, all right. In other words, you know,
i'd recommend folks in the road try it out, give

(01:03:57):
it a shot. You might like it. Let Larry know.
You can get it on an Amazon, so yeah, check
it out. All right, let's see we're oh, I think
we've covered everything we plan to do for today. So
that is everything I have. So let's now we'll turn

(01:04:19):
to the super chat and for that, wait a minute,
I want to remind you that this show is funded
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(01:04:39):
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we can get to our targets. Andrew Reps haven't been
swearing up to ain Rand. Do you feel that you
are always maturing? She said no, a bit shocked. He
do you feel that you are constantly learning more about life?
She yes? And wonder hol ever survived not knowing what

(01:12:09):
I know? Now? How do you interpret this? Well that,
as I said, maturing is not gaining you knowledge. Maturing
you reach a certain level of maturity and you're done, right,
It's not an ongoing process. And that level of maturity
I think most of us gain it in our late teens,

(01:12:30):
early twenties, or maybe later twenties, depending on who you are.
And that level of maturity is again the ability to
think long term, the ability to defer, you know, defer rewards,
the ability to save in a sense, the ability to invest,

(01:12:51):
but the ability to think about the future, and a
lot of that just means being rational, because what does
being rational mean. Being rational means, among other things, being
able to project into the future and understand the consequence
of your actions in the future and take that into account.
So once you reach a certain level of maturity, you're done.
It's not something you keep growing in it. So once

(01:13:15):
you can do that, once you can do that function,
you're done. But you're never done learning. There's always new stuff.
There's always new stuff that you didn't know before. You're
never ever ever done learning in life, never ever done
growing in life. But it's like, is your rationality growing? No?

(01:13:38):
Rationality is I'm rational? Is your maturity growing, no, I'm mature.
Achieve maturity. And the only reason we have a concept
for maturity is because we can contrast there with immature
both immature adults and certainly immature children. And we can
see the evolution of children as they gain the rational capabilities,
as they gain the ability to resist instant gratification, to

(01:14:01):
resist the passions, to resist a whims and and to
and to re orient re oorient themselves around values and
re orient to selves about around the long term rather
than about the short term and about whim worshiping. That's
the process of maturity. Thank you Andrew for the fifty dollars.

(01:14:22):
That is very generous. Clerk, are you not the author
of your thoughts? You're just Are you not the author
of your thoughts? You're just the editor. You're not the
author of your thoughts? Well, then who is the author

(01:14:46):
of my thoughts? I mean, there's a there's a sense
that your thoughts are delivered by your subconscious without your
direct control. What you're doing is prompting for the thought
to come, without reviewing the thought in advance, and then

(01:15:06):
bringing it out. And there is a sense in which
as it's happening, you're editing it. Yes, so yes, But
if you are responsible for the content that shift subconscious has,
if you are the author of the thinking that made

(01:15:26):
possible what you have the focus, then you also the
author of your thoughts. Ultimately, maybe not in real time,
but you are the one who caused and caused these
particular ones. That's a good question to ask a philosopher

(01:15:49):
friends when they hear Andrew cliche. But true art is
nourishment for the soul. Just went to a sculpture garden
that had technically great work of people and modern sculpture
plain or mangled shapes in space. The people much more interesting. Yeah,

(01:16:10):
but the people. But was the sculpture of people technically
great works of people? Yeah? I mean, it's not even
interesting that the mango shapes are nothing. They're zeros. They
mean nothing, they say nothing, they convey nothing, They impact
you nothing. They're just not They don't have anything whereas figurative.

(01:16:37):
At least it has something to say. It's not always interesting,
it's not always good, but it has some teeth to say.
I'm glad you found the people more interesting. Hopefully they
were also nourishing. Michelangelo or David is nourishing and inspiring.

(01:16:58):
But it really is nourishment for the soul, it really is.
It gives you energy, it gives you focus. It gives
you a sense of what is possible. Andrew says, yeah,
sculptures of people. Yeah. I mean. The other thing about
a lot of modern figurative sculpture is that it tends
to be very naturalistic. It tends to be I don't know,

(01:17:23):
a person sitting on a bench or a child playing along,
but you know, fully dressed, just like a you cast
a child. You know, in in bronze, there's nothing, there's
nothing there. There's no stylization, there's no there's no added element,
there's no value projection other than this is life. This

(01:17:44):
is what it's And there's some some you know, interesting
aspects to that, but but most of it is pretty boy.
I mean, one of the things you notice here in
Florence when you look at the sculptures is, uh, you know,
the intense drama of it all. I mean, there's a
beautiful sculpture at the Palazzo Vitio Riccio of Chillini, which

(01:18:12):
is a Theuseus holding the head of Medusa, and it's
just a gorgeous sculpture. And again it's it's not in action,
but it's right after he chopped Medusa's head off, holding
Medusa's head in front of him, standing with the sword proud.
It's dramatic, it's strong, it's powerful, and it's it's I'm

(01:18:36):
pretty sure it's in the nude. I think it's in
the nude, as sculpture I think should be. I think
sculpture should always be in the nude, almost always be
in the nude. And so much a modern and oh
in Balazzo Vecchio. Uh, there's a modern sculpture they put
up of a figurative modern sculpture of a woman looking

(01:19:00):
your iPhone with headphones on and you know, fully dressed
and everything. It's like they missed the whole spirit of
the place. It's like the whole spirit of of of
of all the sculptures there, you know, is lacking in
this completely naturalistic, unbelievably boring sculpture of a woman doing

(01:19:23):
what everybody else does. And you know, not everybody is Michael,
Not everybody is David with a sling getting ready to
fight Eliath. Not everybody is Theseus. Who's just Perseus, pertheous
Perseus who's just chopped the head of Medusa, the feared Medusa,
and still can't look at it because I think if

(01:19:43):
he looks at it, he's still will turn into stone. Uh,
it's not real life. What the what they're sculpting. It's idealized,
and it's dramatized, and it's a projection of you know,
man as he could be. And this woman right in
the middle of the plot. So looking at the iPhone uninteresting.

(01:20:07):
It could be just a human being. Look at the
iPhone fully dressed. At least make make a you know,
make a nude or at least you know, nudity essentializes
things by clothing, I mean, just make them look like
everybody else. It's it's it makes it boring. And you know,

(01:20:30):
even in the in the where the David is in
the room next door, there is a sculpture and I
forget what the theme is, but it's it's a man.
He's he's holding a woman. He's way up there above him,
and he's stomping on it. There's another woman below and
it's all dynamic, in a in a circular motion, twisted bodies.

(01:20:52):
Everything's twisted, everything's in action. Everything's dramatic. Something life and
death is happening here. And then you go out and see,
you know, man at a bench sitting there. I mean
that is what so much of kind of modern figurative.
It's just dull and boring and uninteresting. The drama, the excitement,

(01:21:14):
the the is gone, the heroism is gone. It's just gone.
You almost never see it, Richard, I thank you, Andrew.
I disagree with Jordan Peterson's assertion and maturity requires parents
with it. I've known immature, irresponsible parents whose kids have

(01:21:37):
grown up struggling with life. Yeah, no, I agree with you.
I agree, And I think Jordan would even agree that
some parents resist maturity even after they have kids. He's
saying it's necessary. I'm not sure he's saying it's the
only requirement that is. I'm not sure he's saying by
having kids you automatically mature. It is a wake up

(01:22:01):
call if you're immature. And there are a lot of
comedies about this, right A bachelor finds himself with a
little baby for a few days and has to you know,
irresponsible whim worshiping guy suddenly finds himself what there's three
min and a baby and movies like that where suddenly

(01:22:22):
you've got to change tapers and you've got to feed
the thing and it's crying at nights and you go
you gotta reality is just in your face constantly. Babies,
don't let you forget about reality for one second. Now,
people who are immature screw it up quite a bit,
but people who have any symblance of responsibility. This is

(01:22:43):
a wake up call to become more mature. But it's
not necessary, and I don't think it's sufficient. It's neither
necessary nor sufficient, So I agree with you. Liam says
maturity is taking more pride in the process than in

(01:23:03):
the outcome. I don't know if that's true. I mean,
certainly it's good to take pride in the process. Outcomes
of good too, appreciating the process, but I wouldn't define
maturity that way. It certainly maybe part of maturity. It's

(01:23:26):
part of this appreciating the time aspect of action, of
the pursuit of values. But I don't know if that
is the way I would define maturity. I don't think
that's true. It's much more related to the ability not
to live in wim by wim. Raphael says, please try

(01:23:48):
trut to read Giovanni in Florence. Try to read Giovanni.
I'll have to write that down. I'm not familiar with
that one. So if I recommend Giovanni. Okay, thanks RFL.
Let's see Harper Campbell. When reading online comment sections, it

(01:24:16):
appears the culture is saturated with racism and hatred. Is
this due to immaturity fear of taking the risks necessary
to make your life something? Well, it's a few things. First,
I wouldn't use the comment section on online platforms as
a reflection of the world out there. It's a reflection

(01:24:38):
of a subculture within that world. It's a reflection of
certain people, but not I don't think it's I don't
think it's it's a reflection of the world generally out there.
There are plenty, plenty of people who have never made
a comment on a chatboard in their life, a vast
majority of people. So that's one. But why are they racist.
It's a product of tribalism. It's a product of the

(01:25:01):
negation of reason, which has made them afraid, fearful, and
insecure about their own future. They have to blame somebody.
Racism is a way to blame the other that belongs
to another tribe. You remember, we've talked a lot about this.

(01:25:25):
The tribalism is the consequence of people's inability to think
for themselves. They struggle in life. As a consequence, they're
therefore drawn to a group. They can tell them what
to think, they can tell them how to face life.
Tribalism is the refuge of fearful, unthinking human beings and
it you know, tribalism means the people in another tribe

(01:25:48):
are bad, and often the tribes are. One of the
most obvious, most primitive, most barbaric forms of forming tribes
is around racial groups, around the appearance of race groups,
and that results in racism. Again, hatred comes from fear

(01:26:09):
and is again a product of irrationality. It's a product
of not knowing how to deal with the world, not
knowing how to deal with reality, not knowing how to
deal with with life, and therefore lashing out at the
world because you don't know what to do, because you're
not using the tool that you have to do it

(01:26:30):
to deal with it. Raphel Please also try Besticker a
Lot Florentina and ill Latini. All right, we're getting a
bunch of a bunch of steak recommendations here, all right.

(01:26:51):
I think those two are on my list, or at
least one. Yeah, I think those two have definitely been
mentioned and on my list. Thank you, Clark. Economists are
saying Hyek was right about the past, but AI changes
the game. The calculation problem solved. Modern AI sypocompedis can

(01:27:11):
handle what Soviet planners couldn't. Yeah, they are saying that
I'll do a show on this because it's a big issue.
But it's partially a problem of not understanding Hyek, and
it's prosibly a problem of Hyak himself not properly I think,
defining what he meant by the calculation problem. The calculation
problem is not a calculation problem. It's a metaphysical problem.

(01:27:36):
It's a problem of not being able to know the
values of individuals. That is, what is something worth to me?
A central planet cannot know that. It can once you know, say,

(01:27:57):
it can trying to as to me or average out
what is important to people and how much people are
willing to pay for something, But it can't literally get
inside my brain at least not without you know, a
neurallink and figure out what's important to me at this
particular moment, what I'm willing to pay and what I'm

(01:28:17):
not willing to pay, how far I'm willing to drive
to get something, how I'm not willing to drive what
job I find appealing my job, but don't try it
all the millions of little decisions you make on a
data dayasis AI cannot predict that. It's not an issue
of the data is there. I don't know how to
calculate it that AI could solve. The problem is it

(01:28:40):
doesn't have the data. The most important data is people's values,
which are changing constantly and are being updated constantly. There's
no way, again without a chip in our brain that
sends all their data to central AI to figure that
out and therefore to be able to adjust supply and

(01:29:03):
demand and anticipation of that. So the problem is that
it's not an issue of the enormity of the calculate.
Tell It's not how big and powerful the calculator is.
It's an issue of does the calculator have the right data,
And in this case no, And it can never have

(01:29:25):
the right data because the data is the choices, but
fundamentally the values of individuals. Andrew, you've said metaphysics came
easy to you. I think it's why rand was shocked
at the idea of constantly maturing. Early on, she got

(01:29:45):
a key metaphysical principle, the primacy of existence, which is
the foundation of maturity. Yes, I think that's right. I
think the primacy of existence is the foundation of maturity.
It's to recognize what is metaphysical, recognize what you can
change what you can't change is a big part of maturity.

(01:30:06):
And that your wishes do not are not a claim
on the world, a not a claim on reality. Your
wishes count for nothing. What counts is your values and
your actions in pursuit of those values, guided by reason.
That's what counts. Your whims count for nothing. Can you

(01:30:33):
go over some of Patrick Bindavit's capitalist answers from today's
show on Jubilee. Yes, I'm going to look at that
and review it. It's too bad they didn't have me
on that show. I should have been the guy doing it.
Roland says, so jealous. I mean to Florence once. Now
I know I have to visit again. Yes you do,
and there's so much good stuff to see here. Definitely

(01:30:55):
worth a visit. Gulag okay, would you address private investors
buying property and developing areas. They're therefore increasing property tax
and pricing people out. Thank you? Why are they pricing
why are they increasing property tax? So, first of all,

(01:31:20):
I have no problem with private investors buying property and
developing areas. That's progress, right, we want more development, not
fewer development. But I'm not sure why that increases property taxes.
Property taxes in California are not, for example, I'm not
determined by what other people are doing. They're determined by

(01:31:42):
the last price you paid a particularly on the house
that you own. So and I'm not sure why it
prices people out if they are developing areas, which means
they're building stuff that actually will lower the price. Right,
most apply given a fixed demand, will decrease spaces. The

(01:32:04):
more they develop, the lower prices will be. So maybe
I don't understand the question. Maybe you need to give
me more information for me to be able to answer
it better. But based on that, I just think is
upside down. Peter, who writes Marrabins love you YouTube channel,
Love your YouTube channel, God, love your YouTube channel. Don't

(01:32:29):
love immigrants coming in bringing their uncles with weird sounding names.
They're gonna take a bobs. Who's Bob? I don't get
that all right, But Peter and Mirrabins have their own language,
coming in bringing their uncles with weird sounding names they're

(01:32:49):
gonna take out Bob's all right, Michael, Can you try
and get on Graham's Stephens show. He has a huge
audience in his very open to new types of guests.
Sure I can. I can slowly try to do that.
I don't know Graham Stevens, but I'll look him up

(01:33:12):
and see, let's see. Yeah, all right, thanks Michael Andrew.
I think it's dangerous to care for your children more
than yourself. What happens when your child doesn't need or
want that level of care anymore? Yeah? I mean, I
think I think that whole conception is is strange. You know,

(01:33:37):
you care about your children because you care about yourself,
And I yes, and and and what happens when they
grow up and they leave? Right?

Speaker 3 (01:33:48):
So?

Speaker 1 (01:33:50):
But I think you're caring changes over time as well. John,
always trying to get your question on me. Eighty percent
of pakistanis products of first cousin marriages. Do you think
that is in part? In part? I guess do you

(01:34:10):
think this is in part their high crime rate? Pakistanis
in the UK. So do I think that's why they're
more likely to be criminals or hi criminality? You know,
I don't know first cousin marriages tend to cause all
kinds of birth defects, and I think a lot of

(01:34:31):
these children do have birth defects. I don't know what
kind of impact it has on intelligence. It's very it's
very hard to tell. There are other communities where there's
a lot of in breeding for lack of a different word,
because they're just small communities which have done fine in

(01:34:53):
the world. So I doubt that that is the cause
of crime in particular. I mean, I think the cause
of crime in England with Pakistani is pretty straightforward, and
that is the lack of enforcement. That is, the British
police and the British legal system treat them with kid gloves.

(01:35:16):
They're afraid of being called racist if they sentence them
to jail terms, so they identify them as bad actors
or as criminals, and therefore they get there's a two
chier justice system in the UK. If you're a white
brit and you commit a crime, and if you're a
Pakistani you commit a crime, you don't get punished the

(01:35:37):
same amounts. The first, the police are not doing their job.
I'd say that's number one. Second, the British culture is
not demanding assimilation. And part of that is welfare and
the fact that they're not expected to work and they're
not expected to become Brits. And that's a problem throughout

(01:36:02):
Europe where you don't get assimilation, you go and the
main fault in that is with the warfare state. I
don't know if, if, to what extent cousin weddings have
to do with crime. I mean, that's an empirical question,
but I'm skeptical. It does have to do with a

(01:36:24):
lot of health problems and a lot of both defects
and maybe lower IQ and maybe then being qualified for
lower end jobs. But you could still do those lower
end jobs without being a criminal. So I'd say the
criminality is much more an element of culture and the

(01:36:45):
unwillingness of the Brits.

Speaker 5 (01:36:48):
To demand demand and demand and the assimilation and the
number one did two ways which you demand a simulation.

Speaker 1 (01:37:01):
One is the law, you enforce the law one hundred percent,
and second is work. You have to demand people work
freedom first says. I've watched your show Heroes and Art Today,

(01:37:24):
highly recommended watching, recommend watching the movie Flash of Genius.
It's about a real hero based on a true story. Interesting.
I don't think I've heard of that movie. Thank you.
I always am looking for good movie recommendations. Flash of Genius,
all right, thank you, feeda first. Ben Jackson. Do you

(01:37:47):
think people are able to have multiple careers in life.
I'm an ad copywriter. I love my work, but I
also do architecture design on the site. Yeah, I do
think you can have multiple careers. I think it's hard.
I've certainly had multip careers in parallel and sequentially, and
you can do both. It's difficult. Not everybody can do it,
but it's certainly possible. So and you have to realize

(01:38:11):
that you're giving up something. You're never going to become
as good of an architect as you would be if
you devoted full time to it. You'll never become as
good at copywriter as you could be if you devoted
your full time to it. So as long as you're
willing to live with that, with the fact that you'll
never be the best that you could be in one
of those, yeah, you could probably juggle to careers at

(01:38:34):
the same time. Simon, would it be justified to displace
the Gusans and have Israel just absorb the land in
order to keep Israel Israeli safe. I mean, where do
you displace them? Two? Right, So it could be justified

(01:38:56):
if there was some way to do it, But it's
not necessary, right, It's not necessary to do it, and
there's no way to send them they don't want to go,
the people who nobody wants to accept them. I mean,
the obvious solution would be for Egypt to take the

(01:39:19):
Gauza script and make it proud of egypt Is or
would love that. But you know, it could be justified
if it was done right and it was thoughtful. I
think the option right now of giving them the ability
to voluntarily leave if they want to leave and finding

(01:39:42):
them places where they could go is a good option,
and that would reduce the population in Gaza. So we
use the problem somewhat, but it still needs a solution locally,
and that means first winning the war. All right? Final
two questions, guys, unless you want to ask something before

(01:40:04):
I finish these, hap a friend, Harper. I contrast maturity
from child from child childishness, which is characterized by a
lack of impulse control, that's right, plus a lack of
agency yep, and emotionalism. Yes, maturity is impulse control plus
personal responsibility plus reasoning. Yeah, I mean, I think that's right.

(01:40:27):
But you have to think about what impulse control means
and how it manifests itself, and how all of those
evolve over time as you grow in childhood. That is,
by the time you're in your twenties, though, should all
be gone. You should have shifted to becoming mature. But yeah,
that's that's pretty good. I like that inpo keep, if

(01:40:52):
someone films me in public and post it online for clicks,
isn't that using my image property without consent? Why should
free expression in this context override image rights? I mean,
it's a complicated question. If we live in a world
in which the expectation is that when you're outside, given

(01:41:16):
that the cameras everywhere, that you know, when you're walking
down the street, when you're doing things in public, you
have no you have no expectation of privacy, then you
have no expectation of privacy. Then then people can do
what they will with any images they catch. But generally

(01:41:36):
I think that you're right. I think that your image
is you. And this is why, for example, I don't
know when I film my talks, I often have to
ask the consent of the students to use the video
or announce you are now enging a space where we

(01:41:57):
are filming and we will be using this video. By
entering the space, you're granting consent for us to use
this video, and I think you should have to. This
is why in a lot of videos you see faces
are blurred out because they haven't received consent, and I

(01:42:18):
think that's how it should be. I think we live
in a culture now where people can throw up a
camera and live stream anything anytime anyway, that all of
that has gone out the window, and we really need
to think about. But live streaming really creates an issue.
But you can't get consent live maybe we can create

(01:42:40):
software that can. Maybe it already exists as you're live
streaming blurs out certain faces. I mean, this is something
that needs to be thought through in terms of property
rights and in terms of your image rights versus the
fact that you're in public versus the technology that now
enables this so easily. How do we draw the lines?

(01:43:02):
It's something that we should ask like Adam ourself when
he's on the show next time, to talk about, because yeah,
it is interesting where you draw the line exactly? All right, guys,
thank you really appreciate the supports from all the super
chatters and the stick of people. Thank you for all that.

(01:43:24):
I will see you guys tomorrow, probably around the same time,
maybe an hour later, maybe an hour earlier, but sometime
in the range of this time. Nick, I think I
assume that tomorrow I'll be in an office. It'll be
a different setting, maybe more boring, I don't know, but

(01:43:44):
it'll be a little easier, and it'll be my home
for the show for the next three weeks. All right, everybody,
I will see you tomorrow. Have a great night. Don't
forget patreon dot com. Support the show on patreon dot
com value for value. Thanks guys, Bye, have a good night.

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Michelangelo’s David, Jordan Peterson on Maturity, Gold & Life’s Forks | Yaron Brook Show

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}Michelangelo’s David, Jordan Peterson on Maturity, Gold & Life’s Forks | Yaron Brook Show