RUNNING ORDER
00:00 The Washington air crash
02:50 Free will vs determinism
06:52 The job interview question: “What are you good at, what are you bad at?”
07:45 Jo Ellis, the “transgender” subject of speculation about the crash
09:13 Should podcasters allow their guests to “over share”?
10:55 Forbidden books & ideas and the democratisation of the internet
13:28 Social trust and cohesion vs. “multicultural chaos”
15:02 Is the lens of “good guy vs. bad guy” useless?
17:42 Elon Musk’s erratic participation in politics
21:05 Is AI a “good guy” or a “bad guy”?
22:40 L.A. Fires schadenfreude
25:00 Do the small and weak hate the big and strong?
27:00 Calvinism and British Imperialism as attempts to place Scotland at the centre
29:04 Anglo common values vs. Asian common interests
30:14 Can the hereditarian position defeat the Woke?
32:33 Why is the hereditarian position attractive to younger intellectuals?
TAPESCRIPT
Colin, anything about this crash over Washington, D.C. on Wednesday night that's attracted your attention?
Yeah. Hi, Luke. Yeah. Whenever I hear about a piece of military equipment being destroyed by pilot or captain error, I automatically assume it's a woman involved. Of course, it's not always the case, but the probability tends to be quite high. Mainly it's because a lot of women are being kind of pushed into roles which are not really suitable for them, especially in the military. And that inevitably means that incompetence or lack of ability is being promoted above competence and actual ability. And so this reveals the ongoing agenda of DEI and trying to equalize the population ratios of different groups in different jobs and services.
Yeah, I absolutely agree with you. And I think you're touching on something where the left has a great deal of truth on their side in the sense that these sorts of situations are created by society. In a different kind of society, a society that did not want women in combat, this would not have occurred.
So the promotion of women into combat positions and the promotion of women above their grade of performance to achieve captain at such a young age. This is a function of our political and cultural society, the changes that have pushed for diversity, equity, and inclusion. And this young woman has gotten caught up in this social push.
So she did not apparently grow up from childhood wanting to be in the US military. She was recruited into it in college, and then she appears to have been advanced beyond her capabilities. So this isn't a story just of one helicopter pilot's bad decisions. It's about a general social push, just as you said, for diversity, equity, inclusion, where you promote people above their level of competence. And then she and her family have to pay the price along with all the innocent people who died and those who love them. But I think you're exactly right that this is a social, political, cultural phenomenon that then results in these sort of tragedies.
Is there anything you want to add on this score?
Well, I just think it's not just women, I have to say. The US military have quite a poor record when it comes to accidents and friendly fire incidents. It's something else they're very, very famous for. I think there's a kind of dysfunctional masculine culture in the American military as well.
And there's a lot of kind of gestural or performative masculinity. And then you mix into that this kind of woke agenda of trying to bring more women into these kind of positions. And it's a very poisonous cocktail, I think, and it's going to cause a lot of problems.
So generally speaking, when the right looks at individual outcomes, they look at these individual outcomes as primarily the result of the free will decisions of individuals. And when the left looks at these individual outcomes, they primarily look in terms of society. And in my old age, I've come around to some of the wisdom in this left-wing approach because as I think about it, almost all of my thoughts I receive from the outer world. I come up with almost nothing on my own. Almost everything that I think is in response to stimuli that I get from outside of me.
And so when I plot my life going forward, I think about it in terms of my individual agency, I can make my free will choice to do this and that. But when I understand my life, when I look back on my life, it seems much more fated by genetics and family and what's going on in the community around me. And I see much more of the power of society. Do you have any thoughts on anything that I was just rambling about?
I don't buy it, Luke, because, I mean, you've had quite an unusual life trajectory, I would say, haven't you? I mean, you started out in Australia and some sort of weird Christian religious cult and you ended up in L.A. and you're a convertee to the Jewish faith and, you know, some pretty unusual stopping off points in between, I would say. So it's hard to see that as sort of socially determined unless society is completely insane.
Well, here's what I'd say. I never would have converted to Orthodox Judaism in Australia. It wasn't really a possibility. It just doesn't happen nearly as often in Australia. It's only in a multicultural society like America where these sorts of choices are much more likely. Second, I never would have converted if I hadn't encountered Jews at UCLA. And in particular, one Jew, Dennis Prager, who was on the radio constantly making the case for conversion to Judaism. And so all sorts of possibilities that never would have occurred to me in a different situation, right? They never occurred to me in Northern California. They would never have occurred to me in Australia.
But that I happened to be at UCLA and started listening to a particular radio show where a very unusual Jew was making the case for conversion to Judaism. That spun me in a brand new direction that in almost any other situation would never have occurred to me. And then second, that this particular Jew who so influenced me on my conversion to Judaism, he also promoted the work of a UCLA psychiatrist who wrote books on the elements of sexual desire, including two books on the pornography industry. And it was by reading these books by a psychiatrist who was promoted by Dennis Prager, my Jewish hero, that then led me to writing on the pornography industry. But that's just my own experience. Yeah, I'm still not seeing it, though, because, you know, I think you're sort of making decisions, you're choosing things. And rather than social factors, group dynamics forcing you in a particular direction, you seem to be pulling yourself in your own kind of very unique direction based upon what you perceive to be in your best interest in terms of pleasure or contentment. That's what it looks like to me. So I think... making those kind of pseudo rationalistic choices on behalf of maximizing your life experience has played a much larger part in defining your destiny in life.
Now, how about when you look back on your path in life, do you see it as primarily the result of your own freely chosen choices?
Yeah, by and large, I think a lot of it is to do with my own choices. I mean, I could have moved in quite different directions at different stages of my life. There are certain things that seem a bit more deterministic, but overall, I think it really is, you know, especially for people like us in the late sort of 20th century, the early 21st century. It's very much a case of, you know, deciding your own path. Now, of course, if we'd lived, you know, 50 years earlier, it would be a lot more deterministic, that's for sure.
What things do you do well and what other things do you tend to do poorly at?
Oh, God, I hate questions like this. This is the sort of thing they ask at job interviews, isn't it?
It is, and I knew that you'd hate this question, but I just thought I'd try it on the odd chance that you felt strangely introspective.
I am actually constantly introspective. So that's probably one of my skills is I'm constantly introspective and I'm constantly evaluating what I do and the quality of my choices and my outputs. And what do I do badly? Again, this is the most irritating question. There's all sorts of things that you can pull yourself up over.
But why talk about it on a publicly available podcast?
Great, great. I respect that. And I think that's a great model for people to follow. So for example, this Joe Ellis, this transgender Black Hawk pilot trainee, she went public on a national podcast hosted by a CNN figure. And she talked about very intimate details of her life and the pain and confusion with regard to her gender dysphoria. And if she had not done that, she would never have become the number two trending topic on social media speculating if she had anything to do with this Wednesday night crash. And so I think many people, when they participate in public conversations, whether it's on my humble little live stream or on a much bigger show, they have no idea of the downsides of going public, particularly with the intimate details of your life, particularly with regard to hot button issues such as transgenders serving in the U.S. military. And in general, I think a good rule to follow is do not share anything publicly or in the workplace or with other people that you would not be comfortable with them gossiping about. Any thoughts?
Yeah, somebody like Joe Ellis, they have an identity which is a kind of intimate revelation in itself. I mean, it's not something they can kind of play down, so to speak. I mean, if you're a man who's pretending to be a woman and wants people around you to accept that you are this hypothetical woman, then that's not the sort of thing that you can just be quiet about. So it kind of... probably forces you to take an over revelatory and activist approach to life, you know. So that's the curse of trying to be something you're not.
I used to host a wide open show where anyone could come on and people would... It would be like a train crash. It was just a spectacle, perhaps best known for the Jim Goad Saturday night show. And in reaction to that, I just severely dialed back on the crazy because I thought too many people's lives were being damaged because I noticed that many of the most...
Well, I think Jim Goad's life is being damaged in that particular case.
Right, well, he's a professional provocateur.
But that shouldn't be a problem for him because his life's been damaged for quite a while, I should imagine.
Right, but I started to feel queasy about the lives of other people who had come on the show and those who tended to provide the most compelling content were doing it against their own interest. They were disclosing all sorts of things that I thought, this is really damaging to them. They shouldn't come on the show.
Yeah, especially Kevin Michael Grace. He was revealing every week what an old curmudgeon he was.
Yeah. Any thoughts on the moral responsibilities of a live streamer who is trying to weigh up, on the one hand, the compelling power of spectacle, and on the other hand, is feeling queasy about people who are self-destructing on his show?
Well, are they really self-destructive? I mean, sometimes they are and sometimes they're not. And sometimes, you know, you're giving them exactly what they want out of life. And maybe it's not particularly good for them. But if, you know, they didn't do it in your more careful hands, they might have done it on some other show in much less careful hands. You know, so maybe you should have thought of it from that point of view. You know, you could have worked with them a little bit and try to moderate their excesses. I think you did do that in many of the podcasts I've listened to.
I certainly try. What do you think about the idea that there are some books such as Kevin MacDonald's Culture of Critique or Adolf Hitler's Mein Kampf that normal people just should not read because there's too much danger that they will go off in a destructive direction after that?
My own inclination is that if you're over the age of 40, if you've got a job, if you're married, if you've got kids, if you're a responsible adult, you should be able to read these books and discuss them in a way that doesn't send your life into a downward tailspin. But on the other hand, I've seen too many people seemingly go into a downward tailspin simply after engaging with Kevin MacDonald or Mein Kampf. So is there a forbidden knowledge that normal people who seem to be normal, meaning married, kids, career, all that, but they should just stay away from these forbidden books? Any thoughts?
Yeah, I think, in a way, banning them or making them sort of seem illicit enhances their power for their audience. It's a bit like the Ark of the Covenant. It had a certain kind of power because it was hidden away in a box. And, you know, this is one of the things you come across in lots of religions. They have some hidden symbol. And because it's hidden, it's mysterious. And because it's mysterious, it has a more compulsive power or power to compel, you know. But yeah, I think it's not really healthy to do that.
But also there are a lot of, well, I think the problem is in recent years, we've seen this incredible democratization of the online space. Everybody's able to join in the debate and everybody's able to have an opinion. And, you know, you can basically find evidence or supporting data to back up any cockamamie theory you happen to like out there on the internet. If you want to believe in the flat earth theory, there's all sorts of stuff out there that you can refer to, etc. So this is the problem of the modern Internet, you know, and in an ideal world, these things should be open to discussion. I mean, Hitler's book, Mein Kampf, it makes certain assertions. It can be challenged or looked at within a sort of geopolitical, historical and racial context. Kevin MacDonald's theories, likewise, you know, they can be, you know, he's making certain claims, they can be analysed and, you know, endorsed or refuted according to, you know, what comes out of the debate. But the problem is there's just so many people in the peanut gallery who have kind of like stumbled onto the stage.
Now, when I go back to Australia, I'm always struck by the comparatively high level of social trust and social cohesion. And then I feel bad for those people in American big cities who have never experienced a society like this, where you can walk anywhere day or night, where you can leave your goods on the beach, go swimming, come back, and they're still there. What was that like for you noticing the high levels of social cohesion and social trust in Japan and comparing it to your own experiences in societies where there was much less social trust?
Well, it's not just about social trust. It's about the sort of basic level of violence in a society because there are certain very socially monocultural areas of Britain which are actually quite dangerous. So it's not just about that. But yeah, obviously, if you have a monocultural society where most people are well assimilated into the mainstream culture, that generally tends to make things safer and more manageable on an individual basis. A kind of dysfunctional multicultural society, on the other hand, can create all sorts of unpredictable and therefore quite dangerous situations. In Japan, it's an extremely safe country, but that might just be because of the nature of certain races in Asia more than anything else. It might not just be a reflection on the monocultural nature of society.
So when trying to understand public events and discussing them publicly, I find the prism of good guy, bad guy to be quite limiting compared to a situationist perspective. So people tend to look at Donald Trump as a good guy or a bad guy. And if they look at him as a good guy, then they're highly prone to becoming disillusioned because there are going to be areas where he does terribly. And so what do you think about this very common prism of looking at public figures primarily through the lens? Is this a good guy or a bad guy?
Actually, I don't think it's that bad. I mean, because when I look at Donald Trump, I think he's kind of like a good guy and a bad guy at the same time, you know, because he's obviously incredibly corrupt and egotistical and self-seeking. But at the same time, he's kind of latched on to certain legitimate needs that were being neglected in the American political system. You know, maybe for bad reasons, but he's actually doing some good, I would say, you know, depending on how this whole thing plays out, obviously.
Right. But do you recognize with me that there are going to be situations that are going to play to Donald Trump's strengths, and then there are going to be situations that are going to play to his weaknesses? So I'm thinking about the early months of COVID in his public presentation that certainly played to Donald Trump's weaknesses.
And other situations, they seem to play to Donald Trump's strengths. So there's no, for example, there's no one system of politics that is going to be the best system in all possible circumstances. In some situations, you want a xenophobic police state. In other situations, you want free trade and openness to interchange with our groups.
Some situations, a socialist system will best equip you to deal with particular challenges. In other situations, a more free market system will be superior. that some individuals are particularly suited for certain crises and other individuals are better suited to deal with other crises. Any thoughts on this more situationist approach?
Well, yeah, I mean, it's good to try to see things from other people's points of view. And I don't think anybody, you know, even mass murderers and psychopaths and all sorts of really dodgy characters, they don't actually think they're bad. They think most of them seem to think they're good guys in some form or other.
But yeah, I mean, I think you should try to be neutral about people's motivations. If you get emotional about what you're trying to analyze and start viewing it through an emotionalized prism of good versus evil, then it's going to interfere with your ability to see the kind of incentives and causal patterns that create that kind of behavior.
I try to take a dispassionate view of things myself. So I do tend to go along with that. But I still think you can say that certain kinds of behavior are bad and certain kinds of behavior are good. And it's not too difficult to make a case for that.
So I was listening to Steve Bannon go on what seemed to me unhinged rants against the tech oligarchs, and I don't abide by that kind of blanket thinking. I don't think there's anything inherently good or bad about the tech oligarchs. I don't think there's anything inherently good or bad about Elon Musk, that Elon Musk, on the one hand, has many of the elements of a scam artist, and as someone who... pontificates about all sorts of things he doesn't know much about. On the other hand, he has done things of sufficient merit that made him perhaps the richest man in the world, and now he's throwing his hand into European politics, and I like many of the things that he's He's doing there. And so with Elon Musk, I think on the one hand, he often says and does ridiculous things and often he says and does valuable things. And so looking at him through the prism of righteous crusader versus scam artist, that there are components of both to him. Any thoughts on Elon Musk's participation in politics?
You know, my main concern is how free people are to talk about certain things or to say what they want. And I think since he took over Twitter, it does seem to feel a lot freer than it was. So that's definitely a good thing. Of course, I think Twitter is also used nefariously by certain actors and entities. And that's not necessarily a good thing unless you happen to support those actors and entities. Some of his political pronouncements on Europe are kind of irritating because he often sounds like he doesn't really know what he's talking about. But at the same time, it tends to open up a debate in those countries. It had a galvanizing effect on Europe. certain long neglected areas of politics in Britain. He seems to be doing something similar with Germany now. But there's a danger that this is viewed as outside interference and it breeds resentment and it breeds distrust of Musk and certain animosity towards America. So he might be having a lot of negative blowback So it's very hard to evaluate if this is a good or a healthy process, you know, because generally I think it's probably a good thing, even if his motives are unclear. We're not really sure what his game is, you know, because Elon Musk has been all over the board on a lot of issues. And recently, of course, he seems to be very much this kind of MAGA guy. But even in that respect, there was a lot of controversy over his support for H-1B visas. And that was just a few weeks ago.
So, you know, this guy is very, very inconsistent. He seems to be highly autistic. He seems to be partly drug-addled, you know. So, this is not the ideal person you need to be leading these major, kind of, public debates, I think. So, you know, I think we do need to have a kind of healthy debate about a lot of things in Western culture. But a lot of this has been exploited by anti-Western forces and a lot of it is being just kicked up to muddy the waters, to create a bit of a "shit storm" effect.
And it just makes people all kind of emotionalised and polarised and confused. And ultimately, this just tends to lead to increasing levels of deep politicization, I think.
So, I've never thought much about AI. But when I noticed that 10s of billions of dollars are being spent on developing it, I assume that there is some valid empirical reason for that. And I assume it's going to have profound consequences for worker productivity and job dislocation. What is your evaluation of the significance of AI, particularly with regard to job dislocation?
Generally, yeah, I kind of think AI's, at least as it exists at the present time is a good thing. It's helping a lot of businesses. It's been incorporated into various kinds of instruments and machines and processes. And it seems to be generally taking care of a lot of the duller aspects of work. So on that basis, it is a positive at the moment. But the long-term potential, that's not really clear yet. We're not really sure where this road is heading. So, yeah, I think we should be moving down this road with greater caution at least. But that's very, very unlikely to happen because you have various countries and entities engaged in a kind of AI arms race at the moment. And I think the thing could easily spiral out of control. And if it happens to have ultimately negative impacts, then we'll kind of regret the rather blasé way that we sort of stumbled into this.
We had some major fires in Los Angeles, and I was a little bit taken aback how many people received joy that people in LA had their homes burned down, and in particular that rich people had their homes burned down. And I was thinking out loud that if you received joy in a situation like this where there's no empirical reason why you were benefited by rich people in Pacific Palisades losing their home in a fire, that there's something... dysfunctional with you, that there's something maladaptive in your approach to life, that this is kind of a sign of losing at life, that you would receive joy in rich people losing their home in a fire. I don't empathize with that approach, but anything strike you as strange or disturbing about the number of people who took joy out of rich people in LA losing their homes to a fire?
Yeah, I think it's a commonly observed human characteristic to take some sort of pleasure, whether admitted or not admitted in other people's misfortunes. When there is a disaster, even people who are on the surface actually sympathetic and concerned, they will be more excited. You know, their excitement levels will go up.
There'll be a kind of thrill about life simply because there's been this big disaster and they were not adversely affected. So I think there's a lot of that. Probably what's happened is that the internet and the element of anonymity that the internet provides has made it a lot easier for people to be more explicit about that kind of schadenfreude. So there is, this has been around for a long time. And I just think the internet probably makes it a bit more explicit and Most people would probably be a bit concerned, but at the same time, when there's something weird and big happening, people tend to get excited. Another example would be 911. A lot of people found that quite exhilarating, despite themselves often. I believe that there were people of certain ethnicities who were actually just overcome with exhilaration. They had to just dance it off and so on. So, you know, I think disasters have a kind of flip side like that. On the one hand, they're kind of very tragic for those who are directly affected by them. But on the other hand, they tend to give a lift to other people, whether they care to admit it or not.
So I lived in Northern California for about 14 years, and there is quite a bit of loathing for Southern California in Northern California. So you go to San Francisco sporting events against Los Angeles teams, and there will be dominant chants, LA sucks, LA sucks. And there's no equivalent of that in Los Angeles, no widespread animus against any other city or any other region among Los Angelinos. And similarly, among the educated class in Britain, there seems to be like a great deal of loathing of the United States. But in the United States, to the extent that there's any strong feeling, it is like Anglophilia. Any thoughts on why often smaller regions have such intense loathing about bigger regions, NorCal versus SoCal, Europe versus the United States?
You sometimes get this in the United Kingdom, like, for example, smaller components of the United Kingdom tend to have a bit of a grudge against the larger component. So, yeah, small countries next to big countries, they often feel some kind of grudge or some sort of...
Chip on the shoulder.
Yeah, chip on the shoulder, inferiority complex or even superiority complex, who knows. That seems to... just be a reaction to the imbalance of power, to the asymmetry. So they're sort of trying to overcompensate for the asymmetry that they feel. And, you know, countries that exist on the edge of a civilization will be quite quaint in their behavior. I mean, you can think of in the case of Europe, you know, I've often thought about the Scottish identity in this respect or Russian identity. Russia is a country at the extreme edge of Europe. But it has pretensions to be the third Rome. So this is the marginalized outsider trying to feel that it's at the center.
And so Russia has this element in its culture and it has a lot of weird and quite serious knock-on effects, as we can see. In the case of Scotland, Scotland's always been on the outside of Europe. Originally, the people living in Scotland or Caledonia, as it was previously known, they didn't realise that they were on the edge of Europe. But later, when the Roman Empire came up and tried to conquer them, and then later, when they became part of the Roman Catholic Church, Scots kind of realised that they were on the edge of Europe. And that was a constant source of...agitation let's say to Scottish culture and so Scotland then made an effort to try to be at the centre of Europe by forming alliances with much more central European countries like France and that was a very important historical connection for a while and then the Scots went through a period where they started to see themselves as the the kind of people of the Bible. And this fed into Calvinism. And Calvinism was really, Calvinism is really just people LARPing as the Jews in the Bible. And so they went through that kind of puritanical phase. And that was all an attempt to put Scotland at the center of European culture by being more Christian than other parts of this so-called Christian Europe. And then later, of course, Scotland managed to get into the British Empire. And Scotland was probably the most British part of the British Empire because most English people still considered themselves to be English. But it was the Scots who took up this British identity the most and who did most of the... important imperial work like going out to India and running the place so Scots played a very, very disproportionate part in the British empire and that sort of fulfilled Scotland's need to see itself as being at the center so yeah there is there is this kind of chip on the shoulder thing that develops with uh smaller or more marginal countries and probably in America you see this with America and Canada at the moment, especially, this has been kind of whipped up by the tariff controversy.
So, yeah, very, very asymmetric.
I listened to a fascinating back-to-back interviews on Foreign Policy, their YouTube channel. First interview was with the former Prime Minister of Australia, Malcolm Turnbull, and he was decrying Donald Trump's lack of commitment to our common values because Trump has been threatening Europe and Greenland and Canada and Panama. And then they had an Asian diplomat on from Singapore and he said, well, the Asian way is not to try to forge cooperation on the basis of common values, but on the basis of common interests. And I loved that pragmatic Asian attitude. Did you think there's anything to this divergence between an Anglo intellectual tendency to try to unite behind common values versus the more pragmatic Asian tendency to try to forge cooperation based on common interests?
You know, people say one thing and they mean another. So often values are a cover for interests. And people in the Anglo sphere, people in Europe, I guess, to some extent as well, there is a tendency to dress up our selfish acts with a kind of altruistic sheen. And sometimes we take the altruistic sheen a bit too seriously, maybe.
Do you think that the only philosophical basis for defeating woke is the hereditarian position? The hereditarian position is that different peoples genetically evolved over time to have different responses to the environment, that we all evolved to be adapted to a particular environment and therefore When you look at the world, you'll find people will generally tend to have different gifts and that there is some genetic basis for these predispositions. And therefore, if there is a genetic basis for differing levels of achievement, that therefore we should not expect equal outcomes among groups. But if there is no genetic basis for group achievement, then the woke position that we need to change the environment to ensure equal outcomes is the most philosophically defensible position and is going to consistently win.
That sounds good on paper, but it's not strong enough to defeat the woke, you know, because the woke ideology will actually see that, you know, people have not been given equal opportunities. And when you do give them equal opportunities, the group which was previously underrepresented tends to do at least better than it previously did. So that looks to the Woke like evidence that the hereditarian thesis is wrong. And, you know, they'll keep pushing in that direction. So, like with women pilots, they'll keep pushing for more and more women pilots. And they'll say, why aren't 50% of the pilots female? We must try harder. Girls are being discouraged by our culture from doing a job that they are... equally as good at potentially as males. And so, you know, this is the thing. It's not just gender, of course, it's also different racial groups, different social groups. There's talent everywhere. And so there's always going to be evidence for woke people to cling on to. If you are emotionally inclined to cling on to this woke thesis, you're going to find the evidence out there. There is evidence. And even though other people might say, wait, what about this other evidence? It's very, very hard to prove the hereditarian principle. So, I can see this going on for some time and quite a few air crashes, to be honest.
Yeah. Hi, Luke. Yeah. Whenever I hear about a piece of military equipment being destroyed by pilot or captain error, I automatically assume it's a woman involved. Of course, it's not always the case, but the probability tends to be quite high. Mainly it's because a lot of women are being kind of pushed into roles which are not really suitable for them, especially in the military. And that inevitably means that incompetence or lack of ability is being promoted above competence and actual ability. And so this reveals the ongoing agenda of DEI and trying to equalize the population ratios of different groups in different jobs and services.
Yeah, I absolutely agree with you. And I think you're touching on something where the left has a great deal of truth on their side in the sense that these sorts of situations are created by society. In a different kind of society, a society that did not want women in combat, this would not have occurred.
So the promotion of women into combat positions and the promotion of women above their grade of performance to achieve captain at such a young age. This is a function of our political and cultural society, the changes that have pushed for diversity, equity, and inclusion. And this young woman has gotten caught up in this social push.
So she did not apparently grow up from childhood wanting to be in the US military. She was recruited into it in college, and then she appears to have been advanced beyond her capabilities. So this isn't a story just of one helicopter pilot's bad decisions. It's about a general social push, just as you said, for diversity, equity, inclusion, where you promote people above their level of competence. And then she and her family have to pay the price along with all the innocent people who died and those who love them. But I think you're exactly right that this is a social, political, cultural phenomenon that then results in these sort of tragedies.
Is there anything you want to add on this score?
Well, I just think it's not just women, I have to say. The US military have quite a poor record when it comes to accidents and friendly fire incidents. It's something else they're very, very famous for. I think there's a kind of dysfunctional masculine culture in the American military as well.
And there's a lot of kind of gestural or performative masculinity. And then you mix into that this kind of woke agenda of trying to bring more women into these kind of positions. And it's a very poisonous cocktail, I think, and it's going to cause a lot of problems.
So generally speaking, when the right looks at individual outcomes, they look at these individual outcomes as primarily the result of the free will decisions of individuals. And when the left looks at these individual outcomes, they primarily look in terms of society. And in my old age, I've come around to some of the wisdom in this left-wing approach because as I think about it, almost all of my thoughts I receive from the outer world. I come up with almost nothing on my own. Almost everything that I think is in response to stimuli that I get from outside of me.
And so when I plot my life going forward, I think about it in terms of my individual agency, I can make my free will choice to do this and that. But when I understand my life, when I look back on my life, it seems much more fated by genetics and family and what's going on in the community around me. And I see much more of the power of society. Do you have any thoughts on anything that I was just rambling about?
I don't buy it, Luke, because, I mean, you've had quite an unusual life trajectory, I would say, haven't you? I mean, you started out in Australia and some sort of weird Christian religious cult and you ended up in L.A. and you're a convertee to the Jewish faith and, you know, some pretty unusual stopping off points in between, I would say. So it's hard to see that as sort of socially determined unless society is completely insane.
Well, here's what I'd say. I never would have converted to Orthodox Judaism in Australia. It wasn't really a possibility. It just doesn't happen nearly as often in Australia. It's only in a multicultural society like America where these sorts of choices are much more likely. Second, I never would have converted if I hadn't encountered Jews at UCLA. And in particular, one Jew, Dennis Prager, who was on the radio constantly making the case for conversion to Judaism. And so all sorts of possibilities that never would have occurred to me in a different situation, right? They never occurred to me in Northern California. They would never have occurred to me in Australia.
But that I happened to be at UCLA and started listening to a particular radio show where a very unusual Jew was making the case for conversion to Judaism. That spun me in a brand new direction that in almost any other situation would never have occurred to me. And then second, that this particular Jew who so influenced me on my conversion to Judaism, he also promoted the work of a UCLA psychiatrist who wrote books on the elements of sexual desire, including two books on the pornography industry. And it was by reading these books by a psychiatrist who was promoted by Dennis Prager, my Jewish hero, that then led me to writing on the pornography industry. But that's just my own experience. Yeah, I'm still not seeing it, though, because, you know, I think you're sort of making decisions, you're choosing things. And rather than social factors, group dynamics forcing you in a particular direction, you seem to be pulling yourself in your own kind of very unique direction based upon what you perceive to be in your best interest in terms of pleasure or contentment. That's what it looks like to me. So I think... making those kind of pseudo rationalistic choices on behalf of maximizing your life experience has played a much larger part in defining your destiny in life.
Now, how about when you look back on your path in life, do you see it as primarily the result of your own freely chosen choices?
Yeah, by and large, I think a lot of it is to do with my own choices. I mean, I could have moved in quite different directions at different stages of my life. There are certain things that seem a bit more deterministic, but overall, I think it really is, you know, especially for people like us in the late sort of 20th century, the early 21st century. It's very much a case of, you know, deciding your own path. Now, of course, if we'd lived, you know, 50 years earlier, it would be a lot more deterministic, that's for sure.
What things do you do well and what other things do you tend to do poorly at?
Oh, God, I hate questions like this. This is the sort of thing they ask at job interviews, isn't it?
It is, and I knew that you'd hate this question, but I just thought I'd try it on the odd chance that you felt strangely introspective.
I am actually constantly introspective. So that's probably one of my skills is I'm constantly introspective and I'm constantly evaluating what I do and the quality of my choices and my outputs. And what do I do badly? Again, this is the most irritating question. There's all sorts of things that you can pull yourself up over.
But why talk about it on a publicly available podcast?
Great, great. I respect that. And I think that's a great model for people to follow. So for example, this Joe Ellis, this transgender Black Hawk pilot trainee, she went public on a national podcast hosted by a CNN figure. And she talked about very intimate details of her life and the pain and confusion with regard to her gender dysphoria. And if she had not done that, she would never have become the number two trending topic on social media speculating if she had anything to do with this Wednesday night crash. And so I think many people, when they participate in public conversations, whether it's on my humble little live stream or on a much bigger show, they have no idea of the downsides of going public, particularly with the intimate details of your life, particularly with regard to hot button issues such as transgenders serving in the U.S. military. And in general, I think a good rule to follow is do not share anything publicly or in the workplace or with other people that you would not be comfortable with them gossiping about. Any thoughts?
Yeah, somebody like Joe Ellis, they have an identity which is a kind of intimate revelation in itself. I mean, it's not something they can kind of play down, so to speak. I mean, if you're a man who's pretending to be a woman and wants people around you to accept that you are this hypothetical woman, then that's not the sort of thing that you can just be quiet about. So it kind of... probably forces you to take an over revelatory and activist approach to life, you know. So that's the curse of trying to be something you're not.
I used to host a wide open show where anyone could come on and people would... It would be like a train crash. It was just a spectacle, perhaps best known for the Jim Goad Saturday night show. And in reaction to that, I just severely dialed back on the crazy because I thought too many people's lives were being damaged because I noticed that many of the most...
Well, I think Jim Goad's life is being damaged in that particular case.
Right, well, he's a professional provocateur.
But that shouldn't be a problem for him because his life's been damaged for quite a while, I should imagine.
Right, but I started to feel queasy about the lives of other people who had come on the show and those who tended to provide the most compelling content were doing it against their own interest. They were disclosing all sorts of things that I thought, this is really damaging to them. They shouldn't come on the show.
Yeah, especially Kevin Michael Grace. He was revealing every week what an old curmudgeon he was.
Yeah. Any thoughts on the moral responsibilities of a live streamer who is trying to weigh up, on the one hand, the compelling power of spectacle, and on the other hand, is feeling queasy about people who are self-destructing on his show?
Well, are they really self-destructive? I mean, sometimes they are and sometimes they're not. And sometimes, you know, you're giving them exactly what they want out of life. And maybe it's not particularly good for them. But if, you know, they didn't do it in your more careful hands, they might have done it on some other show in much less careful hands. You know, so maybe you should have thought of it from that point of view. You know, you could have worked with them a little bit and try to moderate their excesses. I think you did do that in many of the podcasts I've listened to.
I certainly try. What do you think about the idea that there are some books such as Kevin MacDonald's Culture of Critique or Adolf Hitler's Mein Kampf that normal people just should not read because there's too much danger that they will go off in a destructive direction after that?
My own inclination is that if you're over the age of 40, if you've got a job, if you're married, if you've got kids, if you're a responsible adult, you should be able to read these books and discuss them in a way that doesn't send your life into a downward tailspin. But on the other hand, I've seen too many people seemingly go into a downward tailspin simply after engaging with Kevin MacDonald or Mein Kampf. So is there a forbidden knowledge that normal people who seem to be normal, meaning married, kids, career, all that, but they should just stay away from these forbidden books? Any thoughts?
Yeah, I think, in a way, banning them or making them sort of seem illicit enhances their power for their audience. It's a bit like the Ark of the Covenant. It had a certain kind of power because it was hidden away in a box. And, you know, this is one of the things you come across in lots of religions. They have some hidden symbol. And because it's hidden, it's mysterious. And because it's mysterious, it has a more compulsive power or power to compel, you know. But yeah, I think it's not really healthy to do that.
But also there are a lot of, well, I think the problem is in recent years, we've seen this incredible democratization of the online space. Everybody's able to join in the debate and everybody's able to have an opinion. And, you know, you can basically find evidence or supporting data to back up any cockamamie theory you happen to like out there on the internet. If you want to believe in the flat earth theory, there's all sorts of stuff out there that you can refer to, etc. So this is the problem of the modern Internet, you know, and in an ideal world, these things should be open to discussion. I mean, Hitler's book, Mein Kampf, it makes certain assertions. It can be challenged or looked at within a sort of geopolitical, historical and racial context. Kevin MacDonald's theories, likewise, you know, they can be, you know, he's making certain claims, they can be analysed and, you know, endorsed or refuted according to, you know, what comes out of the debate. But the problem is there's just so many people in the peanut gallery who have kind of like stumbled onto the stage.
Now, when I go back to Australia, I'm always struck by the comparatively high level of social trust and social cohesion. And then I feel bad for those people in American big cities who have never experienced a society like this, where you can walk anywhere day or night, where you can leave your goods on the beach, go swimming, come back, and they're still there. What was that like for you noticing the high levels of social cohesion and social trust in Japan and comparing it to your own experiences in societies where there was much less social trust?
Well, it's not just about social trust. It's about the sort of basic level of violence in a society because there are certain very socially monocultural areas of Britain which are actually quite dangerous. So it's not just about that. But yeah, obviously, if you have a monocultural society where most people are well assimilated into the mainstream culture, that generally tends to make things safer and more manageable on an individual basis. A kind of dysfunctional multicultural society, on the other hand, can create all sorts of unpredictable and therefore quite dangerous situations. In Japan, it's an extremely safe country, but that might just be because of the nature of certain races in Asia more than anything else. It might not just be a reflection on the monocultural nature of society.
So when trying to understand public events and discussing them publicly, I find the prism of good guy, bad guy to be quite limiting compared to a situationist perspective. So people tend to look at Donald Trump as a good guy or a bad guy. And if they look at him as a good guy, then they're highly prone to becoming disillusioned because there are going to be areas where he does terribly. And so what do you think about this very common prism of looking at public figures primarily through the lens? Is this a good guy or a bad guy?
Actually, I don't think it's that bad. I mean, because when I look at Donald Trump, I think he's kind of like a good guy and a bad guy at the same time, you know, because he's obviously incredibly corrupt and egotistical and self-seeking. But at the same time, he's kind of latched on to certain legitimate needs that were being neglected in the American political system. You know, maybe for bad reasons, but he's actually doing some good, I would say, you know, depending on how this whole thing plays out, obviously.
Right. But do you recognize with me that there are going to be situations that are going to play to Donald Trump's strengths, and then there are going to be situations that are going to play to his weaknesses? So I'm thinking about the early months of COVID in his public presentation that certainly played to Donald Trump's weaknesses.
And other situations, they seem to play to Donald Trump's strengths. So there's no, for example, there's no one system of politics that is going to be the best system in all possible circumstances. In some situations, you want a xenophobic police state. In other situations, you want free trade and openness to interchange with our groups.
Some situations, a socialist system will best equip you to deal with particular challenges. In other situations, a more free market system will be superior. that some individuals are particularly suited for certain crises and other individuals are better suited to deal with other crises. Any thoughts on this more situationist approach?
Well, yeah, I mean, it's good to try to see things from other people's points of view. And I don't think anybody, you know, even mass murderers and psychopaths and all sorts of really dodgy characters, they don't actually think they're bad. They think most of them seem to think they're good guys in some form or other.
But yeah, I mean, I think you should try to be neutral about people's motivations. If you get emotional about what you're trying to analyze and start viewing it through an emotionalized prism of good versus evil, then it's going to interfere with your ability to see the kind of incentives and causal patterns that create that kind of behavior.
I try to take a dispassionate view of things myself. So I do tend to go along with that. But I still think you can say that certain kinds of behavior are bad and certain kinds of behavior are good. And it's not too difficult to make a case for that.
So I was listening to Steve Bannon go on what seemed to me unhinged rants against the tech oligarchs, and I don't abide by that kind of blanket thinking. I don't think there's anything inherently good or bad about the tech oligarchs. I don't think there's anything inherently good or bad about Elon Musk, that Elon Musk, on the one hand, has many of the elements of a scam artist, and as someone who... pontificates about all sorts of things he doesn't know much about. On the other hand, he has done things of sufficient merit that made him perhaps the richest man in the world, and now he's throwing his hand into European politics, and I like many of the things that he's He's doing there. And so with Elon Musk, I think on the one hand, he often says and does ridiculous things and often he says and does valuable things. And so looking at him through the prism of righteous crusader versus scam artist, that there are components of both to him. Any thoughts on Elon Musk's participation in politics?
You know, my main concern is how free people are to talk about certain things or to say what they want. And I think since he took over Twitter, it does seem to feel a lot freer than it was. So that's definitely a good thing. Of course, I think Twitter is also used nefariously by certain actors and entities. And that's not necessarily a good thing unless you happen to support those actors and entities. Some of his political pronouncements on Europe are kind of irritating because he often sounds like he doesn't really know what he's talking about. But at the same time, it tends to open up a debate in those countries. It had a galvanizing effect on Europe. certain long neglected areas of politics in Britain. He seems to be doing something similar with Germany now. But there's a danger that this is viewed as outside interference and it breeds resentment and it breeds distrust of Musk and certain animosity towards America. So he might be having a lot of negative blowback So it's very hard to evaluate if this is a good or a healthy process, you know, because generally I think it's probably a good thing, even if his motives are unclear. We're not really sure what his game is, you know, because Elon Musk has been all over the board on a lot of issues. And recently, of course, he seems to be very much this kind of MAGA guy. But even in that respect, there was a lot of controversy over his support for H-1B visas. And that was just a few weeks ago.
So, you know, this guy is very, very inconsistent. He seems to be highly autistic. He seems to be partly drug-addled, you know. So, this is not the ideal person you need to be leading these major, kind of, public debates, I think. So, you know, I think we do need to have a kind of healthy debate about a lot of things in Western culture. But a lot of this has been exploited by anti-Western forces and a lot of it is being just kicked up to muddy the waters, to create a bit of a "shit storm" effect.
And it just makes people all kind of emotionalised and polarised and confused. And ultimately, this just tends to lead to increasing levels of deep politicization, I think.
So, I've never thought much about AI. But when I noticed that 10s of billions of dollars are being spent on developing it, I assume that there is some valid empirical reason for that. And I assume it's going to have profound consequences for worker productivity and job dislocation. What is your evaluation of the significance of AI, particularly with regard to job dislocation?
Generally, yeah, I kind of think AI's, at least as it exists at the present time is a good thing. It's helping a lot of businesses. It's been incorporated into various kinds of instruments and machines and processes. And it seems to be generally taking care of a lot of the duller aspects of work. So on that basis, it is a positive at the moment. But the long-term potential, that's not really clear yet. We're not really sure where this road is heading. So, yeah, I think we should be moving down this road with greater caution at least. But that's very, very unlikely to happen because you have various countries and entities engaged in a kind of AI arms race at the moment. And I think the thing could easily spiral out of control. And if it happens to have ultimately negative impacts, then we'll kind of regret the rather blasé way that we sort of stumbled into this.
We had some major fires in Los Angeles, and I was a little bit taken aback how many people received joy that people in LA had their homes burned down, and in particular that rich people had their homes burned down. And I was thinking out loud that if you received joy in a situation like this where there's no empirical reason why you were benefited by rich people in Pacific Palisades losing their home in a fire, that there's something... dysfunctional with you, that there's something maladaptive in your approach to life, that this is kind of a sign of losing at life, that you would receive joy in rich people losing their home in a fire. I don't empathize with that approach, but anything strike you as strange or disturbing about the number of people who took joy out of rich people in LA losing their homes to a fire?
Yeah, I think it's a commonly observed human characteristic to take some sort of pleasure, whether admitted or not admitted in other people's misfortunes. When there is a disaster, even people who are on the surface actually sympathetic and concerned, they will be more excited. You know, their excitement levels will go up.
There'll be a kind of thrill about life simply because there's been this big disaster and they were not adversely affected. So I think there's a lot of that. Probably what's happened is that the internet and the element of anonymity that the internet provides has made it a lot easier for people to be more explicit about that kind of schadenfreude. So there is, this has been around for a long time. And I just think the internet probably makes it a bit more explicit and Most people would probably be a bit concerned, but at the same time, when there's something weird and big happening, people tend to get excited. Another example would be 911. A lot of people found that quite exhilarating, despite themselves often. I believe that there were people of certain ethnicities who were actually just overcome with exhilaration. They had to just dance it off and so on. So, you know, I think disasters have a kind of flip side like that. On the one hand, they're kind of very tragic for those who are directly affected by them. But on the other hand, they tend to give a lift to other people, whether they care to admit it or not.
So I lived in Northern California for about 14 years, and there is quite a bit of loathing for Southern California in Northern California. So you go to San Francisco sporting events against Los Angeles teams, and there will be dominant chants, LA sucks, LA sucks. And there's no equivalent of that in Los Angeles, no widespread animus against any other city or any other region among Los Angelinos. And similarly, among the educated class in Britain, there seems to be like a great deal of loathing of the United States. But in the United States, to the extent that there's any strong feeling, it is like Anglophilia. Any thoughts on why often smaller regions have such intense loathing about bigger regions, NorCal versus SoCal, Europe versus the United States?
You sometimes get this in the United Kingdom, like, for example, smaller components of the United Kingdom tend to have a bit of a grudge against the larger component. So, yeah, small countries next to big countries, they often feel some kind of grudge or some sort of...
Chip on the shoulder.
Yeah, chip on the shoulder, inferiority complex or even superiority complex, who knows. That seems to... just be a reaction to the imbalance of power, to the asymmetry. So they're sort of trying to overcompensate for the asymmetry that they feel. And, you know, countries that exist on the edge of a civilization will be quite quaint in their behavior. I mean, you can think of in the case of Europe, you know, I've often thought about the Scottish identity in this respect or Russian identity. Russia is a country at the extreme edge of Europe. But it has pretensions to be the third Rome. So this is the marginalized outsider trying to feel that it's at the center.
And so Russia has this element in its culture and it has a lot of weird and quite serious knock-on effects, as we can see. In the case of Scotland, Scotland's always been on the outside of Europe. Originally, the people living in Scotland or Caledonia, as it was previously known, they didn't realise that they were on the edge of Europe. But later, when the Roman Empire came up and tried to conquer them, and then later, when they became part of the Roman Catholic Church, Scots kind of realised that they were on the edge of Europe. And that was a constant source of...agitation let's say to Scottish culture and so Scotland then made an effort to try to be at the centre of Europe by forming alliances with much more central European countries like France and that was a very important historical connection for a while and then the Scots went through a period where they started to see themselves as the the kind of people of the Bible. And this fed into Calvinism. And Calvinism was really, Calvinism is really just people LARPing as the Jews in the Bible. And so they went through that kind of puritanical phase. And that was all an attempt to put Scotland at the center of European culture by being more Christian than other parts of this so-called Christian Europe. And then later, of course, Scotland managed to get into the British Empire. And Scotland was probably the most British part of the British Empire because most English people still considered themselves to be English. But it was the Scots who took up this British identity the most and who did most of the... important imperial work like going out to India and running the place so Scots played a very, very disproportionate part in the British empire and that sort of fulfilled Scotland's need to see itself as being at the center so yeah there is there is this kind of chip on the shoulder thing that develops with uh smaller or more marginal countries and probably in America you see this with America and Canada at the moment, especially, this has been kind of whipped up by the tariff controversy.
So, yeah, very, very asymmetric.
I listened to a fascinating back-to-back interviews on Foreign Policy, their YouTube channel. First interview was with the former Prime Minister of Australia, Malcolm Turnbull, and he was decrying Donald Trump's lack of commitment to our common values because Trump has been threatening Europe and Greenland and Canada and Panama. And then they had an Asian diplomat on from Singapore and he said, well, the Asian way is not to try to forge cooperation on the basis of common values, but on the basis of common interests. And I loved that pragmatic Asian attitude. Did you think there's anything to this divergence between an Anglo intellectual tendency to try to unite behind common values versus the more pragmatic Asian tendency to try to forge cooperation based on common interests?
You know, people say one thing and they mean another. So often values are a cover for interests. And people in the Anglo sphere, people in Europe, I guess, to some extent as well, there is a tendency to dress up our selfish acts with a kind of altruistic sheen. And sometimes we take the altruistic sheen a bit too seriously, maybe.
Do you think that the only philosophical basis for defeating woke is the hereditarian position? The hereditarian position is that different peoples genetically evolved over time to have different responses to the environment, that we all evolved to be adapted to a particular environment and therefore When you look at the world, you'll find people will generally tend to have different gifts and that there is some genetic basis for these predispositions. And therefore, if there is a genetic basis for differing levels of achievement, that therefore we should not expect equal outcomes among groups. But if there is no genetic basis for group achievement, then the woke position that we need to change the environment to ensure equal outcomes is the most philosophically defensible position and is going to consistently win.
That sounds good on paper, but it's not strong enough to defeat the woke, you know, because the woke ideology will actually see that, you know, people have not been given equal opportunities. And when you do give them equal opportunities, the group which was previously underrepresented tends to do at least better than it previously did. So that looks to the Woke like evidence that the hereditarian thesis is wrong. And, you know, they'll keep pushing in that direction. So, like with women pilots, they'll keep pushing for more and more women pilots. And they'll say, why aren't 50% of the pilots female? We must try harder. Girls are being discouraged by our culture from doing a job that they are... equally as good at potentially as males. And so, you know, this is the thing. It's not just gender, of course, it's also different racial groups, different social groups. There's talent everywhere. And so there's always going to be evidence for woke people to cling on to. If you are emotionally inclined to cling on to this woke thesis, you're going to find the evidence out there. There is evidence. And even though other people might say, wait, what about this other evidence? It's very, very hard to prove the hereditarian principle. So, I can see this going on for some time and quite a few air crashes, to be honest.
So, I noticed that almost all thoughtful commentators on politics under the age of 40 take the hereditarian position. Do you think that's true?
I think the hereditarian position has been artificially repressed, I would say, for the last 50 years or so. And so if you want to come across as a bit edgy and with something new to say, the hereditarian position is going to have certain attractions that it previously didn't have. So I think there's an element of that in it. Generally speaking, I tend to be sympathetic to hereditarian positions. I do think women and men are... quite different in lots of ways. And that really should influence how we treat them and what careers and jobs we encourage them to do. If you just impose merit, a meritocracy, that should be enough to sort of sort everything out. So I think if we just stick to basic meritocracy and we don't exclude anybody who really wants to do something, we don't try to micromanage things too much. I think that's probably the optimum solution of which we are capable at the moment, you know, because I'm a great believer in keeping things as simple as possible. The more complex you make them, the more retarded everything becomes.
I think the hereditarian position has been artificially repressed, I would say, for the last 50 years or so. And so if you want to come across as a bit edgy and with something new to say, the hereditarian position is going to have certain attractions that it previously didn't have. So I think there's an element of that in it. Generally speaking, I tend to be sympathetic to hereditarian positions. I do think women and men are... quite different in lots of ways. And that really should influence how we treat them and what careers and jobs we encourage them to do. If you just impose merit, a meritocracy, that should be enough to sort of sort everything out. So I think if we just stick to basic meritocracy and we don't exclude anybody who really wants to do something, we don't try to micromanage things too much. I think that's probably the optimum solution of which we are capable at the moment, you know, because I'm a great believer in keeping things as simple as possible. The more complex you make them, the more retarded everything becomes.
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