Of the, your lines is because there are reasonable steps they
could have taken to avoid being what they are.
So if you could summarize how we can differentiate good
politicians Tulsi gabbard's, the great example that I always use
good well-meaning politicians, who sort of go astray versus
evil politicians. So to start, I don't want to say
that people are good. If they agree with me and bad,
if they don't, that's an unreasonably High bar.
It's pretty crazy and dogmatic. I want to come up with a
standard. That would be plausible to a
ride range of people regardless of their political views.
And and so, what do you what I propose is is what I was really
applying, what sort of sometimes called the Spider-Man principle?
With great power, comes great responsibility, the for a
politician actually goes and does something that is and does
something highly course, you others, like passing a law
saying, you've got to go and join the military whether you
like it or not, or says that it is illegal to build skyscrapers.
Or what have you do? They do, they actually try due
diligence. Do they investigate.
What are the actual consequences, this?
How bad would it? Really be?
If we just didn't pass a law. What is it?
Reasonable estimate of the benefits that we got out of
this? These are the kinds of steps
that any decent person would take before they went and did
what politics is all about, which is essentially pointing a
gun at people's heads. And saying, if you don't do
this, we will put you in jail. If you don't like that, what you
will kill you, right? So it's either Spider-Man.
Principal with great power. Comes great responsibility.
Seems super reasonable to me. I don't see that there's
anything, especially partisan or sectarian about it.
Something that I think almost anyone should agree with before
you go and start talking about killing a person or putting them
in jail, it behooves you to see whether the whether there's
actually a lot of large excess of benefits over costs and then
it comes down to hardly any politician does this.
Obviously, Almost no politician puts any severe severe and
serious amount of work into investigating this stuff.
The most you can really count on to do is to go and read some
pieces that say what the politician already wanted to
hear the amount of pain that I'm politician, spend reading things
that say that they're wrong or just reading social science,
journals or even just acquiring familiarity with the evidence
just basic numeracy, right? You see.
Very little sign that politicians actually do that and
of course not because they can get power without doing it now.
If You say well, I mean it's their job.
Yeah. Well, that's the excuse of a
whole lot of horrible people in the world.
You can say, hey well, it was my job to go and execute those
innocent people. So don't blame me.
There's my job to run the slave labor camp.
No, that is not a good enough. Excuse, an excuse that.
I am happy to entertain is. No.
I went and kill those prisoners because I would have been killed
by my Superior officer if I hadn't killed them.
That's one right yet, I can get to be pretty dogmatic to say.
Now, you should have just let him kill you Lisa say, alright.
I think that's a pretty good, pretty good point if true.
But then the question is, is it really true that you would have
been killed? But if you had from disobey the
order, maybe just would have been yelled at it.
Maybe just would have been teased, right?
There's a book from about 25 years ago now, Hitler's willing
Executioner's and basically looked at the question when
Germans that were working in death camps and other such parts
of the Nazi Empire disobey, Orders to go and murder
civilians. What happened to them?
And the general answer was nothing.
They were not shot, they were not themselves, but in slave
labor camps, the worst that happened was they got a Stern
talking-to. Like you realize that if old
Germans were to have this disobedient out of food, it
could be of serious harm and Envoy effort.
So now we are going murder. Those children know you really
disappoint me. You might have to be transferred
over to another part of the war effort now.
Okay. Well, this is going to look
really am Balancing for us. But that is pretty much what was
going on and this is where I will say, if your excuse is he
wanted murdered innocent people because you didn't want your
Superior officer to talk to you like that, tough luck like that
is it and that is not a reasonable excuse that someone
was going to go and look down on you for failing to murder and
some people. So they're like the worst public
service that you do you do it or I will kill you.
All right that's where it's like G like you can really under you
can really understand why a person Do a terrible thing in
that situation and say at least it's complicated as to how much
you want to blame them, but if it's just you are real duck
down. Hans.
That's where it's like. Well, okay, well, I'd rather let
you down and go and murder people so no 999.
Yeah, you would think that they actually have some Allegiance
after they're always saying I served and I serve the public
and I'm here to serve you. You'd think they'd have some
allegiance to us. But every time I try, bossing
them around, I'm a, I'm an evil terrorists.
They boss me around that next time.
I keep, I keep forgetting. Next time I talk to an officer.
I'm going to say I was hired to be a drug dealer.
I was a hired assassin. So I was just following orders.
I need to enter a woman's right, Keith.
It's just put it on the blog or a podcast.
I know Foster Michael humor. Once tried to philosophize his
way out of a ticket that he got, I think for running a red light
in the middle of the night. Did get the guy to engage the
argument of it CLI. The point of well no one was
around. So what difference does it make?
If I run the red light, I check to make sure no one was coming.
You were just hiding there with your lights off and the guys
like well you know if you have people can break the law, when
it's totally, there's no reason at all to keep it.
Then they might start breaking really good laws and it's like
seems unlikely, right? But he wasn't able to talk his
way out of the ticket and the cop said, oh God.
Did you write Paradox? Lost on that here?
Goodbye you win. Yeah.
All right at least like he didn't get arrested or anything.
I would have if I was in the car I'd be like to shut up.
Shut up, it's scary. I was on the other end of talk
my way out of multiple tickets. How would you do it?
Always involving. There's a bunch of kids in my
car and I just, I don't, I don't argue, I looked at it with
pitiful. And at a super apologetic, super
obsequious. Like it's that's got like a
tooth or success rate for me. But it does require to having
kids in the car. I was wondering what makes
people care about some death and not others.
So, when it comes to the My Lai Massacre covid, deaths, Waco,
Eric Garner bombing of Dresden, King Leopold, Ashley Babbitt,
everyone. You could find someone saying
these deaths are tragic but very few with the exception of
Libertarians. Will say, all of those involved
in initiating violence against peaceful people in there for our
morale. You have a chapter, tell me the
difference between My Lai Massacre and Hiroshima, what are
your thoughts on that in this book, right?
So of course, to back up, it does require that people have
heard of maile. This was a war crime committed
by American soldiers, in a Vietnamese village.
Where the exact either I got details of the chain of command
and run clear but what is definitely known is that the
commander on site ordered his soldiers to kill every one of
the village? And then the reason we know
about is there was one guy who disobeyed orders and went and
And some of the people in his helicopter and flew away, and I
think he actually risked his own life.
I think he actually did Point his guns back is some American
soldiers who said to hand over all of the civilians in the
village and he refused and rescue them.
So anyway, is that Hugh Thompson, you like I would dive
honestly, I don't remember the names of the people involved.
I'm sorry interests of heroism and villainy right?
But anyway, now Hiroshima, I hope most people are watching
this of heard of That. So the u.s. dropped atomic bomb
on Hiroshima. First time that her an atomic
bomb was used on human beings. Second time was Nagasaki, of
course, right now, most people are strongly convinced with her
Oshima was fine and that maile was terrible.
Although at the time it's worth pointing out that a lot of
people were claiming that the Americans who murdered all the
people are heroes and that the guy who rescues the people was a
traitor. Eventually, the facts came out
and they were so horrifying. And so blatant that it does that
Like, leaking out the, the guy, The Rescuer did not go to jail,
at least. And the perpetrator God, I think
like some years of house arrest, right?
Rather than just being summarily shot as a war criminal, which
would have been the sensible thing.
But anyway, the point of that essays, I just go through.
So what are some, what are some reasons?
Why people think that Roshan was okay?
Because it starts off with saying, well, we were just going
in bombing enemy soldiers and that's totally untrue.
And you can check that pretty easily.
And then the next one is, well, look, We want to kill some
soldiers and unfortunately there were whole lot of civilians
nearby. So we didn't have any convenient
way of going and just just killing soldiers so we killed
them. All right.
But then you go to My Lai and here's the problem.
We've got some Grill infiltration, The Village.
So yeah if you want to make sure that you get the gorillas then
you better just kill everyone in the village and yet this is one
or like now you can't just murder everyone at Villages
because there's a few unknown gorillas there and you say,
well, but there's collaboration between the civilians and the
gorillas well, between some of them, not all of them.
The kids aren't involved in the Collaboration.
So you're going to go and kill all the kids to, that's okay,
right. So basically just try to walk
through different stories that people are given about the
differences between the two. I mean, other one is just well
gross men did the war maile didn't looks like yeah.
Well but what if you knew that doing a thousand my lace would
end the war then would it be okay to go and do that kind of
thing, right? And in this is one little, guess
not. But well in that case we're back
to wondering what's different about Hiroshima.
You have a chapter called The Common Sense case for pacifism.
What is pacifism, please give us the bullet points on why you are
a pacifist. Right?
Well so like sexism you can go to the dictionary and there are
a couple different definitions but in the case of pacifism I'll
say that there's not one definition that is overwhelming
for feminism. I think that it is actually
overwhelming that almost everyone who taught who talks
about it. They mean, the view that women
are treated less. Very in our society, the men,
the case of pacifism, there's what you go, absolute path.
Abysm say you should never use violence for any reason but
another one of the dictionary is just opposition to war, right?
I am not a pacifist in the first sense so I am fully in favor of
actual self. Defense IL in principle, I think
the death penalty is great. It's just a matter of practical
matter about whether or not you can actually make it work in a
given system, right? But like, if I could have
executed Hitler the end of World War Two then.
Yeah, absolutely no question. Good luck young just local
Hillside. Where would where is he around?
Good to go. All right box of pasta business,
sense of opposition to war. This is where I do say that.
I'm a pacifist. I mean, I got thinking about
this, because there were so many Libertarians who say their
isolationist, and then I see, well, that doesn't really fit
what I think in a passivism, is really much more accurate
because isolationist indicates. Well, I'm willing to go and
fight in the case of national self-defense for example, or or
in the case of a civil war, then maybe that would not be ruled
out by isolationism. And so yeah, here's what I say
about passivism to look. I have an actual argument.
So this is not the kind of thing where I say I feel something and
then some people say I feel differently, this is one where I
say. Look I've got premises the
premises lead, logically do conclusion and if you disagree
with conclusion you must tell me which premise you disagree with
It's that kind of an argument, right?
Which is, of course the kind of argument that I like, it's the
kind that I believe in. It's what I dedicate my life to
all right. And again, of course, a good
argument is one where those premises are hard to just throw
away, right? Ones.
Re say, mmm, these premises are not just something that only
Brian believes or something that almost everybody believes and
they seemed to lead to a conclusion, I don't believe
whatever. Imagine like to do.
So the premises of the argument are versus follows.
The let's say let's switch that loose, which the simplest way of
putting it. All right, so premise one of the
short-run costs of War are really bad.
All right, the short-run costs were all really, really bad.
Yeah, a lot of people died destruction.
Right, so you've got that and all right, so you've got that
right now. Secondly, long-run benefits are
uncertain. It is very common for someone to
fight a war claiming it's going to lead to great good and guess
what? It doesn't.
We're one was the war to end all wars.
It really was. All right and that was wrong,
right? How or more recently, let's take
a look at how well Iraq and Afghanistan, have gone.
We were promised that they would be turned into civilized Western
democracies more or less, and that didn't happen.
All right, so the long-term out, this is not mean that they never
happen. The Korean war did actually
leave the South Korea, being a way better country.
Tree the North Korea and the absence of probably whole thing
would have in North Korea. The point is just that there's
high in certainty. Then the next premise, is that
before you go and murder or negligently kill innocent people
You should have high confidence that there will be a large
excess of benefits over costs. Right?
So, that is key that comes down to a thought, experiment that
has been done many times sometimes called the force
bergenholm, organ donation, hypothetical, which just says
look, right. You're a doctor.
You do organ transplants to save lives.
Got five patients. Each patient needs, a different
organ to save their life. One needs a liver.
When these lungs, one needs a heart.
And so, on perfectly healthy guy, walks by, he has no
friends, no family, no one will ever miss him, would it be all
right for you to murder him and harvest his organs?
To save your high patience. Almost everyone says now.
If you raise the numbers up a lot enough than many people
change their minds but five isn't enough so he's all right.
Well this shows that if we're talking about murdering innocent
people, we've got to have at least a five to one benefit cost
ratio. Right in the final point is
people say well, I mean like we're not killing innocent
people. Modern Warfare always involves
the motoring or negligent killing of Innocents because the
weapons are just too indiscriminate to not do it.
All right. So anyway, snap all these
premises together and it seems like there's a very strong
presumption opposed to war really in order to have it
Justified War, you need to be able to reasonably say This Is
War where we have such strong knowledge of its future
consequences that we know with a lot of confidence that there
will be over 5 times benefits, the benefits will be over five
times the cost right now. This is a claim you can always
make but then it's like, all right well let's just go and
look at your record, a prediction.
How good is your record prediction of this?
Kind of thing. We know from the work of
political psychologist. Philip.
Tetlock that even experts, level of prediction of this kind is
extremely poor and so it is just not reasonable to think that
that that people have this kind of knowledge.
Yeah, and even in Obama's book, Promised Land, he still brags
about Libya, and then minimizes the very end of it.
Even the war for Polish Independence, declared September
3rd of 1939 ended with the giving Poland to the Soviets.
So, I mean, we just need so much humility in, in this Arena.
I'm so thankful for your time. Have two more quick questions.
You have a monopolizing Petty, Sighs.
How can you support Free Speech when so many people are
unreliable and dishonest, right? So just to back out the point of
the essay monopolize, the Pretty Lies is this what is the main
point of censorship in a dictatorship?
If you're a big or well fan like me your knee-jerk reaction is
the point is to suppress the truth.
Sorry to that is a thing that dictators do but if you pay
attention to what happens when you relax censorship the main
thing isn't that a lot of truths come out?
The main thing is that I'm competing politicians show up,
and they start spinning their own ridiculous lies.
So, right now in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, only the
government gets to say we're ordained by God and we are great
and this and we are the greatest rulers wherever wonderful.
Now, if they were relaxed, the censorship, what would happen?
Would it be a bunch of rationalist come along and start
going? And saying, well, let's go and
consider some criticism of the Koran and like what that implies
for. But that implies for Sharia law,
much more likely there would be some Fanatics will come along
and say no. No, we ordained by God and he is
ordained us to take over this country and kill you and kill.
You horrible reprobates Who present yourself as friends of
Islam. That's what God really wants.
And in fact, you probably see 20 different guys claiming to have
a pipeline to God, right? So you realize a lot of what
censorship is about is about crushing other Liars.
You want to be the only people, they're able to say where this
is the greatest country in the world because it's ruled by me
because I'm so great. You don't want anyone else.
People say that kind of stuff. All right, now.
So this is my story about the point of the main point of
censorship. It is just that only the people
in power can go and weaponize this ridiculous rhetoric.
Now, given this how can I do that?
Find free speech. So I think I got another piece.
We're basically amounts to one cheer for free speech and I
said, like them. Like you can't really say, you
can't say the Free Speech, leaves the truth, I just it's
not correct me like you know, like obviously if Free Speech
led to truth and they were just be one religious view on the
planet by Now. And guess what?
There's not they'd be one political view on the planet.
There isn't so on right to free speech led to truth.
Then basically, as soon as you open things up, then the most
evidence-based views would suddenly become popular.
And again, anyone who is familiar with evidence knows
that it's not true. All right, so what is the best
defense of free speech to the best?
Defense is just that free speech allows some people to figure out
the truth. It prevents the suppression of
the minority of people that want to actually figure things out.
That's what we've got. We can't say that at least the
truth. We can't say that in the end.
Everything works out. What we can say is that free
speech is what allows the narrow segment society that cares about
truth to keep doing what they're doing.
I had a discussion with a woman the other day and she was very
upset, that Trump has still not been arrested after having
documents, he should not have had in Marla go.
She's also very upset about January 6 and the Ukrainian
collusion phone call. And I mentioned to her, I said,
you know, if you really want to knock out punch against Trump, I
absolutely have it for you and I, yeah, I got her.
I actually dedicated this blog post to her where Trump actually
He has killed thousands of civilians across Iraq, Syria, 86
civilians, in one month alone in Yemen and I go.
So all of this has to be something like a hundred
thousand times worse than any call, he made to Ukraine about,
you know, Hunter Biden's laptop and she could not have been less
interested in what I was saying. And then I tried it with another
person, then I said, hey, if you guys really want to get Obama,
the anti-war president, you know, that he is.
Like helping out the Saudis and gave them the green light for a
war in Yemen, and all this other stuff.
Why is it that people don't care about the major things in
politics, but care about the petty things because it's often
easier to be emotional about a petty thing than about a major
thing. Especially if the major thing is
numerical and the petty thing is personal I thought see like this
is a very general feature of human psychology that Stalin
allegedly said, one death is a tragedy million deficit has a
statistic. If he did say it, I don't think
we got any real evidence that he did.
It's one of the most insightful things that Stalin said IDs this
is basic human psychology, you know, yours watching a movie if
you want to get people on the edge of their seats.
Do you go and show a city? Getting bombed in a million
people dying from mile up. No, you go and move the camera
into the crib. And show the baby burning alive.
That's the kind of thing that you show to get people
emotionally affected. So that's one big part of it, in
politics. And not another part, of course,
is people just care much less about foreigners than about, and
then about people their own country.
If you would said that Trump had had killed thousands of innocent
Americans, that would been the other thing that we've got a
much stronger reaction. So there's that.
And then there's also just a general view well, look, you
know, like their leaders world leaders Wars stuff is going to
happen, so you You got against people and thing honestly, on
something like that. People realize, what your kind
of leading me into a trap, because if I go and condemn,
Trump for going and killing some innocent civilians in Yemen,
then you could also say that Obama is a monster because he
went and killed a bunch of innocent people and I got, but I
love Obama. He's my guy.
So I'm not going to let you trick me by taking me down this
this path. I'm going to focus on something
that only can be said about the guy that I dislike and can't be
said about the guy that I like right.
You know, mean on top of this, of course people are just very
able to have a big double standard.
This is where Orwell's totally spot-on as it usually is
political double. Think people are very capable of
holding contradictory views the same time for the issues that
they're emotionally affected. Emotionally invested in like
politics like religion. The books are, how evil are
politicians, essays on demagoguery also.
Don't be a feminist dr. Bryan Caplan.
Thank you so much for another time.
Yes, the books can both be purchased on Amazon for the
still inflation, unadjusted price of 12 bucks, for the
paperback and 999 for the e-book.
So I hope that you check them out.
Links will be in the description.
Take Care. Thank you.