Freedomain Radio

We want to be rational here, don't we? Let us do as men do and check our foundations rather than assume that part has been taken care of and rush to build a tall skyscraper on top of what could be, if unexamined, cobwebs.

The books and the podcasts of Freedoman Radio have premises that I can't find. I'm looking and I'm asking but either they're unstated or else they are hidden somewhere and paied little notice to. Funny either way, since they are what matter most. And, without them the applications predicated upon them are not worth our attention.

Example, FDR372 (re sadness) "...if you allow yourself to feel that pain, as you should, as you really really should...uhhh, we're not saying any of this is syllogistically proven yet. Yeah [jokingly,] that'll be the next podcast!"

Okay, syllogistic proof is being taken seriously as an important and difficult task here. A task not attempted though, or perhaps someone can furnish the link? Why not? Isn't that important? Why would anybody sit through this podcast before having reason to believe that the assertions it relys on are true?

And there is much much more of this pattern elsewhere. I know, because I've been going through these podcasts trying to find the part where the syllogistic proof of the efficacy of emotions was given. In podcast titles like these you'd expect to get that information wouldn't you? And some very valuable principles besides. But here is what I found...

FDR295 and 296: How To Change Your Emotions: Plea to donate to FDR and a story about some guy's life.

FDR297: Aggression Versus Assertion: Mom's advice about how to cope with aggressive people

FDR318: Moral Experimentation: Before you try your idea on the country try it on a town first, and before that, on yourself

FDR334 and 335: True Versus False Emotions/Selves: The reason/passion false dichotomy as seen in the Romantic Manifesto

FDR349: You are not broken: Statement that *maybe* you're not broken

FDR352: Rage and Anger: More in the series of ongoing assumptions that emotions track convictions, and that there are true/false emotions and that (somehow) we can tell the difference between them

You get the idea. The groundwork is never ever layed, but further podcasts rush on to take an authoritive position concerning the likes of anger, rage, sadness, fear, envy, jellousy, humiliation, loss, sex, vulnerability, and so on. All of the advice given on these subjects has the ring of truth but we rational ones must suspend our belief while we wait for the undiscovered backbone that has not been supplied. Meanwhile, the irrational are swallowing it up and divorcing their parents and friends and rewriting their value systems and lives and crying into their skype microphones (like today!) all on the strength of cobwebs!

If you who do this and see value in such podcasts cannot answer this (to yourselves, if not to me) then you're living in hypocrisyland. Probably you'll swallow whatever feel-good load of truthy jive you are next exposed to and eat that stuff as indiscriminantly and tearfully as you have this one!

Here's what we're looking to substantiate...

1. Conceptual distinction of the true/false self (this component, at least, has been stated fully) 

2. Premise that our emotions each pair with one of our conceptions

- persistently unsubstantiated. Merely assumed that our emotional apparatus is fully functional in this way, akin to the efficacy of the senses. eg there's a whole podcast about how origional sin is rubbish and we are "not broken" but invites throughout only that we consider the possibility we are not broken. Well, are we or aren't we?!

3. That these emotions can be paired to a true and false self (if 2 were verified this would follow logically)

4. That we are able to tell these true emotions from false ones

- Even though the above is all assumed, it is never defined as to which emotions are true and which are false in a general sense

- Podcast 352, for example, gives some of the most detailed prescription seen out of any of these podcasts. Tries to make the distinction between anger as true and rage as false, even mentions the Aristotelean mean, and establishes four steps to sort true from false emotions as one would have expected in 295/296. Fails though, because it falls back on premise 2 being able to answer premise 4 for us instinctually rather than the intellect being able to discover true from false emotions. Also makes unsubstantiated assumptions such as that patriotism and aggression are 'just bad'.

To sum up, these answers are as wonderful as a unicorn and to be as desired as flying carpet. If only emotions really did work like that, what a great friend they would be and what a difference it would make if the fancy of these podcasts were not fantasy but lessons. Alas, they are consumed and relyed upon as principles but presented only as maybes. I may be quite wrong and the syllogistic derivation is out there, perhaps in an overlooked podcast or hidden in the tiny wee minuites of an obscurely titled one. Or, maybe it's coming soon?

At any rate, I trust that unless Freedomainers are ignorant of the backbone of their convictions they wont mind showing it just once?

That's interesting Rick -- I don't know if you're aware of this, but you do have a bit of a habit of insulting people when you want them to do something. Do you think that you developed this habit because putting people down truly motivates them to do what you want in a voluntary community, and you learned this over time by applying a variety of strategies to get what you want -- or do think that this is just a bad habit that was inflicted upon you through some other process?

 Perfectly conscious and intentional concerning that.

It's a motivator, of course. Nobody wants to consider the very foundation of their philosophy of life to be rotten, hollow, or absent. That's an insult that will eventually *** them into either showing that it is not true or in their ceasing to pretend that they know what they're talking about when they don't.

Now that you perceive this situation would you like to be the one to address the issue? If you don't, and only if you don't, have the keystone of emotional efficacy upon which your philosophy heavily relys then you should feel pretty inadequate and misleeding. If not, I can help with that.

Returning to the issue, it is well established that sensations lead to perceptions which lead to concepts. Concepts, seemingly, become integrated into one's knowledge and elicit an emotive response in the doing?? Results in a concept/emotion pairing every time due to the efficacy of our emotional apparatus?? Some are true-self/true-feeling and others false-self/false-feeling and we can tell them apart on the emotional level??

This seems to be the unstated necessary theory that needs to be validated, without which all your work is worthless.

Well, if you are interested in some ways that we have dealt with these issues, I do go into false self and true self differentiation in some of the podcasts, but for more details you can pick up a copy of the Miami Symposium recordings, where Christina does a great presentation on the cognitive model of psychology and answers questions.

I thoroughly dislike your silly attempts to bully and humiliate, though, so I'm not going to interact with you any further.

Rick Giles:

 Perfectly conscious and intentional concerning that.

It's a motivator, of course. Nobody wants to consider the very foundation of their philosophy of life to be rotten, hollow, or absent. That's an insult that will eventually *** them into either showing that it is not true or in their ceasing to pretend that they know what they're talking about when they don't.

Well, having tried to discuss this topic with you last night in the chatroom, I can tell you very certainly that your general approach toward this topic is not motivating at all. In fact, I felt angry, annoyed, and frustrated by what I perceived as your dismissive and evasive responses, and was no more convinced of your assertion that emotions are as "random puffs of smoke" after talking to you than before. Perhaps you have had more success with your method with other people at other times, but in my experience this method is not empirically valid.

I also found your characterization of yesterday's call-in-show to be confusing. I remember that you said that "Stef made a few digs, then the guy just broke down." or something similar to that. I hadn't listened to the show at that point, so today I was expecting to hear a profuse outpouring of sadness, but instead what I heard was a man who seemed fairly disconnected from his emotions for nearly three quarters of an hour before it seemed like the force of the conversation fully impacted the caller.

I don't know what to make of all of this. I don't want to get into a discussion about it because I don't enjoy interacting with you, but I think this feedback might be useful to you.

 Sorry Stephan, I'm grumpy not stupid. I've gone round and round the mulberry bush with board members, combed through forum posts and hours of podcasts and now fobbed off by you. Hardly going to fall for the old Reader's Digest send-money-now-you're-one-step-away-! trick.

N,

 I felt angry, annoyed, and frustrated by what I perceived as your dismissive and evasive responses, and was no more convinced of your assertion that emotions are as "random puffs of smoke" after talking to you than before. Perhaps you have had more success with your method with other people at other times, but in my experience this method is not empirically valid.

 Well as "useful feedback to you" please consider that you are right to be angry, annoyed and frustrated. It's not my fault though. It's because your idea about emotions has a gaping hole in it and my idea doesn't, and my kindly drawing attention to this is more than you can own to, let alone bare.

I also found your characterization of yesterday's call-in-show to be confusing

Easy to fix. I'm only saying that the tools employed in bringing that man to tears depend upon the issue of this thread being disposed of. Kevin had no right to cry and Stephan had no right to provoke him unless both had the knowledge of the efficacy emotions.

Anybody who can front up and supply me with that knowledge is welcome. I hope you wont take it amiss if I'm slightly pissed off that it's being kept secret, just like the Emporer's new clothes before his bluff is called. And I hope that the attention I've drawn to the fatal consequences to the very ediface of FDR and to YOU will not be misconstrued as an attack but as an urgent alarm to prompt the answer to this question which we MUST have. 

Well, let's have a call then, you can ask me anything you want directly, for free... My Skype name is stefan_molyneux

I have to say that it is both observed and expected that emotions and ideas have a very strong interplay.  On that basic idea I agree with Stefan, and I think with most people who have any idea of how human beings work.  But I do have reservations about some of the interpretations and explanations I have heard from Stefan as to the nature, relationship and reliability of emotions.  Not entirely.  But I think he tends to exagerrate the value of emotions and natural reactions.  I do think that some of the makeup of human beings emotionally is negatively correlated with the well being of a specific individual.  I think it is plausible, and to some extent likely, that some emotions and emotional triggers not only fail to serve the individual but disrupt non-violent tendencies.  Human beings have not had time to strongly adapt to civilization proper, most of the 'social' habits we run on are still (I believe) very heavily centered in violence-oriented societies.

Tribal cooperation is poor training ground for individuals coordinated by markets and arguments.  I don't think there is any reason to predict that emotions will adjust reliably or sensibly from the perspective of an individual and his ideas.  Not any more than the tendency to believe anything a lot of people say will remain a good idea.  I think it's unrealistic to expect the human mind to actually have coherent systems for individual happiness.  That equates to little more than zero selection pressure, perhaps even a negative selection pressure.  As 'The Hedonistic Treadmill' argues, happiness is precisely what does not pay off genetically.  To the extent that you can improve your sense of well being you are always in desire of more or you stop acting altogether.  And it is entirely possible that some motivations or more physiological responses are not really compatible.  Given what we know about the non-purposeful and coincidental nature of evolution, why should we even expect it?  I still have a nerve that crosses over my eye and gives me a blindspot, not because it did anything useful for my ancestors but because it wasn't bad enough to be selected out.  And while coordination of emotions to ideas and experience certainly has advantages for humans, there is no reason to suppose that the brain can be made to fully and properly coordinate ideas and emotions.  It is possible that some people form emotional/intellectual bonds very poorly.  The sensitivity and 'force' of some people's emotions is likely to be somewhat arbitrary (though typically not straying too far).  And, ultimately, we need not expect that selection for reproduction will result in a makeup which is amenable to the mold of individual well being.

Vestigal and contradictory triggers, desires and wiring that was built in a crucible of violence for their ability to produce offspring.  One example, the strength and evolutionary basis of mate-jealousy is evident in humans.  While exceptions do seem to exist, some exceptional people consciously try to avoid parroting things they've heard but can't actually justify.  But 'human nature' very much contains both of these and I do not think they can be explained away with Cultural influence, however much that might exacerbate things.  Marriage, practiced even by eminent rational philosophers, really has no basis except this exclusivity-jealousy with regards to sexual relations.  Yet here we have something which creates problematic and negative emotions towards people who are doing you no harm and pursuing their own well being.  And no one I have ever talked to has contended that 'cheating' is wrong because of issues like disease and children, it is in fact present in many people who do not consider or do not care about these (shrinking) problems.  It is highly probable, from my perspective, that psychological forces - including emotions - can lead one in directions which are contradictory to one's own well being and that some of these psychological factors really only need to motivate a person to want happiness and to want certain things regardless of whether they'll make you happy.

Again, I stress that I agree with many of Stef's basic ideas and recommendations, especially with the fact that one has to face one's psychological inner workings (scar tissue/trauma/fixations etc) in order to be able to assess how and where certain problems lie.  I think that, although this can be painful, willfull ignorance can not be defended as a method to happiness since you have to use reason to realise you'd have been better off ignorant.  But I think Stef, like Rand, tends to exagerrate just how much emotion correlates reason and well-being.  And I think that some of it, varying from individual to individual, is fundamentally resistant or even immune to 'training' because a failure of (sex, self-defense, mate retention, social acceptability) might help you feel good but it's very dangerous to your genes' continued replication.  Without pretending to know the specifics I think there are assumptions and implications Stef which don't necessarily reflect what we see or would expect.

 I think Rick Giles was hire by Stefan to test us. But I think he tried to hard to harvest strong emotion. It feel fake.

Nice try Mr. Molineux.

neutrinoide:

 I think Rick Giles was hire by Stefan to test us. But I think he tried to hard to harvest strong emotion. It feel fake.

Nice try Mr. Molineux.

LOL, if only....

Rick is acting out of irritation and anger that the issue of the relevancy of emotions has not been dealt with to his satisfaction...

It is a fascinating paradox of course...

Which, of course, is also a ridiculous complaint, because all he had to do was speak up on Sunday...

Vichy, you make an excellent case.

You're right that Steph and Ayn Rand exagerrate just how much emotion correlates reason and well-being. I must admit I had completely overlooked that Rand was on Steph's side, and I'm surprised (even embarrased) to learn it at this late date. [Lexicon: emotion]

The message I have accepted is that emotions are inexplicable and not matched with ideas at all. According to Nathanial Branden this is a common mistake for which he and Rand had a part in encouraging..

When admirers of Ayn Rand seek my services professionally, they often come with the secret hope, rarely acknowledged in words, that with Nathaniel Branden they will at last become the masters of repression needed to fulfill the dream of becoming an ideal objectivist.

The effect of Rand's approach in this area, then, is very often to deepen her readers' sense of self-alienation. That was obviously not Rand's intention; nonetheless it is easy enough to show how often it has been the effect of her work on her admirers [Benefits and Hazards]

Astonishing!

I am angered and irritated that FDR just lets this matter hang in the air. But I'm making my inquiry from an emotionally disinterested, rational, point of view so there is no paradox. It's only that my anger and irritation happen to be going the same way, so it's perfectly proper to let them speak.

Of course I'll jump on Skype to answer this, with anybody who claims to know. And one of the things I'll ask is why the matter could not have been sorted out right here, long ago? Why wont anybody validate what they claim to know? Why does no podcast get within 100 miles?

Greg, if you must know, I skipped a lecture on Monday morning to put the question to the Sunday conference. I was told to 'just turn up' but it turned out you needed Skype! So I got that going, and maybe I missed the start where questions were put. At any rate, I found an intense dialogue between Stephan and Kevin that lasted a very long time and I can't imagine you expected me to interject. I am ALL ABOUT investigating this issue, I am not trying to avoid hearing the answer. You, on the other hand, along with everyone else, are content to have no input (only Vichy is taking this issue seriously.) What would you make of that if you were in my shoes?

 If emotions don`t correlates so much with reason and well-being. I would be very interested to know your theory about why 2 poeples with same inteligence, who live in the same culture , are exposed to the same information, fact and school education, one will accept rational arguments and the other will not.

There is something going on other then pure free-will in the head of an individual because we won`t be here, in minority talking about irational unethical behavior of our society.

Rick Giles:

N,

 I felt angry, annoyed, and frustrated by what I perceived as your dismissive and evasive responses, and was no more convinced of your assertion that emotions are as "random puffs of smoke" after talking to you than before. Perhaps you have had more success with your method with other people at other times, but in my experience this method is not empirically valid.

 Well as "useful feedback to you" please consider that you are right to be angry, annoyed and frustrated. It's not my fault though. It's because your idea about emotions has a gaping hole in it and my idea doesn't, and my kindly drawing attention to this is more than you can own to, let alone bare.

Your kindly drawing attention to it? Just a couple of posts above this is you admitting that you were intentionally being insulting as a motivator.

Stefan:

That's interesting Rick -- I don't know if you're aware of this, but you do have a bit of a habit of insulting people when you want them to do something. Do you think that you developed this habit because putting people down truly motivates them to do what you want in a voluntary community, and you learned this over time by applying a variety of strategies to get what you want -- or do think that this is just a bad habit that was inflicted upon you through some other process?

Giles:

Perfectly conscious and intentional concerning that.

Because of your blatant inconsistency on this matter, because you basically just told me that I'm angry because I'm wrong and you're right (and that this is an indication that I'm unable to bear it), and because of your avoidance of the content of my post, I think you're being passive aggressive. This serves as a further example of why interacting with you is not enjoyable, and indeed is not productive--and if you were really being dispassionate and rational as you clearly wish to portray yourself on this matter, then you would not do this.

And hence I am taking leave of this thread. "My idea" may have more holes in it than Swiss cheese, and maybe I can't bear that I'm wrong, but I will not find out the truth from you.