Episode Transcript
Speaker 0 00:00:00 Laid out to own the libs and you, um, we're referencing the culture war and you've written a piece, uh, to, to encourage people to put culture back in the culture war that the problem with the culture wars is, is that there's not much culture in it. And in a piece that you wrote for symposium, you compared this to, uh, the late 1980s, um, in which, in the wake of, uh, Alan Bloom's blockbuster, the closing of the American mind, um, there, there was the situation who, what your case for, um, putting culture back in the culture wars is and how you diagnose the problem.
Speaker 1 00:00:48 Okay. Thanks for the intro. Um, yeah. So I wrote this piece about putting the culture back in the culture wars. And if, I don't know how many people still remember Alan bloom, but he made a big stir in 1987 with this book, the closing of the American mind, which really kind of warned us I'm predicted everything that had happened. Well, everything would happen in the, in the nineties with what we call political correctness and the return of political correctness today, which is called wokeness for lack of a better word. And, uh, it really says, he said it came from this philosophy that encouraged people to, that everything was subjective. Everything was relative at all, depended on who you were and what your perspective was. So, you know, as a, as a person of color, you had one perspective, whereas a left-handed lesbian tugboat worker or whatever, you know, you tap these people into the, um, a narrower, a narrower, uh, categories, and there was no universal truth.
Speaker 1 00:01:48 And there was no, uh, grounding in, in, in a, uh, a deeper appreciation of the big ideas of Western civilization. Now he was at the university of Chicago about the time that I showed up there, and this is the home of the great books approach to education. And what struck me is that there was a culture war back in the late eighties that was really about, should we be studying the big ideas, the great ideas of Western civilization? Should we be reading Plato now? I mentioned Play-Doh partly because I've got a couple of reasons why I'm mentioning Play-Doh. One of them is that Alan bloom was most famous as a Plato scholar. He did a, uh, widely used translation of Plato's Republic, um, also by the criticized translation. Um, but, uh, so it's the idea that, you know, we should read Plato to own the lips as the, that was the culture war at the time that a grounding in these big ideas was the answer to the subjectivism and the tribalism of what we then called political correctness.
Speaker 1 00:02:47 And I think that's the thing that's been lost from this current go around to the culture war is that it's become tribalism from all sides. It's that the, the conservatives I floss and lost that original culture war, the Allen blue mirror, and late 1980s culture war. And they've kind of given up on the big ideas and that's what we really need to go back to. And that's why I say read Plato to own the lips, but I, there's a couple of reasons why specifically say Plato, I don't want to go into that a little bit. Um, now the reason where you played it was really not necessarily because of Play-Doh is because of Socrates. So Plato, he, he's a great philosopher from our own 400 BC great Greek philosopher, uh, and he presented his philosophy and a series of what were called dialogues at the time.
Speaker 1 00:03:37 Uh, and this is, you know, a dialogue is basically just a fictional conversation. So, and, and, uh, Plato, and in the, in the process of that conversation played, it would walk you through his philosophical arguments, that for the point that he was trying to make, and the person he always has taking his sort of speaking on his behalf is his teacher, Socrates, who was a real guy. Uh, we know Socrates mostly through Plato's dialogue. So you have a few other places that he's written about other students of his, um, but we know Socrates mostly through Plato as Socrates was the guy. This is middle of the middle of the four hundreds BC in Greece who really defined the basic questions of philosophy and the basic method of philosophy as distinct from what had come before. Uh, and, uh, the, the basic things that, that Socrates originated that he stood for was, first of all, the idea of questioning received opinion.
Speaker 1 00:04:36 So just, but every dialogue begins with him asking a question like, what is justice or what is truth? And people come up with, well, they come up with the standard answers that, that, uh, average person of, you know, fifth century BC, Greece would come up with. And then Socrates also says, well, let's take a look at that answer and pokes holes in it and asked other questions. And it shows that it's not quite adequate, and we need to ask more questions and come up with new answers and come up with better answers. So CID has taking the sort of received opinion, the things that everybody thinks they know and subjecting them to scrutiny and criticism. The second thing about Plato about Socrates, excuse me. I said he is willing to do so, even when it's unpopular, even when it makes people mad. And of course that famously got Socrates in trouble, cause he was eventually put to death.
Speaker 1 00:05:26 He was executed for so-called corrupting the youth of Athens by making an ask all these uncomfortable questions. And then the other thing is that the big difference, the reason why Socrates is considered the guy who started the whole field of philosophy is he was different from the sofas. The sofas were sort of wise men or teachers who were going around Greece at the time. Uh, very commonly found on Greece at the time who used some of the same sort of philosophical arguments, but they were, they were all about rhetoric. There were about, they weren't about the truth. They were about teaching how to win an argument and the, the rap against the sofas as they were, they were good at teaching you how to make the worst argument look like it's the better one. Right? And, and what Socrates taught was the idea that no, this isn't about arguing.
Speaker 1 00:06:12 This is, uh, putting people down or it isn't about owning the libs. This is about seeking the truth. Uh, and you can see how all of that. So very relevant to today, the idea of questioning the received opinions of the majority opinions doing so even when it makes people angry and when it's on a popular and doing it, not just in order to win the argument or to own the libs, but in order to seek out the truth. Now there's one last reason why I'm bringing up Plato in particular. Now Socrates is my main guy of interest, but Plato in particular is because he wrote his philosophy in the form of dialogues. Uh, and that was the predominant way of, of presenting philosophy of engaging philosophy at the time is you would have a conversation. And I think that's the other big thing that's relevant to today is this idea that you, you gain the truth by engaging in conversation and bringing different viewpoints and disagreements and, uh, answering them and, and, uh, uh, going back and forth between those different viewpoints.
Speaker 1 00:07:16 Uh, recently Jonathan Roche wrote a very good book called the constitution of knowledge, where he talks about the relevance of this to today and particularly against wokeness or political correctness. And he starts the book by, uh, referring to Plato's dialogue fetch. He just, now, most of the dialogues are named after the person Socrates's having a conversation with. So the beginning of the book is that Socrates is walking out of the street in Athens. He meets this guy named cheetahs, and they have a whole long conversation about the nature of truth. And which I thrush pointed out is that the most important thing in the dialogue is at the very end where Socrates says to the, just let us meet and talk of this again. Right. And that says, that's the most important thing about it is that truth was found by people engaging in the conversations by meeting and talking and having different viewpoints and hashing them out.
Speaker 1 00:08:08 And all of that I think is so crucially vitally important to today's sort of culture, war environment that we're in and an answer really to both sides of the culture war that we need to be questioning the received opinions. We need to be doing it with a popular, when it's unpopular, we need to be doing it, not just to win the argument, but to seek the truth and let us meet and talk of this. Again, Lee, we need to be doing this constantly in dialogue with Beaumont people with differing opinions. So that's sort of my case for reading Plato to own the lips or really reading Plato as an answer to today's culture wars.
Speaker 0 00:08:42 Thank you, Robin. I wanted to mention, um, thanks to Scott suggestion. Uh, we are trying to record this session, so, so keep that in mind and bear with us. Um, we want to try to make it available to more people. I'd also like to acknowledge that we have one of our senior scholars, professor Stephen Hicks here, um, or not. Uh, and we had a great session with him last, uh, last week and, uh, just a shame that we weren't able to record that. Uh, and then also, uh, we have a horn flaring outside, so I'm going to, um, there we go. Uh, we have the chairman of the Alice society's board of trustees, Jayla pear, and also, uh, Dale bottoms. He's a dear friend and a supporter. So, um, I also see the room filling in. So I want to encourage any of you to just go ahead, raise your hand. Um, I might just call on you. Uh, there we go, Brian.
Speaker 2 00:09:56 Hey. Yeah. Hey, thanks. Um, I I've, I was introduced to Iran, uh, kind of in middle age, but uh, to me it was just, uh, her work spoke to me as a way I had lived my entire life. And so it was just, he was just incredible. Um, so my, my question is it's, um, maybe a slightly off topic, but, but to me it pertains and I can connect the dots if you want. But when I think about Iran's philosophy about, um, the nature of reality, being the basis of our, our morals, our reason, our connecting, the dots of how we should live, um, I, I seem to get, I, I seem to see where people conflate truth with knowledge and they, um, use those words interchangeably and, and, and I'll be very direct about it. The way I see it is truth pertains to the physical world.
Speaker 2 00:11:04 So if you look at the way I, and ran talked about it, she's saying that, you know, following on from Aristotle's Axiom existence exists, that's the nature of truth. But when we talk about knowledge, we some sometimes conflate the two. And so I would just say, uh, to Rob or whoever wants to jump in, tell me where I'm missing the point here, or maybe where I'm getting this wrong, absolute truth exists in terms of reality, the laws of nature, et cetera exist. And that is truth, but absolute knowledge does not. So there's no way for us to have absolute knowledge over anything because certain aspects of physical reality, dark matter, dark energy, quantum, you know, the list goes on. There's just too much that we don't know. And not only that no one person can know everything about anything. So help me understand where I'm going wrong. Absolute truth exists, absolute knowledge does not. Thank you.
Speaker 0 00:12:15 Thanks, Brian. Yes. We have certain limitations of what we can know, including no mind reader technology app yet. So dialogue remains important. Go ahead, Rob.
Speaker 1 00:12:31 Uh, all right. So I'm gonna take that, uh, from the beginning, I think the semantic difference seen truth and knowledge is a little iffy in terms of how the words are used. You know, I think truth is something that's real that is known to us, right? It's a truth, I think implies the, a knower of the truth, right? So reality is a term for just simply anything that exists, whether we know it or not. So I would say the difference you're making between truth and knowledge. I'm not as just as a semantic in terms of how the words are used. I'm not sure. I, I, I think there's a big difference between those two, but I do think there's a different scene, what we call philosophically, the metaphysical and the epistemological, right? So the metaphysical is pertaining to that which exists and things that exist, exists, whether we know them or not, whether there's anybody to observe them or not, they, they still exist.
Speaker 1 00:13:23 They persist in their existence and they are what they are so that, you know, that's the metaphysical aspect of it. And then the epistemological aspect is involves the idea of somebody knowing it, you know, epistemology is the science of how we know things. So there is a different scene, you know, that which exists is obviously it's, it's an unlimited quantity of things that are out there that exists that we don't know, because we could only perceive so much at any one time. What I don't like is the idea that no absolute knowledge exists. Like I can look out my window right now and say, this, I'll ask you to say the sky is blue instead of a grayish blue. Okay, it's still blue. I could go look out my window right now and say, the sky is blue. Or I could say in your little icon here with, with, uh, uh, the Atlas from, uh, uh, from Rockefeller center, the sky is blue in that photo.
Speaker 1 00:14:15 And that I, that, you know, that's an absolute, not fact that it's a directly observable fact. There's no uncertainty in it, right? So we have, we kind of AB I think we have absolute knowledge of the things that are available to us too, that are available for direct perception or for sound solid reasoning for that direct perception. But what we're really looking for is here is the idea that we are, uh, the Mount we can know. And the amount that we can know with certainty is finite. So we're not auditioned, you know, there's a, there's a, a limit to how much we can observe and how much we can know. And then number of valid, uh, inferences we can make from that. Now the limit keeps getting bigger and bigger as human kind, as a, as a species gets to know more and more for an individual is still limited.
Speaker 1 00:15:01 You have to, you know, rely when I go to the doctor, I rely on his special specialty knowledge. I'm not acting on my firsthand knowledge. I'm asking on my judgment of whether at this guy, this physician, I'm going to seems to know what he's talking about. So there are always limits, and there are situations you have to make in the, in the face of uncertainty given those limits. But I don't like the idea that there is no such thing as absolute knowledge. There is absolute knowledge of the things that you can directly know or make clear inferences about. It's just that your, your, the, the knowledge that's absolute to you is limited in quantity and in scope.
Speaker 2 00:15:40 Okay. So, um, I, I would say that if you're saying as a sentence, the sky is blue, there is a semantical semantic range of, uh, ambiguity in each of those nouns or adjectives. So blue is a range. And, you know, you remember that controversy, I dunno, a couple of years ago about the dress, whether it was a gold or right. That, so, I mean,
Speaker 1 00:16:13 Black or white and gold, I actually wrote about that because that was fascinating.
Speaker 2 00:16:18 Yeah, it was fascinating. And it boils down to the individual differences in terms of the perceptual capabilities of each individual observer. So in that regard, I would say, there's no sentence that you can speak, just because of the limitation of, of words. There's no sentence that you could speak that is objective really true. I mean, not even one plus one equals two, because I could say, you know, one man plus one woman equals one marriage, or I could say one idea, plus one idea. If we share aspects of that same, you know, foundational, creative, um, endeavor one idea, plus one idea equals one business or something along those lines. So there's ambiguity in every sentence that you could possibly.
Speaker 0 00:17:13 Yeah. Brian, thank you. I, um, I do want to make sure that we are able to circle back to the, to the main theme, uh, which is about culture and dialogue. Um, but I also wanted to acknowledge that we have, uh, professor David Kelley's founder of the Alice society, um, who is an expert in the topic. So of whether of, um, uh systemology and, um, perhaps get his view on the proposition, uh, that Brian has put forward that absolute truth exists, but absolute knowledge cannot. And Rob suggesting that he's, um, would not agree with absolute knowledge, uh, not existing and that it can exist, but not infinitely. Um, but with regards to particular circumstances,
Speaker 1 00:18:12 Actually, can I access it before David comes in? I just wanted to make a quick thing that Brian, I wrote a piece talking about the blue and gold blue and black dress versus white and gold dress. I wrote a piece about that a couple of years ago called Laurel and Yanny and Manny and nine, uh, Manny being Emmanuel cons that I'd read, being I'd read. That was the Laurel versus Yanni was a sort of an auditory version of the same thing. So if you just Google that Laurel, Laurel and Yanny and <inaudible>, and you'll, you'll find that piece. So that might find that interesting in addressing that particular case. Thank you.
Speaker 3 00:18:47 Uh, hi. Hi Jack. I'm sorry. I joined, I joined late. I just got back from a dentist appointment longer than I expected no Nova candles. So I'm not going to mumble unless I do so naturally the, um, so I, I, and I, I hadn't heard the whole context. I just heard Brian's point. Um, but on that point, I mean, look, every proposition, uh, that you could put in words involves concepts and concepts are formed by a process of abstraction involving similarity with things that you may have received in the past, but no longer perceiving. So there's, there's always that, um, it's not direct in the way that actual looking at the sky is direct awareness or looking at anything or hearing anything is direct awareness, but, but we have to understand the issue of certainty arises only for conceptual knowledge. And it has to be understood contextually as what's relevant to, um, what's the way in which the conceptual faculty functions.
Speaker 3 00:20:00 So when Rob, when Rob says the sky is blue, um, the there's a context, um, of the sky. It's an indifferent indefinite point of reference to be sure, but, um, we all understand what he's talking about. And blue is covers a range of college guests, but saying it's blue is within, you know, whatever, whatever shade of blue it is is blue. So I don't see any uncertainty there. Uh, the, and the examples of mathematics is, is interesting because mathematics is often held up as an operatory discipline. That's not compatible with objectivism, but the one plus one example, there's a context when I say one plus one, does it means one unit plus one unit is it is equal in number to two units. It's a simple quantitative statement. It has a context. So one man and one woman yeah. May make a marriage, but there's still one man. And one woman, two people involved in that marriage. And so-and-so, I, I'm not getting it. Um, honestly I think a lot of the skeptical arguments against certainty drop the context of how human knowledge is acquired and how it works. So I I'll just leave it there and, and let, let, Rob get back to his, uh, his discourse,
Speaker 1 00:21:27 If I can just, I can pitch into that. Just one last thing. I want to point, uh, um, we're talking about the ancient Greeks, uh, Brian sort of the school of Diageo is the CENIC, uh, one of the schools with skepticism of radical skepticism. I, if you think the sky is blue, it's not absolute, that's radical skepticism, but specifically we talked about Plato, Socrates. We talked about Play-Doh well, Plato, Socrates, student and Aristotle was Plato's student. And Aristotle had the answer to this thing about ambiguity though. Cause he was the one who said it, you have to say at the same time and in the same respect, you know, think cannot both be and not be at the same time and in the same respect. So his ideas where their ambiguities, you engage in further inquiry to clear up the ambiguity. So if I say the sky is blue and you say, well, what do you mean by the sky? I can then specify what I mean by the sky. Um, I think, you know, it's not necessarily in such a commonplace phrase and, and some of that parsing, it can get very Clinton asks, you know, it depends on what the meaning of the word is, is, uh, it can be, can be done in bad faith. Anyway, I think that's that I've looked to Aristotle for the answer on that, uh, in his formulation of, of, uh, of the issue.
Speaker 2 00:22:35 Thank you. And the reason I connect these dots is because I get into arguments about objectivism and realism and capitalism and communism and all these, you know, big issues. And to me, it kind of boils down to this notion of what is truth, what is knowledge because you have different people who cherry pick certain economic or social data, and then they use that and they either willfully or ignorantly ignore other pieces of data. And so I see these limitations in terms of knowledge. And even if someone is thoroughly fluent on a given topic, they, they kind of misconstrue truth and conflate truth and knowledge. And so that's where my connection to the topic, um, enters the discussion. If you will,
Speaker 1 00:23:30 What would you do? Do you know how it is that we know that communism works? Because every time it doesn't work, that wasn't real communism.
Speaker 2 00:23:39 Yeah. Well, thank you. I appreciate the, the, uh, discussion.
Speaker 4 00:23:46 Great.
Speaker 0 00:23:51 Welcome. Did you have a question or a comment I'm going to also invite Scott up to the stage?
Speaker 4 00:23:58 Yeah. I just have a question, which I hope you guys don't take. Uh, as if I had malicious intent, I'm just genuinely curious. Um, I mean, just from the title of the, the, the room read Plato to own the lips, I just want to know, like, what is the relation between reading Plato and owning the lips?
Speaker 1 00:24:23 Well, okay, so this is sort of a provocative, uh, uh, title, but it actually came from something I wrote in my article where I was saying that, you know, in the previous iteration of the culture war in the late eighties, this is the article. I, if you're not, if you may have missed the very beginning and there's an article I wrote a while back, I think Jennifer May have a link that she's posted on it, um, about, uh, basically putting the culture back in the culture wars. And in this previous iteration of it, I talked about, you know, these guys like Alan bloom and the university of Chicago guys who were arguing in favor of the importance of the great books. And as I put it, they, they wanted you to replay to own the libs. And it was sort of a joking reference because they really didn't want you to replay to own the libs that not that that term was used at the time, but, you know, they could become popular later, but rather they wanted you to replay it in order and the other great books in order to gain a greater understanding of the truth in order to engage with these big ideas.
Speaker 1 00:25:21 And so it's my way of saying, this is the real answer to our current culture war, right? So what we have now is that you have a bunch of the conservatives, uh, in the culture war whose main goal seems to be, to quote unquote, own the libs, which is, you know, engaging in sort of me more fair and dealing with that and, and a lot of gotcha sort of stuff of, oh, look at the latest outrage of the day on social media. Uh, somebody claimed destined somebody claimed that and, and how terrible it is, and not really engaging with the big ideas. And if that are the actual answer, I think, to, to how we get out of the fruitless conflicts that we're in, in the current culture war. So that's what I read, what reading Plato to own the libs means is engage with big ideas and, uh, uh, important discussion philosophical discussions about the truth in order to get ourselves out of the current sort of fruitless back and forth between these two different sides of the culture war.
Speaker 0 00:26:27 Thank you. And Ferris, I sent you the, the link to the article, uh, just now that Rob is talking about, um, I think it was kind of a provocative title, but also a bit of an ironic, ironic, because he's, uh, it's, it's a title that says, oh, read this to beat the other guy. But what he's talking about is that this cultural debate has devolved into something very tribal and partisan, and it's all about beating the other team and less about what the substance is of what you have to say. So I suppose we could do another one that would be similarly, you know, read Plato to own the right. So, um, so I think it's a little bit more about the, uh, the dialectics of dialogue and, um, what has
Speaker 1 00:27:32 Medics clubhouse will be titled? Plato was never Trump.
Speaker 0 00:27:37 Well, well, we can, we can debate about, but, um, uh, we might come down on different sides, but, uh, we're looking into it. We're looking into it. All right, Scott, what have you got for us?
Speaker 5 00:27:50 Thank you. Uh, I was just going to say about, uh, your original point or one of your original points that I read that Sophos were, uh, people that you could get to take any position, uh, by paying them, which I mean, maybe the same as just wanting to win or lose. Um, but the other point I wanted to make was really a bit of a defense of owning the libs, just because I've seen, uh, lots of libertarians kind of join the left and kind of mocking that. And I just, it, it triggers me to be honest. It seems like, you know, they're saying don't defend yourself. And I do think there's value in counter punching both as, as a type of self-defense and the type of moral judgment. Um, so that's, uh, that's what I wanted to say.
Speaker 1 00:28:39 No, I, I think, I think there's a good point there because, you know, I pointed this isn't that now there is actually, what are you talking about? I've noticed there's a sort of, it's some libertarians and there's been this trend that trend I, that escaped in center seems to be at it's a DC think tank that used to be, you know, very hardcore, libertarian, and then sort of went center left. And it's a sort of a center for people who are doing this, who were sort of thinking of libertarian is approach. Most of them came out of libertarianism, but they're sort of coming in from the cold and becoming center left and they sort of poopoo, oh, I think will Wilkinson was the guy who used to talk about counter culture, council culture doesn't really exist. And then of course he got canceled, which I think was, um, uh, he got fired from the <inaudible> center.
Speaker 1 00:29:26 Chris saying something on Twitter that people got angry about. So he got can't, you know, he's like, cancel culture doesn't exist. And then he gets canceled. Uh, but, uh, uh, so there was this sort of cottage industry and it's part of, I think, wanting to there's this tendency in politics and in political debates. And it goes into not just in partisan politics, but it spills over to the cultural, worst of this tendency to say, I have to choose sides. Right. So I, if I, if I criticize the left, then therefore I got aside with the right. And if I criticize the right, I have to side with the left and there's no imperative to do that at all. In fact, you know, it's usually a bad idea. Uh, and, uh, I just, uh, one of the people I liked the best, that's why one of the people I liked the best in the culture wars, Cathy young, uh, cause she goes to, she does these really detailed, um, articles, you know, going over whatever, the latest person who got canceled.
Speaker 1 00:30:18 There's one guy at, uh, uh, a music professor at Michigan who got, uh, in trouble because he showed a Lawrence, Livier performing a fellow as part of, uh, a class on adapting, uh, uh, opera Othello and talking about various different annotations of Othello. So he shows Loris, Olivia portraying, bro fellow in blackface people and people went ballistic and there's all these arguments going back and forth. Kathy young does a good job of saying, okay, let's consider all the arguments seriously and not feeling like you have to decide with one side or side with the other. Uh, you know, I, a lot of times in the culture where I find it sort of like the, what Kissinger said about the Iran, Iraq war, it's a pity, they can't both lose. And I think that's sort of the plan if I have, which actually the outcome I'm looking for is, is that they should both lose and the, the ants.
Speaker 1 00:31:09 So what I find a lot of times is that you have, you have some people, like you said, that there's some people who try to make excuses, I call them, they're sort of anti anti-ice the spirit of the age, right? So somebody came up with this once. I think Jonathan lasts, uh, uh, who I've worked with at the bulwark, came up with the phrase anti anti-Trump to describe some people who I, people I worked with at the Federalist who for a little while, there were like, they, if whenever Trump did something, they would say, well, I'm not going to defend Trump, but I'm going to criticize the people who were criticizing Trump. So I'm not for Trump, but I'm anti anti-Trump, which is totally different from being pro-Trump. And oftentimes it doesn't really, you know, so the people do anti anticancer culture, right? Where they say, well, I'm not in favor of cancel culture, but I'm going to criticize the critics of it.
Speaker 1 00:31:58 But at the same time, I find you have some people on the right. And I find that Chris Rufo for the men tat, and this is who does this a lot where, uh, one of my heroes, you know, well, he, he, he's done great work in exposing a lot of this stuff, but then he uses it. And then you have to look at some of the things he does. He uses this, this basically to say, therefore, we have to sign up for a conservative authoritarian agenda where we legislate what people can say and what they can't say. And we shut down Facebook and basically saying, we should use the power of the state to impose our own ideology. And otherwise, if we don't do that, we're not really fighting back. And he aims a lot of his anger at people like me and people like David French, who are the sort of classical liberals who don't want the government.
Speaker 1 00:32:45 You know, we don't want cancel culture, but we don't want the government imposing, um, uh, you know, that you're telling people what they can and cannot say and trying to oppose conservative values either. And, um, you know, also we've also realized a Supreme foolishness of scheming to give the government more power only to have it because we know what's going to happen. You, you scheme to give the government more power over social media companies, because you don't like that. They're in the hands of the left and who's going to end up wielding that power. Well, the left is going to end up building that power. We know this we've held a lot of experience. Uh, so, uh, so I think the thing is you need that the idea of this sort of third alternative of somebody saying, you know, the cancel culture is bad. The authoritarian solutions offered on the right are bad and offering the third alternative. And I think the third alternative that's really missing is replayed it on the lips.
Speaker 5 00:33:37 Yeah. I mean, I get the, I just, you know, I feel like the left uses a sense of inevitable victory to try to demoralize us. And within that they, um, you know, I just, I don't want to always just be telling our people they're not fighting right. Instead of focusing on the main threat
Speaker 1 00:33:58 Well, that see that's the main threat I think is, is the mistake that people make because I don't view
Speaker 5 00:34:05 The ones calling me and nine ran to bigot telling me I have no place in their future.
Speaker 1 00:34:11 Uh, no, I, what I was saying is I think the main threat, cause I get, I get the same stuff you should, you should see what guys like syrup Omari are doing. Right? These are guys who, um, there are, there is a, an authoritarian wing of the right that wants to use this cancel culture stuff, as an excuse to say, therefore we should improve, but basically imposing Christianity on everybody. So my view is the main threat is whoever's close to power, closer to power at the given moment. Uh, but the big thing is this, that the enemy of my enemy is not always my friend. And you have to be careful. You have to look at that. And so, um, the main thing is just, I'm not saying don't fight the cancel culture. People I'm talking about how you fight the cancel culture people. And the big thing is to, and that's why I said replayed it on the lips.
Speaker 1 00:34:58 Is that the way to fight them is that the previous conservative culture war was much better. The conservatives lost it because I think they gave up on it. But the previous version was we should be getting people to engage with the big ideas and read the great books and do an engage on this on a more on a deeper, more intellectual level and not just, you know, stoking outrage against the, the, the latest religious thing. Somebody said it actually doesn't accomplish all that much. So I would say, you know, we have to remember what, uh, what Breitbart said, and this is, you know, before Breitbart became what it became. Now, it's like about the original guy, Andrew Breitbart, who said politics is downstream of culture. And I think the idea of focusing on what we can do to revive the culture, and this is, this is really, it's a moral reform movement.
Speaker 1 00:35:45 It's not a political, the political stuff is very secondary to that. And the biggest thing to revive the two to the furthermore reform movement to the culture is to focus on the positive thing that we want people to focus on, which is actually engaging with the big ideas. You know, we had, um, uh, uh, one of the other Atlas, uh, scholars who was here last week, talking about, you know, he has his biggest problem is dealing with students who won't eat her and read John Locke, or won't even read some other philosopher because, uh, he's associated with something bad in their minds. And they're literally closing off their minds. That's the, that's the fundamental problem you have to deal with. And, you know, the, the political debate going on is, is very secondary to that.
Speaker 4 00:36:34 Um, can I just want to add that, um, I mean, you keep talking about Plato, so I guess it's only fair to say that Plato or Socrates or Plato emphasize knowledge and how important knowledge is and knowledge is kind of king. And, uh, so I guess that kind of plays in with, uh, engaging with these big ideas. And I'm interested to hear your take on there's a line in one of Plato's books called the gorgeous, where Socrates says that, um, partnership and friendship hold together, heaven and earth, gods, and men. That's why they called the universe a world order. So, I mean, I'd be interested to hear your take on, you know, the fact that people rather than working together are working against each other. So just, I don't know.
Speaker 1 00:37:36 Yeah. I'm not sure exactly what angle to take on. That's kind of a broad observation, but I do think that the reason why I think if, if you want to go, David, I've got some thoughts I'm forming here, but go ahead.
Speaker 3 00:37:57 Um, I'm not sure this addresses fares to this question, but I did want to ask Rob, I'm hearing two themes here from you. One is that, um, the conservatives are just playing the dielectric or a game of attacking the liberals as the liberals are, or the left is attacking, serve it as, um, and a better position. And they're all ignoring the classical liberals and or worse they're crashing those crashing us. But the other theme is, and that's a political theme, but the other theme is this mythological. We should be not focused on who's winning a certain battle of ideas, but what the truth is, and I assume that's why you cited Plato. And I'm kind of curious why Plato not Aristotle, but, um, I am I right in, in, uh, identifying those two themes?
Speaker 1 00:38:55 Yes, absolutely. Um, and I want to go, so you came in a couple minutes late David, so I did a little spiel about why Play-Doh specifically.
Speaker 3 00:39:03 Okay. All right. Well, don't, don't repeat it. Uh, I'm sorry. I apologize for being late. So
Speaker 1 00:39:07 Yeah, but, but I do want to say that I do agree Aristotle is better than Plato in terms of the actual substance of his philosophy. Um, but you know, it's Socrates really, I was aiming for, with Play-Doh because he's the hero of all these things and it's Socrates, Socrates's the guy who starts the whole ball rolling about thinking about these big ideas and big questions,
Speaker 3 00:39:27 But, you know, there's somebody on that
Speaker 1 00:39:29 Aristotle does a way better job of coming up with actual actual answers that then played at us.
Speaker 3 00:39:36 Okay. And on the two issues, the physiological and political is that, is that accurate?
Speaker 1 00:39:42 Yeah. Yeah. And I think that, uh, that's the, the level that I think conservatives have stopped playing on, uh, is the epistemological level of the idea that the real reform is how we think. Let me give you an example of this. This is something that just came across my transom, uh, came across the threshold, uh, uh, in the last couple of days, uh, by the Cathy young did a, uh, venture really good article about this case in university of Michigan and in passing, she refers to this other case from Arizona. That was just amazing when you look at the details. So apparently there is a Cornish pasty themed restaurant in Phoenix, Arizona. Now that surprises me, but why the heck not? Um, the Cornish pasty is this little beat pie that they make in Cornwall and in England, but apparently somebody from England settled in Phoenix and started this restaurant.
Speaker 1 00:40:35 And in this restaurant, they have these pictures of, of a wall of the old timey pictures of like coal miners from corn Cornwall, cause cor Cornwall was a famous coal mining area. And, uh, they had a patron come in there who was black. And he looks at this picture of these coal miners and says, these guys are in blackface. This is horrible. How can you have a photo of people in black face up on your, up on the wall of your restaurant. Now, if you know anything, even the slightest thing about coal biting, you know, you're laughing right now because of course these guys aren't in blackface, they're covered with coal dust, which is what happens when you're in a coal mine, especially in the, uh, in the early 20th century. Uh, and these, you know, and it just shows how the left has. You started out as the sort of posing itself as the, the doctrine of the common man of the, of the worker standing for the workers.
Speaker 1 00:41:27 And of course it's become the ideology of, of middle-class white collar workers who have absolutely no idea what a call binder looks like. Right. Uh, so that's totally perfect that somebody would see a coal miner and not realize, oh, this is coal dust. Right? So anyway, so this is the ridiculous, and then it became an op-ed in the Arizona Republic. And it became a whole controversy because this guy didn't know what coal miners look like. So this is the kind of absurdity, but the thing that emerged from it that stood out to me was the guy defended making a big deal out of this photo because he said, well, look, you know, maybe these coal miners worked in blackface. They just had coal dust on their faces, but it still makes people feel a certain way to see that photo. And therefore the objection is valid.
Speaker 1 00:42:13 So it's this whole idea of my feelings are the most important thing. And if the facts come up and contradict my emotional reaction, it's my emotional reaction that stays and the facts that get subordinated to it. And that's why I say this is primarily, it's an intellectual reform and an epistemological reform that we need. Uh, yeah. Yeah. And I, I, and one of the ironies, some of us have been pointing out is that, you know, it was a bunch of conservatives. Like I think it was, um, Shapiro Ben Shapiro who borrowed sort of borrow crypto Ryan rant and said, facts don't care about your feelings. Um, but somebody put it out, you know, in, in some recent debates with conservatives that the operative word there wasn't facts, it was your facts don't care about your feelings. They really care about mine. And I found that some conservatives have that problem too.
Speaker 3 00:43:02 Yeah. That reminds me, uh, I'm sure you're familiar with this of that professor. I can't remember. This is a while back, use the word niggardly in a lecture and got taken to a reform camp at his campus. Yeah.
Speaker 1 00:43:15 And it has totally different etymological road has nothing to do with the other, but yes,
Speaker 3 00:43:23 Uh, south. Great. Thanks Rob
Speaker 0 00:43:28 And Matt, uh, who's new to clubhouse has raised his hand and I have tried to, to call on you, Matt, but, um, I will also send another invite. And if you can maybe just click on that near you are yay.
Speaker 6 00:43:49 Yeah. Rob, oh, thanks. I, when you were speaking earlier about the truth, uh, that one, uh, I was hoping you'd make some more comments on that in this regard. I seem to hear a lot of religious people, uh, use truth in this weird artificial way. And so I was hoping you could comment on that. And as a side note to that, uh, I'm sure you've probably seen the Prager video with, uh, um, oh God. Now I can't think of his name. Uh, the objectivist, uh, dental. Thank you. Yes. Yeah. Greg Bedell. And he asked Prager about, uh, you know, evidence and Gregor said, oh, well, all this is evidence, but it's not proof. Well, and again, other than saying, well, uh, you know, if you know, what is proof than overwhelming evidence and how do you define that? But anyway, if you could just make comments on those, I'd like to hear it. Thank you.
Speaker 1 00:44:56 Oh, okay. So I have actually not seen that video, so I'm not going to know the specifics of it. I know Prager, I have a general sense of where Prager comes from. Uh, so, uh, you know, the problem with arguing with someone like Prager is that, you know, he's, he's, he's someone who's so deeply committed to religion that you are not ever going to argue him out of it. And plus there's also the aspect that, uh, was it, uh, it's, it's very hard to, uh, convince somebody of something when they're, uh, uh, when they're their paycheck depends on not understanding it was that the Sophos yeah, there we go. And you know, so Prager is somebody who is, he's engaged in Christian apologetics, and that's actually the term they use for it, which is basically, you know, you have a preexisting faith commitment to Christianity and apologetic consists of going out there and coming up in a venting arguments that will sort of help justify and defend Christianity.
Speaker 1 00:46:04 But the problem is that you're coming up with arguments that will justify and defend something for which you already have existing pre pre rational commitment to. Right. So it really at the Sophos Scott, that's a great observation. It is basically an updated version of it's like it's like sophistry, but for supposedly a better cause. Cause really what it is is I can take this thing that I want to be true and I can invent as many arguments as, you know, as many as arguments you come up with against it. I can come up with a, I can invent arguments for it that will be seemingly, um, uh, convincing. And that I think that's the problem with dealing with somebody like Prager. Now it there's perfectly valid to go and talk to and debate with somebody like that, but you're not to beating, to convince him you're debating to reach, you know, as with most debates, you're debating to reach the audience, right?
Speaker 1 00:46:55 Uh, not to reach your opponent, not to convince your opponent. Uh, but you know, it does show that, uh, the problem with Christianity, this is the problem with is why I'm saying that we have, we have to have a third side in the culture war because ultimately what the conservative side has to offer as their answer to the culture war is this woke stuff is terrible. It's irrational, it's awful. It's, uh, it's um, oppressive, uh, it punishes people for these imagined infractions. And then the only real alternative is we have to go back and believe in God, which for which we have no evidence and no proof. And so we impose our own dog that we came up with from irrational source. And so it's what makes us what undermines the conservative defense against a cancel culture and wokeness or political correctness, whatever you want to call it.
Speaker 1 00:47:47 Well, no, no, no. On the terminology we kept political correctness was the term in the late eighties and nineties. Wokeness is the term. Now it's really what's going on is there's it's the, the fundamental issue that has not changed is this a pistol theological idea that ultimately derives from, you know, Emmanuel contest, its most famous and most influential, uh, progenitor of this idea that the truth depends on your perspective. And it depends on, uh, on your interests and your, your desires and uh, who you are that, that, that your perception of the world is so colored by who by the, by your nature, which said, oh, it's, it's, it's a collective delusion. It's our nature as human beings that, that colors our perceptions of the world that determines how it can perceive, but at least it's universal to everybody. And then what happened is subsequently, you know, people went to work on that assumption, oh, you think all humans perceive the world the same way while we're all different we're and mark says, well, we're all in different classes.
Speaker 1 00:48:49 Uh, Pagle said we're all from different historical and national national backgrounds at historical periods. And so we all perceive the world separately. And then mark says, it's all classes. And then you get to race, class and gender as our current version, but it's this radical subjectivism of everything's dependent on who I am, what my background is, you know, why I'm a trans, a person of color. And therefore I have, my ideas are valid because I, whatever I feel is valid because I feel it because this is what's determined by, by background as a trans person of color. And that's, it's that epistemology of, uh, everything's determined by who I am and my nature of my background. It's all subjective to me. And therefore, whatever I feel is true because I feel it that's the enemy and a guy like Prager, who poses as the opposite of all that is the enemy of all that ultimately it comes down to, well, I'm a Christian and because I'm a Christian, I believe this.
Speaker 1 00:49:47 And I don't have proof. I don't have, you know, I, they could play on working was about having evidence, but not proof. But he's basically saying, I don't believe this on the basis of evidence. I don't believe this is the basis of arguments. I believe it, based on this prior subjective commitment. And that's why I think that's, that's problematic. I think it's also why it leads some of the more dedicated religious people, the sort of syrup Mari. And to some extent, Chris Rufo and these sort of nationalists conservatives is what leads them to say therefore fighting back means we need to seize the state, the instruments of the, of the government under the state, and use that to shut down our, our opposition into basically to have an established imposed on people because they don't have a rational argument for, for their view either.
Speaker 3 00:50:35 I just want to jump in, uh, what you're, what you're invoking here is the, uh, subjectivist background that is going back to con um, and as modified by Marx Hegel and Marx and others. But one aspect that came from marks, especially, um, and was comforted by, um, Fuko, was that not only that it's subjective, but that views are imposed by force and therefore the entire idea of individual rights of the distinction between someone or a criminal force versus influence intellectually, culturally, whatever, um, is all triggered as the exercise of coercion of force. And, um, I think that's part of the equation too. And so my question to you is do you think that affects the, uh, th the debate going on here that, that people like Rupo and, uh, Shapiro are, you know, fighting back against an issue of imposing things by force on campus or more?
Speaker 1 00:51:56 Yeah, I think they absolutely depend on this idea that social pressure is, is equivalent to coercion. And actually they know that that comes from marks and it comes from, um, uh, food code, but it also even goes back to John's tour mill. Who's the great one of the great classical liberals, because I was actually, so I recently, I said, I, I recently read mill like all the way through for the first time, not just I'd read parts and pieces of it, but when you read parts and pieces, you don't quite get the full impact that he actually comes in. And his, his main concern is this idea of social coercion is this idea that the, the tyranny of public opinion that could, that would impose ideas on people. And he, you know, has a good point about that, by the way, you know, there's a lot of valid things he says about how, you know, and this is headed.
Speaker 1 00:52:48 I had, I hosted a debate on this among some Kathy young and Robert Garma and a couple other people about this idea of the culture of free speech. And I think this definitely is something to this, that in addition to the coercive aspect, you know, the libertarian argument of, okay, you'll free speech is really means the government can't force you to do something. But in addition to the coercive aspect, that there is something to this idea that you also need a culture of free speech. You need a culture in which idea, a diversity of ideas as tolerated. Um, I mentioned Jonathan <inaudible>. He has a really good book out recently, um, has some philosophical errors, but it's really interesting observations about how, um, you know, the whole system that we have for gaining knowledge as a society. The book is called the constitution of knowledge. Since there's this whole system we have for getting knowledge as a society, and like the constitution, he goes, sort of goes back to Madison, uh, Madison's arguments with the constitution where Madison says, you need a diversity of different factions with different interests in order to make our political system works.
Speaker 1 00:53:51 And Rouch makes the argument. You also need a diversity of different viewpoints and different arguments and different perspectives in order to make our system for gaining knowledge work, because you have to have all the, you know, everybody bringing all the different viewpoints and facing them off against each other and being willing to consider each and every argument that comes up. And if you close yourself off and say, we're not going to consider certain arguments, then you are, you know, starving the system of, of gaining knowledge. You're starving enough material, and you're, you're blinding it to certain things. So they make some very good arguments, and those are very mill John Stuart mill type of arguments. So there's a lot of good to that. But mill also did sort of popularize this idea that the force of social opinion could be coercive. And so it's comes, you know, and that's what the both sides used.
Speaker 1 00:54:39 You know, the, the, to say, well, well, wokeness is the force of social opinion. It's coercive. If Facebook won't shuts down my, my anti-vax page, they're coercing me. And then they use that as an excuse to engage in coercion of their own and in return or the woke people say, well, look, you know, this is the Fuko argument. Well, look, you're already forcing, you know, that the fact that people regard heterosexuality as normal, this is the heteronormativity. And the fact that we regard heterosexuality is the norm as it's, you know, 97% of the population is that are sexual. The fact that they, that that's considered a social norm is inherently oppressive and coercive to me. So I can engage in coercion against you back in order to in self-defense. And that's sort of this Pandora's box that was opened by this idea of social coercion. Yeah.
Speaker 3 00:55:27 Yeah. One of the hardest things, uh, I'll just say, cause I wrote, I wrote about mil in my old book, uh, with toleration, uh, that it's a delicate balance to invite, invite, um, a range of ideas so that we can all benefit from differences of opinion and challenge our cognitive biases. But at the same time, you know, it, it's maintaining a standard of that. There is a world out there, there is a truth. And, uh, we're engaged the whole point of allowing and encouraging diversity of opinion is to find the truth. It's not an end in itself, but it's, it's, it, it has a goal anyway, it's a delicate balance. And, uh, so,
Speaker 1 00:56:21 And I think it's a difficult thing because involves judgment, involved judgment calls of like, well, okay, the Holocaust deniers, we're not going to allow it, but you know, what about these? What about the global warming global warming skeptics? Do we allow them in? And of course, obviously being in a global warming septic septic, I'd say, yes, allow us in. But you know, people have to make those, there are all these judgment calls that you don't have necessarily a hard and fast rule. You can lay down. That would say what you know, who you let in, who you don't, you actually have to use recent. You have to be, you know, the, uh, the, the sort of maddening thing about the law is the reasonable man standard, right? That there's all these legal principles that require you to say, well, what would a reasonable man do in this case? And it's not some sort of mechanical rule that you can use. You have to use your judgment and use your reason to project what a reasonable person would do. So it's something that, that, that doesn't make for good legislation or politics. Uh, it makes for, you know, it's something that really does have to be handled in the realm of debate and discussion, because it involves you having to make these rats, the judgment calls of using your own individual reason.
Speaker 0 00:57:32 Thank you, Rob. And we have, uh, professor Stephen Hicks who, uh, certainly has had experience over the years with these trends, uh, with students not just disagreeing, um, or feeling hurt or offended or angry, but in some cases, uh, also just refusing to, to listen. Although if I know professor Hicks, he's, he's found a way. Uh, but, uh, Steven, what's your perspective on the,
Speaker 7 00:58:00 Yeah. All right. Roger, just want to serve, enjoyed listening in on this. I have a question that's more psychological than philosophical. So you point out that on the left there's problems of subjectivism and problems of tribalism, and then on the right, the conservatives, we find also tribalism and subjectivism, and we can trace various arguments back to Khan, Hegel, Marx, as, as you did. And there's a subjectivist theme that runs through, and then people make commitments to different tribes, depending on what subjective commitments they want to. But I guess my question is, do you have a sense for whether the tribalism comes first in the thinking, or if it's the subjectivism that's comes first? Because I can imagine the way it seems to be when I talk with many of these people, that the first thing is not so much <inaudible>, but rather they're making a value commitment to a, to a group, a tribe it's a kind of way of life and so on.
Speaker 7 00:59:01 And that, that comes first. And then what happens is when they get pressed for arguments and facts and so on, then they fall back on the subject of his deepest homology, but it's being used rather rhetorically. It's not like they really believe it necessarily. And then of course they can go the other way, people will make, uh, you know, commitments, uh, to a subjective as deep systemology. Nobody knows anything. So I might as well just believe whatever and then make a subjective commitment to some sort of tribe or other. So I wrestle with whether it's the tribalism that comes first and the subjectivism is a cover for it, or whether the a subjectivism comes first and the tribalism is, uh, is just a downstream commitment. Do you have any thoughts on that?
Speaker 1 00:59:47 I, that that's a great, uh, avenue to explore, and I do have definite thoughts on that. It is kind of a chicken and the egg question, right. But I think that, although there is actually an answer to the chicken and the egg question, which is the egg came first, but anyway, well, we'll get to that some other time. But, uh, uh, in this case, I say the tribalism comes first because historically, both historically, right. People lived in tribal, tribal living was the default mode of human existence from the very beginning. And I would say the broader context of that is, is rationality is an achievement, you know, created achievement that we, that we rose to over 50,000 years from being in tribes and just following whatever the tribal leader does to being able to use your individual judgment and, and, and, uh, and arrive at new truths about the world.
Speaker 1 01:00:36 So rationalities and achievement, and the always the default mode, if you don't do that, achievement is always tribalism on the broadest historical perspective. But I also think that has to do in the development of every individual. There is, uh, typically, you know, you, you start to grapple with these ideas before you become fully consciously aware of and able to, to handle all the complex philosophical arguments. And I think that's very true of, you know, for those, I mean, I, I was somebody who wanted to be an academic philosopher when I was 17. So I was, I was immersed in, I was actually paying attention to the philosophical arguments when I was a teenager. Most people are not. So before they come to the philosophical arguments, I think they typically do pick red team or blue team, uh, and you know, you, and you do it based on, and oftentimes based on valid, valid reasons, you know, there's something you validly like about one side and don't like about the other side.
Speaker 1 01:01:35 So, uh, you know, if you were raised in a very intolerant Christian environment in a, in a, in one of the red states out, in, you know, out in, uh, a very religious area of the country and you rebel against the religious dogmatism, it might seem to you that, well, these free thinking people, the secular people on the left are the answer and the, their Progressive's are the answer. And if you, or if you are encountering, if you actually encountered the supposedly free thinking program, not remotely progressive in three thinking, you might rebel against that and say, oh, well, you know, it, somebody has to assert the truth and what's right. And, and, uh, defend all the great achievements of Western civilization and traditional culture. And so therefore I'm going to sign up with the right, and I think that's sort of how people arrive at these tend to arrive at these loyalties early on before they are real rising to the level of being aware of the philosophical issues.
Speaker 1 01:02:38 And then the choice has to be, do you stick with that general tribal affinity, or when you start to become aware of the deep of the bigger issues, do you actually investigate them and think them through and become an independent thinker, or you continue to be invested in this purely as a tribal identity, in which case, if you do that, then you're going to, you're going to gravitate to the sort of subjectivist arguments from the left or a subject faith-based arguments from the right as a way of, I think you're right. And I would say, it's not just cover for your tribalism. I think it's an expression of the tribal outlook, you know, it's, it's that the tribal outlook, what you believe is right is right, because you, people like you believe it and, and there's that, uh, it's sort of like it it's, it's, uh, it's symbiotic with the tribal outlook. Let's put it that way.
Speaker 0 01:03:33 Wonderful. Well, everyone we're actually over our hour. And so I wanted to apologize in particular to Omar. I see you have your hand raised, but I do want to end this, um, as close to on the hour as possible. We're about six minutes over. So I'm going to mention some of the other opportunities, um, that we are going to have to chat on clubhouse. We're going to be here of course, next Tuesday with Rob <inaudible>. And, uh, and then also we will have our regular, uh, Thursday session as well. So, um, this coming Thursday, it is professor Jason Hill at the helm. We're going to be doing something a little different, uh, kind of an AMA and ask me anything. So, um, bring your questions. Uh, but, uh, we're also going to draw on a bit of the, um, the questions that, that pour in every week on Instagram.
Speaker 0 01:04:40 If you're not following the Atlas society on Instagram, um, twice a week, we do Instagram takeovers and, um, I do them, you guys send in questions, I, uh, do quick one minute video answers and, uh, and also professor Richard Salzman does, um, um, Jason Hill does them. And, um, and some of you do them as well. So, uh, so we're going to try to look at some of those questions, cause they're all over the map. Um, David, hasn't done the takeovers, although he's, he scripts a lot of the takeovers, cause he's my go-to for, uh, for getting quick answers to some of these meatier questions. So that will be fun if you would like to join us on Wednesday, I'm going to have kind of a difference, um, webinar. Uh, so we have our live webinars. You can find them on the event section of the Atlas society site, uh, they are live streaming on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn U2, and this week, again, kind of different.
Speaker 0 01:05:49 I'm going to be interviewing Blake J Harris. He is the author of the history of the future, which is about Oculus and Facebook's acquisition of Oculus. And of course about Palmer Luckey, who is going to be speaking at our gala and Malibu on November 4th. So hope you will join us for that. And um, if you guys want to get in touch with us, check out the Atlas society's website, Atlas society.org, uh, use the, the contact form there. Um, if you have questions or suggestions on what we might take on as a future topic. So thank you so much, Rob, and thank you everyone. Thank you. Thanks Jack. Thanks Rob. Thanks.
