Genetics, Dogs, & Pit Bulls： The One Good Genocide
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Summary
In this episode, we discuss a recent article written by a progressive writer who claimed that intelligence is heritable in dogs, but not in humans. We discuss why this is nonsense, and why it doesn't even work in dogs.
Transcript
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most progressives do believe in hereditarianism in dogs and the question is why did they believe
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it there and not in humans and it is because they have raised and interacted with dogs it is very
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hard to miss hereditarianism if you have actually been around young people so what you're saying
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also is this is a product of the fact that they don't have human children i think the previous
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thing is what everyone's gonna freak out about in the comments he wants to genetically modify dogs
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to be smarter how dare he but this is where things get spicy the pit bull debate yeah i do not think
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that there is a huge moral negative to neutering the pit bull population humans who love dogs neuter
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dogs all the time pit bulls in the united states kill an average of 8730 dogs per year in 2904
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cats per year that means that if you neutered the entire u.s pit bull population you would be saving
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one cat or dog's life that is somebody else's pet for every 3.86 pit bulls you neutered over the next
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hundred years and i will tell you the best argument for not neutering pit bulls and then i will tell
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you why it doesn't even work would you like to know more hello simone i'm excited to be here with you
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today today we are going to be doing an episode that was inspired by somebody who was criticizing
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us it was an article that was actually not so bad where was the article published it was like
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the la review of books yeah and what's really interesting in it is when you went to look up
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the writer of the article to learn more about her and her perspectives she was in the middle of a fight
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on the internet based on this article because she called out us and a few of our friends like
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johnny anomaly and diana fleishman the podcast yes and so she calls out a few of our friends and so
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you know obviously they've got supporters as well online and and she's getting trashed in in twitter
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which is actually interesting that it happened this way because often when people attack us enough of
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a twitter spasmob forms like whenever we go viral that we are on the minority side but when they fail
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to go viral the only people who notice are the supporters of the various people who are being
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attacked and they end up getting shit all over so she was getting having to be defensive
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and somebody found and she ended up defending this position a post where she claimed anti-hereditarianism
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in dog breeds so specifically not only does she not believe that none of a human's personality is
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heritable but she doesn't believe that any of a dog's personality is heritable right so like on on
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twitter i can read a bit like so how some of this conversation played out because this is
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a very common conversation we see again and again which is really weird with emily merchant the author
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of this article representing the the kind of person who is very well educated and very well-meaning but
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also very progressive and just will not believe will refuse to believe that that behavioral traits
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including intelligence are heritable so stegosauro benedet writes i can't help thinking i would really
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be screening for the gene that makes otherwise apparently intelligent people fall for pseudoscientific
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nonsense like eugenics and then conchabar responds i haven't read the essay yet but the claim that we
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can't select for specific traits in a population is utterly wrong we've been doing it with animals for
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millennia to which emily merchant the author of this article responds it's much easier with animals but
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a project by behavior geneticists in the 1950s to 1960s to breed an intelligent dog failed utterly and she
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links to this this study and someone reads it and then includes a screenshot of the study saying just
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skimming this they seem to suggest that it can be successful with dogs emily merchant responds no
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they are saying that difference between dog breeds are small especially under similar living conditions
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she continues scott was a member of the american eugenics society in the 1960s and he expressed extreme
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skepticism about the possibility of breeding intelligence in humans on the basis of his experience trying to do it
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with dogs so she's trying to argue that you know this this dog breeder okay so first of all i should note that the
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other study that she's citing here because this is going to be important in a lot of progressives who do believe
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like anti-hereditarianism in dogs is real will cite this it was a recent study actually used a giant sample
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size showed only about a nine percent personality difference between breeds what they won't tell you
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this reminds me of the spanking studies where huge sample sizes did not control at all in the way they were
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collecting data is the personality of the dogs is based on owner self-reports yeah here's the problem
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with that the owner self-report of a dog personality is going to have more to do with the owner's
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personality than with the dog's personality yeah how many owners speak of their pit bull uh oh they're
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just the sweetest little things you know because they use their dog to augment their own self-perception
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which means of course you're not going to get much correlation there but then you can just look at like
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just to go into pit bull statistics so people can understand how absolutely insane this position
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is pit bulls make up 5.8 to 6.69 so around let's say six percent of the total dog population in the
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united states okay but they're responsible for 69 percent of fatal dog attacks okay from 2005 to 2019
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they killed 346 americans which is 6.5x higher than the next closest breed so 650 percent higher than the
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next closest dog breed which only killed 51 people um and pit bulls inflict nearly half of 48 percent of
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all fatal attacks on infants those are babies under one year old not okay and from 2015 to 2019 76 percent
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of the fatal attacks on children under nine years old were from pit bulls keep in mind they only make up
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66 percent of the dog population so you're like well that's the people who maybe buy pit bulls and
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blah blah blah like what like it's very obvious to me and if you've owned a dog and this is the
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other thing that gets really interesting to me in regards to this when you were talking to this
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lady you were like are you mentioning with somebody who's like well try to teach a non well yeah i'll
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read it i mean first someone james dog on twitter made a very good point saying if you're concerned
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that ea because she also writes about effective altruism is a crude measure perhaps you should
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be campaigning for researchers to be permitted to access vast existing iq linked databases which is
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something that's being quite restricted right now but then he continues alternatively try teaching a
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greyhound to memorize over 1000 distinct commands and use it to her shape and then conchabar comes back
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in with op should prove how intelligent these these breed variations are by raising a pack of basset hounds
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and putting them through ipo she'd lose her mind trying to get them to ipo probably like uh maybe like
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an assistance dog training i don't know she'd lose her mind just trying to get them to stop
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sniffing let alone competing against breeds specifically bred for it i mean the thing is
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it's so clear with dog breeds i need to talk about like herding dogs for example so we i've always
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believed that the core difference between dogs is what they're bred for so i think that dog
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personalities predominantly if you're like what type of dog should i get you're looking are are you a
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ratting dog a herding dog a hunting dog or fighting dog i mean pit bulls are fighting dogs let's oh yeah
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fighting dogs like is it a dog meant to kill other dogs yeah um the the typically in my experience for
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like what my family likes i always go herding dogs and i find herding dogs are fairly similar across
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herding dogs but if you've ever had a herding dog it will be clear to you just how much of their
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behavior is genetic so a great example is i grew up with an australian shepherd today we use uh corgis
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which are another type of herding dog but for for our family's primary dog we adopt corgis we don't
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use them yes australian shepherds they it when it rained when i was a kid because they need to get the
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sheep to high ground whenever it rains so they didn't drown and clearly we didn't teach it to do
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this it would nip at all of the family's heels to try to get us upstairs that is really sweet and
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also yeah really weird if you don't believe things are inherited because no one taught this dog to do
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that yeah no one taught the dog to nip at our feet to try to get us to go upstairs so where did it get
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this really specific behavior pattern tied to herding and and you see this yeah just sort of like
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across it's so wild to me that someone could think this but then it gave me this realization which
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was something i hadn't realized before which is that most progressives i mean you've got a few
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crazy ladies like this lady here who are like dog breed differences aren't heritable i mean she's not
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crazy she's the weird thing is that she's very sane and and and reasoned and tempered i don't
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think so i think you need to basically be in a cult to believe this or have never interacted with dogs
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but this is i know here's the way that i look at it like if we were to frame this in from a
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perspective point of view there are lots of otherwise sane reasoned people who believe
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in scientific inquiry but also believe that the earth is flat and the non-hereditarian people
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the blank slightest i think are similar you know they can they can engage i don't think that's true
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i think you always want to see the best in people i think that a lot of the people who think the earth
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is flat are generally stupid i think that people who believe non-hereditarianism in dogs
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are generally just brainwashed cultists they are not well and i think the other thing that's
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notable of course is that most even blank slightest progressives who insist that no traits behavioral
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are heritable are like oh yeah i'm like of course you've got a border collie they're going to behave
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i was about to make which is to say it made me realize that most progressives do believe in
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hereditarianism in dogs most of everyone on culture does and the question is why did they believe it
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there and not in humans and it is because they have raised and interacted with dogs it is very hard
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to miss hereditarianism if you have actually been around young people of a specific species
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so what you're saying also is this is a product of the fact that they don't have human children and
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i think that's a really good point i was listening to a podcast called the bcc club which is broadly
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about internet drama when you know i run through all my blocked and reported episodes and still need
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some kind of gossip please people recommend something better than that that's about internet gossip that i
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can listen to as a podcast but basically the bcc club is two very very progressive lesbians who talk
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about internet stuff and there was one episode where they talk about buying pets online they talk a lot
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about dog breeds and behavior and dog dna and then you know they also frequently talk in their podcasts
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about the amounts of money that they pay for medical care for their pets and things like that
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and they 100 understand and empathize with each other and talk about the the grief that they feel upon
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losing an animal and then they they like literally can't empathize the same way with what it would feel
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like to lose a human child and i think really seeing it i'm seeing exactly what you're talking about here
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where they can't understand they can't they can't even really put it on the same level of their dog
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their dog parenting which is really interesting to me that that that humans wouldn't be as lovable to
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them as dogs because well i think they've so disconnected from their natural instincts at that point i mean
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yeah they're not sleeping with men they're not you know engaging with people who are interested in
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like rational discourse more broadly they have artificially constructed a lifestyle that masturbates
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i think mostly status for them that seems to be the core thing that they're focused on is individual
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status was in the urban monoculture which is achieved through adopting these more fringe and modern
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lifestyle choices which leads to them no longer i think really identifying and i'd say they don't really
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identify as human anymore but what i really mean by that is it's they don't identify most human
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behavior as human anymore they think they're still human but when they look at like your average
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rural american to them that individual is an animal and that's what they are thinking about when they
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are trying to model kids and stuff like that i don't think that's quite it i think they're not
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thinking i just i just don't think they they have that like empathetic basis to work with they don't
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their world is their cats and they're their partners and it's not kids so they just can't
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empathize if you see this in people all the time who have lots of kids is one of the things i've
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noticed like that most when i hear people's stories where they became hereditarians and they weren't
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formerly hereditarians yeah is after having kids yeah like that's i had kids and then i realize
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well both you and i were i think just intuitively from our upbringing because i think
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blank slate theory if you go through a public school system or a mainstream private school system
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is is going to be more or less what's tacitly hammered into you you can learn about genetics in
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school but you're still kind of raised with blank slate theory i think subconsciously and so i think
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you and i came into parenting kind of with a blank slate mindset and then we're blindsided by the
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traits of our children that are just very obviously hereditary yeah even when it's stuff that we've
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never shown them never demonstrated they're not picking this up from us like we've hid it from them
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and still well and the studies on this are incredibly compelling that that look at babies for example young
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infant girls for example if you're talking about differences between males and females they will look
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at an adult much longer like i think like 10x longer like dramatically dramatically longer they crave
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social attention than male babies but if you look between for example ethnic groups there was a
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study in like the 1940s on we mentioned in a different episode but it looked at caucasian babies
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versus east asian children younger than six months and if you put a blanket over their heads the
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caucasian ones like freak out and will rip it off where the east asian ones will just clear a pass for
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themselves to breathe and it's a very different reaction to this negative stimuli and that you can see this
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reliably in infants shows that there are some clustered sociological differences but i mean again
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i think that progressives in the fact that they have to deny that this is true when it is so obviously
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true end up discrediting the claim that they make that their system that they are creating for the
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world that this urban monoculture can actually be fair if there is any degree of genetic differences
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between individuals and this is something that's really made clear to us by one individual who
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is like well yeah but if you intergenerationally select for iq in your kids and it does work i mean
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what happens if in a few generations they're much smarter than other people and it was clear that she
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didn't have a world framework where humans that are born differently from other humans can safely
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coexist with other humans it's like well if one group ever did show genuine superiority to another group
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they would have like a moral mandate to erase that other group or the other group would have a moral
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mandate to erase it like that is genuinely what the urban monoculture believes because they don't
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have a system for dealing with genuine diversity and that is really horrifying yikes yeah another thing to
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go into here is the pitbull debate because we got to go into the pitbull debate yeah here is my thing on
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pitbulls okay i believe that humanity does have a moral obligation to dogs and cats actually this is
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before i get into the pitbull thing i need to make one thing clear we have a moral obligation to dogs and
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cats that we do not have to other species yeah somebody like why would you think that we have a moral
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obligation to dogs and cats that we don't have to other species and because the partnership that
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humanity formed with dogs and cats was not a partnership of subjugation most of the other
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species that we have where we have domesticated them it was us capturing them and forcing them
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they're not like cows don't serve us because they wanted to serve us because at some point some cow
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in distant history made the choice to work with humans that is not the case for dogs and cats
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uh so we can start with cats which were actually the later domestication event and made human
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civilization possible period okay why did cats make human civilization possible because before cats
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we couldn't do long-term grain storage um which was critical to the types of bureaucratic
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infrastructures it was the distribution and collection of long-term grains i.e early taxation that allowed
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specifically in the nile in egypt that allowed for the first real major civilization to start which
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was egypt but you couldn't long-term maintain grain in these primitive silos because they get
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rat and mice infestations and so the introduction of cats which were an obligate carnivore and wouldn't
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eat the grain but would eat anything else there is a reason that the egyptians worshipped cats there is
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a reason they had cat gods and they mummified cats and they because cats made their lifestyle and
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civilization possible in a way that people today do not appreciate and these cats were not captured
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cats these cats were cats that came and made themselves at home within these grain silos okay
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and then some egyptians began to live with cats but another important thing to note about cats as well
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is that cats were never fully domesticated they do not in many categories of domestication count as a
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fully domesticated animal often when cats are living with humans it is because to an extent they have
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chosen to live with humans now dogs are a different and i think an animal that we have even more
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responsibility to than cats um so what i mean by that is if you look at the early domestication
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events from what we can see about the way that dogs were likely domesticated is it appears that some
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canines began to lose the instinct to basically attack and kill humans or fight humans whenever they
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see them beginning before they were a social animal and their tribe would be their tribe and our tribe would
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be our tribe and we would fight and and kill each other and hunt each other and we were enemies but the
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the group that made the first overture was the dogs it appeared what they did is some dogs began to hang
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out around the refuge piles of uh early humans and then over time they began to become less afraid of
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humans and humans began to integrate dogs which already had a pre-coded you know social clan structure
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in them into our societies and it's important to note that our current concept of dogs as pets is
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likely not the way that they integrated into these groups they likely integrated as a separate sort of
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caste but as an independent caste and we can see this in some primitive african communities when
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anthropologists have gone to learn about them there's this story that i found really interesting where
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one anthropologist was walking around a settlement and she was talking to a person about their dog she
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goes oh your dog and they go what do you mean my dog and they're like your dog and they're like i don't
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know what you mean my dog and the person was like well the dog that sleeps in your house and they go oh
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well yeah i mean it sleeps in our house because it chooses to it could sleep in any house that wanted
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to it's not my dog and this is likely the way that early humans related to animals and we even see
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this in modern times where you will have a town dog or a town cat when i was in saint andrews we had a few
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of these i did you have any where you grew up simone yeah i mean i think even in houses where
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people have domesticated cats sometimes people like neighbors will start feeding one of those cats and
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the cats sort of two times families you know what i mean and we'll like sleep over at the other
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person's house and hang out the other person's house and i think animals do that in general i certainly
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saw it a lot when i was in mexico that there would be definitely like ownerless dogs that would just be
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beach dogs that everyone would feed and kind of take care of and the dogs would sleep wherever
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and they were healthy dogs but no one owned them in particular but i do find it notable that even
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in scenarios where humans own the cats where you know you can have cats more freely move between
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houses if they're outdoor cats you still see this this phenomenon well and it's important to understand
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why dogs were such a useful partner to our early species dogs can help in terms of like their
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capacity to sense the environment around them they have like i think like 15 000 times our sense of
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smell and and like i think like 15x our hearing so they make humans they're the first bionic add-on
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to humans yes they were humans first bionic add-on um and i'd also note here another thing that we
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mentioned when we write about dogs but people should note this is because dogs have been selected for
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their love of humans that is one of the things we breed them for they likely experience an emotion
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towards us which is a louder form of love than any love a human is capable of 100 and we've always
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said if you really actually if you want one unconditional love don't find a partner don't
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get a kid yeah no you're only ever going to get unconditional love from a dog no human can give that
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to you or should be expected to give it to you you know totally but with all of this being the case
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with dogs being a voluntary and useful partner to humanity i think as we start encountering other
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species out there in the universe or we start building our own other sentient species and we
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begin to have to form what is our relationship going to look like with species that are strictly more
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intelligent than us and when do we decide like where these relationship boundaries go it's gonna be
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important to us that we have some voluntary relation with another species that we do not
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factory farm etc right that we treat with a dignity level that is to an extent comparable to human dignity
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and that is something that i think we should do with dogs and i also think that we have a a moral
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obligation to if not have dogs on the spaceships we use to colonize the galaxy bring their genetics so that
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they can be recreated when we get to these environments and potentially even to genetically
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uplift dogs it wouldn't be that hard to do for example even with our existing technology you could
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give a dog like pox too and it would likely be able to understand and respond to human speech not with
00:23:07.660
speech but with other things much higher than uh dogs do today from the uh other experiments that we've
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seen i don't know i feel like this this may just be social media hokum but there are definitely
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people on social media who set up buttons for their dogs that actually seem to be fairly effective
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yeah but now the question is what do i think of pitbulls given how much i think of dogs okay yes yeah
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now get into the controversial stuff that lost a ton of followers i think the prettiest thing is what
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everyone's gonna freak out about in the comments he wants to genetically modify dogs to be smarter
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how dare he not i'm not saying today i'm saying eventually okay but the the this is this is where
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things get spicy i do not think that there is a huge moral negative to neutering the pitbull
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population for three reasons one is is humans neuter dogs all the time these days yeah humans who love
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dogs neuter dogs all the time humans neuter humans all the time humans neuter themselves all the time
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yeah but i'm talking about the neutering of another being yeah the non-consensual humans should be able
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to sterilize another human i don't believe that's morally okay but should a human be able to sterilize
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a dog absolutely it's something we do all the time as to why there shouldn't be a moral problem with
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humans neutering dogs if people are wondering like why do i have such a different belief around this
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than humans it's because dogs breed uncontrollably which can lead to big problems in regions where they
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are not neutered that lead to more aggregate suffering of canines exactly and humans and so
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it's strictly and obviously a good thing to do if humans bred like that then it might make sense to
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consider sterilizing humans but humans don't breed like that so that's not well they don't breed like that
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anymore you could argue that there was a time when they did uh no i think it was always an illusion
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but the point being is you're probably right actually if we lived in a world where if you
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didn't sterilize humans humans would exhaust their food supply and eventually start killing each other
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that changes the moral equation around sterilization even and we do live in a world and we've seen this
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because a lot of cultural groups like well my cultural group lodge dogs you want to see more about this
00:25:31.100
year episode why don't jews own guns it's one of our best episodes we've ever done but some groups
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like jews and muslims for example are pretty anti-canine historically and in a modern context
00:25:40.220
and just do not historically own dogs and they're what do these cultures have in common they were
00:25:44.740
typically urban focused cultures in the middle ages yeah what did the fiddler on the roof playwright
00:25:49.760
writer say about dogs if a man owns a dog either that dog is no dog or that jew is no jew um there's
00:25:57.360
a jew owns a dog um so so if people don't know this there's been a lot of papers like i sometimes
00:26:02.620
mention to like jewish friends i'm like you know jews don't own dogs and they're like what do you mean
00:26:06.340
jews don't own dogs i've seen jewish people with dogs i'm like look at the literature jews don't own
00:26:11.200
dogs and if you look at and we know this goes back to early settlements because we can look at
00:26:15.100
settlements to the ancient israeli period and see that dogs appear very rarely in the jewish
00:26:20.580
cemeteries so we can actually see exactly when this cultural practice came about as to why the
00:26:24.900
practice came about it was because if you're an urban based population typically like urban
00:26:29.800
specialist cultures are typically very wary of dogs because dogs can become major problems like stray
00:26:35.660
dogs in cities and you don't really need them for anything why if i'm in an urban environment do i need
00:26:40.480
to be able to hear 15 times you know more range and smell 15 000 percent stronger if you are a rural
00:26:45.980
person dogs are critical to your way of life so rural cultures usually have a much closer relationship
00:26:51.760
with dogs if you want to get a feeling of is your family from an urban or rural background think what
00:26:57.760
was your parents perspectives on dogs that's the core answer right like are they seen as a moral
00:27:02.720
necessity or are they seen as a moral negative and just a waste but anyway where was i going was this
00:27:07.740
the pitbull scenario okay so one neutering there doesn't appear to be any moral negative to
00:27:13.300
neutering dogs at least within our society and i i i could see the involuntary neutering of an animal
00:27:18.780
as a moral negative if there wasn't the sort of gun to our head of but dogs will just keep breeding
00:27:24.820
until they become a problem to other dogs right so that's one problem the second problem is is then why
00:27:30.460
am i okay with neutering pitbulls specifically the the infant murder machines that they are right like
00:27:36.880
again you've got to keep in mind 70 dog murder machines even if you don't like humans
00:27:41.220
that that is where it gets it gets for me and i just see no way to defend this pitbulls were
00:27:47.820
selectively bred for their tendency to kill other dogs not for their love of humans not even for their
00:27:56.760
ability to kill humans if you love dogs you should hate pitbulls because even today when we talk about
00:28:04.700
all of the human deaths that result from pitbulls it is nothing it is a drop in the bucket when
00:28:10.640
contrasted with the pet dog deaths that are due to pitbulls pitbulls kill an average of and this is just
00:28:16.980
in the united states 8730 dogs per year 2904 cats per year and 10 250 other pets and livestock per year
00:28:28.420
in total pitbulls are estimated to kill around 21 886 pets and livestock per year pitbulls were
00:28:35.380
responsible for 81 of the animals killed by dogs in a documented attacks over a 10-year period for
00:28:41.240
attacks on other dogs specifically 90 were carried out by pitbulls all you need to do to top this is
00:28:47.640
neuter pitbulls if you just neutered pitbulls you could within a few years save the lives of around
00:28:54.420
9 000 dogs per year 3 000 cats per year the people who don't do this are genuinely sociopaths given
00:29:02.820
how flippantly we neuter dogs for just about anything else well what if you're not a dog lover
00:29:08.820
and you're just an animal lover in general this report here shows that pitbulls killed 30 times more
00:29:15.640
animals than human crime did in fact it found that pitbulls were 500 times more deadly to other animals
00:29:22.520
and humans than all other dog breeds combined in fact pitbulls that are rehomed by shelters
00:29:29.540
and rescuers killed more animals than persecuted sadists if you are one of those people who's like
00:29:35.280
but my dog's so nice to me and so sweet looking you come off like one of those parents of a serial
00:29:41.980
killer who's like well my kid was nice at home it's like it doesn't matter a dog can be the sweetest dog
00:29:48.580
in the world you know every hour of a year but one where it murders a toddler that dog was still
00:29:56.000
better off not existing that year that's the problem if you are not weighing the statistics
00:30:03.040
against your emotional connection with a specific dog and the statistics are reality yeah in fact i'd go
00:30:10.480
so far and say that you are probably saving one dog life for every probably hundred pitbulls that
00:30:16.500
are neutered that seems like a safe bet just considering the number of people i think if you
00:30:21.220
know dog owners you will probably know you know someone who at least knows someone or someone who
00:30:28.140
themselves attacked by not necessarily killed but attacked by for sure a pitbull yeah so the breed
00:30:35.520
a survey 2019 more puppies yet fewer homes for pitbulls shows that there are around 4.5 million pitbulls
00:30:42.500
in the united states if that number is accurate and if the above numbers are accurate that means for
00:30:48.260
every 3.86 pitbulls you neutered you would save the life of one cat or dog over the next hundred years
00:30:56.860
so it is neutering less than four pitbulls for the life of every cat or dog you are saving i just can't
00:31:05.780
understand the moral equation of not neutering four dogs to save the life of one other that dog who is
00:31:14.420
going to die has kids who care about it a family who cares about it people who love it just as much
00:31:20.080
as you love your pitbull and they're not even asking you to put down your pitbull they're just asking you
00:31:25.080
to neuter it that is insanely moral equation at play and this then gets really interesting because
00:31:32.180
well some pitbull owners will be like well but when pitbulls are well raised they don't do this
00:31:37.840
and i'm like then we still need to ban the breed and people are like wait why would you say we still
00:31:44.100
need to ban the breed if it's a problem with the people who are buying them i'm like those people
00:31:47.620
shouldn't be buying dogs then so we need to ban the breed whatever the desire is that's causing these
00:31:51.640
people to go out and raise them so poorly and you shouldn't have a breed that when it's raised poorly
00:31:55.980
horribly murders other small innocent dogs okay i think another problem too is the one of the the
00:32:03.720
big elements of this controversy is the bully xl which sounds like a uniquely terrifying version of
00:32:11.500
pitbulls but at least is marketed in some corners as a breed of pitbull that is actually much more
00:32:17.660
docile and friendly the problem is that even though it looks really really tough is that
00:32:22.560
you know breeding is not an incredibly well regulated realm it's it's a little kludgy and so
00:32:29.660
you don't necessarily know if you are getting a docile version someone could tell you that this pitbull
00:32:36.640
that they're selling to you for between one and five thousand dollars or more is a bully xl and is
00:32:42.580
docile and will be super nice to your kids and won't hurt a fly but you really can't know that
00:32:48.760
for sure it's not safe there's a reason that if under one year olds 48 of them that were killed by
00:32:54.620
a dog were killed by a pitbull you know that's mostly the dog owners own children or children that
00:32:59.760
they are babysitting like that is horrifying that we are allowing this to happen these are infant
00:33:04.600
murder machines these are toddler killing machines that is what they do and again i should note here
00:33:11.860
that even if the owners and this is what really gets me with the pitbull owners they'll go out and
00:33:15.600
when people are like look we really shouldn't allow like we need to and i'm not saying we should kill
00:33:19.520
pitbulls just saying we should neuter pitbulls when they're like oh presumably make their sale and
00:33:25.360
breeding illegal yeah how dare you do this because we we like pitbulls because they're so sweet and kind
00:33:33.860
and it's like yeah but i can look at the ads of the pitbull breeders and i can see that functionally
00:33:38.440
that's not the case the high value pitbulls are being sold because of their adjacency to savagery
00:33:44.460
and some of the like pitbull ads here they're like this is this is like king cyrus the murder machine
00:33:50.500
he can murder 10 infants in a day no they won't they won't obviously they don't mention the infant
00:33:56.000
murder but they just you know mention how tough and strong and savage they are because individuals who
00:34:00.920
buy them are using them to modify their own self-image often yeah sure buy dogs and this is
00:34:08.760
where i'm like okay well maybe these people are actually of this category of it's the it's the
00:34:15.120
owner's fault because they are buying a dog they want to make them appear like a savage tough individual
00:34:19.260
and so they are training it to be savage and tough fine doesn't change the fact that we shouldn't have
00:34:24.220
this breed right when you consider that you are literally like how many dog neuters is a human
00:34:31.380
child not being horribly savaged worth right like i just don't understand the moral equivalency here
00:34:38.800
when you could get another kind of dog yeah and that's the thing is there are so many amazing dog
00:34:45.360
breeds out there and dog breeds that are super tough too yeah you just there are lots of hunting dogs
00:34:51.820
out there there are lion killers you could get a rhodesian ridge back you could get all sorts of
00:34:56.360
very interesting and and tough and protective but also sweet dogs this is not going to be a challenge
00:35:04.800
for you it just seems so unambiguous that pitbulls are a step too far yeah very polarizing we're
00:35:11.780
definitely gonna lose followers i think this is a lot like korean k-pop stans and taylor swift fans
00:35:19.460
no no no no here if we have somebody who disagrees with us on this i i need them to answer a question
00:35:24.000
okay so let's let's deal with it let's bring the numbers down a bit so that they can understand
00:35:30.080
would they neuter one pitbull if it saved the life of one child okay and from being horribly horribly
00:35:38.880
murdered a toddler a three-year-old horribly murdered and then i say okay they're like well of course i
00:35:43.640
neuter one pitbull if it did that people neuter pitbulls all the time right you know for different
00:35:47.880
reasons i'd say well would you neuter 10 pitbulls to save the life of one child one toddler i'm like
00:35:53.940
what number what's the number that's too high for you what's the number of pitbulls to save the life
00:35:59.220
of a three-year-old that is too high for you because categorically by the data you can save a lot of
00:36:07.300
individual toddler lives by doing this and other dog lives right like at what what about another dog
00:36:14.300
so i want two numbers here how many pitbulls need to be neutered for the life of another dog that was
00:36:19.120
horribly mutilated yeah and how many for a toddler and if you're just like not i wouldn't even neuter
00:36:24.220
one pitbull for one child then we don't want you as a follower i guess that's yeah like you you're
00:36:29.100
there's seriously something wrong in your ethical equations of reality given that people neuter pitbulls
00:36:34.840
all the time get out of my pocket population control you can see the door walk through it
00:36:41.380
okay yeah i get you and that's that's entirely fair uh because i i need to know how they are
00:36:47.300
internally constructing this argument because what they do is they don't do redirect the argument
00:36:53.440
they're like well it's not the dog's fault it's the owner's fault yeah or or well then you should
00:36:58.600
accept bully bullies xl because they they're docile but then you know how do you differentiate
00:37:04.820
yeah but then the question is then why aren't you campaigning if you want the bully xls to be the
00:37:09.920
thing then you need a better system for determining which ones are the bully xls and you need to work on
00:37:14.800
a breeding program to make them more docile and you more than anyone should want to get rid of these
00:37:18.980
other pitbulls that are giving the bully xls a bad name right but you don't do this i don't see the
00:37:24.580
people defending bully xls saying but of course we need to neuter the other pitbulls they're just
00:37:29.860
they're just trying to redirect attention it's like well we need to neuter pitbulls and they're like
00:37:33.680
well what about bully xls or it's well what about the bad owners or this whole thing is i think more
00:37:39.180
largely it reminds me of arguments around abortion it reminds me of arguments around immigration i think
00:37:45.400
that that we have as a society become at all really no i know hear me out here
00:37:54.560
i think people have come to a way of dealing with ideas where it's no longer about the facts it's
00:38:01.800
about once you've established your side your goal is to defend your mind from any ideas that are
00:38:09.220
offensive to it and that is an outcropping of disagree really okay why i think that that is
00:38:16.080
something that happens however i think that if you are talking about immigration or you are talking about
00:38:22.700
abortion abortion there are genuine well-intentioned people with logically sound structures for arguing
00:38:30.980
on both sides of these topics i have my own positions on these topics but i think that there
00:38:36.360
are individuals who seriously listen to all the evidence and have seriously thought through
00:38:39.920
like different positions who genuinely fall on either side of this issue i do not believe
00:38:45.560
there is a single well-intentioned person who has really thought through all of the arguments on the
00:38:52.800
we should not neuter pitbull side of this argument i do not think that there is a logical structure
00:38:58.060
when you consider how lightly neutering is treated in our society for not neutering pitbulls and i will
00:39:05.740
tell you the best argument for not neutering pitbulls and then i will tell you why it doesn't even work
00:39:10.180
okay the single best argument that you can create for not neutering pitbulls is the don't take my gun
00:39:16.620
argument that is to say well yes i agree that i want a pitbull instead of another dog because of the
00:39:22.620
effect that the pitbull has on my personal self-identity right i'm i i need it to be who it's a deadly
00:39:28.880
weapon yeah and it may be a deadly weapon but americans should be allowed to own deadly weapons right
00:39:36.660
and we argue that here's the problem okay a pitbull is closer to an autonomous ai with guns set up on
00:39:48.380
it that is that is trained to in some instances kill people do you think humans should be allowed
00:39:54.620
to own kill but like kill drones that and and i actually i'd even go so far as to say humans should
00:40:01.780
be allowed to own kill drones but i don't think they should be allowed to own kill drones that are
00:40:06.420
constantly circling their house and sometimes randomly shoot people that's where i'd be like
00:40:11.440
obviously a human should not be allowed to own that are you insane well or kill drones with any
00:40:17.480
any track record of being a public safety threat which is to say if a kill drone were to attack
00:40:23.880
civilians or civilians fill a pets obviously those would be considered extremely dangerous and
00:40:30.720
unpredictable pieces of technology that would be immediately banned and yet when this happens with dogs
00:40:35.400
for some reason it's not banned with you know intensity you're absolutely right yeah and this
00:40:44.720
is a but there's the secondary reason which is to say i don't defend people's right to keep guns
00:40:52.420
because of how guns positively augment their self-image i defend that right for two core reasons one is
00:40:58.580
that in certain parts of america guns are necessary for self-defense if you were in an extremely rural area
00:41:03.320
where it takes 30 minutes for the cops to get to your house or an hour for the cops to get to your
00:41:06.420
house you need guns i'm sorry well but also you know guns are are sort of what prevent takeovers of
00:41:13.720
but that's the other core reason is that guns are a part of our checks and balances system in the united
00:41:19.280
states and people are like no do guns really help in like a drone fight do guns really help like
00:41:26.100
if the u.s military wanted to take over and it's like absolutely yes we we if you even look at like
00:41:33.200
hamas's raid in israel if more of these families had been armed and the families that were armed had
00:41:39.180
a very easy time fighting them off the the core reason they got hit so bad was just the jewish
00:41:44.060
cultural predilection to not own guns at high rates another really interesting thing about these
00:41:48.400
raids that a lot of people don't know is the settlements that really got brutalized were
00:41:52.140
not the conservative religious settlements they were mostly spared it was the loosey-goosey
00:41:57.980
kibbutzes that were sort of like hippie nonsense like let's get along with them it was like the peace
00:42:03.680
concert that ended up getting absolutely massacred where nobody had guns it was not the groups that
00:42:08.480
were like hey we need to be worried about these people we really need to you know be harsher in these
00:42:13.080
scenarios that had to deal with with that much bloodshed because they understood the risk and they were
00:42:18.240
armed so that's important to note as well there are externalities to guns that don't exist with
00:42:23.740
pitbulls if you can explain to me an externality that can be resolved by a pitbull that either makes
00:42:29.920
you safer as a citizen okay or that makes us safer from like a democratic standpoint i will take that
00:42:38.540
argument as well i just haven't heard one a pitbull is genuinely differentially not better in a military
00:42:47.500
context than a rottweiler which already exists like why are you using a pitbull and not a rottweiler
00:42:53.640
if you're using it for fighting humans pitbulls are just toddler murder machines they're not really
00:42:59.220
useful for anything else they're useful for that and killing dogs horribly horrifically anyway any other
00:43:06.260
thoughts nope we like dogs we'll take dogs to space but yeah we we only i think you know what actually
00:43:16.420
this is very similar to our cultural viewpoint which is that we we ultimately support pluralism
00:43:22.420
and human groups that play nice with other human groups and if you can't play nice then we have
00:43:29.660
no interest that's actually a really good point is people wonder why we're both so pluralistic but so
00:43:34.940
quick to turn our back on any group that just attacks another group and say okay they lost their
00:43:39.580
right to exist but that's the way that we we play more broadly yeah i am okay with pluralism but if you
00:43:45.280
run out and attack your neighbors the pluralistic protection that i culturally believe that every
00:43:52.060
human has a right to is immediately revoked from your group and yeah like we support human flourishing
00:43:58.300
insofar as you do you are not a net drag on human flourishing and we promote dog flourishing insofar
00:44:03.720
as it is not a net drag on dog flourishing and it would seem that pitbulls are broadly a net drag on
00:44:12.440
canine flourishing so yeah love you did us simone you are so special and amazing i love you uh i just
00:44:19.300
got a call from george can you call him back to see what he wanted i'll call him would you mind
00:44:22.560
getting the kids yes and i'll bring my food down and make you some fried rice tonight with oyster sauce
00:44:27.360
will do an egg or no egg egg please we've got chickens for a reason spring onions but no
00:44:34.040
vegetables i'd actually love it if you put in some other vegetables i got like a frozen vegetable pack
00:44:39.680
that could be good for uh stir fry that would go pretty well with fried rice okay i'll see what i
00:44:44.800
can do there that's what i got it for you know it's got like baby corn and yeah all right we'll give
00:44:49.380
it a try love you love you too i'll call what it's impossible yes all right
00:45:01.180
they've been asking for you oh it says i love you oh my gosh it's a heart