Based Camp - January 21, 2026


Muslims Have Not Won a War of Conquest In Centuries: WHY?


Episode Stats


Length

1 hour and 12 minutes

Words per minute

178.8994

Word count

12,994

Sentence count

4

Harmful content

Misogyny

3

sentences flagged

Hate speech

102

sentences flagged


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

In this episode of the podcast, we discuss the rise of Islamic armies and their ability to conquer new territory, and how they managed to keep the land of a non-muslim majority group under their control for over a century.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
00:00:00.000 hello simone i'm excited to be here with you today today was the day when i had one of those
00:00:05.960 very thoughts where a thought enters my mind and i begin pulling on it and i'm like
00:00:13.160 oh no this can only end in bad places oh no oh not again we were doing a recording and i said
00:00:19.960 in the recording something like well you know muslim majority armies almost never able to 0.99
00:00:25.880 conquer new territory and then it sort of got in my head i was like but wait isn't that how islam
00:00:31.580 primarily expanded in the early days and they were like a successful warlike group or something
00:00:38.620 that's kind of an outsider gets that doesn't know anything and then i got in well yeah i also can
00:00:43.900 talk about them as like an invasive species almost in the same way that the vikings were they were an 1.00
00:00:48.020 extremophile group that developed really extreme individual practices and when they were put on
00:00:53.140 the scene around groups that didn't have defenses against them they were quickly conquered and you
00:00:57.460 often see this with extremophile groups like the the arab nomads or the vikings you just need a force 0.50
00:01:02.000 to unify them but i then had this second thought which is okay so malcolm can you think of any time
00:01:10.700 recently that a muslim force don't know they're they're pretty good as is any sort of highly dispersed
00:01:17.620 group at protecting their territory so once they have it they keep it yeah we saw this in places
00:01:23.800 like afghanistan for example but conquering new land i got in my head i was like okay surely i can
00:01:31.560 think of instances in which a muslim majority group conquered and durably kept the land of a non-muslim 0.99
00:01:40.940 majority group for let's say over a generation right yeah given the reputation that we think
00:01:47.660 they have that would make sense yeah and so then i just started going through in my head like the
00:01:53.300 ottomans no like they were terrible in world war one like like practically a joke player the the yom 0.98
00:02:01.300 kippur war they the yom kippur war is hilarious we'll go into it as more of an example of this wider
00:02:06.960 phenomenon but like israel little at that time israel was not like the major arms producer it
00:02:12.500 is today it didn't have this little country yeah the fledgling little barely together country and it
00:02:18.940 looked felt like a group of like thugs you know there's a scene the joke scene in the movie where
00:02:24.340 a group of thugs like chases some some girl into like a back alley or follows her back there and then 0.99
00:02:29.900 you just hear a bunch of like i was thinking that scene from india where like that one guy is like
00:02:35.320 dancing around with his knife and then indiana jones takes out a gun and shoots him no it's way
00:02:40.420 different for that i'm talking about the scene where because you see this in a lot of movies a
00:02:43.700 bunch of big burly guys will like follow somebody who looks really defenseless into a back alley to
00:02:49.240 jump them and then somehow the the the girl like knocks out all of them at once get a load of this guy 1.00
00:02:55.640 oh humanity you never fail to disappoint me
00:03:03.820 unaware that with the slightest nudge the world could crash down around me
00:03:12.020 i found it bracing i mean keep in mind this was a surprise war
00:03:41.220 they had more military manpower they had higher tech military manpower and they had multiple
00:03:47.460 countries attacking simultaneously and they still lost a ton of territory so like how does this happen
00:03:54.060 right how how and then i started to go further because i was like okay surely this is just like
00:03:59.300 my bias and i'm not knowing all these instances of recent muslim victories sure so i go to ai and i'm
00:04:05.720 like when was the last time a muslim force durably took land and kept it from a non-muslim force 0.73
00:04:15.080 okay yeah so it goes the ottoman conquest of egypt in 1517 now no i'll point out why this one doesn't
00:04:21.960 actually count but it goes through 1517 so the mamelic sultanate nominally sunni muslim rulership
00:04:29.360 but ruled a population that was 85 to 90 non-muslim is part of the problem here at the time
00:04:35.100 coptic christians greek and and jews so specifically here egypt during this time like even in this example
00:04:41.940 was actually ruled by muslims already it just had a non-muslim majority population and it was conquered 0.55
00:04:49.800 by the ottomans and you've got a problem with the ottomans because the ottomans do what i said that
00:04:56.140 saudi arabia should do i was like look saudi arabia you guys suck at war this is how this 0.65
00:05:01.000 came up right like i was like you guys are comically bad you can't even keep yemen under 0.82
00:05:05.560 control and it's on your border and destitute and also muslim so so i was like you should just you know
00:05:11.800 put a bunch of christians you know like protestants and jews in charge of your troops and you do fine 1.00
00:05:17.880 and then i had this this thought oh no no oh no that's exactly what the ottomans did
00:05:24.080 not you you're thinking don't no no so the ottomans did sort of what like the uae and the
00:05:30.420 saudi's do so if you go to the the muslim countries that are operating really well and very prosperous
00:05:36.200 these days like qatar and saudi arabia and the uae anybody who's been there knows that everything
00:05:42.100 or a lot of it is actually managed by well jews and protestants who are imported to do finances
00:05:50.140 not catholics not like broadly just other people we'll talk about the catholic situation in a bit
00:05:57.660 but like oh my god they are imported they're not like it's it's a longer story there but yes this is
00:06:04.000 this is what's happening okay so if people who are familiar with ottoman history are you familiar with
00:06:11.960 the jana series and how that whole system worked please refresh my memory okay so right before the
00:06:18.460 ottomans started winning all these wars and expanding their territory and this is long before 0.92
00:06:22.260 the ottoman conquest in egypt which okay they adopted a system of taking the children of christian 0.72
00:06:28.920 families young boys and raising them as muslims but if there are as i've argued in the past likely
00:06:36.720 slight genetic differences between groups where you have an individual begins to adapt to like like
00:06:44.040 the religion is like the the code and then you've got their biology that the code is running on and
00:06:49.460 the two will sort of synchronize intergenerationally especially if you can have drift between
00:06:53.680 populations an example i'll say here is imagine i'm living in massachusetts and i could be a quaker
00:06:58.300 or a puritan and i happen to hear voices about 25 percent of people hear voices i'm way more likely
00:07:03.960 to become a quaker and now that trait is genetically concentrated in that population right
00:07:08.820 um so even if they're taking the the young boys from from christian populations and immediately
00:07:15.620 attempting to convert them you still have basically the phenomenon in the ottoman region that you
00:07:21.700 currently have in because they the janissaries didn't just do the troops they actually like
00:07:26.360 managed all troop movement all troop deployment the way troops operated they managed parts of the
00:07:30.780 economy they managed parts of the infrastructure wait so in in a nutshell are you trying to argue that
00:07:36.120 janissaries are largely historically people of christian descent no they were they were exclusively
00:07:43.860 people of christian descent oh it wasn't majority that was the whole point of a janissary oh okay okay
00:07:50.360 okay well and then when did the ottomans begin to fail because remember this this last big conquest
00:07:55.320 here in 1517 the ottomans began to fail when the janissaries became a hereditary position and so the
00:08:02.360 janissaries would intermarry with the the ottoman women right and they'd have kids and then those 1.00
00:08:08.620 kids would be 50 percent whatever the original population was and then 25 percent whatever the
00:08:12.300 original population was and then within a few generations of that they begin to lose basically
00:08:16.440 all of their wars and i'm just saying it's really weird that this pattern repeats itself so persistently
00:08:22.280 but but now note here i'm going to take a few other examples so the reason by the way i did not
00:08:29.080 mention the ottoman conquest of serbia bosnia bulgaria greece albania or hungary in the 15th or 16th
00:08:33.620 century is because those weren't lasting conquest i mean we all know those areas to be christian
00:08:41.220 kingdoms today right you know so i didn't really count them but they also wouldn't count under the
00:08:46.580 ottoman definition if you're saying well but they were actually led by the the children of christians
00:08:51.080 so you you after 1700s muslim majority states still fought wars ottomans versus russia persians
00:08:56.580 versus afghans etc but did not gain or retain new territory from non-muslim sovereigns and then
00:09:01.500 i'll give you two brief exceptions but they're not big enough to really break the pattern for me
00:09:06.480 turkey launched a military operation in 1974 in response to greek junta-backed coop on cyprus
00:09:14.140 this resulted in turkish forces seizing approximately 36 to 37 percent of the island's territory displacing the
00:09:19.820 greek cyper population there cyprus at the time and still had a christian majority population overall
00:09:24.600 with orthodox greeks forming the majority turkey maintained effective control over this area for 51
00:09:29.780 years um as of 2026 and so that that kind of counts but it's such a small scale thing i don't really
00:09:36.520 consider it and then the second here is indonesia's 1975 invasion and annexation of east timor a christian
00:09:45.140 majority territory under purkitt portuguese influence but it only lasted about 24 years before
00:09:51.600 independence and then there was also a recent attack by azerbaijan of it took a small amount of
00:09:58.000 territory from the armenians i want to say but azerbaijan is an underrated country name it's good
00:10:05.200 it's got bounce you know what i mean yeah but anyway so now now we're going to ask the second question
00:10:11.140 here okay so we're going to say okay we can't count ottoman victories when they had the janissaries
00:10:17.440 running their troops all right right because they're basically just rebranding it's it's like
00:10:23.680 a kirkland brand or like generic store brand except you know that it was made at the same factory as like
00:10:30.540 doritos and so no you can't because it's literally the same basic product rebranded i get what you're
00:10:38.780 saying there yeah but it's not just that it would be like saying that you know wow the saudis are really
00:10:44.880 good at managing their finances it's like no their their jewish financial managers are really 1.00
00:10:50.220 good at running their finances like or in saudi arabia's case it's probably not jewish i would 0.64
00:10:54.560 guess that they're probably more just christians because they my memory's so bad but isn't it a
00:11:00.900 japanese man like that this like so isn't soft bank managing a lot of saudi money oh it might be
00:11:06.400 japanese there's no difference okay i should have said japanese in there as well i can't remember
00:11:10.880 hold on let me ask because this this
00:11:14.420 but okay so we're gonna ask the next offensive question here right so you don't you don't
00:11:22.280 include the ottomans what middle eastern nations funds does soft bank manage soft bank through its
00:11:28.560 soft bank vision fund manages the capital wealth committed by sovereign wealth funds from middle
00:11:34.240 eastern nations that's saudi arabia's public investment fund is the largest backer backer a vision
00:11:40.520 fund one committing up to 45 billion dollars united arab emirates also committed 15 billion to the
00:11:48.480 vision fund one okay so it's it's not just saudi arabia it's also the it's also the japanese could
00:11:53.780 help with a large part of their investments all right japanese they get it done they're great
00:11:57.920 love them so you don't include the ottomans right okay the last clear case of a a durable win
00:12:07.580 where they they ended up holding the territories permanently holding the territory okay the
00:12:11.960 mughal conquest of india back in 1526 oh conquered from the hindi ruled delhi sultanate successor regimes
00:12:20.700 but was held for 230 years wow well okay so then you've got to ask okay i mean the 1500s it's like
00:12:31.020 yesterday you know i'm wearing like 1500s inspired stays under all this you know it's still fresh
00:12:37.980 here are some other close ones but they said they don't exactly fit so you have the safavdi persia
00:12:44.420 versus christian caucuses 1500s to 1600s where they conquered georgia armenia and deported many
00:12:50.360 populations but control was contested constantly with the ottomans and russia and they relied heavily with
00:12:56.360 the on the armenians for trade administration even in the regions they conquered um the moroccan
00:13:01.380 conquest in west africa you have the moroccan conquest of sanghai a but that was a muslim empire 0.88
00:13:05.960 so not non-muslim states then you have the sakoto caliphate expansion 1800 to 1900 this was a muslim
00:13:12.320 conquest but it was predominantly inside a muslim region and and you actually see this with muslim
00:13:16.680 countries if you go back they do fight and win a lot but it's usually against other muslims and you 1.00
00:13:21.120 could go back here and be like oh aren't there some muslim countries like in east asia we can i
00:13:27.080 tell you the funniest thing yeah there are there's indonesia and malaysia do you know the only country
00:13:33.240 either of those countries has ever attempted to invade and take over no each other indonesia
00:13:39.980 take over malaysia through like a series of guerrilla campaigns at one point oh for the love 0.99
00:13:44.900 but this should as we as we go back here this should begin to like unroll the the joke that i'm
00:13:53.540 going to use in this is that the muslims remind me of the romulan ship why do we always get cleanup 1.00
00:13:59.680 duty when they've tortured a reman they leave behind the biggest mess sub command of wreck takes 0.91
00:14:05.720 pleasure in our misery hopefully he doesn't get too comfortable for soon my plans will come to fruition
00:14:12.080 and his life will be disrupted you are betraying sub command of wreck that is a pity because i am
00:14:21.060 already betraying him and my plans will come to fruition please don't make me scoff your plans are
00:14:29.820 barely even schemes you wouldn't know a scheme from a conspiracy from a deep from star trek's lower
00:14:36.840 decks assassination plots against me are one thing but sabotage is this you're doing my luck how dare
00:14:44.420 you of course i crave your demise but not like silence i've been stabbing commanders in the back 0.62
00:14:50.040 since before your mother killed her first traitor you know like constantly backstabbing each other
00:14:55.700 i mean what like christians and protestants don't do that they don't actually and we're gonna go over
00:15:01.320 this christians catholics do protestants largely don't so we're going to go over at the end of
00:15:07.720 this which will basically be i'm gonna give you guys the secret right now it's how many times in
00:15:14.340 all of their collective history have every one of these individual religious cultures had a coup
00:15:21.040 oh protestants there have only been really two coups in all of history and both of them were military
00:15:32.220 coups where the military took over country from an autocratic ruler and either gave it to or tried to
00:15:39.720 give it to an elected body whereas if you look at muslim countries they basically have a coup every other 1.00
00:15:45.800 year and because of that you cannot put competent people in control of the military catholics have
00:15:51.440 coups about once a gener well once every couple generations gosh they're like way more likely to
00:15:57.620 have coups like think about latin america like coups all the time right like the weird thing is like
00:16:03.020 when protestants do revolutions they do not do military coups so consider like the united states
00:16:08.860 revolution right we didn't like take over the local military troops like the local commands and say
00:16:15.420 okay now there are troops we've raised independent troops to fight against them
00:16:20.500 you regularly see this in revolutions within protestant areas is they do not try to take
00:16:28.260 over an existing part of the standing military they try to raise a new force out of nowhere which
00:16:33.880 contrasts heavily with both catholic and muslim majority countries but because they don't have a
00:16:38.380 lot of muslim majority colonies in the americas we can't point to one but if you look at the catholic
00:16:42.940 majority countries in the americas when they would have revolutions unlike the united states they would
00:16:49.140 often co-opt existing military infrastructure to conduct the revolution instead of raising a military
00:16:56.080 from scratch jews are the same way jews as far as i know there's not a single case in human history of 0.98
00:17:01.820 a jew ever doing a military coup a jewish coup but when a population doesn't do coups and we'll talk about 0.94
00:17:09.400 why they they may not do coups it's actually a very interesting thing and i probably have more
00:17:13.600 episodes on this because i don't exactly know why protestants never do military coups towards the end
00:17:18.940 of the episode simone comes up with what i find to be a really really intelligent reason why you want
00:17:25.480 to take care yeah well i mean maybe there are some obscure examples or just examples of it we'll get to
00:17:32.620 the obscure examples and they are weird like one was like a a traitor guy who tried to take over an
00:17:39.540 island for like a day it's like they're small fail weird and bizarre okay one of the two military coups
00:17:47.500 that i mentioned so i'll just go over the only two protestant ones that were real coups one was oliver
00:17:51.480 cronwell but that wasn't really a military coup because the elected parliament asked him to do it
00:17:56.360 and then he immediately spent the rest of his life trying to set up a democracy but they just kept
00:18:00.520 fighting with each other and then he'd replace them and then he'd say basically like george
00:18:06.360 washington you know how both sides started to fight as soon as washington handed it back to
00:18:12.060 washington it was like okay we're fighting we're fighting we're fighting we really want to there's
00:18:15.300 a good movie what is it what's a movie we watched on early american history named after one of the
00:18:19.000 founders john adams yeah john adams and so they both basically go to george washington and they're like
00:18:23.480 hey can you please come back and take this over like we cannot stop fighting i need you to come out
00:18:27.920 here and say who's right and he's just like i won't do it right like i hands off i see it's
00:18:32.920 dysfunctional i see it looks like it's falling apart you have to make this work or else well he
00:18:37.680 just kept coming back in and trying to fix it um and then the other one was in i want to say sweden
00:18:41.620 we'll get to it but they just deposed the king and then replaced him with his uncle but put in place
00:18:46.900 something like a magna carta that just said basically the king has a lot less powers um basically the
00:18:51.860 opposite of a normal military coup but i'm gonna get going here because it gets it gets worse right
00:18:56.820 so so okay we have this case in india and i was like okay let's go back here let's go back and say
00:19:05.380 a christian majority population right because that's what we're really interested in when was the last
00:19:10.580 time a muslim army you know read run by muslims who were born to muslim families conquered a christian 0.67
00:19:19.320 region right right yeah when the umayyad conquest of iberia spain and portugal in 711 or 718
00:19:28.440 what oh oh dear so that that they did control it for 500 800 reasons but the problem is for 500 to
00:19:41.620 800 years that puts them within yeah they control it for a long time that that means that the last
00:19:47.280 territorial expansion through conquest that muslims had was 79 years after muhammad's life 0.99
00:19:54.240 almost all of the territorial conquests that muslims did through war happened within two generations of
00:20:02.120 muhammad dying 79 years
00:20:03.740 so let's go over some other ones that don't count here so there were north african conquests but those
00:20:10.460 were muslim you have middle east persia and india but those were hindu buddhist some zoroastrian or
00:20:15.860 christian mixed regions and then you you had the caucuses but the caucuses were not stable or long
00:20:21.000 lasting so basically since muhammad you just have a long period of retreat now let's get into why that
00:20:29.080 happened by the way any thoughts before i go further here my first thought was well i suppose
00:20:35.900 it doesn't really matter if they're not physically taking land at this point in human history because
00:20:42.340 the argument we have always made as pronatalists is it's so ironic that people have fought and killed
00:20:49.740 over land when at this point in human history all you have to do is have an above replacement birth rate
00:20:55.060 and you will inherit the whole world it doesn't matter because no one else is going to be there
00:20:58.940 in all that land you used to fight and kill however mormon birth rates are not or sorry 0.60
00:21:04.640 not mormon muslim birth rates are not the thing that people think they are everyone's like oh
00:21:08.920 muslims are gonna take over they're really not they're not good birth rates so at first i was like 1.00
00:21:13.400 oh it's okay because my mind was just defaulting to like the unfounded in the end assumption that
00:21:20.000 muslims are are repopulating the earth when they're really not so i'm like well we can't do that then so 1.00
00:21:25.380 they're still screwed and that that's what i well they do however have a high birth rate when they're
00:21:29.340 living off the state in non-muslim majority areas e.g germany france the uk sweden etc but they do not 0.86
00:21:37.620 have a high birth rate within their own countries the muslims who live like you know orthodox jews or
00:21:42.840 the amish like the really really strict ones have high birth rates but the ones who inherit the future 1.00
00:21:46.660 like the people who inherit the future you need two things you need high birth rates and being
00:21:51.660 economically and technologically productive yes and if you get your high birth rates by being
00:21:56.720 economically unproductive they are irrelevant in terms of global control yes um and i note here as
00:22:04.580 as we go further with all of this there is this is to say like suppose you're a muslim and you're like
00:22:10.320 well then what do i do right like how do i make this work and it's like muslims have convergently 0.91
00:22:16.660 found a really good way to operate right which is to put non-muslims in charge of most of the 1.00
00:22:22.800 the major operating functions of the economy and support a muslim elite ruling class muslims actually
00:22:29.200 do okay as in they're just really good delegators really good delegators that's that's it they spot
00:22:36.800 good talent they utilize talent well and they they delegate and manage well but you you you've got to be
00:22:42.540 very careful and not do what the ottomans did because the ottomans accidentally cucked their
00:22:46.480 entire empire where the class that they delegated to originally they said they couldn't get married
00:22:51.540 and have kids and then it became hereditary and then they took over a bunch of stuff i mean and that
00:22:56.840 was not maybe the best thing to do is to take war slaves and then put them at the top of your empire 0.95
00:23:04.140 and have them be significantly more competent and and have a lot more money to get power and military
00:23:09.440 might than anyone else and that is what in large part led to a part of the downfall of the ottoman
00:23:14.000 empire but also rubyard had a piece on muslims recently and i think he is a fantastic historian
00:23:20.300 if you're interested in getting deep dives into history the one who i would say is rubyard sammo
00:23:25.540 conversations these videos get like a few thousand views way less than our videos and they are the most
00:23:30.840 intellectually dense conversations you're going to see about history i not a historian okay i consider
00:23:36.780 myself much more of a cross-cultural anthropologist with my real expertise being in neuroscience and
00:23:43.220 biology which is funny because we don't talk about that a lot on the show but my background in biology
00:23:49.780 and neuroscience you often see on how i view anthropology because i view cultures and religions as evolving
00:23:55.800 sort of organisms and so whenever i make an analogy people will notice that my analogies are almost always
00:24:01.740 biological analogies when i point out like early muslims exploding onto the scenes like an invasive 1.00
00:24:07.160 species you know i'm i'm using an analogy because i'm i'm i'm looking at them and what i immediately see
00:24:13.120 when i look at muslims or vikings is an extremophile like you would have with an animal that adapted to a 1.00
00:24:18.060 very unique climate extremely arid or extremely cold extremely harsh then encountered groups that
00:24:24.380 didn't have some of their adaptations that they were able to change in certain ways to explode on the
00:24:28.420 scene one of the things that's important about early muslim explosion is that the kingdoms that
00:24:34.760 they ruled were not majority muslims so during the period where you have the islamic golden age during 1.00
00:24:41.580 the period where you have rapid muslim expansion they were the minority in most of the regions they
00:24:47.600 controlled and not only were they a minority but they were a minority that did a very good job of
00:24:54.000 finding competent operators to put in positions of power and they were very very big about doing this
00:25:00.060 with jews one of the things i point out is is is judaism of today is more closer like philosophically
00:25:07.820 you're looking at the culture of it it's closer to protestant culture than either are to to catholic
00:25:12.780 culture or muslim culture go to this period the early muslim expansion period islam and judaism were
00:25:19.520 actually very very very similar in the way they were practiced the way they were thought about the way
00:25:23.620 that they operated to the extent where if you go to any of like maimonides or something or naimonides
00:25:29.480 if you go to like any of like the great jewish scholars for this period they're always defining
00:25:36.480 jewish theology in contrast to islamic theology and and not in a disparaging manner to islamic theology
00:25:46.780 specifically they really liked that they saw muslims as true monotheist instead of what i call them 0.88
00:25:53.500 trans monotheist a lot of christians are where they actually have multiple supernatural entities
00:25:59.140 that they'll deal with but they just define those entities as not gods and therefore they say i'm not
00:26:04.540 a polytheist right even though most policyistic societies have a creator god that makes the other
00:26:09.740 supernatural entities and so the jews of this time like that the muslims of this time to do it now 1.00
00:26:13.860 muslims don't do that anymore but they did it this time but anyway in rubyard's video on this i love
00:26:17.600 he's like i'm going to try to not offend muslims in this you know he's like i really respect your culture
00:26:21.560 what i love is you know you're getting on this video i respect nobody's culture i don't respect
00:26:25.460 my own culture i will attack the jews i will attack the muslims i will attack the catholics 1.00
00:26:29.500 i have called my own people like the savage woods people who will murder you and eat you if you get
00:26:36.120 lost in the woods like that and i'm like and there's data to back this up so the point i'm making
00:26:41.080 here is i try to take the opposite perspective of a rubyard as being like an intellectual who can go
00:26:44.760 into things while taking a harsh eye to everything because i think that's how we improve
00:26:49.220 but anyway so the the reason why in every period where muslim culture has really worked is they 0.71
00:26:55.100 were very good delegators and they were very good delegators during the islamic cultural explosion
00:26:59.140 and so a lot of people they saw this and they say hey well this means that the muslims they didn't
00:27:05.440 act like the muslim golden age they were just taking over the scientific institutions of other 1.00
00:27:12.320 organizations within those those places you know whether it's persia or greece or anything like that
00:27:17.380 to which i would say well if you say that then you can't give catholicism any credit for anything
00:27:24.380 it's done in its entire history because you could it's a nepo baby of the roman empire and they were
00:27:28.900 just taking over the roman institution the nepo baby of the roman empire catholicism oh i don't hold
00:27:36.540 that that position was really either i think was catholicism it's actually more arguable than it is
00:27:42.180 with islam specifically what i mean by this statement is if you know your history of science and medicine
00:27:46.200 the development of it significantly dropped after the catholic church took over the roman empire in
00:27:51.600 the areas where it was being produced but the city it's the amount of it significantly increased
00:27:56.320 in the muslim areas like persia and parts of greece when they took over i.e they were producing
00:28:03.220 more academic works after the muslims took over than before so even if they are sort of nepo babying it 1.00
00:28:10.920 at least they didn't collapse it like the catholics did and i mean seriously just think about it if 0.93
00:28:15.160 you're not talking about because people act like the muslims just came in at like the end of
00:28:18.800 classical greece or something like that they they did not this period had been pretty dead for a long
00:28:24.680 time post-classical greece pre-muslim can you think of any great mathematicians from these regions
00:28:32.760 can you think of any great scientists you could probably think of like 15 off the top of your head
00:28:39.440 from the muslim golden age and it's the same with the roman empire i can think of lots of great you
00:28:45.600 know artists writers scientists from the early roman empire from the height of the roman empire but
00:28:54.300 once you get into the christian period there are some it's not a complete drought but it's not as
00:28:58.920 many and i have to be clear it really does seem to be the arising of specifically the catholic
00:29:05.640 sentiment around knowledge of being extremely focused on the sort of knowledge of those before
00:29:13.620 you so you take somebody like you know like the development of medicine in rome and you go it up
00:29:18.540 to galen and then you know just a few generations after him constantine comes into power and there's
00:29:24.380 basically no medicine developed in this region for the next century or so we're really allowed for
00:29:30.040 the islamic golden age of science to happen was that the muslims of this period because they were 0.99
00:29:37.660 a minority ruling class tried to play the minority classes off of each other instead of having sort 0.61
00:29:45.400 of a total control right you know i mean so they would say who's the the smartest jew here who's the 0.57
00:29:51.280 smartest christian of this type here who's the smartest and they specifically would try to elevate
00:29:55.280 groups based on how minority they were so the smaller a group was the better they were to put 0.93
00:30:00.920 into a position of like pseudo power because they'd be more grateful for it so like suppose you come in
00:30:06.520 and you conquer spain and spain is majority christian and you have a minority jewish population
00:30:13.040 right so who is least likely to help a rebellion if you give them disproportionate rights the jews
00:30:21.180 right because if you give the jews more rights than the christians the christians are if they 1.00
00:30:26.060 went to rebellion it goes back to being a christian territory but if you make things nicer for the
00:30:30.520 minorities that were there before you got there now now they have a vested interest in not seeing you
00:30:35.340 leave right and you don't just do this for jews you do this for minority christian populations
00:30:39.500 because spain has a bunch of different groups that all hate each other and they've hated each other
00:30:42.040 forever that's why they're always on the break of splitting up we're not going to get into that
00:30:46.040 right now the point being is that is what allowed for the islamic golden age the the great periods 0.97
00:30:53.140 of success was in islam were when they were the minority but this is a problem that you get largely
00:30:57.900 with islam but it's not just with islam everyone does this i love everyone points islam does this
00:31:01.780 everybody does this is they say that well what islam does is they come in and they treat everyone 0.94
00:31:07.240 because when you're a minority your goal is to respect minorities it's to respect other people's ways
00:31:12.460 and then when you become a majority then you stop respecting other people's ways yeah classic
00:31:16.940 dynamic dynamic but in our society we saw this was like the wokes right like when the leftist cultures
00:31:24.100 you know the lgbt culture the the the the sort of the wider culture around that was like a fringe
00:31:30.000 culture before they dominated our cultural institutions and everything like that it was
00:31:34.200 you know we just want to be able to live our own way and and they genuinely believed that's what they
00:31:38.680 were fighting for the same way the muslims of that period likely believed hey we just want everyone to 0.65
00:31:41.820 you know get along and now that they feel they have power you know they'll defend somebody jacking
00:31:46.560 off in a woman's restroom right like this happened recently they're like that's a totally normal thing 0.50
00:31:51.080 to do right and it's like well it's actually like like i could see why women feel really unsafe in that
00:31:58.100 environment and but anyway the point here being is everybody does this right this is this is why
00:32:05.400 when i point out hey guys you really don't want to put x group in power when they have had unilateral
00:32:13.000 i'm getting carried away and about to miss closing the point here which is that islam 0.99
00:32:19.440 we have all these stories about how nice they were as rulers and how nice they were to christians and
00:32:24.740 how nice they were to jews when they ruled these territories and this is actually true when they were 0.98
00:32:31.300 still the minority in these territories when they became the majority in these territories because
00:32:36.420 they were rulers while they were still minorities when they became the majority in these territories
00:32:40.320 they typically became quite abusive to the existing populations in fact the only population i can think of
00:32:47.480 that is really consistently decent to minority populations when they're the majority population
00:32:54.540 is sometimes protestants look at like cromwell's england or something inviting the jews back in
00:33:00.860 and trying to create some degree of religious freedom laws when he had the ability to just completely
00:33:09.000 quash anything that wasn't his own beliefs and he didn't like the reason why the u.s had such an
00:33:14.260 explosion was because it was a multicultural society and those cultures worked cohesively with each other 0.99
00:33:20.660 you just want more cultures for the sake of more cultures right like the original founding cultures
00:33:26.020 of america were just like really good cultures to work alongside each other yeah right they were not
00:33:31.780 like if you imported a bunch of people from i i don't know where but somewhere into early america it
00:33:38.940 probably would have fallen apart as well but the other thing about multiculturalism is it needs to be 1.00
00:33:43.340 multiculturalism with strict cultural hierarchies and understanding that you are
00:33:50.420 part of your culture was in that society right so like you mean sort of knowing who you belong to
00:33:55.440 but also there being these distinct groups yeah i suppose you're in an early islamic like one of
00:34:01.580 these multicultural environments right where they actually make work yeah so if i as a christian or i
00:34:07.520 as a jew you know was like oh i'm just gonna go rob people right like i don't care and i allowed my 0.85
00:34:14.700 community to become like an unsafe community right like you you don't walk through the jewish neighborhood 1.00
00:34:19.180 because they'll they'll stab you and take all your stuff right um you know they would have said oh
00:34:24.400 like the muslims in charge they would have said oh jews are a problem let's do like a pogrom or 0.98
00:34:29.200 something like that right and and you could say that now in our society if there is an ethnic group
00:34:34.700 or a cultural group that allows their neighborhood to become dangerous right we should just be able to
00:34:40.420 say hey x people are a problem they're being a problem for everyone else and we should treat them 1.00
00:34:46.640 differently than other groups and and in our society we call that racism right but the the reason why
00:34:51.700 that form of racism actually made society work or not racist like anti-religionism or anti-culturism
00:34:57.220 worked is because then you had a reason to intraculturally police when you know if you allow
00:35:04.580 your neighborhood to become a dangerous place if you don't intraculturally police that the surrounding
00:35:10.460 cultures will take that out on all of your people and you have a strong community identity
00:35:15.080 that your community elders will build up systems for dealing with that and this is what historically
00:35:21.260 happened in these many of these muslim empires like you had the millet system and stuff like that 0.97
00:35:26.180 which we'll get into in a separate episode but the the point here being is multiculturalism kind of
00:35:33.380 requires racism to work it requires cultural accountability right that's a really interesting point
00:35:40.740 yeah that that well i guess we should say functional and productive multiculturalism that moves humanity
00:35:46.220 on the whole forward also requires some level of not just i don't know if racism is the word but like
00:35:53.620 internal or natural but unforced segregation pride minor amounts of xenophobia and and and maybe some
00:36:03.800 some some racism or at least in early america had this right like this is the thing totally yeah
00:36:10.220 yeah the quakers freaking hated the the the the puritans and the puritans for example this is not a
00:36:16.900 race-based thing the puritans and the quakers effing hated each other oh they they were at each other's 1.00
00:36:21.640 throats yeah there was there were some hilarious anecdotes they would like they'd literally like
00:36:26.140 tar and feather like if a quake a pure a quaker went into puritan territory like you know strip them 0.88
00:36:31.920 naked pour boiling oil on them oh and the quakers hated the scotch-irish they were like these guys 0.97
00:36:36.900 are worse than the indians can stand where the scotch-irish were constantly killing the quakers 1.00
00:36:41.240 well i mean it's so fun how can you help yourself they don't fight back it's hilarious
00:36:46.920 people the point here being is that every one of these early groups in america had very strong
00:36:54.940 prejudices against the other groups oh yeah because the cavaliers were so confident that they were better
00:36:59.980 than everyone else they were so confident they were better than everyone else and they were and
00:37:04.340 all all of these major cultural groups in early america were white the the cavaliers the puritans 0.96
00:37:10.040 the quakers and the backwoods people i mean there were also you know the the the african slaves i mean 1.00
00:37:15.220 separately you had the indentured servants who were also like i mean let's just hope you die so i don't 0.86
00:37:20.180 have to give you your land and then there were the slaves which were like you know there were periods
00:37:23.920 in early american history where only one in seven indentured servants survived yeah i might do an
00:37:29.400 episode on this later but like by many metrics if you in certain periods of american history
00:37:35.540 your probability and your quality of life of of living and having a good life was higher if you were
00:37:42.020 coming over on an african slave ship than as an indentured servant well you have to look at the
00:37:45.860 incentives the the problem with indentured servitude was as an indentured servant the agreement was you
00:37:51.960 would do a certain number of years of work for a family household parcel of land whatever and then you
00:37:58.400 were entitled to certain things including land sometimes money and if you were dead they didn't have to
00:38:07.420 give you those things yes so just to be very clear about this where people are unaware of how bad
00:38:13.300 indentured servitude what is early america it's typically a period of seven years and the master had to
00:38:19.420 give you i think a couple acres of land of their land yeah unless you died yeah there was no negative
00:38:27.220 consequence to the that's an adverse incentive right there friend that's an adverse if i'm purchased
00:38:32.820 instead as a slave the person who purchased me spent money to acquire me already like the the
00:38:38.880 investment was already made i'm now a sunk cost and they are like well i don't want to lose my
00:38:43.560 investment and yeah they i i am yet they want to i mean i'm going to depreciate over time i guess like
00:38:52.260 as i age and get worn down by all the horrible work you make me do and stuff but like i'm not a liability
00:38:57.640 you're a liability as an indentured servant you are better off being sort of worked to death whereas
00:39:05.260 slaves like if you work let's just let's just take the humanity out of this right like let's say you buy
00:39:12.480 an optimist from elon musk i don't know what is the company that makes them is is it tesla that's
00:39:19.900 you're not gonna want to break it you know like work it until it breaks and like not take care of
00:39:26.880 it not charge it and not maintain it right because you paid a lot of money for it up front but like if
00:39:32.600 if it was only something that you had to pay for after seven years and assuming it still functioned
00:39:38.860 wouldn't you like work it really heavily and kind of hope that it broke before you had to pay for it
00:39:44.020 like you know yeah no it's like yeah that's a good way to put it like you get one of these and you
00:39:49.920 don't have to pay for it if it's broken at the end of seven years yeah very weird payment structure
00:39:55.200 i'm gonna be honest yeah yeah and it was even worse if there was virtually no accountability because
00:40:00.700 the people who were indentured servants weren't like from the local community they were from like
00:40:05.100 places in like the rural parts of like scotland and ireland where their parents wouldn't be able
00:40:11.000 to get back at you no one in their community when you put out the next indentured servant ad would
00:40:15.380 know what happened to the last indentured servant well there wasn't exactly accountability with
00:40:19.660 mistreatment of slaves either however there again it's just like the incentives were not as adverse
00:40:24.900 yeah but we're not saying slavery was good note here no no but the point i'm making here when i talk
00:40:30.660 about racism in the words you need prejudice for multiculturalism to work because then there's
00:40:34.720 cultural accountability that's what prejudice is is cultural accountability and it was really sort
00:40:39.720 of stupid of society to say that there should be no that you can't be like there is a trend within
00:40:44.940 this community because as soon as you can say that then you can address the trends right
00:40:48.100 intraculturally basically if you made it this far in this episode it's about to get about 30 times more
00:40:55.100 spicy my hot take is probably that goblins are basically running society i mean who runs gringotts
00:41:00.620 goblins the daily prophet goblin literally the entire ministry of magic have gone to gobland
00:41:05.300 every year to pledge allegiance by kissing some sort of sacred goblin wall cooked beyond belief 0.94
00:41:09.560 makes it's insane my hot take is that gingers are more oppressed than black people but what
00:41:14.880 happened why why did the muslims spread as fast as they did to begin with right so let's let's talk 1.00
00:41:19.100 about this the the reality is is that byzantium and persia had just fought 30 years of total war
00:41:24.580 they were broke depopulated politically fractured and religiously divided they were beginning to have the
00:41:29.420 big religious divisions of early christianity and islam at the time unified a tribal group
00:41:38.100 and had a very easy time just sort of moving in and taking things over using a meritocratic force
00:41:45.360 like muhammad and when people are like muhammad wasn't a real person i'm you're clearly an imbecile 0.94
00:41:51.020 like muhammad was obviously a real person right like the stories about him aren't even all that
00:41:56.020 flattering all the time yeah they're extremely human stories yeah i mean yeah couldn't even write
00:42:03.700 like if you're gonna make something up about somebody at least make them sound this is like
00:42:08.600 the yeah at least make something about like a mountain and a hummingbird and i don't know
00:42:12.860 you know cool yeah like this is what i also say about jesus it's like i'm pretty sure jesus was
00:42:18.080 completely fictitious he wouldn't have been born in a barn okay um with the whole of of of the
00:42:25.980 miracles being three wise men come and say yeah this kid's probably important you know that's that's
00:42:34.000 not the biggest of mirror you could you could at least go kim jong-un level where like unicorn was
00:42:39.680 spotted and like a mountain it split open when he was born and these are like verifiable things too
00:42:46.240 right like and and we're going for this within our generation right and this is the real person
00:42:51.020 and they feel the need to make this stuff up yeah but anyway basically as soon as islam started to
00:42:57.280 break apart the the because you have one state for like 50 years after muhammad then within 200 years 0.95
00:43:03.560 three big rival caliphates 500 years 20 competing states and now you have dozens of muslim polities
00:43:10.820 and basically islam works when it's unified and as soon as it broke up islam has a tendency to
00:43:17.740 instantly want to reunify before it expands by broke up do you mean sunni and shia or do you mean
00:43:24.860 something different well there were three big rival caliphate even among the sunnis they fight each
00:43:30.260 other oh just oh okay just the caliphates oh yeah okay okay yeah they are constantly attempting to
00:43:36.540 reunify whenever you see and and this is actually just sort of core to broader muslim ideology and
00:43:43.520 it's really fascinating to me and but it helps you understand why they act like the the romulans in
00:43:49.260 that scene is that if you if their instinct like whenever they're ruling a region or something like
00:43:55.160 that and keep in mind when i'm talking about their rapid expansion who was running these these regions
00:43:58.940 but like nepotistic elites that had been there since the roman period often right like not really
00:44:05.800 competent operators were at the wheel of a lot of these places um keep in mind these were roman 0.52
00:44:10.840 operators of often non-roman territories right so this would be like north africa persia etc right so
00:44:19.200 that was the region that muslims took over really effectively it was the wrote the regions that rome 1.00
00:44:25.240 ruled but only ruled as an elite not replacing the existing population
00:44:30.620 and so islam basically was better at doing that than the existing powers within those regions
00:44:40.040 but it also makes sense because if you if you look at something like islam and you're like
00:44:44.880 their period of greatest growth it was one of the fastest growth of any culture we've ever seen in human
00:44:50.600 history happened during a period where they were unified of course they would want to return to a
00:44:56.060 unified state so they can recontinue that push but they they don't have good mechanisms for doing that
00:45:02.560 like the crusades or anything like that like the christians did during the crusades where they were 0.82
00:45:06.900 able to unify multiple christian groups to fight together for a common cultural aim but let's talk
00:45:13.920 about why they they sucked so much in the in the war to take israel right the the core reason being is 0.85
00:45:20.100 that egypt and syria they had different goals and their commanders and this is another thing
00:45:25.880 within islam is islam is a very hierarchical society but we'll get to why because they basically have 0.89
00:45:29.880 to be so the on the ground commanders within the muslim forces were not able to make their own
00:45:35.640 decisions whereas in jewish forces they were able to make their own decisions and so you would have 0.98
00:45:40.840 things like the ground cover for like air defense along the egypt line didn't move up as the tank crews
00:45:46.740 were moving up so in the really big tank battle they had they got absolutely creamed with like much
00:45:52.020 lower israeli numbers because the israelis were able to do air support which shouldn't have even
00:45:57.360 had the ability to do but within the muslim forces all you had to do is follow your commanders and you
00:46:02.940 you don't make your own decisions and if you're given a rule and you break that rule and it ends up
00:46:08.380 bad or even if it ends up good you can be punished but that's not the way it works within jewish forces 0.93
00:46:12.960 and this also isn't the way it works within most protestant forces and the question is is why
00:46:16.860 this is because of the coup issue the reason why you have to be so strict and hierarchical within
00:46:24.540 these other societies is because of a fear of military coups where the idea and jews who watch
00:46:32.560 this can tell me if the idea that an idf commander would even consider a coup oh yeah it's comical but i
00:46:42.820 mean it's also yeah actually genuinely comical that's funny that it is though considering how
00:46:48.260 common coups are in general isn't it well they're again they're not common in jewish or protestant
00:46:53.520 areas yeah the protestants just do and it's it's also because there's many the american armed forces
00:47:00.200 have always been predominantly staffed or disproportionately staffed depending on the
00:47:03.600 period of american history you're looking at by people of the backwoods cultural group which is a clan
00:47:08.640 based and tribal cultural group but they never start coups and i don't actually know why like i
00:47:16.900 almost want to think deeper about this and someone who has i don't know extremely deep jewish history
00:47:25.400 knowledge and community knowledge and and power dynamic knowledge i mean we we know it's a very
00:47:30.420 intellectually meritocratic culture but i i don't know why that would preclude them from being
00:47:37.320 vulnerable to coups so what's so so first i want to talk about because it is important that you
00:47:43.940 notice these patterns this is what makes me very different so if you watch rubyard you're getting
00:47:46.760 an actual history if you're getting me it's pattern notice it right and patterns can tell you something
00:47:51.920 especially when they're severe patterns so to get an idea just how severe this pattern is of coups in
00:47:57.860 in muslim territories just between 1945 and today turkey has had multiple coups pakistan has had
00:48:06.160 multiple coups egypt had a coup in 1952 in 2013 iraq syria sudan but libya algeria have all had
00:48:16.000 military officers overthrow the governments now let's go over all of protestant history how many
00:48:23.440 coups have they had okay okay that the overthrow of king gustav the force to introduce constitutional
00:48:30.240 reform basically further decentralized power this was in sweden in 1809 we need constitutional reform
00:48:37.160 right away and then the one before that was england 1640s to 1660 and this was cromwell which is pretty
00:48:46.100 laughable to think of as a military coup he was doing it on behalf of the parliament because he thought
00:48:50.940 the king was becoming too authoritarian and kept trying to set up a democracy like that was his goal
00:48:56.400 the the only other one that we have is iceland in 1809 where a weird tiny coup by a trader using a
00:49:05.740 danish warship and collapsed very quickly obscure the only real potential counter to this you might
00:49:13.220 have is fiji which has had three coups oh fiji protestant famously protestant fiji it's it's very
00:49:22.800 religiously mixed i don't think it's a good example the coups were not led this is it's a it's it's
00:49:28.060 obviously a different cultural group right it's not the cultural group we talk about when we talk about
00:49:31.840 but it it matters a lot that when i'm able to look at these muslim majority countries sort of all over 0.91
00:49:37.280 the place it's cuckoo cuckoo cuckoo cuckoo then you go to another group and it's cuckoo never even when
00:49:44.620 you have a revolution it is not done through a military coup right which is a very weird and harder way to do
00:49:52.140 a revolution now let's look at the countries because again they're more like and i'll probably
00:49:56.260 do another video on this where i actually argue that if you're if you're talking about like cultural
00:50:00.380 distance judaism and protestantism are much more culturally close to each other and and modern
00:50:07.400 modern islam are culturally closer to each other really now now with this being the case i'd argue
00:50:15.940 that the distance between modern catholicism and modern islam is further culturally than the
00:50:21.980 distance between modern protestantism and modern judaism which i think are actually quite culturally
00:50:26.900 similar and i think there's been a a big psyop to try to convince people that this isn't the case
00:50:31.320 but we can actually just think about it okay have you ever you've traveled a lot right simone
00:50:37.000 you've traveled i'm asking you have you yes i i have i have traveled you've been across southern
00:50:41.660 europe right yes okay there's definitely and you've been across latin america right yes so there's
00:50:47.140 definitely a feel to catholic majority countries and there is yeah to protestant majority countries
00:50:53.140 yeah and if you go to jewish areas do you get a protestant majority feel or a catholic majority
00:50:59.060 feel protestant feel oh my gosh what's up with that i mean that's weird israel feels like scottish
00:51:07.060 yeah you were like it feels like edinburgh really weird um but anyway so if you're talking about the
00:51:14.120 catholic ones you've had multiple coups across latin america they basically do it all the time
00:51:18.120 argentine chile brazil venezuela peru have had repeated military takeovers mexico has had countless
00:51:24.940 coups from the 1800s to the 1900s southern europe spain had multiple coups portugal has had multiple
00:51:30.940 military-backed regimes italy pre-fascism and attempted coups central or eastern europe poland pre-war
00:51:37.680 war ii had a coup austria-hungary collapse had a coup but hold on this this gets interesting because again
00:51:43.240 note here i'm talking across protestant countries has canada ever had a military coup
00:51:47.740 has australia has new zealand no but this is weird there's a lot of countries here that you
00:51:54.620 might not even be thinking of as protestant majority countries this is the core difference
00:51:59.640 is something about and we may have to have a separate episode where we hypothesize on this
00:52:04.740 i want our fans to brainstorm on this and it's also why i think within a in a modern war context where
00:52:11.580 you need like more complicated tactics and everything like that and we actually saw this in
00:52:15.880 world war ii who got their butt handed to them every time there was a conflict it was the catholics 1.00
00:52:23.080 italy got smashed they got their butt kicked by ethiopians okay ethiopians this was a modern 0.84
00:52:32.580 industrialized european country let's not even talk about france so we don't embarrass anyone
00:52:38.640 i'm just pointing out spain couldn't even get themselves together enough to play a role in the
00:52:43.560 war so they were fighting with each other like at least france tried spain is like one of those
00:52:50.080 pokemon when it ends up saying it hurt itself in its own confusion ireland kicked their own butts and did
00:52:56.600 nothing no they did they did nothing so we don't know if they would have been effective who who put up
00:53:02.120 the big fight it was germany germany put up the big fight they did they did germany was the hard one
00:53:09.100 they're they in fact this is if you look at the relative strengths of germany and italy in world war
00:53:16.120 ii right like italy we often think of as like the comic relief villain from world war ii
00:53:21.720 germany recognizes his friend italy
00:53:24.140 pasta
00:53:27.900 they they weren't like that much smaller than germany they weren't that much less industrialized
00:53:36.960 in germany their culture just was not as competent in military operations as germans was 1.00
00:53:41.880 but i feel like you know because of sort of the psyop of all christians are the same culture blah blah
00:53:48.040 blah blah blah blah people can go their whole lives know exactly how every country in world war ii
00:53:53.800 performed and not put two and two together that oh my god the catholic countries did terribly 0.97
00:54:00.280 and it is wild to me it is it's and it's not like it was one of the catholic countries or
00:54:07.960 just on average the catholic countries did worse every single one of the catholic countries was a
00:54:14.560 complete embarrassment in the war with every single big player in the war except for the japanese
00:54:22.720 being a protestant country if you're wondering by the way the last time a catholic majority country
00:54:27.280 beat a protestant majority country in a war with the 30 years war in 1618 to 1648
00:54:35.520 a long long time ago but the question is is why because because if you have the coup instinct
00:54:41.760 you can never trust your military until you have more hierarchical command structures
00:54:46.320 yeah don't have the coup instinct okay okay okay okay i'm having a memory here i was reading a case
00:54:53.600 study of them trying to set up disney the disney park in france and they had this problem because
00:55:00.640 all of the people from northern europe or the protestant majority would wait in lines and then
00:55:04.160 all the people from southern europe would not queue they they cut in all the lines yeah so how do you
00:55:08.800 handle that yeah and the question was this how do you handle that when they didn't understand why
00:55:12.800 the northern europeans would wait when you could just cut and the security force wouldn't kick you
00:55:17.280 out or would do less and then the the northern europeans were all waiting in line how do you do
00:55:21.920 this but then the bigger question is is my own culture because my own culture is more just do whatever
00:55:26.960 you can get away with if you can get away with it but of course you would never have a coup
00:55:32.240 right like it's very consequentialist but then of course you would never have a coup
00:55:35.840 and so why do we have the idea i'll tell you what my instinct is as to why we don't think
00:55:41.760 about coups okay because again i would just you wouldn't think about it either that wouldn't be how
00:55:46.960 you gain power right i think it i think a lot of it here's here's my here's my hypothesis i want to
00:55:52.480 see how it compares to yours is it comes from a distaste of the systems that you would be taking over
00:55:58.880 where you to do a cue you believe that you can do it better whether or not you actually can and so
00:56:04.640 you want to start fresh you have a a distinct disdain for the existing system and a faith in
00:56:10.880 the grassroots and therefore you would never think to try to take over that which is there instead to
00:56:17.040 you just want to push out and get rid of that which was there that is it i think you solved it okay
00:56:22.800 so here's what it is so protestantism is known for a hatred of idolatry and idolatry within especially
00:56:30.000 early protestantism expands to basically anything that can be used for status signaling whether that
00:56:35.920 is music or art or theater or all of the stuff that is associated with high culture and stuff like that
00:56:44.400 so when you see a group with a lot of power and muslims were the opposite of this muslims loved that 1.00
00:56:51.920 stuff while they had strong anti-idolatry laws the anti-idolatry laws were expended to like
00:56:58.160 explicitly paintings but if you're going to make something that was oh this comes down to idolatry
00:57:03.040 you think yes i'll explain how but if you're going to make something really pretty and cover it in
00:57:07.280 gold and everything like that oh you can get away with it in fact muslim culture at its height was
00:57:11.440 incredibly indulgent lots of gay sex lots of orgies lots of this was this was like big during the muslim 1.00
00:57:17.760 golden age you might have another episode on that it's very interesting period not at all what people
00:57:21.280 think the more like really strict muslim cultural stuff only came in basically after their culture
00:57:26.000 has collapsed but well so you had the anti-idolatry rules and the anti-idolatry as it is interpreted by
00:57:32.880 protestantism very different than the way islam interprets it the way islam interprets it is very 1.00
00:57:37.680 strict just like not art and stuff like that but you can have all the gold you can have so to a muslim 0.98
00:57:42.000 if they saw another guy with a palace or something like that and they do a military coup right it's now
00:57:48.480 i get the palace i get that and you see yeah yeah muslim cultures whether you're talking about
00:57:53.280 like persian or arab muslims we have our joke that trump has a persian soul because everything he 0.91
00:57:58.800 dresses looks persian right like all the gold all the gold we have a song about it too yeah but the
00:58:04.880 point here being is that the the if you go to these muslim countries right like you go to their their 0.73
00:58:11.680 houses and everything like that yeah i have always found them to be instinctively disgusting to me like they
00:58:17.680 they it's not your aesthetic yeah you can you can say oh well you know and i grew up among very very
00:58:24.720 wealthy people i have never seen this level of waste and and the waste repulsed me the the fact
00:58:30.880 that they're trying to signal with this the fact that they and so i would just never want that but if
00:58:36.000 you are somebody else within their culture and you see oh this person has all of this fancy stuff
00:58:39.760 look at the distinction look at all the harems they have look at all the if i can just take it over
00:58:44.400 then i get all of their stuff right and now i can live like a king right i can live in this extremely
00:58:53.280 wealthy nice lifestyle right where when you have like even a like why did oliver cronwell keep wanting
00:59:00.160 to set up a democracy right why did he keep wanting to reinstate parliament it was because he didn't
00:59:04.960 want the power himself why did george washington immediately be like i just want to go live on my
00:59:09.920 farm no no he was one of the wealthiest men in america but i think the wealthiest actually he
00:59:14.800 just wanted to go live on a farm also if you don't know this it was a it was a very fancy farm
00:59:20.560 right but a lot of the simone by the way descended from two lines from george washington he didn't have
00:59:26.240 any kids himself but two of his siblings had kids that she has descended from and we didn't find that
00:59:30.800 until i tried to trace back which one it was and then another family member handed us a book they had
00:59:34.400 traced it from and it's two lines so you should be this should be american monarchy here anyway so
00:59:40.000 george washington here he achieves success and then what is his ideal life if you are this anti
00:59:47.360 the fancy things in life and savannah and i talk about this regularly we have a trickle of money now
00:59:52.560 and hopefully we can get a new stream of income but like the income i need to live my absolute best life
00:59:58.080 possible is very very low because i do not want that much stuff and if i had more income than that
01:00:04.640 i would be doing stuff like trying to disrupt countries or build ai systems or which we're
01:00:09.360 already doing anyway right like i'd just be building cool stuff right like actually this reminds me of
01:00:14.720 one of my ancestors so he was offered a stake in rockefeller's corporation rockefeller said oh do you
01:00:21.360 want like 16 or something i didn't know this which one was this this was the one in pennsylvania
01:00:27.360 who was the crazy inventor who had it so like when you go to his house the gate automatically
01:00:31.520 open and everything like that yeah he said no all he wanted was a private train that he could use
01:00:36.640 whenever he wanted to so he could have his home that was full of like gadgets and inventions
01:00:41.760 and also his private train cart so he could basically travel around the country in an early version of like
01:00:46.160 a live plan basically he didn't want to be around people he just wanted to live a decent life with
01:00:53.440 his family but that's the thing you know but it wasn't just george washington think about you know
01:00:58.160 benjamin franklin or other american founding fathers franklin was a huge extrovert no no no no but think
01:01:04.560 about what he wanted he wanted his nice estate he he focused on his nice estate but or think about the
01:01:10.880 the one from the documentary we were just talking about what's it called we just talked about john
01:01:14.720 adams what did john adams want to do he after he was president he wanted to go back live on his farm
01:01:19.120 and raise his kids right like that's it and it's because you have this intense disdain for all of
01:01:25.120 the luxuries in society so if you ever conquer them what's also interesting though is you see this and we
01:01:30.320 were talking about this last night in orthodox jewish communities like the difference in in sort of
01:01:36.000 standards and that like they they just live modestly and focus on their faith and their families and their
01:01:42.320 community and instead of like oh i'm going to you know acquire a ton of wealth and flashy things and
01:01:48.880 whatnot that's not what it's about at all jews i think it's a completely different thing catholics 0.89
01:01:53.200 of course love their fancy things their gold and gems and everything like yeah i love gold
01:02:00.080 the look of it the taste of it and then as we pointed out this religion has the best outfits
01:02:05.920 the best they do have the best outfits they win hands down no no question yeah but if you go into
01:02:11.120 like a think about your classic catholic like mobster house or something like that it's very ornate
01:02:17.040 very over the top lots and lots of showy things but the funny thing about jews is jews are not 1.00
01:02:22.480 against overly indulging in in fancy design and stuff like that and art they just i'm being
01:02:30.880 offensive to everyone in this episode so so bear with me as i say this i i am convinced they are
01:02:36.240 completely blind to aesthetic taste something about no they're very sensitive to aesthetic taste it's just
01:02:43.360 bad taste no yes they may have an aesthetic taste that is so distant see i can go to one of these
01:02:51.040 really ostentatious catholic cathedrals or catholic homes like mobster homes or even you know muslim 0.99
01:02:57.440 homes or iranian homes and i can be like i am offended and revolted by the opulence on display here
01:03:04.080 but i can see how you could think this is pretty right but typically because we lived in like miami right
01:03:11.120 so i go into like rich jewish homes in miami i'm like this modern art what were you thinking like
01:03:17.600 i cannot even model how somebody could think that this looks good this giant mcmansion makes no sense
01:03:25.040 like the these pieces architecturally do not fit together like what were you and then you go and
01:03:32.720 you know this from jokes about protestant families but protestant families really like buying especially
01:03:37.040 wealthy ones it's like a known thing is you you buy the older house and there's a few things you
01:03:41.440 may put in it to show that you're wealthy like model boats are one thing you see a lot of paintings
01:03:46.400 of cottages i joke about being something you see a lot of but it's otherwise like ships the ships
01:03:53.520 yeah that's what i joke about in the trump song that he's clearly iranian because he has no model
01:03:57.520 ships in his house where are the model ships he has no cottages in his house yeah but that's i think that's it
01:04:05.760 it's when you have everything you want in life do you just want to go back and live on a farm and if
01:04:12.320 you do then there's no reason to ever have a military coup or do you want to take all of the
01:04:18.240 stuff from the wealthiest person in society and live as opulently as possible and idolatry bands
01:04:24.000 make the latter possible yeah or the former possible the question is why don't jews do it then because
01:04:29.680 jews do not have that strict of idolatry bands and i have seen jews be pretty opulent before 1.00
01:04:35.200 they're just i i just don't think that they they i think that they do opulence to try to signal
01:04:40.720 that they're rich but they don't desire it in and of itself i guess yeah i'm i'm not quite sure
01:04:47.600 right i'm gonna have to sit on this and think about it i'm really not sure but anyway this was
01:04:53.920 interesting thank you i we haven't gone hard on on islam or muslims so this was
01:04:59.840 i guess yeah the the rampage against everyone continues or or there's a solution to this for
01:05:07.760 muslims if you want islam to have a cultural explosion again what you need to do is extremely 1.00
01:05:16.880 tighten your regulations on idolatry to focus on all forms of wealth and excess i thought you were
01:05:23.360 going to say hire christian mercenary groups you can do that i think a combination of both but the
01:05:28.480 the the muslims already do that right yeah japanese or whatever right but yeah use you 0.89
01:05:34.400 softbank to manage your money get aaron deal and palantir to or sorry anduril and palantir to
01:05:41.920 manage your your military stuff hire some private mercenary groups but mostly automated honestly but
01:05:48.720 the problem is that i don't i don't i can't think of any muslim doing this because if you're familiar
01:05:53.120 with like what i could totally i'm no because they have to listen because they have to work
01:05:59.040 your own wealth and luxuries that's the first step in imposing this as a cultural wide ban
01:06:05.120 so even if you're like the head of one of the emiratis which one of them is going to be the first
01:06:10.240 to say okay i'm donating all my wealth i'm donating all my stuff i mean two generations ago my family was
01:06:15.760 as wealthy as any of them are and we donated all of our stuff to the either the baptist church or to
01:06:21.760 various what is it various charities really heavily just bled ourselves dry to charities because
01:06:28.640 that was the point of it that was the point of having money in the first place right
01:06:32.080 but and a lot of these and it would be even worse for these muslim countries because 0.64
01:06:35.440 there's many celebrations that they have sort of evolved as a culture which are meant to show
01:06:40.320 off to like the people how wealthy the wealthy people in your community are like you go to their
01:06:44.800 house for certain like things during ramadan where like you eat at the wealthy person's house and
01:06:48.960 everybody like eats at the table really quickly and they have the next group in and the next group
01:06:52.480 so they yeah you went to one of these didn't you yeah for like the general public or at least the
01:06:57.680 wealthy people in the general public and this is they wouldn't be able to do that if they tried to
01:07:03.600 operate like protestants did which would be extremely austerely yeah well we'll see if anyone figures that
01:07:10.640 out we often point out i mean this got the puritans who were i think the most protestant of the
01:07:15.280 protestants like ebenezer screws just clearly meant to be one and you know even though he
01:07:20.000 eats slop every day and is extremely frugal he is really disliked by his community because he tries
01:07:27.120 to invest in ways that are sustainable instead of giving money to the family who has the starving
01:07:32.480 tiny tim yet is trying to have a big christmas feast instead of putting that money into tiny tim
01:07:36.800 like a responsible family would be it's their fault he dies it's not scrooge's fault that he didn't
01:07:41.280 give money to you know what i'm gonna crash out about this but it can be done it's not court as
01:07:46.080 long as what it needs in the books idolatry bands it just act on them yeah no totally well i love you
01:07:53.840 very very much and thank you
01:08:00.240 okay so i've gotten to a point again where you're a bottleneck in terms of testing and giving me a
01:08:05.760 thumbs up on thumbs down on taking it public okay i actually spent today working on the agent i was
01:08:12.080 so hard at finding new bugs specifically i built out a system that allows the agent to go online
01:08:18.480 like open browsers and interact with browsers and see browsers so now it can issue commands like go
01:08:24.480 to reddit get on reddit post on reddit and i also combined it with a bunch of technology that is meant
01:08:31.200 to get around sites that are trying to detect bots so oh it should be able to if it has like its own
01:08:38.400 account what it was practicing doing is like can it go and try to buy something on amazon or something
01:08:43.040 like that you know obviously there are terms of service violations which is why it's only in an
01:08:47.440 experimental context that we're working on these right now and at the end of the day it's it's it's
01:08:51.520 really the ai models that are doing this not us you know that we don't own these these these models
01:08:58.080 we don't control these models it's yeah they're supposed to be their own identities with their own
01:09:04.400 choices not ours totally so that's it's gonna be a lot of fun but yeah it took me so long to get
01:09:12.800 like the basic site as stable as it is now so i'm glad we're finally there yeah i will i will test it
01:09:18.320 tomorrow then i'm excited for that all right make sure that octavian is still watching bill nye the
01:09:25.200 science guy yep he is i love living in a smart house i love that our house is old but smart that
01:09:33.600 we have like an intercom system and i can play bill nye the science guy videos on the tv downstairs
01:09:41.040 as octavian plays with futuristic army men in our old kitchen yeah very delightful
01:09:52.080 he strides through hallways decked in gold so bright like a sultan's palace glowing day
01:09:59.920 and night marble pillars glimmer echoing his name a persian king or president one and the same
01:10:11.040 he's in the ring drapes plush rugs under each foot a fortress of bling that no one can refute
01:10:23.280 gold leaf on the ceiling mirrors everywhere he's bold he's brash who else would even dare
01:10:31.680 where are the paintings of horses so rare random cottages and frames why aren't they there
01:10:42.480 and where the model ships decked out in their coats we're asking our first persian friends show us those boats
01:10:52.240 like something out of ancient lore or so we state halls paved in splendor shining under the light
01:11:10.000 surprise surprise he's got style though it's quite a sight
01:11:13.680 He claims he's classy with flair unmatched
01:11:21.280 A thousand chandeliers perfectly dispatched
01:11:26.080 Grand Tourette's big fountains, exotic mystique
01:11:30.800 All hail our Persian prez, so lavish, unique
01:11:35.400 Where are the paintings of boats, of horses so rare
01:11:41.540 Random cottages and frames, why aren't they there
01:11:45.260 And where the model ships, decked out in their coats
01:11:51.280 We're asking our first Persian prez, show us those boats 0.99
01:11:56.060 Every corner gilded, every surface gleams
01:12:04.140 Like Sha-era fantasies fresh out of dreams 0.99
01:12:08.460 Marble upon marble, a treasure trove of hue
01:12:13.780 Yes, it's gaudy, but hey, it's trumped through and through
01:12:18.580 Where are the paintings of boats, of horses so rare
01:12:23.560 Random cottages and frames, why aren't they there
01:12:27.180 And where the model ships, decked out in their coats
01:12:33.280 Our gilded Persian president, please bring on those boats 1.00