00:03:42.700And that's what we're going to go into today, is basically a new and expanded understanding of sins that will help you be like, hmm, if I just make a personal commitment to never do this list of things, I will be both a much more mentally healthy person, I will be a much more efficacious person, and I will be able to do a lot more to push human civilization forwards.
00:04:08.500and note here when we talk about pushing human civilization forwards obviously this is a wider
00:04:13.400like techno puritan track series but it's we try to make them more applicable to general
00:04:17.340christians now as well uh one of the fun things that you see in regards to us talking about the
00:04:21.480sons of man which you also see all over the bible you know by the way i didn't make up the term the
00:04:25.740sons of man that's all over the old testament very weird way to talk about people why would
00:04:31.860you talk about people as the sons of man right like that's a why and we're not just you know
00:04:39.700humans or people why not just man right well suppose that these rules were supposed to apply
00:04:46.320to not just the humans we have today but when we become a space-faring species when we take0.86
00:04:51.680our manifest destiny among the spars we're going to need to use genetic technology you basically0.91
00:04:55.980have to you can't easily have people live their entire lives in zero g without some form of gene
00:05:00.360editing and most other planets are going to require some gene editing to live on and how
00:05:05.780extensive that goes could be bigger than that you're going to eventually have some humans that
00:05:09.580are ai integrations you're going to have some humans we're going to have ai working alongside
00:05:13.600us so we take the sons of man to mean all of the intelligences which are downstream of humanity
00:05:19.320be those ai intelligences uplifted animals human intelligences of the far future that are
00:05:25.180genetically modified and stuff like that and that's why it says the sons of man i like that
00:05:28.460bundle, like weird prediction of the applicability that that would have to have, but it tracks with
00:05:35.440the way society looks like it's going. So if we're looking at that and we're asking, okay,
00:05:42.360so if God's sort of broader moral framework and at least how it's expressed seems to shift
00:05:49.480over time, how can we find out what he really wanted with those frameworks? Like what was the
00:05:56.120point of the frameworks as they were laid out. And it appears fairly clear because we can look
00:06:00.980at the effects that these frameworks had on individuals and society at large, which is
00:06:07.220an increased amount of human flourishing, right? This is human technological, civilizational
00:06:14.620flourishing, right? The reason why you would want to create more humane rules around the selling of
00:06:22.440your daughter into slavery i was on a stream with leaflet and somebody was asking what are sins
00:06:27.580because we were talking about them more broadly and i was like when you boil it down sins are
00:06:34.300just a list of things that will up your life some of them may seem like a good idea in the short
00:06:40.240term in the same way eating candy every morning for breakfast might what's going on maybe it's
00:06:47.780all this stuff that you both eat oh will you get off that no honestly it's true okay moss what did
00:06:53.580you have for breakfast this morning smarty cereal oh my god i didn't even know smarties made a cereal
00:07:00.160they don't it's just smarties in a bowl with milk but in the long term you're going to suffer from
00:07:06.660it it's basically a long list and we saw this in one of the recent episodes we did on you know
00:07:12.380rampant consumerization of human sexuality leading to the normalization of things like abortion
00:07:19.180and this destroying people's lives, right? The sin that they were committing ended up having this
00:07:28.440absolutely huge deleterious negative impact on them. The women who go out and whore themselves1.00
00:07:35.540when they're younger, the effect that this is going to happen when they hit the wall and then1.00
00:07:40.100nobody wants them anymore. And then, you know, you see this with pride, lying, look at what's
00:07:47.540going on with the bricks and minifigs CEO right now, right? There is no sin. There's no like rule
00:07:53.100that we're given that isn't long-term in our own best interest. Sins are just a really long list of
00:08:00.820don't piss on the electric fence. And so if we are increasing the number of sins or expanding
00:08:08.280our understanding of sin, it's basically expanding this. Good rules to live by, good things to look
00:08:15.600out for. And when I pointed this out on stream, some people were like, well, no, you know, sins
00:08:20.100need to be like this really difficult thing to deal with. This is really like, and it's like,
00:08:26.660they are insofar that anything you do purely for your own self-interest is a sin, e.g. playing
00:08:33.500video games or something like that. And even those things can eventually have negative effects
00:08:39.480on you. But in terms of the more like explicitly labeled sins, for example, sleeping with another
00:08:45.700dude's wife, right? Like it may feel good in the moment, but not even, you don't even need to say
00:08:52.040like civilizationally, this is a bad idea to normalize. It's just obviously going to come
00:08:57.000back and cause you more pain in the, in the longterm. And I would also note that this seems
00:09:00.940to be a core thing that differentiates christianity from other abrahamic traditions like i don't think0.83
00:09:06.240there's anything actually negative at least within a modern context where like a muslim can't eat pork
00:09:11.380right like i don't think pork actually has any negative externalities in a modern context
00:09:16.160or where a jew cannot mix you know linen and flax in a single outfit but in christianity i am unaware
00:09:23.580of any christian sins where i'm like this is just an obscure thing that was totally unique to a
00:09:30.460specific era sorry what does he want he wants to tell the viewers what he learned like
00:09:37.140germs can go in your body and some they're like tiny little dots they can multiply multiply
00:09:48.640why wait so germs get into you kind of like mouth thingies that eat that like germs that are like
00:10:02.000the other things i was talking about recently the green things smart smart so first how do you
00:10:10.560determine and the fact that the way that god expresses his morality has changed over time
00:10:15.840shows that the intentionality of God on humanity through these systems as they have evolved is
00:10:21.920that it's consequentialist in its framework, right? Like it is based on some outcome, right?
00:10:27.300Well, and as you framed it in a different conversation, when you discuss morality on
00:10:31.920the societal level, you argue that the New Testament was made for a point at which human
00:10:39.460civilization had become much more globalized already, and you had different cultures interacting
00:10:45.160more and you needed to begin to mask the brutality of christianity to appear to be symbiotic so as to
00:10:53.760not become an existential threat to other cultures and obligate those cultures to completely take out
00:11:00.240christianity exactly but but even i mean during the early period when they enter it ended the
00:11:06.000period where that was necessary when they began to take over the the roman empire they did not
00:11:10.740forget how brutal their religious teachings actually are they just that only became sublimated
00:11:16.120later that only in like the last hundred years i want to say is really when the all those parts0.75
00:11:21.620of the bible were forgotten but to continue here except by some groups like the quakers who
00:11:27.020annoy me and the anabaptists who i generally like but anyway to continue here so what's a good way
00:11:34.500to build your life in terms of like moral rules and everything like that so first and you can see0.99
00:11:40.020how to do this in the pragmatist kind of life is build an objective function. That is, think
00:11:45.860through whatever it is, whether it's because God, you know, you're coming at this from a Christian
00:11:50.700perspective, or you're coming at this from a completely secular perspective, the collection
00:11:54.160of things that you think is of intrinsic good to maximize with your life, and then build a set of
00:12:01.680functions around that. By that, what I mean is it might be like, well, within my life, maybe some of
00:12:07.980these things will be purely indulgent. I think I need X level of happiness. And once that satisfied,
00:12:14.920then I will put all of my effort into X or Y, you know, that's the way functions are constructed,
00:12:20.400like 50% into doing this, 50% into doing this. Now, if you're a techno Puritan, you're just
00:12:25.920going to have one framing coming from what I was talking about here, which is what is God's plan.
00:12:29.920God's plan is continued human flourishing. So it's probably some level of comfort. And then
00:12:33.820once you reach that level of comfort, it's needed for, you know, maximum personal efficacy and not
00:12:37.960distraction, then focus on maximizing future human flourishing. And this is often best done
00:12:45.080through scientific advancement, which we're going to get to in a bit, right? Which is to say,
00:12:49.640generally speaking, there are many places where you could, for example, give money to the poor,
00:12:56.880right? And over in a hundred years, in 200 years, because God doesn't love somebody in 200 years,
00:13:02.660and I don't care less about somebody in 200 years than I care about a human today,
00:13:06.100which is going to help more aggregate people almost always things that help the civilization
00:13:13.760continue developing are going to have a bigger impact and no that's not just technology that's
00:13:19.580things that help it economically develop that's things that help it develop in terms of its moral
00:13:24.900systems how it deals with outside or parasitic groups that are exploiting systems so we'll get
00:13:31.260into all of that and also note here this line i think highlights what i think is expected
00:13:36.140in terms of dedicating yourself to an extent to continued scientific progress when we did our
00:13:41.740episode on genesis not being incompatible with science one of the things we we kept getting in
00:13:46.520the comments is like people forgot that like all of the early scientific advancements were made by
00:13:50.740people who were trying to understand god better right like they and even the bible like goes into
00:13:56.800this so if you look at lines like it is the glory of god to conceal a matter to search out a matter
00:14:02.140is the glory of kings which is to say you the best of you the best of humanity your greatest endeavor
00:14:09.980is the search of knowledge of things that god has not made immediately obvious right so when
00:14:17.700somebody's like oh well you know god didn't exactly and very cleanly lay out evolution in
00:14:24.380the bible why didn't he do that right why why wasn't that done it's like it's the glory of
00:14:29.080god to conceal matter and to search out a matter is the glory of kings which is to say that if you
00:14:33.720take a approach to everything that does not update post a jesus's time perspective on our
00:14:40.820understanding of nature in the world you're literally acting in rebellion to what the bible
00:14:45.140is telling you to do right all right so if you're just inventing a religion for like savages telling0.70
00:14:52.480them. Like, don't give yourself to lust. Don't give yourself to gluttony. Don't give yourself
00:14:56.900like seven deadly sins, stuff like that. Original 10 commandments, very easy rules,
00:15:02.400but there are so many deleterious things that trap humans today at a significantly more socially
00:15:10.500and morally developed standpoint. I think it's worth laying out additional six so that you can
00:15:16.760easily categorize these in your head. So let's jump right into these note. I think the majority
00:15:22.260of the additional sins that are going to be laid out
00:24:28.980spent one hour actually doing meaningful work instead of being so sleep deprived and stressed
00:24:33.360out that you could only do 15 minutes of actually productive work that day, even though you were in
00:24:37.680an office for like 12 hours. It lowers your overall efficiency, right? Like at least forms
00:24:43.800of indulgence can help you stay sane, feel rewarded, feel motivated. Busy work does not
00:24:50.220do that, right? It's a really good point. And so it is a worse sin and more of a sin to call out
00:24:55.140in your partner in yourself than other forms of of sin it is this is for sure my biggest
00:25:02.180like it's your biggest sin by far it's your only sin really i don't see you sin in any other way
00:25:09.480than busy work well i think it's and but this is where i need advice on this sin is i feel like
00:25:14.800often i lack the judgment in really understanding where i should be putting my time and focus i
00:25:20.140mean i think that you know perfectly well when you're doing something that doesn't actually
00:25:25.120need to be done as frequently as you're doing it, but you do it as an indulgence in the same way
00:25:29.420that I play video games as an indulgence, because you feel that you won't be able to hear yourself
00:25:33.860think as you say, if you don't do it. The question is, are you on being honest with yourself about
00:25:39.500how much of that busy work you need to do to hear yourself think and how much of it is just
00:25:44.000performative? Well, I guess what we do is I check in with you a lot. I should check in with you more
00:25:51.180on like help me balance this out and sanity check this and probably having a third party it could be
00:25:55.960a person ideally you know like your spouse or something but it could also probably be an ai
00:26:01.060if you're operating independently yeah just evaluating it yeah which which is one of those
00:26:07.580things was like that's not in the bible like the bible they didn't have busy work at the time of
00:26:12.560jesus it just wasn't a sin that he needed to warn people about right so simone's gonna mention a
00:26:16.800passage that could be taken to mean this which i love that there are passages and then in addition
00:26:21.840to that passage you could also take the parable of talents from matthews to be about this or you
00:26:28.740could take luke 10 38 to 42 martha and mary to mean this and this is just really cool that you
00:26:36.340do actually see this in parts of the bible was but martha was distracted with much serving and
00:26:42.980she went to him and said lord do you not care that my sister has left me to serve alone to her
00:26:48.940then to help me but the lord answered her martha martha you are anxious and troubled by many things
00:26:55.760but one thing is necessary marcia has chosen the good portion which cannot be taken away from her
00:27:01.400but again even if this is a parable against busy work it's often not in a salient context when i'm
00:27:08.980like a church have i and i used to go to church every week did i ever come away thinking busy
00:27:15.940work is a sin gotta make sure not to do that no i think the there was a passage you read when we
00:27:21.720talked about societal morality about not suffering publicly yeah not suffering performatively that is
00:27:30.300an extreme vice in the united states again like bragging about sleep deprivation this is this is
00:27:38.120not in the busy work category of sin this is in the i'd say no no because people brag about the
00:27:45.140hours they were oh i work 60 hour weeks right but this isn't this isn't that this sin is very
00:27:49.860different so this is the aplomb sin which means not acting with aplomb is sinful i'm sorry we've
00:27:57.340moved on to a new one yes so this covers a number of emotional states which are adopted for purely
00:28:06.800indulgent reasons, it don't actually help you. Oh, like acting exasperated or. Yes. You are
00:28:13.940taking on a negative emotional state, which causes negative externalities for everyone around you.
00:28:19.620It causes your children, your spouse, your coworkers to be less happy, to be less productive.
00:28:25.960It causes you to be less happy and less productive. When at the end of the day,
00:28:29.500emotions are generally a choice. You can choose how you contextualize, you know, you get fired
00:28:35.120from a job, for example, you can say, oh, woe is me, right? Or you can say, oh, well, this is
00:28:42.320exciting. Now I get to try to look for something new. Now I get a change of pace. Now I get a new
00:28:46.480challenge. I mean, people are like, well, what if something truly bad happens? Like what if
00:28:50.440Simone died, right? Then it is extra upon me to not act with sadness and with grief. Because if
00:28:59.220I do that, who suffers? Who suffers from that? The people who are going to suffer the most,
00:29:05.120are going to be my kids and they just lost a mom. Okay. Yeah. Do they also want to have
00:29:12.440an absent, emotionally ruined, angry, grieving, sad, bereft father? Like you don't want to lose
00:29:19.840two parents, you know? The implication of this sin is proportional to the severity of the loss
00:29:29.340that you have undergone is to very the time when you need to act with the most aplomb and no this
00:29:35.800isn't generic happiness aplomb this is you know acting with plucky continued diligence and move
00:29:43.200forwardness like a happy soldier those are the times when it is the bleakest for you when can
00:29:50.740you least afford to have self-pity is when you just got fired and have a family to support
00:29:55.980Exactly. When can you least afford to act with these other forms of indulgence? It is when you most feel them, right? And so don't wait until something really bad happens to adopt this. And I've noted here, I've watched some Mormon influencers and they complain that Mormons are told to do this, right?
00:30:15.060Oh, yeah. Alyssa Grenfell explicitly goes on about how it's really messed up that there's sort of a limited amount of grieving that is considered socially acceptable within the LDS church and like per like traditions and the way that funerals go and memorial services.
00:30:32.740yeah and it's really interesting to hear her talk about that when we would see that as such as like
00:30:38.900a huge huge sign of the church's good taste there are other moral rules that we've been talking
00:30:45.480about internally that were like man this backfired like they completely did this the wrong way like
00:30:51.080setting certain standards either contemporarily or historically that just are being completely
00:30:57.200misconstrued or have been outsized to out sorry outsourced to outside authorities like saying oh
00:31:02.640we don't watch rated r movies but then having this completely unassociated non-mormon body
00:31:06.800determine what the r rating is this is actually where this this today's sort of tracked because
00:31:14.060we don't remember the tracks anymore so this is technically a techno puritan track but it's
00:31:17.220applicable to all christians or people more broadly came from which is we were talking about the words
00:31:22.700of wisdom which is where like don't do this stuff is laid out by joseph smith and some of this is
00:31:26.480useful like the be happy thing other of it is just wasteful like don't drink hot liquids like
00:31:32.660coffee and stuff like that like at the time they thought that it had like negative health effects
00:31:37.280but we now know that it doesn't it actually has positive health effects and it's been very well
00:31:41.220studied so it's like oh like we should have a techno puritan words of wisdom we should have
00:31:45.540something where i try to go through and future proof these so i don't i don't know if it was
00:31:50.660negative health effects it might have been that it was recognized that caffeine was addictive or
00:31:54.800that was an unnecessary expense that didn't yield, you know, caloric benefit. But for whatever
00:32:00.920reason now, even if like caffeine, it's the thing to be avoided, which from a health perspective
00:32:06.680doesn't make sense because it's, it's broadly seen as having health benefits on the aggregate
00:32:11.860aside from being addictive, though it is quite addictive. Now you have all these Mormons drinking1.00
00:32:17.540heavily caffeinated, often dirty sodas, you know, very high in calories, not helpful calories and1.00
00:32:23.760not drinking coffee like a zero calorie you know moderately healthy drink if you don't put a ton
00:32:31.360of stuff in it it's clearly something that's not being optimally construed as a word of wisdom
00:32:37.640absolutely yeah so we're like let's let's build these but try to make them better and future
00:32:44.720proof so also you guys can warn me if i ever do something in a tract and you're like that could
00:32:48.680have really long-term negative ramifications yeah we want to know if if the community becomes like
00:32:54.660really big and fanatic because i always try to think how is a fanatic going to operate on this
00:32:58.700right like if somebody goes down that pathway 200 years from now right and that's also why the tracks
00:33:04.480take so long to produce is because i need to go through you know everything i'm saying it's like
00:33:08.280how could a fanatic twist this but the happiness thing i just see is and for people who aren't
00:33:13.840aware of this they can be like well isn't it like a part it's like useful to grieve it's useful to
00:33:19.300experience negative things it's useful to experience anger and sadness and it's like it's strictly not
00:33:24.420um we know from studies that like if you punch a wall when you're angry you have a harder time
00:33:30.020in the future controlling your anger if you let yourself cry like just have a cry when you're sad
00:33:34.860you're going to cry at lower thresholds in the future uh the reason for this is when you stop
00:33:40.020yourself from these forms of emotional indulgences, you are activating the inhibitory
00:33:44.000pathway in your prefrontal cortex, which gets stronger with each activation. If you have not
00:33:49.500frequently activated it, you are incredibly susceptible to intrusive thoughts and intrusive
00:33:57.260emotional states, um, which puts you like, it's just, this isn't even just a for your family
00:34:02.940thing. It's just worse for you because presumably being sad or being stressed or going over about
00:34:09.400how hard you're working these days I probably would you say I work harder than anyone you know
00:34:15.180or yeah you absolutely work harder than anyone I know you wake up at 2 a.m in the morning to start
00:34:21.160working and you work through every moment of the day that I ever see you like I mean people might
00:34:26.920take an hour every day to chill and I mean this is also like it's not that you have some kind of
00:34:32.540period where you're unwinding while like making dinner because I do that like you have almost
00:34:38.120zero winds down time unless you're like hauling out trash or hauling in groceries for the family
00:34:44.180yeah so but do you ever see me complain about how overworked i am no never no i've never heard you
00:34:52.580talk about being overworked whistle while you work right i work with happiness i work constantly and
00:34:58.540i work with happiness and that's an easy thing to do because there is no moment in your entire life
00:35:03.540will you ever feel as good as when you are suffering and sacrificing for a well thought
00:35:10.660through value system that is the greatest happiness that any human has access to and the
00:35:16.340people who chase directly after hedonism even when they have all of the resources they could ever want
00:35:21.200as i've pointed out they live the most tortured lives who are the people i have met who live the
00:35:26.280most tortured lives they are the famous actors and actresses you know they're they they have
00:35:30.600for people who live pure lives of leisure all the fame very scary all the sex all the partners all
00:35:38.180the respect and yet they are mentally destroyed and they often die of drug overdoses and stuff
00:35:43.580like that and are seeing a thousand therapists and are living states of mental terror they are
00:35:49.460terrorized by their own mind because of this because they went down a pathway that was not
00:35:56.040based on sacrificing through hard work and with a plum for attempting to make the world better
00:36:03.640and when you see actors who clearly do live by that you typically see them live very happy
00:36:11.340fulfilled lives consider like mr rogers for example like he wasn't like he clearly had like
00:36:17.280a moral value system and he attempted to push it through his show to advance human society
00:36:24.620and you didn't see him like get addicted to drugs and crash out in a parking lot somewhere right
00:36:30.900we are rewarded for making these sacrifices and exhibiting this self-control and you will
00:36:38.040be rewarded for fighting sin even within this expanded category so a lot of people we did a
00:36:43.400video recently about people who did like gang bangs and the horror shows that their lives can
00:36:48.140descend into when people wanted us to be like angrier or speak about them was more discussed
00:36:54.440And it's like, this is, oh, it's not something I'm drawn to.
00:36:58.460It's not a sin that I'm tempted by, thankfully.
00:37:01.200But in addition to that, like their lives compared to the lives that Simone and I and
00:37:18.500How am I going to, and I want to help them and I can offer them guidance, but there's
00:37:23.600only so much I can do. And so I think, you know, when you see the end state of what happens to
00:37:30.700these people and what it's like to be them, it's a lot harder to be, to look at them with so much
00:37:36.780anger. When you accept that the additional rules that we live by are not arbitrary restrictions
00:37:41.460that make our lives harder and are just meant to make society a better place or something,
00:37:46.140but actively improve our own lives it's a lot harder to hate somebody for breaking those rules0.77
00:37:53.820for being a sinner so next moral absolutism is the next thing this is allowing primitive or
00:38:04.540overtly extreme signs of acting moral to override what is actually moral right this is where0.98
00:38:14.060the Vatican says, oh, just bring in endless immigrants because the Bible said you should0.59
00:38:20.260feed foreigners and you should feed the poor. And so we're going to maximize that line out of0.93
00:38:25.920context. And through that, we're going to bring in endless foreigners and who cares what long-term1.00
00:38:33.240impact this is going to have on the people we're bringing into the country, right? Who cares what1.00
00:38:37.240long-term impact that's going to have on their family when the citizens get pissed off and they
00:38:40.980decide to deport them and they have kids separated from their parents and that all could have been
00:38:45.260avoided if you just hadn't brought them in the first place or you leave them in the country and
00:38:50.120they end up overtaxing the social safety net and then pensioners don't get their pensions
00:38:53.620and people who relied on social security in the country don't get their social security and they
00:38:57.640start to death like there are negative externalities from this and this sort of moral absolutism
00:39:05.720you see whether it's coming from the vatican because it's often very indulgent right it is
00:39:11.820it is moral hedonism as we've defined it it's saying oh i'm the good guy here right like i'm
00:39:17.160doing the good thing without considering the consequences it's saying i have some deontological
00:39:21.720this is why i always crash out about the deontology because what deontology really does
00:39:24.660is push the cost of your moral purity onto outsiders when you say i won't ever kill and
00:39:34.720then an intruder breaks into your house and rapes one of your kids because you wouldn't fight back
00:39:39.860and this like functionally really happened when they're like pirates happened in around philadelphia0.84
00:39:44.600and the quakers wouldn't wouldn't force oh yeah along historically people were terrorized and
00:39:50.740brutalized because at the cost of their moral purity right that is functionally evil right
00:39:58.160because and they are as responsible or more responsible for those atrocities in the pirate
00:40:04.580themselves and there are ways of approaching non-consequentialist frameworks that prevent
00:40:10.880the extremes like thomism which i'm not particularly against it just feels like a weasel out for me it
00:40:17.840feels like a way of framing morality where you don't have to deal with the potential extremes
00:40:25.180of either consequentialist or non-consequentialist world perspectives and i guess that's good in that
00:40:32.720it doesn't have the extreme negatives, but I also feel like it doesn't accept the full moral weight
00:40:37.960that is important to accept of a moral framing. It just uses a bunch of rules to carve off the
00:40:43.880extremes. And the rules feel arbitrary and non-morally weighty to me. I think any real and
00:40:49.420good moral system is going to push you to positions that a normal person would be mortified by,
00:40:56.800because I think real moral conviction looks like that. It looks like something where other
00:41:02.640people say oh my god like why why why are you doing this it's like this this then this if
00:41:09.340something removes through whatever amount of thing any choice that goes against a person's
00:41:17.000intuitions i think it's removing moral complexity and i think we can see in the bible that god's
00:41:23.520clearly not a thomist when he punishes someone like saul for not killing literally everyone and
00:41:29.400they're animals of the enemy tribe that's not within the bounds of thomas essex yes self-defenses
00:41:35.640but something like that isn't because they said and note here people had asked on a call i should
00:41:41.100lay this out here there are times when a group having these beliefs these moral absolutist
00:41:48.200beliefs exerts a negative externality on society in times when they don't and the difference between
00:41:52.800the two is whether or not they are power hungry and why they are exerting the moral absolutism
00:41:58.520So a good differentiation here is Amish pacifism does not exert an externality on society because Amish don't seek power for themselves.
00:42:08.740They almost never hold elected office and they often don't even vote unless they're actively being victimized as they have been in the most recent few election cycles.0.73
00:42:16.380Whereas Quakers disproportionately historically held positions of power.0.95
00:42:20.920And so they're able to say, even though it's not Quakers who the police would be intervening on behalf of, oh, don't go do that.1.00
00:42:27.740and we see this not just from the vatican we see this from wokes all the time you know this0.98
00:42:33.680oh i'm doing the more moral thing because on a surface level it looks more moral and i'm just
00:42:38.360maximizing these surface level rules or we can even see it on a when people go and spam racism
00:42:44.600or anti-semitism in ways that isn't like this is where we need to be asking some serious questions
00:42:49.900about israel but where they're trying to show off right this is a very smooth brain thing to do
00:42:54.940because these are groups that we're going to have to work with in the future, right? Like0.84
00:42:59.660clearly, if you look at their fertility rate, their level of influence, you're going to need
00:43:04.040to find a way to work with places like Israel and the Jews long-term, whatever cultural group you
00:43:09.860are. And there is a big difference between just spamming something like, oh, I'd go to war with0.94
00:43:15.040them in a second. If I couldn't, the dumbest thing America could do, but some conservative0.99
00:43:18.220influencers have actually said that. I'm like, you idiot. Like think about the long-term1.00
00:43:21.760implications of that i'm not smart yeah it's it's extremely stupid and you could oh even if you what0.99
00:43:29.740purged what's your real and game even if you purged every jew right do you know what happens0.99
00:43:34.480when you purge every jew from a country right they go to other countries and you know what those0.99
00:43:39.580other countries do with those now angry jews they build atomic weapons that's what we did0.97
00:43:45.660okay when we look at leaders historically what they have said is yes the jews might be an outside0.93
00:43:53.080group yes they might not always be aligned with us but there are ways that i can utilize that
00:43:57.040community for my long-term benefit which we saw was people like oliver cronwell bringing the jews
00:44:02.540back to england to better fight the expansion of romanism and i think that that shows like what
00:44:10.200how how to think about this stuff without even if you have an outside group even if you have a group
00:44:18.580that has at times victimized you is worth considering okay with all of that being true
00:44:25.000what's actually the best long-term path going forward for me to signal
00:44:30.200next inaction inaction is a massive sin in the modern age and very very important to note it's
00:44:42.820when you say i will do and this is the most common form of it i will do x thing after i've
00:44:50.660accomplished y thing when y thing is not a necessary prerequisite for x this is very
00:44:55.380different from traditional sloth because traditional sloth you're not doing it because
00:44:59.800you're lazy. Inaction is something like saying, well, once I have the right body, like once I'm
00:45:06.520skinny enough and hot enough, then I'm going to start dating. Or once I'm certain that no one's
00:45:12.580going to make fun of me if I do this or that I'm 100% certain that I'm right. Like we're not certain
00:45:19.920about anything. We're just trying to move in the least incorrect direction possible, but we believe
00:45:26.820that it's sinful to not move forward at all. Whereas a lot of people are like, well, if I'm
00:45:31.160not absolutely certain that I can move forward in the morally perfect way, I'm not going to move
00:45:36.720forward. And we think that that is, that is a form of inaction, right? Even if we're moving
00:45:42.880forward in like a slightly wrong direction, in the end, we're going to be closer to the morally
00:45:47.520good thing than you are if you've not moved at all. If you are like, but I don't have the
00:45:52.820information yet right like if you're in a state like the one this one come up with what tests do
00:45:57.360you need to run to get that information yeah not having enough information should never be a reason
00:46:02.620to not move forward anymore if you're a boss you've had the employee who you come to them you
00:46:06.860gave them a task and they go oh sorry i stopped like 20 minutes into the task when i realized i
00:46:13.660didn't know how to do like stage two or something or stage three and you're like what the is wrong
00:46:18.480with you right like genuinely i feel this way sometimes i'm like you should have either
00:46:23.280immediately come to me when you stopped right and i would have told you what to do next or
00:46:28.180figured it out but now he's talking about me he's he's just talking about me yeah oh you have done
00:46:34.400that a few times recently i'm not i actually wasn't thinking of you but it is yeah you were
00:46:37.680it's okay because it's something that you i wasn't i was thinking of other employees but
00:46:42.900you have done this a few times recently and it's a massive sin when done to yourself because
00:46:47.480ultimately we're all our own bosses and if you ever reach something and you're just like i'm not
00:46:52.300sure then develop a heuristic for how you get to the next step when you're not sure it can be as
00:46:57.760simple as asking your favorite ai model yeah just go to your favorite ai model and say two out of
00:47:02.900three models go to reality fabricator that's our ai site and type in hey we have some that run like
00:47:10.580multiple models on a thing x or y and it will run multiple models and it'll cross check the answer
00:47:16.020for you for the best answer right like that's a fun way to approach this and you can do that right
00:47:21.720like we have the technology that you should never ever be stuck on any question and this is where
00:47:27.380I've got annoyed at Simone when I like came back to her and I was like okay so where are you on
00:47:30.500next task and she's like I got stuck at like stage three and I'm like well then go to an AI right
00:47:36.440because I'm just gonna go to an AI when you kick this back to me so why don't you go to an AI right
00:47:40.600but oh well this was on getting the r5 component ready for apple computers which she had to do
00:47:45.300and now it works by the way for apple for people who want to use it for like coding on apple and
00:47:48.800stuff and to be fair the our third stage of doing this i did finally get around to
00:47:55.360just doing that and not giving it back to until it was done no matter how many times it failed
00:48:01.460but yeah but this is and this is why i'm expanding the list of sins this form of inaction is
00:48:08.820functionally as bad as sloth and is more of a temptation for most people than sloth well and
00:48:14.960again like i think the big theme that differentiates your sins is that you have this extra
00:48:22.600prejudice justified toward virtue signaling sins anything that you know people had that in it if
00:48:31.460you read the freaking new testament like we did in the last chapter yeah like yeah make sure when
00:48:35.820you're giving money you don't do it in a way that is overly performative make sure when you're0.55
00:48:40.120fasting you don't fast in a way where other people can tell that you're fasting because that's overly
00:48:44.680performative make sure when you're praying you don't do it in a way that's overly performative
00:48:49.380because that's really bad like this is made clear in the spirit of what's listed out there it's just
00:48:56.680not explicitly listed out so people have well yeah i think it's maybe people missed it because
00:49:03.480it's not so explicit it's more just like hey don't be flashy when you do when you engage in
00:49:09.500self-deprivation or like active acts of piety it doesn't have an explicit proactive prohibition on
00:49:17.960general virtue signaling yeah it's just like oh when you do these things be be subtle about it
00:49:23.240which of course people miss that too but this is a whole different level of stuff next sim
00:49:28.160self-flagellation this is when you are hard on yourself or allow yourself to experience
00:49:36.160negative emotions when in the past you acted either there's there's two types of self-flagellation
00:49:44.500justified and unjustified self-flagellation i think even justified self-flagellation is a sin
00:49:49.720but we'll get to how in a second okay so if within any moment of your life you made a decision
00:49:56.760based on the information you had available to you and in a way that was directed towards
00:50:03.460long-term human flourishing or the good of the individual you were doing it from like it could
00:50:07.680be how you're raising your kids how you're treating your wife anything like that right
00:50:10.840and it leads to some negative outcome right who feel bad about that is enormously sinful because
00:50:18.940it's indulgent it's it now this is one of the hardest sins to avoid and just knowing that it
00:50:26.100is a sin like just laying it out as a sin in technopuritanism i think will help people better
00:50:30.860categorize these emotions and compartmentalize these emotions so they do not overwhelm you
00:50:36.080i mean the wasted emotion of them doesn't overwhelm you but what when is it actually
00:50:40.600justified to feel bad when you acted in a way historically where you've had full access to
00:50:47.640information or was the information you had at the time and you acted in a way that was not
00:50:54.140in accordance with that information or that was designed not for long-term human flourishing
00:51:01.340but for some personal benefit this is where you know you knew you probably shouldn't have gotten
00:51:07.780that fancy car when finances were tight but you really wanted to show off to people so you got
00:51:13.180the car even though it had no functional utility to your family and now your family's suffering for
00:51:19.380that, you have permission to take time to meditate on those past failings so you don't do them in the
00:51:29.380future, but to not overindulge. This should not be more than 10 minutes of emotion, okay? You need
00:51:37.240to move past this, and since you have created a scenario for yourself, all you can do is move
00:51:43.160forwards. The only iteration of yourself that you can do good for are iterations of yourself that
00:51:49.560have yet to come to exist. And you are suffering or living a life of rewards for the actions of
00:51:56.100past iterations of yourself. And this is how Simone sees sort of actions. Like we're constantly
00:52:01.780changing a new person with every moment, with every second of the day, and you're constantly
00:52:06.000paying it forward to the future you. Yeah. Well, and Ari, is this iteration of you that is acting
00:52:11.420right now that you're consciously experiencing going to be going to go down in history is like
00:52:17.760a war criminal in your massive army of instances or a hero that did something good that moved you
00:52:24.860all in a good direction you have a chance to be a hero you have a chance to be you know a mutineer0.87
00:52:31.200what are you gonna do next one here is a fun one the indulgence of sin
00:52:35.920the indulgence of sin is the sin of for no reason other than to test yourself or because you think
00:52:47.980you are honing yourself and making yourself stronger you needlessly expose yourself to
00:52:55.620temptation so an example of this would be now this isn't normal daily sorts of temptations like
00:53:03.140tv erotic images all of these things they're going to be all around you in modern society you do
00:53:09.100have to be able to resist them to live a normal life right to not crash out the people who crash
00:53:15.720out at the slightest exposure to one of these things and people are like what if my kid sees
00:53:20.100x online and i'm like bro if your kid loses it to like something that every kid is going to see
00:53:26.080within 10 minutes of opening the internet your kid's probably in a pretty bad place in terms of
00:53:31.600how you structured their value system and the rules that you laid out for them. So a good example
00:53:38.480of this for someone like myself could be, you don't have the same temptations that I have. You
00:53:44.440don't live with the same temptations that I live with, but naltrexone, an opioid agonist I take
00:53:48.880daily, which prevents me from feeling my opioid pathways, which makes it much harder for addictive
00:53:53.640things to get their hooks into me. I could, if I wanted to just be like, and some Christians are1.00
00:53:58.340like this. They're like, oh, don't, you know, blunch yourself to the temptation, right? Like0.99
00:54:03.560that's a bad thing. And it's like, why not? Like when I have the technology to do this,
00:54:08.360I should do it. If a person knows that they heavily struggle with alcohol in a way that's
00:54:15.160going to cause them to die or something like that, having a fully stocked liquor cabinet is
00:54:20.180not a moral necessity for them. Yet in terms of the temptations that Christians expose themselves0.98
00:54:26.600to i have noticed some think it's like cool or something to do this right it's not cool it leads
00:54:33.840to long-term negative consequences the only types of exposure that you need to make sure you're okay
00:54:40.340with is the types of exposure that you're going to experience anyway and and that can be tied to
00:54:47.600recreational sins that you've accepted so an example of this can be i believe playing video
00:54:54.560games is sinful in that it is an indulgence that doesn't move human society forwards but i think i
00:55:00.320would like mentally break down if i didn't have any recreational time so um and note i often play
00:55:05.960video games while i'm working my normal way to play video games is while i have an episode running
00:55:10.060so that i'm editing it right you know so i even try to do it like while i'm doing something else
00:55:13.700or when i watch anime i'm often vibe coding right like i try to but these are still sinful i could
00:55:18.580be more focused for example so it's about balancing your efficacious pursuit of your values
00:55:27.580with whatever it is that keeps you happy and motivated and productive and sometimes
00:55:32.520our long-term values when we pursue them are so abstracted and sort of built on delayed
00:55:40.500gratification that the bodies we've evolved to live in can't really keep us motivated like we
00:55:45.940have to create minigames to trick our bodies and to keep going video games are a sin that i'm like
00:55:53.140i will take that sin because i know that it doesn't like consume my entire life right like
00:55:59.200video games and anime do not consume my entire life and so i am able to engage with them in a
00:56:04.020way that i can't engage with for example alcohol when i'm off naltrexo and i think many people can
00:56:09.260relate to pornography in this way some people can engage with pornography in a way that's just
00:56:13.580totally like oh a once a week thing or something like that right whereas other people it's like
00:56:20.540they see it and now it's all they can think about right if you're the type of person where you see
00:56:25.340it and now it's all you can think about maybe don't put horny pictures of women all over your
00:56:29.700house right like if you're the type of person that struggles with gambling maybe don't live
00:56:33.900right next to a casino right and as someone has pointed out it's gotten a lot harder with these
00:56:37.260online betting sites and stuff like that i i think of all of the sins of modern society gambling is
00:56:42.920the worst so be aware of that if you have it the reason why i think it's the worst is it is one of
00:56:48.020the only sins that can destroy your life and the life of everyone around you in like 10 minutes
00:56:54.000very few sins even like a heroin addiction typically takes i don't know six months or
00:56:59.740something right like but gambling that's like just over generational wealth can be gone so it's
00:57:06.800something that i think that people should never engage with gambling is one of those things where
00:57:10.860It's one of the things where it's like, okay, when I'm choosing the sins that I choose to indulge in, which one should I just not do?
00:57:18.480Gambling is like the easiest one, okay?
00:57:20.860One I'd add here that actually came from a recent episode when I was talking to Simone and we were like, well, they didn't even end up enjoying the gangbang that they went to.
00:57:28.440And she goes, well, you know, maybe they went just to see if they would like going.
00:57:31.600And I said, but I don't want to know whether or not I like gangbangs.
00:57:35.400Like I can tell as an outsider, I don't.
00:57:37.460I do not like seeing other men naked or having, but if, if I was genuinely uncertain, I still
00:57:46.080would not want to know because even if I was a completely indulgent person who just, you
00:57:52.220know, did things like gangbangs recreationally, they still take a lot of effort, carry a lot
00:57:58.060And so I think we should also just outline as a sin going out and doing something just
00:58:04.940to see if you like it when it would be a net negative to your life to find out you like that
00:58:12.060thing this includes things like skydiving free climbing gang bangs gambling is an easy one here
00:58:21.420you don't never be like oh well i went to gamble to see if i enjoyed it you know i tried heroin
00:58:26.220to see if i enjoyed it just don't do it next empty words so empty words the sin of empty words
00:58:34.940is when a person is trying to engage or you're trying to engage because sins, our own sins
00:58:41.560that matter the most, when you're trying to engage somebody else in a conversation that
00:58:46.440doesn't either entertain them or move their ideas forwards or share information with them
00:58:53.140or develop your and their understanding of the world, morality, science, et cetera, all
00:58:59.440conversations and all words should have some purpose.
00:59:02.560Now, it could be to make them happy. It could be a joke or something like that. But when you come to somebody and you say something like, here are the things I did today, and that's not relevant to them, you have stolen a portion of their life. You have fractually murdered that person.
00:59:19.360worse are empty words that are designed to try to bring another person down to your negative
00:59:26.120emotional state this is like compounding where you come to a person and you tell them about
00:59:31.240something negative that happened to you to try to like venting complaining trauma dumping
00:59:37.600all of that is horrible a horrible sin you are trying to offload your trauma your pain to another
00:59:46.320person you can say well what if you need to talk about a trauma to get over it it's like you don't
00:59:49.740need to if you just don't contextualize it as traumatic the studies have shown you won't
00:59:54.240experience it as traumatic we always talk about this study but there's a famous study where they
00:59:57.660looked over people's experiences of trauma in use and they correlated their stated experiences of
01:00:04.120trauma in use correlated with their negative behavioral patterns as an adult their mental
01:00:08.260stresses as an adult everything like that but when they went over the court records to see
01:00:10.860who really experienced trauma and who didn't completely discorrelated from anything as an
01:00:15.200adult, people who experience demonstrable trauma. Like I would be someone like that. If you look at
01:00:19.580my childhood, it was horrifying. Like we're actually talking with a team that's like doing
01:00:25.660research on us and I'm going through my childhood and they were like, wait, that sounds horrifying.
01:00:31.140Like, why aren't you more focused on that as a traumatic event? And I say, because how does that
01:00:36.860help me to be? There would be a pure negative externality to everyone around me. Next.
01:00:45.200and this is a big one and i really encourage people to one look for it in themselves and
01:00:51.180look for it in their partners right if you if you're in a techno puritan relationship
01:00:54.220work on this right next unnecessary status signaling easy i probably shouldn't even need
01:01:00.860to say it but all status signaling is sinful right except for when it is necessary for like
01:01:07.440a job or something like that and be very careful you don't use lies about what you say is necessary
01:01:14.800to indulge in status signaling that isn't actually necessary you for almost no job do you actually
01:01:22.080need anything other than a bare bones car right for example and yet many people buy and a used
01:01:28.960bare bones car will buy fancy things that they simply do not need in the same category as status
01:01:35.680signaling is the sin of in-group signaling this is signaling how punk you are how goth you are
01:01:42.380how whatever in group you want to accept you even how techno puritan you are to other techno
01:01:47.200puritans it is when you engage in this signaling in a way that hurts your long-term goals and
01:01:53.300ability to affect society so an example might be a face tattoo or something like that even if there
01:01:58.500was a techno puritan face tattoo you could get it would be strictly sinful to get it because it would
01:02:04.320lower your efficaciousness in society i talked it over with simone to think if there's any sins that
01:02:09.480we're missing here, and we came up with a few more. First is the sin of entitlement. This is to
01:02:16.960believe that you are owed anything by either other people or reality itself. Be that dignity, a good
01:02:25.640life, health care, being treated with respect. No one is owed anything, and to believe you are
01:02:32.160is a grave sin. Second is the sin of indulgent nostalgia. This is allowing nostalgia to indulge
01:02:42.860rumoration rather than focusing on trying to recreate those sorts of experiences for the next
01:02:49.680generation, in which case it can be good. The final is rumination more broadly, just the sin
01:02:56.460of rumoration this is overly focusing or giving weight to any emotion that you are feeling that
01:03:04.900you didn't choose to feel this like as simone put it when we were walking this morning she goes today
01:03:11.020people will be like i'm sad that means i should do something about it i should take pills or
01:03:17.120something when really it's just not particularly relevant how you feel it's usually not particularly
01:03:22.880relevant to what you need to accomplish or what you need to do the final one i'd include here is
01:03:27.180one of the biggest potential sins is risking a human's life for happiness or a thrill or for
01:03:35.200some emotional subset this could be you know recreational sex is one thing that could cause
01:03:41.380a human's life to come into existence and then you feel put in a position where abortion makes
01:03:45.980sense to you but this also includes things like skydiving bungee jumping free climbing anything
01:03:52.260where you are putting your own life at risk meaninglessly for just a thrill next
01:03:57.740corrupted mercy and this is the biggest and we can get to this another day because it goes
01:04:04.960long this section we're going to be talking about the bible and a place where i'm just going to say
01:04:10.540the bible needs to be updated on this point there are many places in the bible where it explicitly
01:04:16.460says give food to the poor yes even foreigners yes don't let that trouble you and i think that
01:04:24.720that made sense morally as we talk about like things in the bible the bible in the past said
01:04:29.580sell your daughter that's how you sell your daughter into sex slavery this is how you know0.84
01:04:33.920you treat your slaves this is how you act when you conquer people and have to slaughter all0.75
01:04:38.800infants right you know all of those things right those those parts of biblical morality have
01:04:46.560changed as society has changed and this isn't because the underlying morality of the bible
01:04:52.340has changed the goals of all of these have always been the same the iterative change to human
01:04:57.440civilization they've made have always been the same but it's because humanity in the way that
01:05:01.900we live has changed and that has changed the rules that are best to live by to live a virtuous
01:05:08.740life within the social norms of your era and i think that this is one area where we need to look
01:05:13.560at what's in the bible and i'd actually say we there's no way around this there's no linguistic
01:05:19.000way around this we just need to accept that in the time of jesus and in the time of the old
01:05:23.940testaments there was not enough charity in the world to the extent that people were suffering
01:05:28.820and so the bible had to signal boost charity but today we live in a time where charity has reached
01:05:34.900such an extreme that it is leading to more aggregate suffering and we will get to that next
01:05:42.540oh that might actually make a whole other tract we'll do a whole other tract on that
01:05:47.740oh that's a good idea useful stuff we need to write this down and think about it an hour now
01:05:52.800won't that be fun yeah i mean remember while the bible tells you to be merciful it also says be
01:05:58.120merciful just as your father is merciful and keep in mind that god did punish a guy by taking away
01:06:04.880his title is king because he didn't kill literally everyone in a settlement even though he did kill
01:06:11.800all the babies he did that part didn't kill everyone so whatever is meant by mercy here
01:06:17.780is not the standard definition of mercy and that's worth meditating on as we go into this
01:06:22.500next section love you simone i love you too