The Michael Knowles Show - Ep. 1981 - Leftist Streamer Hasan Piker Subpoenaed Over Controversial Cuba Trip

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00:00:14.180 The federal government has just subpoenaed left-wing streamer Hassan Piker over his

00:00:19.080 recent trip to Cuba, during which he bragged about violating federal law.

00:00:23.220 After calling for Piker's arrest for at least eight months, I am welcoming this news as if

00:00:31.460 Christmas came early. Then, speaking of Christmas, Pope Leo teams up with Anthropic to release his 0.99

00:00:37.900 much-anticipated first encyclical specifically about AI. And unlike virtually every person

00:00:44.600 commenting on this today, I actually read the encyclical. So we will get into how Christians 0.91

00:00:49.120 should view our impending transhuman robot dystopia. Then, speaking of simulacra of human 0.99

00:00:56.000 beings, 12 new statues of heretofore unsung Revolutionary War soldiers, the so-called

00:01:02.940 ordinary men who built our country, go up in Washington, D.C., near the White House,

00:01:08.980 just in time for Memorial Day in the 250th anniversary of our country.

00:01:13.200 And I am honored beyond measure to say that one of them is my great, great, great, great, great grandpa, Simon Knowles.

00:01:21.200 But I am Michael Knowles, and this is The Michael Knowles Show.

00:01:23.680 welcome back to the show you know there was a shooting at the white house you remember that

00:01:46.640 we i think we mentioned this briefly at the end of last week shooting at the white house

00:01:50.420 and the Secret Service took down the guy. He had a rap sheet a mile long and a bystander was hurt,

00:01:56.400 but I think is okay. And the reporters who were doing live shots from the White House lawn,

00:02:01.900 they all reacted differently. But one gal who was with NBC reacted in the most oblivious,

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00:03:18.200 to catholicmatch.com today and find your forever. So much to get to today. This is what happens

00:03:27.020 after a long weekend. So I hope we have time. I'm going to have to speak at a Shapiro pace today

00:03:32.700 in order to get through everything. First though, Hassan Piker has been subpoenaed

00:03:38.360 by the federal government, Hassan, along with Code Pink, this over their trip to Cuba during

00:03:45.200 which they brag about violating federal law. Here is the left wing streamer who has called for

00:03:51.700 violence against conservatives many times. Here is his reaction. The news is not great. Okay.

00:03:58.820 I mean, it's bull, still not great that, you know, they're, they're after your boy. They're

00:04:05.240 up my ass and i'll obviously get into it right now i'll tell you all about it free me i can't 0.99

00:04:11.620 believe i'm saying that but uh but i'm i'm you know i'm about to be uh seemingly made an example 0.99

00:04:18.340 of okay he goes on that's the super cut of piker's reaction to this and he's he's playing it up a

00:04:25.820 little bit to try to make himself a martyr though you know when you're a martyr it means you're

00:04:31.040 killed for doing something right, for doing something good. You were nevertheless killed

00:04:35.400 for that. In this case, Hasan Piker did something wrong. The specific reason that he's being

00:04:40.420 subpoenaed, it would appear, is because he took a trip to Cuba. We have an embargo with Cuba.

00:04:46.000 We have all sorts of federal rules and laws about how we interact with Cuba. And it doesn't mean

00:04:51.340 that you can't go. I personally have been to Cuba too, but there are rules that you have to follow.

00:04:55.300 One of those rules is you are not permitted to stay at government hotels in Cuba. That violates

00:05:01.020 the Cuban embargo, and it helps fund this communist regime, which has been an enemy 0.61

00:05:06.020 of the United States for 60 years. And Hassan Piker not only did that, he bragged about doing 0.64

00:05:10.300 that. When you go to Cuba, you're supposed to say it's something called a casa particular,

00:05:13.540 which is a way to give money to the actual Cuban people, not to the Cuban government.

00:05:18.240 When you state these government hotels, they could be five-star hotels, but the government

00:05:22.620 is just taking all that money. So anyway, he bragged about doing that. Now he has been subpoenaed.

00:05:27.100 But I've been calling for Hassan Piker's arrest for months and months and months,

00:05:31.000 going back about eight months.

00:05:32.320 And I think this is really crucial.

00:05:34.600 Hassan Piker has called for violence against even the murder of conservatives.

00:05:40.000 Hassan Piker has called for the murder of Rick Scott, Republican senator.

00:05:44.600 He's called for the murder of Tom Cotton, another Republican senator.

00:05:47.400 These aren't even particularly extreme Republican senators.

00:05:50.080 These are very moderate, middle of the road, totally mainstream Republican senators.

00:05:54.380 Hassan Piker has called for their murder.

00:05:57.100 Hassan Piker, I mentioned, I think some months ago now, I mentioned that off the top of my head,

00:06:02.760 I could think about almost half a dozen reasons why one would arrest Hassan Piker.

00:06:08.040 On top of all of that, we know he hates our country. We know he says America deserves 9-11.

00:06:13.220 He's just terrible for our country. He didn't really grow up here. He grew up in Turkey.

00:06:17.460 He comes back here. He was an anchor baby, and then he grows up in Turkey.

00:06:21.320 Then he comes back here for college and to enrich himself. He's a multimillionaire,

00:06:24.600 but he's really, really bad for our country. And so it would be great if we could deport him.

00:06:29.640 I'm not saying it's likely that we could deport him, but it would be good. There's no reason

00:06:32.740 that we should leave him in our country. He's very, very bad for America. And on top of that,

00:06:37.460 he's committed crimes and bragged about committing those crimes. And so I think it's really important

00:06:41.880 to punish him, not in a vigilante way, not in a way that's unjust, but in accordance with the law,

00:06:47.680 we should punish him to the extreme. This is going to be a little break between the conservative view

00:06:53.780 and the libertarian view. The libertarian view, who knows? I don't want to besmirch the libertarians.

00:06:58.780 Maybe some of them will be just as giddy as I am if Hassan Piker is arrested. But the view that

00:07:04.140 focuses more on lowercase l liberalism is going to say, no, no, we should never be too harsh on

00:07:12.000 our enemies or our opponents. No, no, we need to protect free speech in the absolute. Even if

00:07:18.580 someone calls for the murder of senators, by golly, that's why James Madison wrote the

00:07:22.380 constitution was to defend calls to murder. And obviously none of that is true. But the conservative

00:07:27.600 view says, no, no, no. The threat to our country is not the threat of authoritarianism. The greater

00:07:35.180 threat to our country is the threat of libertinism. The greater threat to our country is a total

00:07:39.940 abolition of limits. We will get to the abolition of limits when we talk about the papal encyclical

00:07:45.340 on AI. But the greater threat to our country, the conservatives hold, is that we're going to lose

00:07:50.440 all of our standards. We're going to lose all of our norms. We're going to lose all of the

00:07:53.520 structures that make a country a country. Just like a poem cannot really be art if it doesn't

00:07:59.300 have any limits. Limits like rhyme. Limits like meter. Just like a poem can't really be art if

00:08:05.000 it doesn't have limits. So to a country can't really be a country if it doesn't have limits.

00:08:08.500 Limits like a border. Limits like laws. Limits like standards and norms and social structures.

00:08:14.780 In this case, yes, Hassan Piker needs to be made an example of.

00:08:19.860 But again, that's not unjust.

00:08:22.220 He committed crimes, and he needs to be punished for that.

00:08:25.540 But he does need to be made an example of.

00:08:27.820 I think of this like broken windows policing in New York.

00:08:31.300 When Giuliani became mayor of New York, the city was an absolute sewer.

00:08:34.960 There was crime everywhere.

00:08:35.960 There was filth.

00:08:36.760 It was like most Democrat cities today, because it had been a Democrat city for a long time.

00:08:41.740 And Giuliani comes in and he implements broken windows policing.

00:08:46.540 Broken windows policing, which says when you see something just a little bit wrong,

00:08:51.420 you see a vagrant on the street, you see a guy committing a relatively low level offense,

00:08:56.080 you see a broken window. You don't do what the liberals would do and just kind of ignore it.

00:09:01.600 You don't do what the squishy conservatives would do and just say, oh, well, it's not that

00:09:04.840 big a deal. Who really cares? Let's not go after that guy. Let's focus on the real problems. No,

00:09:09.340 no, no. It's like the butler in the first season of The Crown. It's in the little things that the

00:09:14.600 rot begins. So when you see a broken window, you fix that window. You fix all the problems that

00:09:22.640 led to that broken window. Because when you fix the little things, the big things get a lot better.

00:09:28.420 This is really, really good. If Hassan Piker is imprisoned or Mirabile Dictu, could you imagine

00:09:34.560 how wonderful it would be to say deported, if that were to happen, that alone would vindicate

00:09:41.380 10 years of the MAGA movement. There's a lot else that vindicates the MAGA movement,

00:09:45.500 but that alone would do it. Because I think we all recognize, not just the right-wingers,

00:09:50.160 but centrists, disillusioned liberals, even some people who are on the left,

00:09:54.540 center left. We realize that something has really gone rotten in the country

00:09:59.200 where every day we are insulted, we are disrespected, our sovereignty is compromised.

00:10:04.980 We have a country that is worse day by day, it seems, over the last 30, 40 years.

00:10:12.400 And we want to turn that around. We don't want to fall into terminal decline.

00:10:16.800 And it is so insulting to the American people that an anchor baby who comes here,

00:10:22.200 who says that America deserved the worst terror attack in our history, 3,000 people deserve to die 0.98

00:10:26.700 at the World Trade Center, who says that Republican senators should be killed,

00:10:31.280 who insinuates that ordinary conservatives should not be able to go out on the street

00:10:34.560 without fear for their lives. It is so insulting that that guy is allowed to blab his flabby mouth 0.91

00:10:40.420 all day long on a live stream without any legal consequences while he flagrantly violates our

00:10:44.760 laws. So this is really, really good. I'm glad he's been subpoenaed by the Treasury. Again,

00:10:48.520 that's not an arrest yet, but he should be arrested and he should be prosecuted.

00:10:51.740 Okay. Now, speaking of humanity, speaking of restoring order and re-implementing human

00:10:58.940 flourishing, really important story came out just yesterday, which is that the Pope has released

00:11:06.260 his first encyclical. The encyclicals are the big written works that the Popes regularly release

00:11:12.320 on important social and religious issues. And this one's long been anticipated because this

00:11:17.520 one was about AI. In fact, the Pope launched it with a major AI company founder, with the founder

00:11:23.340 of Anthropic. And this one's also really important because the Pope took the name Leo, Leo deriving

00:11:29.180 from the last Leo, Pope Leo XIII, whose pontificate was largely about industrialization, the massive

00:11:36.800 technological and labor changes that were coming about in the late 19th century. The Pope choosing

00:11:42.040 that name clearly is a nod to the massive fourth industrial revolution that we find ourselves in

00:11:46.600 right now, big part of which is AI. And the Pope had really interesting things to say about it.

00:11:52.120 A lot of people are calling this the encyclical on AI. It's really not. It's an encyclical about

00:11:59.180 humanity. It talks about AI a lot, but it talks about AI to draw a distinction that even many

00:12:05.360 conservatives are missing between artificial intelligence and real intelligence, between

00:12:11.040 artificial persons. Some people are saying AI is conscious or it has personhood. Fake persons

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00:14:53.440 Let's get into the Pope's encyclical.

00:14:55.460 The encyclical is called Magnifica Humanitas, Magnificent Humanity.

00:15:00.500 The thesis of the encyclical is that, and these are his exact words,

00:15:06.160 in the era of artificial intelligence, when human dignity is threatened by new forms of dehumanization,

00:15:13.720 ours is the pressing duty to remain profoundly human.

00:15:18.000 That's what this is about.

00:15:20.200 And it was a similar issue back in the original Industrial Revolution when Pope Leo XIII was

00:15:25.960 writing his encyclicals, the most famous of which is called Rerum Novarum, New Things.

00:15:31.920 During the first Industrial Revolution, people felt less than human. They were being treated

00:15:37.460 as mere cogs in a machine rather than as human beings, proper subjects endowed with rights.

00:15:44.600 And so this is where you get the beginning of Catholic social teaching.

00:15:47.600 This is where you get not only the left-wing critiques of capitalism, capitalism, which is a polemical word promoted by Marxists, but where you get even right-wing critiques of capitalism.

00:15:56.080 We say two cheers for capitalism.

00:15:57.720 We love markets.

00:15:59.480 We love private property.

00:16:00.540 All of these things are very, very important, but we cannot put the cart before the horse.

00:16:04.220 We cannot treat human beings as commodities merely to be traded, which you see in the labor market, which you see in the baby market, which you see really errors spreading throughout.

00:16:13.880 So now in this, what is being called the fourth industrial revolution, the industrial revolution that involves AI and computing and robots, it's very, very important to remain human.

00:16:24.640 Some people have wondered about this pope.

00:16:26.220 Is this a good pope or a bad pope?

00:16:28.240 Is he conservative or is he liberal?

00:16:30.200 Is he a leftist?

00:16:31.400 And again, left and right, those terms don't really map neatly onto the church because those terms come from the French Revolution when the people who supported the church sat on the right side of the National Assembly.

00:16:41.560 and the atheists and the secularists sat on the left side. But nevertheless, it's a real question.

00:16:46.200 I read the encyclical yesterday. It was a good read. There's some stuff that's a little sort

00:16:51.240 of dubious and a little kind of codes politically liberal. But overall, it's a really, really good

00:16:57.160 and important encyclical. I'm just going to give you the highlights of it. We must lovingly

00:17:02.220 safeguard the grandeur of humanity bestowed upon us and revealed in its fullness in Christ,

00:17:06.900 the splendor of which no machine can ever replace. This is really important,

00:17:11.320 especially for Christians, because we're in this age where we want to transcend the limits of our

00:17:16.460 bodies, where we want to transcend the limits of our humanity. You see this a little bit in

00:17:20.320 the transgender movement, where men want to become women, where we say the body doesn't 0.91

00:17:23.760 really matter anymore. You see this definitely in the tech revolutions, where people are talking

00:17:28.600 about transhumanism, that we're going to augment our bodies. We're going to become cyborgs. We're

00:17:32.360 going to upload our consciousness and live forever. These are profoundly anti-human ideas

00:17:37.880 and ideologies. It's not that we hate technology. The Pope writes in the encyclopedia, he says,

00:17:43.060 no, technology can be a good thing. We're not afraid of human knowledge. The Pope was actually

00:17:47.220 a math major, so he uses a math analogy in there. But what we want to do is use technology

00:17:54.900 to fix some of the problems of the fallen world, to fix defects, to alleviate suffering,

00:18:02.360 in a way that is human, but we don't actually want to transcend our humanity. And here he explains

00:18:06.540 why from the Christian perspective, that's so important. Because God is a man. Because God

00:18:12.940 becomes a man. He takes on flesh and dwells among us. The central fact of Christianity

00:18:18.600 is the incarnation. And so it is totally incoherent. It is downright sacrilegious 0.76

00:18:26.180 for human beings to say that we want to transcend humanity. Humanity is good enough for God,

00:18:33.620 but it's not good enough for us. That is a profoundly sacrilegious idea and desire.

00:18:39.900 And indeed, it hearkens all the way back to the Garden of Eden when the serpent tells Eve,

00:18:44.760 you shall be as gods. The first attempt to transcend humanity. So the Pope has partnered

00:18:51.840 here with Anthropic, which is one of the AI companies. Here he is announcing the sort of

00:18:58.200 partnership. In a special way, I'd like to thank Mr. Ola for accepting our invitation.

00:19:05.900 In turn, in the name of the church, I accept your invitation to walk together, to listen and to speak

00:19:13.880 and together to find the way for humanity in this time of artificial intelligence.

00:19:21.840 What a great sign of hope it is that with our differences, we can listen to one another.

00:19:34.880 This interchange clearly bespeaks the gravity of the moment, as well as confidence that together

00:19:41.120 we can discern the major questions of our time, and so the future of humanity.

00:19:48.000 Okay, so why anthropic? First of all, these comments are being misreported. They're saying

00:19:51.620 that the Pope said he's going to work together with Anthropic. He doesn't say, this is walk

00:19:55.700 together. We're going to walk together, the church and this AI company. So the founder of Anthropic

00:20:01.740 is not becoming a cardinal or something. He's not a theological advisor to the Pope. But they

00:20:06.240 announced this encyclical together. And you say, why Anthropic? Anthropic is kind of a weird company

00:20:10.900 because they have this ideology of effective altruism, effective altruism, which kind of

00:20:17.820 peaked around 2012 or so. Its reputation has been damaged because it was embraced by the fraudster

00:20:23.160 Sam Bankman-Fried. But effective altruism, on the one hand, I guess it's altruistic.

00:20:27.920 In principle, it's thinking of other people. But the philosophy and ideology undergirding

00:20:32.960 effective altruism is totally contrary to the Christian view. Effective altruism is fundamentally

00:20:37.700 a utilitarian ideology, which in fact does treat people as mere instruments, and which in fact the

00:20:43.580 Pope lambasts, he lambasts utilitarian consequentialist sorts of ethics in this

00:20:49.080 very encyclical. So why is he partnering with Anthropic? I think it's a little simpler than

00:20:56.520 what some people are speculating on. I think the reason that they brought Anthropic in for this

00:21:01.980 encyclical is because Anthropic, more than any of the other AI companies, has issued warnings about

00:21:08.500 AI. Anthropic is the one that said, we've developed this bot that we're so afraid of,

00:21:14.860 we're not going to release it to the public, and we don't know what we've made, and this could be

00:21:17.840 Frankenstein's monster, and we need to be very cautious here. And so if you have a little bit

00:21:21.900 more of a low, maybe cynical view of Anthropic, you say, yeah, look, this is a tech company that's

00:21:26.500 trying to promote its product, and it's trying to say it's so wonderful and magical that we need to

00:21:30.120 be really careful because we may have just accidentally invented a god. However, the very

00:21:35.340 fact that Anthropic is saying, hey, we need to be cautious about how AI is developed. I think

00:21:40.480 that fact alone explains why the Vatican has brought them in to announce this encyclical.

00:21:45.280 So the Pope begins the encyclical with two images. He said there are two images to keep in mind.

00:21:49.840 There's the image of the Tower of Babel, and there's the image of Nehemiah rebuilding the

00:21:54.880 walls of Jerusalem. Those are parallel images because so much of the tech revolution and AI

00:22:01.960 and robotics and all this seems like people are trying to build a tower of Babel. We're all going

00:22:07.100 to speak the same language. We're going to reach heaven. We're going to build a tower all the way

00:22:11.240 up to heaven. We're going to make ourselves into gods. And that's really bad. But there's another

00:22:16.420 image of building in the Bible, which is Nehemiah in the second book of Ezra. And Nehemiah rebuilds

00:22:21.620 the walls of Jerusalem. And the way he rebuilds the walls of Jerusalem is not through this

00:22:25.700 centralized, antichristic kind of effort where you're going to try to supplant God. The way he

00:22:30.020 rebuilds the walls of Jerusalem is he goes to individuals and to groups of people. He says,

00:22:34.020 you build this part of the wall, you rebuild this part of the wall. And crucially, God is at the

00:22:37.920 center of all of it. And that's the difference. The Tower of Babel is human unity without reference

00:22:47.500 to God. And the walls of Jerusalem is human unity totally centered around God. And that's the

00:22:57.260 crucial point here of how we think about AI. So we'll get into just a little bit from the

00:23:01.060 encyclical. Then we will get to a very exciting thing that happened in Washington, D.C. But first,

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00:24:19.880 So, the encyclical is reasonably long, but it begins with this whole history of Catholic

00:24:27.840 social teaching from Rerum Novarum, from Leo the 13th and 19th century onward.

00:24:32.620 And here are some of the observations that Leo makes.

00:24:35.780 Technology is never neutral because it takes on the characteristics of those who devise,

00:24:39.720 finance, regulate, or use it.

00:24:41.600 Therefore, the primary choice is not between a yes or no to technology, but rather between

00:24:46.500 constructing Babel or rebuilding Jerusalem.

00:24:49.260 This is key.

00:24:49.880 a lot of people, even so-called conservatives, they seem to think technology is just neutral.

00:24:55.980 You know, it's just a fact. It's just improving people's lives or whatever. No, no, no.

00:25:02.560 Implicit in technology, all sorts of philosophical premises, first principles.

00:25:08.240 Indeed, the people who build the technology push those principles onto society. So we need to

00:25:14.000 carefully scrutinize all the ideas that are going into this technology. You especially see this

00:25:18.920 with AI. The whole reason that Elon created Grok, according to his PR, is that all the other AIs

00:25:24.660 were really woke, and Grok is not supposed to be woke. So Elon's acknowledging, look, the AI

00:25:29.760 systems have all of the prejudices of their founders in them. Now, the funny thing about

00:25:36.560 this is you can't build an AI system without prejudices because you can't have an intellect

00:25:40.500 that's purely a tabula rasa. You have to come in with some first principles. It's not that we

00:25:45.740 arrive at first principles through a process of thinking. It's that we can only think when we

00:25:51.920 begin with first principles. Certain things are axioms, like in mathematics. In mathematics,

00:25:56.380 you have to just assume certain things in order to do any mathematics at all.

00:26:00.880 The same is true with technology. So he goes on, he talks about the universal destination of goods.

00:26:06.020 This is really crucial because the commies say, your property is mine. Give me your property. 0.79

00:26:10.980 Belongs to me. That's what Mamdani says. Hey, you didn't build that. Give me that. Give me your 0.95

00:26:14.020 property. The hardcore laissez-faire capitalists say, no, no, no, we all have an absolute right

00:26:19.580 to private property, and we don't have any obligations to our neighbors, and don't you

00:26:23.720 come anywhere near my property. The Catholic Church has this beautiful via media, which

00:26:28.720 happens to be correct, which is that private property is good. You do have rights to property.

00:26:35.580 Pope John Paul II says in his encyclical Centesimus Annus, which was written on the

00:26:40.340 100th anniversary of Ray Room of Arm. He says free markets are awesome. Free markets are great.

00:26:45.000 They are clearly the most efficient way to allocate resources in a society. But nevertheless,

00:26:50.200 there is still a universal destination of goods. No one gets to claim the water or the air or the

00:26:55.640 land entirely for himself because these are goods that come from God, and God does not intend for

00:27:00.620 a single individual to monopolize all of them. So there is a universal destination of goods,

00:27:05.700 but there is private property within those things. And so what's novel here about what

00:27:10.420 Pope Leo is doing is he says, we have to consider the universal destination of goods

00:27:15.040 when we're considering data and algorithms too. Just as in the first industrial revolution,

00:27:21.920 we're talking about the capacity to produce, we're talking about money or whatever.

00:27:28.120 So too, in this economy, in this technological revolution, what about all those data?

00:27:33.180 What about all those algorithms, the algorithms that even impel people's decision-making?

00:27:37.760 Right now, all of that is in the hands of very, very few people, and they do not have an absolute right to that.

00:27:44.220 A handful of tech oligarchs do not have an absolute right to your data, to the algorithms that shape your decision-making.

00:27:50.400 No, no.

00:27:51.060 We need more participation from everybody else as well.

00:27:55.760 He then talks about the principle of subsidiarity.

00:27:57.680 The easiest way to think about subsidiarity is with regard to our federalist system, which is subsidiarity says that decisions that can competently be made at the local level, at the level of the individual or the family or the local community, should be made there and should not be appropriated by higher level.

00:28:13.520 You don't want a totalitarian state.

00:28:15.620 This is how our federal government operates, or it's how it's supposed to operate, which is that if the towns, if the families can make a decision for themselves in an effective way, leave it to the families, leave it to the individuals.

00:28:24.960 then leave it to the local communities, then leave it to the states. And only at the most

00:28:29.500 difficult questions that can't be resolved locally, then does the federal government step

00:28:32.720 in. All great stuff. Leo also points out, he says, when words are simulated by an AI robot,

00:28:39.340 they do not build genuine relationships, but only their appearance. This is crucial.

00:28:45.900 Human beings communicate. We have communion with one another through words, through these signs

00:28:51.880 and symbols that take us from our own private intellects into the minds of others. And AI can

00:29:00.060 seem to replicate that, but it's very different. Talking to your mom and talking to the AI bot

00:29:04.840 are fundamentally, essentially different things. Because when the words are merely simulated,

00:29:10.300 they don't build genuine relationships. You're not really dating Claudia, Richard Dawkins.

00:29:14.160 You're not really in a relationship with a robot. It's not really conscious.

00:29:17.260 he then goes on he says the risk extends beyond the misuse of certain technologies

00:29:22.180 more gravely the pervasive technocratic paradigm in which we are immersed that is amplified by ai

00:29:28.680 threatens to normalize an anti-human vision he's anti-technocrat no no no we and this is crucial

00:29:36.020 he says human being when efficiency becomes the ultimate measure of value human beings are tempted

00:29:40.260 to see themselves as a project to be optimized rather than as persons called to relationship

00:29:45.440 and communion. These are the people who make idols out of health, the people who make idols

00:29:50.320 out of productivity. These are the weirdos who say, well, I only eat this one type of food,

00:29:55.560 and I never have a glass of wine because that would decrease my productivity by 0.07%,

00:30:02.440 and it would decrease my REM sleep by 4%, and that way I won't be totally optimized,

00:30:07.900 and I won't be totally looks maxed, and I won't be totally efficient.

00:30:10.740 You say, that all might be true, but you're not just a project to be optimized. You're headed

00:30:17.520 for the grave anyway, despite the utopian visions of the tech founders. So you're here to live.

00:30:23.420 What's the purpose of life? Is the purpose of life to optimize you and turn you into a cyborg so that

00:30:27.740 you can live forever in this artificial way? Or is the purpose of life communion, relationships

00:30:33.360 with others, charity, and ultimately really to live forever with your maker? Totally different

00:30:39.660 visions. It's important to recall that communication, quote, is not only the transmission

00:30:44.620 of information, but it is also the creation of culture. So crucial. The news media, and especially

00:30:51.040 the AI companies now, bear a massive responsibility because the communication of information is not

00:30:56.520 merely neutral. The communication, communication as such, does not merely transmit data points from

00:31:03.820 one mind to another. It creates culture, and we cannot forfeit our entire culture over to a

00:31:11.940 handful of weirdos in Silicon Valley. Okay, so there's some stuff in the encyclical that's a

00:31:16.580 little dubious. He says that just war theory is outdated. I would like to hear more of an

00:31:20.780 explanation from the Pope on that point, just war theory, which has been part of the Christian

00:31:25.020 understanding since the beginning, actually since before Christianity. There were some lines about

00:31:30.100 migrants and whatever, but mostly it's about AI. Okay, before I move on, just a few points that I

00:31:34.300 think are really crucial to keep in mind. The Pope says, it is not possible to provide a single

00:31:40.960 comprehensive definition of AI. What can be stated, however, is that we must avoid the

00:31:45.220 misconception of equating this type of intelligence with that of human beings. These systems merely

00:31:50.740 imitate certain functions of human intelligence. In doing so, they often surpass human intelligence

00:31:54.960 and speed and computational capacity, offering tangible benefits across many fields. Yet this

00:31:59.880 power remains entirely tied to data processing. You have to remember, artificial intelligence

00:32:04.580 is artificial. It's not real. And so the people who say that AI is going to become conscious or

00:32:10.280 whatever, become a real person or something, they fundamentally misunderstand what the intellect

00:32:16.300 is. There are some people who say, well, yeah, it's not like human knowledge yet. It's not like

00:32:21.340 human intellect yet. No, if you're saying that, you fundamentally misunderstand what the intellect

00:32:26.240 is. The intellect is a power of the rational soul. The intellect is immaterial. It's not

00:32:32.460 just computers. It's not just electrons firing off. The intellect has to be immaterial because

00:32:40.240 the object of the intellect is understanding. That's what the intellect is for. It is

00:32:45.180 understanding. And so what the intellect does is it looks at specific things and tangible things,

00:32:50.540 And then it abstracts universals from them, universals which are immaterial.

00:32:56.200 So it looks at any matter of social phenomena, and it abstracts things like justice.

00:33:01.660 It looks at my Tumblr, and it abstracts the form of the cup.

00:33:05.260 It deals in universals, and a material thing cannot deal in an immaterial substance.

00:33:13.240 So AI can do a pretty good job a lot of the time of simulating human intellect.

00:33:18.200 but it fundamentally is not and never can be the same thing as human intellect.

00:33:25.500 And we are going to be tricked by that. We are going to be tempted. We are going to be deceived.

00:33:29.760 A lot of people already have been. Pope issuing a very important warning on that point.

00:33:34.380 He says, we cannot be satisfied with merely calling for the moralization of machines,

00:33:38.540 the so-called alignment of AI with human values. People who say, look, AI, yeah, it can't be

00:33:42.520 neutral. That's why we need to inject it with morality. No, no, no. He says, that's not going

00:33:45.660 work if we don't also have the courage to insist on a further condition, the possibility of openly

00:33:51.460 discussing the ethical frameworks involved and subjecting them to shared standards of social

00:33:56.080 justice. So some of the AI guys will say, no, don't worry, we're going to make the machines

00:33:59.380 moral because we're going to inject them with effective altruism. We're going to inject them

00:34:03.680 with utilitarianism. We're going to inject them with progressivism. Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. That

00:34:07.600 doesn't make them moral. In my mind, it actually makes them quite immoral. But obviously the next

00:34:13.880 step that we have to get into is what are those ethical systems? We need transparency here. We

00:34:19.140 need open source ethics for AI. He goes on. He says that herein lies the radical departure from

00:34:26.400 Promethean dreams, referring to Prometheus, the Greek myth in which Prometheus brings man fire

00:34:34.840 and technology. It says what saves humanity is not enhanced self-sufficiency, but a relationship

00:34:40.260 that liberates, a communion that transforms. A technology that merely classifies and optimizes

00:34:45.440 what already exists can, however, unintentionally become an obstacle to change and growth.

00:34:52.960 This is really, really crucial. The Promethean vision is we're going to get some technology

00:34:59.180 and we're going to overcome our fallen condition that way. The Christian vision is no. No, you're 0.82

00:35:03.860 Now, think about work. The Pope, I think I pulled out the part where he talks about, yes, he says,

00:35:11.580 work remains a fundamental dimension of the human experience for not only is it a means of

00:35:15.220 sustenance, but it is also a context for expression, relationships, and contributing

00:35:18.780 to the community. Therefore, the problems related to work extend beyond the income necessary for

00:35:22.800 family survival. Think about it this way. In Genesis chapter three, verse 17, I think it is,

00:35:29.740 17 through 19, God says, hey, Adam, the land is cursed because of you, because of your sin,

00:35:37.000 because of your abuse of free will. And so because of this, by the sweat of your brow,

00:35:42.080 you're going to eat for all the days of your life. You have to work now. In the garden,

00:35:46.500 you didn't have to work. You got to walk with God. But now you have to work. And this is viewed as a

00:35:51.320 curse. But it's actually not a curse. God doesn't actually curse us. God saves us. God loves us.

00:35:57.420 God is love. God is always blessing us all the time. And so, from the perspective of the fall

00:36:04.500 of man, which is caused by man, which is caused by our abuse of our free will, the obligation to

00:36:10.600 work, the necessity that we work, is actually a blessing. Because in a fallen world with a

00:36:17.180 defective will, the idle hands are the devil's playground. We need to work. We derive more from

00:36:24.400 work than our income. We derive some of our identity. We get to use our talents. They are

00:36:29.420 directed. We get to engage in excellence. Work is very important. And the techno-futurist utopians

00:36:35.300 who say that we're just going to solve the problem of work forever, and we're going to have a few

00:36:39.760 people who are really productive because they built all these robots, and then everyone else

00:36:43.240 will just pay you to go away. We're going to give you a UBI, a universal basic income. You're going

00:36:47.480 to have a million robots to do it. You're not going to have to do anything. That, ironically,

00:36:51.360 is not a blessing. That's the Promethean promise of a blessing, but it's ironically actually a

00:36:56.920 curse. And so the Pope is calling us to consider that. This is really, really important.

00:37:03.360 AI is amazing. It's wonderful. It's funny. Trump was just asked about AI, and he's really focused

00:37:07.740 on the Iran war. So he said, what do you think about such and such with AI? He goes, AI is

00:37:11.300 amazing. Iran can't get a nuclear weapon. He immediately flips it. And in many ways, forget

00:37:15.720 about Iran. That is how we should think about AI. Yeah, AI is amazing. It's really cool. I can use

00:37:20.120 it for research. It comes up with all sorts. I use it for research sometimes. It's really cool.

00:37:25.140 But I am a human. I am a human. The AI is not a human. I have a life that is different from the

00:37:31.520 life of a robot. And I need to keep my eye on man's ends, our natural ends and our eternal ends,

00:37:38.040 both of which are totally different from the AI utopian vision. I would say, obviously,

00:37:43.860 there's some things that are a little, cause you to scratch your head in the encyclical. Overall,

00:37:47.520 very, very good stuff. I feel quite vindicated on hoping for the name Leo at the papal conclave.

00:37:54.780 I did, you know, I love to say, I told you so in this case, I called the name before the name

00:37:59.000 was announced, Pope Leo, because of Pope Leo XIII, in large part because of these challenges that we

00:38:03.120 face. And I think this encyclical is really good. I encourage you to read it, or at the very least,

00:38:07.660 to send your friends this summary of what it says. Okay.

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00:38:39.900 Now, speaking, the very same day, you see this clip going around on social media

00:38:45.260 of one of these guys, Stephen Bartlett, talking about how he won't have a glass of wine because

00:38:49.080 he has to optimize his life for productivity and efficiency. We'll get to that momentarily.

00:38:52.680 First, I want to tell you about Neil Fachman, one, two, three, four, who says, my favorite

00:38:57.680 comment from Friday, he says, I'm in Ohio, and I'm mailing in about 10 votes for Spencer Pratt.

00:39:03.500 Love it. I'm glad someone's learning a lesson from the Democrats. Let's go.

00:39:08.960 You know, get all your dead relatives to vote for Spencer Pratt, too. That's how you really

00:39:12.260 stick it to the libs. Okay. Stephen Bartlett, who I guess is a podcaster, YouTuber. I don't know.

00:39:19.680 I'm kind of out of it. You know, me, I read old books and I watch the Yankees. For someone who

00:39:24.420 has a daily show in the culture, in politics, I actually don't pay attention to a lot of stuff

00:39:28.240 that goes on in the culture and politics. Here is Stephen Bartlett explaining how two glasses

00:39:33.220 of wine ruined three days of his life. It's one of those areas where you don't understand the

00:39:38.140 hidden cost until you really give it up for a while and and i think about my own relationship

00:39:42.760 with drinking and i stopped drinking at 30 years old i'm now 33 and i had just drank because i just

00:39:47.860 drank i'd never ran the experiment of just giving it up for a while and i and then like i don't know

00:39:51.820 maybe i was at 31 i thought you know i'll have a drink again because now i could really a b test it

00:39:55.920 i had a year of not drinking decided to have a drink again it ruined three days of my life i had

00:40:01.040 a couple of glasses of wine didn't get drunk it ruined three days of my life because of the domino

00:40:06.000 effect it caused so it meant that i got worse sleep that night and then because i got worse

00:40:09.760 sleep that night i ate more poorly the next day because my my dopamine system or whatever the

00:40:14.240 cortisol system was all messed up and then i podcasted worse i didn't go to the gym the day

00:40:20.160 after that day or the day after because of that because i felt really bad i then slept worse and

00:40:25.360 i could track all of this on my week hashtag ad hashtag sponsor hashtag investor whatever

00:40:28.800 yeah and i was like oh my god those three glasses of wine had this hidden domino effect that i must

00:40:34.720 have been living with for my whole life bro what look i don't know if you have a problem with

00:40:43.280 alcohol or something then some people should never drink if they if they can't drink in a moderate

00:40:48.300 way but what you hold on you had two glasses of one you didn't get drunk but you you have some

00:40:55.740 weird gizmo robot thing on your wrist like it looks like a watch but it's not it's something

00:41:00.140 more than that, and it tells you that your cortisol was up, and then you didn't sleep well,

00:41:05.280 and then you had a hamburger the next day, and then you didn't podcast as much, and then

00:41:11.320 it ruined three days of your life. Bro, chill out. Have a glass of wine. Have a glass of wine

00:41:19.940 and have a cheeseburger. What is your life for? First of all, the idea that alcohol is wrong

00:41:27.020 in itself would seem to be contradicted by the fact that our Lord's first public miracle

00:41:33.900 was making lots of really good wine for people who had already been drinking for days.

00:41:41.540 So if wine is good enough for our Lord, it's good enough for me. Now, if you don't have some

00:41:48.500 addiction problem with alcohol and it's just you want to podcast harder the next day, I guess I

00:41:54.140 would have to ask you, what is your life for? I remember I saw a special on this 20, 25 years ago

00:42:00.480 of these people who eat 800 calories a day. They look anorexic. They're very, very emaciated.

00:42:05.900 And they say, this is because if you restrict your calories significantly, it causes less

00:42:10.480 cellular damage. And their theory, at least, I don't know if it's real or not, their theory

00:42:14.640 was that you would therefore live longer. And my response to that, of course, is, yeah, but why?

00:42:20.240 What are you living for?

00:42:22.080 If you're fasting for God,

00:42:25.560 if you're fasting for any greater purpose,

00:42:28.400 but certainly the greatest purpose, God,

00:42:30.100 okay, good, that's one thing.

00:42:31.320 Yeah, everyone needs to fast sometimes.

00:42:33.400 But if you're fasting for yourself,

00:42:35.880 for the God of yourself,

00:42:37.020 I would have to ask why.

00:42:38.480 Because breaking bread is an important part

00:42:41.620 of human communion, of society,

00:42:45.120 of our real purpose,

00:42:46.160 which is that we are social creatures.

00:42:47.920 We are intended to live together.

00:42:49.660 and this points to greater purposes. If you're not going to have a couple glasses of wine

00:42:54.400 with some friends because you want the gizmo doodad on your wrist to go beep boop a little

00:43:01.200 higher the next day when you wake up and because you want to podcast harder or whatever, I would

00:43:06.200 have to ask yourself, are you not making an idol out of lower things? To me, having a little

00:43:11.840 communion with your friends and your relatives is much more important than some dumb podcast

00:43:16.980 or the beep boops that you get on your watch when you log into your app after you have a nighty-night

00:43:22.920 sleep. You are not a machine to be optimized. You're a human being, and you need to act like

00:43:30.160 it. Totally pathetic. Now, speaking of tougher men from past ages, one of the most amazing 1.00

00:43:38.960 experiences of my life took place a few days ago. I was in D.C. at the end of last week. I happened

00:43:44.020 to be in D.C. for a dinner. I'm not even traveling all that much right now compared to my usual

00:43:48.580 schedule, but someone was in D.C. I was flying out to have dinner, and I'm in D.C. I get a tip

00:43:56.180 from someone involved in a group of statues that were going up as part of the 250th celebration of

00:44:03.280 America. It's in this place called Freedom Plaza, and it's right by the White House, right by the

00:44:08.320 Willard Hotel, very famous hotel in D.C., pretty close to Washington Monument. And I was told to

00:44:15.040 go there at a certain time at night and to pay attention to the first statue coming off the truck.

00:44:20.820 And I see these are revolutionary war statues. And I look up, and the first one being lifted

00:44:26.980 off the truck is a statue of my great, great, great, great, great grandfather, Simon Knowles.

00:44:33.740 And I don't get all that emotional,

00:44:35.760 certainly not in public.

00:44:37.140 I was totally overwhelmed.

00:44:38.880 I actually, I'm more than messed it up at this.

00:44:42.820 We found out about Simon's service

00:44:44.300 because my grandpa was a genealogist

00:44:46.880 after he retired from the Navy

00:44:48.080 and from his job after the Navy.

00:44:49.780 And so the only way we found out about any of this

00:44:51.860 is because there was a Revolutionary War pension application

00:44:55.780 that my ancestor filled out in 1832.

00:44:59.220 And he died shortly thereafter.

00:45:01.120 But everything we know about his service comes,

00:45:02.600 It was written in his own hand, and it was submitted, and he gets his pension from him and his wife.

00:45:06.220 And what really matters about this politically, beyond a feeling of pride or honor for my family,

00:45:12.960 is that my ancestor, Simon Knowles, he was not some famous general.

00:45:17.160 There are lots of statues to Revolutionary War, famous heroes all around Washington, D.C., all around the country.

00:45:22.940 But my guy was an ordinary soldier.

00:45:25.320 He was an enlisted guy.

00:45:26.360 he fought from the Battle of Bunker Hill in 1775 through major campaigns crossing the Delaware

00:45:31.500 after Washington to Trenton, Princeton, Saratoga, all the way down to the Battle of Yorktown. He

00:45:37.940 was discharged honorably by Washington at Newburgh. He was a guy. He was one of the

00:45:42.500 enlisted guys who didn't get all the great accolades. And this display that's gone up for

00:45:48.520 the 250th has 12 kind of ordinary soldiers, many if not most of whom have never had any kind of

00:45:56.340 statue or monument before. This all surrounding a big statue that was reclaimed after BLM toppled

00:46:02.820 it of Caesar Rodney, the founding father. It's just a beautiful, beautiful display.

00:46:08.160 And I really like it, especially the timing around Memorial Day is so important because

00:46:11.640 in the 250th anniversary of our country, we need to remember all the great heroes,

00:46:16.600 the Washington, Adams, Jefferson, Madison, Hamilton. We need to remember these great

00:46:21.680 figures of our history who are constantly maligned by the left and by the people who hate America.

00:46:28.060 But we also need to remember, and I think maybe it's especially important for us to remember right

00:46:32.140 now, the unsung heroes, the ordinary guys. Because this country was not merely built by George

00:46:38.080 Washington and John Adams. It was built by countless unsung, largely unknown heroes who

00:46:45.400 just did their job, they sacrificed, and they built our country quietly out of a sacrifice for

00:46:51.440 us and for their posterity, which you even read about in the preamble to the Constitution,

00:46:55.860 that this is for the founding generation and their posterity. In the statue of Simon,

00:47:01.380 it's really beautiful. The artist who made it, I think he got a lot of the info because I did

00:47:06.740 a video for the White House about the ordinary soldier about Simon. And in it, it mentions that

00:47:12.640 when Simon died, he was a farmer. He didn't have basically any money. And one of his only

00:47:17.840 possessions was a sword that had been given to him by his father. And in the statue, it's Simon,

00:47:22.820 who enlisted at age 15, a young boy, just sort of looking at the sword, contemplating the sword

00:47:27.700 that he inherited from his father. And it's so profound. It's a really, really beautiful piece

00:47:32.900 of art, beautiful installation, and something for us all to consider. That sword, physical or

00:47:38.100 metaphorical, that we've inherited from our ancestors, whose names are forgotten. Simon's

00:47:43.840 father, John Knowles, actually died from his wounds that were inflicted at Bunker Hill as well.

00:47:48.880 We need to think about that. We need to think about our place. And in the future, what statues

00:47:54.780 there might be to us? Centuries down the line, long after we're forgotten and recognize that

00:47:59.860 we need to make these sacrifices, not so that there are statues someday, but for the country

00:48:03.700 that we all love, for the political community that we live in, for those who are closest to us,

00:48:07.620 and for the fact that we're called to live in society and to protect all the goods that are

00:48:12.080 around us. Okay. So much more I want to get to. I really want to get to this NBC girl

00:48:17.100 with the White House shooting, but I don't have time. We'll have to get to it tomorrow

00:48:21.140 because today's Tee Hee Tuesday. The rest of the show continues now. You do not want to miss it.

00:48:24.560 Become a member. Use code NOLSK to WLAS at checkout for two months free on all annual plans.

00:48:42.080 You

The Michael Knowles Show - May 26, 2026

Ep. 1981 - Leftist Streamer Hasan Piker Subpoenaed Over Controversial Cuba Trip

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