In this special episode of the Whatever Podcast, Andrew Wilson and Anne join host Brian Atlas to debate whether or not feminism is good for society, abortion, and the body count issue. Topics covered include: Is feminism bad for society? Should abortion be legalized in the United States What does it mean to be a feminist?
00:16:50.340So, and that kind of ties into the counterfactual account, right?
00:16:53.200Like, I can say, if you were going to inherit a billion dollars and I took that billion dollars, I'm depriving you of that thing that you already had claimed to.
00:17:09.560And then my next semantic question for you is, what is a woman?
00:17:15.300So, I think a woman, and I do have a definition written down, but is someone who has dispositions towards traits that are associated with females.
00:44:39.320There's no significant movement anywhere in the South to own slaves.
00:44:44.260Even if they don't desire that particular portion of the negative ideological set of things that people in the South believed during the Confederacy,
00:44:53.760there is lumped in with that racism because of the fact that it was a tool to push for slavery, right?
00:45:55.960So if somebody's flying the Confederate flag and it's offensive enough, you keep on acting like, well, if the flag is causing violence, the flag doesn't cause violence.
00:46:15.600So all you're doing is making an argument saying we should capitulate to mobs who don't like things and are willing to cause violence by taking down the thing.
00:46:24.340Look, I think that that's a complete straw man of the argument.
00:52:45.860So I see a lot of entitlements, rights, entitlements absent duties.
00:52:50.960So you have the right to vote, no duty to vote, right to own a gun, no duty to own a gun, right?
00:52:56.940You have the right to incriminate yourself, or not incriminate yourself, but no duty to incriminate yourself, or not to incriminate yourself, right?
00:53:02.760Every one of these rights is an entitlement.
00:53:05.880There's no duty which comes along with it.
00:53:07.760So I think that in the time before feminism, let's say, especially in the 1900s, that instead of women and men, in this case, moving towards a materialistic outlook, they focused a lot more on duties instead of entitlements themselves.
00:53:26.740And I think that that has been very bad for society, the focus on materialism from feminism.
00:53:33.160Okay, maybe just to get more clear on that term, duty, being an obligation absent entitlement.
00:53:39.380What you're saying is that, you know, somebody should act or needs to act, right, without being given anything to act?
00:53:47.940No, they could be given orders to act.
00:53:52.300Okay, maybe there was some miscommunication there, but something that, you know, you should do whether or not you're rewarded for it or something like that.
00:54:53.940Men have a duty and obligation to sign up for the draft.
00:55:00.000Women have no such obligation or duty to do so, but women can still vote to send men to wars and then not fight in them because they can't be drafted.
00:55:08.540So I would consider that to be an extra right that women have that men do not have because they actually have to sign up and be conscripted during wartime.
00:55:22.880Okay, so this is argument feminism bad because men have to go to the draft and women don't, and they both get the right to vote?
00:55:30.660No, this is an argument for materialism.
00:55:32.880I'm just expressing that when we moved away from a duty-based society for women, there's no—I can't think of any actual obligations that women have as far as duties to society,
00:55:42.500but I can think of actual obligations that men do have still as a duty to society.
00:55:47.520And so it seems that women themselves actually have more rights in modern society than men do, and also, right, that a lot of this movement towards the idea of additional rights comes from materialism itself.
00:56:04.620Everything seems to staunchly revolve around I want me, me, me, me, I want, I want, I want, because it feels good.
00:56:20.840So if you're making descriptive claims about, like, okay, well, you think that this moved towards materialism, and I'm thinking maybe you're talking about, like, Marxist materialism, or do you mean something totally—like, do you mean materialism in a totally different field?
00:56:34.900Yeah, in this case, very simple, right?
00:56:36.960I'm just using materialism in the sense of stuff, stuff, stuff in the replacement for something that is not stuff.
00:56:46.920Like, for instance, if we're talking about concepts of God, of country, of nation, of state, things like that, which could be fulfilling, and materialism would be the idea that, like, stuff can be fulfilling, like, actual material goods.
00:57:01.500Things like this can be a form of fulfillment.
00:57:04.480Okay, so materialism, from what you're defining, is that material goods can be fulfilling.
00:57:10.860Okay, this has to do what with feminism?
00:57:13.240That what feminism has done is move women more towards materialism than duties.
00:57:23.300Duties would be this idea of the conceptualization of I ought to do things outside of because it feels good, whereas materialism is I'm going to get this stuff because it feels good.
00:57:37.400Right. I mean, I can think that people should do things because I think it would have good outcomes for them.
00:57:44.040Like, I think that people should vote because I think that that helps them pursue their political goals more.
00:57:49.920And I think that people enjoy freedom.
00:57:52.200I think that's good for people's well-being, is to have personal freedoms.
00:58:15.580I mean that by everybody being able to collectively vote rather than people at stake in the system, what's been able to happen is that the Treasury has been able to be robbed by the collective power of the vote.
00:58:28.340So what happens is politicians end up creating blocks, voting blocks.
00:58:33.240They pit the voting blocks against each other.
00:58:35.740All of these various blocks are trying to raid the Treasury, essentially, for their own personal agendas.
00:58:41.440Every single block that I can think of, in fact, is trying to raid the Treasury based on an agenda.
00:58:45.860But presumably you think, one, some of those agendas are good, and two, you think that generally there's also good outcomes from everybody voting, right?
00:59:28.080Well, I can give you, I think I can probably give you infinitely many cases where you would say it's good to protect infinite personal freedoms.
00:59:33.400I think I can give you infinitely many cases in the opposition where you would think it was really good to limit them.
01:00:23.560And those are instances that we don't currently have.
01:00:26.540I'm talking about literally from you breathing to you sitting at the table to you holding a pen to you wearing a shirt to you being in the studio to being in America.
01:01:17.520So the concept here, right, it can be overridden and changed because the concept itself is flawed.
01:01:23.080The idea of rights themselves are flawed.
01:01:25.380So when you're talking about your, like, First Amendment right or something like this, when you talk about freedoms in general, yeah, I think that we have all sorts of duties which override those rights all the time.
01:01:50.040Do you think that I'm the only one cutting in?
01:01:51.300I think I've probably cut in far less, but look, so you think that there's all of these instances where, like, you shouldn't have your right to breathe infringed upon.
01:01:59.840You shouldn't have your, you know, your right to X, Y, Z.
01:02:01.560That doesn't mean that those things aren't real just because they can be overridden.
01:02:05.680I don't know what the argument for that would be.
01:02:20.700Does it exist in all brains or does it exist in one brain?
01:02:24.260Well, I think that people have different concepts of rights.
01:02:26.540But what I am saying, though, is when people say, I have a right to life, they're not saying, I have a right to life in every single imaginal possible scenario.
01:02:37.840Do you, like, know that, like, when you express things that you should express them precisely so that I know exactly what it is that you do mean?
01:02:45.200So when you say, so when you say, like, do you know when people say X, that what they actually mean is Y?
01:02:52.240It's like, no, I don't actually know that because from what you're saying is when people say X, they, this, this is, this is it.
01:03:20.160So you do recognize that people, when they say you have the right to life, they aren't talking about the right to life in an absolute sense.
01:05:48.140But you can't really say that when somebody else comes along and says, but I have a right to violate your rights, that they don't have a right to do that.
01:06:07.120Trivial, and trivial truths are true because they're true.
01:06:10.380So the thing is, is, like, yes, it's trivially true, just meaning it's true, that if a person says, well, I have the right to kill you, and you say you don't have the right to kill me, right, I just want to know who actually here has the right to do what?
01:27:18.640I'm not sure if they have a duty to society to not, you know, sleep with multiple partners.
01:27:24.100Do they have a duty not to do sex work?
01:27:26.600Um, that one would hinge on some empirical facts.
01:27:29.140Like, maybe if it caused, like, a lot of negative outcomes or something like that, and maybe, like, the benefits didn't override those negative outcomes, that might be one reason why I would say, like, okay, well, you know, they do have a duty not to do sex work.
01:27:40.980Do they have a duty to stay with their husband, even against their own happiness for the sake of their children?
01:27:46.020Uh, I would probably say no in a lot of cases.
01:27:52.360Uh, because I think that infringes on people pretty severely when you're in a scenario like that.
01:27:56.920Um, I don't have, I mean, there could be some negative outcomes for kids.
01:28:00.880There, once again, that would be an empirical claim.
01:28:03.640That, like, the, the answer to that would hinge on some empirical facts.
01:28:07.340So, if I were to give you empirical facts, and, of course, during this little two-hour debate, it's going to be impossible for, for you to go through any empirical data I would give you in a very, like, wide overview, right?
01:28:20.540But if you were given facts, then, that if women did stay with their husbands, even if they, like, maybe fell out of love with him, they didn't really like him that much anymore, right?
01:28:31.540Or they really just didn't want to participate in the marriage, but they had children with him, right?
01:28:36.620And we saw the outcomes for children were way better if they stayed, even if it was at the expense of their happiness.
01:28:45.020That depends on how much of a toll on their happiness it would take.
01:28:47.580I think falling out of love when someone is a lot.
01:28:49.220It takes a big toll on their happiness.
01:28:51.380I'm not sure that that's something I can give you an answer to, whether or not they have, like, some ethical duty to do.
01:28:57.800That's, that is probably going to be a case-by-case thing.
01:29:00.800Like, I would have to look at, okay, well, how miserable is this person staying with this person, and how much of a benefit is it going to give their kids?
01:29:06.640And do they have access to the knowledge of how much benefit it will give their kids to stay?
01:29:11.900I think in the general cases, they don't have an obligation to stay, because I think the type of things that lead to divorce are pretty severe.
01:29:19.240And in a lot of cases, it's usually irreconcilable differences, not severe.
01:29:35.140I just don't like this person, or I don't like their habits anymore, or things like this.
01:29:39.980Well, I'm not sure falling out of love is always reconcilable.
01:29:43.940In fact, that sounds kind of as simple to try to force yourself to love so much.
01:29:46.700You're not asking it to reconcile and fall back in love, but whether or not they have a duty to stay with their husband for their children, for the sake of their children.
01:29:53.640Because their children get far more desirable outcomes if they do.
01:29:58.460But I think that there's probably something, like, empirically there.
01:30:01.900Like, there's probably a lot of distress that it causes somebody to stay with somebody that they don't love, and to not pursue somebody that they would, in fact, love.
01:30:12.040So, I'm just making an estimate that, no, they probably wouldn't have an obligation to do that.
01:30:18.120Now, you've dove into the stats, then, so you know, probably, that when it comes to abuse of children inside of the home of single mothers, are you aware of where that usually comes from?
01:30:28.700Where the abuse from single mothers comes from?
01:31:07.220Only that, if you are with your biological partner, right, or the parent, the biological parent of the children, that the rates of abuse drastically decrease inside those homes for those children, period.
01:31:22.120Even if the parents stay and they're out of love with each other, they don't even really like each other.
01:31:27.160You see this often in religious marriages, religious institutions, where they'll stay on behalf of the children.
01:31:32.780The children's outcomes are, generally speaking, far and away better.
01:31:37.460Really quick, in five minutes, we're going to probably do a prompt change, and then we're going to do, read some chats.
01:32:12.880Yeah, so the problem there is is I think there would probably be a data collection problem there.
01:32:18.320When you have people who are remarried, it's probably easier for kids to report that a step-parent is committing abuse versus a biological parent.
01:32:28.560A child might be more trusting of their biological parents, especially if they're still together.
01:32:33.260There might be covering up of abuse that's occurring, so I might have some issues with gathering that data and actually coming to a conclusion there.
01:32:56.440I mean, that's fine, but once again, I would need to see that data.
01:33:00.780I'd have to go through it, see what kind of methodological problems exist there, because I would suspect that the abuse would go a lot less reported, because that's something that you can't account for.
01:33:11.500If a kid's not going to report it, a kid's not going to report it.
01:33:13.400But you can make an inference and say, like, okay, well, kids are typically more trusting.
01:33:19.340Kids come out years later and say, hey, my biological parents abused me, and I never told anybody.
01:33:24.820And, you know, sometimes they don't even tell teachers.
01:33:26.620Well, I mean, a lot of these studies are—they're going over multiple decades, right?
01:33:52.380I was just talking when you were saying, like, children could come out later and, you know, discuss abuse rates or something like that.
01:33:59.100It's like, yeah, that's true, but one way that you could compensate for that is to have, you know, longevity in your study following these same people and then, you know, getting back with them 20 years later or whatever so that you could make these determinations.
01:34:11.680So that would be one way that you could compensate for that.
01:34:13.660Sure, and it might still not fully compensate for it, though, if that person still is more trusting of their biological parent.
01:34:57.140That might be a good time for a break.
01:34:58.660But we do have that methodological issue.
01:35:03.120Over time, it doesn't really get rid of it, though, if children still trust their biological parents more.
01:35:08.980And it could be the case, like, parents are covering it up for the other parent, whereas they wouldn't cover it up for, like, a new spouse or something like that.
01:35:14.540Or they might cover it up to keep the family together.
01:35:17.280That could also be a case that I would say would cause a lot of issues collecting that type of data.
01:35:21.660And those reasons might still, the abuse might still not outweigh the type of harm done to the person staying with the person they don't want to be with.
01:38:14.120And Ogle, we do have the regular champagne bottle option, and we do have the ETH champagne bottle option for a bottle of Cristal.
01:38:22.380So, those are the two options available.
01:38:24.380We have Super Korean here, and he writes,
01:38:26.280Don't vegans have a moral obligation to not only exterminate all invasive species, lionfish, python species, feral hogs, et cetera, but consume them to prevent them from destroying native species?
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01:46:00.200I mean, when we look at people's happiness and their relationships versus, like, the comparison with the amount of people that they've had intimate relationships with, there tends to be a lot of variation in the long-term happiness or success of a relationship.
01:46:20.560I believe the last time I looked at the statistics, it was looking at people who were in marriages.
01:46:24.940So, on the lower end of the spectrum, if you tended to have less bodies, and I believe the number is somewhere between, like, one to three, you tended to have less successful marriages.
01:46:35.440And then as those numbers kind of get up a little bit and a little bit, those are where you kind of, it stabilizes.
01:46:43.100You get, like, more happy and more successful marriages or relationships.
01:46:46.100And don't cite me on the marriages thing.
01:46:49.680It's been a while since I've looked at that data.
01:46:51.240But then on the other end, where you get into the, you know, the higher numbers, what people would call more extreme numbers, more, you know, more promiscuous people, their marriages also tend to be less happy.
01:47:02.060So, on both ends of the extremes, you tend to have less happy marriages.
01:47:05.640And then somewhere in the middle, you tend to have, you know, more happier marriages or relationships.
01:47:12.040Those relationships are more successful.
01:47:14.140Yeah, I think I'm familiar with what you're citing.
01:47:16.240I think, now, again, don't quote me either because we don't have the data in front of us, but I believe that this was based around marriage.
01:47:24.380And now, are you, you're not talking about Pew.
01:47:28.840You're talking about, I think there's a specific study on that.
01:49:25.140I don't know that I would call it in a case of abuse.
01:49:28.100Like, if you were messing around with your wife and she, like, smacked you upside the head as a joke, I don't think you would call that abuse.
01:50:34.760I mean, we can exclude it to, you know, like, persistent emotional abuse would be something you would say you should probably end a relationship over, right?
01:50:54.560But we can just say, like, you think that the most, most times when people get divorced over emotional abuse, they're usually talking about those, like, severe cases, right?
01:51:06.000No, I'm not, I'm not at all convinced that when people say they're, especially women, that they're getting a divorce based on emotional abuse, that there was anything other than just, she just wasn't happy based on other circumstances.
01:51:19.560They called it emotional abuse because it's such a nebulous term.
01:51:45.140And to the extent that there is truth to that, it should be, like, handled and understood by people generally.
01:51:50.100Um, but I, I would say in a lot of cases that that's the case where you have, like, severe emotional, what you would categorize, we can just use whatever your standard is.
01:52:12.300In fact, I think that the reason it works is because you're more likely to get help.
01:52:15.080So, because you have an ecclesiastical structure and traditional church functions, you have a community which is there that's able to actually assist inside of these relationships for these problems that come up.
01:52:27.960Whereas, a lot of other people don't have resources or they have secular resources.
01:52:32.400So, you think that, okay, I mean, maybe that's, like, an empirical claim, once again.
01:52:38.380Because it's kind of hard to just say that, like, oh.
01:52:41.440Well, there's a lot of good evidence for this.
01:52:43.360So, the fact of the matter is, is that, I mean, you would just logically agree with this, probably, that if you have community which you can turn to for assistance in your marriage, that's probably better than not having a community to turn to for assistance in your marriage.
01:53:00.720Like, that's probably always the case.
01:53:02.020But if that community reinforces ideas that, like, you know, men are supposed to have power over women and sometimes a physical sense in the same way.
01:53:09.080That shouldn't be problematic if, within the view of the religion, both partners believe that.
01:53:24.600Sure, there can be these structures, but if these structures reinforce the idea that it's good to stay with your partner no matter what, like, there are sects of, like, Catholics who believe that you should never get divorced.
01:53:36.520Like, it's bad any time that you do it.
01:53:38.520There are sects of Baptists or Protestants.
01:53:41.560Catholics are under one single ecclesiastical church authority, and the doctrines are uniform across Catholicism itself, or you're not in communion with the church.
01:53:51.080So, that being the case, their ecclesiastical authority is going to be an unchanging standard from their view.
01:54:35.660Yeah, but you can boil that down to, like, church politics.
01:54:39.780Like, they can call them, like, not real Christians or not real Protestants, not real Catholics, whatever, if they choose to, you know, follow this doctrine.
01:55:39.960No, no, but it is semantics, but it's really important when we're talking about this because what we're discussing is, you know, if you're a part of this religious denomination and it's giving you kind of this bad advice, et cetera, et cetera, should, you know, should you be relying on them as a community?
01:55:57.180And then when you bring up Catholicism as an example, it's like, well, I want to make sure that you're not strawmanning what Catholics believe before you make whatever the empirical claim is.
01:56:05.380No, I'm not. I'm just saying you agree that there are some...
01:57:52.120So, yeah, secularists do the same thing within their own family dynamics.
01:57:55.060They'll be like, well, we don't want this to get out.
01:57:57.140It could be embarrassing, et cetera, et cetera.
01:57:58.720So my whole point, though, was that if there is a community present, right, for marriage, generally it's a good thing,
01:58:07.120and it generally helps marriages, doesn't hurt them.
01:58:09.140And so one of the things that we see is that people who are rigorous with their church authority tend to stay married longer,
01:58:16.900and it's exactly because of those concepts, in fact, that is reinforced by the community that's so helpful to these marriages.
01:58:24.760Right, but there could be concepts in the community like no matter what, it's still bad to divorce your partner,
01:58:30.540even if they're abusing you because it goes against God's will, because it goes against X, Y, Z, insert whatever religious reason that they want to give.
01:58:37.760So gathering data on that is going to be really hard.
01:58:41.240That's the only point that I'm making here is like gathering data on whether or not they're actually having a happy non-abusive.
01:58:46.540But gathering data on almost anything is really hard.
01:58:49.720There are some instances where it's exceptionally hard, and that is one of the cases.
01:58:54.060Yeah, I'm not sure if that's one of the cases.
01:58:57.300Like when we're talking about, I mean, there's exceptional record-keeping kept, especially by things, by like Catholic churches.
01:59:05.900It's so exceptional, in fact, that they kept all the records of like the abuses that happened with underage kids and this kind of thing, right?
01:59:12.900Like they do pretty exceptionally keep records, and they do get reviewed by other priests, parishes, oversights by bishops, all sorts of different things.
01:59:20.200And it's like I think that if such things were happening in mass, we'd be hearing about them, not saying that some churches may not have things like this going on,
01:59:30.100just like some secular families could based on, I'm an internet person now.
01:59:33.720I don't want it to get out, or I have a big reputation.
01:59:36.320I don't want you to, you know what I mean?
01:59:39.480I think that that does happen in Hollywood a lot.
01:59:41.900I think that happens where they go, well, we don't want this movie to look bad, so let's cover up this thing that Johnny Devin never heard of.
01:59:48.360Just anybody in a prestigious position or doesn't want embarrassment or whatever.
01:59:52.820Right, so the church is not exempt to that.
01:59:55.260So when you say like, oh, well, people in religious institutions tend to stay married for longer, there might be some issues with that because of the fact that there's this image to uphold for religion itself and for the church and the institution.
02:00:08.120I mean, they wouldn't be the only ones beholden to it.
02:00:10.380And the correlate there is so strong that the more rigorous – so here's the thing.
02:00:16.120We know this because we can look at people – so various churches have different sacramental or religious functions that you need to follow.
02:00:25.380The more you follow X function, the longer you stay married, right?
02:00:46.060But happiness is done by self-report, right?
02:00:49.560Well, that's probably one of the best ways that we have access to people's happiness, yeah.
02:00:53.580And so these people are self-reporting happiness as well.
02:00:57.000In fact, women who get married as virgins, their self-reported happiness in their marriage is much, much higher in the opposition.
02:01:04.200And the most recent study that I read on that – so the reason is is because there's no sample size for comparison against that.
02:01:10.240So if you've only ever slept with one man, essentially you don't know what you're missing, if you are missing anything.
02:01:15.820And so you're just kind of happy and content.
02:01:17.400It seems like it's pretty good for society.
02:01:19.220It might be good, but you could say something like there's wrong under – you know, there's something bad happening in, like, a counterfactual sense.
02:01:27.940Like, maybe, you know, their happiness level is maybe, like, innate with this person that is the only person that they've ever met, the only person they've ever interacted with.
02:01:36.400And then you could take, well, you know, there's a possible world where they meet somebody who's far better.
02:01:41.420Maybe, you know, they like the temperature the same, you know, in the house all the time or something like that.
02:01:46.580Or they want the same amount of kids or something like that.
02:01:49.900But you can make that argument for everything.
02:01:53.360Yeah, you could say, well, Andrew, you're in a very happy marriage and you're very happy with your marriage.
02:01:58.580But there could be a world which exists somewhere where you could have met a woman who's even better than Rachel.
02:02:04.020And so, I mean, you could apply that universally to every marriage which exists currently, every relationship which exists currently across the board.
02:02:12.440I'm not sure how that would be helpful to this.
02:02:14.320Right, but so remember what we were talking about was the sample size for the individual being very small.
02:02:20.180If you've had a larger sample size, then that kind of mitigates that factor there.
02:02:26.020So when, like, you look at somebody who has maybe two partners that they've dated before and they're marrying their third partner or something,
02:02:34.940they at least have a data set to look at, like, okay, well, here are the possibilities of things that I like and things I don't like.
02:02:39.900And I've kind of been able to weed through and have the opportunity of having a more fulfilling relationships with a third person because I have been able to weed out, you know,
02:02:49.380these are the type of people I maybe am not as compatible with.
02:02:52.420Whereas that person – the person who hasn't had any other experiences – and I'm not saying that that's a bad thing.
02:02:59.060Well, it's actually strange, in fact, because they would still be at the mercy of the same thing.
02:03:05.300Perhaps, though, if they hadn't gone off and had the second or third relationship and had only stayed in the first relationship as a virgin and had nothing to compare it to,
02:03:14.880then in an alternative world they would have been much happier by that standard.
02:03:19.180And that's like – it would be the same thing applied here.
02:03:22.140Yeah, that's – I'm fine with saying that those people in those relationships are happy, but there could be something where they are happier once they have a bigger data set.
02:03:31.780So it's obviously with more knowledge about the world, like, you have the ability to pick and choose better, the thing – like, you're more informed on the things that will make you happier, right?
02:03:40.160Well, you become – I would agree that you gain more experience in the things that are happening around you, perhaps, but that doesn't necessarily mean that those are positive experiences or that you wish that you had known them.
02:03:52.700Yeah, they don't have to necessarily – I'm just saying that with the bigger data set, you have more of a likelihood of finding the thing that's going to make you more happy.
02:04:00.140But wouldn't this imply that the data set, which was done on virgins and their happiness, is somehow smaller than the data set, which is done on people who've had two or three partners?
02:04:09.060Unless you're just saying, well, it's just trivially true that the people who've had two or three partners have had sex with more than one person, so we can just view them in a different light?
02:04:52.940Yeah, but why would that be a bad thing?
02:04:54.520Right, because they have the possibility of looking for people or things that they're more compatible with.
02:04:59.900So let's just say, like, the virgin – you know, this person who's dated one person only has access to the data set of this person that makes them, like, you know, 8 out of 10 happy or something like that.
02:05:12.180Whereas the person who's had access, you know, and engaged in intercourse or maybe had just, you know, personal romantic relationships with other people, they have access to data sets of people who make them, like, you know, a level 10 happy or a level 8 or a level 7 or something like that.
02:05:24.460They have more access – they have access to more data, right?
02:05:28.200That individual has more access to data about what causes them to be happy in a relationship.
02:05:32.360Okay, but, again, couldn't I just apply this to anything?
02:05:37.420Couldn't I be like, well, there's not enough of a data set for us to really determine that if people don't drink gasoline that they wouldn't be happier if they didn't have the experience of drinking gasoline before?
02:05:48.720We do have a – I mean, we unfortunately have data on that.
02:07:11.760But yeah, look, so these people – the person who did, in fact, drink the gasoline, and regardless of whether or not the outcome was good, if they hated it, if they loved it, whatever, that person does, in fact, whether that's for the worse or better, have a bigger data set to go off of.
02:07:33.300We know about the significant negative outcomes of that.
02:07:36.180I would just make the same argument back for this, that if they shouldn't drink gasoline because we know that there's significant bad outcomes for that, but your argument for they should have more than one sexual partner, even though we know the negative outcomes for that, and you say, but there's a possibility that they just don't know what they're missing.
02:07:55.780I could just make the same argument with gasoline.
02:07:58.120Well, just to be clear, because going back to the prompt, the prompt wasn't that people should have multiple partners.
02:08:04.400The prompt is more so about – and maybe you can read it back specifically, but it was about the fact that if you're looking for a partner, the main concern shouldn't be the amount of partners that that person has.
02:08:36.460Yeah, no, you should care in some cases, of course.
02:08:39.280Yeah, like, so if it is the case that I have good evidence to support that a woman's staying a virgin, right, and she's religious – like, for instance, let me give you an example.
02:08:53.560If you're a religious man, right, and you would have certain virtues which are attributed to your religion, one of which could be to marry a woman who's virtuous and a sign of virtue could be chastity.
02:09:08.980That's a – Christianity, for instance, chastity is overwhelmingly large when it comes to the idea of virtue.
02:09:14.540So you would think men like that actually should be selecting for body count, right?
02:09:21.140They should if the person isn't currently acting in that way.
02:09:26.540So the problem that you run into here is, like, obviously people who were prior atheists can be reformed.
02:09:37.020And maybe they've had some, you know, harlot past where they've gone out and they've slept with 50 men and done all these terrible things and extorted people and all sorts of things.
02:09:46.000But when that person – and maybe this could end up being, like, a semantic thing – but when that person, you know, comes to the faith and they find God, that body count still exists, right, unless you think that it doesn't.
02:10:02.600So you agree that there could be a perfectly suitable partner for a man who is a Christian, right?
02:10:09.980And one of the things that happened to be in her past was that, you know, she had all of these sexual partners, but now she has, you know, found Christ.
02:10:18.040So in that case, yeah, it wouldn't be right for him to consider that if she's changed.
02:10:23.040No, it would be totally right for him to consider it.
02:10:25.440Why would he consider that if she's changed?
02:10:27.740Because it would still show a pattern of not upholding the same virtues he's looking for.
02:10:33.080But if she's currently upholding those values.
02:10:34.420Well, your past behavior is generally a really good indication of your future behavior.
02:10:38.920Yeah, look, that's perfectly fine to say.
02:10:41.120But if he has really good overriding evidence that she will never do that again, that she, you know, will go forward and be virtuous or whatever.
02:10:48.320I don't know what evidence he could have for that.
02:10:50.840Let's just say he has some evidence regardless.
02:10:54.600Yeah, if you were to say, like, he had a crystal ball in front of him and he could see the whole future, sure, I wouldn't dispute that.
02:11:01.400But that would be baked into the fact of knowledge itself.
02:11:06.080He has pre-existing knowledge this will not happen or some really overwhelmingly good compelling evidence it wouldn't.
02:11:13.340But absent that, which I would argue in most cases they wouldn't have, then it would show a pattern of behavior against the same virtues he's looking for where he could select for somebody who's upheld those virtues.
02:11:24.860There's also, so that's fine to say that if he has reason to believe that she'll still engage in those behaviors, regardless of whether or not she's in a committed relationship with him, that's a kind of separate question, but an adjacent question.
02:11:38.860Because the question is, is she going to be promiscuous in this relationship?
02:11:45.160Presumably, like, if you take somebody who has, like, a large body count, they're usually not in relationships with those people.
02:11:52.720I dispute, well, I dispute the premise here a bit.
02:11:55.920I'm going to quibble a little bit, but I think I'm fine quibbling on this point.
02:11:59.940So my quibble is not, it's not really necessarily even a sign that she will be promiscuous, though I think it's there.
02:12:07.640Only a sign that she's perhaps not upholding virtues.
02:12:11.580She doesn't have a pattern of upholding virtues.
02:12:13.880So I think that, like any behavior, like, if you're a practicing Christian or a practicing Muslim, let's say, they hold set values for what virtues are.
02:12:24.960And just like language, communication, and all forms of different habits which are formed in people, they're done by exercising them over and over and over again.
02:12:36.240So if you're a person who is high in virtue, you're probably consistently exercising virtues as part of your habit, right?
02:12:42.500And you're stopping on the, let's give a stupid example, like you're always stopping on the side of the road to help people or you're always, you know what I mean?
02:12:50.760After a while, you almost can't help but pull off on the side of the road to help somebody because it's so habitually built up in you.
02:12:58.240So I think that for them, this could be a great red flag sign that, wait, these habits, these virtue habits aren't really formed yet, especially if you're a new Christian, right?
02:13:09.660Or you just came to Christ in this sense.
02:13:12.580These habits haven't even had a chance to flower yet.
02:13:16.000And if you could select for somebody who's upheld them, why wouldn't you do that?
02:13:20.280So then it's not the necessarily body count thing.
02:13:23.860It's more so about whether or not the trend that happened in the past will continue and whether or not that person will adopt to the virtues that you have.
02:13:34.460Well, it is body count, though, because body count would be the virtue which is being broken.
02:13:40.480But they're breaking that when they're not a Catholic or not a Christian, right?
02:13:44.940So it's kind of like you're saying like, okay, well, I want to hold you to the standard of this religion where we have these specific virtues.
02:13:53.860Um, but I'm going to hold your past self who's not involved in that religion to that standard.
02:13:59.180So there could be, and I think in most cases, probably when you look at people who come to Catholicism or to the church in general, um, and they say, hey, I'm reformed.
02:14:11.740I want to stop partying, whatever X, Y, Z that you would find to be like vices.
02:14:15.020Um, I think that it's probably likely that that person, um, should take that as a strong consideration into the relationship.
02:14:25.540You didn't actually give a reason for why that doesn't quite make sense, though.
02:14:29.080You said that doesn't quite make sense, but then you gave a reason that actually still makes sense.
02:14:33.680Yes, you can indeed hold people to your ethical worldview and ethical standard even before they adopted it.
02:14:40.740And you can say, based on the pattern of behavior pre-adopting my standard, you did not uphold to it.
02:14:47.340So I have good reason to believe you will not in the future, at least as of right now until otherwise demonstrated, like we would do with all pattern recognition behavior.
02:14:55.560So what I'm saying here is that there's overriding considerations.
02:14:58.300I'm saying that, like, if you talk to a person, which I would assume this would be the case in, like, the, you know, the courting sense.
02:15:04.540You typically don't just, like, have someone be your girlfriend the next day, especially not in, like, religious traditions.
02:15:10.820It's typically that, you know, you get to know the person first.
02:15:13.780So with that assumption in mind, I would say that you're probably getting to know this person first.
02:15:17.460And then you're saying, okay, well, how much confidence do I have that now that they're part of the faith, now that I know this person, that they're going to uphold these values in the future?
02:15:27.680And are they going to uphold them under the conditions of this religion?
02:15:31.560Because in a sense, we talked about this earlier, they are likely not in relationships with those people.
02:15:37.900So what you're asking is, you know, are you going to stay in a relationship with the person that you're, like, sexually active with or something like that?
02:15:47.960And you have good reason to believe at that point, perhaps not.
02:15:51.880Sure, you might have that as a consideration.
02:16:18.720Not giving a chance to even know the person because you just go, okay, because I'm a pattern recognition machine, right, this isn't what I'm looking for because there's too much potential for X based on how many of these virtues that you have routinely broken, right?
02:16:33.540And so I don't want to waste my time with you developing good habits for virtues again or something like this.
02:16:39.480They have good cause to just pass those women up completely.
02:16:42.460Well, those women have a reason to follow the virtues now, whereas they might not have when they were atheists.
02:16:49.240That's kind of like saying you never gave me a reason for, you know, riding my bike being wrong.
02:16:54.140And then suddenly I adopt this religion where riding my bike is wrong.
02:16:57.020Well, obviously I'm going to have a pattern of, you know, doing very wrong things under this religion.
02:17:02.260But once I adopt this religion, I now have a reason to adhere to that.
02:17:05.560So those women do have a reason to adhere to that.
02:17:07.840Yeah, but the reasons can – the problem with that argument is that the reasons can be as superficial as I want to buy a new reputation.
02:17:14.760An example, let's say you're an OnlyFans model and you decide that you don't want the societal or social stigma that comes with that anymore.
02:17:23.660And one venue that you've seen other women successfully have this stigma kind of removed from them is by converting to a certain religious sect.
02:17:32.820Inside of that religious sect, then they're essentially using that now as some type of purpose to buy a new reputation,
02:17:39.640whether they actually believe in the dogmas of it or the virtues of it or not.
02:17:43.800Right, but you would say that in – like, I'm not disputing that.
02:17:47.680I'm not disputing that people don't, you know, go around, make mistakes, and then, like, want to rebrand themselves and kind of –
02:18:00.320Um, what I am saying, though, is that if a Catholic were to meet someone else in the Catholic tradition,
02:18:07.060um, they would have overriding reasons not to consider body count so strongly because they know that this person has now adopted the Catholic faith,
02:18:15.100or at least they have good reason to believe so.
02:18:16.940I mean, I would assume that you don't just, like, go around thinking people are just, like, lying or –
02:18:22.340Like, you would think you have a good reason to believe.
02:18:25.760Well, inside of religions, Christianity particularly, we have various ways of testing what we would call perhaps the fruits of the Spirit,
02:18:35.580or the sins of the flesh, or various things like that.
02:18:37.820But within orthodoxy, for instance, the example is all sin, right?