https://youtubetranscript.com/?v=QJOwVOGahhY
So, what I figured we could talk about today is patterns and how patterns, very simple patterns can end up looking like conspiracies and how that all works. I was attending a YouTube livestream event that was correlated with a Twitter Spaces thing and Twitter Spaces is sort of based on Clubhouse and Catherine Borodsky, who is my favorite journalist in the whole world, was one of the panel members on the Twitter Spaces and Break the Rules is the name of the YouTube channel that was hosting this and doing the connection between the two and he had some technical problems left, who runs it had a few technical problems, which is too bad. But I was in the, I don’t usually watch Break the Rules either, but I was in the chat for the YouTube and it was just me and one other guy really talking a lot and I don’t think there were that many viewers there, although I wasn’t really paying attention, I was more just shattering away. One of the things that happened was they were talking about Elon Musk, whether he was an insider or an outsider, he has billions of dollars and it’s sort of, I was just like, why are you thinking of the world this way? It’s sort of like a cross between economic framing and political framing to say, is Elon Musk an insider or an outsider? Well, he must be an insider because he has billions of dollars. Okay, inside what? Billionaires have fights all the time. They don’t seem to agree on all that much. There are a few that do. If you want billionaire colluders, anybody who says you’re with Warren Buffett, I know everybody loves Warren Buffett. Yeah, I don’t like Warren Buffett. Look into how Geico makes money. You won’t like Warren Buffett either. And Geico is actually where he makes all his money from. Everything else is sort of ancillary. Geico was his first big investment and that was where he got all his capital from. There’s lots of financial reasons for that that I don’t want to go into because A, I’m absolutely not a total expert in that although I seem to know a lot more than other people, which is disturbing to me. And B, it’s not really important. What is important is you can read where Warren Buffett says that Geico was his best investment and he never should have kept Berkshire Hathaway, which was a clothing provider, it was a mill, actually it was a clothing mill, alive, a fabric mill. He should have plowed all his money into Geico. So he’s got a fund, a charitable fund, and what he does is the people that run his fund for him, he runs their charitable funds for them. And so what this turns into is a way for wealthy people to launder money to their friends and relatives that they want to hire. That’s basically what’s going on. This also happens with the Red Cross. The Red Cross has lots and lots of money that they don’t disperse and there’s two, or used to happen, maybe it’s not happening anymore. I did look this up years ago, this is true. My mother was the one who originally told me and she’s uncannily right about strange things that I’ve never been able to figure out how she could possibly know. One of the things she told me was that they have two income levels at the Red Cross, like 250 an hour. I mean, it’s a slight exaggeration, I’m sure. But that’s basically true. Everybody is either a volunteer making very little money or they’re in the executive suite and they’re making huge bonuses and everything else. Now, I don’t know if that’s still true. It was definitely true. I looked into it. It took a lot of digging to find that information because it’s not easy to find, but it was available at the time. It may not be available now, so whatever. Some of the billionaires are definitely colluding. Warren Buffett and Bill Gates and those guys are definitely colluding. There’s no question about it. And uncertain things, but not that they agree on everything. But that doesn’t mean they all are. Peter Thiel, for example, seems to be fighting a war against all the other billionaires. So fair enough, that’s fine. And there’s the Koch brothers who are, again, they’re fighting a war against all the billionaires on the left, for example, or all the ones they perceive to be on the left. Whether or not they’re in alignment with Peter Thiel is not clear to me. Are these insiders or outsiders? I don’t know. That would be the economic frame. Then you could use the political frame. But the problem is, I don’t think anybody can suss out Elon Musk’s political leanings. What are his political leanings? And then I know it seems like I’m getting a little far afield, but I want to set the stage for why this conversation was weird. And it was really most interesting thing to me was Catherine was going to be in it. And I love listening to Catherine. She’s very smart and she’s very open minded and she’s a really good writer. And her writing is just absolutely gorgeous. So they got off into the weeds at one point because one of the guys, Alex, who was there, was talking to one of the other guys who’s in the Twitter spaces. Alex was on the YouTube stream and some of the guys, it was Alex and Catherine and Lev were on the YouTube stream and everybody else was just on the Twitter spaces. And I couldn’t really keep track of who was talking on the Twitter spaces. But Alex and one of the other guys were getting into the, and I’m not joking, they were playing six degrees of separation, literally through time, which is an even worse game to play because we’re all related to, all the Westerners are related to the great Western figures in some fashion, right? Like a third cousin of whatever great Western person. But they were playing six degrees of separation between the Rothschilds, the Rockefellers and Elon Musk. And I was just like, oh, you’ve got to be kidding me. You’ve got to be kidding me. To prove some kind of connection through time, which is why Elon Musk wants to take over the world. It was very complicated. And I’m an Occam’s razor guy. Simplest explanation is probably the best. Doesn’t hold 100% true, but it does hold like 80 or 90% true. You don’t need to make those connections. And I mean, they were going so far as to say so and so’s, who is related to Elon Musk, I think, I couldn’t track it really, worked for the Rockefellers. Oh my goodness, stop. Just please stop. You know, I’m sure some of my relatives worked for a Rockefeller at one point, too. I didn’t get the big conspiracy money, believe me. I wouldn’t be poor if I did. So yeah, the whole thing’s crazy. But it occurred to me the reason why this is happening is they’re trying to, you know, push through this thread of rationality, right, through time and sort of make sense of things over the long historical, blah, blah, blah, right? So why, what psychologically would be going on there to cause you to do that? Well, I think one thing is, you know, there’s a real loss of historical grounding nowadays, right? Like there’s a loss of this historical grounding that, you know, we all used to agree on, we’ll say that the mythos of the Western world, right, which is roughly the Western canon, which Jordan Peterson talks about, right, it’s roughly the story of the founding of the United States, you know, things like that. And there’s lots of things like that. I don’t want to list them all, right? The belief in the monarchy in England, right, there’s a whole European history, you know, only pieces and parts of which do I know. By the way, you know, if you haven’t looked or say you haven’t looked recently, I’ve got a great talk with Adam, actually two great talks with Adam, but, you know, I’ll just link the French Revolution one here, different way to think about history, and Casino’s way more history than I do in that period anyway. You know, there’s plenty of good ways to think about these things that are helpful, and there’s plenty of ways to make up a narrative, to make sense of things, which is what conspiracy theorists typically do. They’re just making a different narrative from, we’ll say, the narrative that has worked throughout time. So why else did this happen? Well, I think it’s actually really simple. Like, I think the explanation for Elon Musk and why people get conspiratorial about him is really simple. Elon Musk is trying to do, very overtly and clearly, the same sorts of things that other great figures have tried to do throughout time. And this is a recurring pattern that people fall into, people of a certain type, usually, although not always. So some of the people that fall into this are people like Karl Marx, right? And he’s a utopian, right? But, oh, you know, brave new world, a better world. We can build a thing and, you know, whatever. Because I have a system and I’m very smart. It tends to be the smart people, right, who are super rational, or at least so they think. And they’re certainly more rational than the average. There’s no question about that. I don’t know how much more rational than the average. And I don’t want to make a statement on how rational average is, because I don’t think it’s like more than single digit percentages, but whatever. I think that what tends to happen in Musk is, look, we’re going to go to Mars. Why? We’re going to colonize Mars. Why would you colonize Mars? You colonize Mars to start a new civilization with different rules, right? If it were only my rules, civilization would have unfolded differently and everybody would be peaceful and happy and rainbows and unicorns for everybody. I’m sure. I’m sure that would happen. The problem with this is this is just Rousseau all over again. And you may say, Mark, no, Rousseau denied society. You have it, society is inevitable. Society is more than one person, roughly speaking. Maybe a bit of an exaggeration, but not much of one, right? And so if not for society, we would be pure and good inside is irrelevant. It’s not even if that were true, it’s not important because you don’t live without a society. You can’t live without a society. And to the extent that you do live without a society, I can’t hear from you because you’re off in a cave somewhere. And that’s great. Like if that’s what you think, go do that, please. You’ll be happier and I’ll be happier because I won’t have to listen to your silliness. It’ll be great. We both win. It’s a win-win situation. Go do that. I’ll wait here, by the way. I’m going to stay in society as painful as it is for me to do so. Because of many advantages. It’s not all disadvantage, that’s for sure. I have electricity and a cool computer and YouTube channel and all this neat stuff that’s enabled by society. So I’m kind of all in at this point in case you hadn’t figured that out by being on YouTube and having internet and electricity and numerous other things that are too numerous to name. So the inevitable conclusion is we can’t do without society. So we need a better society. Well, fair enough. Maybe. But can you do that? Is society determined by the starting conditions? Is that really what you’re saying? Let’s assume that Rousseau is right and in the pure state of nature, right? Is Mars, which is uninhabitable currently, but maybe could be terraformed, going to be a pure state of nature? I don’t think that’s possible. It couldn’t be pure because we’ll have to build it. So whatever problems we have now, we’ll probably A, take with us and B, build into whatever we build without realizing it because that’s how the world seems to work. We do a lot of things without realizing it. Just inspect your own life. You’ll figure out real quick. Hey, I don’t know why I did that. I don’t know why I did that. Hey, I shouldn’t have done that. That was stupid. Yeah, that happens all the time. That happens to me every day. I don’t know about you all, but it happens to me all the time. What’s his other project? His other project is Neuralink. Why? Well, he’s got what I think of as the worst justification of all time. If he doesn’t do it, somebody else will. Neuralink is not inevitable. The metaverse is not inevitable. Crossing anthrax and Ebola is not inevitable. These things are not inevitable. They take resources. And if we don’t give them resources, they won’t happen. And if we move those resources to more productive things or maybe more ethical things, the unethical things are less likely to happen in either event. And I’d rather go with less likely than guarantee they’ll happen. Because when a bad thing happens, a bad person will come along and take advantage of it. This is roughly my argument for why certain dictators that started World War II aren’t relevant in terms of the person. Somebody would have come along and taken the centralized power, which was already there before that particular person took over, and corrupt it. Because there’s a corrupted person somewhere that’s motivated enough to take over. That’s going to happen. So I’m not a fan of building things that might be used for bad things, because the odds they’ll be used for bad things goes up by 100%. And I’m just not a fan. Maybe you are. Different problem. Point of disagreement afforded. So Neuralink is the same project. It’s, well, we can create a world in our heads. We can live there in the metaverse. And that’s a pure state of nature, because everything in our heads is pure. Everything we believe in our heads is correct. Because it’s based on our phenomenological experience, our lived experience. And therefore, we’re always right. It’s great for the ego and terrible for getting along in society with other people. You know, the ones that help you have electricity and internet and YouTube channels. Yeah, that’s society. So let’s think about this for a minute. The metaverse, which is predicated on the development of society and the continued efforts of society to keep it running, is the pure place uncorrupted by society? Tell me how that’s going to work, because that’s not a possible construction, obviously. So I have my doubts. Now, you can say, aha, this is a continuation of a long line of people with a plan throughout time who have been putting their time, energy, and money towards this very plan. From the Rothschilds to the Rockefellers through Hitler, right? Which was literally the argument that was made, by the way, on this live stream. It’s just freaking mind-boggling to me. And I should link that video. So I will link that video so you can watch and quote, listen. Yeah, I mean, it just got derailed around this wacky thing. It’s really not a simpler explanation that people who are smart and who build things, who are successful, and I think Elon Musk has been successful. I guess you could argue that he hasn’t, but I don’t know on what grounds. I’d be interested to hear. Please put it in the comments. Love comments. Either way, agree, disagree. That’ll be fine. I think he’s been successful, and I think that people’s success sometimes goes to their head, especially when they’re like the wealthiest man in the world, or at least they were for a while, or at least close enough. So who the hell cares when you’re in the top 1%? Like, whatever. It’s not that much of a difference. 100 billion there, 100 billion there, it doesn’t matter. I think that it goes to their heads, and they’re called upon by other people to solve problems. And I did cover this in my Elon Musk Twitter video, which didn’t do as well as I thought it would, by the way. So come on, guys. This is a good video. It’s a really good video. I think a billionaire uses his billions of dollars to make the world a better place, at least he thinks he is, right? And he’s called on to do so all the time by everybody on the left, everybody on the right, whatever, and then gets nothing but flack for it. Really? Really? But called upon all the time, told you can make the world a better place with your billions of dollars if you just invest it in restarting society on Mars, if you just invest it in restarting society in the metaverse. Okay? This is the same narrative as Karl Marx. This is the same narrative as all of these utopians. There’s so many utopians. I can’t even think of them all because there’s too many, and they’re all really the same person in my head because they’re following the same pattern as Elon Musk, which is, well, I think I can get away with this because I think I can build a more rational world because rationality somehow mixed up with the good in our heads. Rationality is not the good, by the way, and it’s not good. Sorry. And that’s actually sort of in Exodus, by the way. I just learned that by watching, I’ve completed the first eight episodes of the Exodus series, which is wonderful, and they go into that, episode eight. If you must know, since I just watched episode eight a couple of hours ago, I can confirm. So rationality is being substituted for goodness, and they’re being told they can do things and that money is going to help do these things, and maybe that’s correct. I tend to doubt it, but there’s certainly something to it. It’s not nothing. It’s not untrue entirely. I just don’t think it’s true enough to be useful. And so he’s trying to do that. And yeah, that looks a lot like other people in the past who’ve been trying to do that, some of whom has been linked to the Rothschilds and the Rockefellers. Apparently, I don’t know about that, but whatever. You can always do 60 degrees of separation. That’s a game you can play, especially if you’re going to play it through generations. Man, 60 degrees of separation works so well when you go out 100 years or 200 years. It works great because everyone’s just linked to Charlemagne in the West anyway. So like, oh, it’s all Charlemagne. He had this plan in his head the whole time. Or in the East, right? And partly in the West, a bunch of people are linked to Genghis Khan, right, in 10% of the population or something goofy. So this lineage game is a fun game to play, but you don’t need it. People just come to this conclusion quite on their own. And especially when they’re told by the crowd, you could make the world a better place, right? And then, what’s the theory of making the world a better place? Oh, look at all these theories. They’re all utopian theories. Look at all these utopian theories. Like any idiot can come up with these utopian theories on their own with enough thought. So if they’re not busy enough to be taking care of their life all the time, and they have too much free time, or they’re just being told by, quote, very smart people that the way you build utopias restarts society or whatever, they’re not going to come up with very similar restarts of society. And that’s got to look like a conspiracy. I totally get that. And look, there are conspiracies. I’m looking at you, Bill Gates. I’m looking at you, Warren Buffett. I’m looking at you, George Soros, right? Yes, these are bad people, and they’re out there. And they’re bad, by the way, which is all I care about. Are you good? Are you bad? Or are you neutral? You could be neutral, right? That’s fine. You know, they want to be neutral by definition, right? I make those determinations for sure. I’m judging, absolutely. And I hope everybody judges me on my actions, too, for whether or not they’re good or bad. I just hope you’re judging me on my actions and not on your projections of my actions or projections of what I say, which is worse yet. I think that’s a fair move. So maybe there aren’t as many conspiracies as you think. Maybe they’re not as vast as you think. Maybe they’re not as organized. Look, I’ve often said, and I really did enjoy diving into the Illuminati. When I was younger, I always thought that was fun. If the Illuminati are running the world, they’re doing such a terrible job at getting it towards any particular disrunnable goal that I’m not too worried about it, right? That’s sort of how I carve it up, just to make it easy. So that’s one way to think about it. Maybe it helps you, right? Maybe that helps you. It certainly helped me to get out of conspiracy thinking. Because you start looking into something like the Illuminati or even the QAnon and all the connections that you can make. And I watched a Maldi Buddha video on YouTube, or a series of videos actually, about all the QAnon connections with pizza shop and all that craziness. And man, there’s some convincing, interesting little hanging chads, links. And inferences that seem perfectly reasonable. I don’t have an opinion on any of that. There’s not possibly enough information. But there’s some interesting tidbits that seem to be true and verifiable. Whether or not you can put them together, that’s the question of conspiracy. A lot of things just happen and they’re unrelated and nobody, you know, there’s no connection whatsoever. It just seems like there should be. But that’s because patterns emerge and they recur. And these are common patterns. You know, look, if you want to find pedophiles in government, you’re going to find pedophiles in government because there are pedophiles in government. Do they have a network together? Maybe some of them do. Do all of them? I doubt it. It’s easier to be a bad actor if you’re not in a network with other bad actors. In fact, those are the people you have to worry about, not the people in conspiracies. Somebody told me this once, you know, very smart guy, had a bunch of patents. Actually explained to me how nuclear weapons work, and EMP and all that stuff. I learned a lot from him because he was an amazing physicist. Actually, he knew all kinds of things about all kinds of things, MIT grad, as I recall. But he told me, he said, look, if you’re going to do something, don’t tell anybody. He said, you know, you’re capable, talking to me, you’re capable of doing this on your own. Don’t tell anybody about it. You’ll meet with more success, and the odds that you’ll get caught will go down. That means the individual actor, right, which is a person, by the way, not an individual, individual actor acting alone can do far more damage than a group of people on average. So I get it. There are conspiracies. Sure, there are bad actors, and bad actors can do a lot more damage than most conspiracies on average. And there are a lot more bad actors working alone than there are conspiracies to make things happen. And, you know, which conspiracies to make things happen do you have to worry about? Well, that’s an open question to me. I don’t care. I’m not. I’m only paying attention to people that I know have bad intent. Like George Soros is not shy about his bad intent. We can argue about whether or not you think a world government is a bad intent. I can prove to you that it is. I’ve already mentioned why earlier in this video. If you consolidate power, a bad actor will take that consolidated power. Therefore, all attempts to consolidate power past a certain level, we can argue about the level for sure, but certainly a global president or something like that is too consolidated, are inherently going to end badly for everybody. And therefore, I consider them bad faith acts and acts of badness in general. And you can criticize me for that if you’d like. Put in the comments because, you know, comments are good even if they’re bad. But yeah, that’s sort of one of the lines that I draw. And I’m going to do a video on where I draw other lines at some point too. That might take me some time to get to because I have a huge list of videos and I did not have a good autumn here or a good winter so far. So I’m way behind on the videos I want to do. But I’m hoping to get back on track and back in the game here. So I hope you found this helpful. And if you didn’t, tell me why. So I can make my videos better because I do appreciate the engagement. And if you did, also tell me that you did because positive feedback is important too. So that I know that someone’s here in me somewhere, maybe. But in either case, I do appreciate the thing that you’re giving me now which is your time and attention.