Free Speech Has a Limit

The Speech That Changed Humanity Forever

We Americans take freedom and liberty seriously. Look at the world around us. In Great Britain, Count Dankula was was found guilty of a hate crime after recording a video of his girlfriend’s dog doing Nazi salutes. White farmers face eradication in South Africa. China increases its censorship grip. America truly is the last bastion of freedom. Then why would I dare suggest that freedom of speech has limit?

This post is inspired by Nassim Nicholas Taleb and his book, Skin in the Game. I recommend you read all his books. The ideas of the Black Swan and being fooled by randomness have fundamentally changed how I view the world. Skin in the Game is needed for fairness in the world. People who pay no price for wrong viewpoints can and will abuse the system.

Speech, used for deception, led to the fall of man. The serpent tricked Eve into eating the Forbidden fruit. As a result, humanity was cast out of the Garden of Eden. On the other hand, the serpent paid a price for his deception. He was cursed to slither on his belly and eat dust. There was Skin in the Game.

Speech has the power to destroy Western Civilization. Feminism has convinced women that femininity is wrong, a tragic irony. The serpent has returned to corrupt countless minds into a life of lonely feline-filled misery. "Empowerment" is the Thousand Cock Stare, mountains of college debt for a worthless degree, and soul-sucking jobs. Professors in Women's Studies Departments under the shield of tenure can poison minds with no recourse. The Ivory Tower of Academia is notorious for lacking a spine and any Skin in the Game.

"Experts" viewpoints created a health crisis in this country. The low-fat crusade caused obesity and diabetes rates to skyrocket. Also consider the experts that created the 2008 Financial Crisis. No one was punished for either catastrophe. Consider fake rape claims. A woman can get away with destroying a man's life with just an accusation.

The Mainstream Media has destroyed countless reputations with their words. There are countless examples of news organizations putting out erroneous information that goes viral. They eventually retract or issue a correction, but the damage has been done. And they are allowed to repeat this cycle without any recourse. General Flynn is a Patriot that the Fake News Media destroyed.

A relevant tweet from Trump:

Peoples lives are being shattered and destroyed by a mere allegation. Some are true and some are false. Some are old and some are new. There is no recovery for someone falsely accused - life and career are gone.

The Most Intolerant Wins is a chapter in Taleb's book. The intolerant minority forces renormalization in a group. My friends and I were deciding on a place to eat for lunch. Despite the fact that the majority of us would have loved one restaurant, our other friend is a picky eater. We were forced to cater to his food choices.

Below is a passage from The Intolerant Minority:

Let us conjecture that the formation of moral values in society doesn’t come from the evolution of the consensus. No, it is the most intolerant person who imposes virtue on others precisely because of that intolerance. The same can apply to civil rights.

So, we need to be more than intolerant with some intolerant minorities. It is not permissible to use “American values” or “Western principles” in treating intolerant Salafism (which denies other peoples’ right to have their own religion). The West is currently in the process of committing suicide.

Freedom of Speech requires a punishment for those who seek to use speech maliciously. Selective intolerance is required to maintain tolerance. One of the many paradoxes of life. Ed Latimore once said, "To be strong enough to protect something, you must be strong enough to destroy it as well." To protect freedom, one must also have the power to destroy it.

Perhaps the best lesson of all from Skin in the Game:

Start by being nice to every person you meet. But if someone tries to exercise power over you, exercise power over him.

Balance is an Illusion

What appears imbalanced is actually balanced

Thinking of something Mr. Swift said "If the tool works, then it was the right tool." Similar to what Ivan Throne mentioned in The Nine Laws, "It is not balance that the Dark Triad Man seeks, but appropriateness" This is a lesson I've noticed with all the speakers from the 21 Convention. If you looked at each life story, it was not "balanced". Ironically through their own trial by fire, they are very grounded and balanced. Each one discovered what tools worked for them even if it meant discarding tools they grew up believing would work. True discovery requires you to let go of theories that don't work, no matter how good they appear or how long you've held them.

Look at the optical illusion above. Your brain wants to believe the two rectangles are out of balance. Yet they are parallel to each other. Nothing is out of balance. The same thing could be said about today's societal buzzwords balanced and moderate. What if the illusion played on us is so powerful, the ideas of the Bible, high standards, and American tradition are now considered dangerous and unbalanced?

President Trump uses tools that work even if those tools aren't considered Presidential. To use a phrase from Scott Adams, "Effective, but we don't like it." The objective reality does not care about your feelings. Hypergamy doesn't care. The iron resting on the gym floor doesn't care. So why should you care so much if a tool you tried failed? The speakers of the 21 Convention are balanced because they measured for themselves the extremes and found a stable point in their identity. To use another phrase from Ivan, these men "tumbled and turned" with the world and discovered themselves in the process.

Fundamentals of Self

Enjoy listening to the waves

I view the Twitterverse as a big ocean. If you pay attention to this ocean, you can see waves forming. Waves are topics of conversation. Some waves are violent with huge swells. Some form gradually. Some give you a jolt of energy that makes you want to ride the wave. But what is fascinating is how multiple voices appear to spontaneously develop the wave. Take Anthony Johnson's tweet.

"This is a fundamental, basic question that you are failing to ask and challenge"

Anthony is challenging a fundamental assumption people take for granted. Why do you want a relationship in the first place? If the answer is because "everyone does it" or "you don't want to be lonely", those are bad reasons to be in a relationship. Even answers like, "I want someone to take care of me" have underlying assumptions. For example, are you looking for a substitute mom to baby you?

Then take Black Label Logic's tweet.

"It constitutes a major problem when attempting to understanding something, because of shifting goal-posts."

He talks about how people conflate variables. Without a firm foundation, the goal posts keep shifting. Not only that but conflating variables leads to confusion on cause and effect. Examples of this confusion are found in nutrition, fitness, medicine, finance, economics. Take the infamous food pyramid. Thanks to the "experts", obesity and diabetes skyrocketed.

11 servings of carbs. Endorsed by the USDA

BLL's tweet reminded me of Wittgenstein's ruler from Nassim Taleb.

"Unless you have confidence in the ruler's reliability, if you use a ruler to measure a table you may also be using the table to measure the ruler."

In other words, if the deemed "expert" of information is not reliable, the statement reveals more about the expert than the information. Why aren't fundamental assumptions challenged more often? Throughout history, there are examples of those who challenged assumptions and were ostracized.

Take Ignaz Semmelweis. He believed that hand disinfection would reduce hospital mortality. His work challenged the fundamental assumptions of the established medical community. Doctors were offended at the suggestion that their hands could be dirty. Doctors conflated the idea that their higher social status meant they had cleaner hands.

A more modern example is Clair Patterson, The Most Important Scientist You’ve Never Heard Of. He was trained as a geologist. While trying to understand the age of the Earth, he discovered a new problem. All his samples were contaminated with lead and that lead levels in the environment were abnormally high. He soon discovered that leaded gasoline was the cause and that people were contaminated with lead.

At the time, the medical community believed lead in the environment posed no threat to human health and dismissed Patterson's findings. After all Patterson was a geologist, what did he know about biology? Since ancient times, lead use was prevalent. It was used in water pipes, cosmetics, and medicine. But just because something is prevalent does not mean it is natural or harmless. In addition, other scientists were not as meticulous in their research as Patterson.

"For decades, most experts rejected Patterson’s work because they carelessly tested corrupted samples and could not verify his data."

This goes back to the issue of conflating variables and Wittgenstein's ruler. If the data being sampled is contaminated, you will be chasing a false narrative. It is vital to get the fundamentals correct before building a system. This is related to something Craig James tweeted.

"That which is considered to be an acceptable standard of excellence is something that every man must determine for himself"

It is up to you to figure out what is contaminating your life. And you must walk the path alone to rid the contaminants and pursue excellence. The reason you must walk this path alone is because others do not know your authentic self. And relying on others gives the wrong diagnosis. Take Dylan Madden as an example.

He was told he had a learning disability. Think about the underlying assumptions in that diagnosis. Is there a right way to learn? Is our current education system an accurate measure of ability? Or is the ruler wrong? We know so little about consciousness that to be able accurately diagnosis learning ability is absurd.

"If you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid"

Once you begin to understand the process of finding your own foundation, you begin to see the gaps in all areas of your life. Like what Tanner Guzy said.

"Once your eyes are open to the truth on one thing, all other lies become easier to spot"

All tweets were made within the past 2 weeks. This fascinating synchronicity drives home an important message. I look forward to the next wave that comes my way.