Michael Malice: The White Pill, Freedom, Hope, and Happiness Amidst Chaos

Lex Fridman (02:39.840)

In the context of this, I have two options.

Michael Malice (02:42.040)

I could either be cautious and afraid, or second, be kind, thoughtful, and fearless.

Lex Fridman (02:48.520)

I choose the latter.

Michael Malice (02:50.240)

Hopefully while still being open, fragile, and empathetic.

Lex Fridman (02:53.680)

Again, I strive to be like the main character of The Idiot by Dostoevsky.

Michael Malice (02:59.480)

That's my New Year's resolution.

Lex Fridman (03:01.400)

Be kind and do difficult things.

Michael Malice (03:04.120)

Difficult conversations, difficult research projects, and difficult entrepreneurial adventures.

Michael Malice (03:09.520)

If you enjoy this thing, subscribe on YouTube, review it on Apple Podcasts, follow on Spotify,

Michael Malice (03:16.160)

support it on Patreon, or connect with me on Twitter at Lex Friedman.

Lex Fridman (03:20.080)

And now, here's my conversation with Michael Malice.

Michael Malice (03:25.600)

Knock knock.

Lex Fridman (03:26.600)

You're stealing my bed?

Michael Malice (03:27.600)

I'll kill your family.

Lex Fridman (03:28.600)

That's not how a knock knock joke works.

Michael Malice (03:35.320)

Knock knock, Michael.

Michael Malice (03:36.320)

You don't do knock knock jokes with Russians because if we have a knock at the door, turn

Michael Malice (03:41.240)

down the TV.

Lex Fridman (03:42.240)

You got to sit quiet.

Michael Malice (03:43.240)

We hope they go away.

Lex Fridman (03:44.240)

You don't do that back in the motherland.

Michael Malice (03:45.240)

You know this.

Lex Fridman (03:46.240)

It's triggering.

Lex Fridman (03:47.240)

Who's there?

Lex Fridman (03:48.240)

I can't even do it now.

Michael Malice (03:53.960)

Knock knock.

Lex Fridman (03:54.960)

Who's there?

Michael Malice (03:55.960)

Leon.

Lex Fridman (03:56.960)

Leon who?

Michael Malice (03:58.600)

Leon me when you're not strong, Michael.

Lex Fridman (04:00.960)

Well, that will never happen.

Michael Malice (04:03.720)

I stole elegantly, eloquently that joke from you.

Lex Fridman (04:08.240)

The lie detector term, that was a lie.

Michael Malice (04:10.680)

Elegantly and eloquently.

Lex Fridman (04:11.680)

Oh.

Michael Malice (04:12.680)

Yeah, you crossed it out on a sheet of paper.

Lex Fridman (04:17.320)

That means it's real.

Michael Malice (04:18.900)

The reason I bring it up is because you had the guts, the brilliance to do a knock knock

Lex Fridman (04:25.120)

joke.

Michael Malice (04:26.120)

Not once, but three times with Alex Jones.

Lex Fridman (04:28.240)

I think it was like six.

Michael Malice (04:29.240)

I had a runner.

Lex Fridman (04:30.240)

Okay.

Michael Malice (04:31.240)

Maybe they started to sort of melt together in this beautiful art form that you've created,

Lex Fridman (04:37.040)

which is like these kind, loving knock knock jokes with Alex Jones.

Lex Fridman (04:40.800)

So you got the chance to meet him and talk to him twice with Tim Pool in a long form

Lex Fridman (04:47.560)

conversation.

Lex Fridman (04:48.560)

What was it like talking to Alex Jones, both on the deep philosophical intellectual level

Lex Fridman (04:56.920)

and staring the man in his eyes and doing a knock knock joke about Olive knock knock.

Lex Fridman (05:04.920)

Who's there?

Lex Fridman (05:05.920)

Olive.

Michael Malice (05:06.920)

I love you, Alex.

Lex Fridman (05:07.920)

I love you.

Michael Malice (05:08.920)

Well, there's a lot to explain.

Lex Fridman (05:11.440)

Where do you start?

Michael Malice (05:12.440)

I've been on his show Infowars a few times when I was researching my book, Then You Write.

Lex Fridman (05:17.520)

So I had had conversations with him before.

Michael Malice (05:20.480)

One of the things that I appreciate about Alex is he is a lot more self aware than people

Lex Fridman (05:25.500)

think and has a good sense of humor.

Lex Fridman (05:28.280)

And I also like a good twist ending.

Lex Fridman (05:32.260)

So if you set people up and all these jokes are these kind of vapid, you know, all of

Michael Malice (05:37.520)

you jokes and the last one's about building seven, they're not going to see that one coming

Lex Fridman (05:41.920)

nor will he see that one coming.

Michael Malice (05:43.400)

I even had another one about Sandy Hook, which I didn't do on the air because he was being

Michael Malice (05:46.960)

like a good sport, but that was the dagger that was kind of behind my back if necessary.

Lex Fridman (05:52.640)

But it was a good mechanism toward I like it when things work on several levels.

Michael Malice (05:57.700)

It was also a good mechanism to keep kind of the conversation guarded and this every

Lex Fridman (06:03.240)

so often, this is kind of hitting the control, alt, delete and bring it down to a certain

Lex Fridman (06:09.480)

point of calmness.

Lex Fridman (06:11.080)

What about the love thing?

Michael Malice (06:12.080)

I mean, you're saying that that was a buildup to the dagger, but it was also somehow really

Michael Malice (06:19.800)

refreshing to get that little jolt, like that pause.

Lex Fridman (06:23.780)

You don't get that in conversations often.

Michael Malice (06:25.480)

Like I'm a huge fan of Rogan and he'll have a three hour conversation, but at some point

Lex Fridman (06:30.640)

just pause and be like, I love you, man.

Michael Malice (06:35.680)

Like it's in the cheesiest way possible because that seems to be, it somehow hits the hardest

Lex Fridman (06:42.760)

then.

Michael Malice (06:43.760)

I don't know.

Michael Malice (06:44.760)

I don't know you didn't intend it that way, but with Alex Jones to sit there and to say,

Michael Malice (06:48.840)

I love you.

Lex Fridman (06:50.960)

That was like, I just haven't never heard that before.

Lex Fridman (06:55.120)

And so it struck me as like, not just funny for what you're doing, but just like, whoa,

Michael Malice (07:00.220)

we just took, cause conversations are all about like this ranting, especially with Alex

Michael Malice (07:04.640)

Jones, just like ranting about this or that, this part of the world, like, can you believe

Lex Fridman (07:08.880)

this shit?

Michael Malice (07:09.880)

That kind of thing.

Lex Fridman (07:10.880)

But like to pause and be like, this is awesome.

Michael Malice (07:13.400)

I don't know if you felt that way, but.

Lex Fridman (07:15.000)

Oh, I definitely felt that way.

Lex Fridman (07:16.240)

So it was actually very fun.

Lex Fridman (07:17.240)

I'll give you the backstory of how that happened.

Michael Malice (07:22.080)

It was silly cause Tim calls me up and there's this expression in marketing, don't go past

Lex Fridman (07:26.620)

the sale.

Lex Fridman (07:27.620)

Right?

Michael Malice (07:28.620)

You're gonna buy someone a car and like, it's got this feature, this feature and that feature.

Lex Fridman (07:32.400)

And they're like, you know what?

Lex Fridman (07:33.400)

I'm going to buy the car.

Michael Malice (07:34.580)

If you keep talking, you can only make them lose the sale.

Lex Fridman (07:38.060)

You just get them to sign and get, get out of Dodge.

Lex Fridman (07:41.120)

So Tim calls me up and he goes, okay, here's what we're thinking.

Lex Fridman (07:47.080)

This is top secret.

Michael Malice (07:48.080)

Alex is going to be on the show.

Lex Fridman (07:50.000)

We want you on as well.

Lex Fridman (07:51.340)

And I've never said yes to anything as quickly in my life.

Lex Fridman (07:54.920)

And then he keeps talking and I'm like, Tim, this, you don't have to sell it.

Michael Malice (07:58.240)

I interrupted him.

Lex Fridman (07:59.240)

I go, you don't have to sell it.

Lex Fridman (08:00.240)

Why you, by the way?

Michael Malice (08:01.600)

I think because I am kind of an agent of chaos and Alex is in his own way, an agent of chaos.

Lex Fridman (08:10.520)

And what is, provides an opportunity in this kind of news media space that you and I travel

Michael Malice (08:15.560)

in, it's the kind of things where none of us three, you know, as we said on the show,

Michael Malice (08:20.960)

knew what it would be like.

Michael Malice (08:22.520)

If you, you know, to certain, within certain parameters, what, you know, Megyn Kelly or

Michael Malice (08:28.400)

Wolf Blitzer or any of these corporate figures are going to be like in a conversation to

Lex Fridman (08:32.520)

some extent, none of us had any idea.

Michael Malice (08:35.360)

I knew they didn't know I was bringing in knocking up jokes.

Lex Fridman (08:39.080)

So that was kind of what was so exciting.

Michael Malice (08:42.480)

I said at one point, I'm kind of envious of the audience because this is, there's so many

Michael Malice (08:47.160)

exciting things that are happening and that the internet and podcasting provides people

Michael Malice (08:52.000)

an opportunity to do that.

Lex Fridman (08:53.880)

It was great.

Michael Malice (08:54.880)

Yeah.

Lex Fridman (08:55.880)

That, that was the greatest pairing with Alex Jones that I've ever seen by far.

Lex Fridman (09:02.080)

So like, so I immediately knew now this isn't a knock on Tim, but I don't even know if Tim

Lex Fridman (09:08.960)

was prepared.

Michael Malice (09:09.960)

Tim was not prepared.

Lex Fridman (09:11.400)

For this.

Lex Fridman (09:12.400)

How could he be prepared?

Lex Fridman (09:13.400)

Well, so I mean, I don't know if Tim is used to that.

Michael Malice (09:16.360)

I think Joe Rogan is more equipped, prepared for the chaos, just the years he's been in

Lex Fridman (09:22.120)

it.

Michael Malice (09:23.120)

Like I immediately thought this is the right pairing for Joe Rogan because Alex Jones has

Lex Fridman (09:27.640)

been on Joe Rogan a few times, three times.

Michael Malice (09:31.300)

My favorite so far was with Tim Dillon, but Tim was clearly, Tim Dillon was also kind

Michael Malice (09:39.240)

of a genius in his own right, but he was kind of a fan and he was stepping away.

Michael Malice (09:48.000)

He was almost like in awe of Alex Jones where you were both, you were in awe of the experience

Michael Malice (09:58.400)

that's being created and at the same time fearlessly just trolling the situation.

Michael Malice (10:04.000)

I mean, to do a knock, knock joke, to stop, I mean, that just shows that you're in control

Lex Fridman (10:08.760)

of the experience.

Michael Malice (10:09.760)

No, you're like riding the experience.

Lex Fridman (10:11.440)

That immediately was like, this needs to be on Rogan.

Lex Fridman (10:14.720)

So I hope that happens as well.

Lex Fridman (10:18.080)

You're on your own, of course, on Rogan, but just you, that's an experience.

Michael Malice (10:22.440)

That's the, whatever, this gotta be a good name for it.

Lex Fridman (10:24.720)

Like Jimi Hendrix Experience, there's the Michael and Alex.

Michael Malice (10:27.520)

Because that was a band.

Lex Fridman (10:29.080)

It's taken.

Michael Malice (10:30.080)

Well, I don't know how many years you can restart the experience.

Michael Malice (10:35.360)

Because I feel sorry to interrupt you, I feel a very big responsibility, especially in 2020

Michael Malice (10:42.040)

to provide fun and something cool and something unique that hasn't been done before for the

Lex Fridman (10:49.560)

audience.

Michael Malice (10:50.560)

I think this has been a very rough year on our audiences psychologically and in other

Lex Fridman (10:55.560)

aspects of their lives.

Lex Fridman (10:57.200)

So I feel if I'm going to be there, I'm going to put on a show and it's also going to be

Lex Fridman (11:02.920)

great because it also alienates the people you don't want.

Lex Fridman (11:06.360)

So there's a lot of people who sit there and be like, oh, he's telling knock, people who

Michael Malice (11:09.760)

are too cool for school, where they're like, oh, he's telling knock, knock jokes.

Michael Malice (11:13.560)

This is stupid.

Lex Fridman (11:14.560)

I'm like, good.

Michael Malice (11:15.560)

If you have an issue with having eaten cotton candy or doing a puzzle with a kid or with

Lex Fridman (11:22.920)

that by yourself, that's on you.

Lex Fridman (11:26.520)

And it's something very, something I think is the enemy is cynicism and this idea that

Michael Malice (11:31.040)

like, oh, this is too silly and we need that kind of childlike aspect in our lives.

Michael Malice (11:36.520)

I think it's something we could use more of.

Michael Malice (11:38.360)

It's very much an aspect of our media culture that to kind of have be condemnatory about

Michael Malice (11:42.840)

that or to do it in a certain very corporate fake way.

Lex Fridman (11:46.400)

So it is something I encourage a lot, something I enjoy doing.

Lex Fridman (11:51.560)

And again, like with the first time I was on Tim, I had a propeller beanie on, you know,

Michael Malice (11:56.640)

with the motorized and a lot of people were like, I can't take anyone seriously who dresses

Michael Malice (12:00.880)

like this.

Lex Fridman (12:01.880)

I go, good.

Michael Malice (12:02.880)

If you judge someone's ideas by how they appear instead of the ideas themselves, you're not

Lex Fridman (12:07.960)

someone I want on my team.

Lex Fridman (12:10.280)

Are we going to address the outfit you're wearing?

Lex Fridman (12:15.160)

We can address it, sure.

Michael Malice (12:16.160)

You know, for those who are colorblind, Michael's wearing the, or just listening to this, Michael's

Michael Malice (12:25.240)

wearing the exact opposite, the universe from another dimension outfit, which is a white

Michael Malice (12:31.800)

suit and black shirt.

Lex Fridman (12:33.800)

So genius.

Michael Malice (12:34.800)

Okay.

Lex Fridman (12:35.800)

So.

Michael Malice (12:36.800)

You just see the next two looks I've planned.

Lex Fridman (12:37.800)

Oh, no.

Michael Malice (12:38.800)

Yeah, they're great.

Lex Fridman (12:39.800)

Well, obviously this relationship's going to end today.

Michael Malice (12:42.800)

It's over.

Lex Fridman (12:43.800)

I'll put them on Insta.

Michael Malice (12:47.000)

Okay.

Lex Fridman (12:48.000)

Is there some deep philosophy to the humor?

Lex Fridman (12:50.960)

Is this goes to our trolling discussion?

Michael Malice (12:54.540)

Is there some, is there like chapters to this genius or is this just what makes you smile

Lex Fridman (13:02.360)

in the morning?

Michael Malice (13:03.360)

Well, I mean, I think you're honestly, in this case, using the word genius a little

Michael Malice (13:07.120)

loosely.

Lex Fridman (13:08.120)

I am.

Michael Malice (13:09.120)

I don't think this is particularly genius, but I do think it is fun.

Lex Fridman (13:12.080)

It is exuberant.

Michael Malice (13:13.260)

It is joyous.

Michael Malice (13:16.040)

I think the bigger my audience has gotten and the more I actually communicate with,

Michael Malice (13:23.400)

you know, fans, I do feel it kind of kicks in these paternal maternal instincts, which

Lex Fridman (13:28.840)

is very, very odd.

Michael Malice (13:29.840)

I did not expect to have them.

Lex Fridman (13:30.840)

What do you mean?

Lex Fridman (13:31.840)

Who's the dad?

Lex Fridman (13:32.840)

I'm the dad and the mom.

Michael Malice (13:33.960)

I remember, and it may have been similar for you, I'm curious to hear it.

Michael Malice (13:37.400)

For young, smart, like ambitious men, like 24 to 27 for me was a very rough period because

Michael Malice (13:43.880)

that's the window where a lot of people get married and they kind of check out.

Lex Fridman (13:47.980)

And if you're very much kind of finding your own road, you don't know what's happening.

Michael Malice (13:52.700)

No one's in a position to really guide you or help you.

Lex Fridman (13:55.280)

And it's tough.

Michael Malice (13:56.280)

It's a very tough window.

Lex Fridman (13:58.840)

And what I'm finding now is having these kids who are in that position, but now instead

Michael Malice (14:05.040)

of them stumbling along, for some of them, I'm the one who could be like, no, no, no,

Lex Fridman (14:09.360)

it's not you.

Michael Malice (14:10.360)

It's everybody else.

Lex Fridman (14:11.760)

And to be able to give them that semblance of feeling seen, to use a cliched expression,

Michael Malice (14:18.340)

to feel normal and that, no, no, you're the heroes here.

Lex Fridman (14:23.360)

They're the background noise.

Michael Malice (14:25.660)

It's just really very flattering and humbling to be in that position.

Lex Fridman (14:30.360)

You have many minds, right?

Michael Malice (14:31.960)

There's the thoughtful kind, Michael, there's like, I'm going to burn down the powerful.

Lex Fridman (14:41.280)

And then there's like, I'm going to have this just lighthearted trolling of the world, which

Lex Fridman (14:48.100)

and which of those are most important to the 27 demographic?

Lex Fridman (14:55.040)

I think it is the combination.

Michael Malice (14:57.680)

It's like if you're making a meal, chicken Kiev, you need the chicken, you need the ham,

Lex Fridman (15:04.480)

you need the butter sauce.

Michael Malice (15:07.600)

Because I think people, when you're young, you need to see someone who's fought the fight

Lex Fridman (15:13.280)

for you and who's won.

Lex Fridman (15:15.960)

So it's very easy to be defeatist.

Lex Fridman (15:18.560)

So this is what winning looks like.

Michael Malice (15:20.880)

No, this is not.

Lex Fridman (15:23.300)

This is most assuredly what winning does not look like.

Lex Fridman (15:26.040)

But in my normal clothes, a little bit more.

Michael Malice (15:29.680)

This is a good time to mention that clothes wise, you're wearing sheath underwear.

Lex Fridman (15:34.720)

And people should buy sheath underwear.

Lex Fridman (15:37.180)

Use code Malice20.

Michael Malice (15:38.180)

If you go to sheathunderwear.com, use promo code Malice20.

Lex Fridman (15:42.240)

What I love about why I'm glad to promote the product and wear it, it's the most comfortable

Michael Malice (15:46.600)

underwear I've ever worn.

Lex Fridman (15:48.160)

And you have a separate pouch for both parts of your genitals.

Michael Malice (15:51.880)

That's what I thought there was like a punchline coming.

Lex Fridman (15:54.000)

No, it's a very nice aspect of the product.

Michael Malice (15:56.240)

Yeah.

Lex Fridman (15:57.240)

But I think what here's something else just goes back to what we're just talking about.

Michael Malice (16:00.420)

There are so many and this is going to segue into this.

Lex Fridman (16:02.800)

There are so many small companies who've been devastated this year.

Michael Malice (16:07.360)

We have not seen a sustained attack on mom and pop shops like we've seen in 2020, who

Lex Fridman (16:13.200)

are innovators and making something happen.

Lex Fridman (16:17.060)

And when you're just like one dude who's producing a product, they're a sponsor of mine.

Michael Malice (16:22.720)

I'm happy to, first of all, it's funny that I'm pitching underwear, but it's also something

Michael Malice (16:28.400)

I enjoy.

Lex Fridman (16:29.400)

And also you said small business.

Michael Malice (16:30.400)

Yeah.

Lex Fridman (16:31.400)

It's microscopic, like a thimble.

Lex Fridman (16:33.120)

So this isn't a sponsor of mine, but this is a good segue.

Lex Fridman (16:36.120)

So this is, Russians, we celebrate New Year's, it's Novomgorodom.

Michael Malice (16:39.720)

We have Dmitry, he comes down, puts a present under your pillow.

Lex Fridman (16:43.240)

So this is a company called J.L. Lawson.

Michael Malice (16:45.720)

He's a fan of yours.

Lex Fridman (16:46.720)

He's a metal worker.

Lex Fridman (16:47.720)

And he said, can I give you something to give to Lex?

Lex Fridman (16:50.920)

I have one of his worry coins.

Michael Malice (16:52.480)

I'll tell you what it is.

Lex Fridman (16:54.000)

He's not a sponsor.

Michael Malice (16:55.000)

This is not, I'm not getting paid for this.

Lex Fridman (16:56.600)

So what a worry coin is, I carry it around in my butt.

Michael Malice (16:58.740)

If you have raw denim, it's great because it brings you fades.

Lex Fridman (17:01.500)

So you carry it around with you all the time.

Lex Fridman (17:03.640)

It says worrying is like paying a debt you don't owe, right?

Lex Fridman (17:08.120)

And I carry this around and allow it to spend like a year.

Michael Malice (17:12.420)

Next time you're worrying, and this is good advice if you don't have a worry coin.

Lex Fridman (17:15.720)

Go think about 10 years ago and what you were worried about then.

Lex Fridman (17:20.640)

And then think about, did any of those things pan out?

Lex Fridman (17:23.040)

And some of them did, but you were able to handle it.

Lex Fridman (17:25.840)

And that's a good way to maintain perspective.

Lex Fridman (17:28.600)

So J.L. Lawson is the company.

Michael Malice (17:30.440)

He sent me this present.

Lex Fridman (17:31.440)

I said, let me give it to Lex on air.

Lex Fridman (17:33.600)

So enjoy.

Lex Fridman (17:34.600)

So I have to open it up now?

Michael Malice (17:37.360)

Yeah.

Lex Fridman (17:38.360)

J.L. Lawson and co.

Michael Malice (17:39.640)

Two Lex from Anthony.

Lex Fridman (17:40.920)

Yeah.

Lex Fridman (17:41.920)

And I said, make something mathematical for Lex.

Lex Fridman (17:43.400)

So I don't even know what's in there.

Lex Fridman (17:44.680)

You don't know what's in there?

Lex Fridman (17:45.680)

No.

Lex Fridman (17:46.680)

And it got through his TSA.

Lex Fridman (17:47.680)

Could be a bomb.

Michael Malice (17:49.160)

It could be.

Lex Fridman (17:50.420)

Just like this episode.

Michael Malice (17:54.700)

Make sure you unwrap it close to the mic because it drives you for crazy.

Lex Fridman (17:57.860)

That's really the best part.

Lex Fridman (18:03.120)

Is this what an unboxing video looks like?

Lex Fridman (18:05.640)

I think so.

Michael Malice (18:07.240)

This conversation is going to be a big hit on the internet.

Lex Fridman (18:10.400)

With the unboxing community.

Michael Malice (18:12.960)

I need to have an excited look on my face to make sure that the reaction video, it should

Lex Fridman (18:17.480)

be an unboxing and a reaction video.

Michael Malice (18:19.880)

Lex Freeman reacts.

Lex Fridman (18:20.880)

It's another box.

Michael Malice (18:21.880)

It's just a series of boxes.

Lex Fridman (18:25.920)

Lex big fan since hearing you on Rogan months ago.

Michael Malice (18:30.480)

Most of your guests are over my head, but still enjoyable.

Lex Fridman (18:34.840)

Like this episode, Michael was kind enough to want to share my work with you.

Michael Malice (18:40.400)

Keep doing what you do.

Lex Fridman (18:41.760)

Anthony Lawson.

Michael Malice (18:42.760)

Thanks Anthony.

Lex Fridman (18:43.760)

There's a lot in there.

Lex Fridman (18:44.760)

What is in there?

Lex Fridman (18:45.760)

Give me some.

Michael Malice (18:46.760)

I'll open some.

Lex Fridman (18:47.760)

Okay.

Michael Malice (18:48.760)

All right.

Michael Malice (18:49.760)

Show it to the camera and then make sure you look excited or not or disappointed.

Michael Malice (18:56.600)

No, this is cool.

Lex Fridman (18:57.600)

This is a worry coin.

Michael Malice (18:58.600)

Like I was showing you.

Lex Fridman (18:59.600)

So you hold it in your hand and when you can do this with your thumb, if people are, have

Michael Malice (19:03.200)

anxiety or whatever.

Lex Fridman (19:04.200)

Oh, there's a lot of cool stuff in here.

Michael Malice (19:06.520)

Fibonacci coin.

Lex Fridman (19:07.520)

Oh, see, yeah, that's the math stuff.

Michael Malice (19:10.320)

That's really awesome.

Lex Fridman (19:11.760)

This is really cool.

Michael Malice (19:12.920)

Wait, you got a big one laying there too.

Lex Fridman (19:16.440)

That's what she said.

Michael Malice (19:19.520)

I'm telling you last time you offended me saying I don't have humor.

Lex Fridman (19:28.720)

The spin tray micro brass and copper bronze.

Michael Malice (19:33.320)

By the way, the packaging is epic.

Lex Fridman (19:36.480)

I think that's his top.

Michael Malice (19:37.480)

He makes tops.

Lex Fridman (19:38.480)

Cool.

Michael Malice (19:39.480)

Yeah, you spin it in there and it's the two different bronze and copper.

Michael Malice (19:49.920)

I think he's the only one who makes these machined tops and then they sit in here, I

Michael Malice (19:54.600)

guess.

Lex Fridman (19:55.600)

Yeah, but you could spin them in that section.

Michael Malice (19:57.640)

Got it, cool.

Lex Fridman (1:00:01.520)

There's not a deep intellectual discourse is what I mean.

Lex Fridman (1:00:03.880)

But if you were to try to be on stage with the Jordan Peterson, to me the brave thing

Lex Fridman (1:00:09.800)

now, it would be to argue for communism.

Michael Malice (1:00:13.400)

It'd be interesting to see.

Lex Fridman (1:00:15.080)

Not many people do it.

Michael Malice (1:00:16.900)

I certainly wouldn't be willing to do it.

Lex Fridman (1:00:18.320)

I don't have enough...

Michael Malice (1:00:19.320)

I don't, first of all, I don't believe it, but second of all, it's a very difficult argument

Michael Malice (1:00:23.280)

to make because you will get so much fire, which is why I like Richard Wolff, he's one

Michael Malice (1:00:27.480)

of the people who is quite rigorously showing that there's some good ideas within the system

Michael Malice (1:00:33.800)

of communism, specifically saying that attacking more the negative sides of capitalism.

Michael Malice (1:00:42.360)

Just saying that capitalism potentially is more dangerous than communism.

Lex Fridman (1:00:47.840)

I mean, I disagree with that, but I think it's a...

Michael Malice (1:00:51.040)

I love how something is like we've got a body count of 60 million, but this everything

Lex Fridman (1:00:55.840)

is potentially, like water can drown everyone on earth.

Lex Fridman (1:00:59.880)

So this is incoherent.

Lex Fridman (1:01:00.880)

Well, I think nuclear weapons are bad, but nuclear energy is good.

Michael Malice (1:01:04.960)

Sure.

Lex Fridman (1:01:05.960)

Well, nuclear weapons also can be good.

Michael Malice (1:01:07.660)

You can easily make the argument, which I don't know that I subscribe to, that nuclear

Michael Malice (1:01:11.320)

weapons prevented boots on the ground war, or it caused them to be much more contained.

Lex Fridman (1:01:17.520)

And they're also quite effective at changing the direction of an asteroid that's about

Lex Fridman (1:01:21.920)

to hit earth, as I've learned from a movie.

Michael Malice (1:01:25.040)

Armageddon.

Lex Fridman (1:01:26.040)

And they're actually useful as Elon Musk has claimed for prior to colonizing Mars, making

Michael Malice (1:01:34.080)

it more habitable.

Lex Fridman (1:01:35.360)

Oh, okay.

Michael Malice (1:01:36.360)

Got to do something.

Lex Fridman (1:01:37.360)

But yes, but I guess what I'm saying is there's a place for nuance.

Lex Fridman (1:01:46.480)

And there's some topics so hot, like communism, where nuance is very difficult to have.

Lex Fridman (1:01:53.240)

And I feel like with Nazi Germany, it was a similar thing at the time.

Michael Malice (1:01:59.960)

You want to talk about Jeanette Rankin, who was one of my favorite people.

Lex Fridman (1:02:03.480)

So Jeanette Rankin was the first woman elected to Congress.

Michael Malice (1:02:06.080)

She was elected before women's suffrage was a constitutional amendment from Montana.

Lex Fridman (1:02:12.300)

She was elected in 1916.

Michael Malice (1:02:16.720)

She was one of a handful of people to vote against the US going into the Great War, which

Lex Fridman (1:02:22.260)

was the right call at the time.

Michael Malice (1:02:23.520)

She was a pacifist Republican as well, coincidentally.

Lex Fridman (1:02:26.980)

She lost her seat, ran again in, was it 1940?

Michael Malice (1:02:32.280)

Got the seat again, and was the only person to vote against getting into World War II.

Lex Fridman (1:02:38.680)

It was not a unanimous choice.

Michael Malice (1:02:40.800)

Jeanette Rankin was the one person.

Lex Fridman (1:02:42.480)

And she said, you can no more win a war than you can win a hurricane.

Lex Fridman (1:02:46.360)

So she's one of these interesting, and talk about bravery.

Lex Fridman (1:02:50.400)

You're the one vote after Pearl Harbor to say, we're not doing this.

Lex Fridman (1:02:55.960)

And I mean, the pressure she must have been under at the time is, and of course, many

Lex Fridman (1:03:00.840)

people are not interested in hearing her perspective.

Michael Malice (1:03:02.520)

She's crazy.

Lex Fridman (1:03:03.520)

She's evil, blah, blah, blah.

Michael Malice (1:03:04.520)

It's also funny, someone on my Twitter when I talked about her goes, maybe she had Hitler's

Lex Fridman (1:03:07.480)

sympathies.

Michael Malice (1:03:08.480)

Like, yeah, Ms. Rankin was a big fan of Hitler.

Lex Fridman (1:03:12.680)

You figured it out, guys.

Lex Fridman (1:03:13.840)

Do you think there's an argument to be made that United States should not have gotten

Lex Fridman (1:03:18.760)

involved in World War II?

Michael Malice (1:03:20.280)

Oh, easy.

Lex Fridman (1:03:21.280)

An easy argument.

Michael Malice (1:03:22.280)

The argument, I talk about this in The New Right.

Lex Fridman (1:03:25.160)

So on internet circles, there's something called Godwin's Law, which means the longer

Michael Malice (1:03:29.920)

an internet conversation goes on, the probability someone gets compared to Hitler becomes one.

Michael Malice (1:03:37.680)

In certain New Right circles, the longer the conversation goes on, the more likelihood

Michael Malice (1:03:42.800)

that the argument will become we shouldn't have ended World War II also becomes one.

Lex Fridman (1:03:46.040)

And the argument is, at the very least, stay back, let Hitler and Stalin kill each other

Michael Malice (1:03:51.880)

off, and then go in and knock off the weaker one.

Lex Fridman (1:03:54.840)

And you're going to be saving, destroying two nightmare systems.

Lex Fridman (1:03:59.200)

And I think that's an easy argument to make.

Lex Fridman (1:04:00.720)

Now, it's hard to pull off after Pearl Harbor.

Lex Fridman (1:04:02.920)

But in terms of strategy, I don't think that's a tough sell.

Lex Fridman (1:04:07.440)

What about after Pearl Harbor?

Michael Malice (1:04:08.440)

I mean, that's what I'm saying.

Lex Fridman (1:04:09.920)

After Pearl Harbor, how are you going to sell it to the people?

Michael Malice (1:04:11.980)

The argument is, blah, blah, the Holocaust.

Michael Malice (1:04:13.600)

The Holocaust, there's no scenario where that doesn't happen, really, unless you're going

Michael Malice (1:04:18.200)

in way earlier.

Lex Fridman (1:04:19.640)

But even so, Hitler had said, if the Jews launch another war, we're going to wipe them

Michael Malice (1:04:24.000)

from the face of the earth.

Lex Fridman (1:04:25.000)

So the Jews are being held hostage by Hitler as an argument for this.

Michael Malice (1:04:27.840)

Another thing he did, which was diabolical, is in order to make it that people could not

Michael Malice (1:04:34.140)

accept Jews as refugees, if they were going to leave Germany, they had to be penniless.

Lex Fridman (1:04:39.680)

So now you have, it's not like they're coming over with money and they can take care of

Lex Fridman (1:04:43.200)

themselves.

Michael Malice (1:04:44.200)

No, no.

Lex Fridman (1:04:45.200)

They're going to be completely destitute.

Michael Malice (1:04:46.200)

It makes it harder to accept them, yeah.

Lex Fridman (1:04:47.200)

Millions of destitute people who don't speak the language, it's a tough sell.

Lex Fridman (1:04:50.800)

So speaking of good ones law, what do you make of this condition, Trump derangement

Lex Fridman (1:04:58.320)

syndrome?

Michael Malice (1:04:59.320)

Yeah.

Lex Fridman (1:05:00.320)

And the idea of comparing Trump to Hitler?

Michael Malice (1:05:04.980)

I think it's despicable.

Lex Fridman (1:05:06.880)

And I'll give you an example, something parallel that I think more people should be regarding

Michael Malice (1:05:11.000)

as despicable.

Michael Malice (1:05:12.320)

Earlier in 2020, we were all told that unless we were in Syria immediately, the Kurds were

Michael Malice (1:05:19.120)

going to be exterminated.

Lex Fridman (1:05:20.920)

They invoke the Holocaust.

Michael Malice (1:05:22.620)

This is going to be another genocide.

Lex Fridman (1:05:24.760)

And if you're not for this, you're basically forcing another Holocaust.

Michael Malice (1:05:29.740)

None of the people who use this argument, we didn't go to Syria, the Kurds were exterminated,

Michael Malice (1:05:33.920)

they just vanished from the news, had any consequences for using this kind of a comparison.

Lex Fridman (1:05:39.860)

So I think it's really kind of fatuous.

Lex Fridman (1:05:44.720)

And I think it's amazing that people think Hitler's the only tyrant who ever lived.

Michael Malice (1:05:49.360)

Like everyone who's bad is specifically Hitler.

Lex Fridman (1:05:52.340)

You know how you know he's not Hitler?

Michael Malice (1:05:54.540)

Because you can tweet at him, and no one comes to your house to kill your family.

Lex Fridman (1:05:58.240)

Like that's kind of a big difference.

Michael Malice (1:06:01.280)

Also there between Trump and many of his critics is that his grandchildren will be raised as

Lex Fridman (1:06:06.240)

Jews.

Lex Fridman (1:06:07.240)

So that's also kind of a, and Deborah Lipschad talks about this a lot.

Michael Malice (1:06:11.600)

The New York Times at the time, there's another book called Buried by the Times, which talks

Michael Malice (1:06:16.840)

about the New York Times in the World War II.

Michael Malice (1:06:19.320)

Because the idea that Jews weren't white was the Hitler idea, the New York Times at the

Michael Malice (1:06:25.680)

time, Salzburger, wanted to be against this idea.

Lex Fridman (1:06:30.760)

So they specifically downplayed the antisemitism as opposed to the Nazis are being oppressive.

Lex Fridman (1:06:37.440)

So the argument that you can separate Nazism from antisemitism is a historical debate people

Lex Fridman (1:06:43.360)

have.

Lex Fridman (1:06:44.360)

And my perspective is, I think it's, I do not find it convincing that you can separate

Lex Fridman (1:06:50.600)

those two.

Michael Malice (1:06:51.600)

I think antisemitism was essential to Nazism.

Lex Fridman (1:06:54.320)

I think Nazism and Mussolini's fascism have very big differences.

Lex Fridman (1:06:59.680)

And do you think, do you think antisemitism was fundamental to who Hitler was or was it

Lex Fridman (1:07:04.840)

just that?

Lex Fridman (1:07:05.840)

So this is the interesting thing is like, was it a tool that he saw as being effective?

Lex Fridman (1:07:12.120)

No, he believed it.

Lex Fridman (1:07:14.840)

So why do you see those as intricately connected?

Lex Fridman (1:07:17.840)

Could Hitler have accomplished the same amount or more without the Holocaust?

Michael Malice (1:07:23.600)

Yeah.

Michael Malice (1:07:24.600)

Because think about how many resources you had to divert at a time where you have Operation

Michael Malice (1:07:28.160)

Barbarossa with Stalin.

Lex Fridman (1:07:29.520)

So why are they connected?

Lex Fridman (1:07:30.780)

Why are they so connected?

Lex Fridman (1:07:33.320)

Is it because Hitler was insane or was he a bad strategist or what?

Michael Malice (1:07:38.320)

He was obviously a bad strategist.

Lex Fridman (1:07:40.440)

He had no need to open a second front.

Michael Malice (1:07:42.320)

His generals, my understanding, told him this is crazy.

Lex Fridman (1:07:45.420)

It didn't work out for him at all.

Michael Malice (1:07:48.240)

I mean, to draw Russia and her resources into that war, it makes absolutely no sense in

Lex Fridman (1:07:54.120)

retrospect.

Michael Malice (1:07:55.120)

There's a book about, I forgot what it's called, where it talked about him at that point was

Michael Malice (1:07:58.000)

just high all the time on amphetamines and that could have affected his thinking.

Michael Malice (1:08:01.360)

Yeah, there's a really good book on drugs.

Lex Fridman (1:08:03.520)

I forget what it's called, but yeah, it's a really good one.

Lex Fridman (1:08:07.080)

But it was, I mean, scapegoating is a big part and parcel of the Nazi mythology and

Lex Fridman (1:08:15.680)

this kind of one universal figure to explain this kind of skeleton key.

Lex Fridman (1:08:20.280)

But it could have been the communists.

Lex Fridman (1:08:22.040)

I mean, that could have been the source of the hatred.

Lex Fridman (1:08:24.500)

But the communists didn't get Germany into World War I like he said the Jews did.

Michael Malice (1:08:28.640)

It seems to me that the atrocity of the Holocaust is the reason we see Hitler as evil.

Michael Malice (1:08:36.880)

No, the reason we see Hitler as evil is because of World War II propaganda still.

Lex Fridman (1:08:40.640)

Because we don't see Stalin as evil.

Michael Malice (1:08:42.000)

Right, that's my main point.

Lex Fridman (1:08:43.000)

We don't see Mao as evil to that extent.

Michael Malice (1:08:45.440)

I think that...

Lex Fridman (1:08:46.440)

Why?

Lex Fridman (1:08:47.440)

Like why would you say that?

Lex Fridman (1:08:48.440)

You know what?

Michael Malice (1:08:49.440)

Because...

Lex Fridman (1:08:50.440)

The nature of that propaganda.

Michael Malice (1:08:51.440)

Because I think a lot of the problem for certain type of mentality is Hitler didn't mass

Lex Fridman (1:08:54.800)

murder equally.

Lex Fridman (1:08:56.520)

So as long as you're killing just one group, it's a problem.

Lex Fridman (1:08:59.380)

But if you're murdering everyone equally, all of a sudden, it's like, what are you going

Lex Fridman (1:09:02.040)

to do?

Lex Fridman (1:09:03.040)

So the fact like you were saying, the Hall of the Moor is not common knowledge.

Michael Malice (1:09:06.200)

The fact that Mao's 50 million dead are not common knowledge and Richard Nixon can be

Lex Fridman (1:09:11.840)

raising a glass to him in China.

Michael Malice (1:09:14.360)

These are things that I think the West has not done a good job reconciling.

Lex Fridman (1:09:19.080)

Knock knock.

Lex Fridman (1:09:20.080)

Who's there?

Lex Fridman (1:09:21.080)

Frank.

Lex Fridman (1:09:22.080)

Frank who?

Lex Fridman (1:09:23.080)

Frank, you for being my friend, Michael.

Lex Fridman (1:09:26.560)

And the heart attacks will say, Frank, you for being my friend.

Lex Fridman (1:09:30.640)

This is...

Michael Malice (1:09:31.640)

You got to do it like this.

Lex Fridman (1:09:34.640)

Yeah.

Michael Malice (1:09:35.640)

Okay.

Lex Fridman (1:09:36.640)

Now back to Hitler.

Lex Fridman (1:09:42.900)

Do you think Hitler could have been stopped?

Lex Fridman (1:09:46.040)

We kind of talked about it a little bit in terms of how to...

Lex Fridman (1:09:51.400)

What is the brave thing to do in the time of Nazi Germany?

Lex Fridman (1:09:54.080)

But do you think, I mean, I'm not even going to ask about Stalin in terms of could Stalin

Lex Fridman (1:09:59.080)

have been stopped?

Lex Fridman (1:10:00.080)

Because probably the answer there is no.

Lex Fridman (1:10:02.720)

But on the Hitler side, could Hitler have been stopped?

Lex Fridman (1:10:05.440)

I think a lot of these things, a lot of luck has to play with it.

Michael Malice (1:10:09.240)

He was almost assassinated.

Lex Fridman (1:10:11.780)

If you mean by like the West, it's very hard.

Michael Malice (1:10:14.880)

I mean, yeah.

Lex Fridman (1:10:15.880)

By the German people too.

Michael Malice (1:10:17.280)

I mean, like if we're politically speaking, there was a rise to power through the thirties,

Lex Fridman (1:10:24.400)

through the twenties, really, I mean, like can whoever...

Michael Malice (1:10:28.240)

It's not about Hitler.

Michael Malice (1:10:29.240)

It's about that kind of way of thinking, that totalitarian control that always leads to

Michael Malice (1:10:37.040)

trouble at sometimes at a mass scale.

Lex Fridman (1:10:40.160)

Could that have been stopped in Germany or maybe in the Soviet Union?

Michael Malice (1:10:44.360)

I think this is one of the best arguments against radicalization in the States, which

Michael Malice (1:10:48.240)

is how do you engage when you have like 30% of the population who are members of a party,

Michael Malice (1:10:55.840)

which is dedicated to systemically overthrowing the existing democracy.

Michael Malice (1:11:01.800)

Stalin gave orders that the communists who had a pretty sizable population, the Reichstag,

Michael Malice (1:11:09.280)

that their target shouldn't be the Nazis, but the liberals and the social Democrats

Lex Fridman (1:11:14.160)

and they invented the term social fascist for them.

Lex Fridman (1:11:16.840)

So instead of, they're just like jihadis, instead of taking their sights on Nazism,

Michael Malice (1:11:21.880)

they set their sights on the moderates because they figured the choice between Hitler and

Michael Malice (1:11:27.000)

us we're going to win.

Lex Fridman (1:11:28.620)

And this was a huge gamble and they were all killed or had to flee and ones who fled were

Michael Malice (1:11:33.320)

killed also by Stalin to my understanding.

Lex Fridman (1:11:36.160)

So this is an easy way where he could have been certainly heavily mitigated.

Lex Fridman (1:11:41.120)

What about France and England that it was obvious that Hitler was lying and they wanted

Lex Fridman (1:11:47.240)

peace so bad that they were willing to put up with it even after Czechoslovakia?

Michael Malice (1:11:52.520)

Like this is the anti pacifist argument, which is like they should have threatened military

Lex Fridman (1:12:03.280)

force more.

Lex Fridman (1:12:04.280)

But then the other anti, the anti anti pacifist argument is if you're going to remember Barack

Michael Malice (1:12:08.840)

Obama had that, the red line, if you cross this red line in Syria, we're going to go

Michael Malice (1:12:13.360)

in and Assad or whatever is like, yeah, cool.

Lex Fridman (1:12:15.660)

And he's like, oh, okay, well, sorry.

Lex Fridman (1:12:18.080)

So if you're threatening force, there's the great song lyric, don't show your guns unless

Lex Fridman (1:12:23.840)

you intend to fight, right?

Lex Fridman (1:12:25.800)

So if it's very clear with, with free countries through what's in the press, whether the institutional

Lex Fridman (1:12:32.400)

will is there to follow through on these threats.

Lex Fridman (1:12:35.380)

So I think we have been very hard for Chamberlain to rally the British people to take on Hitler

Michael Malice (1:12:42.360)

just after the great, I mean, the suffering that Britain's took the great war, they still,

Michael Malice (1:12:47.480)

you know, obviously it means so much more to them than does to us in the West.

Lex Fridman (1:12:50.680)

What about what do you make of Churchill then?

Lex Fridman (1:12:53.080)

Like why was Churchill able to rally the British people?

Lex Fridman (1:12:56.880)

Why was he like, do you give much credit to Churchill for being one of the great forces

Lex Fridman (1:13:06.200)

in stopping Hitler in World War II?

Lex Fridman (1:13:08.240)

I don't think that's really in dispute.

Michael Malice (1:13:10.560)

I think he was very much regarded as this kind of the right man at the right time.

Lex Fridman (1:13:16.000)

And I think Chamberlain took a gamble.

Michael Malice (1:13:19.480)

He, the expression peace in our time was Neville Chamberlain when he signed the appeasement

Michael Malice (1:13:24.920)

with Hitler and he goes, we now have peace in our time, now go home and get a good night's

Michael Malice (1:13:28.800)

sleep.

Lex Fridman (1:13:29.800)

That's what he said.

Michael Malice (1:13:30.800)

Cause he's like, all right, you know, he's going to stop here.

Lex Fridman (1:13:33.880)

And it's not impossible that if you just gave him, like if you gave Saddam Hussein Kuwait,

Michael Malice (1:13:40.400)

it's not impossible that he's not going to, you know, invade Saudi Arabia next or something

Lex Fridman (1:13:44.440)

like that.

Michael Malice (1:13:45.440)

Let's see.

Lex Fridman (1:13:46.440)

Okay.

Michael Malice (1:13:47.440)

The last thing I've read, it's like, of course there's, there's a, it's not impossible, but

Michael Malice (1:13:56.080)

when you're in the room with Hitler, you should be able to see like man to man, like, like

Michael Malice (1:14:03.640)

to me, a great leader should be able to see past the facade and see like, like, yes, everything

Michael Malice (1:14:10.960)

in life is a risk, but it seems like the right risk to take with Hitler, like it's surprising

Michael Malice (1:14:17.060)

to me.

Lex Fridman (1:14:18.280)

I know there's charisma, but it's surprising to me.

Michael Malice (1:14:20.960)

People did not see through this facade.

Michael Malice (1:14:23.280)

I really hate the idea of hindsight and everything being 20, 20, and I think it's a very good

Michael Malice (1:14:28.860)

idea.

Michael Malice (1:14:29.860)

Generally, I'm thinking generally not in this specific instance to give our ancestors more

Michael Malice (1:14:34.400)

credit than they, than, than we tend to give them because people often, here's a great

Lex Fridman (1:14:38.560)

example from another context, which is a lightning rods.

Michael Malice (1:14:42.200)

People always talk about religious people being stupid and superstitious and they weren't,

Michael Malice (1:14:46.820)

they often were very well reasoned and example of this is lightning rods, which is every

Michael Malice (1:14:51.920)

year whatever town, the church was the tallest building and that's the one that always got

Lex Fridman (1:14:57.080)

hit by lightning and got caught on fire.

Michael Malice (1:14:59.560)

Now what, it's a coincidence that it's always the church, like that makes logical sense

Michael Malice (1:15:06.160)

that they didn't realize, well, it's because the tallest and therefore that attracts electricity.

Lex Fridman (1:15:11.400)

And in fact, when they invented lighting rods, this is a controversy because it's like, well,

Lex Fridman (1:15:15.000)

how is God going to show his displeasure if now it's striking this lightning rod not burning

Lex Fridman (1:15:19.400)

down the church?

Lex Fridman (1:15:20.480)

So a lot of times things are a lot more coherent than we give them credit for.

Lex Fridman (1:15:26.980)

And again, Chamberlain didn't, he's the head of a parliamentary party.

Lex Fridman (1:15:32.080)

So he does not have the freedom in a sense that a Hitler would to be like, all right,

Michael Malice (1:15:36.880)

we're doing this again, boys.

Lex Fridman (1:15:38.800)

We don't know what it's like in the room with Hitler.

Michael Malice (1:15:40.400)

Come on.

Lex Fridman (1:15:41.400)

That's, that's, we really have no idea.

Lex Fridman (1:15:43.200)

But I think you have to think about that, right?

Michael Malice (1:15:45.200)

Yeah, but you can, I can very easily see him in the room being very calm and charming.

Lex Fridman (1:15:51.920)

And then you think, okay, the guy with the speeches is the act and he's putting on a

Lex Fridman (1:15:55.960)

show for his people and this is the real one.

Michael Malice (1:15:59.320)

Okay.

Lex Fridman (1:16:00.320)

So let's, let's take somebody as an example.

Michael Malice (1:16:02.880)

Let's take our mutual friend, Vladimir Putin.

Lex Fridman (1:16:06.680)

Yes.

Michael Malice (1:16:07.680)

Okay.

Lex Fridman (1:16:08.680)

I don't know why saying his name makes my voice crack.

Michael Malice (1:16:11.680)

Because he's scared he can hear you.

Lex Fridman (1:16:13.680)

It's like Beetlejuice.

Michael Malice (1:16:14.680)

Volodya.

Lex Fridman (1:16:15.680)

So there's a lot of people that...

Lex Fridman (1:16:21.760)

Was he the one who built you?

Lex Fridman (1:16:23.760)

No, that was a, that was a collaboration.

Michael Malice (1:16:29.520)

It's a double blind engineering effort where I was not told of who my maker was.

Lex Fridman (1:16:39.680)

There's a backstory, but...

Michael Malice (1:16:42.000)

There's a talking cricket.

Lex Fridman (1:16:43.000)

Pinocchio.

Michael Malice (1:16:44.000)

He'll be a real boy someday.

Lex Fridman (1:16:52.120)

I talk about him quite a bit because I find him fascinating.

Michael Malice (1:16:58.040)

Now there's a, there's a really important line that people say, like, why does Lex admire

Lex Fridman (1:17:03.840)

Putin?

Michael Malice (1:17:04.840)

I do not admire Putin.

Lex Fridman (1:17:07.240)

I find the man fascinating.

Michael Malice (1:17:08.840)

I find Hitler fascinating.

Lex Fridman (1:17:10.680)

I find a lot of figures in history fascinating, both good and bad.

Lex Fridman (1:17:17.240)

And the figures, just as you said, that are with us today, like Vladimir Putin, like Donald

Michael Malice (1:17:23.680)

Trump, like Barack Obama, it's difficult to place them on the spectrum of good and evil

Michael Malice (1:17:28.580)

because that's only really applies to like when you see the consequences of their action

Lex Fridman (1:17:33.460)

in a historical context.

Lex Fridman (1:17:35.700)

So there's some people who say that Vladimir Putin is evil.

Lex Fridman (1:17:41.640)

And based on our discussion about Hitler, that's something I think about a lot, which

Michael Malice (1:17:46.760)

is in the room with Putin, and there's also a lot of historical descriptions of what it's

Lex Fridman (1:17:53.640)

like to be in the room with Hitler in the 1930s.

Michael Malice (1:17:57.240)

There is a lot of charisma.

Lex Fridman (1:17:59.000)

In the same way, I find Putin to be very charismatic in his own way.

Michael Malice (1:18:05.760)

The humor, the wit, the brilliance, there's a simplicity of the way he thinks that really,

Michael Malice (1:18:16.840)

if taken at face value, looks like a very intelligent, honest man thinking practically

Michael Malice (1:18:25.640)

about how to build a better Russia constantly, almost like an executive.

Michael Malice (1:18:36.160)

He looks like a man who loves his job in a way that Trump, for example, doesn't, meaning

Michael Malice (1:18:42.520)

like he loves laws and rules and how to...

Lex Fridman (1:18:45.720)

There's no adversarial press, so that's going to help.

Michael Malice (1:18:48.760)

Yes.

Lex Fridman (1:18:49.760)

And he's popular with his people, that's also going to help enormously.

Michael Malice (1:18:51.920)

I'm talking about strictly the man, directly the words coming out of his mouth, like all

Michael Malice (1:18:58.240)

the videos and interviews I watch, I'm based on that, not the press, not the reporting.

Michael Malice (1:19:03.000)

You can just see that here's a man who's able to display a charisma that's not...

Michael Malice (1:19:10.560)

Like I can see, that's why I love Joe Rogan, is like you could tell the guy is genuine

Lex Fridman (1:19:17.160)

and is a good person.

Lex Fridman (1:19:18.760)

And you could tell immediately that once you meet Joe, that he's going to be offline, also

Michael Malice (1:19:23.720)

a good person.

Lex Fridman (1:19:24.720)

You could tell there's signals that we send that are difficult to describe.

Michael Malice (1:19:29.240)

In the same way, you could tell Putin is like he genuinely loves his job and wants to build

Lex Fridman (1:19:37.240)

a better Russia.

Michael Malice (1:19:38.240)

There's the argument that he is actually an evil man behind that charisma, or is able

Lex Fridman (1:19:45.120)

to assassinate people, limit free press, all those kinds of things.

Michael Malice (1:19:54.680)

Like that's...

Lex Fridman (1:19:57.960)

What do we do with that?

Lex Fridman (1:19:59.640)

So what do human beings like journalists or what do other leaders when they're in their

Michael Malice (1:20:06.360)

room with Putin do with those kinds of notions in deciding how to act in this world and deciding

Lex Fridman (1:20:13.640)

what policy to enact, all those kinds of things?

Michael Malice (1:20:16.120)

Just like with Hitler, when Chairman is in the room with Hitler, how does he decide how

Lex Fridman (1:20:22.080)

to act?

Lex Fridman (1:20:23.080)

Well, let's go back to my wheelhouse, which is North Korea.

Lex Fridman (1:20:27.280)

So when your entire world is based on being against Trump and everything Trump does is

Michael Malice (1:20:34.280)

buffoonery or counterproductive, the conclusion of your reporting is going to be pretty much

Michael Malice (1:20:39.480)

given.

Michael Malice (1:20:41.080)

I was very hopeful that there would be some positive outlooks or outcomes rather of Trump's

Michael Malice (1:20:46.960)

meeting with Kim Jong Un.

Lex Fridman (1:20:49.840)

It looked like there was a space for things to go a bit better.

Michael Malice (1:20:53.120)

I talked about it a lot at the time.

Lex Fridman (1:20:57.320)

And Trump was under no illusions about who he was dealing with.

Michael Malice (1:21:05.940)

People pretend that, oh, he was kind of naive.

Michael Malice (1:21:08.640)

He had one of the refugees that had stayed the union, you know, lifting up his crutch.

Michael Malice (1:21:13.040)

The first thing he sat down and talked to Xi Jinping about in Mar a Laga right after

Lex Fridman (1:21:17.320)

he became inaugurated was North Korea.

Michael Malice (1:21:19.520)

Barack Obama said that when he sat down Trump in the White House during the transfer of

Lex Fridman (1:21:24.520)

power, he said North Korea is the biggest issue.

Lex Fridman (1:21:27.120)

So I think a good leader, whether or not you consider Trump a good leader, has to be aware

Michael Malice (1:21:33.660)

of, all right, I'm going to have to have relationships of some kind, even if it's adversarial, with

Michael Malice (1:21:41.680)

some really evil, evil, horrible people, which Kim Jong Un clearly is.

Michael Malice (1:21:47.960)

Well, I don't think there's anybody that has a perspective that North Korean Kim Jong

Lex Fridman (1:21:54.000)

Un or ill are not evil, right?

Lex Fridman (1:21:58.600)

Correct.

Lex Fridman (1:21:59.780)

But with, in 1930s Germany, isn't it a little bit more nuanced and difficult?

Michael Malice (1:22:06.520)

Yeah, because Hitler hasn't done anything yet and he's just a blowhard and he's an anti

Michael Malice (1:22:09.840)

Semite, sure, but he's...

Lex Fridman (1:22:12.000)

What about like before the war breaks out, like what about the basic actionable anti

Lex Fridman (1:22:19.560)

Semitism when you're like just attacking, hurting?

Lex Fridman (1:22:22.200)

Are you talking about Kristallnacht or are you talking about the Night of Long Knives?

Michael Malice (1:22:25.600)

Kristallnacht.

Lex Fridman (1:22:26.600)

So it's the Night of the Broken Glass.

Michael Malice (1:22:28.520)

Yeah, yeah, the Long Knives is when he assassinated a bunch of his people, that was something

Lex Fridman (1:22:32.520)

different.

Michael Malice (1:22:33.520)

Yeah, so like when you're actually attacking your own citizenry.

Michael Malice (1:22:37.520)

Yeah, that was universally condemned, Kristallnacht, and that was very shocking, its level of barbarism

Michael Malice (1:22:46.600)

to the West.

Michael Malice (1:22:47.960)

Because I think we still want to believe, understandably, that things aren't as bad

Michael Malice (1:22:55.880)

as they seem.

Lex Fridman (1:22:57.740)

We would rather...

Michael Malice (1:22:59.080)

This is why the North Korea book I did, Dear Reader, is used in a humorous framework because

Lex Fridman (1:23:07.440)

if you have to look, it's like looking to the sun.

Michael Malice (1:23:09.540)

If you stared it straight on, it's very hard to do.

Lex Fridman (1:23:12.640)

So you have to kind of look at it obliquely and then you're kind of realizing the enormity

Michael Malice (1:23:18.400)

of the depravity.

Lex Fridman (1:23:20.840)

And again, pogroms in Russia had been a thing for a very long time.

Lex Fridman (1:23:26.320)

And there's a difference between, okay, we're going to sack these villages and persecute

Lex Fridman (1:23:30.840)

people and we're going to systematically exterminate them.

Michael Malice (1:23:35.440)

There's still levels of evil and depravity.

Lex Fridman (1:23:38.720)

So you did write the book, Dear Reader, on Kim Jong Il, Dear Reader, the unauthorized

Michael Malice (1:23:45.020)

autobiography of Kim Jong Il.

Lex Fridman (1:23:48.440)

So that's the previous leader of North Korea.

Michael Malice (1:23:51.080)

Third one is the un, no creativity on the naming.

Lex Fridman (1:23:56.400)

Well, no, this is intentional because it's a throwback to the dad.

Lex Fridman (1:24:01.920)

So there's been only three leaders in North Korea.

Lex Fridman (1:24:06.120)

So we've talked about the history of Hitler and Stalin, men like these.

Michael Malice (1:24:09.040)

I think it's important to understand that the history of those kinds of humans, there's

Michael Malice (1:24:14.480)

the history of North Korea is not well written about or understood, which is why your book

Michael Malice (1:24:18.640)

is exceptionally powerful and important.

Lex Fridman (1:24:21.200)

So maybe in a big broad way, can you say who was, who is Kim Jong Il as a man, as a leader,

Lex Fridman (1:24:34.880)

as a historical figure that we should understand and why should we understand them?

Lex Fridman (1:24:39.160)

So I wrote Dear Reader by going to North Korea and getting all their propaganda, which is

Michael Malice (1:24:44.360)

translated into several languages because the conceit is everyone on earth is interested

Lex Fridman (1:24:47.960)

in them and wants to mirror their ideology.

Lex Fridman (1:24:51.280)

And he died in 2011 and you wrote the book in 2012.

Lex Fridman (1:24:55.600)

I went there in 2012.

Michael Malice (1:24:56.600)

I wrote the book, came out in 2014.

Lex Fridman (1:24:58.720)

So Kim Jong Il is, though not an intellect, North Korea's version of Forrest Gump in that

Michael Malice (1:25:04.880)

when they write their history, whenever something happens, he's there.

Lex Fridman (1:25:08.920)

And by telling his life story, it's in the first person, he's telling the history of

Michael Malice (1:25:13.680)

North Korea.

Lex Fridman (1:25:14.680)

So I wanted to write the kind of book where in one book, and it's the kind of reading

Michael Malice (1:25:19.120)

you could do in the beach or the bathroom, you're gonna get the entire history and know

Lex Fridman (1:25:22.400)

everything you need to know about North Korea in one accessible outlet.

Lex Fridman (1:25:26.680)

And it's what people don't appreciate about North Korea, there's several things, how bad

Lex Fridman (1:25:31.840)

it is.

Lex Fridman (1:25:33.580)

And this didn't happen overnight.

Michael Malice (1:25:35.400)

This was very systemic that what this family did to that country where piece by piece,

Michael Malice (1:25:41.120)

they did everything in their power to hermetically seal it from the rest of the world, ramp up

Lex Fridman (1:25:46.600)

the oppression, keep any information from coming in.

Lex Fridman (1:25:50.340)

And they're very creative and innovative in their style of manipulation and control.

Lex Fridman (1:26:00.800)

So there is a farcical element.

Michael Malice (1:26:03.240)

Let me give you an example.

Lex Fridman (1:26:04.240)

So people in the West kind of get it wrong.

Michael Malice (1:26:05.840)

They talk about, oh, they talk about when Kim Jong Il played golf for the first time,

Lex Fridman (1:26:09.680)

they get 17 holes in one.

Michael Malice (1:26:11.800)

There's this one story about Kim Jong Il shrinking time.

Lex Fridman (1:26:17.320)

And this is a story, it sounds supernatural, but it's not.

Lex Fridman (1:26:20.360)

So Kim Jong Il is at a conference, the Dear Leader, and someone is giving a talk.

Lex Fridman (1:26:25.360)

And while that person is giving a talk, Kim Jong Il is taking notes and working on his

Michael Malice (1:26:30.360)

work.

Lex Fridman (1:26:31.360)

And he has an aide who keeps interrupting him with questions and the speaker keeps stopping.

Lex Fridman (1:26:36.280)

And Kim Jong Il says, why are you stopping, goes, I see you're doing these other things.

Lex Fridman (1:26:39.840)

And he goes, no, no, I can do all these things at once, everyone's shocked.

Lex Fridman (1:26:43.880)

And they said, this is why Kim Jong Il looks at time, not like a plane, but like a cube,

Lex Fridman (1:26:49.880)

and he can shrink time.

Lex Fridman (1:26:51.620)

And my friend goes, do they mean multitasking?

Lex Fridman (1:26:54.480)

And yes, Kim Jong Il is the only person in North Korea who's capable of multitasking.

Lex Fridman (1:27:00.120)

So in order to elevate him, they basically make everyone else in North Korea completely

Lex Fridman (1:27:06.360)

incompetent.

Lex Fridman (1:27:09.520)

And that has a purpose because should the leader go away, this country is going to collapse

Lex Fridman (1:27:15.520)

overnight.

Lex Fridman (1:27:16.660)

So they laugh in the West about all these newspapers show him at the factory and he's

Lex Fridman (1:27:22.480)

at the fish hatchery at the paper plant.

Michael Malice (1:27:25.200)

They say the difference in North Korea is that the leader goes among the people and

Lex Fridman (1:27:29.960)

does what he calls field guidance.

Lex Fridman (1:27:31.920)

So he will go in that farm and be like, this is what you need to do.

Lex Fridman (1:27:34.440)

And he'll go here and he's so smart, he's good at everything.

Lex Fridman (1:27:37.840)

And thanks to him for sharing his wisdom with us.

Lex Fridman (1:27:39.920)

And he's not removed from the people like in every other country.

Lex Fridman (1:27:43.780)

Why does that seem to go wrong with humans, do you think that this kind of the structure

Michael Malice (1:27:50.000)

where there's this one figure, this authoritarian, this totalitarian structure where there's

Lex Fridman (1:27:57.280)

one figure that's a source of comfort and knowledge?

Lex Fridman (1:28:00.680)

Kim Jong Il is not good at farming.

Michael Malice (1:28:03.200)

Kim Jong Il is not good at the machinery.

Lex Fridman (1:28:06.060)

It's all a complete lie.

Michael Malice (1:28:07.720)

Or the things he'll point out will be things that are completely obvious.

Lex Fridman (1:28:10.000)

So here's another example that they use.

Michael Malice (1:28:12.960)

In North Korea, they have something called the Tower of the Juche Idea, which is an obelisk,

Lex Fridman (1:28:16.680)

which looks like the Washington Monument.

Lex Fridman (1:28:18.400)

But it's completely different because it's got this like plastic torch at the top.

Lex Fridman (1:28:23.400)

And they talk about in their propaganda how all the architects got together and they said,

Michael Malice (1:28:30.080)

oh, we should make this the second tallest stone obelisk in the world.

Lex Fridman (1:28:35.480)

And Kim Jong Il says, no, let's make it the tallest.

Michael Malice (1:28:39.280)

They're like, we never thought of this before.

Lex Fridman (1:28:41.720)

And the way it's presented as if, and like, he's the first person to think of this, like

Michael Malice (1:28:46.160)

these architects are having a brainstorming session at the Tower of the Juche Idea.

Michael Malice (1:28:49.520)

They're like, all right, we got to do something innovative to put North Korea on the map.

Lex Fridman (1:28:53.760)

What can we do?

Lex Fridman (1:28:54.760)

How about second biggest?

Michael Malice (1:28:56.560)

He's going to go for this.

Lex Fridman (1:28:58.220)

And then he's like, make, oh, we never thought of this.

Michael Malice (1:29:01.120)

It's so, because I present it at face value, people sometimes say the book's a satire.

Lex Fridman (1:29:06.740)

It's not a satire.

Michael Malice (1:29:07.740)

I downplayed all this stuff.

Lex Fridman (1:29:09.480)

It's a farce.

Michael Malice (1:29:10.480)

Here's another example.

Lex Fridman (1:29:11.480)

North Korea is very big.

Lex Fridman (1:29:12.480)

And I think Russia is to some extent too, on amusement parks, funfairs, they call them,

Michael Malice (1:29:16.240)

in the British style, because this is a chance for the people to all get together.

Lex Fridman (1:29:21.120)

And there was this amusement park, it's almost like South Park, Cartman, where there's all

Lex Fridman (1:29:25.960)

these rides.

Lex Fridman (1:29:27.960)

And Kim Jong Il's like, I'm not going to let any elderly or children take these rides until

Lex Fridman (1:29:34.880)

I put myself in danger and ride them myself.

Lex Fridman (1:29:39.720)

And they go, but dear leader, it's drizzling.

Lex Fridman (1:29:42.800)

And he goes, no, I have to make sure these rides are going to be safe for everyone, even

Michael Malice (1:29:48.360)

during the light rain.

Lex Fridman (1:29:49.360)

They go, well, can we go on these rides with you?

Michael Malice (1:29:51.280)

No, no, no.

Lex Fridman (1:29:52.280)

I have to be the courageous one.

Lex Fridman (1:29:54.400)

And he's riding all the rides and they're standing there crying at his courage.

Lex Fridman (1:29:58.080)

But that's what's, and you ask all the things in one power.

Michael Malice (1:30:00.960)

It's like, listen, I'm quite confident that those funfair engineers are in a position

Michael Malice (1:30:06.160)

to ride Modest Mouse, whatever it's called, by themselves and be like, yeah, okay, this

Michael Malice (1:30:10.160)

is good for the kids.

Michael Malice (1:30:11.160)

Although to be fair, some of those amusement parks are pretty rusty and dangerous.

Michael Malice (1:30:17.560)

That kind of propaganda, I guess what I'm playing a devil's advocate is like, it's comforting

Lex Fridman (1:30:23.680)

and it's useful.

Lex Fridman (1:30:25.680)

But it does seem that that naturally leads to an abuse of power.

Lex Fridman (1:30:33.040)

How can it be used correctly?

Michael Malice (1:30:34.280)

No one person has the intellect or the mind to understand the entirety of an economy,

Lex Fridman (1:30:40.840)

let alone every individual field of interest.

Michael Malice (1:30:42.960)

Well, for example, you can have an artificial intelligence system that understands the entirety

Lex Fridman (1:30:48.000)

of it.

Michael Malice (1:30:49.000)

Your affect just completely changed.

Lex Fridman (1:30:50.520)

The mask slipped.

Michael Malice (1:30:51.520)

I guess you could have an artificial intelligence system.

Lex Fridman (1:30:55.720)

But the question is, can that, I mean, the human version of that is like, you can hire

Lex Fridman (1:31:03.800)

a lot of experts, right?

Lex Fridman (1:31:05.320)

You can be an extremely good manager.

Michael Malice (1:31:07.760)

Since everything's dynamic, they're not going to have the data to kind of manage it well.

Michael Malice (1:31:13.560)

It seems that there's a, like what George Washington allegedly did, it seems like most

Michael Malice (1:31:18.760)

humans are not able to fire themselves.

Lex Fridman (1:31:21.880)

You're not able to like, ultimately be a check on your own power.

Lex Fridman (1:31:26.040)

But that's not, if I was creating a human, that's not an obvious bug of the system that

Michael Malice (1:31:36.600)

we would not be able to fire ourselves, to know when we have, I mean, it seems like that's

Michael Malice (1:31:43.720)

something you have to know always, like that's something I often wonder is like, am I wrong

Lex Fridman (1:31:48.320)

about this?

Michael Malice (1:31:49.320)

Well, this is what we talked about earlier, what are the safety valves to make sure that,

Michael Malice (1:31:53.960)

okay, if I am incorrect, or my knowledge is finite, Plato's cave kind of thing, what mechanisms

Lex Fridman (1:31:59.920)

are in place that my mistake or limited information isn't going to have the deleterious consequences?

Lex Fridman (1:32:06.720)

And North Korea does not really have that, and as a result, they had polio in the 90s.

Lex Fridman (1:32:10.660)

So there is a, you write about it straight, but there's a humor to it, because it's an

Lex Fridman (1:32:17.880)

absurdly evil place, I suppose.

Michael Malice (1:32:21.880)

A bunch of people, I asked, I said that I'm talking to you and a bunch of people ask questions.

Michael Malice (1:32:28.520)

Oh, I got to hear from the plebs, you asked me before we started recording, I specifically

Michael Malice (1:32:33.320)

said no, it was my contract.

Lex Fridman (1:32:35.280)

Yeah, and you gave, I gave you all the pink skittles or whatever.

Lex Fridman (1:32:40.480)

But they,

Lex Fridman (1:32:41.480)

So pink skittles, you know, pink.

Michael Malice (1:32:43.520)

I'm trolling, Michael, let me explain to you how that works.

Michael Malice (1:32:47.680)

We should go at malice.locals.com and sign up and pay, I think the membership fee is

Michael Malice (1:32:55.080)

several thousand dollars, it's very, it's not.

Lex Fridman (1:32:58.680)

It's not for the layman.

Michael Malice (1:32:59.680)

Yeah, but the service is excellent.

Lex Fridman (1:33:03.440)

You get a coat with it.

Lex Fridman (1:33:04.920)

But yeah, I went there, posted a lot of really brilliant people there, people should join

Lex Fridman (1:33:09.040)

that community.

Michael Malice (1:33:10.560)

If you find Michael interesting, or if you just want to go and say why he's wrong, it's

Lex Fridman (1:33:15.720)

a great place to have that.

Michael Malice (1:33:17.840)

It's not a good place for that, I assure you.

Lex Fridman (1:33:21.840)

A lot of really kind people.

Lex Fridman (1:33:23.120)

So anyway, there's a bunch of people ask that we should talk about humor.

Lex Fridman (1:33:29.920)

So pretend hypothetically speaking that I'm a robot asking you to explain humor to me.

Lex Fridman (1:33:40.720)

So dear reader, I mean, there's a humor, you so wonderfully dance between serious dark

Lex Fridman (1:33:48.880)

topics and then seriously dark humor.

Lex Fridman (1:33:55.080)

Can you try to, if you were to write like a, I don't know, a Wikipedia article, maybe

Michael Malice (1:34:00.960)

a book about your philosophy of humor, what do you think is the role of humor in all of

Lex Fridman (1:34:05.120)

this?

Lex Fridman (1:34:06.120)

A joke is like a baby.

Michael Malice (1:34:07.120)

You can't dissect it and then put it back together and expect it to work.

Lex Fridman (1:34:10.960)

Trust me on this one.

Michael Malice (1:34:12.480)

Despite no matter how you carve that thing up, it's not going to be working the next

Lex Fridman (1:34:17.280)

day.

Lex Fridman (1:34:18.280)

And you need it to sew those little sneakers with those hands.

Lex Fridman (1:34:22.320)

I don't know that humor is something that is very explainable.

Michael Malice (1:34:26.520)

People there's something called claptor, where this is like the worst kind of humor where

Michael Malice (1:34:30.640)

people applaud because they agree with what you're saying, as opposed to laughter.

Michael Malice (1:34:35.600)

That's the poetry reading and the drag queens do that too, I think because of the nails.

Lex Fridman (1:34:43.960)

You laugh, it's a visceral reaction.

Michael Malice (1:34:45.720)

When someone on Twitter is insisting, you know, that's not funny, you're not in a position

Lex Fridman (1:34:50.800)

to make that claim.

Lex Fridman (1:34:52.560)

And let's go back to North Korea.

Michael Malice (1:34:54.920)

I had a refugee I knew and he went to high school here and he was talking to his buddies

Lex Fridman (1:35:01.000)

and they said, hey, remember when we were kids, we had Pokemon and he goes, oh yeah,

Michael Malice (1:35:06.120)

except instead of Pokemon, I watched my dad starve to death, which is the truth.

Lex Fridman (1:35:09.720)

Now, who are any of us to tell him not to make that joke?

Michael Malice (1:35:15.480)

I don't know what it's like watching anyone, including my dad, starve to death and my dad's

Michael Malice (1:35:19.880)

fatty so he's not going hungry anytime soon.

Lex Fridman (1:35:23.620)

So it's very bizarre to me when people feel comfortable precluding others from making

Michael Malice (1:35:33.800)

jokes, especially, and I think this is a very Jewish thing, like this kind of gallows humor,

Michael Malice (1:35:38.400)

especially when it's laughing about a personal loss or experience that they've had.

Michael Malice (1:35:44.400)

Humor is a great way to mitigate pain and suffering.

Lex Fridman (1:35:50.080)

But it's also, I think this is why it's a Jewish thing, it's a black thing.

Michael Malice (1:35:53.780)

When you are a marginalized community or poorer, it's free.

Michael Malice (1:35:58.420)

Telling stories, telling jokes or songs, you don't have to have money, but you can have

Michael Malice (1:36:04.000)

joy and happiness.

Lex Fridman (1:36:05.720)

And I think that's why you find it so much more in kind of lower status communities than

Michael Malice (1:36:10.040)

you find in like wasps who are notoriously humorless.

Michael Malice (1:36:14.320)

Which is strange because people pay you a lot of money for the jokes you do, so it's

Michael Malice (1:36:19.040)

not really free.

Lex Fridman (1:36:20.040)

Yeah, well, nope, they don't have to pay me.

Michael Malice (1:36:22.920)

It's appreciated but not expected.

Michael Malice (1:36:25.840)

I find my voice cracking every time I try to make a joke, like I fail miserably at this.

Michael Malice (1:36:31.680)

Some people...

Lex Fridman (1:36:32.680)

You're still in beta, that's what I thought.

Michael Malice (1:36:35.680)

Alpha.

Lex Fridman (1:36:36.680)

Sure.

Michael Malice (1:36:37.680)

Being an alpha is like being a lady.

Lex Fridman (1:36:38.680)

If you have to tell people you are, you aren't.

Michael Malice (1:36:39.680)

No, I meant alpha version.

Lex Fridman (1:36:40.680)

Oh, okay.

Michael Malice (1:36:41.680)

I don't know if you're a robot gobbledygook.

Lex Fridman (1:36:46.680)

I'm not going there, okay.

Lex Fridman (1:36:49.360)

Who are you talking to?

Lex Fridman (1:36:51.360)

In my own head.

Michael Malice (1:36:52.360)

I'm talking to myself in my own head.

Michael Malice (1:36:54.360)

Okay, speaking of North Korea, some people say that, you know, I've read that comedy

Michael Malice (1:37:03.120)

is about timing.

Lex Fridman (1:37:04.120)

Well, first of all, do you agree?

Lex Fridman (1:37:06.680)

And second of all...

Lex Fridman (1:37:07.680)

No, I'm serious.

Michael Malice (1:37:08.680)

It's very much about timing.

Lex Fridman (1:37:09.680)

No, just that you're saying yes.

Michael Malice (1:37:10.680)

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Lex Fridman (1:37:11.680)

Yeah, it's funny.

Michael Malice (1:37:12.680)

Okay.

Lex Fridman (1:37:13.680)

Isn't it comedy is tragedy plus timing?

Michael Malice (1:37:16.200)

This is not the full reference.

Lex Fridman (1:37:17.760)

What is it?

Michael Malice (1:37:18.760)

The interrupting cow knock knock joke.

Lex Fridman (1:37:20.680)

I'm not going to do it, but...

Michael Malice (1:37:22.640)

That's not a timing thing.

Lex Fridman (1:37:23.960)

It's more of a repetition and then the twist ending.

Michael Malice (1:37:27.080)

No, the moo.

Lex Fridman (1:37:28.080)

Oh, the moo.

Michael Malice (1:37:29.080)

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Lex Fridman (1:37:30.080)

Interrupting cow.

Michael Malice (1:37:31.080)

You're thinking of the banana one.

Lex Fridman (1:37:33.080)

Anyway, I'm not going there.

Michael Malice (1:37:37.320)

Yet you're...

Lex Fridman (1:37:38.320)

Who are you talking to?

Michael Malice (1:37:39.320)

In my own head.

Lex Fridman (1:37:40.320)

Good lord.

Lex Fridman (1:37:41.320)

Are you small wonder?

Lex Fridman (1:37:42.320)

Do you stand sleeping in a wardrobe?

Michael Malice (1:37:45.320)

Yeah.

Lex Fridman (1:37:46.320)

That's so British.

Lex Fridman (1:37:50.640)

But yet you're very...

Lex Fridman (1:37:51.640)

I don't want to stay in a closet because that has connotations.

Michael Malice (1:37:55.240)

Let's both come out of the closet for a second.

Lex Fridman (1:37:57.520)

I love you.

Michael Malice (1:37:58.520)

Let's talk about...

Lex Fridman (1:37:59.520)

I love you, Lex.

Michael Malice (1:38:00.520)

I wasn't saying, I love you, Alex.

Lex Fridman (1:38:02.800)

I was saying, I love you, Lex.

Michael Malice (1:38:04.600)

Oh, you're talking to me.

Lex Fridman (1:38:06.160)

Yes, through the screen.

Lex Fridman (1:38:07.960)

So you think about me when you're with another man.

Lex Fridman (1:38:11.760)

I watch you when you're sleeping.

Michael Malice (1:38:13.760)

Okay, so you're really active on Twitter.

Lex Fridman (1:38:19.600)

And somebody else asked on your overly expensive membership site, how do you find humor different

Lex Fridman (1:38:31.400)

in writing on Twitter versus spoken humor?

Lex Fridman (1:38:34.800)

So if humor is about timing, how do you capture the timing and the brilliance of the whatever

Lex Fridman (1:38:42.560)

is underlying humor in the context of Twitter?

Lex Fridman (1:38:45.360)

Like another way to say it is how do you be funny and yet thoughtful on Twitter?

Lex Fridman (1:38:54.400)

So with Twitter, you have to be the first one to the punchline.

Lex Fridman (1:38:58.900)

So when Ron Paul had a stroke, I was immediately being like, he's still the most articulate

Michael Malice (1:39:03.320)

libertarian.

Lex Fridman (1:39:04.320)

He's doing a great Joe Biden impression right now.

Michael Malice (1:39:06.200)

All the libertarians got ass mad.

Lex Fridman (1:39:08.840)

So like too soon, or like when someone dies, you're making the jokes about them.

Lex Fridman (1:39:12.640)

It's like, when do you want to make the jokes about someone just died a week later?

Lex Fridman (1:39:16.040)

It doesn't make any sense.

Michael Malice (1:39:17.040)

Too soon is perfect timing.

Michael Malice (1:39:18.960)

Or you could say it's not appropriate ever, but too soon does not make sense in this context.

Lex Fridman (1:39:25.040)

So that is something that I enjoy doing.

Lex Fridman (1:39:28.660)

It's also fun ruffling people's feathers, something I enjoy doing.

Michael Malice (1:39:32.600)

I think spoken versus writing is very different because when you are having good banter with

Michael Malice (1:39:41.280)

someone, for me as the audience, knowing that it is on the spot really adds an element of

Michael Malice (1:39:49.700)

humor because then it's like, wow, this is fun.

Lex Fridman (1:39:51.880)

It's like a ping pong match or something.

Michael Malice (1:39:54.240)

Whereas in writing, you're losing the tone, you're losing the relationship of a dynamic

Lex Fridman (1:40:01.800)

conversation.

Lex Fridman (1:40:04.440)

And a lot of times the joke is just going to be a different type of joke.

Michael Malice (1:40:07.000)

Well, it's funny, but Twitter, there's a sense, especially your Twitter, that you just thought

Michael Malice (1:40:15.040)

of that and you just wrote it.

Lex Fridman (1:40:17.040)

Yes.

Michael Malice (1:40:18.040)

Like there's a feeling like it's literally you talking as opposed to what I imagine is

Lex Fridman (1:40:24.680)

there's some editing or it doesn't look like it.

Michael Malice (1:40:27.920)

Whoever your editor is should be fired.

Lex Fridman (1:40:32.440)

There's an interesting effect actually.

Michael Malice (1:40:34.040)

If I want to say something, I don't know, about something that's bothering me about

Michael Malice (1:40:42.080)

the presidential election or something like that, what is the actual central idea that

Lex Fridman (1:40:47.400)

I'm trying to convey to myself?

Michael Malice (1:40:48.880)

Like if say I was having a hypothetical conversation with myself in my head, why am I putting my

Lex Fridman (1:40:56.200)

pants back on?

Lex Fridman (1:40:57.200)

I'm more comfortable this way.

Michael Malice (1:41:01.480)

Promo code MALICE20, sheathunderwear.com, okay.

Lex Fridman (1:41:09.760)

That's sheath...

Lex Fridman (1:41:10.760)

What is it?

Lex Fridman (1:41:11.760)

What's the website?

Michael Malice (1:41:12.760)

Sheathunderwear.com.

Lex Fridman (1:41:13.760)

Sheathunderwear.com, promo code MALICE20.

Lex Fridman (1:41:17.540)

And I forgot, why is that underwear really nice?

Lex Fridman (1:41:20.120)

Because it has a dual pouch technology to keep your man parts separate.

Michael Malice (1:41:23.440)

They've also got woman stuff, but I don't know how that works.

Lex Fridman (1:41:25.640)

There's a thing worth going somewhere.

Lex Fridman (1:41:27.600)

And the material is really refreshing.

Lex Fridman (1:41:29.120)

I mean, it's really...

Lex Fridman (1:41:30.120)

And it makes your ass look good.

Lex Fridman (1:41:32.020)

That's promo code MALICE20.

Lex Fridman (1:41:35.500)

And it's made by a former vet because he was in Iraq.

Lex Fridman (1:41:39.320)

So that's why I like promoting it.

Michael Malice (1:41:41.040)

Yeah.

Lex Fridman (1:41:42.040)

But what I'm writing the tweet, I like to...

Michael Malice (1:41:45.620)

It forces me to think deeply about the core of the message.

Lex Fridman (1:41:50.540)

But what I found, this really interesting effect, like I don't really do much editing

Michael Malice (1:41:54.160)

on the tweet, I'll just think and then I'll write it.

Lex Fridman (1:41:57.960)

And then when I post it, like submit, I immediately see the tweet very differently than it was

Michael Malice (1:42:05.280)

in my mind.

Lex Fridman (1:42:06.280)

Huh.

Michael Malice (1:42:07.280)

I often delete, I delete, I don't know, some percentage of tweets about two, five seconds

Lex Fridman (1:42:12.520)

after.

Michael Malice (1:42:13.520)

Wow.

Lex Fridman (1:42:14.520)

I don't know.

Michael Malice (1:42:15.520)

It's something...

Michael Malice (1:42:16.520)

Once you send it, it's why the Gmail send features, undo send feature is really nice.

Michael Malice (1:42:21.440)

It's like it just changes the way I see the thing.

Lex Fridman (1:42:24.300)

So it's very interesting.

Lex Fridman (1:42:26.440)

But I really love it that you can delete it because when I say stuff out in the wild,

Michael Malice (1:42:33.000)

like to other humans, like spoken word is like, you can't delete what you just said.

Lex Fridman (1:42:40.840)

And I often regret the things I say, like on the spot, like I shouldn't have said that.

Lex Fridman (1:42:46.480)

Really?

Michael Malice (1:42:47.480)

Yeah.

Lex Fridman (1:42:48.480)

I don't have that.

Lex Fridman (1:42:49.480)

Well, again, whoever your editor is, what is it, Edith Piaf, Jeannine Hicart Han?

Lex Fridman (1:42:58.040)

Wow, your French is as bad as your English.

Michael Malice (1:43:01.360)

I don't have any tweets I regret because if I sent a tweet that I regretted, I would make

Lex Fridman (1:43:10.000)

amends.

Michael Malice (1:43:11.160)

I would make it a point if I was needlessly offensive to somebody or hurtful or accidentally,

Michael Malice (1:43:17.880)

I would make sure to fix it and go out of my way to make sure that person feels vindicated

Lex Fridman (1:43:24.800)

and validated by accepting my apology.

Lex Fridman (1:43:27.220)

That has never happened, had to happen, thankfully.

Michael Malice (1:43:30.000)

I'm also someone who is not big on taking the bait.

Lex Fridman (1:43:37.760)

Some recently some people have come after me pretty hard.

Lex Fridman (1:43:40.900)

And my perspective is that it's not really about me.

Lex Fridman (1:43:44.640)

It's either I represent something to them.

Michael Malice (1:43:46.840)

I'm just a jackass with the Twitter.

Lex Fridman (1:43:49.560)

So if you're getting this riled up over me, it's not really about me.

Michael Malice (1:43:53.220)

Maybe I'm delusional, but that's how I look at it.

Lex Fridman (1:43:55.560)

So if they are trying to provoke me into this kind of heated exchange, I will never do it

Michael Malice (1:44:01.840)

because I'm not interested in it.

Lex Fridman (1:44:03.400)

And I don't think there's going to be any, like Jeannette Rankin, you can't win.

Michael Malice (1:44:08.360)

It's just going to be like trying to win a hurricane.

Lex Fridman (1:44:10.400)

There's no hero here.

Michael Malice (1:44:12.120)

Well, let me ask you about this because somebody also asked that on your overly expensive membership

Lex Fridman (1:44:16.360)

site that like they were saying that they're an academic.

Michael Malice (1:44:20.680)

They wondered, because I'm an academic, quote unquote, I'm not an academic, but I do still

Lex Fridman (1:44:24.440)

have an affiliation with MIT.

Michael Malice (1:44:27.040)

The word academic is just dirty, which is a problem that needs to change.

Lex Fridman (1:44:32.600)

Just like the word nerd is dirty.

Michael Malice (1:44:34.480)

No, academic needs is going to be the next front to open and they're going to be very

Lex Fridman (1:44:38.340)

vilified.

Michael Malice (1:44:39.340)

We're coming for them and it's going to be very, very ugly.

Lex Fridman (1:44:42.060)

And I cannot wait.

Michael Malice (1:44:43.060)

No, but there needs to be a place, a different term for people who love research and knowledge.

Lex Fridman (1:44:50.880)

Oh, that's true.

Michael Malice (1:44:51.880)

That's very fair.

Lex Fridman (1:44:52.880)

No, you're right.

Michael Malice (1:44:53.880)

100%.

Lex Fridman (1:44:54.880)

You're right.

Lex Fridman (1:44:55.880)

So like you have to clarify what you mean by academic and right now the word academic

Lex Fridman (1:44:59.440)

means in the intellectual public discourse, it means the enemy.

Lex Fridman (1:45:04.560)

And there's a lot of people that perhaps deserve that targeted vilification, but like a lot

Lex Fridman (1:45:11.520)

that don't.

Michael Malice (1:45:12.520)

They're just curious people that are just building robots that will one day destroy

Lex Fridman (1:45:18.120)

you.

Michael Malice (1:45:19.120)

Voice cracks every time I make a joke.

Lex Fridman (1:45:20.120)

You're not consistent.

Michael Malice (1:45:21.120)

I can't do this.

Lex Fridman (1:45:22.120)

Because you're not making a joke, you're telling the truth.

Michael Malice (1:45:24.760)

I'm editing.

Lex Fridman (1:45:25.760)

Can I delete that joke?

Michael Malice (1:45:28.040)

Okay.

Lex Fridman (1:45:29.040)

That's not even a joke.

Michael Malice (1:45:31.800)

Robots building robots that will one day kill us.

Lex Fridman (1:45:34.440)

Oh, God willing.

Michael Malice (1:45:36.880)

God willing.

Lex Fridman (1:45:37.880)

Humans are the joke.

Michael Malice (1:45:38.880)

That's why I'm cracking.

Lex Fridman (1:45:39.880)

My voice is cracking.

Lex Fridman (1:45:40.880)

What was I even fucking saying?

Lex Fridman (1:45:45.880)

Academics.

Michael Malice (1:45:46.880)

Academics.

Lex Fridman (1:45:47.880)

But why?

Michael Malice (1:45:48.880)

My local, someone had a question.

Lex Fridman (1:45:49.880)

They're an academic.

Michael Malice (1:45:50.880)

Right.

Lex Fridman (1:45:51.880)

They're an academic.

Michael Malice (1:45:52.880)

They're saying like, are you worried that in academia, associating yourself with a sort

Michael Malice (1:45:59.120)

of somebody who can be misconstrued to have radical ideas, like the two examples they

Michael Malice (1:46:06.240)

gave is Michael Malice and Joe Rogan.

Lex Fridman (1:46:10.040)

Does Joe have any radical?

Michael Malice (1:46:11.680)

I wouldn't consider him radical at all.

Lex Fridman (1:46:13.400)

Well, we can talk about it.

Lex Fridman (1:46:15.280)

But Joe is, I think, a bad example.

Lex Fridman (1:46:17.240)

He's quite centrist to me.

Lex Fridman (1:46:20.040)

Well he could have, for example, like what has Joe been attacked on?

Lex Fridman (1:46:24.200)

It's, for example, on the topic of like transgender athletes in sports, there's what else?

Michael Malice (1:46:34.520)

I mean, he's been pro Bernie Sanders and pro Trump or like giving Trump a pass.

Lex Fridman (1:46:43.840)

Not anti Trump.

Michael Malice (1:46:44.840)

Not anti Trump.

Lex Fridman (1:46:47.320)

What else?

Michael Malice (1:46:48.320)

None of these are radical.

Lex Fridman (1:46:52.180)

Meat stuff, being pro meat versus anti vegan.

Michael Malice (1:46:56.560)

All those kinds of things.

Lex Fridman (1:46:57.560)

But you can be misconstrued and saying, there's I think a highlight, my mom actually wrote

Michael Malice (1:47:02.800)

to me about this, which is hilarious.

Lex Fridman (1:47:04.800)

Thank you.

Michael Malice (1:47:05.800)

I said, I like how you jot it down.

Lex Fridman (1:47:08.800)

That's when it's important.

Michael Malice (1:47:09.800)

That's a sign, my voice cracks, a sign when Michael Malice makes a funny joke when you

Lex Fridman (1:47:16.680)

jot something down.

Michael Malice (1:47:23.120)

He writes it and then the next time he crosses it out.

Lex Fridman (1:47:27.240)

Yeah.

Michael Malice (1:47:28.240)

It's like Joe Biden and the debates.

Lex Fridman (1:47:31.800)

I did also just crap my pants.

Lex Fridman (1:47:36.680)

So there's a, I mean, he's a comedian.

Lex Fridman (1:47:42.520)

You have a comedian side to you, right?

Michael Malice (1:47:44.560)

I mean, you're, you've talked humorous side humorous.

Lex Fridman (1:47:48.920)

So you can misconstrued like Joe is being somehow a radical thinker and the same can

Michael Malice (1:47:53.120)

be done with you.

Lex Fridman (1:47:54.720)

And his question was, how are you worried about associating yourself with folks like

Lex Fridman (1:47:59.600)

that?

Lex Fridman (1:48:00.600)

Am I or are you?

Lex Fridman (1:48:01.600)

Like me?

Lex Fridman (1:48:02.600)

Yeah.

Michael Malice (1:48:03.600)

That's a good question.

Lex Fridman (1:48:04.600)

And is that something, do you see yourself as somebody who's dangerous that I shouldn't

Lex Fridman (1:48:12.880)

be talking to?

Lex Fridman (1:48:14.440)

And in the same way, do you ever think about guests on your podcast or people you talk

Michael Malice (1:48:23.600)

to publicly, associate yourself with publicly and think that there is somebody that crosses

Lex Fridman (1:48:30.280)

that line that you shouldn't talk to?

Lex Fridman (1:48:32.040)

So I interviewed in the new ride, I interviewed like up to full blown Nazis in the last chapter

Lex Fridman (1:48:37.440)

is that Chris Cantwell, but that was in the context of that book, right?

Lex Fridman (1:48:40.940)

So there's lots of people who people want me to have on my show.

Lex Fridman (1:48:45.800)

And the way I look at it is like you have a table and tablecloth, right?

Lex Fridman (1:48:48.560)

And let's suppose the table is three feet wide.

Lex Fridman (1:48:52.140)

The tablecloth is two feet wide.

Lex Fridman (1:48:54.600)

So if I move the tablecloth to the right, I'm going to lose people on the left.

Lex Fridman (1:48:58.280)

I can only cover so much space.

Lex Fridman (1:49:00.240)

And the further you go on the fringe in one direction, the more mainstream you're going

Lex Fridman (1:49:04.100)

to lose on the other direction.

Lex Fridman (1:49:05.800)

So I'm very much making a conscious choice not to talk to being, people will say I'm

Lex Fridman (1:49:12.000)

cowardly and that's absolutely true.

Michael Malice (1:49:13.720)

I'm being fearful here.

Michael Malice (1:49:15.160)

I would prefer not to talk to some of those who would alienate some of the more mainstream

Michael Malice (1:49:22.080)

people.

Lex Fridman (1:49:23.080)

And here's a perfect example of why.

Michael Malice (1:49:25.300)

On my birthday last year, I woke up seven o clock in the morning to go pee.

Lex Fridman (1:49:29.160)

And I checked Twitter or whatever, and Jeb Bush had followed me, Jeb.

Lex Fridman (1:49:34.600)

And it's seven a.m., you're not really awake.

Lex Fridman (1:49:37.920)

You're like, wait, what?

Lex Fridman (1:49:38.920)

And then I thought maybe it was a fake account, but it's in the verified tab.

Lex Fridman (1:49:41.200)

Oh, you don't have this because you're not verified on Twitter, that's a shame.

Lex Fridman (1:49:44.240)

So people who are mad are on Twitter.

Lex Fridman (1:49:45.800)

Twitter does not respect robots.

Michael Malice (1:49:49.680)

They ban bots.

Lex Fridman (1:49:50.680)

You're lucky.

Michael Malice (1:49:51.680)

Zero, one.

Lex Fridman (1:49:52.680)

Zero, zero.

Michael Malice (1:49:53.680)

It's zero, zero, zero.

Lex Fridman (1:49:56.080)

Those are my pronouns.

Lex Fridman (1:49:57.080)

So it was Jeb, Jeb, Governor Bush, and I corresponded with him and I asked him on the show and he

Lex Fridman (1:50:07.160)

decided not to for various reasons.

Michael Malice (1:50:09.480)

Very politely, he's like, just politics is so bad right now, I don't want to talk about

Lex Fridman (1:50:12.240)

it.

Lex Fridman (1:50:13.240)

And I respect that for him.

Michael Malice (1:50:14.760)

If I'm creating my show where he's going to get heat and get canceled, oh, you can't be

Michael Malice (1:50:24.400)

on the show.

Lex Fridman (1:50:25.400)

He has these other guests.

Michael Malice (1:50:26.400)

I don't want to lose that opportunity because as we were talking about earlier, me and Alex

Michael Malice (1:50:29.840)

Jones and Tim Pool, I think a lot of people would be very excited to see me sit down with

Michael Malice (1:50:35.320)

Jeb Bush.

Lex Fridman (1:50:36.320)

And I told him in writing, and I meant this, I wouldn't be clowning him.

Michael Malice (1:50:40.040)

I wouldn't be disrespectful.

Lex Fridman (1:50:41.820)

It would be a lot of fun.

Michael Malice (1:50:43.280)

There's a goofball side to him that comes out sometimes and I would do my best to bring

Michael Malice (1:50:46.600)

that out and talk about what it's like being a blue blood to be born into his grandfather,

Michael Malice (1:50:50.680)

Prescott Bush was a Senator from Connecticut, marrying a woman who didn't speak English.

Lex Fridman (1:50:55.860)

How does that work when your family's royalty and things like that?

Lex Fridman (1:50:58.160)

So I had a lot of fun questions for him and that's kind of, you're going to have to choose

Lex Fridman (1:51:01.320)

one or the other.

Michael Malice (1:51:02.320)

Well, you do a really good job with that.

Michael Malice (1:51:04.440)

Like Ben Shapiro does a good job with that too, which is you can have multiple, you can

Michael Malice (1:51:09.600)

have a trolley side, humor side where you tear down the power structures and so on,

Lex Fridman (1:51:14.800)

but you can also have a serious side and it's a safe space for people from all walks of

Michael Malice (1:51:19.080)

life to walk in and you're not adversarial.

Lex Fridman (1:51:22.640)

Never.

Lex Fridman (1:51:23.640)

So I take the word guests seriously.

Michael Malice (1:51:25.980)

If they're going to be on my show, I'm not going to have them have negative consequences

Michael Malice (1:51:30.720)

as a result of being on my show.

Michael Malice (1:51:32.840)

That said, I mean, maybe in my case, I'll be honest and say that I find Alex Jones outside

Michael Malice (1:51:41.960)

of the conspiracy stuff for some reason, maybe you can explain, maybe you can psychoanalyze

Lex Fridman (1:51:46.000)

me, but I find him hilarious to listen to.

Michael Malice (1:51:49.320)

He's a performer.

Lex Fridman (1:51:50.320)

He's very performative.

Lex Fridman (1:51:51.640)

But there's a lot of people that don't see the humor of it and they see the serious consequences

Michael Malice (1:51:56.600)

of spreading conspiracy theories of different kinds and they see the danger of it.

Lex Fridman (1:52:05.920)

And I personally, I'm often tempted to talk to Alex in a podcast format, but I think I'm

Lex Fridman (1:52:15.520)

trying to convince myself that I never will.

Michael Malice (1:52:19.060)

For me, I feel unsafe talking to Alex because I can't truly be myself, which is like naive

Lex Fridman (1:52:28.040)

and honest.

Lex Fridman (1:52:30.400)

And actually, I generally, when I talk to humans, I want to see the best in them.

Lex Fridman (1:52:37.480)

And I think that's like, I often think about if I talked to Hitler in 1935, 1938.

Michael Malice (1:52:42.600)

You got a list of names to give him.

Lex Fridman (1:52:46.680)

Well, yeah, I mean, that's how you get the interview.

Michael Malice (1:52:50.200)

Come on, let's be honest.

Lex Fridman (1:52:53.440)

Who are we kidding?

Michael Malice (1:52:54.440)

I would, you have to give away one of your, I would probably give away one of my brothers,

Lex Fridman (1:52:59.960)

so.

Lex Fridman (1:53:00.960)

How many brothers do you have?

Lex Fridman (1:53:01.960)

Well, just one.

Michael Malice (1:53:02.960)

Okay.

Lex Fridman (1:53:03.960)

Too many.

Michael Malice (1:53:04.960)

I want to be an only child.

Lex Fridman (1:53:07.000)

He's the older brother.

Michael Malice (1:53:08.000)

He used to pick on me.

Lex Fridman (1:53:09.000)

Payback.

Michael Malice (1:53:10.000)

You know, it's only, he had a good life.

Michael Malice (1:53:11.360)

You should think of it more as Stalin, so I don't interrupt you, because Hitler, you're

Michael Malice (1:53:14.400)

Jewish.

Michael Malice (1:53:15.400)

You're already going to have very adversarial, he's not going to perceive you as a human

Lex Fridman (1:53:20.480)

in a sense, right?

Lex Fridman (1:53:21.480)

Right.

Michael Malice (1:53:22.480)

Stalin, you're right.

Lex Fridman (1:53:23.480)

Yeah.

Michael Malice (1:53:24.480)

That would be much easier.

Lex Fridman (1:53:25.480)

Or Kim Jong Un or something like that.

Michael Malice (1:53:26.480)

Okay.

Lex Fridman (1:53:27.480)

Do you think, like how, okay, this is a good question, is, and that's, why don't you judge

Lex Fridman (1:53:32.280)

something?

Lex Fridman (1:53:33.280)

If you, alright, we'll cross it out in a second.

Michael Malice (1:53:44.320)

I think this is a really good example of a difficult figure that's controversial that

Michael Malice (1:53:49.160)

people bring up to me a lot, and you've interviewed twice, which is Curtis Yarvin.

Michael Malice (1:53:53.760)

Yeah, Manchester Smallbug.

Michael Malice (1:53:54.760)

Manchester Small, AKA Manchester Smallbug, which is his pseudonym that he goes by in

Michael Malice (1:53:59.680)

his blog.

Lex Fridman (1:54:00.680)

Can you tell me about who he is?

Michael Malice (1:54:03.400)

Sure.

Lex Fridman (1:54:04.400)

Why is he interesting?

Lex Fridman (1:54:05.400)

What of his ideas are interesting?

Lex Fridman (1:54:06.880)

Well, briefly, he invented the concept, the red pill.

Lex Fridman (1:54:10.360)

So Curtis, Manchester Smallbug had a blog called Unqualified Reservations, you can still

Lex Fridman (1:54:15.320)

find it online.

Michael Malice (1:54:16.320)

It's very verbose.

Lex Fridman (1:54:18.120)

He writes at length, very, very bright.

Michael Malice (1:54:22.680)

His perspective is very heretical.

Lex Fridman (1:54:26.100)

So a lot of things that we take for granted in our liberal democracy, he regards as not

Michael Malice (1:54:31.960)

only incorrect, which is downright absurd, and he does not take what many people view

Lex Fridman (1:54:38.120)

as the basis of American political discourse as the basis for his thought.

Lex Fridman (1:54:44.640)

So when you're starting with someone who is basically repudiating the American milieu,

Michael Malice (1:54:55.520)

a lot of people are going to, of course, regard him as dangerous or someone who is verboten.

Michael Malice (1:55:02.740)

He's a very bright person.

Lex Fridman (1:55:05.840)

Why is he such a toxic figure?

Michael Malice (1:55:08.400)

Because if you are blue pilled, if you are the guardians of what is acceptable discourse,

Michael Malice (1:55:17.200)

then you have to make sure your forts are secured, and that any figure outside of this

Michael Malice (1:55:22.480)

acceptable discourse has to be marginalized and regarded as radioactive as possible.

Michael Malice (1:55:28.440)

You don't want to let in these kind of ideas that would be destructive to your hegemony.

Lex Fridman (1:55:34.760)

So let's dig into it.

Lex Fridman (1:55:36.600)

So I've read a few things by him, but then I hear that in a bunch of places, him being

Michael Malice (1:55:44.240)

called a racist, a white supremacist, neo fascist, so on.

Lex Fridman (1:55:49.560)

I go to his Wikipedia.

Michael Malice (1:55:52.600)

There's a view on race section.

Lex Fridman (1:55:54.560)

Let me read it.

Michael Malice (1:55:57.440)

Yarvin's opinions have been described as racist, with his writings interpreted as supportive

Michael Malice (1:56:02.520)

of slavery, including the belief that whites have higher IQs than blacks for genetic reasons.

Michael Malice (1:56:08.640)

Yarvin himself maintains that he's not a racist because while he doubts that, quote,

Michael Malice (1:56:14.320)

all races are equally smart, the notion, quote, that people who score higher on IQ tests are

Michael Malice (1:56:19.920)

in some sense superior human beings is, quote, creepy.

Michael Malice (1:56:24.040)

He also disputes being an outspoken advocate for slavery, though he has argued that some

Michael Malice (1:56:29.920)

races are more suited for slavery than others, quote, it should be obvious that although

Lex Fridman (1:56:34.920)

I'm not a white nationalist, I am not exactly allergic to the stuff.

Michael Malice (1:56:40.560)

Yarvin wrote in a post that linked approvingly of, I don't know these people, Steve Saylor.

Lex Fridman (1:56:45.960)

Steve Saylor, yeah, he's from.

Michael Malice (1:56:46.960)

Jared Taylor and other racialists.

Lex Fridman (1:56:49.360)

Yeah, so.

Michael Malice (1:56:50.360)

Okay, so like, one of my questions is.

Lex Fridman (1:56:54.400)

Let me just say one sentence.

Michael Malice (1:56:56.680)

In the same way that you had, you mentioned that guy earlier who was defending some aspects

Michael Malice (1:57:01.040)

of communism, and that is, in some context, acceptable when you think about it, it's like

Michael Malice (1:57:06.280)

this should be radioactive.

Michael Malice (1:57:08.560)

The fact that he is engaging with these ideas in anything other than this has to be reputed

Michael Malice (1:57:14.240)

at all costs is what renders him to a large extent a racist.

Lex Fridman (1:57:18.400)

That's really interesting.

Michael Malice (1:57:19.400)

There are some topics you can be nuanced and some not, and communism is still a topic that

Lex Fridman (1:57:26.040)

you can be nuanced about.

Michael Malice (1:57:28.080)

It's difficult, but you can be.

Michael Malice (1:57:31.600)

Race and this like talking about slavery and IQ differences based on race is a topic that

Michael Malice (1:57:38.720)

I guess is radioactive to a degree where you can't even say anything, even if it's like

Michael Malice (1:57:45.480)

nuanced or not even like making a point, it's like touching it as you make another point.

Lex Fridman (1:57:52.120)

And understandably, you can understand that I'm going to steel man their point, because

Lex Fridman (1:57:56.880)

you can understand the point.

Michael Malice (1:57:57.880)

It's like you're just talking about Hitler.

Michael Malice (1:57:59.680)

Once this foot gets in the door that some people are inherently slaves or some people

Michael Malice (1:58:04.520)

are inherently better than others, it really quickly collapses, so that would be their

Lex Fridman (1:58:09.120)

perspective.

Lex Fridman (1:58:10.120)

But that's what, like if I were to give criticism of his...

Lex Fridman (1:58:12.680)

But let me just say one more thing.

Michael Malice (1:58:14.400)

Racist is also used to describe Alex Jones.

Lex Fridman (1:58:17.080)

Alex doesn't talk about race.

Michael Malice (1:58:19.280)

Racist is a shorthand for a certain percentage of the population to let you know, do not

Lex Fridman (1:58:25.240)

bother investing in this person any further.

Michael Malice (1:58:28.160)

They're off limits.

Lex Fridman (1:58:29.160)

Yeah, so definitely.

Michael Malice (1:58:30.240)

Racism and sexism is a thing that's now used to shut down conversation that's quite absurd

Lex Fridman (1:58:34.880)

by a small percent of the population.

Lex Fridman (1:58:36.400)

But Jared Taylor and Steve Saylor, Jared Taylor interviewed him for my book, he would be regarded

Lex Fridman (1:58:41.640)

in any sense as a racist.

Lex Fridman (1:58:43.400)

What's the difference between racist and racialists?

Lex Fridman (1:58:45.680)

So racialists, I mean, this is splitting hairs and now I'm gonna be all radioactive, Jared

Michael Malice (1:58:50.680)

Taylor runs something called Amarin and this is, I mean, his perspective is that there

Michael Malice (1:58:55.240)

are inherent differences for the races and you cannot live side by side, well, whites

Lex Fridman (1:59:01.240)

and blacks should not be living side by side.

Lex Fridman (1:59:03.000)

And by the way, for people who don't know, this is out of context, you have written a

Michael Malice (1:59:07.680)

great book that includes some of these concepts called The New Right, which does not include

Michael Malice (1:59:11.800)

these concepts, but talks about, well, it's more about the growth of the community around

Michael Malice (1:59:20.440)

the alt right and all those kinds of the world.

Lex Fridman (1:59:23.360)

So and his point about IQ, it's like, if you had a population, the Dutch, right, I think

Michael Malice (1:59:29.560)

they're the tallest people on earth.

Lex Fridman (1:59:31.560)

And if you said, well, the Dutch are the best people on earth, why?

Michael Malice (1:59:35.160)

Because they're the tallest, it's like you're a crazy person.

Lex Fridman (1:59:38.080)

So if someone is scoring low, an individual on an IQ test, that means they're somehow

Michael Malice (1:59:43.040)

a lower quality person.

Michael Malice (1:59:44.400)

Well, maybe one very specific aspect, but I mean, if they're a good human being, I've

Michael Malice (1:59:48.720)

got friends who are low IQ, all my friends are low IQ, frankly, compared to me, sound

Lex Fridman (1:59:52.160)

like Trump there for a second.

Michael Malice (1:59:53.160)

That's how you choose.

Lex Fridman (1:59:54.160)

Well, I don't have any other choices, no one's gonna be at my level.

Michael Malice (1:59:58.280)

You're the smartest person since Abraham Lincoln that I've ever seen.

Lex Fridman (20:01.280)

Where's the where's the worry thing?

Michael Malice (20:02.920)

Here's the worry coin.

Lex Fridman (20:03.920)

Anyway, I wasn't listening.

Lex Fridman (20:04.920)

What were you worried about 10 years ago?

Lex Fridman (20:06.960)

10 years ago, 2010.

Lex Fridman (20:09.840)

What would I have been worried about then?

Lex Fridman (20:11.200)

The government?

Michael Malice (20:12.200)

No, I'm not.

Lex Fridman (20:13.200)

That's not a worry.

Michael Malice (20:14.200)

I think...

Lex Fridman (20:15.200)

What was the North Korea book?

Michael Malice (20:16.520)

I apologize.

Lex Fridman (20:17.520)

That came out in 2014.

Michael Malice (20:19.840)

I went there in 2012, came out in January 2014.

Lex Fridman (20:24.840)

It still pays my rent with the royalties.

Lex Fridman (20:28.280)

The North Korea book?

Lex Fridman (20:29.280)

Yeah.

Michael Malice (20:30.280)

See, this is why it's so much better.

Lex Fridman (20:31.800)

I gotta talk to you about self publishing because you brought that up.

Michael Malice (20:36.400)

I'm doing the next books also going to be self published.

Lex Fridman (20:38.880)

Can we talk about self publishing?

Lex Fridman (20:42.960)

What's the whole idea of publishing?

Michael Malice (20:45.320)

Like having a publisher and an agent because there's a bunch of people have been reaching

Michael Malice (20:49.100)

out to me trying to get me to write a book, which is ridiculous.

Lex Fridman (20:52.480)

Why?

Michael Malice (20:53.480)

Because people who are brilliant folks like you, like Jordan Peterson, that I think have

Lex Fridman (20:58.480)

a lot of knowledge to share with the world.

Michael Malice (21:00.840)

I think what I feel I can contribute to the world in terms of impact is to build something.

Lex Fridman (21:10.480)

Meaning like engineering stuff.

Michael Malice (21:12.560)

Like a book...

Lex Fridman (21:13.560)

A book has to be engineered and I'm not using that loosely.

Michael Malice (21:16.400)

You have to engineer a book.

Lex Fridman (21:17.720)

No, for sure.

Lex Fridman (21:18.720)

What I mean is like literally a product with programming and artificial intelligence.

Lex Fridman (21:22.920)

I want to build a company.

Michael Malice (21:24.100)

I want to...

Michael Malice (21:25.100)

Because I have a few ideas that I feel I'm equipped and it has to do with your intuition

Michael Malice (21:31.600)

about the way you can build a better world.

Lex Fridman (21:34.380)

You individually.

Lex Fridman (21:35.380)

Like, what can you add to the world that's a positive thing?

Lex Fridman (21:38.620)

And for me, I feel like the maximal thing I can add to the world is at least to attempt

Michael Malice (21:45.400)

to build products that would add more love in the world.

Lex Fridman (21:49.540)

And like, so I want to focus on that.

Michael Malice (21:50.900)

The danger of the book for me, or any kind of writing, and even this podcast is a little

Lex Fridman (21:57.000)

bit dangerous for me, is like, it's fun.

Michael Malice (21:59.480)

That's for sure.

Lex Fridman (22:03.200)

It's fun.

Michael Malice (22:04.200)

It's like it takes you into this place where you start thinking about the world.

Lex Fridman (22:07.000)

You start enjoying and playing with ideas.

Michael Malice (22:09.000)

You start...

Lex Fridman (22:10.000)

And like, just your book on a Dear Reader, but also the new write.

Michael Malice (22:16.560)

Like clearly you and I probably think similarly in the sense that you did a lot of work.

Lex Fridman (22:22.960)

Yes.

Michael Malice (22:23.960)

This next book is killing me.

Lex Fridman (22:25.560)

Yeah.

Michael Malice (22:26.560)

As you mentioned, often it's clear, like on your YouTube channel, which I'm a fan of,

Michael Malice (22:33.360)

you often, it just comes out like you mentioned all of these books that you're reading.

Michael Malice (22:37.600)

It just comes through you that you're suffering through this and it changes you.

Lex Fridman (22:43.840)

And it's clear that you're thinking deeply about the world because of this book.

Lex Fridman (22:49.000)

And I feel like if you do that, that's like when I first came to this country, I read

Lex Fridman (22:55.200)

the book The Giver.

Michael Malice (22:56.200)

I need to read it again.

Michael Malice (22:57.560)

It's like the red pill thing is it changes you in where you can never be the same person

Michael Malice (23:04.400)

again.

Lex Fridman (23:05.400)

Sure.

Michael Malice (23:06.400)

I feel about a book in that same way.

Lex Fridman (23:07.760)

The moment you write a book, of course it depends on the book.

Michael Malice (23:11.040)

I could also just write like in my field, a very technical book.

Lex Fridman (23:15.840)

No, that's a terrible idea.

Michael Malice (23:17.800)

Yes.

Lex Fridman (23:18.800)

But that's okay.

Michael Malice (23:19.800)

That doesn't really change you.

Lex Fridman (23:20.800)

That's just like sharing information.

Lex Fridman (23:22.040)

But like something where you're like, how do I think about this world?

Lex Fridman (23:26.800)

Can you just leave that behind you?

Michael Malice (23:28.640)

I get it.

Lex Fridman (23:29.640)

Dude, it's being pregnant.

Michael Malice (23:31.280)

It never escapes your brain.

Lex Fridman (23:32.280)

I'm telling you.

Michael Malice (23:33.280)

You're absolutely right.

Lex Fridman (23:34.280)

Yeah.

Michael Malice (23:35.280)

I don't know.

Lex Fridman (23:36.280)

It does seem to change you.

Michael Malice (23:37.280)

The reason I bring that up is because there's this whole industry of people that seem to

Michael Malice (23:42.920)

not really contribute much to the publication process, but they make themselves seem necessary

Michael Malice (23:49.120)

for like, if you want to be in the New York Times bestseller list kind of thing, but also

Lex Fridman (23:53.740)

just being like reputable, which I'm allergic to that whole concept.

Lex Fridman (23:59.640)

But do you think it's possible to be on the New York Times bestseller list and be a reputable

Lex Fridman (24:05.760)

author and still be self published?

Michael Malice (24:09.640)

Not what you would want to do.

Lex Fridman (24:11.200)

Like people like Mark Sisson, I think is his name.

Michael Malice (24:12.840)

He wrote like the Primal Blueprints.

Lex Fridman (24:14.160)

So like if I'm getting the names correct, he's the first paleo guy, right?

Lex Fridman (24:18.160)

So he self published it.

Lex Fridman (24:19.960)

It sold gangbusters.

Lex Fridman (24:20.960)

But that would be on their health chart, I believe.

Lex Fridman (24:24.080)

And it's a little bit of a different situation.

Michael Malice (24:27.640)

You would be reaching much more for the mainstream.

Lex Fridman (24:30.840)

You'd be giving up a lot if you go through a publisher, especially financially.

Lex Fridman (24:36.180)

But yeah, you are not going to have the cred because the publishing is a cartel.

Lex Fridman (24:41.880)

The New York Times is part of this cartel.

Lex Fridman (24:44.360)

And if you don't publish within this cartel, they will do what they can, as any cartel

Lex Fridman (24:50.880)

has to, by necessity of being cartel, to pretend you don't exist.

Lex Fridman (24:55.800)

So I was, I think, the first one to have an hour on BookTV for Dear Reader because that

Lex Fridman (25:01.240)

was a Kickstarter book.

Lex Fridman (25:03.660)

But this is something that people would have to be aware of.

Lex Fridman (25:12.280)

So you would be giving up a lot.

Lex Fridman (25:14.660)

But you'd also be giving a lot to work with a publisher because you're losing like a year

Lex Fridman (25:18.320)

and a half of your life because they're glacial and they don't care.

Michael Malice (25:21.960)

Well, that's my problem.

Lex Fridman (25:22.960)

It's not the money.

Michael Malice (25:23.960)

I mean, the money is whatever percent they take, 10, 20, 30, 50%.

Lex Fridman (25:27.960)

They're taking a huge chunk.

Lex Fridman (25:29.920)

So if I sell a book through St. Martin's, it's a dollar.

Lex Fridman (25:33.800)

If I sell a book through Amazon, which is Dear Reader, that's $6.

Lex Fridman (25:37.520)

So that's what, 87%, it's something crazy.

Lex Fridman (25:41.280)

But for me, what bothers me isn't the money that, for me personally, for me, what bothers

Michael Malice (25:47.040)

me is incompetence.

Lex Fridman (25:48.040)

Like whenever I go to the DMV or something like that.

Lex Fridman (25:50.320)

Can I interrupt you?

Lex Fridman (25:51.320)

Yeah.

Michael Malice (25:52.320)

Let's talk incompetence.

Lex Fridman (25:53.320)

When a new write comes out last year, I get on Rogan, get on Ruben.

Michael Malice (26:00.800)

I call them and I said, I got on these shows.

Lex Fridman (26:04.720)

Is there money in the budget for travel?

Lex Fridman (26:08.240)

And they say, we don't have that budget.

Lex Fridman (26:10.920)

Fine.

Michael Malice (26:11.920)

By the way, you got on those shows with no help from them.

Lex Fridman (26:14.800)

Correct.

Michael Malice (26:15.800)

Oh yeah, that's not even a question.

Michael Malice (26:17.200)

The reason they would want you to do a book is because they know you could get...

Michael Malice (26:20.000)

The only reason people get book deals nowadays, literally, is because they know that person

Lex Fridman (26:24.380)

can market their own book.

Michael Malice (26:25.620)

That's the only way.

Lex Fridman (26:27.320)

And I got on Ruben, I got on Rogan, and they go and have the money for the budget for travel,

Michael Malice (26:31.400)

which is fair.

Lex Fridman (26:32.480)

They can do Skype.

Michael Malice (26:33.920)

They told me this in writing.

Lex Fridman (26:36.500)

And I'm like, okay.

Lex Fridman (26:38.240)

And they can financially cover Skype.

Michael Malice (26:40.440)

No, but it's like, hey Joe, yeah, we don't have the budget, but you're going to do Skype.

Lex Fridman (26:46.840)

Hello?

Lex Fridman (26:47.840)

Hello?

Michael Malice (26:48.840)

There is, another friend of mine was on a show on CNBC with Nassim Taleb, and they said

Lex Fridman (26:57.240)

Nassim wants a copy of the book.

Lex Fridman (26:59.840)

And they're like, oh yeah, it's like four o clock on Friday, so we're closed.

Lex Fridman (27:04.600)

So, and he's like, he went there, picked it up, and walked it the two blocks.

Lex Fridman (27:10.840)

So there is, it's almost cartoonish, and it's not incompetence.

Lex Fridman (27:17.280)

It's past that.

Michael Malice (27:20.160)

It's something almost, you can't really believe that, I've had two friends who have been literally

Lex Fridman (27:25.480)

rendered suicidal because this was such a huge opportunity for them.

Lex Fridman (27:31.080)

And it was like watching their kid get beaten in front of them, and I had to talk them off

Lex Fridman (27:34.440)

the ledge.

Lex Fridman (27:35.440)

So it's, people do not appreciate how bad, here's another example.

Lex Fridman (27:39.280)

The apathy of bureaucracy, something like that.

Michael Malice (27:41.960)

I did this book, Concierge Confidential.

Michael Malice (27:44.560)

There's a typo in the first chapter, it ends with, I'm about to, TOO, they didn't fix it

Michael Malice (27:50.120)

for the paperback.

Lex Fridman (27:51.120)

Who cares?

Michael Malice (27:53.040)

It's just like, well, okay, yeah, great book by the way, it got, NPR gave it one of the

Lex Fridman (27:58.360)

books of the year, so that was good.

Lex Fridman (28:00.720)

So why participate in this?

Lex Fridman (28:03.520)

Because otherwise, New York Times is going to pretend you don't exist.

Michael Malice (28:07.560)

Getting booked on some shows might be more difficult.

Lex Fridman (28:10.920)

Although I think that's collapsing in real time.

Michael Malice (28:15.920)

You're not going to get reviewed necessarily on places like PW, or some others.

Lex Fridman (28:21.340)

So the new book you're working on, do you have a title yet?

Michael Malice (28:24.600)

The White Pill.

Lex Fridman (28:25.600)

The White Pill.

Lex Fridman (28:28.560)

Are you self publishing that?

Lex Fridman (28:29.720)

Oh yeah, for sure.

Lex Fridman (28:31.120)

And what's the thinking behind that?

Lex Fridman (28:33.100)

Just because you already have a huge following and a big platform and...

Michael Malice (28:36.880)

It's six times the cash.

Lex Fridman (28:38.320)

If I finish the book in December, I could have it out in February.

Michael Malice (28:43.720)

If I finish the book in December with the publisher, it's going to be out in December

Lex Fridman (28:48.000)

at the earliest, 2021.

Lex Fridman (28:50.320)

Why am I giving up 10 months of my life?

Lex Fridman (28:52.200)

Well, this is the big one.

Lex Fridman (28:53.200)

Do you have any leverage?

Lex Fridman (28:55.080)

Like do authors have leverage to say, F you?

Lex Fridman (28:58.800)

Can you just say, what do you mean?

Lex Fridman (29:02.000)

Meaning like, I want to release this book in two months.

Michael Malice (29:06.360)

Oh no, no.

Michael Malice (29:07.360)

I mean, you'll have a contract and then your agent can fight it, but they don't have the

Michael Malice (29:11.000)

capacity to rush things through.

Lex Fridman (29:13.680)

Yeah.

Michael Malice (29:14.680)

I guess if the, cause I've heard like big authors, I don't know, Sam Harris, all those

Lex Fridman (29:19.720)

folks talk about like, they've accepted it actually.

Michael Malice (29:23.720)

They've accepted it.

Lex Fridman (29:24.720)

They're like, yeah, it takes a long time to...

Michael Malice (29:26.000)

I'm not accepting it.

Lex Fridman (29:28.200)

But you're kind of implying that a human being like me should, like...

Michael Malice (29:33.800)

I'm saying these are your options.

Lex Fridman (29:35.880)

Right.

Lex Fridman (29:36.880)

So I just, I just hate it.

Lex Fridman (29:38.600)

I hate the waiting because it's incompetence.

Michael Malice (29:41.700)

It's not the, it's not necessarily the wait.

Michael Malice (29:44.640)

If I knew it wasn't, you know, if it was the kind of people that are up at 2 a.m. at night

Michael Malice (29:51.640)

on a Friday and they love what you're doing and they're helping create something special.

Michael Malice (29:56.960)

That's the sense I get with some of the Netflix folks, for example, that work with people.

Michael Malice (2:00:02.120)

Unlike him, I actually am honest.

Lex Fridman (2:00:05.400)

So he is someone who very much swims in heretical ideas.

Michael Malice (2:00:11.920)

Here's another thing, like if you bring up that Aristotle said that some people are born

Lex Fridman (2:00:16.240)

to be slaves, he wasn't speaking about race, he just meant people's souls.

Michael Malice (2:00:20.080)

H.L.

Michael Malice (2:00:21.080)

Mencken, who's a great heretic and early 20th century figure, one of his quotes that I say

Michael Malice (2:00:27.640)

all the time, which people have seen a lot in this past year, that the average man does

Lex Fridman (2:00:31.320)

not want to be free, he merely wants to be safe.

Michael Malice (2:00:34.440)

That I think speaks, I don't know, I am not familiar with what Mulbug's saying about slavery

Michael Malice (2:00:39.920)

because his writing is ponderous, but that certainly is something I think that is undeniable,

Michael Malice (2:00:45.120)

that I think more people are realizing there's a large percent of the population that is

Lex Fridman (2:00:48.560)

actively disinterested in freedom and the more responsibilities it entails.

Michael Malice (2:00:52.280)

Well, I mean, really just the word slavery, if you want to make some kind of point or

Michael Malice (2:00:57.800)

even think about the topic outside the context of this is a horrible thing that happened

Michael Malice (2:01:03.760)

in the United States history.

Lex Fridman (2:01:05.320)

And other countries history is not unique to us, let's be clear.

Michael Malice (2:01:07.560)

This is very important in their slavery going on today and a lot of people argue that sex

Michael Malice (2:01:13.280)

trafficking and all those kinds of things, I mean, there's atrocities going on today

Michael Malice (2:01:17.160)

that talking about it in a way that's not immediately saying this is the most horrible

Michael Malice (2:01:25.400)

thing that happened ever, it's something I think about a lot is like if I want to say

Michael Malice (2:01:32.720)

something controversial, I should do so with skill, with care, and only about things I

Lex Fridman (2:01:39.920)

care about.

Michael Malice (2:01:40.920)

Well, here's where I would disagree.

Michael Malice (2:01:43.400)

When I say things, I often say things that are controversial, or I will say uncontroversial

Michael Malice (2:01:48.360)

things in a controversial way, because it's a useful mechanism to alienate people you

Lex Fridman (2:01:53.480)

don't want around you.

Michael Malice (2:01:55.240)

Because if there are people who are going to be shocked by certain topics, like we should

Michael Malice (2:02:00.360)

have ended World War II, like even as a hypothesis, they just clutch their pearls, they're like,

Lex Fridman (2:02:04.280)

oh, you want the Holocaust to happen?

Michael Malice (2:02:06.280)

I can't discuss most things with you because you're not interested in having a conversation,

Michael Malice (2:02:10.720)

you're interested in your emotional response.

Michael Malice (2:02:12.040)

I see things differently, maybe this is a bit of a devil's advocate, but in at least

Michael Malice (2:02:16.880)

the modern discourse of like Twitter and social media and so on, I find that if you do that,

Michael Malice (2:02:22.940)

you're not actually removing the people that are not thoughtful and kind and so on, you're

Michael Malice (2:02:29.560)

actually attracting loud people.

Michael Malice (2:02:31.920)

Like a small number of them, they come over and start yelling at you, start yelling, they're

Michael Malice (2:02:36.800)

basically ruin the party by showing up and just screaming, and so all the thoughtful

Lex Fridman (2:02:43.080)

people leave.

Michael Malice (2:02:44.080)

Well, that's why you have to be a very heavy blocker.

Michael Malice (2:02:46.960)

You have to block people on Twitter because you have to cultivate your audience and have

Michael Malice (2:02:50.240)

them, like a lot of times people come at me, I don't care, then they'll start attacking

Michael Malice (2:02:54.040)

members of my audience and then I'm like, dang, I got to block them because they've won

Michael Malice (2:02:56.880)

this one because I can't have that.

Michael Malice (2:02:59.880)

Yeah, I don't know, unnecessarily provoking people feels, this is beta testing, you try

Michael Malice (2:03:12.840)

to break the system and see what works, you put up as much pressure as possible.

Michael Malice (2:03:17.360)

This is very much computer stuff that you should be able to appreciate, the point being

Michael Malice (2:03:21.440)

when you have a program, you're trying to intentionally sit there and do as many mistakes

Lex Fridman (2:03:25.920)

as you would go wrong.

Lex Fridman (2:03:26.920)

Right?

Lex Fridman (2:03:27.920)

Is that not common practice?

Michael Malice (2:03:28.920)

Yeah.

Lex Fridman (2:03:29.920)

So you're saying that's a way to see communication with the world, as you say something uncontroversial

Michael Malice (2:03:37.400)

in a controversial way and that blocks people.

Lex Fridman (2:03:40.880)

Or does it trigger them?

Lex Fridman (2:03:41.880)

Do they roll their eyes?

Lex Fridman (2:03:42.880)

What is going to be their emotional response?

Lex Fridman (2:03:44.920)

Are they going to start yelling?

Michael Malice (2:03:47.040)

The problem is the reason I can't think like this, or I can't, because I'm not sure about

Michael Malice (2:03:52.960)

the points I'm trying to make, always.

Lex Fridman (2:03:56.600)

I'm not always 100% sure that I'm right about things.

Lex Fridman (2:03:59.200)

So in being thoughtful, I'm afraid that I'll turn off with an eloquently phrased or even

Michael Malice (2:04:08.680)

incorrect statement, I will do damage that can't be undone in terms of having a good

Michael Malice (2:04:15.760)

conversation about a topic.

Lex Fridman (2:04:17.400)

So I want to be very careful about like, I'm not saying afraid, fear is not what I'm talking

Michael Malice (2:04:24.280)

about.

Michael Malice (2:04:25.280)

I think fear is like not saying something out of fear is at the core of the many of

Michael Malice (2:04:31.360)

the problems of the world today.

Lex Fridman (2:04:33.320)

But I'm just saying be, say stuff with care.

Michael Malice (2:04:36.080)

If I'm going to touch race as a topic, it feels like you really should be deeply, first

Michael Malice (2:04:43.960)

have a point to make, like you really care about a point you want to make, and second,

Michael Malice (2:04:49.240)

think deeply about how to say that point in a way that communicates it the best.

Lex Fridman (2:04:54.840)

And touching, I would say, listen, on your show, which is great, I mean, I'd like to

Michael Malice (2:05:04.560)

say thank you for having Menchus Moberg.

Lex Fridman (2:05:07.340)

You are welcome.

Michael Malice (2:05:09.440)

That's the name of the show.

Lex Fridman (2:05:13.920)

Thank you for having me.

Michael Malice (2:05:14.920)

A couple of times, it's great to sort of get him to in this loose way to talk about different

Lex Fridman (2:05:20.000)

kinds of stuff.

Michael Malice (2:05:21.000)

I don't think we talked about race at all.

Lex Fridman (2:05:22.000)

So I'm just bringing it back to what you were asking, which is if you read the Wikipedia,

Michael Malice (2:05:27.440)

the perspective is going to be this guy talks about slavery constantly, where it's completely

Lex Fridman (2:05:31.640)

disproportionate to his work.

Lex Fridman (2:05:33.480)

But even on your show, you can tell even not outside of the race stuff that he's not ultra

Lex Fridman (2:05:38.140)

careful about, he's not nuanced.

Michael Malice (2:05:44.360)

He's not afraid to say something just like, I would say, let me just criticize him, my

Lex Fridman (2:05:48.920)

face is not used as me, carelessly say something controversial.

Michael Malice (2:05:53.440)

I'm not saying he doesn't go, that makes him, it's a very different thing than somebody

Michael Malice (2:06:01.740)

who on purpose says something controversial stuff, like Milo Annapolis, sorry, I forgot

Michael Malice (2:06:08.320)

Milo, whatever his name is.

Michael Malice (2:06:11.000)

Which is really nice to see that he's a genuine person who's thoughtful, he doesn't mean to,

Lex Fridman (2:06:15.120)

but he just carelessly seems to say things that I feel like damaged the rest of his body

Lex Fridman (2:06:23.000)

of work.

Michael Malice (2:06:24.000)

I can't really speak for him, but I would guess his point is once you're swimming in

Lex Fridman (2:06:29.200)

this kind of worldview, you're going to be anathema already.

Lex Fridman (2:06:34.600)

So there's no pleasing these people, so why bother trying?

Lex Fridman (2:06:36.920)

Yeah, I think that's a deeply, that's a black pill way of seeing the world.

Michael Malice (2:06:41.080)

It's not black pilled at all, because it's a cynical way that these people, so it's saying

Michael Malice (2:06:46.220)

that it's a very kind of way of thinking, I'll say whatever I want, whoever comes along

Michael Malice (2:06:53.760)

with me.

Michael Malice (2:06:54.760)

You just earlier said yourself that race, racism has been weaponized as a way to shut

Michael Malice (2:06:59.360)

down conversation.

Lex Fridman (2:07:00.760)

So I think his perspective would be, I am so outside the mainstream in my worldview

Michael Malice (2:07:06.520)

that I know I'm going to be called racism, racist.

Lex Fridman (2:07:09.940)

So there's no point in trying to be nuanced because I'm already going to get the scarlet

Michael Malice (2:07:14.200)

letter.

Michael Malice (2:07:15.200)

Yeah, I just disagree with that because for example, I am one person that he turned off

Michael Malice (2:07:21.280)

by his carelessness, and I think I should be a good target.

Lex Fridman (2:07:25.080)

I should be somebody.

Michael Malice (2:07:26.080)

I think that's fair.

Lex Fridman (2:07:27.160)

And I'm just like, he, it's very convenient to think that there's ridiculous people out

Michael Malice (2:07:33.160)

there, which they are, who call everybody racist and sexist currently.

Lex Fridman (2:07:37.000)

And then you can't please them.

Lex Fridman (2:07:39.140)

So I'm not even going to try, no, but there's like this gray area of people that I don't

Michael Malice (2:07:44.640)

listen to the outreach culture, whatever that I don't, this Wikipedia article means nothing

Michael Malice (2:07:48.920)

to me.

Lex Fridman (2:07:49.920)

I'm not going to, I'm more, I'm just seeing this careless person.

Lex Fridman (2:07:55.040)

And if he's going to be careless about a race like this, I feel like if I walk along with

Lex Fridman (2:08:02.520)

him long enough, I'm going to catch the carelessness.

Michael Malice (2:08:06.800)

I'm going to lose like, I'll defend your perspective better than you can.

Lex Fridman (2:08:12.200)

This is good.

Michael Malice (2:08:13.520)

I'm taking notes.

Lex Fridman (2:08:14.600)

I talked to Eric Weinstein after you guys talked about me on your show.

Michael Malice (2:08:18.640)

We had a good conversation.

Lex Fridman (2:08:19.880)

He invited me on his show.

Michael Malice (2:08:20.880)

That would be an amazing conversation.

Lex Fridman (2:08:22.640)

And we got on the phone and his concern, fairly, he goes, I don't want you to come on my show

Michael Malice (2:08:28.200)

for the purposes of clowning me.

Lex Fridman (2:08:31.120)

And I would never do that.

Michael Malice (2:08:32.960)

Yeah.

Lex Fridman (2:08:33.960)

It would never.

Michael Malice (2:08:34.960)

He might not be aware of who you are.

Lex Fridman (2:08:36.560)

That's why he wants to feel me out.

Michael Malice (2:08:37.720)

He's like, you know, when he hears troll, it can mean a lot of different things.

Lex Fridman (2:08:40.460)

And I, we had a very conversation and very much was very clear that that's not where

Michael Malice (2:08:44.000)

the conversation would go.

Lex Fridman (2:08:45.700)

But I think when you are going to be on someone's show, there is a responsibility that they're

Michael Malice (2:08:51.320)

not going to have to pay a cost for having you as their guests.

Lex Fridman (2:08:54.900)

So if you're perceived, if you were put off by how he was in that live streams or two,

Michael Malice (2:08:59.360)

I did like, I understand where you're coming from.

Michael Malice (2:09:01.640)

I think he's very, very bright, but you have a very, you have a different audience than

Michael Malice (2:09:05.660)

I do.

Lex Fridman (2:09:06.660)

And you're going for something different than I am.

Michael Malice (2:09:07.660)

No, no, no.

Lex Fridman (2:09:08.660)

Like in my interest, the sense of.

Michael Malice (2:09:11.760)

You wouldn't feel safe with him.

Lex Fridman (2:09:12.760)

Yeah.

Michael Malice (2:09:13.760)

I wouldn't feel safe with him.

Lex Fridman (2:09:14.760)

That's a really boring line for me.

Michael Malice (2:09:15.760)

I think I would like to actually talk to him one day, Alex Jones has crossed the other

Lex Fridman (2:09:21.120)

line for me.

Michael Malice (2:09:22.120)

Well, you could do what you could do with me, tape the episode and then never release

Lex Fridman (2:09:25.440)

it.

Michael Malice (2:09:26.440)

No, it's, it's one of those things will be when there's finally they'll, they'll make

Lex Fridman (2:09:33.960)

a history channel documentary about you and I and how it all went wrong.

Michael Malice (2:09:38.400)

Like the cult that we started and then everybody killed themselves.

Lex Fridman (2:09:42.320)

And there's a, we'll release it then because it'll be like unseen footage.

Michael Malice (2:09:49.360)

This is how it started is it'll be black and white in a basement somewhere in New York.

Lex Fridman (2:09:56.560)

Yeah.

Michael Malice (2:09:57.560)

Yeah.

Lex Fridman (2:09:58.560)

My mother's basement.

Michael Malice (2:09:59.560)

Let's explain so much.

Lex Fridman (2:10:01.640)

Okay.

Lex Fridman (2:10:02.640)

So I spoke to Yaron Brooke about objectivism and Ayn Rand, he, he kind of argued, he highlighted

Michael Malice (2:10:13.440)

difference between capitalism and anarchism as around the topic of violence and the, that

Michael Malice (2:10:23.880)

having government be the sort of the, the negative way to say it is like having a monopoly

Michael Malice (2:10:32.100)

on violence, but basically being the arbiter of, or the, the people that making sure that

Michael Malice (2:10:39.400)

violence doesn't get out of hand.

Lex Fridman (2:10:42.040)

That would, you know.

Michael Malice (2:10:43.040)

Yeah.

Lex Fridman (2:10:44.040)

2020 showed that.

Michael Malice (2:10:45.040)

Yeah.

Lex Fridman (2:10:46.040)

The government's great at that.

Michael Malice (2:10:47.040)

Yep.

Lex Fridman (2:10:48.040)

Well, what, what's, okay.

Michael Malice (2:10:49.040)

Without.

Lex Fridman (2:10:50.040)

This is him with a straight face making that argument.

Michael Malice (2:10:51.840)

Good work Yaron.

Lex Fridman (2:10:52.840)

All right.

Michael Malice (2:10:53.840)

Well, can you with a straight face argue for the idea that in anarchism, violence would

Lex Fridman (2:11:02.840)

not get out of hand?

Michael Malice (2:11:04.480)

Sure.

Michael Malice (2:11:05.480)

For one thing, if your worst argument against that, one of my little quotes is what are

Michael Malice (2:11:10.300)

presented as the strongest arguments against anarchism are inevitably description of the

Lex Fridman (2:11:14.160)

Strasquo.

Lex Fridman (2:11:15.400)

So the argument is under anarchism, you know, you'd have warlords, you know, killing people

Lex Fridman (2:11:21.000)

and then you'd have, you know, whoever's strongest gets to just take over a neighborhood.

Michael Malice (2:11:25.520)

Well, we have that now.

Lex Fridman (2:11:27.400)

We saw that the police are perfectly comfortable disarming the population.

Lex Fridman (2:11:33.320)

And then when they try to protect themselves or punished, they're, we're happy to stand

Lex Fridman (2:11:37.200)

down.

Michael Malice (2:11:38.200)

You can't, you can only have that happen if you have a monopoly.

Lex Fridman (2:11:42.220)

If they're like, let's suppose you had a television stations, right?

Lex Fridman (2:11:45.720)

And CBS said, you know what?

Lex Fridman (2:11:47.800)

We're not going to broadcast.

Michael Malice (2:11:49.440)

Cool.

Lex Fridman (2:11:50.440)

We're not going to broadcast.

Michael Malice (2:11:51.440)

We're going to watch any of these other channels.

Lex Fridman (2:11:53.240)

So the problem with having monopoly is everyone has to be dependent on this issue.

Michael Malice (2:11:57.800)

What's amazing about minarchism, which objectivists are, is they will argue that government is

Lex Fridman (2:12:02.960)

really, really bad at everything it does and it touches.

Michael Malice (2:12:07.560)

Therefore it has to be in charge of the most important stuff.

Michael Malice (2:12:10.960)

Well, that's not therefore, but, but there is a thing that's fundamentally different

Michael Malice (2:12:16.560)

than all the other things.

Lex Fridman (2:12:17.560)

And Yaron Brook also said that no government has, this is on your show, has ever worked

Michael Malice (2:12:24.720)

in the way he's proposing.

Lex Fridman (2:12:26.180)

Now objectivism, Ayn Rand's philosophy is based on objective reality.

Lex Fridman (2:12:31.520)

And what she posited is you look and study the facts of nature, facts of reality and

Lex Fridman (2:12:36.960)

deduce things accordingly.

Lex Fridman (2:12:39.000)

And she very much regards herself as part of the Aristotelian tradition, as opposed

Michael Malice (2:12:43.920)

to the Platonist tradition, where the idea precedes reality and the idea is more real

Michael Malice (2:12:49.120)

than what we see around us.

Lex Fridman (2:12:50.800)

So what he's saying is all the data, according to him, contradicts his argument, but still

Michael Malice (2:12:59.000)

he's going to make this imaginary government that has never existed and there's no evidence

Lex Fridman (2:13:03.760)

that it can exist.

Michael Malice (2:13:06.520)

Let's talk about objective law, to have access to the legal system, which is something we

Lex Fridman (2:13:12.200)

want.

Lex Fridman (2:13:13.200)

And just in terms of selling disputes, when you have a government monopoly, it's going

Lex Fridman (2:13:17.040)

to be more expensive, more difficult for poor people.

Michael Malice (2:13:20.660)

The cost of hiring a lawyer is more expensive than hiring a surgeon.

Lex Fridman (2:13:24.160)

You can't say with a straight face, this is the only way or the best way.

Lex Fridman (2:13:31.000)

And the other thing is the argument for objectivism, against anarchism, they have this stupid

Michael Malice (2:13:36.960)

claim it's like, what if you're a member of one security company and I'm a member of another

Lex Fridman (2:13:43.280)

and we have a dispute and one shows up the door.

Lex Fridman (2:13:45.640)

What happens now?

Michael Malice (2:13:47.120)

As if this is some insuperable argument.

Lex Fridman (2:13:49.000)

Well, we have that on earth.

Michael Malice (2:13:51.320)

Every country is in a state of anarchism regarding every other country.

Lex Fridman (2:13:54.080)

We don't have a world government.

Lex Fridman (2:13:55.660)

So what happens if a Canadian kills an American in Mexico?

Lex Fridman (2:14:00.520)

I have no idea.

Michael Malice (2:14:01.520)

I bet you don't have an idea.

Lex Fridman (2:14:03.080)

What I'm sure of is that system has been worked out ahead of time between the three countries

Lex Fridman (2:14:09.160)

and it's been worked out in such a way that you and I don't have to reinvent the wheel.

Lex Fridman (2:14:13.480)

Same thing with cell phone companies.

Lex Fridman (2:14:15.240)

If I'm on Sprint, you're on Metro PCS and I call you, who pays?

Lex Fridman (2:14:19.400)

Does Sprint pay you?

Lex Fridman (2:14:20.880)

Do they split the difference?

Michael Malice (2:14:21.880)

First of all, there's no objective way that one has to work, but the thing is companies

Michael Malice (2:14:26.840)

who have auto accidents, they have arbitrage all the time.

Lex Fridman (2:14:30.840)

Like if I run into you, they work it out and it never reaches our desk.

Lex Fridman (2:14:36.440)

So the only thing that cops are good at is keeping people, at any government monopoly,

Lex Fridman (2:14:42.080)

is forcing people to be their customers by keeping them unsafe.

Michael Malice (2:14:45.000)

Okay.

Lex Fridman (2:14:46.000)

There's a few things I'd like to say there to just explore some of these ideas.

Lex Fridman (2:14:51.600)

So one is in terms of Canadian and Mexico and so on, that it does, something has been

Lex Fridman (2:14:57.360)

worked out perhaps.

Michael Malice (2:14:58.920)

Not perhaps.

Lex Fridman (2:14:59.920)

Perhaps.

Lex Fridman (2:15:00.920)

Do you know for sure that if there's a point I'm trying to make, so let's say for sure

Lex Fridman (2:15:05.160)

it's been worked out.

Michael Malice (2:15:07.240)

There was a point in history where it wasn't worked out.

Michael Malice (2:15:11.960)

To work, to come to a place of stability, there has to first be some instability.

Lex Fridman (2:15:17.000)

So when you first, like for every kind of situation, they're like dispute over space,

Lex Fridman (2:15:24.000)

like who gets to own Mars, that kind of thing.

Michael Malice (2:15:26.280)

Sure.

Michael Malice (2:15:27.280)

For it, and then these different competing institutions will have to figure it out.

Lex Fridman (2:15:33.320)

And so there's the concern with anarchism, I think, or with any kind of interaction.

Michael Malice (2:15:38.680)

You said brilliantly that there's an anarchism relative to the, there's no one world government.

Michael Malice (2:15:44.600)

Right.

Michael Malice (2:15:45.600)

Alex Jones enters the chat, but the fear is that there's going to be an instability that

Michael Malice (2:15:56.440)

doesn't converge towards some stable place.

Lex Fridman (2:15:58.840)

That is not the fear.

Michael Malice (2:16:00.060)

That is the goal under Ayn Rand's philosophy.

Michael Malice (2:16:03.600)

Markets have something what they always talk about as being creatively destructive, which

Michael Malice (2:16:08.100)

means you look at something that's been happening for a very long time.

Lex Fridman (2:16:12.360)

Every generation, every innovator starts chipping away at it.

Michael Malice (2:16:16.400)

He finds better ways, marginal improvement or marginal, or it doesn't work and he goes

Lex Fridman (2:16:20.120)

broke.

Michael Malice (2:16:21.120)

When government tries to implement improvement, we all have to suffer the consequences.

Lex Fridman (2:16:25.600)

When an innovator does, it's a huge asymmetry.

Michael Malice (2:16:28.200)

If it hurts, it only hurts him.

Lex Fridman (2:16:30.120)

If it succeeds, he becomes rich and we all profit as a consequence.

Lex Fridman (2:16:34.480)

But the fear of anarchism, I think, is that it will be non creative destruction.

Lex Fridman (2:16:39.560)

It'll be just destruction, right?

Michael Malice (2:16:43.160)

It's not like the instability.

Lex Fridman (2:16:47.680)

Stability is one of these words that sounds objective, but has no real meaning.

Lex Fridman (2:16:51.800)

What field has stability?

Lex Fridman (2:16:55.120)

Let's suppose you want stability.

Michael Malice (2:16:56.840)

Relationships.

Lex Fridman (2:16:57.840)

Yeah.

Michael Malice (2:16:58.840)

Let's talk about medicine.

Lex Fridman (2:16:59.840)

Stability means we're not going to invent new diseases or new treatments, right?

Michael Malice (2:17:02.760)

If you mean stability in terms of a baseline of security, we have that already.

Lex Fridman (2:17:08.700)

Very few relationships turn violent.

Michael Malice (2:17:11.560)

Under an anarchist system, look at it right now.

Michael Malice (2:17:14.960)

If you look at a bar full of drunken young males full of testosterone, if you look at

Michael Malice (2:17:21.080)

a hotel where everyone is not native to the area, those are both far safer than the places

Lex Fridman (2:17:29.080)

that the government has taken upon itself to protect you.

Michael Malice (2:17:32.420)

The parks, the alleyways, the streets, the subways.

Lex Fridman (2:17:36.400)

We have right now a comparison of which is better at keeping people safe.

Lex Fridman (2:17:41.240)

And it's very obvious that when something is private and under someone's control, and

Michael Malice (2:17:46.440)

there would be layers of there'd be more police, but they wouldn't be a government monopoly.

Michael Malice (2:17:50.460)

The store would have someone, the street would have someone, and you'd have your own personal

Lex Fridman (2:17:54.200)

security that would be attached to your phone.

Michael Malice (2:17:56.660)

Having security as a function of geography as opposed to a function of you as an individual

Lex Fridman (2:18:02.440)

is a landline technology in a post cell phone world.

Lex Fridman (2:18:05.700)

So you think it's possible to have, psychologically speaking, as an individual among the masses,

Michael Malice (2:18:11.840)

to have a sense of security even though there's not a centralized thing at the bottom of the

Lex Fridman (2:18:17.600)

whole thing?

Michael Malice (2:18:18.600)

Like, there's not a set of laws that are enforced based on geography like we have nations now.

Michael Malice (2:18:24.960)

You can have a set of laws that are enforced in some kind of emergent agreed upon way.

Lex Fridman (2:18:30.280)

So like, basically, I want to go to a hotel and trust that I'll be able to get a room

Lex Fridman (2:18:35.080)

and nobody's going to break down the door and I don't know, take all my vodka.

Lex Fridman (2:18:41.040)

Let's take a different way.

Michael Malice (2:18:42.520)

If you were worried about a hotel having bedbugs, that's not something the government's involved

Lex Fridman (2:18:46.700)

in.

Lex Fridman (2:18:47.700)

And that's not an unrealistic concern.

Lex Fridman (2:18:50.680)

Are there mechanisms right now that you can undertake to make sure that's not the case?

Michael Malice (2:18:54.680)

Yes.

Lex Fridman (2:18:55.680)

So it would be the same thing with, I want to make sure I go to a hotel that has security.

Michael Malice (2:19:01.560)

It would be exactly the same thing.

Lex Fridman (2:19:03.080)

And here's another example, kosher food.

Michael Malice (2:19:06.440)

People who keep kosher, Jews who keep kosher, their food has to be prepared in a certain

Lex Fridman (2:19:09.880)

way.

Lex Fridman (2:19:10.880)

It has to meet higher rabbinical standards, right?

Michael Malice (2:19:13.080)

If you look at food, it will have that certification, the K, and there's even competition there.

Michael Malice (2:19:18.520)

There's the K and there's the stricter U letter.

Lex Fridman (2:19:20.760)

People don't notice it because they're looking for it.

Michael Malice (2:19:22.560)

You would have companies certifying different locales for their level of security.

Lex Fridman (2:19:28.520)

And it would take an hour to have an app that would, just like when you have toll roads,

Lex Fridman (2:19:34.000)

right?

Michael Malice (2:19:35.000)

That would tell you you're approaching an unsafe area, you're not going to be covered

Michael Malice (2:19:38.120)

by us or, and you could have it color coded very easily.

Lex Fridman (2:19:41.920)

We could do this today.

Lex Fridman (2:19:43.920)

But the thing is, you're exactly correct, but there's an assumption of you're already

Michael Malice (2:19:48.640)

in a, okay, you can give me a different word than stability, but you're already in a place

Michael Malice (2:19:53.240)

where the forces of the market or whatever can operate.

Michael Malice (2:19:57.960)

The worry is like, initially, you might not have enough stability to where you can choose

Michael Malice (2:20:05.880)

one place over the other based on the security that they provide.

Michael Malice (2:20:10.200)

We already have different types of security here because we have federal government, we

Michael Malice (2:20:14.440)

have state governments and we have local governments.

Lex Fridman (2:20:17.520)

So and these often contradict each other.

Lex Fridman (2:20:20.600)

So the idea of the implausibility of having different security companies and having it

Michael Malice (2:20:25.340)

be unstable or impossible, we already have a very rough example of it happening in real

Michael Malice (2:20:31.160)

life.

Lex Fridman (2:20:32.160)

So how all of it started, the idea of, especially with Yaron, is like it all started with government

Michael Malice (2:20:41.240)

monopoly of violence saying like, no kids, don't let violence get out of hand.

Lex Fridman (2:20:47.240)

So like how do...

Michael Malice (2:20:48.240)

We had a civil war where half the country was slaughtered.

Lex Fridman (2:20:51.840)

That's the display of the government not having a monopoly on the violence, right?

Michael Malice (2:20:56.760)

It's like, that's the split.

Michael Malice (2:20:58.460)

They had such a monopoly on the violence in the North that it could draft people to fight

Michael Malice (2:21:02.680)

others that they didn't even care about.

Lex Fridman (2:21:03.680)

But there's a South.

Michael Malice (2:21:07.600)

It's the government splitting because this is giant iceberg like splitting.

Michael Malice (2:21:14.900)

The argument is that you would have something like a civil war much more often under anarchism.

Michael Malice (2:21:21.600)

First of all, if you had a civil war much more often, we don't have that with car companies,

Lex Fridman (2:21:27.200)

right?

Michael Malice (2:21:28.200)

We don't have a company that says, I refuse to pay or whatever.

Lex Fridman (2:21:32.240)

That's not violence.

Michael Malice (2:21:33.240)

Sorry to interrupt.

Lex Fridman (2:21:34.920)

And I'm playing...

Michael Malice (2:21:35.920)

Hold on, let me finish.

Michael Malice (2:21:36.920)

It is violence because if I'm a company and I'm saying that my cars can run over yours

Lex Fridman (2:21:42.800)

with no consequences, this is a rough analog, why has that not happened?

Michael Malice (2:21:48.160)

Now in terms of having security system, if I am free, just like switching cell phone

Michael Malice (2:21:53.840)

to go from one provider to another and this one company as part of its payment doesn't

Michael Malice (2:21:58.480)

want $50 a month, $100 a month, wants my son, I'm not going to be a member of this security

Michael Malice (2:22:04.360)

company unless in that case we're dealing with something like a Pearl Harbor or foreign

Lex Fridman (2:22:09.120)

invasion where it's like all hands on deck.

Michael Malice (2:22:12.160)

Let's go by evidence.

Lex Fridman (2:22:13.760)

How many places do have evidence of that you can have at a large scale?

Michael Malice (2:22:17.960)

Well, it's absolutely in a large scale.

Lex Fridman (2:22:21.120)

Because it feels like once you don't know the person.

Lex Fridman (2:22:24.320)

What about eBay?

Lex Fridman (2:22:25.320)

eBay is an example of anarchism in practice.

Michael Malice (2:22:27.480)

I am selling something to someone whose name I don't even know in a country that is nowhere

Lex Fridman (2:22:31.420)

proximate to me and eBay acts as the arbiter.

Michael Malice (2:22:34.900)

Sometimes I don't get the money after I get screwed over, but that's far less than the

Lex Fridman (2:22:38.040)

taxation that I have to give to the federal government.

Michael Malice (2:22:40.160)

It's a great point, but it's in the space of finance.

Lex Fridman (2:22:43.600)

If I could, if on eBay you could also commit violence.

Michael Malice (2:22:49.200)

Theft is violence.

Lex Fridman (2:22:50.200)

No.

Michael Malice (2:22:51.200)

Yeah, if you give me 10 grand for a car and I don't deliver anything, you've stolen 10

Lex Fridman (2:22:57.000)

grand from me.

Michael Malice (2:22:58.000)

Yes, but there's something uniquely problematic to being stabbed or shot.

Michael Malice (2:23:06.160)

The reason you're stabbed or shot is because the government, despite its contract, is refusing

Michael Malice (2:23:11.720)

to allow second amendment rights to be implemented among the citizenry and the people who are

Lex Fridman (2:23:17.640)

making that the case are the cops.

Michael Malice (2:23:20.160)

They are the ones who are the traitors to the constitution and should be regarded as

Lex Fridman (2:23:23.720)

such.

Michael Malice (2:23:24.720)

Whereas private companies are far more amenable to market pressures than the state is.

Michael Malice (2:23:31.280)

It's a strong argument, but let's actually just briefly mention the scale thing.

Lex Fridman (2:23:37.920)

Why don't you think we should talk about scale?

Lex Fridman (2:23:40.720)

Because if you had anarchism just in Vermont or just in Brooklyn, well, fine.

Michael Malice (2:23:45.480)

The people make the argument you need anarchism or else China's going to invade, but that's

Lex Fridman (2:23:48.920)

like saying what, do these little countries don't exist?

Lex Fridman (2:23:52.080)

Does San Salvador not exist?

Michael Malice (2:23:53.520)

Some of them are violent, some of them are not, but the point is they're not all at moments

Michael Malice (2:23:58.080)

notice about to be invaded.

Lex Fridman (2:23:59.600)

Kuwait's an example of this.

Michael Malice (2:24:01.040)

Kuwait was invaded by Iraq and very quickly all the big countries who are interested in

Lex Fridman (2:24:05.760)

having your stability, safe space, got involved and kicked him out of Kuwait.

Michael Malice (2:24:11.300)

If you had this company that was waging war on the population, it seems quite likely that

Michael Malice (2:24:17.200)

the other organization would get together and put a stop to this because they're not

Michael Malice (2:24:20.440)

in a position to provide this service of security to their customers.

Lex Fridman (2:24:23.520)

Okay.

Michael Malice (2:24:24.520)

All of this is brilliant, but didn't you just say that we are actually in a state of anarchism

Lex Fridman (2:24:30.840)

relative to other countries?

Michael Malice (2:24:32.560)

Yes.

Lex Fridman (2:24:33.560)

So isn't this what emerges?

Lex Fridman (2:24:35.360)

This is what, aren't we actually living in a state of anarchism where we all have agreed?

Lex Fridman (2:24:41.840)

I haven't agreed to anything.

Lex Fridman (2:24:43.080)

So the basic criticism you have is you're born on a geographical area and you're forced

Lex Fridman (2:24:52.640)

to have signed a bunch of stuff just by being born in a particular place.

Lex Fridman (2:24:59.840)

So really, if you could just much easier choose which space of ideas you associated with,

Lex Fridman (2:25:08.720)

that would be actually a state of anarchism.

Lex Fridman (2:25:12.000)

And you could have like a military that you sign up with.

Lex Fridman (2:25:17.200)

Sure.

Lex Fridman (2:25:18.320)

And you're certainly not putting people in prison to get raped because they're selling

Lex Fridman (2:25:22.080)

drugs.

Michael Malice (2:25:23.080)

Yeah.

Lex Fridman (2:25:24.080)

And you're certainly not allowing everyone else on the street who wants to be there.

Lex Fridman (2:25:30.400)

Can we say something nice about Ayn Rand?

Lex Fridman (2:25:32.560)

I can talk about nice things about her all day.

Michael Malice (2:25:34.680)

I own her copy of the Fountainhead, you know.

Lex Fridman (2:25:36.640)

What to you is Ayn Rand's best idea, one that you find impactful, insightful, useful for

Lex Fridman (2:25:43.920)

us in modern society that you think about?

Lex Fridman (2:25:47.040)

That your life has meaning and productive work is your highest value.

Lex Fridman (2:25:54.640)

And that you shouldn't apologize, and this is something I despise, you shouldn't apologize

Lex Fridman (2:26:00.040)

for saying, I want to be happy and I'm going to work toward that.

Lex Fridman (2:26:05.780)

And that, there's a few others, that you owe nobody else, some random stranger, a second

Lex Fridman (2:26:11.400)

of your time.

Michael Malice (2:26:12.640)

You see this a lot on Twitter and social media, people like demanding a debate or demanding

Lex Fridman (2:26:17.320)

you act a certain way and engage with them.

Michael Malice (2:26:19.800)

You don't owe them anything.

Lex Fridman (2:26:22.120)

So I think those are some of her best ideas.

Lex Fridman (2:26:25.880)

And she teaches you how to think.

Lex Fridman (2:26:27.240)

Ayn Rand does not have all the answers, but she has all the questions.

Lex Fridman (2:26:29.920)

Do you think, what do you think about the whole selfishness thing?

Lex Fridman (2:26:32.320)

I mean, are you triggered by the word selfishness?

Michael Malice (2:26:37.520)

It's really unfortunate what she does because you were just talking earlier about Moldbug

Lex Fridman (2:26:41.520)

being carelessly, this is indefensible in my opinion.

Lex Fridman (2:26:47.520)

So she talks about the virtue of selfishness and she claims that when people talk about

Lex Fridman (2:26:53.640)

selfishness, they mean concern primarily with the self, they don't.

Michael Malice (2:26:58.200)

When people talk about selfishness, they mean in a sociopathic way, concern exclusively

Lex Fridman (2:27:02.440)

with oneself.

Michael Malice (2:27:03.720)

They mean like, oh, if someone is dying on the street, I'm not going to even waste a

Lex Fridman (2:27:09.120)

second saving them because I'm selfish.

Lex Fridman (2:27:11.500)

So she sets up this complete caricature of the term.

Michael Malice (2:27:15.320)

When she's attacking selflessness in her best sense is when there are people who have no

Michael Malice (2:27:21.080)

sense of self, they have no values of their own, they have no goals of their own, everything

Michael Malice (2:27:27.260)

that's in their mind is gotten secondhand from the culture at large and there's nothing

Michael Malice (2:27:31.680)

unique or special from their perspective worth fighting for.

Lex Fridman (2:27:36.560)

So when she attacks, when she advocates for the self, she basically means self development,

Michael Malice (2:27:43.120)

self improvement and achievement.

Lex Fridman (2:27:44.960)

So I think that word choice is really false and needlessly off putting.

Michael Malice (2:27:52.360)

Yeah, controversial perhaps for the purpose of being controversial, I don't know, but

Lex Fridman (2:27:57.280)

it's just, it's not accurate.

Michael Malice (2:27:59.360)

That's not what people mean by selfishness.

Michael Malice (2:28:01.240)

Yeah, I would say it's one of the reasons probably her philosophy is not as much adopted

Michael Malice (2:28:09.280)

or thought about is like, it's funny, like the use of words means something.

Michael Malice (2:28:13.960)

Exactly as you said, that's my criticism, I mentioned small bug, which could be incorrect

Michael Malice (2:28:17.560)

criticism by the way, so I'm not exactly sure.

Lex Fridman (2:28:21.520)

Can we talk about some modern day chaos and politics?

Michael Malice (2:28:28.000)

Yes, please.

Lex Fridman (2:28:29.000)

I hate chaos.

Michael Malice (2:28:30.000)

Speaking of your hatred for chaos, let's talk about secession.

Lex Fridman (2:28:33.680)

Oh yeah, I was the first one on this trip.

Michael Malice (2:28:36.200)

Yeah, you were, well, the Civil War beat you to it, but.

Lex Fridman (2:28:39.960)

Sure, in contemporary times.

Michael Malice (2:28:41.760)

In contemporary times you were, you're on this.

Lex Fridman (2:28:45.520)

Can you talk about what is the idea of secession, what are the odds that it might happen, what

Lex Fridman (2:28:52.960)

does it mean for the United States in some way for different states to secede?

Lex Fridman (2:28:58.640)

Sure, America's been one country with several cultures since the beginning.

Michael Malice (2:29:02.760)

There's absolutely no reason for someone, this goes back to the anarchist idea, if you

Michael Malice (2:29:07.520)

despise Donald Trump, which is your prerogative, if you think Joe Biden is a clown, which is

Michael Malice (2:29:12.460)

your prerogative, there's absolutely no reason for you to be governed by someone you disapprove

Lex Fridman (2:29:18.060)

of.

Michael Malice (2:29:19.060)

This is an incoherent, nonsensical concept.

Michael Malice (2:29:21.420)

The only reason we even take it as a hypothesis is that we're trained to the contrary since

Michael Malice (2:29:25.360)

kindergarten.

Michael Malice (2:29:26.360)

A secession, I don't know along what lines, but increasingly it's becoming harder and

Michael Malice (2:29:33.200)

harder for people to have conversations.

Michael Malice (2:29:35.960)

I think social media, and this is something people despise social media for, I think this

Michael Malice (2:29:39.960)

is something that social media has done well, which I'm advocating for, is it tends to

Michael Malice (2:29:45.200)

kind of run through ideas through like an evolutionary process and drive them to the

Michael Malice (2:29:49.320)

logical conclusion.

Lex Fridman (2:29:50.320)

So it's very hard to be a moderate online because there's going to be people pushing

Michael Malice (2:29:54.260)

through your ideas through several cycles, and then you're going to end up at some kind

Lex Fridman (2:29:57.560)

of more pure, or if you want to dislike it, extreme perspective.

Michael Malice (2:30:02.060)

Having these different pockets, it's not really governable because people fundamentally have

Lex Fridman (2:30:07.520)

different worldviews.

Lex Fridman (2:30:09.160)

So I don't know what secession would look like.

Lex Fridman (2:30:11.180)

I think the number is really increasing at an exponential rate.

Michael Malice (2:30:17.360)

I do not think the number of supporters.

Lex Fridman (2:30:20.360)

I think the claim that this can only be accomplished through violence is false.

Michael Malice (2:30:24.640)

It's a lie.

Michael Malice (2:30:26.080)

Just like any divorce doesn't have to involve beating your ex husband or ex wife.

Lex Fridman (2:30:31.680)

And I'm very much looking forward to this becoming a reality far quicker than I ever

Lex Fridman (2:30:37.840)

expected.

Lex Fridman (2:30:38.840)

Do you think there's a value of competing worldviews being forced to be in the same

Lex Fridman (2:30:48.760)

space?

Michael Malice (2:30:49.760)

Yes, but within a context.

Lex Fridman (2:30:52.320)

So we can agree if group one thinks A, B, and C are the fundamental aspects of the worldview

Lex Fridman (2:30:59.160)

and argue within that, and group two thinks D, E, and F and argue within that.

Lex Fridman (2:31:04.680)

So you're going to have a lot of argument within those space.

Lex Fridman (2:31:07.080)

And if there's fundamental differences in worldview, there's no reason to be, especially

Lex Fridman (2:31:12.920)

when each views the other as completely coherent and unreasonable.

Lex Fridman (2:31:15.600)

Do you think there's a line of fundamentally different worldviews along which a secession

Lex Fridman (2:31:25.800)

will happen in the United States?

Michael Malice (2:31:27.520)

Is there something that emerges to you as a set of ideas that are like, what do you

Lex Fridman (2:31:34.960)

call that?

Lex Fridman (2:31:35.960)

That you can't come to an agreement over?

Lex Fridman (2:31:38.920)

Yeah, I think that's already happening.

Michael Malice (2:31:40.880)

Like with the masks, I think there's just two fundamental perspective and each one thinks

Lex Fridman (2:31:46.760)

the other is insane and also deadly and destructive.

Lex Fridman (2:31:51.980)

And I don't see how there's any discourse on this topic.

Lex Fridman (2:31:56.600)

So on the left, I wouldn't say it's left versus right.

Michael Malice (2:31:59.520)

I think it's people who are pro risk versus people who are risk averse.

Lex Fridman (2:32:04.640)

Yeah, so risk averse.

Lex Fridman (2:32:07.200)

And then there's like a hope for the comfort of the sort of a centralized science giving

Lex Fridman (2:32:18.280)

the truth and then everybody must follow the truth of the proper way to behave.

Lex Fridman (2:32:23.120)

And then there's on the other side, a distrust of any kind of centralized institutions of

Michael Malice (2:32:29.900)

anybody who might use like control to try to gain greater and greater power and masks

Michael Malice (2:32:37.520)

are a symbol of that.

Lex Fridman (2:32:38.760)

And even if masks are or are not a effective way of stopping the virus, which is really

Michael Malice (2:32:48.680)

unfortunate to me from a perspective, I happen to be on a survey paper about masks.

Lex Fridman (2:32:53.600)

Like people don't seem to care about the data or the so on.

Michael Malice (2:32:57.840)

This has become just a nice point on which to then highlight the difference between the

Lex Fridman (2:33:05.400)

two sides.

Michael Malice (2:33:06.400)

Yeah, that's really interesting.

Michael Malice (2:33:07.400)

I mean, it sounds kind of on the face kind of ridiculous that the succession would occur

Michael Malice (2:33:12.800)

over masks.

Michael Malice (2:33:13.800)

It wouldn't, but I'm saying this is an example of something where there's a clean break.

Lex Fridman (2:33:18.240)

And risk averse versus someone who's risk seeking, these are just two fundamentally

Lex Fridman (2:33:24.400)

different perspectives.

Lex Fridman (2:33:25.400)

Do you want to have an NHS or do you have one of a market based healthcare system?

Lex Fridman (2:33:29.880)

You can make very valid arguments for both.

Michael Malice (2:33:32.360)

There's no reason for everyone to be under one.

Lex Fridman (2:33:34.520)

But do you think that's not something that's, you think that's irreconcilable, if that's

Michael Malice (2:33:39.800)

the word, that that's not in the space of ideas that you can have in the same room together

Lex Fridman (2:33:46.160)

and they fight at each other and ultimately make progress like that.

Michael Malice (2:33:49.400)

That succession is the more effective way to proceed forward.

Lex Fridman (2:33:53.320)

Yes.

Lex Fridman (2:33:54.320)

But do you see a possible world with no is the answer, meaning I know you say yes, because

Lex Fridman (2:34:04.440)

you kind of lean on the side of freedom and anarchism.

Michael Malice (2:34:07.360)

Yes.

Michael Malice (2:34:08.360)

Like you make, you want to make, let me make an argument in terms of divorce, which is

Michael Malice (2:34:15.400)

in your worldview or your intuition is you want to make secession as frictionless as

Lex Fridman (2:34:22.080)

possible.

Michael Malice (2:34:23.080)

Of course.

Lex Fridman (2:34:24.080)

And not just like states or whatever, just like you want to choose, you want to be free.

Michael Malice (2:34:29.200)

Yeah.

Lex Fridman (2:34:30.200)

And peaceful.

Michael Malice (2:34:31.200)

Let me make my authoritarian, Russian, okay, Papa Stalin argument in terms of relationships.

Lex Fridman (2:34:39.640)

Like when shit goes wrong in a relationship.

Michael Malice (2:34:42.960)

That's your language.

Lex Fridman (2:34:45.960)

Okay.

Michael Malice (2:34:47.400)

There's only a place for one Stalin at this table.

Lex Fridman (2:34:50.160)

Okay.

Michael Malice (2:34:51.160)

Okay.

Lex Fridman (2:34:52.160)

I'll get to be Lenin.

Michael Malice (2:34:53.160)

Or you get to be like Merkel as our previous discussion with Putin.

Lex Fridman (2:34:57.040)

Okay.

Michael Malice (2:34:58.040)

Don't let me unleash the hounds.

Michael Malice (2:35:00.960)

You know, you want to work through some of the troubles before you get divorced.

Michael Malice (2:35:05.680)

Like you want to do the work in relationships sometimes, like it goes up and down.

Lex Fridman (2:35:09.040)

It's been 200 plus years.

Michael Malice (2:35:11.520)

It's done.

Lex Fridman (2:35:12.520)

But in the, listen, okay, so it's not a one night stand, but you know.

Michael Malice (2:35:17.400)

Look at Trump.

Lex Fridman (2:35:18.800)

This I don't see the middle ground.

Michael Malice (2:35:20.960)

He's either a complete calamity buffoon, or he's been the first great president we've

Lex Fridman (2:35:26.380)

had in like many, many years.

Lex Fridman (2:35:29.200)

So you think that there's something different now than it was 20 years ago?

Lex Fridman (2:35:33.480)

Yes.

Michael Malice (2:35:34.480)

Social media and access to information.

Lex Fridman (2:35:37.460)

And the division will only increase, you think?

Michael Malice (2:35:39.520)

Oh yes.

Lex Fridman (2:35:40.520)

So Trump is not an accident of history.

Lex Fridman (2:35:42.920)

So they thought Trump was the river, but he was the dam.

Lex Fridman (2:35:46.800)

Trump was the dam.

Michael Malice (2:35:49.020)

They thought he was the river.

Lex Fridman (2:35:50.960)

So in that analogy, Trump being gone makes things worse.

Michael Malice (2:35:55.840)

Yes.

Lex Fridman (2:35:56.840)

For that perspective, because now things are really going to hit the fan.

Lex Fridman (2:36:01.220)

So what are the odds of secession?

Lex Fridman (2:36:04.520)

I don't know.

Lex Fridman (2:36:06.880)

And my desperate hope is that it's peaceful, but I think the number of people who are becoming

Lex Fridman (2:36:12.800)

very comfortable with the violence is making me very unsettled.

Lex Fridman (2:36:17.640)

So I see words as violence and your Twitter.

Lex Fridman (2:36:21.920)

It's like Hiroshima times a million.

Michael Malice (2:36:27.040)

Sometimes I curl up in the corner crying after I check your Twitter feed.

Lex Fridman (2:36:31.360)

So in all seriousness, you think it's possible to do nonviolent secession?

Michael Malice (2:36:39.880)

It's like a Czechoslovakia.

Lex Fridman (2:36:41.920)

Look at Brexit.

Michael Malice (2:36:43.200)

Brexit was a secession.

Lex Fridman (2:36:45.200)

Right.

Michael Malice (2:36:46.200)

Right, so you can have a civil war did not need to be fought.

Lex Fridman (2:36:50.800)

That would have been a nonviolent secession.

Lex Fridman (2:36:52.960)

And if you worry about slavery, you could have bought off all the slaves, import them

Lex Fridman (2:36:55.820)

to the North.

Michael Malice (2:36:56.980)

It still would have been cheaper and less loss of life and probably better for race

Lex Fridman (2:36:59.760)

relations.

Michael Malice (2:37:00.760)

Yeah.

Michael Malice (2:37:01.760)

I don't know enough history to, to wonder about like how the civil war could have been

Michael Malice (2:37:05.200)

avoided.

Lex Fridman (2:37:06.200)

Well, that's how is a well conversation.

Lex Fridman (2:37:11.020)

So like, no, no.

Lex Fridman (2:37:12.020)

If they want to secede, say, look, here's what we're going to do.

Michael Malice (2:37:14.560)

We're going to let you secede, but you have to end slavery.

Lex Fridman (2:37:18.160)

They seceded because of slavery.

Michael Malice (2:37:19.320)

Here's the other thing.

Michael Malice (2:37:20.320)

There's like this, some circles of conservatism have this myth that, oh, it wasn't about slavery,

Michael Malice (2:37:23.280)

it was about state's rights.

Michael Malice (2:37:24.480)

Well, if you go back, every state, when they seceded, released the press release.

Lex Fridman (2:37:28.520)

And they said explicitly, we're doing this because of slavery.

Lex Fridman (2:37:31.000)

So that is an abomination that needs to be taken care of.

Lex Fridman (2:37:34.080)

But other countries have ended slavery peacefully.

Michael Malice (2:37:37.960)

One of the ways to do it is pay them by all, and we ended up doing this after the war.

Michael Malice (2:37:42.360)

I think the South people got reparations, the slave owners, it was just insane.

Lex Fridman (2:37:47.680)

Bring them North.

Michael Malice (2:37:48.680)

You want to go to Canada, whatever.

Lex Fridman (2:37:50.520)

And you agree.

Lex Fridman (2:37:51.520)

And that's our peace treaty.

Lex Fridman (2:37:53.900)

Because the people who died weren't the slave owners.

Michael Malice (2:37:56.260)

It was white trash.

Lex Fridman (2:37:57.920)

And it was, that's who always, and I hate that that's the term, I can't think of a better

Michael Malice (2:38:02.080)

one, but that's who always ends up fighting these wars often disproportionately.

Lex Fridman (2:38:05.100)

It's poor people and uneducated people.

Lex Fridman (2:38:07.520)

And I don't, I did not regard them as cannon fodder.

Lex Fridman (2:38:09.800)

I think it's horrible.

Lex Fridman (2:38:12.800)

So what would it look like?

Lex Fridman (2:38:14.120)

There would be two founding documents?

Michael Malice (2:38:16.000)

Yeah, they had their constitution.

Lex Fridman (2:38:18.000)

Actually, I don't know the history of that.

Michael Malice (2:38:20.760)

Yeah, they had a constitution, but it was much more decentralized.

Michael Malice (2:38:24.800)

If secession doesn't happen, you said that Donald Trump was the dam, not the river.

Michael Malice (2:38:35.520)

That sounds like Walt Whitman or something.

Lex Fridman (2:38:37.960)

It's poetry.

Michael Malice (2:38:38.960)

Okay.

Lex Fridman (2:38:39.960)

Are you flirting with me?

Michael Malice (2:38:44.480)

You know us, we don't flirt.

Lex Fridman (2:38:45.880)

We just club and drag you to the cave.

Michael Malice (2:38:50.480)

We hammer and sickle.

Lex Fridman (2:38:53.080)

And you don't want to know about the sickle.

Michael Malice (2:38:54.600)

It's not good cob, bad cob.

Lex Fridman (2:38:56.080)

It's bad cup for a sickle.

Michael Malice (2:38:59.320)

Yeah.

Lex Fridman (2:39:00.320)

What do you think 2024 looks like in terms of the candidates?

Michael Malice (2:39:07.560)

It's going to be Kamala Harris as the Democratic candidate.

Michael Malice (2:39:11.320)

I'm really looking forward to Ted Cruz versus Mike Pence, because they're both very good

Michael Malice (2:39:15.680)

at debate.

Lex Fridman (2:39:16.680)

That would be interesting to see how they differentiate themselves.

Lex Fridman (2:39:19.240)

But honestly, I don't, I mean, things are going to get really ugly really soon.

Lex Fridman (2:39:24.600)

What about Donald Trump coming back?

Michael Malice (2:39:26.160)

He's not going to do it.

Lex Fridman (2:39:28.480)

So things, in my opinion, I think things are going to be really, really crazy in 2021.

Lex Fridman (2:39:33.360)

And talking about the dam being gone, like 2021.

Lex Fridman (2:39:35.960)

So this year coming up.

Michael Malice (2:39:37.600)

Oh yeah.

Lex Fridman (2:39:38.600)

It's going to be complete.

Michael Malice (2:39:39.600)

It's going to be complete mayhem.

Lex Fridman (2:39:40.600)

What do you think, like prediction wise, and this is empirical.

Lex Fridman (2:39:45.440)

What do you think Donald Trump's Twitter feed looks like in 2021?

Michael Malice (2:39:51.640)

Like if we're at the end of 2021, we'll look back and see like, what was the, you know,

Michael Malice (2:39:57.720)

Obama gate exclamation points or we won.

Michael Malice (2:40:01.800)

He is going to be, for the first time in history, holding the Republican party accountable to

Michael Malice (2:40:07.720)

the base.

Lex Fridman (2:40:10.000)

We've never had that happen before.

Michael Malice (2:40:11.600)

I think he's going to be holding their feet to the fire, radicalizing them.

Lex Fridman (2:40:17.440)

And given that they have the Senate, where it's going to be 50 50, the Democrats have

Michael Malice (2:40:21.640)

a three seat majority in the House.

Lex Fridman (2:40:24.080)

This is not a governing coalition for either.

Michael Malice (2:40:26.920)

It's going to be complete mayhem.

Lex Fridman (2:40:27.920)

What does that actually look like?

Lex Fridman (2:40:29.360)

What are the key values you think that he's going to try to push?

Lex Fridman (2:40:33.960)

I think it's just going to be very contrarian.

Michael Malice (2:40:36.600)

He's going to be holding them accountable in terms of budgeting, even though he never

Lex Fridman (2:40:39.580)

did that as president.

Michael Malice (2:40:41.080)

I think in terms of some kind of nominations, here's the thing.

Michael Malice (2:40:44.760)

This is the first time since Nixon, 50 years and things weren't as politicized then, where

Michael Malice (2:40:53.880)

an incoming president doesn't have control of the Senate.

Lex Fridman (2:40:57.120)

The Senate has the vote over cabinet positions.

Michael Malice (2:41:01.020)

I do not see a possibility of them not trying to pick a fight on one or two of these nominations.

Lex Fridman (2:41:08.760)

And especially as revenge for Kavanaugh.

Michael Malice (2:41:10.720)

This is going to get very bloody very quickly.

Lex Fridman (2:41:12.720)

And I think Mitch McConnell, there's a sadistic side to him.

Michael Malice (2:41:16.100)

He revels in being the brakes on the car.

Lex Fridman (2:41:19.400)

And I think the base, it's just going to be throwing just, they're going to want some

Michael Malice (2:41:22.640)

bone.

Lex Fridman (2:41:23.640)

It's like, oh yeah, we eliminated this one person.

Lex Fridman (2:41:25.900)

So that's going to get really ugly really quickly.

Michael Malice (2:41:28.180)

You see it being quite divisive, like the division increasing, not stabilizing or decreasing.

Lex Fridman (2:41:35.640)

And I'll be doing my part.

Michael Malice (2:41:37.360)

I know you'll be doing my part, but I'm trying to do my part and like trying to be like,

Michael Malice (2:41:42.800)

to me, the division is shouting over people like Elon Musk, people who are actually building

Lex Fridman (2:41:50.960)

stuff and like accomplishing things in this world in terms of like.

Michael Malice (2:41:53.840)

Elon said he took the red pill.

Michael Malice (2:41:56.120)

No, see, you're talking about the, I'm talking about, forget Elon, SpaceX and Tesla and actually

Michael Malice (2:42:03.080)

the good sides of like some of the things that Google is doing.

Michael Malice (2:42:07.920)

Like actually building things, like making the world's information searchable, all that

Michael Malice (2:42:11.800)

kind of stuff.

Lex Fridman (2:42:12.800)

Like all this stuff, you know, making actually the world a better place.

Michael Malice (2:42:18.360)

There's a bunch of technologies that are increasing our quality of life.

Lex Fridman (2:42:21.000)

All this, all that kind of stuff.

Michael Malice (2:42:22.640)

I feel like they get like not much credit or in our public discourse because of the

Lex Fridman (2:42:29.440)

division.

Michael Malice (2:42:30.440)

The division is just like, it's clouding our ability to concentrate on what's awesome about

Lex Fridman (2:42:36.000)

this world.

Lex Fridman (2:42:37.000)

Well, you know what would eliminate the division, right?

Lex Fridman (2:42:39.960)

Succession.

Michael Malice (2:42:40.960)

Yeah.

Lex Fridman (2:42:41.960)

See, I don't, I don't, it's hard for me to disagree.

Michael Malice (2:42:47.560)

It's hard for me to disagree because, but at the same time, succession, I'm a romantic

Lex Fridman (2:42:57.360)

at heart and divorce breaks my heart.

Michael Malice (2:42:59.720)

Cool.

Lex Fridman (2:43:00.720)

But do you want to live in a country where Joe Rogan is regarded as an example of someone

Lex Fridman (2:43:07.400)

who's spreading white supremacy?

Lex Fridman (2:43:09.200)

I don't.

Michael Malice (2:43:10.200)

Well, but see, I feel like that's not the country we live in.

Lex Fridman (2:43:13.960)

That's just.

Michael Malice (2:43:14.960)

The New York Times did it, the cathedral does it on a regular basis.

Michael Malice (2:43:18.960)

Well, the cathedral is, okay, the cathedral, I guess you can maybe define the cathedral,

Lex Fridman (2:43:24.960)

but it's like the centralized institutions that have like a story that they're trying

Lex Fridman (2:43:28.720)

to sell and so on.

Michael Malice (2:43:29.720)

Yeah, this is mold books concept, but yeah, they basically are set the limits of permissible

Lex Fridman (2:43:33.040)

discourse and create a narrative for the population to follow.

Lex Fridman (2:43:35.760)

But to me, that's a minority of people.

Michael Malice (2:43:37.760)

Yeah, minorities always controlling everything in any country, the vast majority of the masses

Michael Malice (2:43:42.000)

have no thought.

Lex Fridman (2:43:43.000)

But minorities can be overthrown and the.

Michael Malice (2:43:45.000)

Sure, the circulation of the elites, yeah.

Michael Malice (2:43:46.560)

The way the, no, no, no, and that's why the, what progress looks like is ridiculous people

Michael Malice (2:43:51.760)

take power.

Lex Fridman (2:43:52.760)

Yes.

Lex Fridman (2:43:53.760)

And then they get annoying and new ridiculous people that are a little bit better overthrow

Lex Fridman (2:43:58.920)

the previous.

Michael Malice (2:43:59.920)

No, I think progress happens despite the people who are in power, not because of them.

Lex Fridman (2:44:04.400)

Right.

Lex Fridman (2:44:05.400)

And so why is this a succession?

Lex Fridman (2:44:08.880)

So is it always about overthrowing the powerful?

Lex Fridman (2:44:11.480)

Is that how progress happens?

Lex Fridman (2:44:12.600)

No, I think progress happens despite the powerful.

Michael Malice (2:44:14.760)

The powerful are going to do what's in their power to maintain their power and they're

Lex Fridman (2:44:18.560)

going to fight innovation because it's a threat to their control.

Lex Fridman (2:44:21.960)

There's always going to be the New York Times of the world, right?

Lex Fridman (2:44:24.500)

There's always going to be those, those people that haven't heard.

Michael Malice (2:44:26.560)

Sure, let them have their own country.

Lex Fridman (2:44:28.960)

So it's two countries.

Michael Malice (2:44:30.080)

One has Joe Rogan, the other one has the New York Times.

Lex Fridman (2:44:33.200)

That's basically what's happening right now.

Michael Malice (2:44:34.780)

It just geographically doesn't map out very well, but culturally, yes.

Lex Fridman (2:44:40.320)

But that's just cultural stuff.

Michael Malice (2:44:41.600)

Like there's a layer of public discourse.

Lex Fridman (2:44:43.400)

Okay.

Michael Malice (2:44:44.400)

I don't mean like that's what we're operating under now, but there's actual like progress

Michael Malice (2:44:48.040)

being made, like roads being built, hospitals being run, all those kinds of things like

Michael Malice (2:44:53.160)

different innovations.

Lex Fridman (2:44:55.260)

That seems like secession is counterproductive to that.

Michael Malice (2:44:59.080)

Right, because one country would have all the roads and the other would have all the

Lex Fridman (2:45:01.720)

hospitals.

Michael Malice (2:45:02.720)

That's a great point.

Lex Fridman (2:45:03.720)

No, that's not, that's not the point I'm trying to make.

Michael Malice (2:45:05.440)

It's just like, it just feels like the division that we're experiencing in the space of ideas

Michael Malice (2:45:10.720)

could be constructive and productive for, for building better roads and better hospitals

Michael Malice (2:45:17.360)

as opposed to like using that division to separate the countries.

Lex Fridman (2:45:21.480)

They're all going to have to solve the same problems, it feels like.

Michael Malice (2:45:25.760)

Sure but they can solve them differently and compete that way.

Lex Fridman (2:45:28.680)

Mass is a great example.

Michael Malice (2:45:30.160)

Yeah.

Lex Fridman (2:45:31.160)

We're seeing that right now.

Michael Malice (2:45:32.160)

Different countries have different mass mandates and things like this.

Lex Fridman (2:45:34.600)

And the competition within the same structure, within the same founding documents and same

Lex Fridman (2:45:39.920)

institutions is not effective, you think?

Lex Fridman (2:45:42.480)

As effective as separating.

Michael Malice (2:45:43.480)

It is effective but there is a certain point, which I think we have long passed, where there

Lex Fridman (2:45:48.160)

is not a governing consensus ideologically or culturally.

Lex Fridman (2:45:51.920)

Let me ask you a fun question, okay?

Lex Fridman (2:45:54.200)

Knock knock.

Lex Fridman (2:45:55.200)

Who's there?

Lex Fridman (2:45:56.200)

Mars.

Michael Malice (2:45:57.200)

God of war.

Lex Fridman (2:46:03.560)

The other one.

Michael Malice (2:46:06.100)

The planet.

Lex Fridman (2:46:07.100)

Yeah.

Michael Malice (2:46:08.100)

So, there is a kind of captivating notion that we might, I'm excited by it, the human

Lex Fridman (2:46:17.280)

being stepping foot on Mars.

Michael Malice (2:46:19.520)

That to me is, it's like one of those things that feels like it's, why do we want to engage

Lex Fridman (2:46:30.400)

in space exploration?

Lex Fridman (2:46:32.920)

But I'm a little bit with Elon Musk on this, which is, it's obvious that eventually if

Michael Malice (2:46:39.360)

human species is to survive, it's going to have to innovate in ways that includes the

Michael Malice (2:46:45.720)

space.

Lex Fridman (2:46:46.720)

Okay.

Michael Malice (2:46:47.720)

Like, there's a lot of things we're not able to predict yet that if we push ourselves to

Michael Malice (2:46:53.440)

the limits of space, like new ideas will come that'll be obvious a hundred years from now

Lex Fridman (2:46:59.120)

and then we're not even imagining now.

Lex Fridman (2:47:01.560)

And colonizing Mars, that idea that seems ridiculous, exceptionally difficult, impossibly

Michael Malice (2:47:07.200)

expensive is something that is actually going to be seen as obvious in retrospect and that

Lex Fridman (2:47:14.120)

we should engage in.

Michael Malice (2:47:15.120)

Okay.

Lex Fridman (2:47:16.120)

That's just to contextualize things.

Michael Malice (2:47:18.520)

The fun idea and experiment from a philosophical and political sense is what kind of government,

Lex Fridman (2:47:27.340)

how do you orchestrate a government when you go to Mars, like we don't get too many chances

Michael Malice (2:47:32.680)

like this, but how do you build new systems, not in place of old ones, but in a place with

Lex Fridman (2:47:39.480)

no system previous have existed?

Michael Malice (2:47:41.740)

I think organically, I hate that word, but that's the correct word.

Lex Fridman (2:47:45.520)

You would have to figure out, I mean, that's how America was built.

Michael Malice (2:47:48.560)

You had the, it was a Jamestown colony and they tried to do communism here and it completely

Michael Malice (2:47:52.120)

failed and they went to a more free market system with the second wave of colonists is

Michael Malice (2:47:55.620)

my understanding.

Michael Malice (2:47:57.420)

For Mars, I mean, it depends on the population, who the population was, the number of people.

Michael Malice (2:48:04.120)

I don't know.

Michael Malice (2:48:05.660)

These are all kind of hypotheticals that I don't really have any good insight in whatsoever.

Michael Malice (2:48:10.860)

I'm not a space person.

Lex Fridman (2:48:12.080)

I hate astronomy.

Michael Malice (2:48:13.080)

Like I hate it.

Lex Fridman (2:48:14.720)

So a lot of people look up to the stars and they're filled with awe and wonder about the

Lex Fridman (2:48:18.020)

mystery of the universe and you look up to the stars and you feel what?

Lex Fridman (2:48:22.640)

I'm not looking up.

Michael Malice (2:48:23.640)

I'm looking at the earth.

Michael Malice (2:48:25.440)

If you look at what's, I'd much rather given a choice between Mars and the deep sea.

Michael Malice (2:48:33.000)

I'd much rather spend a week at the deep sea and all the life forms that are down there

Lex Fridman (2:48:36.440)

because they're literal aliens.

Michael Malice (2:48:38.480)

It's like things that are not literal, but they're unimaginable to us.

Lex Fridman (2:48:41.760)

Some of the things down there.

Michael Malice (2:48:42.920)

Yeah, that's true.

Michael Malice (2:48:43.920)

To me, it's an interesting thought experiment to see when you have 10 people, when you have

Michael Malice (2:48:47.640)

a hundred people, how do you build an effective, you know, this is actually really useful for

Lex Fridman (2:48:53.520)

a company, right?

Lex Fridman (2:48:54.520)

How do you build an effective company that does things?

Michael Malice (2:48:57.960)

It's not an obvious, despite everybody being really certain about everything in this, in

Michael Malice (2:49:02.360)

this modern world, to me, it's not obvious, like how do you run successfully as a group

Lex Fridman (2:49:07.040)

of people?

Michael Malice (2:49:08.040)

I agree.

Lex Fridman (2:49:09.040)

I agree.

Michael Malice (2:49:10.040)

That's what I'm saying.

Michael Malice (2:49:11.040)

It also organic means you have to look at who the people are and tailor the organization

Michael Malice (2:49:15.140)

to them as opposed to try to impose something.

Lex Fridman (2:49:17.640)

But you get to also select people.

Michael Malice (2:49:19.520)

Right.

Lex Fridman (2:49:20.520)

Cause it's not going to be open borders on Mars.

Michael Malice (2:49:22.280)

Oh, right.

Lex Fridman (2:49:23.880)

I was going to say when you have one country, it's all open borders.

Michael Malice (2:49:27.320)

Yeah, you're right.

Lex Fridman (2:49:28.320)

They're from outer space, right?

Michael Malice (2:49:32.160)

Some say they're aliens already there.

Lex Fridman (2:49:33.720)

So you're going to have to negotiate that.

Michael Malice (2:49:35.360)

Sure.

Lex Fridman (2:49:36.360)

We're aliens.

Lex Fridman (2:49:37.360)

So we're aliens to somebody.

Lex Fridman (2:49:38.880)

We're legal aliens.

Lex Fridman (2:49:39.880)

Do you think there's alien civilizations out there?

Lex Fridman (2:49:42.560)

Yes.

Michael Malice (2:49:43.560)

Of course.

Lex Fridman (2:49:44.560)

What do you think is their system of government anarchism?

Michael Malice (2:49:48.080)

Cause they're advanced.

Lex Fridman (2:49:51.160)

Do you honestly think there's intelligent life forms out there?

Michael Malice (2:49:53.200)

Of course.

Lex Fridman (2:49:54.200)

It's the math.

Michael Malice (2:49:55.200)

It's impossible that there isn't.

Lex Fridman (2:49:56.200)

So what do you make of all the stories of UFO sightings, all that kind of stuff?

Lex Fridman (2:50:03.120)

Do you think they've visited earth?

Lex Fridman (2:50:05.320)

Yes.

Michael Malice (2:50:06.560)

My grandfather was an air traffic controller in the Soviet Union and he said they would

Michael Malice (2:50:10.700)

often see these things that were not operating the way we knew vehicles operate.

Lex Fridman (2:50:17.080)

So that's good enough for me.

Lex Fridman (2:50:18.800)

So I mean, do you think government is in possession of some, like, what do you think government

Lex Fridman (2:50:23.880)

is doing with this kind of information?

Lex Fridman (2:50:26.160)

Do you think somebody has any understanding of UFO sightings or any kind of information

Lex Fridman (2:50:36.040)

about extraterrestrial life forms that are not known to the public?

Lex Fridman (2:50:41.520)

Yes.

Michael Malice (2:50:42.520)

That's indisputably true.

Michael Malice (2:50:43.520)

I think the fact that so many of these sightings are from aerodynamic professionals, like

Michael Malice (2:50:48.360)

pilots and things of that nature, they are people who've seen it all, who are reputable.

Michael Malice (2:50:53.080)

If they are on record saying, I've seen things that don't make sense, and both the Russians

Lex Fridman (2:50:58.720)

and the Americans thought it was the other one, that says something.

Lex Fridman (2:51:03.160)

Shouldn't that be a bigger problem?

Lex Fridman (2:51:04.880)

Shouldn't that be bigger news and a bigger problem if government is in fact hiding it?

Lex Fridman (2:51:09.520)

I guess, but like, what are they going to do with that information?

Michael Malice (2:51:13.360)

It's a good question.

Michael Malice (2:51:14.360)

Like, if a UFO, if an extraterrestrial spacecraft, which most likely would be like a crappy space,

Michael Malice (2:51:22.200)

like it wouldn't be the actual aliens, it would be like some drone probe ship.

Lex Fridman (2:51:28.080)

AI.

Michael Malice (2:51:29.080)

Yeah.

Lex Fridman (2:51:30.080)

Yeah.

Michael Malice (2:51:31.080)

Yeah.

Lex Fridman (2:51:32.080)

So if that, like, what would you do with that information?

Michael Malice (2:51:33.280)

As somebody that's in charge of, you know, like you see how badly WHO fumbled the discussion

Lex Fridman (2:51:41.520)

of masks.

Lex Fridman (2:51:42.520)

Masks?

Lex Fridman (2:51:43.520)

Yeah.

Michael Malice (2:51:44.520)

Yeah.

Michael Malice (2:51:45.520)

Masks is one of them, but everything really in terms of communicating with the public

Michael Malice (2:51:47.560)

honestly about what they know, what they don't know.

Lex Fridman (2:51:51.040)

And that's a trivial one.

Michael Malice (2:51:53.040)

Right.

Lex Fridman (2:51:54.040)

I don't, I don't, I don't know.

Michael Malice (2:51:58.080)

There certainly feel incompetent at being able to communicate effectively with the public

Michael Malice (2:52:03.600)

about something much more difficult, much more full of mystery, like a UFO, a thing,

Michael Malice (2:52:11.320)

a piece of material that's out of this earth.

Lex Fridman (2:52:14.120)

Forget like organic material.

Michael Malice (2:52:17.760)

I don't, I don't know.

Lex Fridman (2:52:19.400)

To me, I just, so from a scientist perspective, it would be beautiful.

Michael Malice (2:52:22.520)

It would be inspiring to reveal this to the world.

Lex Fridman (2:52:25.680)

Here's the mystery and make it completely public.

Michael Malice (2:52:29.000)

Share it with China.

Lex Fridman (2:52:30.000)

Share it with everybody.

Michael Malice (2:52:31.000)

I think there is a domino effect where the concern would be what else are you hiding

Lex Fridman (2:52:35.120)

from us?

Lex Fridman (2:52:36.120)

And at that point, if you said, no, no, no, this is everything, people wouldn't believe

Lex Fridman (2:52:39.160)

you and they would, you can't blame them for not believing them.

Michael Malice (2:52:43.080)

Ah, yeah.

Lex Fridman (2:52:45.800)

And then it'd be like, show us the aliens.

Michael Malice (2:52:46.800)

They'd be like, we don't have them.

Lex Fridman (2:52:47.800)

We just have the craft.

Michael Malice (2:52:48.800)

You're lying.

Lex Fridman (2:52:50.800)

Speaking of aliens, offline, you mentioned elves.

Michael Malice (2:52:55.920)

Yeah.

Lex Fridman (2:52:57.000)

And psychedelics.

Michael Malice (2:52:58.000)

Yeah.

Lex Fridman (2:52:59.280)

What do you think about psychedelics in terms of the kind of places that can take your mind?

Michael Malice (2:53:09.080)

The kind of journey it can take you on.

Michael Malice (2:53:11.640)

Like what do you think, what do you think the psychedelics do to the human mind and

Lex Fridman (2:53:17.880)

what does that say about the capacity of the human mind and just in general, like the mysteries

Lex Fridman (2:53:22.660)

of all that's out there?

Michael Malice (2:53:23.660)

I don't know that we understand what they do.

Michael Malice (2:53:26.320)

The way I heard it explained to me is that much of the human mind isn't about receiving

Lex Fridman (2:53:32.820)

information but blocking information, right?

Michael Malice (2:53:36.080)

Because we're so, there's so much data coming in any moment that you basically have to train

Michael Malice (2:53:39.600)

yourself to see and to hear only what you want to see and to hear.

Lex Fridman (2:53:42.880)

And that what psychedelics do is they tear that away and suddenly you're much more aware

Michael Malice (2:53:46.480)

of what's out there and also you're going to be noticing patterns that you hadn't noticed

Lex Fridman (2:53:49.240)

before.

Michael Malice (2:53:50.240)

I know you had that researcher on the show and he kind of discussed this at some length.

Michael Malice (2:53:56.160)

I mean, Rogan is probably the person who popularized DMT more than, well, he's obviously the person

Michael Malice (2:54:01.200)

who's popularized DMT more than anything.

Michael Malice (2:54:03.840)

I don't know anyone who had, even the researchers who have anything close to a coherent explanation

Michael Malice (2:54:10.240)

of why this drug, which exists everywhere, would have this very specific, very extreme

Michael Malice (2:54:15.840)

effect on so many people who are going to be experiencing such bizarre consequences

Michael Malice (2:54:21.320)

as a result of it.

Michael Malice (2:54:22.960)

I think it's very interesting that this is talking about the government, you know, the

Michael Malice (2:54:26.680)

CIA started experimenting with LSD, they killed one of their own people, drove them to suicide

Lex Fridman (2:54:33.320)

and there was a lot of research into, Terrence McKenna talks about this, into this field

Lex Fridman (2:54:39.480)

and then very quickly, once it got into the mainstream, they shut it down, even though

Michael Malice (2:54:43.840)

it's not addictive, it doesn't cause you to go crazy or anything like that and there was

Michael Malice (2:54:47.400)

a lot of propaganda against its use, which I think, thankfully, is now somewhat receding.

Michael Malice (2:54:52.560)

I think Colorado just legalized mushrooms, something like that and I think it'll be very

Michael Malice (2:54:56.400)

interesting to see what happens as a result of this.

Michael Malice (2:54:58.480)

Yeah, and the interesting thing is, there doesn't seem to be, for certain psychedelics

Michael Malice (2:55:03.320)

like psilocybin, like mushrooms, there doesn't seem to be a lethal dose, which is fascinating,

Michael Malice (2:55:09.880)

like Matthew Johnson, the Hopkins professor that you mentioned, I'm definitely going to

Michael Malice (2:55:17.280)

do one of his studies, it's a really cool way to do what he calls a heroic dose of psilocybin.

Lex Fridman (2:55:24.960)

Oh, I want to do it, what do I have to do?

Michael Malice (2:55:27.320)

Let's do it.

Lex Fridman (2:55:28.320)

A heroic dose, holy crap.

Michael Malice (2:55:32.440)

Yeah, but it's safe.

Lex Fridman (2:55:36.560)

How many grams are we talking?

Michael Malice (2:55:37.840)

I don't know, but it's just, it's big.

Lex Fridman (2:55:41.400)

He says that...

Michael Malice (2:55:42.400)

This is going to have a kick.

Lex Fridman (2:55:45.400)

Yeah.

Michael Malice (2:55:46.400)

He says that, I mean, he also studies cocaine, he studies all kinds of drugs and he's like,

Lex Fridman (2:55:51.800)

the psilocybin is...

Michael Malice (2:55:52.800)

A heroic dose of cocaine kills you.

Michael Malice (2:55:55.680)

You can't, so you can't even come close, so he says the problem with studying cocaine

Michael Malice (2:56:01.080)

is you have people who are addicted to cocaine or war or so on, you give them the kind of

Lex Fridman (2:56:08.200)

doses that we can and part of the study is like, it's nothing to them.

Michael Malice (2:56:14.520)

Psilocybin is the only one where even daily users or regular users are blown away by the

Lex Fridman (2:56:22.280)

dose they give them.

Lex Fridman (2:56:25.160)

So you can go to Russia in your mind, you can go to outer space, maybe you'll become

Lex Fridman (2:56:35.160)

an astronaut or astronomer after all.

Michael Malice (2:56:39.240)

Maybe I'll be Baba Yaga.

Lex Fridman (2:56:42.080)

I'll let people look that one up.

Lex Fridman (2:56:46.760)

What is love?

Lex Fridman (2:56:50.360)

What do you think this thing is like our attachment to other human beings?

Lex Fridman (2:56:57.280)

And is it something that we should give to just a few people?

Lex Fridman (2:57:00.200)

Yes, that's for sure.

Michael Malice (2:57:01.960)

When I was working with DL Hughley in his book, he didn't use the term, but he was describing

Lex Fridman (2:57:07.440)

like low key depression.

Lex Fridman (2:57:10.000)

And he talked about how he was in the airport and he noticed a girl had a red dress and

Lex Fridman (2:57:15.120)

he went up and thanked her and she was like, what are you thanking for?

Lex Fridman (2:57:17.680)

And he had realized he hadn't registered color in like weeks.

Lex Fridman (2:57:22.040)

And I think love is like that when you see someone and you just like, oh, like your eyes

Michael Malice (2:57:28.800)

are open.

Michael Malice (2:57:29.800)

Like this is something I've never seen before or I want more of this, that kind of thing.

Michael Malice (2:57:34.260)

It really disorients and reorients your thinking.

Lex Fridman (2:57:40.920)

Don't you find that like the world is full of that like nonstop?

Michael Malice (2:57:45.360)

It's not just like a person either.

Lex Fridman (2:57:47.040)

It's like...

Michael Malice (2:57:48.040)

Yes, but when it's in a person, it's a whole other level because it's like, I could have,

Lex Fridman (2:57:53.320)

this is going to be great for years.

Michael Malice (2:57:55.060)

It's like, you know, every day it's something new.

Lex Fridman (2:57:57.760)

I mean, that is, and that is rare.

Lex Fridman (2:58:00.560)

You think it's rare?

Lex Fridman (2:58:01.560)

I mean...

Michael Malice (2:58:02.560)

Find someone who you could talk to them for years and not run out of things to talk to.

Lex Fridman (2:58:06.120)

Oh, that's true for years.

Michael Malice (2:58:07.120)

Yes.

Lex Fridman (2:58:08.120)

Yes.

Michael Malice (2:58:09.120)

That's rare.

Lex Fridman (2:58:10.120)

And know that they really, if you leave the room, they will do right by you.

Michael Malice (2:58:14.440)

That's really rare.

Lex Fridman (2:58:16.040)

Well, from a Russian perspective, you just don't give them another choice.

Michael Malice (2:58:27.080)

This is Tavadish New Year, New Year's Eve.

Lex Fridman (2:58:33.780)

So you talked about secession and the world burning down and you holding the match at

Michael Malice (2:58:41.080)

the end, standing with a big smile on your face.

Lex Fridman (2:58:44.160)

Yes.

Michael Malice (2:58:45.160)

I was serious.

Lex Fridman (2:58:47.520)

But let me ask you, if it doesn't include flame and secession and destruction and laughing

Michael Malice (2:58:54.940)

malice and makeup and a white suit at the end, how do we bring more kindness and love

Lex Fridman (2:59:01.600)

to the world in 2021?

Michael Malice (2:59:03.680)

Oh, easy.

Lex Fridman (2:59:05.040)

Be comfortable saying, I want to be happy.

Lex Fridman (2:59:09.480)

And if there's someone who interjects and gives you attitude, arms lengthen.

Lex Fridman (2:59:16.200)

Surround yourself with people who also want to be happy.

Michael Malice (2:59:19.600)

Here's a great example.

Michael Malice (2:59:21.000)

My buddy Chris Williamson, who I've mentioned before, he's a podcaster, does Modern Wisdom.

Michael Malice (2:59:25.880)

He's an awesome dude and we became very close friends this past year.

Lex Fridman (2:59:30.240)

And he was in Dubai recently and he sent me pics from Dubai by the pool, just loving life.

Lex Fridman (2:59:35.720)

And it took me a week and then it clicked in my head and I'm like, you know what?

Michael Malice (2:59:41.840)

For some other people, if they saw him under remodel at the pool, they would think this

Michael Malice (2:59:48.260)

is him bragging or humble bragging.

Lex Fridman (2:59:50.840)

And that never entered my head.

Michael Malice (2:59:51.920)

I'm like, oh man, I'm so glad my boy can be having a good time and is sharing his joy

Lex Fridman (2:59:58.480)

with me.

Michael Malice (2:59:59.960)

That's the kind of people you need to surround yourself with, where it never enters their

Michael Malice (30:01.800)

I just, I don't know anything about this world, but you get like Netflix folks who, who help

Michael Malice (30:07.200)

with shows.

Lex Fridman (30:08.680)

You could tell that they're obsessed with those shows.

Michael Malice (30:10.840)

Yeah.

Lex Fridman (30:11.840)

Oh yeah.

Michael Malice (30:12.840)

You're not going to get that publishing.

Michael Malice (30:13.840)

If you hand, like I handed the book in, I think it was July, I didn't hear anything from

Michael Malice (30:17.160)

my editor until December.

Lex Fridman (30:19.360)

Well, can we actually talk about the suffering, the darkest parts of writing a book?

Lex Fridman (30:27.720)

So the, let's go to the full Michael Malice, Stephen King mode of what are the darkest

Lex Fridman (30:33.800)

moments of writing this book and what is it maybe start, the white pill?

Lex Fridman (30:38.480)

What's the idea?

Lex Fridman (30:39.480)

What's the hope and what are your darkest moments around writing this book?

Lex Fridman (30:43.320)

So people are familiar with the red pill and the blue pill, the red, they're from the Matrix.

Michael Malice (30:48.600)

The red pill is the idea that what is presented as fact by the corporate press entertainment

Michael Malice (30:53.940)

industry is in fact a carefully constructed narrative designed to keep some very unpleasant

Lex Fridman (30:58.140)

people in power and everyone else under control.

Lex Fridman (31:01.640)

And I guess one of my expressions is you take one red pill, not the whole bottle because

Michael Malice (31:06.080)

at a certain point you think everything's lie and then you're kind of no capacity for

Michael Malice (31:10.520)

distinguishing truths.

Lex Fridman (31:11.720)

You're full of good one liners.

Michael Malice (31:12.960)

Well, thank you.

Lex Fridman (31:13.960)

Yeah.

Michael Malice (31:14.960)

I'm full of something that's for sure.

Lex Fridman (31:17.160)

And what I saw in this space is a lot of these red pill people got very disheartened and

Michael Malice (31:26.480)

cynical.

Lex Fridman (31:27.480)

And one of my big heroes is Albert Camus and he said the worst thing is cynicism.

Lex Fridman (31:33.440)

And that's something called the black pill, which is the idea that, you know, it's all,

Lex Fridman (31:38.840)

it's just we're waiting for the end.

Michael Malice (31:41.300)

It's hopeless.

Lex Fridman (31:42.920)

And I don't see it that way at all.

Lex Fridman (31:47.100)

And I'm like, all right, I have to address this.

Lex Fridman (31:51.040)

And not just with some kind of cheerleading, everything's going to be great guys.

Michael Malice (31:55.120)

Here is why I am positive.

Lex Fridman (31:58.880)

And not that I'm positive the good guys are going to win, but I'm positive that good guys

Michael Malice (32:03.620)

can win.

Lex Fridman (32:05.460)

And that's all you need.

Michael Malice (32:07.040)

Because if your God forbid kid is kidnapped and there's a 10% chance that you can save

Lex Fridman (32:13.400)

them, you're not going to be like, well, I don't like those odds.

Michael Malice (32:17.960)

This is your country.

Lex Fridman (32:19.360)

This is your values.

Michael Malice (32:20.400)

This is your family.

Lex Fridman (32:21.400)

And I think it's much more than 10%.

Lex Fridman (32:24.640)

And even if you lose, you will take pride in that you did everything in your power to

Lex Fridman (32:30.280)

win.

Michael Malice (32:31.280)

So.

Lex Fridman (32:32.280)

Is there a good definition of good guys?

Michael Malice (32:35.080)

In the sense that.

Lex Fridman (32:36.080)

The ones who wear white.

Michael Malice (32:38.520)

There's layers to this.

Lex Fridman (32:40.000)

You're like modern day Shakespeare.

Michael Malice (32:43.340)

Is there a danger in thinking Adolf Hitler was probably pretty confident that he led

Lex Fridman (32:53.000)

a group of good guys?

Lex Fridman (32:54.280)

Listen, if Hitler did anything wrong, why isn't he in jail?

Lex Fridman (32:58.520)

My Czech friend thought of that joke.

Lex Fridman (33:01.600)

He actually says in his accent, he goes, if Hitler's so bad, why isn't he in the jail?

Lex Fridman (33:08.960)

That's a good point.

Michael Malice (33:09.960)

He's probably still alive.

Lex Fridman (33:10.960)

Right?

Lex Fridman (33:11.960)

And look, yeah.

Lex Fridman (33:12.960)

Hopefully.

Michael Malice (33:13.960)

Oh boy.

Lex Fridman (33:14.960)

Two of the three people listening to this are very upset right now.

Lex Fridman (33:21.960)

What were you even talking about?

Lex Fridman (33:22.960)

Oh, how do you, how do you know the, what is good?

Michael Malice (33:26.160)

There's lots of standards of good, but if you're for me to be a good guy is if you want

Michael Malice (33:32.400)

to leave the world a little bit better than you found it, that to me is the definition

Michael Malice (33:36.920)

of a good guy.

Lex Fridman (33:38.600)

And I think there are many people that that's not their motivation at all.

Michael Malice (33:43.800)

It's about your motivation.

Lex Fridman (33:44.800)

Well, it's also about if your motivation is at all correlated to reality.

Michael Malice (33:50.900)

No one thinks we're the bad guys.

Lex Fridman (33:52.440)

That's correct.

Lex Fridman (33:53.620)

But are you taking steps to check your motivations and also take a certain amount of humility

Michael Malice (34:00.600)

because if you're going to start interfering with other people's lives, you really better

Michael Malice (34:05.200)

be sure you know what you're talking about.

Michael Malice (34:08.560)

The control of others, if you do have centralized control or then you kind of, you become a

Michael Malice (34:15.440)

leader of a group, you better know, you better do so humbly and cautiously.

Lex Fridman (34:21.620)

And also have steam valves, right?

Lex Fridman (34:25.240)

So if in case things go wrong, let's have, I'm sure this is a lot happening with AI,

Michael Malice (34:30.040)

whatever work with computers, like, okay, if something goes wrong here, how do we have

Lex Fridman (34:34.120)

a workaround to make sure it doesn't cause everything to collapse?

Lex Fridman (34:37.440)

Yeah.

Michael Malice (34:38.440)

The going wrong thing.

Lex Fridman (34:39.440)

I mean, the whole, the feedback mechanism.

Michael Malice (34:41.960)

Yeah.

Lex Fridman (34:42.960)

Like, I wonder if people in Congress think that things are really wrong.

Michael Malice (34:50.120)

It's working for them.

Lex Fridman (34:51.120)

Are you sure?

Michael Malice (34:52.120)

No, I'm not sure.

Michael Malice (34:54.760)

Because I'd like to believe that the people that at least when they got into politics

Michael Malice (35:02.640)

actually wanted, some of it is ego, but some of it is like wanting to be the kind of person

Lex Fridman (35:08.520)

that builds a better world.

Michael Malice (35:10.080)

Sure.

Lex Fridman (35:11.080)

I also think it's diverse.

Michael Malice (35:12.080)

Some of who are going to have different motivations than others.

Lex Fridman (35:15.720)

But like once you're in the system and trying to build a better world, how do you know that's

Lex Fridman (35:21.760)

not working?

Lex Fridman (35:22.760)

Like, how do you take the basic feedback mechanisms and like, and actually productively change?

Michael Malice (35:30.200)

I mean, that's what it means to be a good guy is like, hmm, something is wrong here.

Lex Fridman (35:34.200)

And that's why I like the Elon Musk, like think from first principles, like, wait, wait,

Michael Malice (35:39.400)

wait.

Lex Fridman (35:40.400)

Okay.

Michael Malice (35:41.400)

Let's ask the big question.

Lex Fridman (35:42.400)

Like, can this be, one, is this working at all?

Michael Malice (35:45.200)

Like the way we're solving this particular problem of government, is this working at

Lex Fridman (35:48.880)

all?

Lex Fridman (35:49.880)

And then like stepping away and saying like, as opposed to modifying this bill or that

Michael Malice (35:54.960)

bill or like this little strategy, like increase the tax by this much or decrease the tax by

Lex Fridman (36:00.040)

this much, like, why do we have a democracy at all?

Lex Fridman (36:06.000)

Or why do we have any kind of representative democracy?

Lex Fridman (36:11.200)

Shouldn't it be a pure democracy?

Lex Fridman (36:13.320)

Or why do we have states, like representation of states and federal government and so on?

Lex Fridman (36:20.600)

Why do we have this kind of separation of powers?

Lex Fridman (36:23.040)

Is this different?

Lex Fridman (36:24.040)

Why don't we have term limits or not like big things?

Lex Fridman (36:28.560)

Like how do you actually make that happen?

Lex Fridman (36:31.400)

And is that what it means to be a good guy?

Lex Fridman (36:33.640)

It's like taking big revolutionary steps as opposed to incremental steps.

Michael Malice (36:39.720)

Well, I don't know that you could be a politician to be a good guy, to be honest.

Lex Fridman (36:43.020)

And let me give you a counter example of someone who you could tell is not being a good guy.

Michael Malice (36:47.200)

Joe Biden said he regards the Iraq wars a mistake.

Lex Fridman (36:50.360)

Okay.

Michael Malice (36:51.360)

You and I have made mistakes in our lives, I'm sure.

Lex Fridman (36:53.120)

None of our mistakes have caused tens of thousands of people to die.

Michael Malice (36:56.860)

If I were a chef, let's take it out of politics.

Lex Fridman (37:08.400)

And in my restaurant, somehow, accidentally, someone ate something and they died.

Michael Malice (37:13.240)

A, I would feel horrible.

Lex Fridman (37:15.880)

But more importantly, I would be like, we need to look through the system and figure

Michael Malice (37:21.000)

out how it got to the point where someone lost their life.

Lex Fridman (37:24.460)

Because that can never happen again.

Lex Fridman (37:26.300)

And we need to figure out step by step.

Michael Malice (37:28.920)

I'm not a gun person, but there's like this checklist of like, if you're holding a gun,

Michael Malice (37:34.680)

there's five things to do.

Lex Fridman (37:35.680)

And if you get too wrong, it's like assume every gun is loaded, only pointed at something

Michael Malice (37:40.920)

that you want to kill.

Lex Fridman (37:42.560)

And there's like three other things.

Lex Fridman (37:44.040)

And it's like to make sure that nothing goes wrong.

Lex Fridman (37:48.140)

So if I'm that chef, and I would have to not only feel guilt, but take preventative action

Michael Malice (37:55.800)

to make sure this has no possibility of happening again.

Michael Malice (38:00.640)

If you look at the staff he's putting in, it's the same warmongers that would have advised

Michael Malice (38:05.400)

him to get into the Iraq war on the first time.

Lex Fridman (38:09.900)

That is to me is not a good guy.

Michael Malice (38:12.560)

That to me is someone who does not feel remorse for their responsibility in killing not only

Michael Malice (38:17.160)

many Americans, but some of us think that, you know, dead Iraqis isn't necessarily ideal

Michael Malice (38:22.200)

either.

Lex Fridman (38:23.200)

Okay, let's talk a bit about war.

Michael Malice (38:27.200)

Maybe you can also correct me on something.

Michael Malice (38:29.600)

The first time I found myself into Barack Obama was, I don't know how many years ago

Michael Malice (38:37.160)

this was, but when I maybe heard a speech of his about him speaking out against the

Lex Fridman (38:44.520)

war.

Michael Malice (38:45.520)

Yeah.

Lex Fridman (38:46.520)

And him, I think it's on record saying he was against the war before it was happening.

Lex Fridman (38:52.680)

But he wasn't in Senate at the time, so it was very easy for him to say this.

Lex Fridman (38:55.600)

But see, like people say that, people say that.

Michael Malice (38:58.920)

People say like it was easy and it was some people say it's like strategically the wise

Lex Fridman (39:04.080)

thing to do given some kind of calculus, whatever.

Lex Fridman (39:07.480)

But I, to this day give him, that's the reason I've always given him props in my mind.

Michael Malice (39:13.640)

Like this is a man of character, like he makes, I also personally really value great speeches.

Michael Malice (39:19.800)

I think speeches are really important for leaders because they inspire the world.

Michael Malice (39:23.480)

It's like one of the most best things you can contribute to the world is great, like

Michael Malice (39:29.840)

through intellect, mold ideas in a way that's communicable to like a huge number of people.

Lex Fridman (39:34.800)

Yeah, it's better to persuade than to force in every instance.

Michael Malice (39:37.920)

That's where I disagree with Chomsky said, like if you're, Chomsky's whole idea was that

Lex Fridman (39:42.400)

like if you're really eloquent speaker, that means your ideas aren't that good.

Michael Malice (39:48.240)

That's nonsense.

Lex Fridman (39:49.240)

Yeah.

Lex Fridman (39:50.240)

So I think that's a way for him to describe like I speak in a very boring way.

Lex Fridman (39:54.800)

Maybe that's a pitch for this podcast.

Michael Malice (39:56.800)

I speak boring so that the ideas are the things you value and it's also useful to go to sleep.

Lex Fridman (3:00:03.040)

head to be resentful or anything other than sharing in your bounty.

Lex Fridman (3:00:10.960)

What makes you happy?

Lex Fridman (3:00:12.880)

I'm happy all the time.

Lex Fridman (3:00:15.320)

And one of the points I made in my life is like, I really hated, I really did not like

Michael Malice (3:00:19.440)

to give advice because I feel don't give advice until you know what you're talking about.

Lex Fridman (3:00:24.400)

And to me, what makes me happy is being self actualized.

Michael Malice (3:00:27.440)

I am in a position with my career where I could be myself 24 seven, where I never have

Michael Malice (3:00:34.200)

to engage in small talk, where I never have to interact with someone I don't want to.

Lex Fridman (3:00:39.300)

And I'm very blessed to have that.

Michael Malice (3:00:41.440)

Very few people have that.

Lex Fridman (3:00:42.980)

And to have that be not only, to have that be like rewarded and having people find that

Michael Malice (3:00:51.320)

something of value to them makes me very, very happy.

Lex Fridman (3:00:55.240)

But also being an uncle, I have two little nephews.

Michael Malice (3:00:58.600)

They make me very, very happy.

Michael Malice (3:01:01.400)

Sure my sister's raising them Russian, so they talk like immigrants, but that's okay.

Michael Malice (3:01:05.280)

We're going to change that.

Lex Fridman (3:01:06.280)

We have to dismember her, that's fine.

Michael Malice (3:01:09.040)

That makes me happy.

Lex Fridman (3:01:10.040)

And to be able to finish this book and know it's going to give people a sense of hope,

Michael Malice (3:01:17.240)

that's really validating.

Lex Fridman (3:01:20.280)

What are you most grateful for for our conversation today?

Michael Malice (3:01:25.720)

You're stealing my bit.

Lex Fridman (3:01:27.760)

What am I most grateful for?

Michael Malice (3:01:29.840)

I am very grateful that I can come in here not knowing what we're going to talk about

Lex Fridman (3:01:38.280)

and know it's not going to be something I have to be on guard about, or I have to watch

Michael Malice (3:01:44.020)

my words and that neither you or your audience is going to be responding derisively.

Lex Fridman (3:01:53.160)

I feel safe here.

Michael Malice (3:01:55.280)

You're welcome.

Lex Fridman (3:01:56.280)

Vaseva.

Michael Malice (3:01:57.280)

Thanks for talking to me Michael, that was awesome.

Michael Malice (3:02:01.460)

Thank you for listening to this conversation with Michael Malus and thank you to our sponsors.

Michael Malice (3:02:06.160)

NetSuite, business management software, Athletic Greens, all in one nutrition drink, Sun Basket,

Lex Fridman (3:02:13.240)

the delivery service, and Cash App.

Lex Fridman (3:02:15.640)

So the choice is success, health, food, or money.

Lex Fridman (3:02:21.560)

Choose wisely my friends.

Lex Fridman (3:02:23.240)

And if you wish, click the sponsor links below to get a discount to support this podcast.

Lex Fridman (3:02:29.140)

And now let me leave you with some words from Emma Goldman on anarchism.

Michael Malice (3:02:34.640)

People have only as much liberty as they have the intelligence to want and the courage to

Lex Fridman (3:02:39.960)

take.

Michael Malice (3:02:41.280)

Thank you for listening and hope to see you next time.

Lex Fridman (40:02.560)

But that's why I really liked Obama throughout his life and still do.

Lex Fridman (40:09.800)

But when I first like saw this is for some reason you can disagree, I thought he's a

Lex Fridman (40:14.360)

man of character.

Michael Malice (40:15.360)

It's when most politicians, most people who are trying to calculate and rise in power,

Lex Fridman (40:21.720)

I think were for the war or too afraid to be against the war.

Michael Malice (40:25.600)

That's why I liked Bernie Sanders and that's why I liked like in the early days Obama for

Lex Fridman (40:33.320)

speaking out against the war and not like in this weird activist way.

Michael Malice (40:37.200)

Not weird, but not saying I'm an activist, but like just saying the common sense thing

Lex Fridman (40:44.400)

and being brave enough to say the common sense thing without like having a big sign and saying

Michael Malice (40:50.160)

I'm going to be the antiwar candidate or something like that, but just saying this is not a good

Lex Fridman (40:55.200)

idea.

Michael Malice (40:56.200)

Yeah.

Lex Fridman (40:57.200)

And I think it's for those of us who are old enough to remember, it's pretty despicable

Lex Fridman (41:01.960)

what happened with Tulsi in 2020.

Michael Malice (41:04.400)

She was the biggest antiwar candidate and she was marginalized within her own party,

Michael Malice (41:09.360)

which I guess you can make sense.

Lex Fridman (41:10.560)

She's just a congresswoman from Hawaii.

Lex Fridman (41:12.780)

But the corporate press did everything in their power to diminish her and pretend she

Lex Fridman (41:18.640)

didn't exist.

Lex Fridman (41:19.640)

And for those of us who remember where 12 years prior, when George W. Bush had the Republican

Michael Malice (41:26.200)

National Convention in New York and it was the biggest protest in history and the Iraq

Michael Malice (41:30.060)

war led to democratic landslides in 2006 and 2008, to have that completely not part of

Lex Fridman (41:37.440)

the Democratic Party in 2020 is both shocking and reprehensible.

Michael Malice (41:43.000)

Hey, Michael, you don't have to say, hey, Michael, you just say knock, knock, okay.

Lex Fridman (41:54.600)

What did the volcano say to his true love?

Lex Fridman (41:57.960)

What?

Lex Fridman (41:59.160)

I love you.

Michael Malice (42:05.920)

These jokes are better when you know how to speak English.

Lex Fridman (42:09.000)

It was actually in Russian, I did Google translate, okay.

Michael Malice (42:13.480)

Back to your book, In the Suffering, you somehow turned it positive.

Lex Fridman (42:18.520)

And as one who's wearing, who's the representative of the black pill in this conversation, what

Lex Fridman (42:24.160)

are some of the darker moments?

Lex Fridman (42:25.680)

What are some of the hardest challenges of putting together this book, the white pill?

Michael Malice (42:30.960)

Content, content, content.

Lex Fridman (42:32.820)

So if I'm having a page in about Reagan taking on Gerald Ford in the 1976 presidential primaries,

Michael Malice (42:41.240)

I'm going to have to read like 20.

Lex Fridman (42:43.680)

So it's the thing like if there'll be some times I'll remember some quote somewhere and

Michael Malice (42:48.600)

then I have to spend an hour trying to find it because I want it to be as dense with information

Lex Fridman (42:53.760)

as possible.

Lex Fridman (42:54.760)

Like how do you structure the main philosophical ideas you want to convey?

Lex Fridman (43:01.840)

Is that already planned out?

Michael Malice (43:03.080)

No, the book changed entirely from its conception.

Lex Fridman (43:06.700)

So my buddy Ryan Holiday had a series of books, still does, where he takes the ideas of the

Michael Malice (43:11.880)

Stoics and he applies them to contemporary terms.

Lex Fridman (43:16.080)

He has this whole cottage industry that he's doing very well with.

Lex Fridman (43:18.820)

And I'd asked him years ago if I could do that with Camus and he's like, sure, go for

Lex Fridman (43:22.760)

it.

Lex Fridman (43:23.760)

And I was going to rework Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus.

Lex Fridman (43:27.920)

And I read it recently, reread it, and this wasn't the book I remembered at all.

Lex Fridman (43:32.920)

And I'm like, okay, I'm going to write the book that I remembered.

Lex Fridman (43:35.920)

But the more I was writing it, one of the things I always yell at conservatives about,

Michael Malice (43:41.240)

there's a long list, is they don't talk about the great victory of conservatism, which was

Lex Fridman (43:47.560)

the winning of the Cold War without firing a shot.

Lex Fridman (43:51.000)

And I said, you can't expect the New York Times to tell this story because the blood

Lex Fridman (43:53.680)

is on their hands.

Lex Fridman (43:55.720)

And I'm like, well, Michael, instead of complaining about it, why don't you do it?

Lex Fridman (44:01.520)

Why don't you talk?

Michael Malice (44:02.520)

That is a great example of the good guys winning over the bad guys.

Lex Fridman (44:06.000)

And that's become, A, the victory is beautiful.

Lex Fridman (44:11.240)

But also pointing out to people, when people are like, oh, things are worse than they've

Michael Malice (44:13.880)

ever been, they don't appreciate how bad things were in the 30s, what Stalin was doing overseas

Lex Fridman (44:20.800)

and how people in the West were advocating to bring that here.

Lex Fridman (44:24.960)

So that's kind of pointing out how bad things were and how good they became.

Lex Fridman (44:31.080)

And you don't have to be a Republican or conservative to be delighted at the collapse of totalitarianism

Lex Fridman (44:37.200)

and the peaceful liberation of half the world.

Lex Fridman (44:39.220)

So that's a picture of the good guys winning.

Lex Fridman (44:40.720)

Oh, yeah.

Michael Malice (44:41.720)

Well, how does that connect to Sisyphus and maybe to speak deeper to life and whatever

Michael Malice (44:49.520)

the hell this thing is, which is what I remember the myth of Sisyphus being about.

Lex Fridman (44:55.480)

So where does the threat of Camus sort of lie in the work that you're doing?

Lex Fridman (45:02.480)

So the myth of Sisyphus, which I had remembered incorrectly, is actually just a five to seven

Michael Malice (45:09.280)

page coda to the whole book at the very end.

Lex Fridman (45:12.800)

You only need to read that little essay called The Myth of Sisyphus.

Michael Malice (45:15.380)

The broader work is about Camus's concept of the absurd and the absurd man within literature.

Lex Fridman (45:21.620)

And it's just like, I don't really care about the character in Dostoevsky and all this other

Michael Malice (45:24.760)

stuff that you're talking about.

Lex Fridman (45:25.760)

It's of no relevance.

Lex Fridman (45:27.360)

But the myth of Sisyphus, the myth itself, not the book or the essay of his, is this

Michael Malice (45:33.200)

Greek character and Sisyphus is forced in hell to roll a rock up a hill for eternity.

Michael Malice (45:39.880)

At the very last moment, the rock falls away.

Lex Fridman (45:42.800)

And Camus's takeaway from the story is that we must imagine Sisyphus happy.

Lex Fridman (45:48.720)

And there's several interpretations of this, but one is once you accept that you are living

Lex Fridman (45:54.440)

an absurdist existence, once you own your reality, it loses its bite.

Lex Fridman (46:02.560)

And you can start with that as your kind of baseline.

Lex Fridman (46:06.960)

And bite is suffering.

Lex Fridman (46:09.920)

And hopelessness.

Lex Fridman (46:11.320)

So I think when people look at how much ridiculousness is happening in America and it's escalating,

Michael Malice (46:19.580)

you can either think, oh, all is lost.

Lex Fridman (46:23.680)

And I think you and I have lived our lives like this.

Michael Malice (46:25.560)

You can live life more like a surfer, whereas you're never going to control the ocean.

Lex Fridman (46:30.460)

But you can sure enjoy that ride and stop.

Michael Malice (46:33.500)

If you're trying to control the waves, yeah, you're done.

Lex Fridman (46:36.920)

But if you're like, all right, I've got my board, I'm going to see where this takes me.

Michael Malice (46:41.460)

Surfing from what I understand is a pretty fun activity.

Lex Fridman (46:44.340)

And also sometimes dangerous, but you'd have to ask Tulsi about that.

Lex Fridman (46:48.360)

So we were offline talking about Stalin and the evils of the Soviet regime.

Michael Malice (46:58.920)

One of the things I mentioned, I watched the movie, Mr. Jones, but it's about the 1930s,

Michael Malice (47:05.600)

all the more the, what would you say, the torture of the Ukrainian people by Stalin.

Michael Malice (47:13.320)

One interesting thing to me that I'd love to hear your opinion about is the role of

Michael Malice (47:18.400)

journalism in all of this and also about 1930s Germany.

Lex Fridman (47:25.680)

So what's the role of journalists and intellectuals in a time when trouble is brewing.

Lex Fridman (47:34.520)

But it requires a really sort of brave and deep thinking to understand that trouble is

Lex Fridman (47:41.760)

brewing.

Michael Malice (47:42.760)

Like if you were a journalist or if you were just like an intellectual, a thinker, but

Michael Malice (47:47.760)

also a voice in the space of public discourse, what would you do in 1930s about Stalin, about

Lex Fridman (47:56.640)

how the more, and what would you do about Nazi Germany in 1937, 1938?

Lex Fridman (48:03.520)

So that's really funny that you asked that because currently how the book is structured,

Lex Fridman (48:07.760)

it's like books often follow a three act structure, right?

Lex Fridman (48:11.080)

So act three is the 80s, act one is the 30s, and act two is going to be like, all right,

Michael Malice (48:17.000)

let's suppose you were in the 30s.

Lex Fridman (48:19.040)

Are you just going to give up?

Lex Fridman (48:20.420)

Are you just going to be like, well, we're screwed?

Lex Fridman (48:22.520)

And you'd be right to say things are going to be very bad for a long time.

Michael Malice (48:25.760)

Or are you going to be one of those few who are like, we're going to do something about

Lex Fridman (48:29.680)

this and we're going to go down swinging.

Michael Malice (48:32.320)

There are two books I can recommend, which are just masterpieces that are written by

Lex Fridman (48:37.880)

women that just are historians that are just superb.

Michael Malice (48:41.240)

There's a book called Beyond Belief by Deborah Lipschdott.

Lex Fridman (48:43.520)

She talks about the rise of Nazi Germany as seen through the press.

Lex Fridman (48:47.880)

And what was amazing, and she does a great job empathizing with the press and understand

Michael Malice (48:52.080)

their perspective, is we remember, and Chamberlain gets a bad rap, Neville Chamberlain for kind

Michael Malice (48:56.960)

of appeasing Hitler, because not that long ago they had the Great War, they had World

Lex Fridman (49:01.200)

War I, and they had the carnage that the earth had never seen before.

Lex Fridman (49:06.920)

And when you had people made out of meat, meeting industrial machines, and plastic surgery

Michael Malice (49:11.120)

was invented as a consequence of this, they're coming back mangled and disfigured.

Lex Fridman (49:14.720)

And for what?

Lex Fridman (49:16.120)

And this was a world where the Kaiser was the most evil person ever lived.

Lex Fridman (49:20.800)

And we all had the Western propaganda about the Hun and all the rapes and all this barbarism

Lex Fridman (49:25.740)

and blah, blah, blah.

Lex Fridman (49:27.340)

So not that long later, when you're hearing all this propaganda, which was factual, about

Lex Fridman (49:33.800)

Hitler, it's like, we heard this, we heard this 20 years ago.

Michael Malice (49:37.960)

This was all lies.

Lex Fridman (49:39.840)

Give us a break.

Lex Fridman (49:42.160)

And she has all the quotes from the different agencies and how they addressed it.

Lex Fridman (49:47.680)

Plus they had very limited information.

Michael Malice (49:49.240)

It's not like Nazi Germany was an open society where reporters can walk around and they were

Lex Fridman (49:53.840)

under a lot of pressure as well in those areas.

Lex Fridman (49:56.800)

And Hitler himself was pretty good at, he let some stuff slip, but usually he made it

Lex Fridman (50:02.440)

seem like he wants peace.

Michael Malice (50:04.680)

He wants world peace.

Lex Fridman (50:05.680)

This was amazing.

Michael Malice (50:06.680)

They were making the argument that because all these Jews were being beaten up on the

Michael Malice (50:10.280)

street, this proved, this was the hot take of the day, that Hitler was weak because since

Michael Malice (50:16.520)

Hitler's a statesman and he can't control these hooligans, that shows his control and

Lex Fridman (50:21.480)

power is tenuous and this is all going to go away.

Michael Malice (50:24.380)

By the way, Hitler thought that too.

Michael Malice (50:26.960)

He was kind of afraid of the branchers, whatever, he was afraid of these hooligans a little

Michael Malice (50:31.680)

bit.

Lex Fridman (50:32.680)

They were useful to him, but at a certain point, yeah, they can get in the way.

Michael Malice (50:38.020)

That's why he wanted to get control of the military, the army, their regiment.

Lex Fridman (50:42.160)

If you want to take over the world, you can't do it with hooligans.

Michael Malice (50:45.240)

You have to do it with an actual army.

Lex Fridman (50:47.200)

And then you had Kristallnacht, which was a nationwide pogrom, and then all the news

Michael Malice (50:52.000)

agencies universally were like, oh, crap, we got this wrong, and the condemnation was universal.

Lex Fridman (50:59.240)

So that book traces the West's reaction to what's going on there and including the reaction

Michael Malice (51:05.520)

to the insipid Holocaust as people being, you know, what they knew, when did they know.

Lex Fridman (51:11.760)

There was not ambiguity about people.

Michael Malice (51:14.740)

I think there's this myth that she dispels that they didn't know the Holocaust was happening

Lex Fridman (51:20.680)

or they didn't care.

Michael Malice (51:22.080)

They were aware, but they were already at war with Nazi Germany, like what literally

Lex Fridman (51:26.080)

what else could they do at that point, you know, to rescue all these Jews.

Lex Fridman (51:31.540)

So that's a superb book.

Lex Fridman (51:33.140)

And Ann Applebaum, I think the book is called Red Famine, came out fairly recently.

Lex Fridman (51:38.600)

And she brings the receipts.

Lex Fridman (51:41.840)

And she's a, you know, this is something I really hate with the binary thinkers, where

Michael Malice (51:46.680)

the people think, oh, you know, if you're a Democrat, you're basically a communist,

Lex Fridman (51:49.880)

they call Joe Biden a Marxist.

Michael Malice (51:51.240)

It's just like, you know, she's a hard lefty, she's, you know, has TDS.

Lex Fridman (51:54.880)

But this book just systemically lays out what Stalin did.

Michael Malice (51:59.400)

By the way, I'm triggered by the binary thinkers.

Lex Fridman (52:01.840)

And for those who don't know, TDS 0011 is a trauma derangement syndrome.

Michael Malice (52:07.120)

Yes.

Lex Fridman (52:08.120)

So they, you know, forced the starvation in this entire population.

Lex Fridman (52:12.800)

And it's not only that, it's like they knew if you weren't starving by looking at you,

Lex Fridman (52:19.720)

you were hiding food.

Lex Fridman (52:21.560)

So they'd come back to your house at night and break your fingers in the door, or take,

Lex Fridman (52:26.160)

burn down your house.

Lex Fridman (52:27.160)

And now you're on the street without food because you lied, because this is the people's

Lex Fridman (52:30.480)

food.

Michael Malice (52:31.480)

You're a kulak, you're a landowner.

Lex Fridman (52:32.480)

And very quickly, a kulak, which meant like peasant landowner, became anyone who had a

Michael Malice (52:35.960)

piece of bread.

Lex Fridman (52:37.840)

And this was systemic and ongoing.

Lex Fridman (52:40.720)

And many people in the press did not believe it.

Michael Malice (52:45.320)

There was a British journalist, I believe, who got out of the train, Ukraine, like one

Michael Malice (52:50.520)

town earlier and walked and he described all this.

Lex Fridman (52:53.640)

And he was mocked and derided.

Lex Fridman (52:55.840)

And this is just anti Russian propaganda.

Lex Fridman (52:58.280)

Because at the time, in the 30s, this was socialism had come to fruition.

Michael Malice (53:02.160)

This was a noble experiment.

Michael Malice (53:03.560)

I'd seen the future and it works, as I think Sidney Webb was the guy who said that.

Lex Fridman (53:08.340)

And the premise was, let's see what happens.

Lex Fridman (53:12.080)

We've never tried something like that.

Lex Fridman (53:13.800)

And they were perfectly happy to have this experiment happen overseas at the price of

Lex Fridman (53:18.640)

the Russian people.

Michael Malice (53:20.160)

Because it's like, you know what, maybe this will be paradise on earth.

Lex Fridman (53:23.520)

And I address this in my book as well.

Michael Malice (53:26.780)

This superb essay, I think, by Eugene Genovese.

Lex Fridman (53:30.200)

And he talks about the question.

Lex Fridman (53:32.080)

The question being, what did you know?

Lex Fridman (53:34.920)

And when did you know it?

Lex Fridman (53:36.360)

What did you know about the concentration camps?

Lex Fridman (53:38.200)

What did you know about the starvation?

Lex Fridman (53:39.200)

What did you know about children being taught at school to turn in their parents for having

Lex Fridman (53:43.640)

some extra bread?

Lex Fridman (53:45.240)

And his conclusion is, we all knew.

Lex Fridman (53:47.600)

And we all knew from the beginning, every bit of it.

Lex Fridman (53:49.840)

And we didn't care.

Lex Fridman (53:51.320)

Because we were more interested in promoting this ideology.

Lex Fridman (53:54.240)

So when people are kind of thinking the worst thing on earth is like Robert E. Lee statue

Lex Fridman (54:00.160)

being taken down to Washington, DC.

Michael Malice (54:02.640)

We were being told, and especially in a much more limited news information world where

Michael Malice (54:09.400)

now you have literally anyone can have a Twitter, but how many outlets were there, that this

Michael Malice (54:14.080)

is, we're backwards, they're the future, they're scientific.

Lex Fridman (54:18.260)

We have the vagaries of the market, which led to the Great Depression.

Lex Fridman (54:21.560)

And when you see what was being put over on the American public at the time, anyone who

Michael Malice (54:26.520)

thinks things are as bad now as they've ever been is simply delusional or ignorant.

Michael Malice (54:31.680)

Yeah, I would say just as a small aside, that's why reading, as I'm almost done with The Rise

Lex Fridman (54:38.300)

and Fall of the Third Reich, it's a refreshes the, resets the palette of your understanding

Lex Fridman (54:47.360)

what is good and evil in the world that I think is really useful now.

Lex Fridman (54:54.600)

What helps me be really positive and almost naive on Twitter and in the world is by just

Michael Malice (55:01.960)

studying history and comparing it to how amazing things are today.

Lex Fridman (55:10.520)

But in that time, what would you do?

Lex Fridman (55:18.040)

What does a brave mind do?

Lex Fridman (55:21.320)

And not just acts of bravery, but how do you be effective in that?

Michael Malice (55:30.200)

That's something I often think about.

Lex Fridman (55:31.760)

It's easy to be an activist in terms of just saying stuff.

Michael Malice (55:37.400)

It's hard to be effective at your activism.

Lex Fridman (55:40.440)

One of the big questions historians have constantly is how did this happen?

Michael Malice (55:44.920)

A, to make sure it doesn't happen again, but this is Germany.

Lex Fridman (55:48.080)

This is not some kind of weirdo cult nation.

Michael Malice (55:51.600)

They're very advanced, very in the land of poets and philosophers.

Lex Fridman (55:55.740)

How did it get to that point that they're just shooting children and everyone's cheering

Lex Fridman (56:00.900)

for this?

Lex Fridman (56:02.640)

Specifically on the anti Semitism and the Holocaust.

Lex Fridman (56:04.640)

But just the totalitarianism, the cult of Hitler and just this whole kind of thing.

Lex Fridman (56:09.240)

This is starting to drop, but there's two sides.

Michael Malice (56:11.680)

I don't know if you want to separate them.

Lex Fridman (56:13.200)

One is the totalitarianism and the entirety of the Nazi regime.

Lex Fridman (56:18.760)

And then there's the Holocaust, which is going, I would say, very specifically, as I think

Lex Fridman (56:29.400)

you're about to describe, is targeting Jews very much so.

Michael Malice (56:34.720)

I don't know if you see those as two separate things.

Lex Fridman (56:36.680)

I think they're very interconnected.

Lex Fridman (56:38.000)

But I think if you look at it, everyone thinks that they'd be the ones putting up Anne Frank.

Lex Fridman (56:45.040)

But if you look at the numbers, they'd be the ones calling the Stasi on her or whoever

Michael Malice (56:49.320)

the people were at the time, and not the Stasi, obviously, and patting themselves on the back

Lex Fridman (56:53.440)

for it.

Lex Fridman (56:54.440)

So sorry to pause on that.

Lex Fridman (56:55.440)

That's a really important thing.

Michael Malice (56:57.120)

If you're listening to this, and you were in Germany at the time, you would have likely

Michael Malice (57:05.800)

been willing to commit or at least keep a blind eye to the violence against Jews.

Michael Malice (57:11.880)

You have to really sit with that idea that you would have been somebody who just sees

Michael Malice (57:17.120)

this and is not bothered by it, and also very likely kind of understand this as a necessary

Michael Malice (57:24.320)

evil or even a necessary good.

Lex Fridman (57:26.440)

Yeah.

Lex Fridman (57:27.440)

And I think people think they would be the abolitionists or marching on Selma.

Lex Fridman (57:32.860)

The numbers don't add up to that at all.

Lex Fridman (57:36.400)

And I think the question would be like, what social...

Lex Fridman (57:39.080)

My friend was on Tinder, my friend Matt, who's a great dude.

Lex Fridman (57:42.600)

And the question was, what's the most controversial opinion you have?

Lex Fridman (57:46.340)

This is New York.

Lex Fridman (57:47.520)

And the girl wrote, I hate Trump.

Lex Fridman (57:50.320)

And what people perceive themselves as being courageous in saying and doing, and what is

Michael Malice (57:56.320)

the actual social costs of you saying or doing this are two very disconnected things.

Lex Fridman (58:01.020)

And we're also trained by corporate media to have completely vapid, uninteresting, banal

Michael Malice (58:08.360)

ideas and yet regard ourselves as revolutionaries.

Michael Malice (58:12.920)

There are people who still in New York will take pride because they have a gay friend.

Lex Fridman (58:18.380)

And it's like, first of all, who cares?

Lex Fridman (58:21.800)

But second of all, you are not a hero.

Lex Fridman (58:25.160)

And that person is not your prop, by the way.

Lex Fridman (58:26.960)

That's another big problem.

Michael Malice (58:28.280)

Which is why I'd like to give Richard Wolff a shout out for being an intellectual who

Lex Fridman (58:32.740)

talks about communism.

Michael Malice (58:34.440)

I think it takes kind of a heroic intellectual right now to speak about communism seriously.

Lex Fridman (58:41.760)

There's difficult waters to tread.

Lex Fridman (58:44.280)

Is that the expression?

Lex Fridman (58:45.860)

There's difficult paths to walk.

Michael Malice (58:47.360)

I love watching a robot try to use idiom in a language he doesn't even know.

Lex Fridman (58:52.000)

0011.

Michael Malice (58:53.000)

I'm quite deeply hurt by the binary comment.

Lex Fridman (58:57.440)

Are you?

Michael Malice (58:58.440)

Your feeling has gone from one to zero.

Lex Fridman (59:03.120)

What is love?

Michael Malice (59:04.120)

My buffers have overflown.

Lex Fridman (59:07.240)

But there's difficult, I feel like communism is universally seen as a bad thing currently

Michael Malice (59:14.160)

in intellectual circles.

Lex Fridman (59:15.720)

Or actually maybe some people disagree with that.

Michael Malice (59:17.920)

People say far left, people are trying to, there's some people who argue the BLM movement

Lex Fridman (59:25.400)

is some kind of a Marxist.

Michael Malice (59:28.960)

I don't really follow the deep logic in that, whatever.

Lex Fridman (59:34.560)

They said they were formed by Marxism, the founder, co founder.

Lex Fridman (59:37.400)

But stating that is different than...

Lex Fridman (59:41.680)

There's Marx the totalitarian, there's also Marx the revolutionary.

Michael Malice (59:44.720)

I think they're talking more like we're revolutionaries, we're going to overthrow the status quo.

Lex Fridman (59:48.600)

Yeah, right.

Lex Fridman (59:49.600)

But we can have that further discussion.

Lex Fridman (59:51.720)

But I just don't think they speak deeply about political systems and saying communism is

Michael Malice (59:58.840)

going to be the righteous system.