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Freedomain with Stefan Molyneux

6221 Why Virtue is Hard and Easy! (UPB)

Freedomain with Stefan Molyneux

Stefan Molyneux

Economics, Anarchism, Stefan, News & Politics, Atheist, Higher Education, Religion & Spirituality, Stephen, Government, God, Philosophy, Violence, Freedomain, Rogan, Ron, Society & Culture, Radio, Paul, History, Liberalism, Libertarian, Capitalism, Market, Molyneux, Anarchy, Free, Classical, Family, Freedom, State, Joe, Podcast, Atheism, Stephan, Education, Podcasts

4.62.4K Ratings

🗓️ 10 December 2025

⏱️ 33 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Stefan Molyneux looks at Universally Preferable Behavior, or UPB, in terms of moral superstitions and social norms. He points out how probing long-held moral ideas can uncover risks tied to power systems. His own stories show the fallout from pushing against those norms, and he covers the mental effects of facing taboos. He stresses that moral ideas need to hold up under examination to count as valid, and he puts forward UPB as a way to handle ethical talks with a focus on objectivity and to chase truth despite pushback from society.

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Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0

All right. So somebody ran UPB through GROC and was sort of arguing with GROC to get GROC to understand

0:06.4

UPB and it was a consent loop thing and I'll post it on social media. But it was interesting,

0:12.1

but it was incorrect. And when we were working with AI to create the sort of Stephpot AI,

0:18.8

which is available for donors at premium.freydomain.com.

0:23.1

I worked with a lot of AIs to try to get AI to understand what was UPB, what UPB meant.

0:33.1

The foundational proof of UPB is this. It's very simple and I know that sounds like being a dick.

0:41.9

I get that, but you know, just bear with me. It's not because it's so complicated. It's because

0:47.4

all of our morals are superstitious, right? All of our morals are superstitions. Now, all of our morals

0:53.8

are superstitions. Now, there are superstitions

0:56.9

that happen in many ways to accord with reality, right? In the same way, like, when there's a tsunami,

1:06.9

the first thing that happens is the water level goes down, because like the water level is gathering where the tsunami is, right?

1:12.9

So there are these Pacific Islanders the last time there was some big tsunami.

1:17.1

They saw it first.

1:18.1

They got to higher ground because they had a, you know, when the water goes down,

1:21.2

it means that the sea guard is angry and there's going to be a big wave.

1:24.8

Right.

1:25.5

So they had a superstitious understanding of the facts of reality that when there's going to be a big wave, right? So they had a superstitious understanding of the facts of

1:29.2

reality that when there's going to be tsunami, the first thing that happens is the water level goes

1:33.1

down because it's gathering in the big tall tower of a wave, right? So all of our morals are superstitions.

1:43.6

And questioning superstition, this is why it's so hard to think about UPB,

1:48.8

but questioning superstition was extremely dangerous throughout all of human history,

1:56.8

because power is based upon rules and exceptions.

...

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