Word count:21038
[Music] welcome in this episode we're gonna be talking about self bias this is an exciting topic that I've been wanting to talk about for four years now in some great lengths because this is a core problem of epistemology and epistemology remember don't get confused by this word all it means is the theory of human knowledge so how do we know anything as human beings well soft bias turns out to play a very important role so what is self bias it's a term that I coined when I was in my teenage years when I first started doing philosophy I was about 18 years old in high school and in early college and I started reading various philosophies trying to figure out life you know I didn't have a particular philosophy that I subscribed to because I didn't know which philosophy was true I had an open mind and so what I did I was just reading various kinds of philosophical literature but what I noticed is a very peculiar phenomenon in philosophy maybe you've noticed this as well is that every philosophical school presents arguments in favor of its own position and against other positions which are not its own so atheists will present arguments for why there is no God Christians will present arguments for why there is a God and why Christ is the one true prophet Muslims will present arguments for why Islam is the one true faith and that Allah is the highest God and that Muhammad is the greatest prophet scientists will present arguments for science and against witchcraft and against voodoo and against mysticism and other forms of knowing rationalists will present rational arguments for why rationality is correct empiricist will present empirical arguments for why empiricism is correct realists will argue that reality is real idealist will reaaargh you that reality is just some idea in the mind of God skeptics will argue for scepticism conservatives will argue for conservativism liberals will argue for liberalism post modernists will argue for post-modernism and on it goes and what baffled me as I was studying these various schools of thought is that I noticed a meta pattern amongst all these different schools and philosophers which was that all of them were biased towards their own position and against those of others I didn't see fair treatment I didn't see a scientist fairly considering the position of the Muslim I didn't see a Muslim fairly considering the position of the skeptic or the atheist I didn't see the atheist fairly considering the position of someone practicing witchcraft I didn't see conservatives fairly honestly genuinely trying to understand the position of liberals nor the opposite and this immediately struck me as the number one problem of all of life because how am I supposed to discover what's true if I myself am gonna act this way if I'm just gonna present skewed arguments towards my own pet theories then I'm not genuinely inquiring into the actual nature of reality I don't actually care about what the truth is all that I'm doing is I'm playing a persuasion game where I'm trying to persuade others to believe what I believe and of course in the process I'm also first and foremost trying to persuade myself with these talking points that what I believe is true and that I actually understand reality when in fact I don't and so the key error that I found throughout all of Western philosophy is that no Western philosopher seriously acknowledges their own self bias and of course this isn't just limited to philosophy we're talking about all basically intellectual pursuits and this struck me as a huge problem and I didn't see anybody talking about this problem which struck me is kind of odd because it seems so obvious so such an important problem and I didn't see any solutions to this problem either there were no simple solutions because what I was interested in I was interested in truth I didn't care what the truth was per se my position was that whatever the truth is even if it's ugly or even for contradicts everything that I believe I would rather have that than my own pet theories and so with this I began a serious investigation to the nature of life and reality and human knowledge which ultimately led me to actualize that org and to mysticism to non-duality to enlightenment and all of that so the biggest obstacle in philosophy is that truth requires impartiality and objectivity but how do you be impartial it's not nearly as easy as people assume you might think well okay I'll just be impartial I'll just do an impartial investigation into all the different philosophies and then I'll find the true right one but the problem goes much deeper than this you see because it's very tricky who is going to judge whether you're being objective or impartial because it's not enough just to tell yourself that your objective and impartial because of course you're the judge and the jury and the one on trial in this case see so who are you gonna ask whether you're actually truly being objective are you gonna ask yourself and then what is your mind gonna tell you of course it's gonna tell you that you are objective the whole problem is that all of these different philosophies and schools believe that their objective and that their impartial you ask a Christian or a Muslim if they're impartial and what are they gonna say yes I mean what are they gonna say no of course they're gonna say that they're impartial but see the problem is is that if you are self biased already towards a certain position then you're not gonna be able to see your own self bias and therefore your bias is gonna be the problem because if you're gonna just blindly follow your bias your bias will just say well Christianity is true how do I know it's true well because I say it's true same thing for science and anything else see there's a question begging going on here with all these different worldviews that I want you to notice the person doesn't truly question the very foundations of their worldview because it's just taken for granted and it's not even realized that it could be a problem it's just assumed that it's valid so for example you ask a scientists well how do you know science is true why are you a scientist why do you trust in science and the scientists will tell you this whole spiel about the history of science and all the technology that's been invented and how good science is and the scientific method and how it's all been much better than all the alternatives like witchcraft and voodoo and mysticism and religion and all that nonsense and that of course we know science is objective and impartial but how do you know that the problem is is that the scientist is going to use scientific and rational arguments to try to validate science but that's begging the question because the very thing that we're trying to question here is how do we know that the very mechanism the epistemic mechanism that you're using all those scientific mythological assumptions how do you know those actually lead to truth the scientists will of course use further science to try to prove that science leads to truth which is exactly as absurd as asking a Christian why do you believe in God and then the question says well because because of the Bible and then why do you believe in the Bible well because God wrote the Bible and God wouldn't lie see it's a it's a vicious circle because what we're questioning here is did God really write the Bible did God really not lie or maybe God is a liar how do you know well Leo the Bible says God can't be a liar yeah but what we're questioning is is the Bible correct so you can't assume that the Bible is correct nor can you assume that God is not a liar maybe God is a liar you don't know maybe the devil wrote the Bible you don't know if you're being objective and impartial the problem though is precisely that you're being a partial you're you're not being objective you're favoring the thing that you're trying to prove and so in this sense you're not actually making it proof so what I'm telling you is that most scientists who buy into science they don't buy into science because they've proven that science is valid it's actually the other way around they buy into science and therefore they then rigged their entire scheme of justifications and all of their logic to validate that science is correct they assume the science correct and then they use science to validate the sciences correct same thing for Muslims Christians Jews and everybody else and so this is the mechanism that I saw when I was about 18 years old this shook me to my core it changed my life forever when I realized this this wasn't something I read in a book or that somebody told me I sat down one night late at night by myself in my room I can still vividly remember the night with just a sheet of paper kinda reason this stuff through and when I saw this when I saw this infinite black hole of Grau miss into which all of these worldviews and philosophies ultimately vortex their way down into because they're all groundless they're all predicated upon circular reasoning when I saw that it really shook me it really opened up my mind and that was the doorway towards ultimately being able to understand awakening but that would take decades for me to really understand it I didn't know at the time that I was just like licking the tip of the iceberg of how deep this problem goes this basically explains why people tricked themselves into believing all sorts of crazy worldviews they don't have enough consciousness or awareness to see that question begging nature of their own self bias see isn't it funny how if you ask a Christian are you biased they always say no and if you ask a scientist are you biased he says of course not I'm a scientist our whole objective is not to be biased but then you can go around and do that with every single crazy belief and worldview that people have held since the dawn of time and they will all deny that they're biased so what good is the denial what's it worth it hey what [ __ ] and that's when I started to really suspect a problem within science I saw that scientists were not seriously interested in this problem because generally scientists are just interested in like executing science they're not interested in questioning science not very deeply because they just assume it to be true and why do they assume to be true because they weren't doctrine ated into it in their culture when they were growing up through their schooling and through university and so forth through their parents through TV shows through books they read through science fiction or whatever and the same thing goes for Christians atheists and everybody else it's nothing very original is happening here and nobody is really being intelligent they're just executing they're executing preexisting conditioning and programming and so I started to question all this and so at this point in my life I started to identify most with being a skeptic because to me skeptics were the closest of all the different schools of thought especially the ancient Greek skeptics the Peroni ins were the closest to taking this problem seriously everybody else seemed to just kind of gloss over it as though it's not a big deal and even when I entered philosophy in university I became a philosophy major and I was taking philosophy classes and even there when I brought up this issue in class I noticed that even professional philosophers and all of my classmates did not take this issue seriously and that's when I understood how deep the problem goes at that point I realized because my my career plans at that point where that I was going to become a professional philosopher I wanted to become a professor and I thought that what am I break through achievements within professional philosophy within my career you know I still very naive at that point I didn't know how anything worked I don't know how the world worked I didn't know how to business how business work I didn't know how academia works or how science professionally works but I quickly learned that um so anyway yeah so I thought that I would introduce this giant nuclear weapon into into philosophy that would blow the whole thing up I kind of wanted to undermine it from within with this sort of toxic form of skepticism that I was practicing but I saw that you can't be a professional philosopher as a-- as one of these toxic skeptics because the whole industry and it is an industry is built upon basically all of Western civilization is built upon building up worldviews not breaking them down and so at that point I realized that well there goes my philosophy career I can't be a philosopher so that was very interesting so anyways enough about me so let's articulate a bit more explicitly what is self bias self bias and I'll give you a few different definitions of it here that I came up with number one it's the minds natural tendency to favor its own intellectual positions above others it's also whim your worldview is question begging and you can't see how it is question begging and furthermore all worldviews are question begging it's when you're unable to fairly and objectively evaluate your own worldview relative to others when you give preferential treatment when you construct arguments and justifications and various double standards for why your worldview is superior to others so for example if you're an atheist you're going to have double standards about the kind of logic that you use to justify atheism over theism you're not going to admit for example that atheism is a hypothesis or that it's held as a position of faith or as a dogma because you want to differentiate yourself from the theists see you wanna you want to accuse the theists of being dogmatic and being faith-based whereas you want your position as an atheist to be scientific and rooted in reason and logic and and facts and evidence and that's the thing that you're using to differentiate between you and theists but what I'm telling you is that actually when you're doing that you're not being fair because you already assume that atheism must be true therefore what you do is you skew all of your arguments and reasoning such that it favors the correct outcome that you you have assumed is the correct outcome so you're actually reasoning backwards you're putting the cart before the horse you have already determined in your mind in the back of your mind what the correct conclusion should be you haven't actually done any inquiry into whether there is a God or not you haven't actually gone out and like looked under a rock God are you there you haven't like gone looked into the bushes you know God are you in there answer me you haven't done this you haven't you just assume that there's no God of course likewise the theists have succumbed to the same problem they also haven't gone and looked under a rock or under a tree or whatever to find God they just assume that God is there and another way to phrase what south bias is is that it's an irrational favoring of one's own worldview and a creation of various kinds of pseudo evidence and pseudo proofs that seem to justify your worldview but which are actually ultimately groundless and viciously circular self bias is why our legal system has a notion called conflict of interest and recusal you've probably heard about this a judge or a lawyer is supposed to recuse himself from a certain trial if he's materially involved in some manner with the prosecution or with the defense if he has a a horse in the race he needs to recuse himself and there are various ethic boards within government for example ethics lawyers which will consult with politicians and so forth and advise them to recuse themselves in certain situations where there's conflict of interest for example you know if I'm taking money from a defense contractor as a judge and then I have to judge a court case where somebody is suing this defense contractor for negligence or some such thing well I have to recuse myself because if there's a conflict of interest it's hard for me to be objective when my survival is at stake and so in in a fair court system one of the most important things that the judges are objective and unbiased they really have to not have a horse in the race they can't say well that's a man and that's a woman and you know I favor the man over the woman just because you know well I don't like women because some woman in the past did me wrong like my wife she she cheated on me so therefore now you know women they can't be trusted so she's gonna lose the kid and you can't be a judge this way I mean you can but that would be corrupt and that would be untruthful and you could see how that would be a very big problem if all judges were like that so see in the legal system we recognize a problem with self bias we just we don't call it self bias we recognize it the problem though is that this problem extends way beyond the legal system we need to really extend our notion of conflict of interest and recusal way beyond the legal system to include business to include science to include religion and many other things where it isn't taken seriously the self who you are is the lens through which you see the world and it's that lens that self which then distorts your perception of reality not just your perception but reality itself science logic emotions actions decisions relationships all of this gets distorted by who you are and all of us are trying to be somebody unique somebody different somebody else or even if you're conforming then that's even worse you're trying to be that and then that distorts your perception so the reason we care about any of this you might wonder like what what's the big deal leo well the big deal is we care about having an accurate perception of reality that's what we really care about that's not a way of saying we care about the truth but the truth is a tricky thing how do you get to the truth when you're always looking at it from the lens of yourself how do you get outside of yourself when you're stuck inside of yourself see triki triki triki not only do you need to see this entire mechanism at the metal level that I'm describing here of self bias but you also then need to go even further that's not enough just to see yourself being biased you also have to relinquish your biases are you willing to do that to actually get a clear picture of reality most people aren't I want you to notice that after all how can you see reality clearly if you're preoccupied with survival if I'm a judge and let's say I love to gamble and so I've gambled away my life savings to the point where I'm almost bankrupt I'm gonna lose my house and if I lose my house my wife and my children they're probably gonna leave me and because of all these problems I also have a drinking problem on top of this because drinking is what I use to to calm my nerves and keep this anxiety and keep some of these problems at bay and and but I'm a judge so you know I asked respectable in the morning when I show up to the courtroom and now I have this this decision this important decision in front of me between some some corporations a big drug company that accidentally you know killed some some innocent person because they gave the wrong drug or whatever yeah and now the drug company comes to me and offers me a million dollars for ruling in their favor because you know if they lose this lawsuit it could mean a 10 million dollar loss for them not to mention oh if they lose this lawsuit other people will jump on the bandwagon they will keep suing them in the end for this company it might end up costing them a hundred million dollars to lose this lawsuit so they're glad to pay me a million to rule in their favor how can I say no because I've put myself in this terrible position where I need to survive if I say no I'm gonna lose my entire life so saying no isn't really an option for me unless of course I have very very high integrity and I really value the truth to the point where I'm even able to say I value the truth so much that I am willing to lose my wife my house my children my whole life to be objective in this in this trial but you know but you see how easy it is to corrupt a person because who is gonna give up their life their children their house or life just for the sake of the truth in this situation you know in most in most judicial matters in most judicial verdicts like are you are you really gonna be able to tell whether I was biased as a judge or not usually not many many judicial verdicts come down to like a 50/50 split they're very close so you know if somebody pays me a million dollars and I just happen to lean towards them a little bit it was any harm really done I was probably gonna rule in their favor anyways right it's like you know I was even if they didn't give me a million dollars I was still probably gonna rule in favor because because all they presented all this good logic and facts and evidence for why for that for why this this defendant it really doesn't doesn't deserve to get a 10 million dollar reward see you see how easy the mind plays tricks on you when your survival is at play that's the problem fundamentally when we're pursuing the truth is that we're pursuing the truth at a potentially great cost to ourselves so why would we do that well that's a very good question we'll get to that about a bit later see people think it's about choosing or deciding who's right and who's wrong which religion is right which is wrong which person is right which is wrong in a debate it's not about that it's about a meta problem it's about realizing that your mind will always find a way to feel that it's right your mind will always just a any core metaphysical positions that you have which serve your survival why do people denies self bias because and this is very twisted and ironic it doesn't benefit the self to admit of self bias see there's no benefit to a Christian to admit that his worldview is biased and there's no benefit to a scientist to admit that his world team is bias in fact there's a great cost because if a Christian actually admitted the possibility just the possibility that his worldview is biased then that creates doubt a doubt which will seep into the cracks of his worldview and corrode it from within until the foundation cracks and crumbles and then he's gonna face an extension crisis well if Christianity is not true and maybe there's no God then what oh my god that's terrible who's who's correct then what should I believe should I believe the scientists should I believe the nihilus who should I believe see then you're lost so if you're already committed to being selfish for the pursuit of survival which of course you are you had to be in order to be alive that's how you survived this far in your life so you're committed to it but if you already are committed to it then there's no benefit to you admitting that you're selfish so people deny it another reason that people deny self bias is because the the genuine is not because they're malicious or evil in the classical sense but rather it's because they lack the awareness to see the circularity at the center of their worldview they generally they genuinely don't see it scientists genuinely believe that there's no vicious circularity within science within the foundations of science genuinely believe that there's no vicious circularity within Christianity see they they don't even take this problem seriously they just consider this as aw it's just philosophy mental masturbation doesn't have any real real consequences who really cares see of course because they're self biased to care about the things that I'm talking about you'd already have to not be so fast because the things I'm talking about here are very threatening and dangerous to any worldview another reason people deny self bias is because they conflate selfishness with truth when you're very selfish to you anything that serves you appears as though it's the truth and anything that doesn't serve you appears as though it's falsehood there's this conflation conversely people also tend to think in this situation that by pursuing the truth they will be personally benefited and so if they're pursuing the truth under this assumption that I will be personally benefited from finding the truth then what ends up happening is that as soon as life stops personally benefit you like if your inquiry into the nature of reality stops to give you personal payoffs and benefits stops making you feel good about yourself then you stop pursuing it because you tell yourself well it must not be the truth then because the truth is supposed to make me feel good but of course that's begging the question how do you know the truth is supposed to make you feel good maybe the truth suppose to make you feel terrible you don't know when you start off the inquiry you will only know if the truth makes you feel good after you found it not before and of course the trick is that everybody tells them that they already have the truth I mean tells themselves that they already have the truth nobody admits like well I've never found the truth yet so I don't even know if it's gonna be good or bad nobody approaches life that way everybody just assumes they already have the truth which compounds this problem and another reason that people deny self bias is because they don't see how being partial or biased produces problems because they're so myopic they're only looking at the short-term gains so they think themselves well Leah what's the problem like you know if if yeah I'm a little bit self biased towards science maybe okay fine but what's the problem in science science gives us good stuff it gives us phones it gives its cars planes rockets all this sort of stuff comfortable technology so look science is giving us all these benefits leo what why why question it any further what's wrong with being a little bit partial that's right you don't see what's wrong because you're only looking at the immediate payoffs it's the same problem as shopping with a credit card you know what's wrong with with shopping with the credit card well you find out after you make a lot of purchases months down the road but not immediately in the short term it seemed great fundamentally since all points of view are partial and subjective that is the nature of what a point of view is they must be selfishly defended against the truth because the truth transcends all points of view now we're talking about truth with a capital T now when you begin your inquiry into the nature of reality to be honest you don't even know if there is such a thing as truth you don't know what the truth is it's just a possibility there's a possibility that there's such a thing as truth the capital T you don't know though and you might have to spend years doubting whether there is such a thing and whether it's worthwhile for you to pursue but I'm telling you there is such a thing because I spend in many years pursuing it and I've found it many times and I understand it pretty well now so it's there you just don't know what it is but it turns out to be such a radical thing that is very very threatening this truth is very very threatening to all points of view and all worldviews and so in a sense what all of these different people are doing with their philosophies and worldviews really is they're actually constructing elaborate defense mechanisms and schemes of rationalization to defend against the truth so of course if they're doing that and the truth is so threatening and dangerous as I say that it is then why would they ever admit of all of their defense mechanisms the value and power of a defense mechanism is in the denial that you're using these defense mechanisms because if you admitted it then you'd have to surrender them because you'd be out of integrity there'd be too much cognitive dissonance see so the number one trick in deceiving yourself and lying to others is lying to yourself first because if you succeed in lying to yourself then you can pull off the the act that you aren't really lying and it's true you're not lying because you yourself have tricked yourself first which makes it easier than for you to trick others so in the effort to survive and you know to survive trickery is extremely important for a social species so for you to survive you have to trick others but for you to effectively trick others you first have to trick yourself and so you did and that's the situation you find yourself in today and from this sprawled all the different multitude of worldviews that exists on this planet so it's not that people lie per se it's that they are blind to how their own mind and constructs reality towards their own survival people are blind to this evidence and proof cannot be trusted because they have been corrupted and co-opted by this entire process by the self see evidence and proof and logic can only work if we assume that you're not self biased but we can't assume that because you're thoroughly self biased you're so self biased that you deny that your self biased so what good is evidence and proof and reason have you noticed that every insane person every crazy cult leader has a perfectly valid reason and a set of evidence and logic that he uses to justify his actions every religious nutcase every scientist who's ever been wrong all the wrong ones they've all had proof and evidence for why they were right and yet history prove them to be wrong so how do you explain that so what good is your proof in your evidence if you can't rely on it to accurately get you to the truth the trick with all this is that it's very easy to see this problem of self bias in others we're very quick to point it out in others we're very quick to point out other people's fallacious arguments and double standards but it's extremely difficult to see it in yourself when you're doing it to yourself and that's what really scared me when I realized all of this it wasn't that I was scared that other people believed crazy things it was that I saw that if if all those other people believed all these crazy things that must mean that I must believe crazy things as well so what kind of crazy things do I believe what kind of twisted logic am I using to uphold my own worldviews that is that is the the very kernel of skepticism when you start to take that doubt seriously that's the most serious doubt that you'll ever consider in your life it's it's interesting how this works the less conscious one is the more ego one has the thicker and more distorted that sense of self that lens of self is through which reality is perceived the more self biased one is the more defense mechanisms one will then use to deny that one is self biased and the more extreme one's defenses must become in order to be effective see so it's there's there's a direct connection between all those things so when you have a very low consciousness person you will see that this person will have a very thick self bias and he will have a wide repertoire of defense mechanisms to deny that he is self biased and it will be virtually impossible for you to break through to him through logic through evidence through reason through through emotional Appeals through anything because that's just the nature of low consciousness and and if he gets really bad it gets violent because violence is the ultimate defense mechanism against getting people to question your views you know if you question my religion too much I'm going to blow you up I'm gonna shoot you up so what I concluded early on in my philosophy days is that all ideology is self biased all philosophy is self biased every organization is self biased every country is self bias every political movement itself biased and then later I found out once I learn about spirituality is that all spiritual schools are also self biased and that's an even deeper mindfuck because supposedly those who are awake are supposed to be the least soft biased and yet oftentimes even lined people are still self biased that's how tricky this stuff is very very tricky and even pragmatism and nihilism our self biased so you might say this point well Leo you know all this philosophy business I'm not really interested in this I'm just a simple ordinary guy I want to like just go work on my business start my family you know just do practical stuff so I'm not interested in the self bias stuff I'm not I don't have any particular ideologies or pet theories that I want to protect I'm just interested in being practical yeah that's pragmatism that's yourself bias in a certain sense pragmatism is the most self biased position you could have because at least some of these more theoretical positions there are people are they are actually at least make pretenses towards caring about the truth in some abstract sense you know if you're if you're a a Christian at least you you pretend that you know the truth if you're a scientist you pretend like you're pursuing the truth but if you're a pragmatist for you it's just about whatever serves yourself directly I mean in a certain sense it's kind of honest at least you're being honest about your selfishness your just being blatantly selfish and just caring about what's in it for you okay fine I understand that but that is self bias so practical people are self biased as much as theoretical people are self biased theoretical people are self biased towards their own theories practical people are our self biased towards being practical and anti theoretical and nihilists are of course also self bias you know people who just say ah [ __ ] it all it's all just nonsense nothing matters it's just all pointless well that's your self bias that's the lens of self through which you're seeing the world it's not true you assume it's true but it's not true you might wonder well leo but aren't you just when you're talking about self bias aren't you just talking about selfishness here what's the difference why aren't you just calling it selfishness and that's a good that's a good point you could call self bias selfishness and sometimes I do but selfishness is a more broad notion selfishness encompasses a lot of stuff self bias is a little bit more specific a term and specifically what I'm using it to highlight is this one aspect of selfishness so soft bias is a more narrow term that refers to how the mind frames its intellectual positions you see even a pragmatist you might say well a pragmatist has no intellectual positions so how could he be self biased but he does you see because a pragmatist has an intellectual position which justifies his pragmatism and tells him why pragmatism is better than all the other ways of approaching life so the pragmatist will have some sort of narrative in his - as well to much theory you know Leo too much theory rots the mind it's not good for you you're gonna drive yourself crazy with all this theorizing and you know this isn't healthy there you go that's your philosophy that's your pragmatic philosophy or you might say only all this is nonsense it's not even possible to know what the truth is so you're just wasting time that would be sort of up maybe a cynical position you might call that a cynics position that's yourself bias you're assuming it's it's it's not worthwhile you're assuming it's impossible and therefore that's how you see the world and it becomes true for you doesn't mean it's actually true it's just true for you from your point of view now let's bust into my core of this topic which is let's look at some examples of self bias you got to really look at examples to see the power of this concept we've already been talking a little bit about them but now let's get very specific so the first example is with dictators and tyrants have you noticed that a dictator or a tyrant never willingly relinquish his throne even though he's hurting lots of people it's quite obvious he's hurting lots of people why doesn't he relinquish his power I just like go live a comfortable life I mean supposedly Hitler could have done that Saddam Hussein Stalin Kim jong-un why are these dictators not doing that because they don't see themselves as a dictators and tyrants their self biased they think they're doing good for their people and you know what they might be I'm not I'm not saying they aren't but what I am saying is that they are extremely self biased you know that Trump also fits into this category very interestingly Trump is extremely self biased he's he's the poster boy of self bias self bias on stilts and you know the best example of which was when all this legal stuff with the robert muller investigation was happening around Trump there was this talk of Trump considering pardoning himself that's exactly how a pirate or a dictator thinks they're so self biased and they have such a lust for power that to them the idea of pardoning oneself is totally legitimate because when you're that selfish when you're that unconscious the notion that you could be guilty of something but then if you have you know you could pardon yourself if that power is available to you that you wouldn't exercise it because of some shame or some some lack of integrity or you know yeah some some higher integrity that you might have this doesn't even cross the mind of a dictator or retired or an authoritarian like Trump so of course Trump would part himself if he could of course he sees nothing wrong with this and of course he doesn't you you couldn't convince him that there's anything wrong with this because he's so selfish because he's so short-sighted all he cares about is his own personal survival so if that's all you care about and you don't care about the truth and your version of the truth is that whatever serves my survival is the truth which is precisely how Trump behaves he has no other concept of truth of that then of course you're gonna pardon yourself and you'll do other nasty and evil things because it's survival at all costs at that point that's that's the level of consciousness that he's living in and so are these other dictators if they didn't have that level of consciousness they would never have come into power in the first place because they way they come into power they don't come into power through through authentic means they come into power through machinations manipulations scheming exploitation and various other kinds of corruption and shenanigans sometimes pure violence conquering all their enemies and all their opponents that's how they come to power you might say well leo but Hitler a god elected democratically well I he did but I mean I I'm not saying he conquered people to get elected but uh but you have to understand also how much manipulation exploitation various kinds of other sneaky things went on behind the scenes to get Hitler elected he didn't really truly get elected on an honest message and honest campaigning he was a master of propaganda and various other kinds of manipulative marketing techniques basically to get himself elected he played on the various kinds of passions and fears of the people of the time very much like Trump did to get elected another example of self bias is colonialism and what happened with the American natives as the Europeans moved in to to conquer and exterminate them see the European attitude towards the natives was a very self biased one the natives were seen as savages barbarians heathens on Christians and so because they were not Christians they were to be converted their traditions were not to be respected their life wasn't worth as much as a European life and in fact if they refused to convert then it was your moral obligation as a good European and a good Christian to rid the earth of these savages who were an affront to God because they were heated that's the attitude you see how itself biased that is it's it's ridiculous you can go back and read the history books of the the world views and the beliefs of these various conquistadors I read one in particular about Magellan Magellan is it was a bloodthirsty Christian who believed in converting all heathens he was very vicious to human beings who were not Christians even to even the Christians he was pretty brutal too but um but he was just terrible to indigenous people you know he tried to circumnavigate the world and as he was doing that he was encountering all these different native tribes and all these problems ensued and he was very vicious towards them you know very dismissive of them basically treated them like animals and in the end he got butchered by the very animals that he thought he was dealing with in the Philippines he got butchered there's still a place in the Philippines where he can go where there's a belief there's a statue on a beach where he got blood Lee Mirta butchered by the Native Filipino people because of just how vicious and how how self biased he was in their dealings with him at first the Filipinos were welcome you know many of these natives tribes they were quite peaceful they were welcoming you know you think about it these crazy advanced europeans come from from another part of the world you know they must have seemed like gods and aliens to these to these many of these natives in South America and Indonesia and and in the Philippines but many of these natives were friendly they traded they even had sexual relations with with the Europeans who were on these giant colonial ships but these Europeans were just so [ __ ] selfish and so ruthless with the way that they wanted to dominate these natives you know they they didn't respect any of the natives customs they didn't expect they didn't respect fair trade agreements they wanted to rip these guys off so they would do these trade deals which were very unfair to the natives they would you know like steal their women and they would disrespect their their spiritual you know gods and ancestors and all this and you know they just behaved like [ __ ] animals these Europeans did ironically while calling those Native savages and animals they themselves behave like animals and then for that they paid some heavy heavy price with their life most of Magellan's crew was was butchered or just died of just the long journey it's very fascinating how that worked and overall this is the whole problem of colonialism in general you know as the Europeans spread forth from Europe you know the Spanish the Portuguese the the Dutch the English hmm all these foking of the French they had all sorts of encounters with with natives and basically what happened was bullying the Europeans because they were generally more advanced and more scheming more egotistical they tried to bully the natives into submission into serving their survival needs they tried to enslave them or they try to do various kind of sneaky unfair trade deals they try to exterminate them and grab their gold grab their women bla bla bla bla bla colonialism and herschel colonialism is no different than bullying at the schoolyard except at a collective level at a national level and of course why does this happen self bias it can only happen when you think that you're superior to those who you're dealing with if you think the person you're dealing with is at the same level as you and deserves as much respect as you and you value their worldview as much as your own you're not biased towards your own worldview are you gonna go desecrate and piss on the grave of their ancestors no are you gonna rape their women no you're gonna treat their women the way you would treat your women and of course if you treat your women badly that's because you have also have a self bias against the women of your own culture which of course the Europeans had a problem with as well so the Europeans didn't just rape the women of of natives they also raped their own women that's it that's a that's a problem we're getting to hear down on my list yeah so you see you see the problem and then ultimately what happens it gets you killed a lot of times many slave owners were killed by their slaves speaking of slavery of course that is the ultimate example of self bias plantation owners and the worldview they had in how they treated their slaves totally soft biased they didn't see the slaves they owned as being human they saw them as animals which justified in their mind the ownership and the the cruel treatment of them and what they put them through see and why do these slave owners have these philosophies because these philosophies served the slave owners and how could they maintain these philosophies by being extremely self biased by coming up with all sorts of justifications like well I'm a white man and you know I deserve I deserve to have these these subhuman savages as you know as my workers because I'm actually doing something good for them they would be even worse off without me these sorts of philosophies you know you can only hold the philosophy or worldly like that if you're extremely self biased because if you were truly fair and objective you would say well but what's the difference between me and them okay the difference in color fine but don't those people wanna like eat food same as I do yes don't those people one ally have a family and make love the way that I do yes don't those people get tired and sick and don't they suffered like I do yes okay so then so then why should I own them and why should I be superior why should I feel superior to them oh right there's no reason but to recognize that requires objectivity you see people take it for granted today that well leo yeah of course I mean it's it how could someone believe that a black person is like an animal that that's that's crazy it's not crazy it actually took a lot of intellectual development and shedding of self bias to get to the point where now it's taken for granted that white and black people are just on the same level and even still this is not true for many places around the world even in developed countries even in America it's still not fully true we still have plenty of closet racists around and even not closet racists around people take all this for granted don't take it for granted shedding of self bias is something that society has been doing historically for thousands of years since the beginning of civilization and it's a long arduous process of a lot of resistance because people don't want to shed their self biases because it harms their survival so that's totally understandable of course another example is how humans in general treat animals human civilization since the dawn of time has treated animals so badly use them for war you know how many horses have been killed in in war how many pack mules have died from exhaustion hauling stones up to the Egyptian monuments or pyramids or whatever or you know on the various kinds of expeditions and excavations that have been happened happening since the dawn of time how many millions of animals have been butchered and slaughtered to please the taste buds of humans humans tree animals as completely disposable this is pure self bias because if you think about it why would an animal's life be any less worthwhile than a human's life only because yourself biased that's the only reason and then of course you have all sorts of justifications and excuses for why well leo animals you know they're not really human they don't suffer as much as humans do they're not really that important we can just bring more of them who really cares about them leave how dare you compare an animal to a human you know these are two totally different things that's what I'm talking about all of those arguments are completely skewed towards your own perspective because of course you need it to come out that you as a human or on top of the entire food chain that serves you so well because then you have to think twice about renting a mule and overworking him to death or killing a horse in in some battle or you know butchering some animal for your dinner table so on it's very inconvenient to admit that animals are as worthwhile as humans extremely inconvenient see then you can't just be the selfish [ __ ] that you've been your whole life and your culture can't continue to be the [ __ ] that your culture has been its whole life another great example is corporate lobbying and corruption of course if you ask a corrupt person are you corrupt what are they gonna say are they gonna say yes if you ask a corporate lobbyist are you hurting society with your lobbying what do you think they're gonna tell you yes no of course not they believe they're doing good for society with their corruption the millionaires and the billionaires who who skew tax policy in their favor who Lobby the government to get subsidies for their corporations and so forth if you ask them if they're doing good society they're all gonna tell you yes that's what they genuinely believe self bias how about the example of nationalism ethnocentrism of course racism comes in here to which we've already touched upon nationalism and ethnocentrism whether it's white nationalism or Nazism German nationalism and you know nationalism comes in all sorts of flavours there's a there's a version of nationalism in every third world country in the Middle East there's nationalism there's Iranian rationale and there's their Turkish nationalism there's Eastern European rationals and there's Russian national there's Jewish nationalism there's Filipino nationalism Chinese Japanese you name it every every country that has an underdeveloped element has its own form of nationalism which sometimes flares up and causes a lot of problems what is nationalism really about it's really about cultural self bias people favor their own culture thinking that it's superior to all other cultures without objectively looking at other cultures without experiencing or exposing themselves to other cultures or even if they do they do so in a partial manner or they don't objectively consider the pros and cons and the the the beauties of other cultures that's what nationalism boils down to just so fast and you see how many problems are caused by that the Holocaust was the result of self bias which brings us to all right-wing ideologies in general right-wing talk radio all of it Fox News all of it pretty much this is pure self bias pure self bias that's what Fox News is spewing every single day it's just self biases self biased propaganda machine that's what it is now you might say well leo but ball are aren't you being biased Leo because you you're you're ranting against nationalists right the right wing but what about left-wing ideologies aren't they also self biased and you're right of course they are but remember there's degrees of self bias and so what I'm telling you is that if you are objective and you look at the degrees of self bias within the left-wing ideology and right-wing ideology you will find that right-wing ideology is significantly more soft biased than left-wing ideology that doesn't mean left-wing ideology is perfect and that it's free of self bias there's still plenty of it to go around and we can make many criticisms but remember as I talked about in my conscious politics series the left and right wing are not identical they are not just two sides of the same coin there is a difference in elevation of their perspective there's actually a difference in their cognitive development there's a difference in their moral development which is this is generally not understood by mainstream media and of course if I point this out and you're a right winger you will immediately accuse me of being self biased of course because bias is always relative to one's perspective you know it would be very problematic for you to admit that your self biased so you're gonna deny it and you're gonna accuse me of it tada this is how the vine works this is the trickery of the mind and if you're a left winger then you're nodding your head and you're agreeing with me you're saying yes leo yes yes yes that's what I've new note all along the right wingers are so self biased and as you're doing that you're being self biased you see self bias is rampant it's rampant its pernicious it's it's invasive it's like a weed that grows in your garden you can't stop it you pull it up by it through and it grows up the next day a few feet away from where you pull it up it's very tricky people don't understand what objectivity it means they think that Oh Leo if you are truly pretending to be objective here that means you got to treat the right-wing left-wing the same no that's not objectivity if I did that I would actually be playing into your self biases I'm not doing that and of course you're upset at me for not doing that not playing the game that you want me to play let's move on to various kinds of men's rights movements pick up ideology MOG Tao ideology red pill ideology in cell ideology and generally we can call all this patriarchy these are various forms of patriarchy or toxic masculinity as it could be called all of this is extremely self biased extremely go on to any pick up forum MOG Tao subreddit some red pill forums some in cell forum look at the kind of [ __ ] they write look at how obnoxious Lee self biased their entire worldview is basically it's young men who are frustrated not getting their sexual needs met who are frustrated with women want to blame women and they develop this extremely skewed and warped perspective of what women are what femininity is and how problematic it is for society and for them because they've wrapped up their own personal sexual needs and frustrations with women their own inadequacies with women their own insecurities as a man their own lack of masculine they've wrapped that selfishness up with the truth and with the facts and the evidence and the logic and so what they do is they present science and evidence and logic and studies and all this to create this toxic masculine ideology for why you know women are oppressing men and this sort of stuff and why they are getting the sex that they need and all the reasons for why this is happening yeah that's that's the epitome of self bias the epitome of self bias one of the things that shocked me the most when I was in to pick up you know I did pick up for a while I hung out with a lot of pickup pickup guys I hung out with a lot of professional pickup coaches dating coaches some of the world-class ones some of the ones that you know famous ones you know world-famous ones and I picked their minds I I studied with them I took boot camps with them I know how they think their world view is extremely self biased and then their students end up getting sucked into that ideology there's no problem with dating women there's no problem going to a club and chatting up a girl and then sleeping with her that night no problem at all the problem is the toxic masculinity ideology that you create in order to make that more effective for yourself that's the real problem that's what goes unaddressed in the pickup community for example if you want more about that go check out my episode a rant against the pickup community where I talk about this and of course that video is probably one of my top most downvoted videos it has a huge downvote ratio of course because the PAS who watch that video do they want to admit that what they're doing is extremely self biased of course not because it doesn't serve them because if they admit that that means that they have to treat women better that means they can't just go and just obnoxiously exploit and manipulate women in the way that they want to get their sexual needs met so by listening to me that directly conflicts with their number-one objective objective of getting their dick wet and to a guy who struggles getting a girl and you know I've been in that situation before I know how frustrating that can be so I understand your your desperation and you know that need is a desperate need that you have if you don't know how to get your sexual useful field in a healthy manner yeah you're willing to stoop to any level basically to get your dick wet that's how sex works sex is a fundamental human need remember how I told you about that Judge yeah well you know a lot of politicians you know how do they how how do a lot of politicians and judges destroy their careers through inappropriate sex why is that because sex is a base need and it's very easy to corrupt yourself when your sexual needs aren't met because you can be tempted and seduced so easily and that's also what happens a lot of times in the Middle East you know a lot of young men in the Middle East who are sexually frustrated and then they get caught up in various kinds of toxic nationalistic Islamist ideologies and then they become terrorists and suicide bombers and so forth yeah that's why war is another great example of self bias how could you go to war unless you were self biased it would be very hard there are tons of examples of self bias and war for example when Americans commit war crimes we deny that we commit war crimes we sweep it under the rug we are lenient with our soldiers who commit war crimes because yeah you know after all you know they were they were fighting for us they were fighting for the good guys so of course Lea why would we hold our own war criminals to the same level as those Nazi barbarians that's pure self bias see if you didn't have a horse in the race and you were looking at that situation like if you were an alien from outer space who was just hovering on his UFO looking down at the world just of you observing humans like ants you would realize that the Americans commit terrible war crimes just as bad as the Vietnamese did or just as bad as Middle Easterners did or the Germans did so forth but Americans don't see it there's a long history of demonization in wartime which I've talked about in the past I'll give you a few examples here the Romans versus the Carthaginians were vicious enemies fought to the death to exterminate each other they were two different city-states in the Mediterranean you know about the Romans but you probably don't know much about the Carthaginians they were mortal enemies they hated each other and they came up with all sorts of stories about how evil the other one was and they fought battles against each other ultimately the Romans exterminated basically the Carthaginians raised their whole city to the ground but there was vicious demonization of both sides their rather silly when you look at it from an objective third-person perspective see you today and I today we could sit here and we can we can read the history books about the Romans in the Carthaginians you know go go google it look it up on Wikipedia or something you can read that Wikipedia page and you can see that oh this is this was terrible vicious self bias on both sides but you couldn't see it if you were a Roman or if you were Carthaginian because your survival in your identity was at stake the only reason you can look at it objectively now is because it's 2,000 years later and you're neither Roman nor Carthaginian in fact if you were a modern Roman you still probably hold some animosity towards Carthaginians probably just because of your culture that's self bias how about the Romans versus the barbarians they're barbarians were just the Romans demonization that term was a Roman term that was invented to demonize that tribes of Germany of France of you know Ireland and Great Britain at that time mmm these were tribal people they were just as as human as the Romans were sure they might have not had as big and magnificent of a city as Rome was at the time but you know the Romans were were no less barbaric and vicious than the barbarians were you see so for the barbarians perspective the Romans looked like conquerors and like Devils and from the Roman perspective the barbarians seemed like they were you know attacking Rome from outside and they were trying to destroy civilization both were self biased how about Athens and Sparta these were two nation states city states rather in ancient Greece who were also mortal enemies and who went to war many times against each other demonized each other had different lifestyles different cultures read about that the Nazis during World War two were viciously demonized by the Americans literally painted with fangs and horns and Devils tails the Japanese and the Chinese were called Japs and Xinxin were also demonized and painted with horns and so forth by the Americans during World War two during Vietnam and so forth and we do today with Islam America does this with Muslims so you see how that works how about the example of criminals criminals if you haven't noticed very often excuse their own crimes they don't see their own crimes as crimes they don't see themselves criminals especially many white-collar criminals self bias legal disputes are a great example of self bias because what happens in a courtroom you have a prosecuting attorney and a defense attorney they come in there and they just they only argue for their side they only argue for their client their client could be guilty of murder and the defense attorney will still argue for why the guy didn't commit murder because the defense attorney he's getting paid to defend that client he's not getting paid for truth now ideally the judge is supposed to be of the objective one the impartial one who's gonna adjudicate or if not the judge than the jury but but the lawyers themselves are totally Southwest shamelessly self biased and that's why people hate lawyers now of course in truth there are many good lawyers out there who could fight for good causes and the legal system is very important because you have to understand that without the legal system as bad as the legal system might be it's even worse when there is no legal system because then people just grab their knives and swords and guns and go for each other for each other's throats it children how about negotiations when you're negotiating somebody like your employer for a salary raise or you're in the negotiating a business deal with some business partner or you're negotiating for a car that you want to buy what's going on in negotiation is the truth being served in a negotiation of course not everybody knows that in a negotiation both sides are bullshitting as much as humanly possible to justify why they should get the better end of the deal and they are trying to screw the other side isn't that how a negotiation works of course self bias and why because these negotiations are usually directly related to your survival money cash you know a giant negotiation where millions of dollars at stake lots of people's salaries are at stake which means lots of people's survivals are at stake when you're negotiating for your car you know you worked hard for that money so for you saving an extra thousand dollars it's a big deal survival you don't care about what's actually fair in that situation you don't care about like how much does the dealer earn when you're negotiate with you don't think about the dealer's children like you don't ask yourself like well maybe I should be a little bit nicer to the dealer because you know he's not gonna earn enough on this car that his children will go hungry you don't give a [ __ ] about his children you just want your car and you want to save as much as possible and the dealer of course is playing that same game from the opposite side all religion is a amazing example of self bias every religion thinks it's the best every religion has an excuse for an irrational logic and evidence and proof for why it's the one true one the best one the one that you should believe why you should ignore all the other ones and the Catholic Church is probably the best example this you know if you ask the Catholic Church are you guys harming children they will say of course not Lia we would never harm children that goes directly against everything the Catholic Church believes of course of course self bias see if you're a Catholic priest you can't admit that you're part of an organization that abuses children on a systemic massive level around the whole law you can't admit that you can't live with that especially because the church has filled your mind with all these ideas of how how godly you are and how special the church is and how Christ can do no wrong and how God is beautiful and good and moral and all this and how your you're a Messenger of God your representative of God your trying to be saintly in all this this just makes it even worse because now you need to ratchet up your defense mechanisms threefold to deal with that cognitive dissonance with the reality of what goes on in the Catholic Church self bias but it doesn't stop with religion it also this self bias problem is present within all spiritual schools as well all mystical schools even the ones that you would think are good like Zen Buddhism yoga various schools of yoga Sufism what else is there Jainism you know these are some of the better spiritual schools or just advisor neo-advaita even just teachers on their own who are not affiliated with any tradition there they're all self biased they all think their system is the best they all have justifications and reasons for why they're the most enlightened and others aren't why their enlightenment is its complete by others or not every even even just within yoga there's like a thousand different schools of yoga and each one thinks that it's the best of the original the truest the most enlightening the most beneficial the one that helps the most people whatever so fast cults are all extremely self biased if you take any cult that has ever existed in all human history and you go to his leader to the cults leader and you ask them are you a cult they'll look at you with a straight face and they'll say of course not we're good we're not a cult what are you talking about we're helping people to see the truth to wake up we're improving their lives we're not a cult self bias partisanship partisanship is a beautiful example of self bias what are partisans partisans aren't people who take parts who take sides they divide reality into two and then they take one part one side at the expense of the other side and then that brings us to academia and professional science many people are under the illusion that these guys are supposed to be immune to self bias but they aren't I could be me in professional science is extremely self biased and you might wonder well how how telling me how is science self biased well I'll tell you how science is self biased because it's committed to quantifying all of reality to modern science if a thing can't be quantified it doesn't exist and you might tell a scientist but what about this thing here which can't be quantified but clearly it exists the scientist looks at and says well but how do i quantify that I can't quantify it so it must not exist but look it exists yeah but I can't quantify it so doesn't see they don't get it they don't get what they're doing science is biased towards mysticism I mean biased against mysticism bias against spirituality biased against the paranormal biased against evidence of the paranormal there's there's tons of valid evidence about the paranormal that mainstream sciences is totally in denial about and biased against yeah mmm that's very problematic now I'm not saying the science is doomed you know one of the managers of science is that it does involve and there of course are scientists who study the paranormal and they do good research and all this so there are a few cutting-edge scientists who are visionaries but I'm talking about mainstream science for the most part which is still very materialistic and very closed-minded in certain ways science has makes many ungrounded epistemic and metaphysical assumptions that it's in denial about that it refuses to question the self bias of science is what produces paradigms and paradigm lock which it was famously talked about by by Thomas Kuhn a philosopher of science and historian of science the groundbreaking work that's one of the most important scientific works of the 20th century was Thomas Kuhns book about scientific revolutions and paradigms that book by the way is on my book let's go check that out atheism rationalism materialism and reductionism these are self biased how is reductionism self biased well a reductionist a reductionist assumes that you could take all phenomena and reduce it down to just molecules and atoms and physics and then when you point out to him well here's a phenomena that you can't reduce to atoms and physics he will say that's not a real phenomenon then because all phenomenon can be reduced to atoms and physics but that's begging the question you don't know that all phenomena can be reduced to atoms and fitness and of course in truth they can't that's a that's a silly reductionist dogma another great example of south bias is favoring your own family and friends over other people over strangers there's no reason why your family is more important than a stranger other than your self bias and then a great example that is nepotism nepotism is when you put your own family into positions of power even though they haven't earned it or deserved it simply because you have a position of power so it's like if I'm the king then I get to appoint my my sons and daughters as the as the the deputies the Dukes and and so forth of various kinds of departments of the government this is extremely common in developing countries third-world countries all around the world nepotism is rampant in America and in Europe nepotism has been mostly stamped out of course with the exception of of Trump now you know Trump comes back trumps back into power and so he as you've noticed he has no problem with nepotism putting his incompetent children into positions of power over things that they shouldn't be managing objectively speaking his children are clueless about the things that they're engaged in there there are senators Middle Eastern negotiations with Israelis and Palestinians and all this was a clueless no experience in this a high-quality leader would come in there and would realize that well you know I love my children but I'm not going to sacrifice the well-being of the country by putting them into positions that they're not qualify for let me get an expert who's actually knowledgeable about you know Middle Eastern policy to negotiate with the Israelis and Palestinians rather than putting some incompetent a son-in-law in charge that's nepotism and that's exactly how many tires and dictators work when a tyrant comes into power he puts his whole family into all the top positions because he can't trust anyone but his family that's how mob bosses work - that's it of course exactly Trump's modus operandi that's how he's where he's run his whole business his whole life is in this way because that's the level of consciousness that he's at extremely selfish extremely soft biased doesn't even think that there's a problem with this nepotism but of course nepotism is a massive corruption of government it's a huge problem that Europe had to work through you know during the the French Revolution and all through all the struggles that Europe has faced over the last let's say 500 years a lot of it involved nepotism and they had to pass laws against nepotism remove it and of course when that tradition came to America we also passed laws against nepotism now you might say well leo but what about Hillary Clinton wasn't she just like another line in the in the in the lineage of the Clintons and so if she won the election that would also Vinh nepotism yeah that's a problem too that's a problem too but what I'm telling you is that Trump's nepotism is worse and the reason Trump's nepotism is worse is because Hillary Clinton actually is conscious and developed enough that she has a sense of the impropriety of nepotism more so than Trump I'm not saying she's perfect but she is more conscious than Trump if you can't see that you're so biased now you know the problem though is that if you can't see that you're gonna call me self biased for calling out yourself bias of course you will that's how that's how you must act to maintain yourself bias romantic relationships are another great example of self bias most relationships are destroyed by self bias when you're arguing with your spouse girlfriend or boyfriend when they're cheating on you or when you're cheating on them when you are having disputes what is that about self bias you're not actually treating that relationship in a fair manner or you actually care about the needs of the other person most relationships you're trying to get your needs met the other person is trying to get their needs met and it's just this is luck in negotiations transactional that's what most relationships boil down to and of course that's why most relationships and most marriages fail self bias gerrymandering is a beautiful and disgusting example of self bias all at the same time pure self bias the people in power want to redraw the district lines in order to fail it favored themselves they don't care about the truth they don't care about maintaining one-person one-vote they don't care about honoring the the will of the people they just want to maximize their party's chances at winning debates are an example of self bias the reason debates are so useless and the reason that I don't really engage in debates sometimes people ask me Leo winter you need bait that person or this person why aren't you out there talking with people on podcasts and videos and debating with them and all this because debates serve self bias why would I want to waste my time doing that in a debate it's just like a lawyer in a courtroom everybody's just arguing for their own position the truth is lost nobody cares about the truth you're just arguing for your own biases that's all the debate is so mostly debates are a waste of time so if you're frustrated with watching debates that's why because the truth is never addressed mostly you're just reinforcing your own biases when you're watching a debate whoever is most aligned with your bias is the one you're gonna say won the debate because you're not objective the Israelis and the Palestinians this is a huge self biased problem especially on the Israeli side the Israelis are viciously self biased with the encroachment that they're doing you know occupying your eStore territories within Palestine and they're doing this very deliberately it's a deliberate strategy that they've been executing for the last 30 or 40 years I don't know how many years it's been with these Israeli settlements but they're doing it and they're doing it just shamelessly because it serves them because when you believe it Israelis are the chosen people and that they are the ones who are supposed to be in charge of that land the Palestine area the land the holy land of Christ and and Moses and all this yeah you're gonna be self biased and of course the evangelicals support the Israelis that's why America supports Israel so much in this very self biased way and it leads to unfairness it's unfair to the Palestinians who have been allocated those territories in that land bye-bye UN treaties and so forth and past agreements also I want to point out to you as we're talking about these examples it's not always giant issues that involves self bias a lot of times self bias you know many of these examples I'm talking about these are macro examples of countries nations races being self biased but it happens in the micro level every single day for you like have you ever parked at a Walmart or something you go go shopping and then you see some other guy there he parked such a terrible manner that he's like taking up to two parking spots and you get pissed off at this guy you started judging this guy you like how dare this guy look look at how we consider a he's such a bastard the way he parked but that a month later your child is sick or your dog is sick so you're rushing to Walmart to buy some medicine for them and then you park your car terribly just like that guy did and when you're coming back from the store you see you're terribly parked car and you realize oh [ __ ] and that's a that's a interesting moment of a rude awakening but of course a lot of people will rationalize it to themselves you actually notice your mind doing this I noticed this sometimes I mind doing this is I help with excuses from like oh well but but i but I needed this medicine my dog is sick so I needed the medicine so of course I was in a rush in all this and so it's understandable why I would Park this way or just like I'm driving a rented car I don't have the feel for this car yet so of course I'm gonna knock in a park it quite as well as I would park my normal car yeah but you see you didn't offer that same excuse and that same leeway to the guy that you were judging and angry at a month ago for his bad parking job what if his child was sick what if he was in a rush what if he was driving a rented car you don't know you didn't care that's how judgment and criticism work in general they're extremely self biased criticism is never almost never objective Western culture as a whole is extremely self biased how well it's called American exceptionalism especially in America here talking about American culture but what's your culture overall is rationality over emotion analysis over synthesis and holism individualism over collectivism the masculine epistemology versus the feminine materialism over spirituality science over emotions and feelings and human well-being and happiness money and greed over human well-being and happiness and health that's Western culture in nutshell those are all the various self biases you know speaking of masculine versus feminine epistemology you know that the pistil mala G actually comes in in these two different flavors masculine and feminine the last two thousand years of Western culture have mostly been feminine epistemology from I mean sorry masculine masculine epistemology of course from-from masculine philosophers because most philosophers in Western culture were male and it was only recently like in the last seventy years that feminist philosophers have emerged and feminist epistemologists have emerged and they have rethought how epistemology works and they've made some important critiques books have been written about how one's theory of knowledge and even one's way of knowing the world is actually skewed and distorted by whether you're masculine or feminine or feminine and there's different approaches and that different epistemologies lead to different results and different conclusions about reality that's that's an important consideration that the feminists have introduced into Western philosophy that's important don't dismiss that of course another example is the u.s. foreign policy again American exceptionalism this is extremely self biased the way that America tries to bully other nations tries to manipulate them interfere with their elections tries to extract resources tries to create favorable business environments in the Middle East or in South America or elsewhere through sometimes through their diplomatic leverage sometimes through military intervention sometimes through threats of war deposing democratically elected governments overseas this is self bias you could only have this kind of foreign policy if you were biased towards your own nation if you actually believe that other nations has have equal sovereignty and deserve their own autonomy and deserve their own democracies you couldn't have the kind of foreign policy that has existed for the last seven years in America I also want to point out as an example many internet intellectuals that are popular these days online on YouTube and elsewhere there are a lot of these sort of pseudo intellectuals that masquerade as though they are defenders of truth across the internet which are just hopelessly self biased obnoxiously self biased cartoonishly self biased I'm talking about people like Jordan Peterson ben shapiro stefan molyneux dave rubin sam harris neil degrasse tyson even Christopher Hitchens Daniel Dennett Lawrence Krauss Bill Nye even various kinds of online gurus Indian gurus that you see that are popular on youtube today yeah most of these guys are extremely self biased and they have no idea what they're doing at the metal level they have no idea what they're doing so be very careful in fact most intellectuals of any kind are gonna be very soft biased because this this notion that I'm teaching you of self buys is this is cutting-edge stuff like it's not talked about almost anywhere almost nobody knows about this stuff and for a good reason because nobody wants to know about this stuff because it's not in their agenda and it's not in their favor it doesn't serve their survival to know about this stuff humanity as a whole is deeply self biased I call it the human species bias we believe were the best species the smartest species the most advanced species the most important species the only species that actually counts that matters the only one that deserves rights the only one that that we need to care about the suffering of the only one whose epistemology in science is the best and correct we don't even consider the epistemologies of animals that's how biased humanity is so that's the list of examples of course there's plenty more but that'll do it for now let me share a list with you now of related terms to the term self bias so self bias is often synonymous with selfishness conflict of interest hypocrisy double standards confirmation bias cherry-picking justification rationalization partiality or just be partial paradigm lock as I've talked about the past devilry mess-up talked about the past intellectual dishonesty survival as I talked about in the past and self-deception as I've talked about in the past I have episodes on many of these I've episodes on devilry I have episodes on survival I have so it's selfishness I have episodes on self-deception these are all closely related ideas but they're also fine distinctions we can make between these and because it's such an important topic that's why I shoot videos from different angles to cover this from different angles now you might wonder in the end like leah why should I be objective why why what's in it for me to be objective well hopefully some of the examples I mentioned up above have have gotten you to start to see some of the problems see there's some nasty things I mentioned up above that happened from self bias but but let's let's reiterate that let's make it more clear so why is self bias a problem well even even before I get I get to that list look can you see how even just asking what's in it for me why should I be objective how already how dysfunctional that is already how self bias that is because you're asking me to frame this entire conversation in such a way that it serves your stupid petty little ego as if your ego is the most important and only thing in the universe as if that could be the only consideration that a living being could have is its own survival see you see the problem you're already deeply self past so if you're asking what's in it for me you're you're already deeply deluded and you're not gonna understand what I'm saying here you need to be open to an attitude towards life where it's not about you it's not about what's in it for me in a sense I don't even want to play your game I don't even want to explain to you why you should worry about self bias but I will anyways I will frame it for you in a selfish manner because the only thing you understand is selfishness so that's why I'll frame it for you though that way but understand that this is not gonna be enough you're gonna need to go beyond your selfishness to really understand me but anyways here it is selfishly the reason you should have worried about self bias is because it precludes self-reflection and questioning of deep fundamental assumptions these deep fundamental assumptions that you don't question constitute your paradigm which then lead to a distorted view of the world a distorted view of the world means that you're gonna [ __ ] things up badly when you're trying to manipulate systems in the world because you don't understand them they're gonna backfire on you in catastrophic ways leading to of course death and suffering is that a good enough reason for you to care about self bias at least a paradigm lock it closes down the mind it leads to cultural and tolerance at least to violence hatred anger judgment and demonization of other humans and even nonhumans leads to oppression abuse of power exploitation enslavement criminality leads to corruption leads to nepotism leads to lying in propaganda it precludes and retards the evolution of society it creates unfairness and inequality makes healthy relationships virtually impossible makes genuine communication virtually impossible between two beings it precludes responsibility taking which is a core principle of self-improvement and spirituality it creates evil what you consider evil you see so if you don't care about self bias then you have no right to complain about evil in the world because evil is the result of self bias we are discussing the mechanics of evil here so don't be perplexed and confused and asking naive question I Kolya why does evil exist why do bad things happen to good people self [ __ ] bias that's why because everyone is as selfish as you and nobody cares about that's why and ultimately the greatest tragedy of self bias is that it precludes the discovery of truth absolute truth of the capital t it precludes the discovery of God you can't discover God if you're too self biased have you ever wondered why people are such monsters and Devils it's not that there are monsters and devils they're just blind to their self biases as Jesus said forgive them father for they know not what they do have you ever noticed how you just really don't give a [ __ ] about other people's problems have you noticed this I want you to notice this it's amazing really somebody on TV could have lost their child or their parent and yours clicking through the channels and you watch it and you see it and you're like okay and then yeah it's kind of bad and you just kind of move on but for that person to lose their child or their parent this is a huge massive ordeal a massive problem huge suffering grief torture the depths of hell for this person for weeks for months for years they're coping with this just struggling with this for you nothing nothing not even not even a second not even a second of suffering or pain for you why why why is it such a big problem for them but not for you because a problem isn't a problem unless it affects you that's your attitude towards life that's how self biased you are problems don't even exist for you unless they affect you that's what a problem is yeah you just don't care you don't care even if your mom has a problem a lot of times you just don't care why not cuz it doesn't serve you to care notice that notice how viciously self biased you are but then when you have that same problem or now all the sudden you care all now it's a giant problem now it's a huge drama it's a huge ordeal oh my god oh my god I need help Leo please help me yeah only when it affects you do you care that's the level of consciousness that you're at right now but I want you to know that there are higher levels of consciousness where you can care even when something doesn't directly affect you have you noticed how partial people are to their own cultures it's crazy it's it's it's almost cartoonish it's ridiculous when you zoom out and take a look at how people value their culture and think that their culture is superior that their culture is the best their cuisine is the best their people are the best their races the bet their nationality is the best their cultures come up with the best inventions the best science the best spirituality the best yoga the best this the best the books the movies the whatever the poems the stories the language is the best self eyes blind self bias and perhaps the starkest example of self bias is the way that humans treat death and suffering humans just do not care about the death and suffering of other species almost not at all a few advanced humans do but most humans not at all and certainly not for most of human history why not because it didn't serve us to care but why should it matter why should there be a difference between the death of a human and an ant you know some celebrity dies in the news some big musician or movie star or whatever and people are all sad about it they type about it on the on the forums on social media and all boo-hoo-hoo and how tragic how terrible it is you know the New York Times writes a big post about it you know Time magazine puts the picture of their face everywhere you see it on the at the supermarket shelves you see everybody's you know eulogizing how great this person was yada yada yada when a bird dies a pigeon outside in your neighborhood what does anybody care does they get splattered all over the evening news no nobody gives a [ __ ] but what's the difference is there a difference is there really a difference if you were truly objective if you were like an alien from outer space on a sitting on a UFO just looking down with your telescope would there be any difference of course not of course not the value of the life of bird is no less than the value of a life of some celebrity and yet look how differently we treat them why because we're so goddamn partial and unobjective so if you really want to have the proper perspective a high elevation perspective of the whole universe you need to step outside of all this crap all this partial stuff that you're doing and you need to start to become objective here's a key insight I want you to remember for the rest of your life how bias works the devil sees objectivity and impartiality as evil as bias and as disloyalty by devil I mean a selfish person to understand what I mean by devil go see my episode what is the devil search warrant so the devil and what makes him a devil is that he will project his own bias onto objective and selfless people - a devil the worst possible sin is putting truth above loyalty to some to himself and so Devils will absolutely Gaslight you as you're trying to be objective and impartial don't expect people to appreciate or validate your objectivity and impartiality they will actually do the opposite see when you point out the self biases of other people they will get deeply offended by it and deeply hurt and they will lash out at you so that's why for example conservatives perceive calling out evils of the government as disloyalty because many conservatives don't wanna admit for example that the US government commits war crimes that's why many white supremacists complain about reverse racism because when you call out legitimate racism in society the people who are participating in the racism they need some defense mechanisms so what they do is they project their own bias back on to you by calling you a reverse racist white genocide and all this sort of stuff the Catholic Church perceives critiques of the church as the work of the devil will perceive a critique of science and materialism as pseudoscience mysticism and anti science so I have rendered many critiques of science in the past and oftentimes people listen to me and they say oh well then Leo must be anti science no I'm not anti science I love science I'm actually a true defender of science but of course it's precisely because I am a true defender of science and I'm pointing out the corruptions of science in the same way that if I was pointing out the corruptions of the Catholic Church I would be demonized for it of course of course that's how devilry works because the devil is not aware of his own self bias he projects it onto you so if you have gripes with me about being self bias be careful watch out maybe you're a devil maybe you need to look within to find your own biases first before you go complaining about mine if you are going to become a selfless conscious loving objective unbiased person which is the point of this work you will be attacked and you will be attacked precisely on the following terms you will be attacked for being selfish egotistical narcissistic amoral subjective biased unscientific irrational disloyal to the human race and to your country and you will be called evil and you will be called the devil so all of the things that you are precisely working to correct within yourself as you're spiritually purifying yourself you will be called all of those things by other devils who are not doing this work so just keep that in mind be ready for that I'm telling you all this so you're ready for it this is what happened with Socrates with Jesus with Buddha with maja with Mahatma Gandhi with Martin Luther King it's happening right now with Bernie Sanders for example if you seek to significantly uplift society you will be demonized this is a general rule of human society and human nature because what's involved with uplifting society is undoing selfishness and self bias but the ego hates with itself biases are pointed out so of course the ego is going to lash out and project because the ego wants to rig the game for its own advantage so the thing the ego hates the most is those people those whistleblowers who point out the rigging of the game that the ego is doing see the ego treats this as the worst and greatest threat the greatest disloyalty what the ego wants is the ego wants compatriots who are going to be loyal conspirators in this conspiracy of self deception and self bias doesn't just work alone by itself soft bias is compounded by conformity it's very hard to be soft biased all by yourself as an individual it's much easier when you have a bunch of other people who aren't as self biased as you so that all of us can come together and we can be self biased as a group you know because if I'm viciously racist yeah it's gonna be hard for me to maintain that but if I can be viciously racist and I can gather a social media group of ten thousand other vicious racists and then we can come up with a story about how it's the other people who are actually reverse racists against us then we can convince ourselves that we don't actually have a self bias and that turns out to be one of the core functions of human groups is to normalize self bias because in a group we can create a story that creates a collective denial of our shameless self biases and that's exactly what certain organizations for example Fox News is doing that is the whole structure of Fox News the people who work there don't even understand that they're doing this because they are all surrounded by others who are asked self biased as them and they're spewing out this propaganda and the value this propaganda has to people who watch fox news is that of course they themselves are as self biased as the people on fox news and this is a great benefit because it builds a collection of millions of people who can be self biased together you can be a devil together collective devilry and as we do this collective devilry we can convince ourselves that were actually angels and that's how the devil really does is work the devil doesn't do his work individually the devil does most of his work collectively through individuals collectively so you might be wondering Malia what's the alternative to self bias its impartiality and objectivity I'll give you two examples from art history actually you know I was a student of art history really love art history passionate about it ever since high school and there are two paintings that that I always found admirable because of the objectivity that they demonstrated these are two paintings by French painter neoclassical painter Jacques lui dahveed maybe you've seen these before these are pretty famous especially the first one I'm gonna show you which is called the death of Socrates now I don't know how much you know about Socrates I'll just tell you the story here in brief but Socrates were put on trial by the people of Athens for corrupting the minds of the youth that was the official charge against him he was tried and ultimately he was convicted he was actually given a chance to repent I think he was given a chance to change his ways to admit that he did wrong and to I guess maybe excommunicate himself or something like that but Socrates was too proud and he had too much integrity and basically he said that no I will I will take my punishment because Socrates believed in the rule of law so he said you know whatever you guys decide should be my punishment I will take it because that's how much I believe in truth and the rule of law and so he was sentenced to death he was sentenced to drink a cup of Hemlock I believe it was some kind of poison and so this image that you see here this this piece called the death of Socrates by Jacques Louie de vide is the moment right before Socrates drinks the hemlock so this is a powerful scene powerful image which demonstrates the integrity and the objectivity and impartiality of Socrates he calmly takes his punishment drinks the hemlock of his own will you know doesn't refuse he they don't have to force him to drink it or anything and then and I'm just paraphrasing here but I believe in his last moments you know after he drank the hemlock he just kind of sat there on the bed he walked around a little bit he felt the poison kicking in within a few minutes starting to you know affect him disable his motor functions and so forth and he just you know he talked to the people there and he just explained what was happening to them and he was she was kind of interested and curious about the whole thing and people asked him well aren't you afraid to die and he would say why would I be afraid to die but because I don't even know what death is you know if I had died and I knew the death was terrible then I would be you know it would be reasonable for me to be fearful of death but since since none of us have experienced death what if death is the greatest thing there is so I shouldn't fear death it's unreasonable it's irrational to fear death and he lived up to those words and so that shows you what true objectivity impart reality and integrity really means imagine being able to be that objective in real life see you can see that this is an extraordinary psyche an extraordinary being behaves this way not your average guy and then the second painting is also by Jacques lui de vide and it's called the lictors bring to Brutus the bodies of his sons so this is uh this is also an image from ancient Rome so Brutus was one of the founders of the Roman Republic and he really believed in the Republic and democratic rule and so forth against tyranny and emperors and so when he discovered that his own sons were conspiring to bring a tyrant and a monarch to power to overthrow the Republic he had the tough decision to make of sentencings sentencing his own sons to death and so because he believed in the Republic so much he believed in the principles of it he had high integrity he sacrificed his own sons committed them to death and now in this scene the you could see in the corner there off to the side the bodies are brought being brought into him and he's sitting there you know dealing with the magnitude of his decision of having to choose the Republic over his own sons which shows you the power of of integrity and what it takes to be able to make a decision like that now you could contrast that for example with Trump if Trump discovered that one of his sons or his son in laws or his relatives was engaged in some sort of corrupt activity in the government would he put them to death what he tried them as a traitors would he care at all or would he hide their corruption you probably know the answer to that question so as you can see truly impartial people are very rare these are the kinds of people we need more of this is the kind of person that you need to be if you're doing this work you'll notice that objectivity and impartiality is not taught in school or in university that's not by accident that's because those who are in charge what their biases reinforced so why would they teach you in partiality and objectivity if school or science or university taught you true objectivity and impartiality it would undermine itself and it would destroy that institution from within so of course it's not in their agenda to teach you luckily we're different here with extra lines that orange now you might wonder but Leo what about your self biases our choose self bias it seems like you're sitting up here judging everybody else condemning everybody else but you're a hypocrite what you need to understand about self bias this whole topic is that it's not about judging or condemning others it's very easy to condemn others for self bias it's really about getting you to self-reflect I'm not condemning you I understand where you're at because I've been where you're at and to a certain degree I still am where you're at I do have self biases the difference is that I've been observing and studying myself biases for the last 20 years and you probably haven't that's the difference it's not that I am perfect and then I don't have a single self bias it's that I'm more aware of my self biases than most people and that makes me more aware of the self biases of other people as well and this helps me to avoid various kinds of self-deception again don't misunderstand me I'm not perfect I am always vulnerable to self-deception itself bias and therefore I have to be vigilant all the time so the lesson here is that you must vigilant and I comport with that lesson I am trying to be vigilant now you're not always gonna be perfect in your vigilance precisely because my point is that the self biases are extremely tricky you might be able to spot a self bias within me that I'm not able to spot yet within myself but I probably will over time because I'm always on the hunt for more self biases and that's what my growth process has been over the last 20 years of course it's hard for you guys to see it how much my positions have changed on things you know when I started out I was an atheist when I sorted out I was all on board with science it took me a lot of questioning of my own self biases to see the limitations of science and atheism and materialism and reductionism and realism and many other philosophies and ideologies of pick up you know I was in pick up and I didn't see the self biases of pick up until I got more aware and then I became more conscious of self biases in my intimate relationships self biases within the way I interact with my family and friends self biases with how I run actualize Org over time I've been spotting more and more of those so this is a never-ending project this is not something you're just you watch one video you go oh yeah I can understand self bias then you're done no this is your vigilant for the rest your life as I have to be and even as you have awakenings and enlightenment you're still not immune to self bias in fact in certain ways you're open to even further self biased even deeper levels of self bias because now that you're awake you think that you've you understand it all which you probably don't but leo isn't it what you're talking about here isn't this relativism isn't this post-modernism is just nihilism actually no this goes way deeper than just relativism and post-modernism actually post-modernism is self biased it took me quite a while to realize the self bias as a post-modernism and if relativism a lot of people get stuck there especially stage green people but leo is it really possible to ever be objective isn't that there's just a pipe dream well that's the best the really interesting bit is that it's possible to access the absolute it actually is possible believe it or not to access absolute truth and absolute understanding of reality that is possible but not using conventional means not using science and not using any of the kind of worldviews or philosophies that we've talked about in this episode and you might wonder well how is that possible how could it be possible to be objective when Leo everything is so subjective and you're always looking through human perception well believe it or not when you go deep enough you can actually deconstruct you in perception and you can deconstruct human subjectivity and what you'll end up with is the absolute and that's what Awakening is about but I can't go into too much depth on that here I've talked about it in the past another objection is but Leo how do I know when I'm truly being unbiased is there some metric some rule of thumb and the answer is no there's not that's the whole trick to it if there was a simple metrical rule of thumb if you could just quantify it in some way if you could just lay out some Ten Commandments that you need to follow to be forever unbiased in your life to avoid self-deception well then we wouldn't be having this talk it would be easy I would just give you the ten rules the ten commandments you would follow them and everything would be peachy but of course it doesn't work this way the whole point is that you never know when you're gonna deceive yourself so you always have to be vigilant I wish I could just tell you that all just take this psychedelic and you will forever be unbiased but it doesn't work that way and even if you do yoga or meditation you can still be biased so there's no foolproof method it takes consciousness it takes constant vigilance it takes energy it's not easy so what's the solution to self bias it's this first of all start noticing your self biases it all starts there notice the large ones notice the smallest catch yourself applying double standards to how you justify your own actions and beliefs stop trusting in your own justifications stop favoring your own interests above all other interests drop manipulations and schemes to get your own way at any cost try to have integrity in your dealings with people try to have integrity in your intellectual positions stop asking but what's in it for me because if you're always asking but what's in it for me that's leading you down the road of self bias that's a self biased question cultivate a genuine desire for the truth regardless of the cost regardless of how it makes you feel make it a top value a top priority above even your own survival and just read more and study divergent points of view this goes a very long way towards opening your mind and helping you to see your own self biases when you lock yourself into a propaganda bubble like Fox News or a liberal one you know there are also liberal propaganda bubbles that you can lock yourself into through YouTube or other it becomes incestuous your world you become so incestuous because you're always just interacting with others who have the same worldview and you're not getting diverse perspectives from outsiders which is exactly what you need you need this whether you're running a business or you're having family trouble you need outside perspectives if you aren't yet able to drop a self bias at least have the courage to admit that your self biased see there's there's two stages here first you have to notice that yourself biased and then admit it to yourself and to others potentially and then the second step is you have to go beyond they actually let it go let go of the self bias like for example you might admit that yeah leo you know what I favor white people over black people or you know i favor European cuisine over Asian cuisine you might admit that to yourself then you might go one step further and admit that publicly I mean that's your family admit that to your friends whatever that you know that takes courage takes honesty but then there's one step further where you actually have to surrender that position and that's where it's really difficult because you feel uncomfortable you know maybe make more friends with people from different cultures or maybe go travel to countries with cuisine that you're not comfortable in that's the actual step you take to let go of that self bias see and then do that intellectually do that if you're a conservative do that if you're a liberal do that if you're a nihilist do that if you're a materialist or whatever now you might say Oh Leo but but shouldn't shouldn't you do that Leo shouldn't you do that with with non-duality if you're gonna if you're gonna like eat your own dog food here and follow your advice shouldn't you question non-duality and shouldn't you question god no because that's the absolute non-duality is not a soft bias sorry but I know that doesn't seem fair to you because you want non-duality to be a self bias but non-duality is not a self bias non-duality is a transcendence of all self biases if you ever manage to do that and that is possible to do it's amazing that it's possible but it's possible people have done it you can do it it's just tricky so one of the ultimate counterintuitive moves you can make in life is breaking loyalty with yourself with your family with your tribe with your nation with your religion with your reason with your race with your human species all the stuff that you identify with that you hold so dear is so important and so valuable to you your tradition your heritage your ancestry your symbols all of this I'm suggesting a radical way to improve your life take all of that and throw it in the incinerator and trust that your life will improve if you do that and I know that seems kind of crazy and I know that that's the last thing you want to do but if you do this I'm telling you you will have the best life possible and you might wonder well Leo what's the reward for me doing all this what's in it for me if I do all this well first of all notice that's the wrong question to ask but second of all there actually is a reward and the reward is the truth with a capital T God immortality and infinite love that is the reward for living in unbiased life but do you understand what that reward really means no you don't unless you've actualized living an unbiased life which you probably have it so you're gonna need to have some faith you need to do some work you know I did about a decade or two of work before I I actualized the fruits of an unbiased life of an unbiased worldview and was it worth it [ __ ] yeah it was worth it you won't regret it it's the greatest move you'll ever make in your life that's it I'm signing off here one little tip I'll I'll leave you with is go to my book list if you purchased it and do a ctrl F or if you're on a Mac command F search of the the pages of my book list and search for a book with the title mistakes the keyword mistakes is gonna be in the title of the book mistakes and then read that book that book talks about soft bias and soft justification it talks about it gives very concrete specific examples within medicine within science within law of ways in which people have been extremely self biased and all the calamity and problems that this led to it so it's a really good book mistakes is in the name of the title so you will search for it and find it that's it I'm done here please click like button for me and come check out actualized at org that's my website you'll find my blog where I post a lot of insights and videos and resources that I share pretty cool stuff that you only find there I also sometimes post unique vlog videos that I only shoot for my blog so check those out I update it kind of randomly but consistently you'll also find my book list that I just mentioned you'll find a life purpose course and you'll find the forum where you can chat about all this stuff and the last thing that I'll say is this of course actualized org as a school or as a teaching has its biases I have a certain personality I have certain things that I resonate with other things that I don't resonate with I have certain a certain teaching style I have a certain style the way that my mind works and so the way that I teach of course is filtered through me and it can't be otherwise now of course there are some biases which are harmless there are some biases which can be very toxic and damaging so I tried to avoid exposing you to any damaging and toxic biases that I might have I'm very careful about that but that still leaves me with many just kind of like no normal biases the way that I do spirituality the way that I talk about the spirituality you know there's various different kinds of spiritual paths one can have one can have a path of love one can have a path of intellect one can have a path of yoga or meditation or karma or whatever you know these various different paths that exist different methods there can be a more feminine spirituality can be a more masculine spirituality there can be a spirituality for introverts or spirituality for extroverts there can be a spirituality which is kind of grounded in science and there can be a spirituality which is grounded very new agey type of stuff like very mystical and doesn't care about science at all so you know I do make certain kinds of choices you know my teachings are a little bit more masculine feminine my teachings are a little bit more scientific and intellectual than certain other teachings I have certain biases and that I favor for example sharing insights and understanding understanding is very important to me not just shutting off my mind so my teachings aren't intellectual whereas certain other spiritual teachings are kind of anti intellectual they're more emotional or they're more bodily if you're doing hatha yoga or whatever so yeah so these various biases of course do exist and I've been I've been pointing them out to you pretty much from the beginning which is why I've been trying to expose you to various different schools different teachings the way one of the most important ways that we counteract our self biases is precisely by studying lots of diverse sources and acknowledging that our way my way is not the only way for example I talked about psychedelics a lot for me it's been a powerful tool for you maybe it's not going to be or maybe it will you know it depends I have a bias toward psychedelics other people don't other teachers don't that's fine don't expect everybody to be equal that's not the point of this topic of it's just that you got to be aware of it and also it means you got to expose yourself cross pollinate in the intellectual domain you know cross pollinate different traditions schools thoughts ideas all of this this will make life much richer for you and expose many blind spots and keep you from getting trapped into cults and toxic ideologies which can SAP your life and get you painted into a corner to the point where you just get so stuck that it becomes them a condition for the rest of your life and that's that's the key that we want to avoid you