On Freedom and Lies – Ep. 162

Next level humans are always open to debate, to different ideas, and most of all, to respect other people’s viewpoints. And one thing that every human being has in common is the right to have an opinion in the first place. But what if all the arguments around this opinion come from a place of misinformation? In the world that we live in, which one has more importance, freedom of speech or speech itself?

Welcome to this week’s episode of Next Level Human Podcast. In this episode, Dr. Jade talks about the concept of having the freedom to express our opinions and say what we think out loud versus having the honesty to not spread lies. A great thing about technology and social media is that everyone has access to all kinds of information, but at the same time, everyone can produce information (even if it’s wrong information). Tune in to listen to the whole episode!

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TRANSCRIPTION:

Podcast Intro: [00:14] welcome to the Next Level Human Podcast. As a human, you have a job to do. In fact, you have four jobs; to earn and manage money, to attain and maintain health and fitness, to build and sustain personal relationships, to find meaning and make a difference. None of these jobs are taught in school and that is what this podcast is designed to do. To educate us all on living our most fulfilled lives through the mastery of these four jobs. I'm your host, Dr. Jade Teta and I believe we are here living this life for three reasons and three reasons only; to learn, to teach and to love. In this podcast, I will be learning, teaching, and loving right along with you. I'm grateful to have your company; here is to our next level.

Episode Intro: [01:18] welcome to the show everyone. Today we are going to be discussing one of these topics that is a let's get us thinking topic. It's all about the next level human philosophy and psychology. And it is a very difficult one. And you'll see why in just a second. It's not just a difficult one for me, it's going to be for you. In fact, it is what I believe the biggest issue that is currently facing our world in general right now. We are now in a world where we have information at our fingertips; everyone does. And so everyone in the sense has become a researcher, and someone who can get information at will. And what we've seen is that this has been a blessing and a curse both a heaven and a hell, a demon and an angel and the reason why is because what we have learned is information in and of itself does not give us power, so to speak but it only potentially gives us power and understanding. In a lot of ways if we don't know how to sort information, make sense of information, and it most especially and saliently to this discussion, to determine what is actually truth from fiction, and how to maneuver around that, then, in fact, it is not powerful at all but it is a I shouldn't say it's not powerful, certainly powerful but it is not something that is going to elevate us but rather something that will destroy us. And this is the idea of misinformation and disinformation and also how this collides with freedom of speech. And to me this is one of the biggest things that we all must deal with as humans as aspiring next level humans trying to be our next level human selves, we are going to have to grapple with this. And the fact of the matter is that you and me, none of us can escape this, we will find ourselves believing in sometimes ridiculous, untrue things, simply because we don't know how to make sense of things. And so I certainly am not going to start this podcast with the arrogant stance that I know the solution to this problem. I just want this to be a place where we can all come regardless of what you believe, and just talk about this issue in this podcast. And so this is what this is going to be. Now of course, I know many of you have very different beliefs than I do. And in fact, I am a person who celebrates that. I think that the quintessential sign of an immature psyche is one that wants the world to behave and look exactly like it. In other words, I feel like a sign of maturity and a quintessential aspect of being a next level human or trying to come from that mental construct more often than not, is to not only tolerate different points of views but be inspired by them and interested in them. Think about it when we think about a next level human the idea is that we are centered around our own personal growth and evolution, not just for ourselves but the world and let's talk about this for a minute in terms of the next level.

[05:02] A human way of looking at the world, many people, and I would say far too many people nowadays come from an extremely individualistic point of view, it's me against the world, nothing else matters. Now, I'm not here to judge that. But I am to say, that's not a viable, reasonable, rational way to approach the world because it is destructive. And I'll just give you a simple example of this. If me and my neighborhood, I decide to do whatever I want to do, take whatever I want from my neighbors, not recycle, be destructive in any way, look after my own good, but not others. If I tend to do that, and then all my neighbors start to do that, then what will begin to happen is none of us are helping each other out, all of us are wanting everything for ourselves, and it becomes a free for all, I believe I deserve, I want to take from you and elevate myself. So I want to elevate myself and push you all down. That is a very base level way of approaching the world. And when we take this extremely individualistic viewpoint, and all of us start to do that, it begins to become chaotic, we can't have agreement, we feel like it's us against them. And basically, the world begins to degrade pretty quickly. Likewise, if I decide I'm going to align with a team, especially a political team, Democrats or Republicans or any particular group of people, and then dehumanize and demonize other groups, I am also violating some of the principles of self preservation because what happens is I create enemies for my team that would not have existed otherwise, and create a conflict where none needs to be. And this can also begin to then create division, creating potential destruction of the humanity that we all might aspire to. Now, there's certainly a third way, the first way being the base level way me against the world, the second way, being the culture level, weigh us against them. And the third way being that it is me and you, we are team, a team we are Team human, so to speak. And I'm just realizing, actually, now that I'm wearing my team human T shirts. But the idea that where I go, you go, and by taking care of you, I'm taking care of me and by paying attention to your needs, and my needs at the same time, I'm taking care of us and you are taking care of us. And what if everyone worked that way, right? Instead of being extremely individualistic base level human, or extremely team based, culture level human, we were instead extremely both, we were both for ourselves and others simultaneously. We were both growing ourselves. But we were doing that and evolving ourselves so that we can better the world. This is the next level human way of looking at this.

[08:07] now when it comes to disinformation and misinformation and free speech. Let's talk a little bit about the definitions here just for a minute. And then the different ways that maybe a base level human coming at this, versus a culture level human coming at this, versus a next level human coming at this would potentially look at these issues and interact with information in general. This information, in my mind, is what base level humans would ply in. If it's me against the world, and I'm looking for power and I'm looking to elevate myself over you, then I'm going to do whatever it takes to make myself look good, make you look bad, get myself money, and keep you away from power. So I'm going to look for material gain for myself, monetary gains for myself, and comfort and stability and safety for myself without any care for you. In fact, I will procure safety, stability, powerful myself at the expense of you. So in a very real way I care about only myself. And I do not care about you. And I will certainly hurt you to help myself. This is sort of the base level way of looking at this now, when we talk about disinformation; disinformation is this idea that I know what I'm talking about is not true. Or I know that I have no proof for it, but I speak about it as truth. And I do it and use it in a way to further the goal of either tearing you down and elevating myself up or tearing another group down so that I can create an enemy out there and base level humans oftentimes do this in their head. Part of the reason they do this is not because we're bad people is because their fear predominates. And their major motivational drive has to do with safety and security. And so when you are scared as an individual, if that's your default state, you will look out there and assume everyone is out to get you whether they are or not. And yes, I have, and we should all have compassion for individuals like this. But we also have to realize these individuals exist in the world, and they do ply in disinformation. Now at a one on one level, you see this all the time, don't you friends gossiping about other friends, saying things that are untrue, we can see this on an individual level with shit talking, and gossip. And oftentimes, you see this in teenagers, and kids and young adults. And then most of us either mature out of that, or we begin to rein it in a little bit because we know it's not culturally acceptable. And in order to get our aims if we are a base level human, we need to be a little bit more Machiavellian, more manipulative, more quiet about it but base level humans will be narcissistic Machiavellian and psycho psychopathic in their orientations to the world. And in case you are not familiar with psychology research, this these are the three traits of the dark triad narcissism, which basically says, I am better than you and I deserve more than you Machiavellianism which means I will do things to manipulate you and tear you down so I can get gain and psychopath meaning that I don't care about your feelings and nor do what can I be empathetic and compassionate towards you. I simply care about my gain. Base level, humans tend to be very, very strong in the dark triad traits of narcissism, Machiavellianism, and psychopath, and they will apply in this information. So this information is the idea that I know something's not true, or I can't prove that it's true, and I will use it as a weapon. I will weaponize information that is false or improvable, as of yet, in order to get my way or to tear someone else down. This is disinformation. Okay? And this can also be applied in the realm of one government to the other. So for example, Russia plying disinformation against the United States, let's say or the United States, plying disinformation against Russia, another word for this, by the way, when it's taken to the level of geopolitical situations would be propaganda, right? So this idea of propaganda things that we are going to use to turn other people away from certain ideas and get them on board with our ideas. And just so you know whenever we're in uncertain fearful times, which we certainly are, right now coming off of COVID. And some of those things, what we have seen in research is that people tend to when they are stressed, go more base level, propaganda tends to be more effective against individuals. And so disinformation is something that will be used by base level humans now misinformation, is the idea that I'm going to pass on information that I don't know is true, but I'm not doing it on purpose to hurt you or hurt other people. I'm simply passing it on; I'm simply a link in the chain. So in a sense, misinformation is not as bad in a sense and this is usually applied in the realm of culture level humans, they will take disinformation or information they can't prove that looks bad for the other team. For example, I'm going to pass on information that's negative about Donald Trump or negative about Joe Biden are negative about the Democrats and positive about the Republicans. Because I'm I aligned myself with a particular team. Now it doesn't matter what team that you associate with. Hopefully, if you're an aspiring next level human and you've been listening to this podcast, you are slowly understanding that you shouldn't be on either team. You should be on Team human, not team Republican or team Democrat, you should not be on the extreme right extreme left but rather in the extreme middle and that we need more people like this, who are actually operating from first principles rather than basic level, self survival and culture level team think. But culture level people oftentimes will pass on disinformation, not being the originators of this different disinformation, but being the sort of gasoline on the fire of this information and spread it so disinformation might be purposely deceiving people. Misinformation is unknowingly passing this stuff on, but it's no less evil, is it? In a sense, it's no less destructive? Is it in a sense, and this we know from history in the world is extremely dangerous and can kill millions. All we need to do is call up World War Two and the propaganda around that and how it kind of started with disinformation amongst a few base level humans, that then went to misinformation among mostly good people who were psychologically hijacked by a few base level humans. And by the way, this can happen, and some would argue happens all of the time. And it's always a constant battle. And of course, then on top of that, we have to look at this idea. Well, we can't get to this point where it's like we don't want disinformation, because we know it's incredibly dangerous. And we know the Internet has amplified its danger. And we want to mitigate against misinformation, of course, but we cannot go and then say, well, we don't want any information. Because as soon as we start policing information, in general, we also lose the thread of truth.

[16:13] And so we have this very weird thing that's happens here, where we have disinformation and lies on one hand, freedom of speech on the other hand, and the need to be able to express ourselves and to have different ideas and then this gasoline on the fire in the middle, that would be misinformation. And the whole point of me doing this particular podcast is to draw to all of our attention, that we are the individuals amongst our family and our friends, and all the culture level humans out there, which by the way, just as an aside, hopefully, you know that when we talk about the next level, human construct and psychology, there's no such thing as a next level human so to speak, it's just where you're operating most of the time so all of us can be base level at times. Hopefully, as you listen to this podcast, you begin to catch yourself and are spending less time in base level mindsets, we all can be cultured level at times and team based in our thought processes. Hopefully, though, as a as a listener of this podcast, you're slowly realizing that the next level human way of being is the most important and best way to be to grow ourselves, evolve the world and leave a positive imprint on everyone. So how do we as aspiring next level humans, who can sometimes go bass level and sometimes go culture level deal with this, this continuum of disinformation and misinformation and truth and deal with freedom of speech around that?

[21:46] And let's get back to the show. Now, this brings us to the concept of first principles. And I want to ask you a couple questions here. What do you think are the most important first principles that a human can have? Do you think for example, honesty is more important than kindness? Or do you think kindness is more important than honesty? Do you think strength is more important than generosity? Or do you think generosity is more important than strength? Now the reason I bring this up is because these are very important questions to ask. In my mind, when you think about first principles, you start to go okay, what is the most important thing for me as a human to show up in the world as so that the rest of the world is better. So for example, let's take honesty and kindness. Now if I show up kind, and I'm a people pleaser and I always just say nice things to you all of the time even though you're an asshole, or you're not doing very good, or you know, a very simple example, Your breath stinks, let's say and I want to be kind, which is funny, because I just did a bad breath episode a couple episodes ago. So we'll go with this, this idea of bad breath. Now if you have bad breath, and I want to be kind kindness says don't tell you, right. But if I don't tell you then what happens. As my friend, I will potentially keep you from having deep relationships, perhaps your girlfriend or boyfriend or your significant other or romantic partner. Perhaps you won't find a romantic partner because you're constantly turning them off with their with your bad breath and by me being kind on perpetuating this dysfunction in you and keeping you from being your best self or having your best life. Instead, if I was honest, lovingly honest, I could say listen, I love you, but your breath is horrible. And you really should do something about it. Because I'm afraid other people are going to smell that and then distance themselves from you. Now take bad breath as a metaphor for a bad personality being an asshole. Right? So what do you think is more of a first principle now kindness or honesty? Now I struggle with this in my life, a lot of you know my story, where I was an overly people pleaser for a very long time well into my 30s that ended up with me having an affair, and, you know, doing some very kind, unkind, rather and destructive things in my life and to people I loved. And this made me realize that honesty is always kinder than kindness and so there's no doubt in my mind, why many cultures and religions have always put honesty as one of the top first principles. Now, you can go through the same exercise with strength and generosity. But the whole point of this is, I want to ask you, what do you think is a more important first principle, freedom of speech, or truth? Which is better? If everyone was truthful, would the world be better versus everyone saying whatever they wanted? Now, of course, I'm framing this as a black and white issue. That's what we do when we play around with psychology and philosophy in these questions. Now, of course, there's going to be some place in between, right? Where we want freedom of speech and you might be someone who's like, I'm a freedom of speech absolutist, I don't care what you say, you should be able to say whatever you want. And this has been said in many different ways, perhaps the most of, you know, sort of memorable one is, I don't, I might hate what you say, but I'll die for your right to say it. Is that where you come down on freedom of speech? Or do you think that lies should be punishable? Now I'm not here to answer this question for you. I'm certainly I'm just here to get you to think about this. What happens if we protect people and say everyone should be able to say whatever they want, in a world where disinformation is incredibly dangerous, and misinformation adds fuel to the fire on that disinformation and destructive nature. That also should we allow people to incite riots or lie? And should there not be any penalty for that? For example, if you say that Jade is a murderer, and a rapist, or whatever it is about me that is untrue and shouldn't I have the ability to then combat that in some way? And in some regards, our laws do wrestle with this, but they almost always come down on the side of freedom of speech, not necessarily truth. In other words, it would be incredibly difficult for me to sue you for lies that you tell about me. And the danger would have already been done with those allies. Now, you might ask me, Jade, where do you come down on this? Well, I'm pretty close to a freedom of speech absolutist. However, the Internet has changed this for me to some degree, because now that I see how dangerous untruth can be, I start thinking that maybe, yes, freedom of speech, to me is more important than truth, partly because I believe, the more people talking and the more people in the town square, having voices, and speaking gets us further to truth. But I also realized now with the potential of the town square being everywhere and everyone talking at once, the truth is easily drowned out. And secondly, there are bad actors that have bigger voices now than ever before. And so in a sense, it used to be like, well, you're on a town square, it might be that everyone would go up to the microphone, take their turns and talk. But now you can imagine we're in the town square, and everyone has their own microphone, and they're all talking all at the same time. But the most sensational and the people who are the most ridiculous or lie the most or create the most sensational sounding arguments have the louder megaphones. So now imagine in this town square, we're all there instead of each of us coming up and having an equal voice now you've got whoever is the most sensationalized right gets the louder megaphone, and everyone else megaphones are muffled. This is kind of what we're dealing with now. So should we continue to allow people who ply in this information and misinformation to have the loudest microphones? How do we balance this idea of getting everyone to have a voice and making sure that we protect that, while we also don't allow people who are the most sensational, and the ones who already are bad actors on purpose, to not have the loudest microphones or perhaps to even have their microphones taken away from them?

[28:53] So this is the idea that we're talking about. And by the way, these are kind of big ideas, right? This is nothing that we're going to solve by talking on this podcast right now. The whole point is to get you thinking about it, right. And I will offer some things that I think are ways that we could begin to think about this. But I'm simply here to get us to all think about it right? Now, one of the other things we have to talk about here is the ideas around how we create stories. If you're a base level human, you create a story of us me against the world. And part of the reason that you're creating that story is because you believe the world is bad and dangerous and will take your safety and stability away from you. In a sense a base level human looks out in the world and sees a war. And so they will then see that there are battles everywhere, most of them aimed at themselves whether those battles exist or not. And so therefore, they will adopt a defensive and offensive posture towards everyone and everything. Oftentimes have an offensive posture where they will actually go on the attack, make things up, do whatever they can to tear others down and build themselves back up and this is where we get into the land of conspiracy theories and things like that. And by the way, I just highlighted on my Instagram feed, an interesting study psychological study where they looked at during uncertain times, and fearful times which COVID was one. And I say was because hopefully we are coming out of COVID now. But what ends up happening at that time is that during those times what this study was looking at is that people high in the dark triad traits of narcissism, Machiavellianism, and psychopath tend to seek power. Part of the reason they tend to seek power during this time is because they're narcissists. So they think they are better than everyone else. But they're also Machiavellian and psychopathic, which means they think, Hey, I am the one who should be leading, I am better than everyone else. And I will also have these tendencies to manipulate and lie and cheat others. And so what they were essentially saying is that people who are low in dark triad traits, the least narcissistic, the least Machiavellian, the, the least psychopathic, tend not to seek power during these times the scary times, but that people high in dark triad traits do. And the other thing that study said was that it basically looked at and said, Not only do these people tend to seek power, they tend to get it as well, because for some reason, people who are narcissistic and more sure of themselves, they look to other fearful people as if they know what they are doing. And they oftentimes can stir up our own fears make us more base level, which gets us in alignment with them, and then they achieve power. And so this is a dangerous time, anytime where there's economic unrest, psychological unrest, a pandemic economic issues, those kinds of things. We are in danger of being base level ourselves, and base level humans elevating themselves to leadership positions, and we are in danger of being duped into voting for these particular people. We are also more vulnerable to this information and passing misinformation on in other words, during these times of angst, and you know, security and stability issues, we will tend to become more base level for base level, more culture level if we're culture level, and less next level human. And this is very important. This is where conspiracy theories and things like this come from. Now one of the things I talk a whole lot on conspiracy theories, and I oftentimes get a lot of flak for it. And I don't mind because to me, I think it's a very, very important topic. And I've done a whole episode on conspiracy theories. And one of the studies that I really like to highlight when I'm talking about conspiracy theories is a study called on the viability of conspiratorial beliefs. And basically what this study looks at, that's the title of the study. By the way, if people want to look it up, it is free to read on the internet, on the viability of conspiratorial beliefs. And one of the things that this study looks at is it essentially says that there's a, there's a very strict math to conspiracy theories. In other words, what it looks at is essentially says, if you have one person, let's say me, and you decide we're going to kill somebody or do something evil, or we run a, you know, a chemical company, and we want to pollute the water or whatever, and it's just me and you, right? You and me two people, and we decide to do this thing, and we keep it a secret. Now, ultimately, there's a good chance we're gonna be able to keep that a secret, but there's two of us, and we got a long life and lots of things come up I might get with, you know, a partner who I meet somebody who changes my mind who's super kind, I might go through a loss and, you know, have a change of heart, you and I might, you know, run into differences and part ways and try to get back at each other. It's likely that you and I might tell on each other at some point, right, maybe we'll die with the secret, maybe we'll stay best buds forever. But there's a chance isn't there that one of us will tell on the other. Now, if it's just one person, just me who's perpetrating this thing. I could keep that a secret forever. But once you put two people in to the mix, now all of a sudden the chances of that secret getting out are basically cut in half. Now magnified at times three or add a third person and now a fourth person and now a fifth person. What ends up happening is this starts to degrade Very quickly, the chances of this secret getting out start to compound very, very quickly. It's not doubling and tripling its qualm, it's like compounded interest, it becomes very, very difficult to begin to keep a secret when you start getting up into 10s, and 20s, and 30s. And what this study basically looks at is that most conspiracies, once they get into sort of double numbers and triple numbers, hundreds of people, and especially when you get up into 1000s of people who have to be involved in a conspiracy conspiratorial event, what ends up happening is it degrades very quickly, that secret is going to get out very quickly. And we have evidence of this, let's just look at the Watergate scandal. Let's look at the cigarette companies. We obviously know that conspiracy theory conspiracies happen, and they're happening. Now they've happened in the past, the more people involved, the faster this stuff gets out. And the math on this is very clear. And so it's very important to understand this. And so whenever we are applying in the only reason I'm going through this is because to help us all begin to spot disinformation and misinformation. As soon as we start saying that there are, you know, the entire scientific community is for example, conspiring with vaccines. Now, these are 1000s, and 1000s of individuals, at hundreds, if not 1000s, of different entities in universities, all in very different countries, all with very different cultures, all with very different ideas, all checking each other, the chances of that happening are almost nil, in fact, nil, right? That just is not going to happen with that amount of numbers of people in a profession, that the whole profession is designed to check each other, which is why these things are found out very quick in science. That's why studies are retracted very quickly. That's why these things are oftentimes called out and you can find them very quickly. And there's also a huge penalty for any scientist that does try to do the public or to, you know, basically fudge the numbers or is to in the bed of industry, this stuff comes out more often than that. And ironically, for instance, we're talking about vaccines.

[37:27] this was a very famous example of this, when the MMR vaccines were essentially found in studies to basically be linked to autism. A lot of people don't know this, everyone in the medical field knows this and almost everyone in everyone in the science field knows, but a lot of people who are not scientists or medical professionals don't know this, that that particular scientist basically fudged their numbers and was found out that that information was never duplicated. And since then, there have been 1000s and 1000s and 1000s of studies done with very independent researchers to look at this issue finding no issues with MMR and autism. Now, of course, there could be issues with vaccines that we don't know in other places. But this is an example of somebody who doctored the numbers due to this is this information due to nefarious intent and, you know, issues around, you know, personal finances one individual who was found out who still did damage that is still being reverberated today. In many of the vaccine movements, most people who are anti vaccine probably don't even know where this even came from. Right now, I'm not taking a position either way. What I'm trying to essentially say here is that, ultimately, if we want to and by the way, when I say I'm not taking a position either way, I'm not saying you know that I know for sure all vaccines are 1,000% safe. I am pro vaccine. You've heard me say that before. But that does not mean that all vaccines are the same. That does not mean that certain people can't be harmed by vaccines. It basically just means that vaccines, historically speaking in the literature, have saved more lives along with antibiotics and hygiene, probably than any other thing on the face of the earth. And that does not mean that the COVID vaccine is 1,000% safe. And I know that to be true, but it certainly looks like the data is showing that and if it's not, and you know Moderna and Pfizer and all these companies are somehow holding data, which some of them their data is being scrutinized constantly. It will be found out and this is the point here. And now what's the whole point of going through this though is to help you understand that when you see disinformation or misinformation that you can spot it. And this study on the viability of conspiratorial beliefs helps us with one rule that you can begin to look at for yourself, the more people involved, the less likely this thing is to be true. So then you can think about, well, how many people would have had to be involved to keep something like the moon landing to fake the moon landing, how many people would have had to been involved to pull off something like 9/11, how many people would have to be involved to pull off something like manufacturing the COVID vaccine or something like that, you start to see very quickly that these are going to have to be 1000s of people. And right off the bat, it just doesn't hold common sense value in terms of this mathematical equation related to conspiratorial event events of beliefs. Now, again, this does not mean these things can't happen. But the reason that I'm going through this is to say, we should not if we don't know for sure, and we're sending and passing that information around, we are applying and misinformation. And if we're making things up, right, if we are literally making things up, like we're saying, you know, 100,000 people have been killed from the vaccine, and we're making that up and we're starting up a website and we're tweeting it we're doing all that, that is plying in this information. And from my perspective, this is immoral, at worst, and incredibly irresponsible at best. If we want to be good humans, we would not be doing that and here's the interesting thing about this also, we run into this boy who cried wolf effect if we start finding conspiracies everywhere making it up or passing on conspiracies all the time. Then what happens it's like the boy who cried wolf that's, you know, I'll go through the story in case people don't know. Basically, if the if a boy runs to your house every day and says there's a fire there's a fire there's a wolf outside and then you look and there's no wolf or there's no fire pretty soon you're gonna start ignoring that boy he's gonna lose first couple times he comes in yells you're gonna go and look and get the water bucket or, or do something to get the wolves away from your chickens right? But the more he does it and the more you see there is no wolf, the more you don't trust him. So if everyone is spouting off conspiracy beliefs all the time and plying and disinformation and misinformation, then what happens is, you no longer believe it when it really is the real deal, because you've lost the thread and you don't know how to tell fact from fiction.

[42:43] and this brings us to the next point about disinformation and misinformation. That is actually the entire point for the person who is the base level human who is starting the disinformation. In fact, when countries are applying in this misinformation, disinformation campaign against a another country that they find, you know, an enemy, they will flood untrue things all over the place, creating so much noise in the town square, that no one can make sense of anything and scaring the hell out of everyone in the process. And this has never been done before in the history of mankind. The internet has allowed this to happen, the Internet has allowed there to be 1000 people, a million people crying wolf all at the same time, confusing everybody so that someone can sneak the wolf in and steal or just do destruction right under your nose and you don't even know it. And so you lose the thread. And this is essentially what has happened, which is why I think it is becoming perhaps the most dangerous thing that we are now dealing with in our modern day society. And unfortunately, people are going being caught by this disinformation, misinformation conspiratorial campaigns hook line and sinker. I have seen it in the natural medicine community which was incredibly discouraging to me as an evidence based individual who really wants to know the truth of things. I am not pro this or that I am pro truth. I am pro evidence. I am very much on board with what the evidence tells us and I'm okay saying I don't know when we don't know I'm okay saying we need to hear all voices. What I'm not okay with though is letting liars’ cheaters bass level humans and people who want to ply in disinformation and misinformation do so without penalty. Now this is part of what we want to talk about now because freedom of speech to me also I told you I'm also oh, close to a freedom of speech absolutism absolutist, basically, I believe the more people talking and the more debating and the more views despite how disgusting I think they are, if you're a racist and a bigot, and whatever you are, I still want to hear what you have to say. And I still will fight for your right to say it, so long as you are not inciting violence, and doing damage in that way, which, by the way, damage, right. And this is where some of this comes from. Damage is hard to measure, you know, because it might not be your intent with your Miss Information to hurt people, but you may hurt people in the process regardless, and rest assured, these untruths hurt people, there are people for who the not taking a vaccine may have killed them, because they heard that it might be bad, or give them three eyes, or whatever it is, this can do real damage. Now, whatever your political beliefs are, I hope I'm not triggering you. This should not be political at all. If we are all aspiring next level humans, then I am willing to be wrong and willing to be right, and you should be willing to be wrong and willing to be right. And we both should be willing to say we don't know, because that's going to be the truth most of the time. So why are you feeling triggered? When you're listening to this? If I have a different point of view, you should be interested in that because you can learn from it. I am certainly interested in yours. And this, to me is how we should be thinking about interacting with each other. We should be upholding the ability for people to speak. But I also think that we should be finding some way to penalize well not while not canceling people and not letting them speak people who have shown a consistent disregard for the truth. What do you think? Do you think people should be held accountable? And this is a real question I want to stop right here. Just ask, do you think that people should be held accountable for disinformation and misinformation? And if so how should they be held accountable? Now, I certainly don't think they should be held accountable by their platform being taken away from them without a warning. Certainly, we've had situations I will I will tell you this right now. And I have no problem saying it. And hopefully, you know, if some of you need to stop following me and not listen to my podcast, that's just fine. I am not a fan of Donald Trump. I never have been I'm also not a Democrat. And I'm not a fan of Joe Biden. But Donald Trump is someone who I have never been a fan of since the 90s. I do not like the guy I think he is. I'll just come out and say it. This is my opinion. I think he is not a good human being. I don't think he's a good human. And I think we can demonstrate that by calling on people fat and disgusting on Twitter, by lying constantly with, you know, by many, many different things that he's done going back into the 90s since I've been following Donald Trump living in Manhattan. Now, by the way, I could be wrong about him. I don't know Donald Trump. Okay. Now you should be when you listen to that, whether you like Donald Trump or not, you should be okay. I'm going to hear Jade I want to hear what his perspective is. And by the way, I want to hear your perspective while why you might like him. Now, as much as I don't like him I don't like the fact that he was taken off of Twitter. And here's why, by the way, okay. I'll tell you why. I don't like that. Because the rules in Twitter say that anyone who lies who plies and misinformation who is nasty to other people should be taken off right away. Have you ever gone and looked in on Twitter, and actually seen what they're sort of terms and agreements are, if you go on and you are harassing people on Twitter, you should immediately you are immediately be platform if you are I started to harass somebody may complain about as our Twitter feeds would get shut down. But for some reason, when Donald Trump was doing this very early on, he wasn't shut off. Why? Because he had a big platform. So that says one thing about what I don't like about the people who are running Twitter, right, the fact that, look, they're a private company, they can do whatever they want. It's not censorship, it's not freedom of speech, if you don't go with their bylaws, and you don't do what they say, and you are disrupting the community. And they are a private company, or a public company, or a privately owned company, they can do whatever they want. Right so they can get rid of us. But the fact that they did it later on with Trump, and not in the beginning, which I think Trump if he's going to be booted off Twitter should have been booted off Twitter in the beginning, and I think everyone else should be applied that same way. Now, I bet all of you whether you're Democrat, Republican Trump fan, not a Trump fan you probably agree with that. You might be shocked to be like, well, here's a guy who doesn't like Trump, who still wants to hear what Trump has that’s to say, and to me, I don't think it's fair the way Twitter did that. Now at the same time, I don't think that, you know, taking away the organization of Twitter and replacing it with one man is a good idea either. Do we really think that Elon Musk is going to do a better job upholding truth? He might do a better job with freedom of speech. But will he do a good job with misinformation and disinformation? Now, again, all of this is just to get us to think, right. I am an American. First and foremost, I will vote for a Democrat or Republican based on the quality of human they are, the judgment they have and the political evidence base they have to do good for my country and the world. I don't care, Democrat, Republican, someone else I've come to dislike both parties. Now you might feel different. I would love if we could all get in a room. Right? We could talk about it. You can say, Jade, I think you should be a Republican because of this, or I think you should be a Democrat because of this, or I think you should reconsider Donald Trump because it is or I think you should reconsider Biden because of this. Right? This is the conversation that we should be having. But that assumes that we're coming at it from a place of charity and a next level human standpoint, if we have base level humans in the room, they will just hate me because I don't have a favorable view of Donald Trump if they like Donald Trump, or they'll just hate me, because I don't have a favorable view of Joe Biden, because they like Joe Biden, right. That's what a culture level human does. What we need to do is we need to start with law of charity in my mind, and then we need to essentially step back and say, how do we then get everyone talking? And incentivize people telling the truth as next level humans and learning from each other, and dissent, devising lies, disinformation and spreading of misinformation? Now, I've shared a lot today, I got a little vulnerable with you, I shared some personal feelings with you. I hope that you liked that. I did that on purpose. I knew I was going to do that in this episode, partly because it speaks to freedom of speech. Isn't it interesting that people want freedom of speech, but then they get all torn out of shape, when they hear a viewpoint that doesn't agree with them, some of you right now are really liking me, because I have a dislike for Donald Trump. And some of you are not liking me, because I have a dislike for Donald Trump.

[52:30] The whole point whole reason I brought it up is to challenge you to basically say, where are you operating from your base level or cultural level selves, because now all of a sudden, you're more or less likely to listen to me because you heard my point of view, then in my mind, if you're doing that you are acting more base level or culture level, you are not operating from your next level, human self. Now I know we all have that potential. And of course, you're not alone. I might go base level and culture level too. But if we're all operating from that standpoint, wouldn't the world be a better place? And so we have this issue of freedom of speech and law of charity and letting everyone talk, but also deincentivizing, in my point of view, lies disinformation and misinformation. How do we do that? That's what this podcast was about. Now, as I end this podcast, which by the way, was not meant to provide solutions is just getting you to think in a very different way, so that you and me and our families and the greater community and our nation and the world, because this literally is how it starts. People having real conversations and being comfortable with just saying, Okay, you disagree with me, you see it this way, I see it as I'm not mad at you. Because you're a Trump fan, you might know something I don't, I'm not mad at you. Because you're a Biden fan, you might know something that I don't or you might have a piece of information for me to consider and I am happy to upgrade my belief system. What I'm not happy with is that if you're going to throw disinformation lies and bullshit my way, or if you're going to apply and conspiratorial things, then we can't actually have a real conversation and it's not necessary. And if we're playing in those conspiratorial things, then guess what, when there are real issues that come up that need to be solved real issues going on? Then guess what? They get lost because of the crying wolf constantly. This is really important.

[54:26] So let's go through some things that might work that I've talked to my friends about my girlfriend about been having this conversation and actually read about right. What would happen if the social media algorithms scoured instead of looking at things that were sensational and just being like the things we click on because we because we know that sensational motional driven clickbait gets our attention. But what if instead, they looked for words that were dehumanizing, divisive destructive, base level language and culture level teen think and dissent devise those things. In other words, you could say it, no one's stopping you from saying it. But the algorithms are essentially saying, this is divisive, demonizing dehumanizing language towards another group. Therefore, it's going to get less play, certainly people who are close to you and want to hear that are free to go to your profile, but we're going to show that stuff to less people. Right? How about this idea that came from my girlfriend? How about the idea that when people come on new platforms, rather than just letting them post constantly, they have a ramp on period where they're learning to be less divisive, less dehumanizing, and less demonizing, meaning that they can only post once per day or once a week, and they're getting feedback that basically says, Hey, your post will reach more people, if you remove some of this inflammatory language, or, Hey, we'll post this for you. But it might not get much play, because there's no proof for this. You know, we don't have proof that, you know, this is, you know, a factual thing. It looks like this is disinformation or misinformation? Would you like to adjust your post, maybe that would work, maybe by including references that are, you know, sort of vetted references, your post would be amplified? Maybe the algorithms could work in a way that forced us subtly and slowly to understand how to act through the law of charity be less divisive, less dehumanizing, and more accurate, in what we are saying, What if you were penalized, just like if you, you know, nowadays, with Amazon, if you write too many five star reviews, they start to suspect you're not a real reviewer. And if you write too many one star reviews, you're not a real reviewer, what if there was a situation where you're the way you were online, followed you around, and if you were constantly a troll, and constantly disrupting conversations and not contributing, that you were doing for that no one's going to take away and be platform you. But the fact of the matter is, if you're not being a productive member of society, and you've got a big bullhorn, and you're trying to drown other people out and you're not giving other people the benefit of the doubt, you're calling names, and you're acting like an ass that you are descent devise, your posts are not shown as much. What would things be like, then? Right? This these are there are ways that we could force people to basically be better humans without taking away their freedom of speech, but also teaching them to be more truthful and honest, making learning more important than winning. What if we had something was like a Yelp review for humans, where you're, you were no longer anonymous online. What if that was a thing, you could not be anonymous online, if you want it to operate in the public space, we no need to know who you really are. That would change things a little bit, because we all know if I can be anonymous, right, and there's no repercussions and you can't see me face to face, you and I might have incredibly different belief systems and may not even like each other. But if we get face to face with each other, and we can talk, we're gonna find common ground as humans almost always doesn't matter. That is always the case. And therefore not letting people hide behind their computer screens might be something that we should consider. What if there were rewards for people who not just decentralizing but what of their rewards for people who were, you know, more active and finding and policing bad behavior online, and that you could essentially be incentivized for your good behavior online for not being an ask for not being disruptive for actually prying in good quality information and being part of a charitable debate online. All of these things could perhaps work, what if you were prioritized based on your expertise, right? Like, for example, if we're having a discussion about metabolism and natural medicine, then perhaps I should be magnified in terms of my voice in that conversation. If I am showing over and over again, that I am giving good quality, usable information to the community. And perhaps I should be de-incentivize from that platform of expertise. As soon as I began to show that I'm not providing good quality, evidence based information to individuals. What if we did that there are many other different ways to do that. And by the way, I don't know if these ideas are Good ideas, bad ideas, neutral ideas. I am presenting them and presenting this conversation for all of us to begin thinking very deeply about this as we engage in the internet moving forward, because this is only going to get worse, from country to country from person to person. And we're starting to see this be a very big deal. How do we, as aspiring next level humans, learn from each other, tolerate each other, be better for each other, help our leaders be better and help the internet space be more accurate, so that we can keep freedom of speech for everybody, and do it in a way that honors truth and integrity as top first principles.

[60:46] that’s all I got for you today on today's podcast. Definitely hit me back on this one, if you're mad if you're happy if it got you thinking. My hope is that we can in this podcast, this podcast will be different than others in that we get to have these very deep conversations and I can just be very real with you, my audience. Whether you love me or hate me, hopefully you'll show up and engage with me. So shoot me a DM, send me an email to support at jadeteta.com. Let me know what you think of this particular episode. And I would love to hear your ideas about how this might work this way of keeping freedom of speech, while also prioritizing truth as a next level human and next level culture. Alright everybody, I'll see you next time.