Yaron Brook: Ayn Rand and the Philosophy of Objectivism | Lex Fridman Podcast #138

Lex Fridman 0:00 The following is a conversation with Yaron Brook, one of the best known objectivist philosophers and thinkers in the world. Objectivism is the philosophical system developed by Ayn Rand that she first expressed in her fiction books, The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged, and later in non-fiction essays and books. Yaron is the current chairman of the board at the Ayn Rand Institute, host of The Yaron Brook Show, and the co-author of Free Market Revolution, Equal Is Unfair, and several other books where he analyzes systems of government, human behavior, and the human condition from the perspective of objectivism. Quick mention of each sponsor, followed by some thoughts related to the episode. Blinkist, an app I use for reading through summaries of books. ExpressVPN, the VPN I've used for many years to protect my privacy on the internet. And Cash App, the app I use to send money to friends. Please check out these sponsors in the description to get a discount and to support this podcast. As a side note, let me say that I first read Atlas Shrugged and The Fountainhead early in college, along with many other literary and philosophical works from Nietzsche, Heidegger, Kant, Locke, Foucault, Wittgenstein, and of course all the great existentialists from Kierkegaard to Camus. I always had an open mind, curious to learn and explore the ideas of thinkers throughout history, no matter how mundane or radical or even dangerous they were considered to be. Ayn Rand was, and I think still is, a divisive figure. Some people love her. Some people dislike or even dismiss her. I prefer to look past what some may consider to be the flaws of the person and consider, with an open mind, the ideas she presents and Yaron now describes and applies in his philosophical discussions. In general, I hope that you will be patient and understanding as I venture out across the space of ideas and the ever-widening Overton window, pulling at the thread of curiosity, sometimes saying stupid things, but always striving to understand how we can better build a better world together. If you enjoy this thing, subscribe on YouTube, review it with five stars on Apple Podcast, follow on Spotify, support it on Patreon, or connect with me on Twitter @lexfriedman. And now, here's my conversation with Yaron Brook.

Lex Fridman 2:39 Let me ask the biggest possible question first.

Yaron Brook 2:42 Sure.

Lex Fridman 2:43 What are the principles of a life well-lived?

Yaron Brook 2:47 I think it's to live with, uh, with thought. That is, to live a rational life. To- to think it through. I think so many people are, in a sense, zombies out there. They're alive, but they're not really alive, 'cause their mind is not focused. Their mind is not, you know, focused on, "What do I need to do in order to live a great life?" So, too many people just go through the motions of living, rather than really embrace life. So, I- I- I think the secret to living a great life is to take it seriously.

Lex Fridman 3:22 Mm-hmm.

Yaron Brook 3:22 And what it means to take it seriously is to use the one tool that makes us human, the one tool that provides us with all the values that we have, our mind, our reason, and to use it, apply it to living, right? People apply it to their work. They apply it to their math problems, to science, to- to programming. But imagine if they used that same energy, that same focus, that same concentration, to actually living life and choosing values, uh, that they should pursue. That would, that would change the world, and it would change their lives.

Lex Fridman 3:56 Yeah. Actually, you know, I wear this silly suit and tie.

Yaron Brook 3:59 (laughs)

Lex Fridman 4:00 It- it- it symbolizes to me always, it makes me feel like I'm taking the moment really seriously.

Yaron Brook 4:06 I- I think that's really, that's right, and- and each one of us has different ways to kind of, uh, condition our consciousness, "I'm serious now," and- and for you-

Lex Fridman 4:16 Mm-hmm.

Yaron Brook 4:16 ... it's, it's a suit and tie. It's a, it's a conditioning of your consciousness to, "Now I'm focused. Now I'm at work. Now I'm doing my thing."

Lex Fridman 4:22 Yeah.

Yaron Brook 4:23 Right? And I think that's, that's terrific, and I- I wish everybody took that. Look, I mean, it's a cliché, but we only live once. Every minute of your life, you're never gonna live again. This is really valuable, and- and when people... People don't have that deep respect for their own life or their own time, for their own mind. And if they did, again, uh, uh, you know, one could only imagine. Look at how productive people are. Look at the amazing things they produce and they do in their work.

Lex Fridman 4:54 Yeah.

Yaron Brook 4:54 And if they applied that to everything? Wow.

Lex Fridman 4:58 So, you kinda talk about reason. Where does, uh, the kind of existentialist idea of experience, maybe, you know, fully experiencing all the moments versus fully thinking through? Is there a interesting line to separate the two? Like, why such an emphasis on reason for- for a life well-lived, versus just enjoy, like, experience the moment?

Yaron Brook 5:26 Well, because I think experience, in a sense, is the easy part. You know, I'm not saying it's... It- it's, it's how we experience the life that we live. And yes, I'm all with the take time to- to- to value what you value, but I think... I don't think that's the problem of people out there. I don't think the problem is they're not taking time to appreciate where they are and what they do. I think it's that they don't use their mind in this one respect, in planning their life, in thinking about how to live. So, the focus is on reasoners because it's our only source of knowledge. There's no other source of knowledge. We don't know anything.... with a, you know, that does not come from our senses and our, and our mind. The integration of the, of the evidence of our senses. Now, we know stuff about ourselves, and I think it's important to know oneself through introspection, and I count- consider that part of reasoning, is to-

Lex Fridman 6:22 Mm-hmm.

Yaron Brook 6:22 ... is to, is to introspect. But I think reason is undervalued, (laughs) which is funny to say because it's our means of survival. It's how human beings survive. We cannot... See, this is where I disagree with so many scientists and, and people like Sam Harris. You mentioned Sam Harris before the show. Um, we're not programmed to know how to hunt.

Lex Fridman 6:46 Hm.

Yaron Brook 6:47 We're not programmed to do agriculture. We're not programmed to build computers and build networks on which we can podcast and do our shows.

Lex Fridman 6:54 Yeah.

Yaron Brook 6:55 All of that requires effort. It requires focus, it requires energy, and it requires will. It requires somebody to will it, it requires somebody to choose it. And once you make that choice, you have to engage- that choice means that you're choosing to engage your reason in discovery, in integration, and then in work to change the world in which we live. And, you know, human beings had to discover, figure out, solve the problem of hunting. Hunting, you know, everybody thinks, "Oh, that's easy. I've seen the movie." But human beings had to figure out how to do it, right? You- you- you can't run down a bison and bite into it, right? You're not gonna catch it, you're not gonna, you have no fangs to bite into it.

Lex Fridman 7:44 Mm-hmm.

Yaron Brook 7:44 You have to build weapons, you have to build tools, you have to create traps, you have to have a strategy. All of that requires reason. So the most important thing that allows human beings to survive and to thrive in every value, from the most simple to the most sophisticated, from the most material to, I believe, the most spiritual, requires thinking. So stopping and appreciating the moment is, is something that I think is relatively easy once you have a plan, once you've thought it through, once you know what your values are. It, there is a mistake people make, they attain their values and they just, and they just, they don't take a moment to savor that and to appreciate that and to even pat themselves on the back that they did it, right?

Lex Fridman 8:31 Yeah.

Yaron Brook 8:31 But that's not what's screwing up the world. What's screwing up the world is that people have the wrong values and they don't think about them and they don't really focus on them and they don't have a plan for their own life and how to live it.

Lex Fridman 8:42 If we look at human nature, you're saying the fundamental big thing that we need to consider is our capacity, like, capability to reason.

Yaron Brook 8:51 So to me, reason is this massive evolutionary achievement, right? In quotes, right? Um, if you think about any other sophisticated animal, everything has to be coded. Everything has to be written in, in the hard way. It has to be there.

Lex Fridman 9:09 Yeah.

Yaron Brook 9:10 And, uh, they have to have a solution for every outcome. And if there's no solution, the animal dies, typically. Or the animal suffers in some way. Human beings have this capacity to self-program. They have this capacity, it, there's not, it's not a- a- a- a tableau rasu in the sense that there's nothing there. Obviously we have a nature. Obviously our minds, our brains are structured in a particular way. But given that, we have the ability to turn it on or turn it off. We have the ability to commit suicide, to- to- to reject our nature, to work against our interests, not to use the tool that evolution has provided us with this- which is this mind, which is reason. So that choice, that fundamental choice, you know, uh, uh, Hamlet says it, right? "To be or not to be." But to be or not to be is to think or not to think.

Lex Fridman 10:01 Mm-hmm.

Yaron Brook 10:01 To engage or not to engage, to focus or not to focus. You know, in the, in the morning when you get up, you kind of, you know, you're not, you're not really completely there. You're kind of out of focus and stuff. It requires an act of will to say, "Okay, I'm awake. I've got stuff to do." Some people never do that. Some people live in that haze, and they never engage that mind. And- and wh- when you're- when you're sitting and trying to solve a, a complex computer program problem or a math problem, you have to turn something on. You have to, in a sense, e- exert certain energy to focus on the problem to do it, and that is not determined in a sense that you have to focus. You choose to focus, and you could choose not to focus.

Lex Fridman 10:46 And that choice is more powerful than any other, like, parts of our brain that we've borrowed from fish and, uh, from our evolutionary origins? Like, this-

Yaron Brook 10:55 S-

Lex Fridman 10:55 ... whatever this crazy little leap in evolution is that allowed us to think is more important than anything else.

Yaron Brook 11:00 So, uh, so I think newer scientists pretend they know a lot more about the brain than they really do.

Lex Fridman 11:07 Yeah.

Yaron Brook 11:08 Um, and that we know v-

Lex Fridman 11:09 Shots fired. (laughs)

Yaron Brook 11:11 (laughs)

Lex Fridman 11:11 I agree with you. (laughs)

Yaron Brook 11:12 And- and- and we don't know that much yet...

Lex Fridman 11:14 Yeah.

Yaron Brook 11:14 ... about how the brain functions and what's a fish and what, you know, all this stuff. So I think what, what exists there is a lot of potentialities. But the beauty of the human brain is it's- it's potentialities that we have to manifest through our choices. It's there, it's sitting there. And yes, there's certain things that are gonna evoke certain, uh, senses, certain, uh, feelings. I'm not even saying emotions, 'cause I think emotions are too complex to have been programmed into our mind. Uh, but I don't think... So, you know, there's this big issue of evolutionary psychology is huge right now.

Lex Fridman 11:53 Oh, yeah.

Yaron Brook 11:53 And- and- and it's a big issue. You know, I find it, uh, f- to a large extent as way too early and- and storytelling about ex-post storytelling about-

Lex Fridman 12:06 Yeah.

Yaron Brook 12:06 ... about stuff. We still don't... You know, so for example, I would like to see if evolutionary psychology differentiate between things like inclinations...... feelings, emotions, sensations-

Lex Fridman 12:20 Yeah.

Yaron Brook 12:20 ... thoughts, concepts, ideas. What of those are programmed and what of those are developed, and chosen, and a product of reason? I think anything from emotion to abstract ideas is all chosen, is all a product of reason. And everything before that, w- we might have been programmed for. But the fact is... So, clearly a sensation is not a product of... you know, is- is something that we feel because that's how our biology works. So, until we have these categories, and until we can clearly specify what is what and where do they come from, the whole discussion in evolutionary psychology seems to be rambling. It doesn't seem to be scientific. So, we have to define our terms, you know, which is the basis of science. You have to have some- some clear definitions about what we're talking about. It... When you ask them these questions, there's never really a coherent answer about what is it exactly. And everybody is afraid of the issue of free will. And I think, I think to some extent, I mean, Harris has this... And I don't want to misrepresent anything Harris says, 'cause I... You know, I'm a fan, and I-

Lex Fridman 13:30 Yeah.

Yaron Brook 13:30 ... I like a lot of his stuff. But- but on the one hand, he- he is obviously (laughs) intellectually active and wants to change our minds, so he believes that we have some capacity to choose.

Lex Fridman 13:41 Yeah.

Yaron Brook 13:41 On the other hand, he's undermining that capacity to choose by saying it's just determined, so you're going to choose what you choose. You have no say in it. There's actually no you. He- he- he-

Lex Fridman 13:51 That's

Narrator 13:51 Mm-hmm.

Yaron Brook 13:51 ... so it's... You know, so the... And that's, to me, completely unscientific. That's completely him, you know, uh, uh, pulling it out of nowhere. We all experience the fact that we have an I.

Lex Fridman 14:03 That kind of certainty saying that we do not have that fundamental choice that reason provides is, uh, unfounded currently.

Yaron Brook 14:12 Look, there's a sense in which it can never be contradicted, because it's a product of your experience. It's- it's not a product of your experience. You can experience it directly.

Lex Fridman 14:24 Right.

Yaron Brook 14:24 So, no science will ever prove that this table isn't here. I can see it. (laughs) It's here, right? I can- I can feel it. I- I know I have free will 'cause I can introspect it. In a sense, I can see it.

Lex Fridman 14:37 Mm-hmm.

Yaron Brook 14:38 I can see myself engaging it.

Lex Fridman 14:41 Mm-hmm.

Yaron Brook 14:42 And that is as valid as the evidence of my senses. Now, I can't point at it so that you can see the same thing I'm seeing, but you can do the same thing in your own consciousness, and you can identify the same thing. And to deny that in the name of science is to get things upside down. You start with that, and that's the beginning of science. The beginning of science is the identification that I choose and that I can reason, and it... Now, I need to figure out the mechanism, the- the- the rules of reasoning, the rules of logic, the- the... you know, how does this work? And that's where science comes from.

Lex Fridman 15:19 Of course, it's possible that science, like, from my sp- place of AI, would be able to... If- if we were able to engineer consciousness or understand... I mean, it's very difficult to... 'cause we're so far away from it now. But understand f- f- how the actual mechanism of that consciousness emerges, that in fact this table is not real, that we can determine that it, um... exactly how our mind constructs the reality that we perceive. Then- then you can start to make interesting-

Yaron Brook 15:51 But our mind, our mind doesn't construct the reality that we perceive.

Lex Fridman 15:54 Well-

Yaron Brook 15:54 The reality we perceive is there. We perceive a reality that exists.

Lex Fridman 15:59 Yeah.

Yaron Brook 15:59 Now-

Lex Fridman 16:00 And then-

Yaron Brook 16:00 And we perceive it in particular ways given the nature of our senses, right?

Lex Fridman 16:05 Yeah.

Yaron Brook 16:05 A bat perceives this table differently, but it's still the same table with the same characteristics and the same identity. It's just a matter of we use eyes, they use a radar system to... you know, they use sound waves to perceive it. But it's still there. Existence exists whether we exist or not. And so you could create... I mean, I don't know how, and I- I don't know if it's possible, but let's say you could create a consciousness, right? And I- I suspect that to do that, you would have to use biology, not just electronics. But, you know, way outside my expertise.

Lex Fridman 16:39 Yeah.

Yaron Brook 16:39 Um, because consciousness, uh, as far as we know, is a phenomena of life, and you would have to figure out how to create life before you created consciousness, I think. But if you did that, then that wouldn't change anything. All it would say is we have another conscious being. Cool, that's great, but it wouldn't change the nature of our consciousness. Our consciousness is what it is, irrespective.

Lex Fridman 17:01 But... So, that's very interesting. I think this is a good way to set the table for discussion of objectivism, is let me at least challenge-

Yaron Brook 17:11 Sure.

Lex Fridman 17:11 ... a thought experiment, which is, uh, I don't know if you're familiar with, uh, Donald Hoffman's work about reality. So, his idea is that we're just... our perception is just an interface to reality.

Yaron Brook 17:23 So, Donald Hoffman is the, uh, is the guy at UC Irvine?

Lex Fridman 17:26 Yeah.

Yaron Brook 17:26 Yes. I've met Donald-

Lex Fridman 17:27 He's awesome.

Yaron Brook 17:27 ... and I've seen his video. And look, Donald has not invented anything new. This goes back to ancient philosophy.

Lex Fridman 17:33 So, let- let me just-

Yaron Brook 17:34 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 17:34 ... state-

Yaron Brook 17:35 Yeah, sorry. (laughs)

Lex Fridman 17:35 ... in case people aren't-

Yaron Brook 17:35 Yes, of course.

Lex Fridman 17:36 In case people aren't familiar, I mean, it's a fascinating thought experiment to me, uh, like, of out of the box thinking, perhaps literally, is that, uh, you know, our... There's a different... there's a gap between the world as we perceive it and the world as it actually exists. And I think that's... for the philosophy, objectivism is a really important gap to close. So, can you maybe at least try to entertain the idea that, that there is more to reality than our minds can perceive?

Yaron Brook 18:09 Well, I don't understand what more means, right? Of course there's more to reality than what our senses perceive. That is, uh, for example...... I don't know, certain, uh, certain elements, uh, uh, have, uh, radiation, right? Uranium has radi-... I can't perceive radiation. The beauty of human reason is I can, I can, through experimentation, discover the phenomena of radiation, then actually measure radiation-

Lex Fridman 18:36 Yeah.

Yaron Brook 18:36 ... and I don't worry about it. I can't perceive the world the way a bat perceives the world, and I might not be able to see certain things that a... But I can... We've created radar, so A, we understand how a bat perceives the world, and I can mimic it through a radar screen and create in images like the bat, its consciousness, somehow perceives it, right?

Lex Fridman 18:55 Yeah.

Yaron Brook 18:55 So, uh, the beauty of human reason is our capacity to understand the world beyond what our senses give us directly. At the end, everything comes in through our senses, but w- we can understand things that our senses don't provide us. But, but what he's doing is, he's doing something very different. He is saying what our senses provides us might have nothing to do with the reality out there.

Lex Fridman 19:20 Yeah.

Yaron Brook 19:20 That is just a random, arbitrary, nonsensical statement. And he actually has a whole evolutionary explanation for it.

Lex Fridman 19:28 Right.

Yaron Brook 19:29 He runs some simulations. The simulations seem... I mean, I'm not an expert in this field, but they seem silly to me. They, they don't seem to reflect... And look, all he's doing is taking Immanuel Kant's philosophy, which articulate exactly the same cause, and he's giving it a veneer of, of, of evolutionary, uh, ideas. I'm not an expert on evolution and I'm not an expert on epistemology, which is what this is. So to me, as, as a semi-layman, it doesn't make any sense. And, uh, y- y- you know, I'd... I'm actually... (laughs) You know, I have a... I have the Shiran Book Show. I don't know if I'm allowed to pitch it, but I've got the Shiran Book Show on-

Lex Fridman 20:06 Oh, please. Uh, so first of all, let me pause-

Yaron Brook 20:08 ... on YouTube. (laughs)

Lex Fridman 20:08 I'm a huge fan of the Shiran Book sh- show-

Yaron Brook 20:11 Thank you. (laughs)

Lex Fridman 20:11 I listen to it very often. As a small aside, the cool thing about reason, which you practice, is you have a systematic way of thinking through basically anything.

Yaron Brook 20:24 Yes.

Lex Fridman 20:25 (laughs) And that's so fun to listen to. I mean, it's rare that I think there's flaws in your logic. But even then, it's fun-

Yaron Brook 20:34 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 20:34 ... 'cause I'm, like, disagreeing with the screen when I'm... (laughs) So-

Yaron Brook 20:37 And it's great when somebody disagrees with me-

Lex Fridman 20:39 Yeah.

Yaron Brook 20:39 ... and they give good arguments-

Lex Fridman 20:40 Yeah.

Yaron Brook 20:40 ... because that makes it challenging.

Lex Fridman 20:42 Yeah. Anyway, sorry.

Yaron Brook 20:42 I- You know, so, so one of the shows I wanna do in the next few weeks is, is one of my philosop-... bring one of my philosopher friends to discuss the video that, that Hoffman, uh, where he presents his theory, because it surprises me how seductive it is, and it seems to be so, first of all, completely counterintuitive. But, but, but because, you know, somehow we managed to cross the road and not get hit by the car, and if our, our, our senses do not provide us any information about what's actually going on in reality, how do we do that? That's, uh... And not, not to mention build computers-

Lex Fridman 21:16 Yeah.

Yaron Brook 21:16 ... not to mention fly to the moon and actually land on the moon. And, uh, if reality is not giving us information about the moon, if our senses are not giving us information about the moon, how did we get there? You know, and where did, where did we go? Maybe we didn't go anywhere. Um, it's just... It's nonsensical to me, and it's, it's a, it's a very bad place, uh, philosophically, because it basically says there is no objective standard for anything.

Lex Fridman 21:40 Mm-hmm.

Yaron Brook 21:40 There is no objective reality. You can come up with anything. You could argue anything, and there's no methodology, right? My... I believe that, at the end of the day, what reason allows us to do is provides us with a methodology for truth. And at the end of the day, for every claim that I make, I should be able to boil it down to see-

Lex Fridman 21:59 Yeah.

Yaron Brook 21:59 Look, y- y- the evidence of the senses is right there. And once you take that away, knowledge is gone, and truth is gone, and that opens it up to, you know, complete disaster.

Lex Fridman 22:09 So, you know, uh, to me, why it's compelling to at least entertain this idea... First of all, it shakes up the mind a little bit to force you-

Yaron Brook 22:20 Mm-hmm.

Lex Fridman 22:21 ... to go back to first principles, and th- and, you know, ask the question, "What do I really know?" And the second part of that, that I really enjoy is, uh, it's a reminder that we know very little, to be a little bit more humble. So if reality doesn't exist at all, i- before you start thinking about it, I think it's a really nice wake-up call to think, "Wait, wait a minute. I don't really know much about this universe," that humbleness. I think... Something I'd like to ask you about, in terms of reason, when you... You can become very confident in your ability to understand the world if you practice reason often. And I think, I feel like it can lead you astray, b- because you can start to think... It's a... Uh, so I love psychology. And psychologists have this certainty about, uh, understanding the human condition which is undeserved.

Yaron Brook 23:19 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 23:19 You know, you run a study with 50 people, and you think you could understand the source of all these psychiatric disorders, all these kinds of things. Uh, that's similar kind of trouble I feel like you can get, uh, into with, uh, when you, when you overreach with reason.

Yaron Brook 23:35 So I don't think there is such a thing as overreaching with reason, but there are bad applications of reason. There are bad uses of reason or, or, or the pretense of using reason. I think a lot (laughs) of these psychological s- studies are pretense of using reason, and, and, uh, these psychologists have never really taken a serious stat class or a serious econometrics class, so they use statistics in weird ways-

Lex Fridman 23:55 Yeah.

Yaron Brook 23:55 ... that just don't make any sense. And that's a mis... That's not reason, right?

Lex Fridman 23:59 Yeah.

Yaron Brook 23:59 That's, that's just bad thinking, right? So I- I don't think you can do too much good thinking.

Lex Fridman 24:05 Right.

Yaron Brook 24:05 And that's what reason is. It's good thinking. Uh, now, that... The fact that you th- try to use reason does not guarantee (laughs) you won't make mistakes. It doesn't guarantee you won't be wrong. It doesn't guarantee you won't go down a rabbit hole and, and, and completely get it wrong. But it does give you the only existing mechanism to fix it-

Lex Fridman 24:28 Right.

Yaron Brook 24:29 ... which is going back to reality, going back to fact, going back to reason, and, and, and, and getting out of the rabbit hole and getting up back to reality.So, I agree with you that it's interesting to think about these, uh, y- what I consider crazy ideas, because it... Oh, wait, w- what is my argument about them?

Lex Fridman 24:47 Yeah.

Yaron Brook 24:47 If I don't really have a good argument about them-

Lex Fridman 24:49 Right.

Yaron Brook 24:49 ... then do I know what I know? So in that sense, it's always nice to be challenged, and pushed, and, and oriented. You know, the nice thing about objectivism is everybody's doing that to me all the time, right? Because nobody agrees with me on anything.

Lex Fridman 25:01 (laughs)

Yaron Brook 25:02 So, I'm constantly being challenged, whether it's in, eh, by Hoffman on metaphysics and epistemology-

Lex Fridman 25:08 Yeah.

Yaron Brook 25:08 ... right on the very foundations of our knowledge and ethics, everybody, constantly, and in, in politics all the time.

Lex Fridman 25:14 All the time.

Yaron Brook 25:14 So, um, uh, I find that it's part of... You know, I prefer that everybody... Uh, there's a sense in which I prefer that everybody agreed with me, right? Because I think we'd live in a better world. But there's a sense in which that disagreement makes it, at least up to a point, (laughs) makes it interesting and challenging, and forces you to be able to, to rethink or to confirm your own thinking, and to challenge that thinking.

Lex Fridman 25:39 Can you try to do the impossible task and give a whirlwind introduction to Ayn Rand, the, the many sides of Ayn Rand? So Ayn Rand the human being, Ayn Rand the novelist, and Ayn Rand the philosopher. So who was Ayn Rand?

Yaron Brook 25:58 Sure. So, so, e- her life story is, is one that I think is, is fascinating, and, but it also, uh, lends itself to this integration of all of these things. She was born in Saint Petersburg, Russia in, uh, 1905 to kind of a middle class, uh, family, Jewish family. They, they owned a pharmacy. Her father, uh, owned a pharmacy. And, uh, y- you know, she grew up, uh, she grew up, uh, she was a very, um... She knew what she wanted to do and what she wanted to be from a very young age. I think from the age of nine, she knew she wanted to be a writer. She wanted to write stories. That was the thing she wanted to do. And, uh, y- you know, she focused her life after that on this goal of "I want to be a novelist, I want to write," r- and the philosophy was incidental to that in a sense-

Lex Fridman 26:50 Yes.

Yaron Brook 26:50 ... at least until some point in her life. She witnessed the Russian Revolution, literally had happened outside. They lived, eh, eh, in Saint Petersburg where the first kind of demonstrations and, and, uh, of the revolution happened, so she witnessed it. She lived through it as a teenager. Um, went to school under the Soviets, uh, th- for a while. They, they, they were under kind of the, in- on the Black Sea where the opposition government was ruling, and then they would, they would go back and forth between the commies and the whites. But, but she experienced what communism was like. She saw, uh, the pharmacy being taken away from her family. She saw their apartment being taken away or other, other families being brought into the apartment they already lived in. Um, and, uh, it was very (laughs) clear given her nature, uh, given her views even at a very young age, that she would not survive the system. Uh, so a lot of effort was put into how do we get... How do, how does she get out? And her family was really helpful in this. And she had a cousin in, uh, cousin in, uh, Chicago, and, uh, she had been studying kind of film at the university and, uh-

Lex Fridman 27:59 This is in her 20s?

Yaron Brook 28:00 This is in her 20s. Early 20s. And, uh, Lenin... There was a small window where Lenin was a- allowing some people to leave under circumcir- certain circumstances, and she managed to get out to go do research on film in, in the United States. Everybody knew, everybody who knew her knew she would never come back, that this was a one-way ticket, and, and she got out. She made it to Chicago, spent few weeks in Chicago, and then headed to Hollywood. She wanted to write scripts. That was, that was the, that was the, uh, the goal. Here's this, uh, you know, short woman from Russia with a strong accent, uh-

Lex Fridman 28:37 (laughs)

Yaron Brook 28:38 ... learning English, showing up in, in Hollywood and, you know, "I want to be a script writer," right?

Lex Fridman 28:43 In English.

Yaron Brook 28:44 In English.

Lex Fridman 28:45 Yeah.

Yaron Brook 28:45 Writing in English. Uh, and, um, and this is kind of a, uh, uh, one of these fairytale stories, but it's true. She shows up, uh, at the Cecil B. DeMille Studios. (laughs)

Lex Fridman 28:56 (laughs)

Yaron Brook 28:56 And she, she has a letter of introduction from her, uh, cousin in Chicago who owns a movie theater, and this is in the 19, uh, the late 1920s. And she shows up there with this letter and they say, you know, "Don't call us, we'll call you," kind of thing.

Lex Fridman 29:10 (laughs) Right.

Yaron Brook 29:10 And she steps out, and there's this massive, um, convertible. And in the convertible is Cecil B. DeMille, and he's driving slowly past her right at the entrance of the studio, and she stares at him. And he stops the car and he says, "You know, why are you staring at me?" And she says, you know, she tells him her story, "I'm from Russia and, you know, I wanna, wanna make it in the movies. I want to be a script writer one day." And he says, "Well, if you wanna, if you want that, you know, get in the car." You know, she gets in the car and he takes her to the back lot of his studio where they're filming The King of Kings, the story of Jesus.

Lex Fridman 29:41 (laughs)

Yaron Brook 29:42 And he says, "Here's a pass for a week-

Lex Fridman 29:45 Yeah.

Yaron Brook 29:45 ... if you wanna be a... If you wanna write for the movies, you better know how movies are made." And, uh, she basically spends a week, and then she spends more time there. She managed to get an extension. She lands up being an extra in the movie, so you can see-

Lex Fridman 29:57 (laughs)

Yaron Brook 29:57 ... Ayn Rand there in the, in the-

Lex Fridman 29:59 Wow.

Yaron Brook 29:59 ... as one of the masses, uh, when Jesus is walking by.

Lex Fridman 30:02 Yeah. (laughs)

Yaron Brook 30:03 And she meets her future husband on the set of, uh, of The King of Kings. She lands up, uh, getting married, getting her American citizenship that way. Uh, and she lands up doing odds and ends jobs in Hollywood, living in a tiny little apartment, um, somehow making a living. Her husband was an actor. He was, you know, struggling actor as well, difficult times. Uh, and in the evenings, studying English, writing, writing, writing, writing, and studying, and studying, and studying. And she, she finally makes it by writing a play that, that, uh, is successful in, in, um-... in LA and ultimately goes to Broadway. Um, and, uh, she writes, her first novel is a novel called We The Living, which is the most autobiographical of all her novels. It's about a young woman in the Soviet Union. It's a powerful story, a very moving story, and probably, if not the best, one of the best, uh, uh, portrayals of life under communism and-

Lex Fridman 31:05 So you would recommend the book?

Yaron Brook 31:06 ... definitely recommend We The Living. It's her first, first novel. She wrote it in the '30s. And it didn't go anywhere because if you think about the intelligentsia, the, the, the, the people who mattered, the people who w- wrote book reviews, this is a time of Duranty in, uh, who was The New York Times, uh, guy in Moscow who's praising Stalin to the hilt-

Lex Fridman 31:28 Oh.

Yaron Brook 31:28 ... and, and the success. So the, the novel fails, uh, but, but she's got a novel out. She writes a small novelette called Anthem. A lot of people have read that, and it's, it's read in high schools. It's, it's kind of dystopian novel, uh, and, uh, it's, won't, it doesn't get published in the US. Gets published in the UK. UK is very interested in dystopian novels. Animal Farm, uh, and, and 1984, 84 is published couple of years after, I think, after Anthem. There's reason to believe he read, he read Anthem, uh, that, uh-

Lex Fridman 32:02 Yeah, and, uh, that George Orwell wrote.

Yaron Brook 32:05 George Orwell wrote. Yeah.

Lex Fridman 32:05 Yeah, no, for Animal Farm.

Yaron Brook 32:06 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 32:07 Just, just a side. Animal Farm is probably t- top. I mean, I would, it's weird to say, but I would say it's my favorite book, which is

Narrator 32:14 (whistles)

Yaron Brook 32:14 Have you, have you seen this movie out now called Mr. Jones?

Lex Fridman 32:17 No.

Yaron Brook 32:18 Oh, you've got to see Mr. Jones.

Lex Fridman 32:19 What's Mr. Jones?

Yaron Brook 32:21 It's a-

Lex Fridman 32:21 I'm sorry, (laughs) sorry for my ignorance.

Yaron Brook 32:23 No, no. It's a movie, i- it hasn't gotten any publicity, which is tragic, 'cause it's a really good movie. It's both brilliantly made. It's made by a Polish director, but it's in English. It's a, it's a true story, and, and George Orwell's Animal Farm is featured in it in a sense that during the story, George Orwell was writing Animal Farm. And, and he's r- the narrator is reading off sections of Animal Farm as the movie is progressing.

Lex Fridman 32:48 Oh, interesting. Yeah.

Yaron Brook 32:49 And the movie is a, a true story about the, the first Western journalist to discover and to write about the famine in Ukraine.

Lex Fridman 32:58 Oh.

Yaron Brook 32:58 And so he goes to Moscow, and then he gets on a train, and he finds himself in Ukraine. And it's, it's, it's beautifully and horrifically made, so the horror of the famine is brilliantly conveyed. And then, and it's a true story, so very moving story, very powerful story. And, and just very well-made movie, so it's, it's tragic, in my view, that not more people are seeing it.

Lex Fridman 33:19 That's intere- I was actually recently just complaining that there's not enough content on the, the famine, the '30s of, you know, of, of stu-

Yaron Brook 33:29 Well-

Lex Fridman 33:29 There's so much on Hitler. Like I love-

Yaron Brook 33:31 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 33:31 ... the reading. I'm re- reading, it's so long, it's been taking me forever, the, The Rise and Fall-

Yaron Brook 33:37 Go ahead.

Lex Fridman 33:37 ... of the Third Reich. Yeah, I, I love it, uh, but-

Yaron Brook 33:39 Well, I've got the book to complement that, that you have to read.

Lex Fridman 33:42 Oh.

Yaron Brook 33:42 It's called The Ominous Parallels. It's Leonard Peikoff.

Lex Fridman 33:45 Oh.

Yaron Brook 33:45 And it's The Ominous Parallels, and it's about, it's about the causes of the rise of, of, of Hitler, but the philosophical causes. So whereas The Rise and Fall-

Lex Fridman 33:56 Interesting.

Yaron Brook 33:56 ... is more of a kind of, uh, uh, the, the existential kind of what happened, um, but really delving into the intellectual, uh, intellectual, uh, currents that led to the rise of Hitler.

Lex Fridman 34:09 And maybe-

Yaron Brook 34:10 Highly recommend that.

Lex Fridman 34:11 ... and basically suggesting how it might rise in other-

Yaron Brook 34:15 That's The Ominous Parallels.

Lex Fridman 34:17 Right.

Yaron Brook 34:17 The parallel he draws is to the United States. And he says those same intellectual forces are rising in the United States. And this is, this was published I think in, published in '81, uh, '82. It was published in '82. So it was published a long time ago, and yet you look around us, and it's unbelievably predictive, sadly, about the state of the world. So I haven't finished Ayn Rand's story. I don't want e- I don't know if you want me to finish it.

Lex Fridman 34:41 No, no, no. Uh, but on that point, I'll have to... Let's please return to it, but let's now, for now, let's talk about-

Yaron Brook 34:47 But let me also say, just, just because I, I don't wanna forget about Mr. Jones. It is true, the point you made, there are tons of movies that are anti-fascist, anti-Nazi, and that's good.

Lex Fridman 35:00 Yeah.

Yaron Brook 35:00 But there are way too few movies that are anti-communist.

Lex Fridman 35:03 Yeah.

Yaron Brook 35:03 Just almost none.

Lex Fridman 35:05 Yeah.

Yaron Brook 35:05 And it's very interesting, and if you remind me later, I'll tell you a story about that. But, um, so she publishes Anthem, and, and then she starts, and she's doing okay in Hollywood, and, and she's doing okay with, uh, with the play. And then she starts on her, on, on the book The Fountainhead. And she writes The Fountainhead, and it comes out, um, she finishes it in, uh, 1945. And she's, um, she sends it to publishers, and publisher after publisher after publisher turn it down. And it takes 12 publishers before this, this editor reads it and says, "I, I wanna publish this book." And he basically tells his bosses, "If you don't publish this book, I'm leaving," (laughs) right? Um, and they don't really believe in the book, so they publish just a few copies. They don't do a mass lu- And the book becomes a bestseller from word of mouth.

Lex Fridman 36:00 Ah.

Yaron Brook 36:00 And they land up having to publish more and more and more. And it, and it's, you know, she's basically gone from this immigrant who comes here with very little command of English, uh, and, and it, it, to a, uh, all kinds of odds and ends jobs in Hollywood to, you know, writing one of the seminal, I think, book, American books. She is an American author. I mean, if you read The Fountainhead, it's not Russian. This is not-

Lex Fridman 36:28 It's very-

Yaron Brook 36:28 ... Dostoevsky.

Lex Fridman 36:29 It feel, it feels like a symbol of what America is in the 20th century.

Yaron Brook 36:34 Yes.

Lex Fridman 36:34 And I mean, probably, maybe you can... So there's a famous kind of sexual rape scene-

Yaron Brook 36:41 (laughs)

Lex Fridman 36:41 ... in there.

Yaron Brook 36:42 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 36:42 Is that, is that like a lesson? You wanna throw in some controversial stuff to make (laughs) your philosophical books work out?I mean, is that... Why, why was it so popular? Uh, do you have a sense? Or was it-

Yaron Brook 36:53 Well, because I think it illustrated... Uh, first of all, because I think the characters are, are, are fantastic. It's got a, a real hero. And I think it... The whole book is basically illustrating this massive conflict that I think went on in America then, is going on today, and it goes on in a big scale, politics, all the way down to the scale of the choices you make in your life.

Lex Fridman 37:15 Yeah.

Yaron Brook 37:16 And, and the, the, the issue is individualism versus collectivism. Should you live for yourself? Should you live for your values? Should you pursue your passions? Uh, should you... Or should you do what your mother tells you? Should you follow your mother's passions? And, uh, that's... And it's a, it's, it's very, very much an indivi- a book about individuals, and people relate to that, but it obviously has this massive implications to the world outside. And at the time of collectivism just having been defeated, communism... Well, not, uh, fascism, and, and, uh, and, and, you know, the United States representing individualism, right?

Lex Fridman 37:58 Mm-hmm.

Yaron Brook 37:58 Has defeated, uh, defeated collectivism. But where collectivist ideas are still popular in the form of socialism and communism. And for the individual, there's constant struggle between what people tell me to do, what society tells me to do, what my mother tells me to do, and what I think I should do. I think it's unbelievably appealing, particularly to young people who s- who, trying to figure out what they want to do in life, trying to figure out what's important in life. Um, it, it, it had this enormous appeal. It's romantic. It's bigger than life. The characters are big heroes. It's very American in that sense. It's about individualism. It's about the triumph of individualism. And, uh, so I, I, I think that's what related. And it had this big romantic element from the... I mean, when I use romantic, I use it kind of in a, in a sense of, uh, um, a movement in art. But it also has this romantic element in the sense of a relationship between a man and a woman who's, that's very intriguing. It's not only that there's a, uh, I would say almost rape scene, right?

Lex Fridman 39:00 Yes.

Yaron Brook 39:00 Um, I would say, but it's also that this woman is hard to understand.

Lex Fridman 39:04 Yeah.

Yaron Brook 39:04 I mean, I've, I've, I've read it more than once, and I still can't quite figure out Dominique, right?

Lex Fridman 39:09 Yeah.

Yaron Brook 39:09 Because she loves him and she wants to destroy him, and she marries other people. I mean, think about that, too. Here she is writing a book in the 1940s. It's, there's lots of sex. There's a woman who marries more than one person, is having sex with more than one person. Very unconventional. She's having married... She's having sex with Rourke even though she's not married to Rourke. This is 1945. And it's, um, it's very jarring to people. It's very unexpected, but it's also a book of its time. It's about individuals-

Lex Fridman 39:41 Yes.

Yaron Brook 39:41 ... pursuing their passion, pursuing their life, and not caring about convention and, and what people think, but doing what they think is right. And, um, and, and so, so I think it's, it's, it's... Uh, I encourage everybody to read it, obviously.

Lex Fridman 39:56 (laughs) So, uh, th- that was... Was that the first time she articulated star- uh, articulated something that's sounded like a philosophy of individualism?

Yaron Brook 40:04 I mean, the philosophy is there in We The Living, right? Because at the end of the day, the, the woman is the, the h-h-ro of We The Living is this individualist stuck in Soviet Union, so she's struggling with these things. Uh, so the, the theme is there already. It's not as fleshed out. It's not as articulated philosophically. And it's certainly there in Anthem, which is a dystopian novel, where the, this dystopia in the future has a, has, uh, there's no I. Everything is we. And it's about one guy who breaks out of that. I don't want to give it away, but-

Lex Fridman 40:42 Yeah.

Yaron Brook 40:42 ... but breaks out of that. So, these themes are running. And they, and they, we have, and we, and they've been published, some of the early Ayn Rand stories that she was writing in preparation for writing her novel, stories she was writing when she first came to America. And you can see these same philosophical elements, even in the male-female relationships and the passion and the, uh, you know, you s- and the conflict. You see them even in those early pieces. And she's just developing them. And same philosophically. She's developing her philosophy with her literature. And of course, after The Fountainhead, she starts on what turns out to be her magnus opus, which is Atlas Shrugged, uh, which takes her 12 years to publish. By the time, of course, she brings that out, every publisher in New York wants to publish it because The Fountainhead has been such a huge success. Um, they don't quite understand it. They don't know what to do with Atlas Shrugged, but they're eager to, to get it out there. And indeed, it's, when it's published, it becomes an instant best-seller. And the thing about the f- particularly The Fountainhead and, and Atlas Shrugged, but true of, of even Anthem and We The Living, she is one of the only dead authors that sell more after they've died-

Lex Fridman 41:55 (laughs)

Yaron Brook 41:55 ... than when they was still alive. Now, you know, that's true maybe in music. We listen to more Beethoven than when he was alive, but it's not true typically of novelists.

Lex Fridman 42:02 Yeah.

Yaron Brook 42:03 And yet here we are, uh, you know, uh, what is it? 50, you know, 60 years after, the 63 years after the publication of Atlas Shrugged, and it sells probably more today than it sold when it was a best-seller when it first came out.

Lex Fridman 42:17 Is it true that it's like one of the most sold books in history?

Yaron Brook 42:22 No. (laughs)

Lex Fridman 42:23 Okay.

Yaron Brook 42:23 No. Any-

Lex Fridman 42:23 I've heard this kind of statement.

Yaron Brook 42:25 Any Tom Clancy book comes out-

Lex Fridman 42:27 Okay.

Yaron Brook 42:27 ... sells more than Atlas Shrugged. Uh-

Lex Fridman 42:28 But I've, I read... I've heard statements like this.

Yaron Brook 42:30 So there was a very... And I shouldn't say this, but it's the truth so I'll say it.

Lex Fridman 42:35 Yeah.

Yaron Brook 42:35 A very unscientific study done-

Lex Fridman 42:38 Yeah.

Yaron Brook 42:38 ... by the Smithsonian Institute-

Lex Fridman 42:40 Yeah.

Yaron Brook 42:40 ... probably in the early '90s, that basically surveyed, uh, CEOs and asked them, "What was the most influential book on you?"

Lex Fridman 42:49 Hmm.

Yaron Brook 42:50 ... and Atlas Shrugged came out as number two, the second most influential book on CEOs in, in the country. But there's so many flaws in the study. One, was it, hey, you wanna guess what the number one book was?

Lex Fridman 43:01 The Bible?

Yaron Brook 43:01 The Bible. But the Bible was like, uh, y- you know, so maybe they surveyed 100 people. I don't know what the exact numbers were, but let's say it's 100 people, and 60 said the Bible and 10 said Atlas Shrugged, and there were a bunch of books over here. So, you know, I don't-

Lex Fridman 43:16 That's, that's again the psychology discussion, what we were having earlier.

Yaron Brook 43:18 Exactly. Well, and it's, it's ... One thing I've learnt, and maybe COVID has taught me, and, and, uh, nobody ... Y- you know, there are very few people who know how to do statistics.

Lex Fridman 43:29 (laughs)

Yaron Brook 43:29 And almost nobody knows how to think probabilistically. That is, think in terms of probabilities, that it is a skill, it's a hard skill. And everybody thinks they know it. So I see doctors thinking they're statisticians and giving whole analyses of the data on COVID, and they don't have a clue what they're talking about. Not because they're not good doctors, but because they're not good statisticians. It's not e- the ... You know, people think that they have one skill and therefore it translates immediately into another skill, and, and it's just not true. Um, w- so I've been astounded at how, how, how bad people are at that.

Lex Fridman 44:03 For people who haven't read any of the books that we were just discussing, what would you recommend? What book would you recommend they read? And maybe also just elaborate what mindset should they enter the reading of that book with?

Yaron Brook 44:22 So I would recommend everybody read Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged, and in one order-

Lex Fridman 44:27 In that order? Oh.

Yaron Brook 44:29 I- so it would depend on, on where you are in life, right?

Lex Fridman 44:31 (laughs)

Yaron Brook 44:31 So it, it depends on who you are and what you are. So Fountainhead is a more personal story.

Lex Fridman 44:38 Yeah.

Yaron Brook 44:38 For many people, it's their favorite. And for many people, it was their first book and, and they wouldn't replace that, right? Um, if ... Atlas Shrugged is a ... It's about the world.

Lex Fridman 44:50 Right.

Yaron Brook 44:51 It's about what impacts the world, how the world functions, how ... It's a bigger book, in the sense of the scope. If you're that ... If you're interested in politics and you're interested in the world, read Atlas Shrugged first.

Lex Fridman 45:05 Mm-hmm.

Yaron Brook 45:05 If you're mainly focused on your life, your career, what you want to do with yourself, start with Fountainhead. I still think you should read both, because I think they are ... I mean, to me, they were life-altering, and to many, many people, they're life-altering, and you should go into reading them with an open mind, I'd say, and with a ... Put aside everything you've heard about Ayn Rand. Put aside any ... Even if it's true, just put it aside. Even what I just said about Ayn Rand, put it aside. Just read the book as a book, and let it move you and let, let, let your thoughts, let it shape how you think. Um, and, and it'll have, you know, it either have, uh, you'll either have a response to it or you won't. (laughs) Uh, but I think most people have a very strong response to it, and then the question is do they, are they willing to respond to the philosophy? Are they willing to integrate the philosophy? Are they willing to think through the philosophy or not? Because I know a lot of people who completely disagree with the philoso- philoso- philosophy, right? Here in Hollywood, right?

Lex Fridman 46:07 Yeah.

Yaron Brook 46:07 Lots of people here in Hollywood love The Fountainhead.

Lex Fridman 46:11 Interesting.

Yaron Brook 46:11 Oliver Stone, who is, I think, a avowed Marxist, right? I think he's, he, he, I think he's admitted to being a Marxist. He is. His movies certainly reflect a Marxist theme. Um, is a huge fan of The Fountainhead, and is actually ... His dream project, he has said in public, his dream project is to make The Fountainhead. Now-

Lex Fridman 46:33 Oh, that's good.

Yaron Brook 46:33 ... he would completely change it-

Lex Fridman 46:36 Yeah.

Yaron Brook 46:36 ... as movie directors do, and he's actually outlined what his script would look like, and it would be a disaster for the ideas of The Fount- But he loves the story, because to him the story is about artistic integrity.

Lex Fridman 46:47 Ah. Yeah.

Yaron Brook 46:49 And that's what he catches on. And what he hates about the story is the individualism.

Lex Fridman 46:52 Right.

Yaron Brook 46:53 And I think that his movie ends with Howard Rock joining some kind of commune-

Lex Fridman 46:58 Mm-hmm.

Yaron Brook 46:58 ... of architects that do it for the love and don't do it for the money.

Lex Fridman 47:02 Oh. Interesting. But, so yeah, so he can connect with you without the philosophy. And before we get into the philosophy, st- staying on Ayn Rand, I'll, I'll tell you sort of my own personal experience, and I think it's one that people share. I've experienced this with two people, Ayn Rand and Nietzsche. Wh- when I brought up Ayn Rand when I was in my early 20s, the number of eye rolls I got from sort of their, you know, like advisors and so on, that ... Of dismissal. I've seen that la- later in life about more, more specific concepts in artificial intelligence and technical, where people decide that this is, this is a set of ideas that are acceptable and these sets of ideas are not. And they dismissed Ayn Rand without giving me any justification of why they dismissed her, except, "Oh, that's something you're into when you're 19 or 20." That's same thing people say about Nietzsche, "Well, that's just something you do when you're in college and you take an intro to philosophy course." So ... And I've never really heard anybody cleanly articulate their opposition to Ayn Rand, uh, in, in my own private little circles and so on. Maybe one question I just want to ask is, why is there such a opposition to Ayn Rand? And maybe another way to ask the same thing is, what's misunderstood about Ayn Rand?

Yaron Brook 48:35 So we haven't talked about the philosophy, so it's harder to answer right now.

Lex Fridman 48:39 Oh. We can return to it if you think that's the right way to go.

Yaron Brook 48:41 Well, let me, let me give a broad answer and then-

Lex Fridman 48:43 Yeah.

Yaron Brook 48:43 ... and then, and then we'll do the philosophy and then we'll return to it-

Lex Fridman 48:45 Yeah.

Yaron Brook 48:45 ... 'cause I think it's important to know something about her ideas. She ... I think her philosophy challenges everything.... it, it really does, it shakes up the world. It challenges so many of our preconceptions, it challenges so many of the things that people take for granted as truth. Um, from religion to morality, to, to politics, to almost everything. There's never quite been a thinker like her, in the sense of really challenging everything and doing it systematically, and having a complete philosophy that is a challenge to everything that has come before her. Now, I'm not saying there aren't threads that connect. There are, right? In, in politics, there might be a thread, and in morality, there might be a thread. But on everything, there's just never been like it. And people are afraid of that, because it challenges them to their core. She's basically telling you to rethink almost everything. Um, and that is that, that people reject. E- the other thing that it does, and this goes to this point about, "Oh, yeah, that's what you do when you're 14, 15," right?

Lex Fridman 49:54 Yeah, yeah.

Yaron Brook 49:55 She points out to them that they've lost something. They've lost their idealism. They've lost their youthful idealism.

Lex Fridman 50:05 Yeah.

Yaron Brook 50:06 What is, what makes youthfulness meaningful? Other, other than, (laughs) you know, we're in better physical shape-

Lex Fridman 50:12 Yeah.

Yaron Brook 50:13 ... which I'm starting to feel 'cause I'm getting older.

Lex Fridman 50:16 (laughs) Yeah.

Yaron Brook 50:16 When we're young, we... You know, sometime in the teen years, right, there's something that happens to human consciousness. We almost awaken anew, right?

Lex Fridman 50:26 Mm-hmm.

Yaron Brook 50:27 We, we suddenly discover that we can think for ourselves. We suddenly discover that not everything our parents and our teachers tell us is true. We suddenly discover that this tool, our minds, is suddenly available to us to discover the world and to discover truth. And it is a time of idealism. It's a time of, "Whoa, I wanna..." You know, the better teenagers, "I wanna know about the world. I wanna go out there. I wa- I don't believe my parents. I don't believe my teachers." And this is healthy. This is fantastic. "And I wanna go out there and experiment." And, and that gets us into trouble, right? We do stupid things when we're teenagers. Why? 'Cause we're experimenting. It's the experiential part of it, right? We wanna go and experience life. But we're learning. It's part of the learning process, and, and, and we become risk-takers because we wanna experience. But the risk is something we need to learn, 'cause we need to learn where the boundaries are, and... And one of the damages that helicopter parents do is they prevent us from taking those risks so we don't learn about the world and we don't learn about where the boundaries are. So, the teenage years are these years of wonder. They're depressing when you're in them (laughs) -

Lex Fridman 51:32 Mm-hmm.

Yaron Brook 51:32 ... for a variety of reasons, which I think primarily have to do with the culture, but also with oneself. But they are, uh, exciting. They're periods of discovery. And people get excited about ideas, and... Good ideas, bad ideas, all kinds of ideas. And then what happens? We settle.

Lex Fridman 51:51 Mm-hmm.

Yaron Brook 51:52 We compromise. Whether that happens in college, where we're taught that nothing exists and nothing matters, and start being, be a, be a nihilist, be a cynic, be a whatever. Or whether it happens when we get married and get a job and have kids and are too busy and can't think about our ideals and forget, and get, just get into the norm of conventional life. Or whether it's because our mother pester us, uh, pesters us to get married and have kids, and do all the things that she wanted us to do. We give up on those ideals. And there's a sense in which Ayn Rand reminds them that they gave up.

Lex Fridman 52:25 That's beautifully, that's so beautifully put, and so true.

Yaron Brook 52:29 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 52:30 It's ... There's, it's worth pausing on, that, uh, this dismissal. People forget the, the beauty of that curiosity. That's true in the scientific field too-

Yaron Brook 52:43 Yep.

Lex Fridman 52:44 ... is, uh-

Yaron Brook 52:47 I mean-

Lex Fridman 52:47 ... that, that youthful joy of like, (sighs) "Everything is possible, and we can understand it with the tools of our mind."

Yaron Brook 52:56 Yes. And that's what it's all about. That's what Ayn Rand's ideas, at the end of the day, all boil down to, is that confidence and that passion and that curiosity and that interest. And if you, you know, think about what academia does to so many of us, right? We go into academia, and, and we're excited about, "We're gonna learn stuff."

Lex Fridman 53:13 Yeah.

Yaron Brook 53:14 "We're gonna, we're gonna discover things." And then they stick you into some sub-sub-field and examining some minutiae that's insignificant and unimportant. And, and to get published, you have to be conventional, you have to do what everybody else does, and then there's the tenure process of seven years, where they put you through this torture to write papers that fit into a certain mold. And y- by the time you're done, you're in your mid-30s, and you've done nothing, you discovered nothing, you're, you're, you're all in this minutiae, in the stuff, and it's destructive. And where's ... Holding on to that passion, holding on to that knowledge and that confidence is hard. And when people do away with it, they become cynical-

Lex Fridman 53:55 Yeah.

Yaron Brook 53:55 ... and they become part of the system, and they inflict the same pain on the next guy that they suffered because that's part of how it works.

Lex Fridman 54:03 Yeah, there's, uh, this happens in artificial intelligence, this happens when, like, a young person shows up in, with like fire in their eyes, and they say, "I wanna understand the nature of intelligence." And everybody rolls their eyes bec- well, for these same reasons, because they've spent so many years on a very specific set of questions that, um, that kind of they compete over, and they, they write papers over and they have conferences about. And it's true. Those, that incremental research is the way you make progress. Answering the question of what is intelligence is exceptionally difficult, but when you mock it, you actually destroy the... (laughs) The reality is wh- (laughs) when we look, like centuries from now, we look back at this time for this particular field of artificial intelligence, it will be the people who will be remembered, who will be the people who've asked the question and made it their life journey of, "What is intelligence?" And actually had the chance to succeed. Most will fail asking that question, but the ones that, like, had a chance of succeeding and, uh, had that throughout their whole life, uh-... and I suppose the same is true for philosophy.

Yaron Brook 55:15 It's in every field. It's, it's, it's asking the big questions, and staying curious-

Lex Fridman 55:20 Yeah.

Yaron Brook 55:20 ... and staying passionate, and staying excited, and accepting failure. Right? Accepting that you're not gonna get it first time, you're not gonna get the whole thing. But... and, and sometimes you have to do the minutia work, and I'm not here to say nobody should specialize or you shouldn't do the minutia. You have to do that. But there has to be a way to do that work and keep the passion and keep, and keep it all integrated in it. That's another thing. I mean, we don't live in a culture that integrates, right?

Lex Fridman 55:46 Mm-hmm.

Yaron Brook 55:46 We live in a culture that is all, that is all about f- you know, this minutia, and not... and, and, you know, medicine is another field where you, you specialize in the kidney. I mean, the kidney's connected to other things. You've gotta... and we don't have a holistic view of these things, and I'm sure not official intelligence. You're not gonna make the big leaps forward without a holistic view of what it is you're trying to achieve, and maybe that's a question of what is intelligence. But that's the kind of questions you have to ask to make big leaps forward, to really move the field in, in a, in a positive direction. And it's the people who can think that way who move fields, who move technology, who move ev- anything, anything is, is, is... everything is like that.

Lex Fridman 56:27 But ju- just like you said, it's painful, because-

Yaron Brook 56:29 (laughs)

Lex Fridman 56:29 ... uh, underlying that kind of questioning is, "Well, maybe the work I've done for the past 20 years was, um, was a dead end." And you have to kind of face that. Even just... it might not be true, but even just facing that reality-

Yaron Brook 56:44 Yes.

Lex Fridman 56:45 ... uh, is, is just... it's a pa- it's a painful feeling.

Yaron Brook 56:47 Absolutely.

Lex Fridman 56:48 (laughs)

Yaron Brook 56:48 But, but it's... that's part of the reason why it's important to enjoy the work that you do.

Lex Fridman 56:52 Right.

Yaron Brook 56:52 So that even if it doesn't completely worked out, at least you enjoyed the process.

Lex Fridman 56:56 It is never a waste. Beautiful.

Yaron Brook 56:56 Right? It was not a waste because you enjoyed the, the process. And if you learn, as, as any entrepreneur knows this, right? And if you learn from the wasted time, from the errors, from the mistakes, then you can build on them and make things even better, right? And so the next 20 years are, are, are, are, are m- massive success.

Lex Fridman 57:16 Can we... uh, another impossible task. So, you did wonderfully on talking about Ayn Rand.

Lex Fridman 57:22 The other impossible task of giving a whirlwind overview of the philosophy of objectivism, the philosophy of Ayn Rand.

Yaron Brook 57:30 Yeah, so luckily she did it in an essay where she, she talks about doing her philosophy on, on one foot.

Lex Fridman 57:36 Mm-hmm.

Yaron Brook 57:36 Um, but let me integrate it with the literature and with her life a little bit. She wanted to be a writer, but her goal... she had a particular goal in her writing. Uh, she was an idealist, right? She wanted to portray the ideal man. So one of the things you do when you want to do something is, is, "What is an ideal man?" You have to ask that question. "What does that mean?" You might have a sense of it. You might have seen glimpses it, glimpses of it in other people's literature, but what is it? So she starts reading philosophy to try to figure out what did philosophers say about the ideal man? And what she finds horrifies her in terms of the view of most philosophers of man, and, and she's, she's attracted, certainly when she's young, to Nietzsche because Nietzsche at least has a vision of, of, of grandeur for man, even though his philosophy is very flawed and has other problems and contradicts Ayn Rand in many ways. But at least he has that vision of what is possible to man, and she's attracted to that romantic vision, that idealistic vision. So she discovers in writing, and particularly in writing Atlas Shrugged but even in The Fountainhead, that she's gonna have to develop her own philosophy.

Lex Fridman 58:48 Mm-hmm.

Yaron Brook 58:49 She's gonna have to discover these ideas for herself because they're not fully articulated anywhere else. There are glimpses, again, of it in Aristotle, in, in, in Nietzsche, but they're not fully fleshed out. So el- to a large extent she develops a philosophy for a very practical purpose, to write, to write a novel about the ideal man, and, and, and Atlas Shrugged is the manifestation of that. And Atlas Shrugged does just that-

Lex Fridman 59:14 By the way, s- sorry, and to interrupt, uh, as a little aside, she does... when you say man, you mean human, and the... uh, and, and because we'll bring this up often, uh, uh, she does... I mean, maybe you can elaborate of how she specifically uses man and he in the work. We live in a time now-

Yaron Brook 59:34 Yes. Yeah,

Narrator 59:35 we do.

Lex Fridman 59:35 ... of gender and so on.

Yaron Brook 59:36 Well, she did that in, in, uh, in a sense that everybody did it during her period of time.

Lex Fridman 59:41 Yeah.

Yaron Brook 59:41 Right? It's only in modern times where we do he slash she.

Lex Fridman 59:44 Yeah.

Yaron Brook 59:44 Right? It... historically, when you said he, you meant a human being, unless the particular context implied that it was a... but in Ayn Rand's case, in this case, in this one sentence, she probably meant man. Not that... because she... A, she viewed that there are differences between men and women, we're not the same, which I know comes at a shock to many people.

Lex Fridman 1:00:06 (laughs)

Yaron Brook 1:00:07 (laughs) But, um, she-

Lex Fridman 1:00:11 She's working on a character. (laughs)

Yaron Brook 1:00:12 She was working on a particular vision, right?

Lex Fridman 1:00:15 Yeah.

Yaron Brook 1:00:15 She considered herself a man worshiper, and... a man, not, not human being, a, a male.

Lex Fridman 1:00:22 Male.

Yaron Brook 1:00:22 Male. She worshiped manhood, if you will, the, the, the, the, the hero in man, and she wanted to fully understand what that was.

Lex Fridman 1:00:31 Mm-hmm.

Yaron Brook 1:00:32 Now, it has massive implications for the ideal woman, and I think she does portray the ideal woman in, in, in, in Atlas Shrugged, in, in the character of Dagny. But her goal is... you know, I think her selfish goal for what she wanted to get out of the novel-

Lex Fridman 1:00:48 Understand.

Yaron Brook 1:00:49 ... is that excitement, partially sexual-

Lex Fridman 1:00:52 (laughs)

Yaron Brook 1:00:52 ... about seeing your ideal manifest in reality of what you perceive as the... that which you would be attracted to-

Lex Fridman 1:01:02 Yeah.

Yaron Brook 1:01:02 ... fully, intellectually, physically, sexually, in every aspect of your life. That's what she's trying to bring into

Narrator 1:01:08 ... and she succeeds.

Lex Fridman 1:01:08 So there was no ambiguity of gender, so there was a masculinity and a femininity in her work.

Yaron Brook 1:01:13 Very much so.... and if you read the novels, you, you see that.

Lex Fridman 1:01:16 Yes.

Yaron Brook 1:01:16 You see that.

Lex Fridman 1:01:17 Very true.

Yaron Brook 1:01:17 Now, remember, this is in the context of, in Atlas Shrugged, she is portraying a woman who runs a railroad-

Lex Fridman 1:01:25 Right.

Yaron Brook 1:01:25 ... the most masculine of all jobs you could imagine, right? Running a railroad, better than any man can run it.

Lex Fridman 1:01:30 Yes.

Yaron Brook 1:01:31 And achieving huge success, better than any other man out there. But, but for her, even Dagny needs somebody to, needs a man in some sense to look up to.

Lex Fridman 1:01:47 Yeah.

Yaron Brook 1:01:48 And that's the character whose name I won't mention, because it gives away too much of the plot. But-

Lex Fridman 1:01:53 (laughs)

Yaron Brook 1:01:54 ... there has to be-

Lex Fridman 1:01:54 I like how you do that. You're good.

Yaron Brook 1:01:56 (laughs)

Lex Fridman 1:01:57 You're not, uh-

Yaron Brook 1:01:57 Lot of practice. Lot of practice.

Lex Fridman 1:01:59 (laughs) That's brilliant, 'cause you convey all the important things without giving away plot lines. That's beautiful. You're a master. (laughs)

Yaron Brook 1:02:06 So, she's, so she's very much, she... (laughs) She described herself once as a male chauvinist.

Lex Fridman 1:02:14 (laughs) Okay.

Yaron Brook 1:02:16 She very, she likes the idea of a man opening a door for her. But more metaphysically, she identifies something in the difference between a m- way a man relates to a woman, and a woman relates to a man. It's not the same.

Lex Fridman 1:02:32 And l- let's not take too far of a tangent, but I just, as a side comment, I, to me, she represented... She was a feminist to me. But perhaps there's a, uh, perhaps technically, philosophically, you disagree with that, whatever. But the, you know, that, to me, represented strong... Like, she had the s- some of the strongest female characters in the history of literature.

Yaron Brook 1:02:56 Again, this is-

Lex Fridman 1:02:57 (laughs)

Yaron Brook 1:02:57 This is a woman running a railroad in 1957.

Lex Fridman 1:03:00 Yes. Yeah.

Yaron Brook 1:03:01 And not just a woman running a railroad. And this is true of The Fountainhead as well. A woman who is sexually, in a sense, assertive, sexually open. Uh, e- e- e- y- sh- this is, this is not a woman who, you know... This is a woman who i- who, who, uh, embraces her sexuality. And, uh, you know, sex is important in life. This is why it keeps coming up, b- right?

Lex Fridman 1:03:24 (laughs)

Yaron Brook 1:03:24 It's, it was important to Ayn Rand. It was, it's important in the novels. It's important in life.

Lex Fridman 1:03:28 Yeah.

Yaron Brook 1:03:29 And for her, one's attitude towards sex is a reflection of one's attitude towards life and i- you know, and what attitude towards pleasure, which is an important part of life. And she thought that was an incredibly important thing. And so she has these assertive, powerful, uh, sexual women who live their lives on their terms 100%, who seek a man to look up to.

Lex Fridman 1:03:57 Yeah.

Yaron Brook 1:03:57 Now, eh, eh, this is psychologically complex. It's more psychology than philosophy, right?

Lex Fridman 1:04:02 Yeah.

Yaron Brook 1:04:02 It's psychologically complex, and, n- n- you know, not my area of expertise. But this is, th- th- there's something in it, uh, uh, she would argue there's something fundamentally different about a male and a woman, uh, about a male and female, psychologically, in their attitude towards one another.

Lex Fridman 1:04:18 Yeah, b- but as a side note, I say that, uh, I would say that I don't know philosophically if her ideas about gender are interesting. I think her other philosophical ideas are the more, much more interesting. But reading-wise, like, the stories it created, the tension it created, um, that was pretty powerful. I mean, that was, that's-

Yaron Brook 1:04:41 Uh-

Lex Fridman 1:04:41 ... that's pretty powerful stuff.

Yaron Brook 1:04:43 ... I'll speculate that it, the reason it's so powerful is because it reflects something in reality.

Lex Fridman 1:04:47 Yeah. That's, that's true.

Yaron Brook 1:04:48 And, uh-

Lex Fridman 1:04:48 There's a thread that at least it, it pulls on.

Yaron Brook 1:04:49 Yeah. And, and look, she, she, uh, it's, it's really important to say, she, I think she was the first feminist, in a sense.

Lex Fridman 1:04:55 (laughs)

Yaron Brook 1:04:56 Uh, I think, in a sense, the feminists have perverted feminism-

Lex Fridman 1:04:59 Yeah.

Yaron Brook 1:04:59 ... into something that it shouldn't be. But in the sense of men and women are capable, she was the first one who re- who really put that into a novel and showed it.

Lex Fridman 1:05:10 To me, as a l- as a k- as a, as a boy, when I, I was reading Atlas Shrugged, I think I read that before Fountainhead, that was one of the early introductions, at least of an American woman, had examples in my own life of Russian women, but of like a badass lady.

Yaron Brook 1:05:26 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 1:05:26 Like, I admire ve- I, like, I love engineering. I loved it that she could, you know-

Yaron Brook 1:05:32 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 1:05:32 ... here's a lady that's running the show.

Yaron Brook 1:05:34 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 1:05:35 So that, at least to me, was an example of a really strong woman. But objectivism, let's get-

Yaron Brook 1:05:39 Objectivism. So, and, and so she developed it for a novel. She spent the latter part of her life after the publication of Atlas Shrugged really articulating her philosophy. So, that's what she did. She applied it to politics, to life, to gender, to all these issues, from 1957 until she died in 1982.

Lex Fridman 1:05:54 So, the objectivism was born out of the later parts of Atlas Shrugged?

Yaron Brook 1:05:58 Yes, definitely. It was there all the time, but it, it was fleshed out during the latter parts of Atlas Shrugged and then articulated for the next 20 years.

Lex Fridman 1:06:05 So, what is objectivism?

Yaron Brook 1:06:06 So, objectivism... So, there, there are five branches in philosophy, and it, it, and so I'm gonna just go through the branches.

Lex Fridman 1:06:13 (laughs)

Yaron Brook 1:06:13 She starts with, you start with metaphysics, the nature of reality. And objectivism argues that, uh, reality is what it is. It's kind of, uh, goes, hearkens back to Aristotle, law of identity. A is A. You can wish it to be B, but wishes do not make something real. Uh, reality is what it is, and it is the primary. And it was, it's, it's not, mm- it's not manipulatively directed by consciousness. Consciousness is there to, uh, uh, uh, you know, to observe, to, to give us information about reality. That is the purpose of consciousness. That is the nature of it. So, in metaphysics, e- existence exists. A, it, it, the law of identity, the law of causality. Things are, you know, the, the things act based on their nature, not randomly, not arbitrarily, but based on their nature. And then we have the tool to know reality. This is epistemology, the, the theory of knowledge. Uh, our tool to know reality is reason. It's our senses and our capacity to integrate the information we get from our senses and to integrate it into new knowledge and to conceptualize it. And, uh, and, and that is uniquely human. Um, uh, we don't, we don't know the truth from revelation.We don't know truth from our emotions. Our emotions are interesting, our emotions tell us something about ourselves, but our emotions are not tools of cognition. They don't tell us the truth about what's out there, about what's in reality. So reason is our means of knowledge, and therefore mea- reason is our means of survival. Only individuals reason, just in the same way that only individuals can eat. We don't have a collective stomach. Nobody can eat for me, and therefore nobody can think for me. I, we don't have a collective mind. There's no collective consciousness. Not... It's- it's bizarre that people talk about these collectivized aspects of the mind. They don't talk about collective feets and collective stomachs and collective things. But... So we all think for ourselves, and it is our fundamental, basic responsibility to live our lives. To live, to choose to di- uh, once we choose to live, to live our lives to the best of our ability. So in morality, she is an egoist. She believes that the purpose of morality is to provide you with a code of values and virtues to guide your life for the purpose of your own success. Your own survival, your own thriving, your own happiness. Happiness is the moral purpose of your life. The purpose of morality is to guide you towards a happy life.

Lex Fridman 1:08:57 Your own happiness.

Yaron Brook 1:08:58 Your own happiness, absolutely. Your own happiness. So she rejects the idea that you should live for other people, that you should live for the purpose of other people's happiness. Your purpose is not to make them happy or to make them anything. Your purpose is your own happiness. But she also rejects the idea that you could argue maybe, uh, the Nietzschean idea, of you should use other people for your own purposes.

Lex Fridman 1:09:20 Mm-hmm.

Yaron Brook 1:09:21 Right? So every person's an- is an end in himself. Every person's moral responsibility is their own happiness, and you shouldn't use other people for your own, you shouldn't exploit other people for your own happiness, and you shouldn't be, allow yourself to be exploited for other people.

Lex Fridman 1:09:34 Mm-hmm.

Yaron Brook 1:09:35 Every individual's responsible for themselves. And what is it that allows us to be happy? What is it that facilitates, um, human flourishing, human success, human survival? Well, it's the use of our minds, right? It goes- goes back to reason. And what does reason require in order to- to be successful, in order to- to work effectively? It requires freedom. So the enemy of reason, the enemy of reason is force. The enemy of reason is coercion. The enemy of reason is authority, right? The Catholic Church, doing what they did to Galileo, right? That restricts Galileo's thinking, right? When he's in house arrest, is he gonna come up with a new theory? Is he gonna discover new truths? No. It- it- it- it's... The punishment is too, you know, it's too dangerous. So force, coercion, um, are enemies of- of reason, and what reason needs is to be free-

Lex Fridman 1:10:38 Mm-hmm.

Yaron Brook 1:10:39 ... to- to think, to- to discover, to innovate, to break out of convention. Um, so we need to create an environment in which individuals are free to reason, free to think, and to do that, we- w- w- we come up with a concept, historically, we've come up with the concept of individual rights. Individual rights define the scope of th-, define the fact that we should be left alone, free to pursue our values using our reason. Free of what? Free of coercion, force, authority. And that the job of government is to make sure that we are free. The whole point of government, the whole point of when we come in a social context, the whole point of establishing a government in that context is to secure that freedom.

Lex Fridman 1:11:30 Mm-hmm.

Yaron Brook 1:11:30 It's to make sure that I don't use coercion on you. The government is supposed to stop me, supposed to intervene before I can do that or- or if I've d- already done it, to prevent me from doing it again. So the purpose of government is to protect our freedom to think and to act based on our thoughts. It's to leave individuals free to pursue their values, to pursue their happiness, to pursue their rational thought, and to be left alone to do it. And so she rejects socialism, which- which basically assumes some kinda collective goal, assumes the sacrifice of the individual to the group, assumes that your moral purpose in life is the well-being of other people rather than your own. Uh, and- and, uh, she rejects all form of statism, all form of government, uh, that is, you know, overly, uh, that- that is involved in any aspect other than to protect us-

Lex Fridman 1:12:30 Mm-hmm.

Yaron Brook 1:12:30 ... from force, coercion, authority. Uh, and she rejects anarchy, and we can talk about that. I- I- I- I think you had a question in the list of questions you sent me about anarchy, so-

Lex Fridman 1:12:40 Sure.

Yaron Brook 1:12:41 ... and I'd be happy to discuss that.

Lex Fridman 1:12:41 And I just talked to Michael Malice about anarchy, so-

Yaron Brook 1:12:43 About anarchy, yes.

Lex Fridman 1:12:44 I don't know if you're familiar with him.

Yaron Brook 1:12:45 Yes, I'm familiar with him. So- so yeah, so she completely rejects anarchy. Anarchy's completely inconsistent with her point of view, and we can talk about why, if you want.

Lex Fridman 1:12:54 So there's some perfect place where freedom is maximized, so systems of government that max-

Yaron Brook 1:12:59 A- a- absolutely. And- and she thought that the American system of government came close in its idea, obviously founded with original sin, with the sin of slavery. But in its conception, the Declaration of Independence is about as perfect a political document as one could write. I think the greatest political document in human history.

Lex Fridman 1:13:16 Mm-hmm.

Yaron Brook 1:13:17 But really, articulated almost perfectly, um, and- and beautifully. And that the American system of government with its checkses, balances, balances, which is with its emphasis on individual rights, with its emphasis on freedom, with its emphasis on lead- leaving individual free to pursue their happiness, an explicit recognition of happiness as a goal-... individual happiness. It was the model. It, it wasn't perfect. There were a lot of problems, to a large extent because the founders had mixed philosophical premises. So, so there were, there were alien, um, uh, premises introduced into the founding of the country. Slavery obviously being the biggest problem. Um, but it was close, and we need to build on that to create an ideal political system that will, yes, up, maximize the freedom of individuals to do exactly this. Um, and then, of course, she had... So that's kind of, uh, that's eh, eh, the manifestation of this individualism in a political realm. And she had a theory of art. She had a theory of aesthetics, which is the fifth branch of, of, of... So you have metaphysics, epistemology, ethics, and politics, and the fifth branch is aesthetics. And she viewed art as an essential human need, a fuel for the human spirit, and that just like any human need, it had certain principles that it had to abide by. That is, just like s- there's nutrition, right? So some food is good for you and some food is bad for you. Some food, some stuff is poison.

Lex Fridman 1:14:47 Mm-hmm.

Yaron Brook 1:14:47 She believed the same is true of art, that art had an identity, which is very controversial today, right? If you, you know, today it's, if you put a frame around it, it is art, right?

Lex Fridman 1:14:57 (laughs)

Yaron Brook 1:14:57 If you put a urinal in, eh, eh, a urinal in a, in a museum, it becomes art-

Lex Fridman 1:15:00 Yeah.

Yaron Brook 1:15:01 ... which she thought was, e- was evil and, and, and ludicrous, and she rejected it completely. Uh, that art had an identity, and that it served a certain function, that human beings needed it-

Lex Fridman 1:15:13 Mm-hmm.

Yaron Brook 1:15:13 ... and if it didn't have... Not only did it have, have the identity, but that function was served well by some art and poorly by other art. Um, and then there's a whole realm of stuff that's not art, basically. All of, all of what today is considered modern art, she would consider as not being art. Uh, you know, splashing paint on a canvas, not art.

Lex Fridman 1:15:34 (laughs)

Yaron Brook 1:15:34 Um, so she had very clear ideas. Uh, she articulated them not... So I would say not in conventional philosophical form.

Lex Fridman 1:15:47 Mm-hmm.

Yaron Brook 1:15:47 So she didn't write philosophical essays using the philosopher's language. It's why, partially why I think philosophers have never taken her seriously. They're actually accessible to us. (laughs)

Lex Fridman 1:15:59 Mm-hmm.

Yaron Brook 1:15:59 We can actually read them. And she integrates the philosophy in what I think are amazing ways with psychology, with history, with economics, with politics, with what's going on in the world. Uh, and she has dozens and dozens and dozens of essays that she, she wrote. Uh, many of them were aggregated into books, uh, I particularly recommend. Books like, uh, uh, The Virtue of Selfishness, Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal, uh, and, and, uh, Philosophy: Who Needs It? And, eh, y- you know, it's, it's, uh, I think it's, it's a, it's a beautiful philosophy. Uh, you know, I know you're big on love. I think it's a philosophy of love. We can talk about that. Essentially, it's about love. That's what the philosophy's all about, and when it apply, in terms of it applying to self. Um, and, uh, eh, y- you know, I, I think it's sad that so few p- so few people read it, and so few intellectuals take it seriously and are willing to engage with it.

Lex Fridman 1:16:58 Let me ask... That was incredible, but after that beautiful whirlwind overview, let me ask the most shallow of questions, which is the name Objectivism.

Yaron Brook 1:17:09 Mm-hmm.

Lex Fridman 1:17:11 Uh, where, like, how should people think about the name being rooted? Why not individualism? What, what are the options? If we, like, had a branding meeting right now. (laughs)

Yaron Brook 1:17:22 Sure. So she actually had a branding meeting.

Lex Fridman 1:17:23 (laughs) Yeah.

Yaron Brook 1:17:23 So she, she did this. She went through the exercise. Objectivism, I do not think... I don't know the, all the details, but I don't think Objectivism was the first-

Lex Fridman 1:17:31 Yeah.

Yaron Brook 1:17:31 ... name she came with. The problem was that the other names were taken-

Lex Fridman 1:17:34 (laughs)

Yaron Brook 1:17:35 ... and they were not positive implications.

Lex Fridman 1:17:37 Got it.

Yaron Brook 1:17:38 So for example, rationalism could've been a good word-

Lex Fridman 1:17:40 Mm-hmm.

Yaron Brook 1:17:41 ... because she's an advocate of rational thought, or reasonism, but reasonism sounds weird, right?

Lex Fridman 1:17:47 Yeah.

Yaron Brook 1:17:47 The ism... Because of too many Ss, I guess.

Lex Fridman 1:17:50 (laughs)

Yaron Brook 1:17:50 Rationalism, but it was already a philosophy, and it was a philosophy inconsistent with hers because it was, it was a, it was a, what she considered a false view of, of reason, of rationality. Um, reality-ism, you know, just doesn't work. So she came on Objectivism, and I think actually, it, it, it, it's a great word. It, it's a great name because it, it's, it has two aspects to it, and this is her unique view of what objectivity actually means. In Objectivism, in objectivity is the idea of an independent reality. There is truth.

Lex Fridman 1:18:27 Mm-hmm.

Yaron Brook 1:18:28 There's actually something out there that we... And then there's the world of consciousness, right? There is the world of figuring out the truth. The truth doesn't just-

Lex Fridman 1:18:38 Mm-hmm.

Yaron Brook 1:18:39 ... hit you. (laughs) Eh, the truth is not in the thing. You have to discover it. It's that, it's that, a consciousness applied to-

Lex Fridman 1:18:49 Mm-hmm.

Yaron Brook 1:18:50 ... that's what objectivity is, right? It's you discovering the truth in reality. It's your consciousness interacting-

Lex Fridman 1:19:00 So the... And thereby posing the individual in that sense ... the individual in that.

Yaron Brook 1:19:02 And only the individual could do it. Now, the problem with individualism is it would've made the philosophy too political.

Lex Fridman 1:19:10 Right.

Yaron Brook 1:19:10 And she always said, so she said, she said, "I'm an advocate of capitalism because I'm really an advocate for rational egoism."

Lex Fridman 1:19:19 Mm-hmm.

Yaron Brook 1:19:20 "But I'm a rational for ra- I'm an advocate for rational egoism really because I'm an advocate for reason." So she viewed the essential of her philosophy as being this, uh, reason and her, her particular view of reason. She has a whole book, she has a book called, uh, Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology-... which I encourage any scientist, mathematician, anybody interested in science to read because it is a tour de force on, on, on, in a sense, the s- the, the, the, what it means to hold concepts, and what it means to discover new discoveries and to use, uh, e- e- e- to use concepts, and how we use concepts. And she has a theory of concepts that is completely new, that is completely revolutionary, and I think is essential for the philosophy of science. And therefore, ultimately, for the more abstract we get with scientific discoveries, the easier it is to detach them from reality and to detach them from truth, the easier it is to be inside our heads instead of about what's real.

Lex Fridman 1:20:30 Mm-hmm.

Yaron Brook 1:20:31 And there are probably examples from modern physics that fit that. And I think what she teaches in the book is how to ground your concepts and how to bring them into grounding in reality. So Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology, and note that it's only an introduction, 'cause one of the things she realized, one of the things that I think a lot of her critics don't give enough credit for, is that philosophy is... There's no end, right?

Lex Fridman 1:20:55 Mm-hmm.

Yaron Brook 1:20:56 It's always growing. There are always new discoveries. There's always- it's, you know, it's like science. There's always new things. And, and there's a ton of work to do in, in philosophy, uh, and particularly in epistemology

Lex Fridman 1:21:08 (laughs)

Yaron Brook 1:21:09 ... and the theory of knowledge that she was actually, given your interest in mathematics, she was a- she actually saw a lot of parallels between math and concept formation.

Lex Fridman 1:21:18 Mm-hmm.

Yaron Brook 1:21:19 And she was actually l- you know, in the years before she died, she was taking private lessons in mathematics, in algebra and calculus, because she believed that there was real insight in understanding algebra and calculus to, um, philosophy and to epistemology. And, uh, and she also was very interested in neuroscience 'cause she believed that that had a lot to tell us about epistemology, but also about music, therefore about aesthetics. So, I mean, she recognized the importance of all these different fields and how... And, and the beauty of philosophy is it should be integrating all of them. And one of the sad things about the world in which we live is, again, we view these things as silos. We don't view them as integrating. We don't have teams of people from different arena, you know, different fields, e- e- you know, discovering things. We, we, we become like ants, specialized. So she was definitely, uh, like that, and she was constantly curious, constantly interested in n- in the, in new discoveries, in new ideas, and, and how this could expand the scope of her philosophy and application of her philosophy.

Lex Fridman 1:22:32 The- there's like a million topics I could talk to you, but since you mentioned math, I'm almost q-

Yaron Brook 1:22:35 And we've only got three hours.

Lex Fridman 1:22:36 You only get... (laughs)

Yaron Brook 1:22:38 (laughs)

Lex Fridman 1:22:38 Well, I'm, I'm almost curious.

Yaron Brook 1:22:39 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 1:22:40 Uh, I don't know if you're familiar with Galileo's, like, incompleteness theorem.

Yaron Brook 1:22:44 I'm not, unfortunately.

Lex Fridman 1:22:45 Okay. It was a, a powerful proof that any axiomatic systems, when you start from a bunch of axioms, that there will, in that system, provably must be an inconsistency. So that was this painful, like, stab in the idea of mathematics that, no, if we start with a set of assumptions, kind of like Ayn Rand started-

Yaron Brook 1:23:11 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 1:23:11 ... with objectivism-

Yaron Brook 1:23:12 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 1:23:13 ... there will have to be at least one contradiction. Same-

Yaron Brook 1:23:17 See, I, I intuitively am gonna say that's false.

Lex Fridman 1:23:21 Philosophically, but in math, it's just true, and that-

Yaron Brook 1:23:25 But it's a question about how you define... Again, y- y- definitions matter, and you have to be careful on how you define axioms. And you have to be careful about what you define as an inconsistency and what that means to say there's an inconsistency. And I don't know. I'm not gonna say more than that 'cause I don't know.

Lex Fridman 1:23:41 Right.

Yaron Brook 1:23:41 But I'm suspicious-

Lex Fridman 1:23:43 (laughs) Yeah.

Yaron Brook 1:23:44 ... that there is some, uh, and this is