WBD498 Audio Transcription
I Was in a Cult with Tuur Demeester
Release date: Friday 6th May
Note: the following is a transcription of my interview with Tuur Demeester. I have reviewed the transcription but if you find any mistakes, please feel free to email me. You can listen to the original recording here.
Tuur Demeester is a Bitcoin investor and economist. In this interview, we discuss how he was drawn into a toxic online cult, his awakening and leaving, Twitter enabling cultist behaviours within Bitcoin and why it’s key to give air to all voices within Bitcoin.
“The short of it is that I was involved in an online cult, I think it’s fair to call it that way…. and it’s not like I lived in a commune, but it was really involved. And a lot of my friends were involved with that too. And it was very toxic and confusing. And it took me a long time to figure out what was going on and leave.”
— Tuur Demeester
Interview Transcription
Peter McCormack: Tuur, good to see you.
Tuur Demeester: Peter, good to see you, genuinely.
Peter McCormack: I know. We should tell people because some people won't know this, we did an interview in person back in 2018. The podcast hadn't even been going a year; it was just me, there was no team. We've done a couple since, but you've been a bit quiet the last year or two; missed you.
Tuur Demeester: Yeah. I even made my account private for a year, I think, my Twitter account. Yeah, definitely been quiet and I'm enjoying coming back. I've been doing more podcasts and just more Bitcoin stuff, yeah.
Peter McCormack: Well, it's good to see you back, because you were definitely missed. Did you do that Nirvana thing you told me about? You were going to write something about Nirvana.
Tuur Demeester: I have lots of drawers with drafts in them and that's one of them, Kurt Cobain draft, a kind of biographical piece, yeah.
Peter McCormack: I'd like to see that. Okay, so when we were coming out here to make a podcast, Danny said, "We need to talk to Tuur, it's been a while". So, we reached out to you. Not sure what we were going to talk about; we thought we might revisit the Reformation. But you came back to me and said, "No, I've got something else I want to talk to you about" which means we might not talk about Bitcoin too much today, maybe we will; I want to see if it comes up. It's something when you raised it and both me and Danny were, "Let's definitely talk about that, we think it's super interesting".
When we get into it, people will understand, but it has a meaning to me in terms of producing content and understanding the influence people have on other people. But I come with no questions, because I think this is just a conversation we must have. Do you want to give me the background of what it is you want to talk about?
Tuur Demeester: Yeah, sure. It's interesting how this number seven keeps coming back and leading up and like, "Oh, what it is it?" But it's basically been seven years that I'm not involved with that anymore, and so I remember there was this -- you know when you go to therapy, the ideas that the therapist -- it's a bit of an unequal relationship, they're in a power dynamic. So, if you ever want to be regular friends with a therapist, genuinely they recommend to wait seven years and then things are -- so interestingly, it's been seven years for me and now I feel ready to talk about it. I think it's relevant to -- we'll get into it I'm sure because of some of what's going on on the internet and even with crypto.
But so, yeah, the short of it is that I was involved in an online cult, I think it's fair to call it that way. We can maybe go into what makes up a cult or things like that. The timeframe was approximately 2008/09. Yeah, let's say 2009 through to 2014, early 2015 maybe. Yeah, that's about six years and it's not like I lived in a commune and things like that, but it was really involved and a lot of my friends were involved with that too. Yeah, it was very toxic and confusing. It took me a long time to figure out what was going on and leave.
Peter McCormack: I think a lot of people listening right now are going to be thinking, "What is this? You joined a cult in 2008, 2009, left in 2014. Is this Bitcoin?"
Tuur Demeester: Yeah, the timeframe. No, it was totally not. No, I guess you could say the cult was named, or the community was named, or the project was named Freedomain Radio. I think a lot of the early bitcoiners will be familiar. The guy who ran it is Stefan Molyneux. He started it in 2005 and it is real interesting, because I forget when he's born exactly, but I remember calculating that he was about 36 years old when he started it, which is the same age as I have now. So, it's really interesting to look back from that angle too.
So, on the face of it, what he was doing producing podcasts and doing call-in shows and talking to a lot of young people. The angle was philosophy, "We're going to be philosophically analysing what's going on with the world, thinking from first principles, rational debate, that kind of thing". Then ideologically, his bent was very much first republican/libertarian and then into anarcho-capitalists. Then interestingly later, he made a switch to born-again Christian-type audiences and also Trump. In 2016, he was a Trumper, even before Trump got elected.
So yeah, that was what it looked like on the surface. I learned about it because a friend of mine was, "Look, here's this piece" that Molyneux had written that was critical of academia. It was kind of this, now it's a more familiar story of the government obviously funds lots of universities, and so you get certain ideologies that permeate the universities, especially in Europe and Canada, maybe a little bit less in the US, because there's more free market forces at work. So, he was critical of the academic world and it really spoke to me.
I was digging into what else this guy was about and then discovering that he was -- I think he's at 5,000 podcasts now. He was producing huge amounts of content and a lot of it was just him, monologues, long, long monologues, two, three hours sometimes. So, I noticed that he was talking a lot about family stuff. To me, it was "Whoa, not only does he understand economics in a way that I think probably makes sense, but there's this whole self-improvement, working with trauma". His wife was a therapist.
Peter McCormack: We discussed that in our first ever interview.
Tuur Demeester: Yeah, we actually did talk about family stuff.
Peter McCormack: Yeah.
Tuur Demeester: Yeah, we talked about how I broke from my family. So, I started listening to this podcast day in, day out. It took a long time before I met the first people that were also listeners, but that's how it started.
Peter McCormack: I'm aware of him. Danny, can you look up; I'm trying to remember, it was either a podcast or a documentary? Can you look up Rabbit Hole, The New York Times Rabbit Hole?
Danny Knowles: Yeah, I know exactly what you mean.
Peter McCormack: Have you listened to that? Was that the one with Stefan Molyneux? They talked about going down the internet rabbit hole and where you can end up. I am sure they were talking about a guy went on YouTube and he ended up finding this Stefan Molyneux video, then he started going down the Stefan Molyneux rabbit hole. It sounded very toxic when he explained it. I think also Stefan Molyneux's been on Rogan and that's one of the shows that's been removed.
Tuur Demeester: Yeah, I think he did two appearances.
Danny Knowles: It was him in that podcast.
Peter McCormack: I thought so. That's the only awareness I have of him, from Rabbit Hole. But the explanation of what he was doing and the way he was manipulating his audience was pretty clear in that.
Tuur Demeester: Yeah, I haven't seen that. But I would say his peak, in terms of popularity, was around 2014/15, then 2016 too, but in a different way because it was more about Trump. The libertarian circles in 2014/15, anyone who was browsing online -- because he was doing so many interviews as well. He would interview scientists and all kinds of people. He's incredibly well-spoken, so it's tempting to just go on the show and he asks you about your work. Of course, in the process he legitimises his own projects.
Peter McCormack: You talk about it being a cult, but you start out just listening to his content. Talk to me about starting to meet some people, what that meant and how you found yourself in that cult.
Tuur Demeester: Yeah, and again I think cults are probably like a spectrum definitely. I'd never even read a book about cults, so I'm sure people will have all kinds of things to say about how I classify things. I do think it's probably a spectrum. When people are somehow emotionally immature or they just tend to see the world black and white, which I think is how he sees things, and good and evil, and us versus them, me against the world, that kind of thing, I think those kinds of people tend to be susceptible to either joining a cult, or in his case creating it.
What it looked like to me, one of the main things that made it more cultish was the moral angle where it was like, "Maybe your parents are evil" and all kinds of reasonings to justify that, like "Oh, they could have found better resources and done a better job and they didn't. So, they knowingly did this and that". His audience was 20-year-old kids. Now, being that kind of age, in my mid-30s, yeah, if I see someone who is 20 years old, they basically just came out of high school; they're very impressionable. If I pontificate about things, I could ramble for an hour and pull up all kinds of theories that I might have heard. Then what if I don't credit my sources? It's like I'm a genius, because I came up with all these mind-blowing ideas in the eyes of a 20-year-old. That's how he made himself the authority.
Another aspect, aside from the moralistic stuff, is -- and again I don't think he's evil. I think he genuinely believes that stuff; but it's being manipulative, it's really having a lot of double standards. For example, one of the things he would do is on the one hand he would be seemingly so humble, "Oh, what do I know? I'm just a guy on the internet". This is in the context of two-, three-hour-long call-in shows, where if you have an issue with your girlfriend or whatever, you would call in and he'd be your instant therapist. He would, of course, immediately know what's going on, kind of Tony Robbins-style almost where it's, "Yeah, I have this magic sense that I immediately know what's going on".
On the one hand, he would be, "Well yeah, you don't have to do anything. I'm not telling you what to do. What do I know? I'm just some guy on the internet". Then in other times, he would just be, "Well, I don't know. I've only done this 20 years, I've only been a professional full-time philosopher for…" all this weird stuff, and it took a long time to figure out. For example, he would tell people what to do, and then eventually you learn about his biographical timeline and it's, "Well, he didn't do that". He's telling people to do all this work or pursue philosophy as much as you can, whereas he first made sure he was comfortable financially before he started doing all this stuff and now it's still his business; he's asking people for money. So, those are some of the things, I think, that stand out.
Then the culture that he really cultivated, the culture and what that show was about and what he was about, was also in that manipulative sphere where it's a lot of psychologising. Anything you say, I'm going to interpret, "Well, you know, maybe… tell me about your… " This sounds such a trope but, "Tell me about your childhood" and, "Oh, where's that come from?" etc. Basically, it's a way to never take responsibility for him; he can always hold a mirror in front of someone and be, "Well, maybe you're being critical of me because of the stuff that you haven't worked out. I'm enlightened but you've got to…"
Sorry, I'm not going through the elements. I think another large element is isolation. It's this us against them, they're the muggles, they're the people who are stupid and they don't study philosophy, and we're the small circle of enlightened libertarians who are going to change the world and we need to breed and you need to find a girlfriend who… it's just very, very toxic.
Peter McCormack: Yeah. I seem to remember he asked to come on the show.
Danny Knowles: Stefan Molyneux?
Peter McCormack: Yeah.
Danny Knowles: I don't remember that.
Peter McCormack: I seem to remember it. Yeah, I can double-check that. I'm pretty sure he did and I'm pretty sure it was after that New York Rabbit Hole and we rejected him.
Tuur Demeester: Interesting.
Peter McCormack: Yeah, I'm going to confirm that. I think you would have been working on the show.
Danny Knowles: I definitely was when that happened, but I don't remember that.
Peter McCormack: Have a look and see if you can find him. Search him up in the emails.
Danny Knowles: He would have been on my old email.
Peter McCormack: Okay, I'll search it on mine but I'm pretty sure he did. The interesting thing is when you talk about age, 20-year-olds and how susceptible they are, because I remember being 20. I was at university and I felt like I was an adult. I'm away from home, I've got a job, I'm going to college and I'm learning. I definitely felt like I was an adult. Now I'm somebody with a 17-year-old son, I realise how he's still a kid and I don't expect in three years for him to not be a kid. Even though he's classed as an adult by society, I understand how he's still vulnerable. Our brains are still developing at that age anyway. It's 25, isn't it?
Tuur Demeester: 27, I even read --
Peter McCormack: 27.
Tuur Demeester: -- for brain maturity. There's some studies that suggest emotional maturity is actually in your 40s.
Peter McCormack: That would make sense for me! Yeah, that would make sense for me. I think it's coming; I feel like it's coming closer. So, talk to me about the community and how the community worked and how you connected with other people.
Tuur Demeester: Yeah, so there was an online forum, so there'd be all kinds of threads happening there. That was monitored and curated by either his employees or volunteers that had been there from the beginning, which is interesting because some people got kicked off and that was part of how it fell apart for me like, "Why did they get kicked off?" basically because one guy, in particular, who was critical and debating a lot of people, who was basically, I think, threatening staff because he was doing something similar and that's not allowed, of course. You can't challenge the leader.
So, the forum was one thing. I'm trying to think. The main place where people gathered and definitely listened to him religiously was the call-in shows. I think at some point it was twice a week, two, three hours, maybe longer sometimes; they would all be recorded. So, a lot of the "community members" would call in. I don't know if there's Torrents circulating still and if there's an archive, but I called in several times to ask for advice. In hindsight, I think he gave pretty terrible advice.
Peter McCormack: Can you find any examples of this call-in?
Tuur Demeester: I don't know when he started. It's hard because he had this road up and then he got cancelled on YouTube and several platforms. I think he was just too much on external hosting. I don't even know if he has an archive of all his stuff. Back in the days, you could go back and listen to any podcast that he'd done previously. It was one of the initiation rites, that you would basically listen to all his podcasts. People would come in new, and he's at podcast 1,300, and people would say, "Yeah, I'm at 300 now" or, "I'm at 500 now". They would listen to the whole thing, so you're almost downloading his complete world view at that point.
Peter McCormack: And I guess, when you go in that deep, you're starting to believe everything he says is correct, even if he's contradicting himself.
Tuur Demeester: Yeah, it really is hard to admit sometimes but it really drew me in. I would naturally have excuses because I didn't want him to fall off the pedestal, for sure. I remember, especially when after his second time he came on -- well no, his first time he came on Joe Rogan and Joe Rogan pushed back --
Peter McCormack: Do you want a coffee?
Tuur Demeester: Yeah, sure.
Danny Knowles: Thank you.
Peter McCormack: Do you know this Summer Moon coffee?
Tuur Demeester: I do, yeah.
Peter McCormack: So good.
Tuur Demeester: Yeah. He would obviously contradict himself and pretend to have this honest demeanour. But every time he was challenged, he would slither his way out of it or shut people down; he would really shut listeners down, "Oh, onto the next one". So, one of the things that comes to mind was his first appearance on Joe Rogan. Joe was very friendly and was quite impressed. Then I think after it aired, some people probably sent Joe Rogan some stuff and he was, "Oh really? Is this guy encouraging people to break from families?" So, the second time Stef came on, the atmosphere was different and Rogan was really challenging him on some things.
I remember being really upset, and then Joe Rogan was on some other TV show. He was, "Yeah, Freedomain Radio, they're all crazy. His listeners, they're all crazy" and yeah, I just remember being really upset and, "Oh, he doesn't understand". You just develop this loyalty, definitely. Basically what you do, I think, and what a lot of the kids did is, it's like a parental figure, you just project stuff into him.
Peter McCormack: I want to double-check.
Danny Knowles: I'm going through now to see if it's been taken or to see if he's the person that reached out to us.
Peter McCormack: I'm sure he did and I'm sure it's when he got cancelled. I want to double-check.
Tuur Demeester: Interesting, yeah.
Peter McCormack: I'm almost certain.
Tuur Demeester: I remember his YouTube channel got cancelled.
Peter McCormack: "Hello, Peter. I just recently found your podcast, I love it. You have very interesting people who bring a variety of viewpoints. I was introduced to Bitcoin by a philosopher named Stefan Molyneux who was talking about Bitcoin back in the early days. Would you be interested in having him on, so I can set it up for you? Stefan is very articulate and very good at explaining things to a layperson."
Tuur Demeester: Yeah.
Peter McCormack: "I would be interested to hear his points of view on Bitcoin and morality, anarcho-capitalism and the current moral state of monetary systems. Let me know if you're interested and if there's anything I can do to make this happen. I think he would add a lot to the conversation, especially in the realm of morals".
I replied, I said, "Sorry, no. Whilst Stefan makes some interesting points in some areas, many of his opinions are not things I like or agree with. I support his right to free speech but I have no interest in that on my show". You see, that was last year. I'm sure he's approached me directly as well. I'm sure I had a conversation with him; I've got a memory of it happening. I'm going to look in one more place.
Tuur Demeester: I'm trying to remember, he definitely spoke at the Texas Bitcoin Conference in 2014. Had he kept his wits, he could have been very wealthy by now. I remember looking at his Bitcoin addresses, his donation addresses and I think, if you cut it all together, over 500 Bitcoin was donated to him.
Peter McCormack: To him.
Tuur Demeester: I do remember hearing that they lost access to the wallet at some point.
Peter McCormack: When you talk about him being cancelled, that's why I think at the time that he approached us or someone on his team did. I don't think it's that one; that might be somebody else. But we rejected it because I just didn't like him! If I hadn't seen Rabbit Hole, it might have been one of the ones I said okay, I maybe would have watched a video or two and thought, "Okay, he might be interesting". But after the Rabbit Hole thing, I was just no, I'm not going to talk to this guy and I'm glad I didn't. To me, he comes across as really just a grifter.
Tuur Demeester: Yeah, it's more clear to me now. What is the definition of a grifter; is it somebody who's opportunistic?
Peter McCormack: Kind of, yeah. For me, a grifter is somebody who has a YouTube show or a podcast; they don't stand for anything, but they're always trying to find ways to get money. They stand for something, but they're always trying to get money out of their audience.
Tuur Demeester: Yeah.
Peter McCormack: There's a guy who runs London Real.
Tuur Demeester: Yeah, I know London Real.
Peter McCormack: He's a bit of a grifter. He was going to do a thing where he was going to create a free speech platform because he got cancelled from YouTube, raised a bunch of money from his audience, never really built it. I need to double-check this, I don't want to get sued.
Danny Knowles: Stefan's grift is working. He's got over 1,000 Bitcoin in his donation address.
Tuur Demeester: Yeah, but does he still have access to it?
Danny Knowles: Don't know.
Tuur Demeester: Is it empty?
Danny Knowles: No.
Tuur Demeester: We can probably figure since when he started building.
Danny Knowles: No, it's still in use; he's sending stuff on it.
Tuur Demeester: Oh.
Peter McCormack: That's the balance.
Danny Knowles: That's confirmed received.
Peter McCormack: He could have spent a lot of that.
Tuur Demeester: I think he probably did.
Peter McCormack: When did he start?
Tuur Demeester: He started, yeah, in 2011 or 2012, or something, really early soliciting Bitcoin donations.
Peter McCormack: Is that his whole revenue model, donations?
Tuur Demeester: Yeah, it's almost like he was, "People go to church, you know. Churches are private institutions and they're maintained by their audience. I'm never going to have ads or advertising on my podcasts, I want to keep it clean. What if I charge half a dollar per podcast? Then you just figure out how many podcasts you've heard and that's how much you donate". So, I think that's part of why he made the switch from libertarianism to Christian, to a Christian audience, because they're used to that stuff. He could be just, "Hey, I'm your new church leader. Why don't you donate to me?"
Just to be fair or clear, I don't think it's necessarily terrible to ask for donations, but I definitely think that the way he would ask and also considering who his audience is, obviously there's thousands of people, I've only met a small sample; but most of them are not particularly successful entrepreneurs, they're just poor students, poor kids. Then the way he would guilt people into keeping up with the donations, that doesn't sit right with me.
Peter McCormack: He sounds a bit grifty to me. I'm not entirely against it, but I'm also not an entire fan of some donations; it depends how it's done. I quite like the podcasting stuff where you can stream sats, I think that's cool. There's things like Sam Harris's podcast. I think he's the one where you can choose how much you pay; it's free, but you can choose how much you pay. I think some people do that or you can subscribe to podcasts. But that whole soliciting donations, it never sits right with me in that way.
Like I say, Brian Rose the London Real guy, I feel like he does that. There's some great YouTube videos about that, by the way. There's a guy who goes out and he's the grifter hunter; he goes out hunting grifters and then he does little videos explaining the whole grift.
So, what was the kicker to get out? You said earlier…
Tuur Demeester: Part of the context is also I met my now wife through that; she was a listener too.
Peter McCormack: Wow.
Tuur Demeester: There was a Europe call, so some listeners would do Skype calls together. That's another part, and so we were talking about the forum and then there's the call-in show. There were some people who actually physically lived close. For example, Philadelphia is one of the places where early on in 2006 to 2008, there were maybe ten people who tried to live together. Of course, there was drama and it all fell apart.
Peter McCormack: Hold on. So, a group of Molyneux fans created the Molyneux --
Danny Knowles: Citadel.
Peter McCormack: -- citadel?
Tuur Demeester: Yeah, I don't think they physically lived in the same house but it was close to each other. Also, I remember hearing a call where he was talking to one of his close associates or volunteers who had been there since forever and Stef asking, "Oh, what happened in Philly that it fell apart?" then basically being disgruntled, "Oh, they should have reached out to me and I would have fixed it" kind of thing; this grandeur sense. He's basically admitting, "My audience, they're like children and they need the father to keep everyone happy, and they should have asked", that kind of entitlement.
Peter McCormack: Does sound culty.
Tuur Demeester: How did we end up there, physically? Yeah, so my wife -- so, there was a Europe call and so interestingly, we knew some of the same people who were on that call, because she was from the US but somehow it interested her and she would also participate on that call. We started talking to each other and then I ended up just travelling to the US and just sticking around; we just fell in love and that was 2014 era.
So basically, I was starting to get a life instead of just being a keyboard warrior. In those conversations with her, she would be, "Hang on, what was that about?" I remember, in particular, there was one podcast that he did. He would do these video productions eventually, "The Truth About". It was "The truth about this person, the truth about that person". It was an alternative take on their biography, or just something. So, he did a "Truth About" what's his name again; Bill Cosby. He did "The Truth About Bill Cosby" right when the scandal broke.
Peter McCormack: Coincidentally or just after?
Tuur Demeester: No, he was always after views and engagement and growing his audience. He would try to produce something really quickly. So, he did this two-hour thing, "Oh, Bill Cosby, biography, this and that". He ended up basically saying, "Yeah, he was a flawed man. He did bad things but he also did many good things and he supported education", this kind of stuff.
Peter McCormack: Like a narcissist.
Tuur Demeester: I remember just letting it flow over me even more. I was, "That's kind of fucked up, you know. This guy is a serial rapist and this scandal just broke and you're going to put out a video basically being, 'Oh, you know, there's good and bad. Yeah, too bad that he made some wrong choices'". I would increasingly just look more critically at some things that he would put out.
Peter McCormack: That's what narcissists and sociopaths do; they layer their bullshit with being parts of the community or making donations. It was Epstein who did all the work with the scientific community. That's just a narcissistic tactic. That isn't something where you say, "Oh, he's good. He did some good things; he did some bad things". No, he did some good things as a shield for his bad things.
Tuur Demeester: Exactly. Isn't that interesting; for all his amazing wisdom, Stef did not identify that, or maybe it's convenient because that's his modus operandi himself. He has all this helpful stuff, talking to child psychologists and helping you figure out -- and I'm not saying he does this consciously. But he has, at least he had, he did create a big a shield to be, "Oh no, I'm a philosopher. I care about the truth. Look at all this content". Then the manipulation stuff has snuck in there.
Peter McCormack: Do you think part of it also is you're just getting older; you've fallen in love so you've got other distractions? Maybe you started to realise he's just full of shit or not needing it?
Tuur Demeester: It was also that 2014/15 was also the period for me where I started to really interface a lot face-to-face with other listeners. They would have a lot of the vibe, which was the culture of, what me and my wife, we call "tinkering under the hood". It's gross if you think about it; every time you enter into a conversation with someone they start asking you, "What about your trauma? What about your childhood?" They're yanking over the hood of your car and starting to mess with the engine. It was, "Oh, I don't know if this is…" It's, "Dude!"
Of course I care and yeah, I've been in therapy for over ten years now. I care about that stuff, but it gets into manipulative territory if every time, that becomes -- because that's what creates the power dynamic. I'm not going to do it, but if I start trying to ask you, "What about your --" digging around in your childhood and stuff. That's the key also, I'm not doing it meanwhile. There's a difference; I'm the authority. Because our friends there, they had been in therapy for longer than us. I think that's what happens in cults is that some people just have more power. There's this hierarchical structure, do you know what I mean?
The people who have been in it for longer, they have more power, they want it, they want to keep it. So for a long time, I would feel really intimidated by everyone. Even talking to Stef, "Oh wow, they've been in it for so…" the way maybe some people in Bitcoin feel intimidated by someone who's been in it for a long time, "Oh, I don't want to step on anyone's toes". We're talking about how it ended. That to me was turning the volume to ten; going from a more passive listener and interacting with some people to, all right, I'm living in Philadelphia, we're meeting these people very often.
Then I got into some weird confusing situation with Stef's number two, his right-hand man. That was the finale for me, because this guy was acting really weird and cold and it was just so confusing. The whole philosophy is, "Oh, you've got to introspect and you've got to work on your stuff". I was doing that, writing pages and pages, "Oh, what did I do wrong?" Eventually it was, "Okay, I think I have some clarity. I don't think I actually did anything wrong. The guy doesn't want to talk to me so, all right, let's call the Buddha. Let's have a call with Stef".
All that he did in that call was being defensive and trying to blame me. He was, "Maybe if you don't get what you want, maybe you get angry" shit like that. I was just, "What the hell?"
Peter McCormack: "What is this bullshit?"
Tuur Demeester: Yeah. That was the moment where I was okay, this is fucked up. It's weird because it took me a little longer than my wife; she was done with it before I was.
Peter McCormack: Sounds a little bit like Scientology in that you have those layers of groups.
Tuur Demeester: Yeah. There's no written procedures but maybe that's how Scientology started. I don't know that much about Scientology.
Peter McCormack: It has a hierarchy.
Tuur Demeester: Yeah, and then also the ostracism; that was one of the cultish things as well. Because there's lots of psychologists who are, "Sure, if you're in a family with lots of trauma, lots of dysfunction, yeah, it can be really healthy to take a break. Just take a break and it can be a long break and then gradually you find your way back". But Stef was very forever; you just break forever.
He had broken with his parents forever, he had encouraged his wife to do the same. Then what you would also notice is that inside the Freedomain Radio circles, there was lots of ostracism there, where people would just be cast out not to ever be talked to again, which is sad. If you want to grow into a mature adult, you re-visit relationships, sometimes you just lose touch with someone and then you reconnect. But it was really encouraged. And also, if you're not an anarchist, that was one of the tropes that he would use, "If you're not an anarchist, well then you don't believe in the non-violence --" how do you call it?
Peter McCormack: Non-aggression principle.
Tuur Demeester: Non-aggression principle. So, "I will do this little game with you. Would you support the use of force against me? If you're in favour of taxation, let's make it personal. What if I don't pay the tax? Would you support that someone with a gun comes in and drags me to jail?"
Peter McCormack: I know exactly what you're saying.
Tuur Demeester: It's demonise the person who just, I don't know, maybe for whatever reason they don't believe in anarchy and now all of a sudden, they're evil; they support the use of this crazy violence against me, so I've got to stay away from them. My friends are all anarchists.
Peter McCormack: This is why I wanted to have this conversation; this is why it interested me so much. Some people might have already given up listening because they're, "I want to hear about Bitcoin". But this really interests me because this has come up recently. I got into a Twitter discussion with somebody about the state.
I am reluctant statist, I believe in democracy, I support democracy. I am not anarcho-capitalist, I'm not a libertarian. I like a lot of the ideas they have, but every time I game it out and try and imagine society organising around these rules, it just doesn't work for me. It came up on Twitter and somebody said to me, "Let's start with first principles. Do you agree that all coercion is bad?" which is a very tricky question to deal with. If I say yes, then by that I should therefore be against the state because the state will tax you under the threat of weapons. If I say no, therefore I'm somebody who believes in coercion, I'm fundamentally evil.
There are arguments that start from a point of a very simple first principle; they don't allow you to deal with the nuance. For example, of course I have to pay tax in the UK, I'm okay paying tax. I think it's too high, I wish it was lower, I do wish it was lower. I would like it to be a lot lower.
Tuur Demeester: I sympathise. Having grown up in Belgium, I sympathise.
Peter McCormack: You understand. But I'm still okay paying tax and whilst you can define it as being taxist theft and you have to pay it under the threat of men with guns, I don't feel like there is a threat of men with guns; I just accept that as part of how a society coordinates itself. But the reason I'm interested in this is because of these kinds of arguments. I think they destroy nuance and I think nuance is super important.
When we make a show, Tuur, it doesn't matter what it is, whether we cover Russia/Ukraine or we cover COVID or we cover the state or we cover climate change, all Bitcoin subjects or asymmetric subjects, I can guarantee you that there are three audiences listening. There is the audience that will disagree and are never going to change their mind, the audience that will agree and will never change their mind and then the group in the middle who are willing to hear open arguments. But my problem is when you get to the audience who disagree or agree, one or the other, but won't change their mind, is that they're unempathetic for other people's ideas and they will repeat talking points they hear from other people.
So, a great example will be tomorrow, and this isn't an advance criticism of Alex Epstein. We've got an interview with him; he's written a book called The Moral Case for Fossil Fuels. I'm not saying he's a cult leader. I think he has made some interesting points. I do think those people concerned about the climate have got some issues wrong. The point I'm trying to make is people who have been convinced and are immovable from the point that climate change is a scam will believe everything he says and repeat everything he says without thinking it through; that works vice versa. Those who are highly concerned about the climate will read everything by a climate scientist and repeat it verbatim without challenging it.
We seem to have lost this ability or some people have lost this ability to think through the idea and accept they may be wrong, and end up following the opinions of somebody. I think that's dangerous. I think people have become their ideas, which is dangerous.
Tuur Demeester: I think it's understandable but dangerous. I think usually it comes from you feel unsafe, you feel fear and then it becomes like a shield. You join a tribe, you're hiding behind their shield, you can just follow them and they'll protect you and they'll value you. So, yeah, joining a team is fun and even in a company you're competing or in sports, cheering for a certain team is fun, but you can't do it everywhere. In life as an adult, there is nuance and there is disagreement and it's hard to stand on your own legs to be, "Hey, I actually don't fully agree with any human on the planet". It's tough to realise, to grow into that and be, "Yeah, I'm just my own person".
But then I think the beauty is if you can get to a point where it's, "Oh, but that doesn't mean I can't connect with other people. We can sit at the table and talk and be, 'Oh, here's a different idea about this, let me think about that. Maybe now I'll disagree and then later…'" Yeah, I agree it doesn't even matter what camp people are in. I think the scary thing is if people are just tribalists.
To come back to the non-aggression principle, to somebody who is impressionable, that is a compelling argument but the nuance, I think, can come where it's, "Okay, let's make it --" because the example given is always, "Oh, let's imagine Robinson Crusoe on an island and Friday arrives, number two and then what, say, if you have five people there and then three people gang up against the two others and force them to pay tax". That's the argument that tax and slavery are just the two sides of one coin.
This is just off the top of my head, but there's another model which is possible to think about; they call it the hotel model in libertarian circles or Austrian circles. The idea is basically if you live in an apartment building or some kind of organisation where people live together, you want to make decisions. You have meetings sometimes and of course you have your own freedom inside your apartment, but there are certain places where there is some friction and where you talk and you try to figure out. Of course an apartment building is going to charge for maintaining the lawn and this and that.
So, I'm not saying I agree with that and that's the model that we should extrapolate and the social contract is, therefore, Rousseau is 100% right. I'm not saying that, but I'm just saying there is another way to look at this stuff which is not necessarily retarded or evil. It's a fair argument.
Peter McCormack: The non-aggression principle works if everyone abides by the non-aggression principle and their life circumstances allow them to abide by it, and we don't have people who are maybe violent or psychopaths or desperate, who for some reason have to break that principle. If someone is hungry and they don't have food, if they steal an apple from a cart, have they broken the non-aggression principle?
Tuur Demeester: Yeah, yeah.
Peter McCormack: I tend to think these binary black and white positions, which you mentioned earlier, they don't really allow for understanding of what humans are like. When humans are desperate and hungry, they will fight and they will defend themselves, and they will steal. That happens. So, I believe you have to have a way of co-ordinating around rules and if you're going to have rules, they're really going to end up being centralised so you have a way of enforcing them.
Now, that doesn't mean I support the extension of where the state is now; we've gone too far, things have gone a bit crazy. But I think it's important to start thinking of, rather than looking at a binary decision, start looking at the net position of both. If you want a libertarian society, what is the net position on everybody? If you want government, also what is the net position?
Tuur Demeester: What does that mean, net position?
Peter McCormack: The net position: for example, we live in a democracy now and we pay high tax. You can maybe have a number of different measures: economic output, standard of living, how content people are. If you went to a libertarian society, you would lose some things. What would you maybe lose? You would lose taxation, so you have more money. But you would have to arrange your own cover in case you have a fire or if you need support from the police or medical cover. What about people who can't afford that? Does it ghettoise certain areas and, with that, does it make it a more dangerous society? What is the net impact of these decisions?
I think that's where the debate is and I think if you start to understand the net impact, you don't really want democracy in its current form; you don't really want a libertarian society; you want something in the middle.
Tuur Demeester: I even wonder if -- I'm just thinking out loud, but one of the areas that I think is under-understood and underappreciated is the area of the production of law. With law, I don't mean lex, I don't mean rules that come from some authority, I don't mean fiat. What I mean is order; how does order get produced in society. If you look historically, a lot of it is mediation, a lot of is sitting across from a person you don't agree with and trying to work something out. A lot of it is maybe even just talking about contractual terms like prevention, amounts of prevention. Then pre-agreeing, how are we going to mediate this if we run into a conflict?
Historically, it helps if people have been living in the same area for a long period of time to have a consensus, not about individual life choices, but about the meta stuff; what if we disagree, what do we do? Do we bash each other's head in or do we sit around the table? If we do sit around the table, how does that work?
So, I think part of why we have grasped onto this idea of the state, that the state must take care of it is, and I could very much be wrong, is that there's been so much change that's happened over the past few centuries, so much technological change, so much migration. So, what do you do when there is an influx of people with very different programming? It's tempting to be, "Maybe this one organisation can do a great job".
But I do think in the long run there can be a lot of unbundling where ultimately the state is just a corporation, right; it's just a corporation that has some privileges and some monopolies. I think a lot, if not all of that, can be unbundled and doesn't have to be so geographically bounded. If I rent a car with Avis, maybe the headquarters are somewhere in the US, but I can be Europe and still I can rely on their way of doing things, their lawful way of doing things. Historically, there was mercantile law which is also not bound to geography, it was just the oceans.
Of course, the role of technology is to make the realm of where we even have to have these debates to shrink that. If we use Bitcoin, there's not even a debate about how much money there needs to be printed, it just is. All that energy about monitoring the Fed, we can just do not that. Debating each other and trying to get elected to make change, it's just a given; technology takes care of it so we can focus on our own private lives and getting along.
That to me is what excites me. I'm into tech because it shrinks the area of potential conflict. I do think that governments can play a role in shrinking that area of potential conflict, but I think there are other ways; there are ways to shrink the government almost completely. I do also think that this is something that in general Brits, and I don't mean it as an attack or something, but maybe because of Jeremy Bentham and this background of scientism and empiricism, there can be a tendency to have this consequentialist thinking, where something is good if the consequences are good. If we reach the end, that justifies the means and to me, that is dangerous.
Peter McCormack: Has any part of what happened with Stefan Molyneux and your thinking about it, and reviewing it, how do you compare that to the world of Bitcoin? Again, the reason I care is I believe in Bitcoin. Like yourself, I think it's a great technology and a great tool for people, especially in the current climate. I do consider how we tell the story of Bitcoin to people, how we convince people, help them understand the benefits of Bitcoin, specifically those who may be more moderate on the left. I think the right and the libertarians get Bitcoin a little bit easier.
So, rather than reject them, just tell them their ideas are idiotic, I'm much more interested in thinking how we communicate it to them. That's a challenge; that really is a big challenge and something I think about a lot. Do you layer your experiences onto Bitcoin and recognise any faults or mistakes or concerns within the Bitcoin community?
Tuur Demeester: Yeah, definitely. To me, I have different concerns now than I had a few years ago. In 2015/16 I was worried about personality cults, not necessarily in Bitcoin, but more in the altcoin space. I think we've seen Cardano and Ethereum, to a large extent, as a personality cult. That to me, because of my background with this stuff and because I know how destructive it can be, in general in life the most painful thing is to let go of your illusions; that is one of the most painful things. So, if people get really caught up in one of those altcoin personality cults, it's going to be really painful once the downfall happens. That's part of why I've been always so vocal to be critical of these kinds of things.
Then as time progresses, I think Bitcoin is winning, I think Bitcoin is going mainstream. As that happens, I think certain people feel like they may lose their edge, all right. You used to be on the cutting edge if you're a bitcoiner. Well, if a billion people using Bitcoin or five billion, it's like an internet user, you're just an internet user. Whereas in the 1990s, you were part of the little club, exclusive club. So, my worry now is that we'll see splinters, we'll see people that feel the need to have a tribe and so they will maybe incorporate Bitcoin in whatever their ideology might be. I just worry because it's just destructive.
You know I've done work on the Reformation, and looking back, to me the essence of the Protestant Reformation was we had a technological revolution, the printing press was one of the main things there. That allowed people to push for religious freedom, which was radically new. We don't need a monopoly on religion; people can just follow their own passions and interests, it's a personal thing. That was the push initially; it's like breaking the monopoly of the Catholic Church.
Then if you look at what happened, all these crazy cults started emerging and that's what we associate today with Protestantism. Literally, originally it was protesting the Catholic Church, that's what united people. But then as almost everyone started doing that, some people were like… and I would include Luther in that and some other very famous figures, they created their own cults. I feel like the ideal of the Protestant Reformation, even though it started in Europe, was most perfectly achieved in the US, where you have that religious freedom, and then gradually it came back to Europe.
That's what I think could happen, as Bitcoin goes more mainstream, that we in a way -- and I guess I feel compassion too. Society can't move faster than what it's ready to move towards. This Bitcoin nirvana that we dream of might take multiple generations to actually materialise. We might have some weird times when people are like, Bitcoin initiation rituals, I don't know what we could expect. That's one of the things that I try to, and I think that's what you try to do too, "Hey, you know, you don't need to eat meat to be a bitcoiner" or, "You don't need to do all these arbitrary things to be part of the club". It's just a technology, you know.
Peter McCormack: You say you worry about it happening in the future, but I see it happening now. We were out yesterday talking about this, when somebody who isn't a bitcoiner can come into the community, have a question and groups of people can dogpile in, call them an idiot, meme them, insult them, and I think that pushes them away. Someone who doesn't do that is Michael Saylor; he's brilliant.
Tuur Demeester: Yeah.
Peter McCormack: Every time he replies, it's with a very considered intelligent explanation, but that's lost amongst people dogpiling in. By the way, I'm a hypocrite, I've done it, I try not to. But I do worry that actually, that holds Bitcoin back. I worry for people externally looking in, do we look like a cult? We make a joke about it and some people even say, "I'm in the Bitcoin cult and I'm glad". But I do worry we look like a cult.
Tuur Demeester: I don't think it's that uniform. First of all, I feel like I've been through it with everyone else. If you've lived through several Bitcoin cycles, you have battle scars. If you believe in fundamental analysis and long-term thinking and sound engineering, you feel the battle scars of all the attacks that have happened against Bitcoin. I really, really sympathise with the cause, the motivation of where some of these people are coming from; another person who is justifying shitcoinism or whatever. I get that there's an element of that; there's an immune system response and it's healthy.
Peter McCormack: I think that's healthy.
Tuur Demeester: Then there's a grey zone where it's, "Well, does that justify abuse?" Just a few days ago, we had Will Smith slapping Chris Rock, this comedian at the Oscars. Yeah, you can sympathise where Will Smith may be coming from; he had a horrible violence growing up in his family and maybe he has some marital troubles and whatever. You can sympathise, but it is still wrong what he did. I feel the same way about people piling in online with all kinds of abuse. I sympathise where you're coming from but that doesn't justify hazing someone or whatever you call it, bullying someone.
Peter McCormack: That's the shame of social media. Myspace was my first one, but it wasn't really social media; I would go on band pages and listen to their music. Facebook was really the first social media took I used and it was great fun; it was great fun to begin with. You'd go out and want to post some pictures, you'd laugh about what happened the night before, you would throw a sheep at each other, you would have fun, it was great.
Then I remember Twitter coming along and thinking, "No one's going to use this", because you don't know these people, you don't care what they say. So, I didn't really use it to begin with, I stuck with Facebook. Then what happened was Facebook got boring and Twitter became useful. But now Twitter has got to this point where it is just a big giant argument, a big giant fight.
Tuur Demeester: Didn't people also really go out of their way to hurt you recently?
Peter McCormack: Yeah, that happens, but that's happened the whole way. I'm not completely without blame; I control and I can take the Mick. Yeah, there's abuse that comes in. There was one particular thing that's happened a couple of times, just the insulting my dead mother.
Tuur Demeester: Yeah.
Peter McCormack: Actually it was to my sister; some guy said, "Everyone's glad she died". Those are the ones, it's just another reason to say, "I don't care about Twitter". But also they are the ones that affect me the least, surprisingly, because this is just some random guy who is obviously mentally deranged and hurt in himself in some way that he feels it's okay to say that to somebody. That doesn't bother me the most in the end. The stuff I dislike the most is where some people who should know better, they lie about your intentions.
Tuur Demeester: Yeah, I think that ribs me the most too, it gets under my skin. Someone who has built up a certain credibility for themselves, but they're still insidious and insinuating that they're basically superior, morally superior. To me, what gets me the most is that other people don't see what's going on.
Peter McCormack: They're in the subcult.
Tuur Demeester: Yeah, this person is a mini cult leader and then their followers are, "Yeah, yeah". That is what gets me the most and, "All right, I've got to take a break".
Peter McCormack: I've taken the break. It's made my life immeasurably better over the last week or so. The main reason I took the break is I was being a dick myself. Some guy was making a comment and the way I questioned him is not the way I would have done in person.
Tuur Demeester: Yeah.
Peter McCormack: Where I would have said, "Listen, can you explain this to me? I really don't understand why you're doing this". Instead, it was a bit of a sarcastic quip and then he came back at me. I said, "You know what? You've just given me a good reason to quit". So, it was mainly self-reflection of my own behaviour but I can layer in loads. I can give you 20 reasons to quit Twitter. In the end it just doesn't serve a person for me anymore.
But I also feel like it's one of those things, what is it Amber said to me one time, "Everything's a weapon if you point it in the right way", and I feel like people have weaponised Twitter against each other and I'm just like, "I don't need this, it isn't helpful". I still see it as a useful tool for a number of reasons, but I do feel with these social tools, we've lost civility and the ability to have a proper discussion. It's gamed in a way where it's fight, fight, fight and I'm just done with that.
Tuur Demeester: Also, the power that it has to play your emotions like a piano. You're scrolling through the feed and you're seeing all this stuff. Now, especially with the wars and stuff, you're bombarded with all these impressions and the responses are often, even on your own tweets, if I look at the responses, I know people just did it in ten seconds; not everyone but a lot of people, which is understandable and so easy. Part of how Twitter thrives is on the engagement. It's, "Oh, yeah" and if you're a little bit sarcastic, then you've got a thing going.
Peter McCormack: It also elevates people into a position they're not ready to handle. You think five years ago, I didn't have a podcast, I was just a guy with regular job. I do a podcast and got half a million followers. I'm not prepared for that, what that means or how to handle it, how I use that responsibly; I'm just not prepared and I recognise that now. I recognise that I can say things, that if I get things wrong, there's a negative impact. I don't know how you prepare for that but it's similar. It might even be someone who's got 10,000 followers and they're a troll and they spark the people who follow them to attack someone with them. I just don't think people fully understand the impact they can have on other people.
Tuur Demeester: Yeah and also it's funny how, in the Bitcoin world, we're always talking about lower your time preference and think about the long run, hodl and all that stuff. Yet, we're all engaging, not all because I know there's lots of bitcoiners who don't do social media, but we're all engaging in this super short time preference platform. There's an irony in there and I'm guilty of it very much; not guilty, I don't think it's bad, but I'm aware of the challenge. I feel like my challenge is to lower my time preference more so that I can give Twitter a more, "Okay, I like you, here's your room. I'm going to visit the room every now and then", but it's not sitting on my shoulder following me everywhere. I don't want that; I want it to be a tool for me rather than something that rules my life.
Peter McCormack: I can understand that. I feel similar, but also a tool for Bitcoin. The way we're just using it now is we release a show and we'll re-tweet it. Somebody said to me will I ever come back on Twitter and I was, "Probably at some point, I don't know". But there are still some tweets I will send. For example, say you wrote a new article and I was, "This is great, I will share that out". Or, we're about to support a project, a charity project and we're going to make a Bitcoin donation to try and spark other people, I will tweet that out; these are useful things. But as far as getting there and have opinions and share opinions and debate them, that time has passed.
Now, we use this; this is the place to do it where two people can have a conversation, we can put it out there, people can email us and they can give us their feedback and I think that's a much better use of time. In the end, what's the thing? What's best for Bitcoin, Danny?
Danny Knowles: Everything's good for Bitcoin!
Peter McCormack: But that was the point. If the decisions we make are good for Bitcoin, then they're the right decisions; let's do that, let's put Bitcoin first. We want Bitcoin to be a success, we know the benefits that can have on people's lives. So, let's just focus on that, let's make shows. Let's make this show to help people understand, and hopefully this will impact people in a way so maybe they don't dogpile and attack other people, but have empathy for other people's decisions.
They might tell me to go fuck myself and think I'm pretentious, but someone might come out of this and go, "You know what, maybe I'm not going to talk to someone like that online, maybe I'm going to look at how Saylor replies to people and maybe I'm going to do more of that", can we do things like that.
Tuur Demeester: Yeah, I think so much starts with yourself. If you can just find a way that really works for you, where you feel ethically more at peace, then the side effect is you become a role model and people sense this person is happy and they're not abusive. That's part of what I find not very productive, are these debates on Twitter about how people should behave. I understand maybe where it's coming from but it's usually not productive.
Something I meant to ask you, because you started bringing it up: one of the things you're trying to do is to reach across the aisle and see people that are more liberally inclined; what are the things that can help them join us, join Bitcoin. By the way, I wouldn't call myself Republican at all, I'm very much politically homeless. So I'm curious, what are the things you feel you've found so far that possibly really work?
Peter McCormack: This has been coming for a while. The real stand-out thing for us is we took it off recently, but I used to say on every show, "If you want to get in touch, drop me an email hello@whatbitcoindid.com, I reply to everybody". We got to a point where we were getting 40, 50 emails a day and it would take me an hour to two hours every morning to reply to them, and I was happy to do it. Well, I was happy to do it to begin with but when it became one to two hours, that became prohibitive in terms of time, especially when some people send you really long emails and you want to respect them and read it; so, we took that out.
But what was happening was, the response I was getting in my emails was very different to Twitter. I have differing views than maybe some of the more traditional bitcoiners. I vocally say, "I am a firm supporter of democracy", which isn't a popular term amongst certain circles. I will say, I am vaccinated, I will say, "I think climate is caused by humans and I'm concerned about it". To some people, I'm considered a lefty. I'm still considered on the right in the UK, but to some people I'm considered a lefty. I will share these opinions.
But what will happen on Twitter, the response was generally either neutral to fuck you. The "fuck yous" are memes, people making memes of me and putting me in outfits, saying I'm an idiot and then blocking me and accusing me of being a cuck and all this stuff, it's quite aggressive, aggressive responses to it. What would happen in the emails, the emails we would get in would be, "Thank you for speaking up about this", "Thank you for that, I really appreciated it", "I share your opinions". I was, "Okay, there's a difference here between the listeners and Twitter, and why is that".
I think what it is, is the public acknowledgement of agreeing or supporting ideas is not rewarded, it's actually attacked because it's not the considered historical position for some bitcoiners. Also, some people would specifically say to me, "I'm not going to say this on Twitter because I don't want to get attacked".
Tuur Demeester: Right.
Peter McCormack: That was something that really stood out for us. It didn't really change too much about what we do, because we would always speak to everyone. The one thing we have noticed recently, there's more people who are moderates, left, who are asking to come on the show and that didn't happen. Historically, it was traditional Bitcoin people who don't give a fuck about politics or are libertarians, anarcho-capitalists, maybe on the right. We just didn't get people from the left. That's now come in as well.
Tuur Demeester: That's awesome.
Peter McCormack: The bigger point here really is, Bitcoin is going to spread amongst the wider world quicker than Bitcoin is going to bring down the state; that's very clear.
Tuur Demeester: Yeah.
Peter McCormack: If that's going to happen, there's going to be an influx of people who are from the right, the left and the middle. So, what's the best thing we can do with this show? It's represent the spectrum of voices that exist out there. If we only represent one cohort, then it might feel like a cult, it might feel like you don't belong here. We want people to listen to the show and say, "Whatever your opinion is, wherever you sit politically, there is a show for you. By the way, even if you are from the right, listen to the people on the left. If you're from the left, listen to the people from the right and make an effort to empathise with where they've come from". I don't know if that answers your question.
Tuur Demeester: Yeah, absolutely.
Peter McCormack: Would you say that's fair, Danny?
Danny Knowles: Yeah definitely, for sure.
Tuur Demeester: What it makes me feel excited about is to do some more things outside of the Twittersphere, because it really resonates what you're saying, that there are a lot of people who maybe are on Twitter lurking or something, or maybe they just listen to podcasts or something, who understandably don't feel safe being the minority. Whatever angle you're coming from, it's scary on Twitter to have a minority opinion, to share it and then potentially be bombarded with abuse. That's just not cool.
Peter McCormack: The biggest shame of this is, is that we should be embracing alternative views. Alex Epstein tomorrow and the interview with him, that's somebody with whom I fundamentally disagree. But by embracing what he says and listening to it, I've actually shifted my position on certain issues to do with climate change, because I recognise the things I agree with him on, rather than just saying, "It's all bullshit, I'm not going to talk to you". That's allowed me to go to a more nuanced position on understanding climate change, what can be done, what shouldn't be done.
Basically, we don't have to get into that issue itself, but on the two spectrums, you've got the climate hysterics and then on the other spectrum you've got the, "Burn the coal" people. Actually, the problem we're dealing with here with climate change is that we need to be able to create energy, right now, we need to burn fossil fuels. Stopping that presents a risk to society because we may have power blackouts, but also at the same time we are seeing the effects of climate change.
For me, coming from a climate change, somebody concerned about that, but trying to understand his position, I can walk that nuance and try and navigate that and understand what the bigger problem is. Now, I'm not going to come up with an answer that's going to change anyone's opinion, but what I might do is bring the guests on who help people understand this.
Tuur Demeester: Yeah, it reminds me of something I remember. There's a lot of shades and hues in the libertarian world, but there are sub-units, or whatever you call it, tribes of people who use it as a shield. It's a shortcut for not having to talk to anyone, basically an excuse to be an asshole, "This philosophy, if everyone follows it, we don't have to do this weird thing where we sit around the table and talk to people that we disagree with". I feel like I see it in Bitcoin too where some people think, "Oh, Bitcoin is going to solve the world's problems, so I can just be a dick". It's tempting and they just avoid the discomfort of talking to someone who disagrees, maybe even about some really big stuff; it's hard. So, I think it's awesome what you're doing with this show.
Peter McCormack: Thank you.
Tuur Demeester: To your point about the climate change thing, and it's things like the gender stuff; they're so mired with tribalism on both sides. I don't know always about on both sides, but they're so sensitive these issues.
Peter McCormack: They're never normally black or white.
Tuur Demeester: No. I think I've also grown into a more -- I've gone back and feel like with the climate change, I've come to like both sides. There were times when I was, "Oh my God, this is really happening" and then times where I was, "No, I don't think the Earth is warming". I think I'm more in the middle now where I do think, and who am I? I don't know anything about this stuff. But I do think industrialisation, the fact we pushed a lot of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere has contributed and is contributing to the warming.
Then, on the other hand, I don't think politics can stop it. I think it's hubris to think the UN can get together and do a global programme on carbon taxes and boom, boom, boom, and we stop the clock at 11.55. No, it's just going to play itself out, it's going to be like a carbon burp. They have models where they're like, "Okay, what would happen if we incinerated all the carbon inside the Earth's crust at the same time? What would happen to the climate?" There were times when the Earth was on fire pretty much for hundreds and thousands of years, and you can see what it did with the temperatures. So, it seems like if you just let it play out, yes, temperatures will be higher for a long period of time, but they will be stable higher; it's not going to grow exponentially and there seems to be a ceiling.
I guess I feel like the most productive thing to do from my point of view is more the entrepreneurial angle, where it's like, "Okay, maybe let's just accept the Earth is going to get warmer, some places are going to get uncomfortable to live. We're going to be able to have British wine again like in the Roman times". In Belgium, there's Belgian wine again and that wasn't the case in my childhood.
Peter McCormack: We have good sparkling wine in the UK.
Tuur Demeester: And we can start to live in Greenland again. It cannot be that there's only negative consequences to global warming. For one, in terms of talking about nuance, I'm very happy that we have the problem of global warming. Imagine if we were declining into a new Ice Age, holy hell! We have 9 billion people we've got to keep warm. That's harder to do than, we're sweating and we need to make sure everyone has enough water; our bodies are created to deal with heat more than with cold.
Peter McCormack: I'm similar. I don't know the answer, I certainly think we are warming the planet and I certainly think that is going to have an impact in different places in the world in different ways. Sadly, the poorest nations are the most likely to be the most affected.
Tuur Demeester: You mean Africa, for example?
Peter McCormack: Certain places in Africa, Indonesia, from our research, and also coastal cities and islands and such. The people who are most economically equipped to prepare for this are the most economically advantageous nations. Do I wish there was a way of solving it? Yes. Do I think we can as humans? No, I think we're too greedy, I think we've gone too far. Can we slow it down? Perhaps.
I mean, this is a really evolving position I have, but I've only been able to get there by speaking to a wide range of people from Katharine Hayhoe, who's a climate scientist, to Alex Epstein tomorrow, to try and get myself to fully understanding the big picture. That's why I think it's important to talk to as many people as possible, so you get as much information as you can to come to your conclusions.
Then, if you feel like you have an educated point of view to put across, at least you can come with that nuance and perhaps people will trust you more because they're like, "He will speak to everyone, he doesn't fit into a cult, he will apologise when he's wrong, he'll admit his mistakes". If you can create trust because of the way you operate, then hopefully when you come to conclusions, people will listen to them more.
Tuur Demeester: Yeah, I agree. Also for me, this research is for my own peace of mind, because I want to feel good about the choices I make in my life. So, rather than push it away and be, "I'm just not going to think about that", this is one of the issues where I have spent some time reading and thinking. I'm really glad there's these conversations happening too.
Peter McCormack: What's the future for you now, Tuur?
Tuur Demeester: I'm taking it easy. To make it full circle, the first time we talked, we talked briefly about that I'd broken from my family.
Peter McCormack: I saw you recently and you told me -- I actually wrote down here, because I was going to ask you, if you don't mind me asking you, you said you'd split from your family. I bumped into you -- where did I bump into you a few months back?
Tuur Demeester: Maybe in Austin somewhere.
Peter McCormack: Outside a bar or something and you told me, you said you've rebuilt it with your family.
Tuur Demeester: Yeah, it started in late 2019 and then it was obviously hard to see each other physically with the pandemic, but it was literally not possible to travel. I even missed two funerals unfortunately, because I wasn't allowed to travel. Yeah, it's been amazing to reconnect with everyone; I just talked to my cousin this morning.
Just for context, I had fully cut contact from all my family for about six years and it was really hard to do. I did lots of therapy to figure out what was going on for me, what I needed. Now it's this amazing, I don't know, it's so good, it's better than it's ever been. We put together a little family reunion, which was awesome, in my hometown of Bruges, we're definitely going to do that again.
To me, the history of this cult thing is also nuanced, speaking of nuance, because there were some kernels of truth in there that I feel I did something with; the therapy stuff was super helpful. I still do lots of therapy, group, individual and couple; I do lots of therapy still. So yeah, for me being in touch again with my family is amazing. I'm so happy that's happening.
Then I love central Texas, we're going to stay here and there are some plans brewing. I'm trying to take it slow; I don't want to rush. I did a Bitcoin fund before; but yeah, in the direction of long-form writing and research. It's been three years since I published something in terms of articles or reports. I don't think it'll be focused on Bitcoin but I have some things brewing. Like I said, I have a lot of drawers and there's drafts in there, but I wanted to take my time and find a way to have this marriage between something that's really meaningful to me and potentially of value to other people. That's always what excites me. Yeah, write and maybe even print it; that's what I'm working on, thinking about.
Peter McCormack: Whatever it is, I want to read it; I've always enjoyed your work. I think what we'll do, because it's been a couple of years since you've been on the show, there'll be new people coming to Bitcoin who might not even know who Tuur Demeester is. So, we will share out in the show notes, the previous shows we made, the articles; I think people should go and dig into them. Thank you for being vulnerable, transparent and open. This is a very different show to the one we normally make, I'll be intrigued to see the feedback. But thank you, Tuur, it's great to see you again.
Tuur Demeester: Yeah, likewise, it was a pleasure. Thank you.
