Genetics, Dogs, & Pit Bulls: The One Good Genocide

In this episode, we dive into the controversial topic of hereditarianism in dogs and why many progressives acknowledge it in pets but not in humans. The discussion covers the pit bull debate, including the moral implications of neutering the breed to prevent attacks on other pets and humans. We also explore the historical and societal roles dogs and cats have played, arguing for their special status and potential future alongside humanity, even in space. The script wraps up with an exploration of online backlash against the hosts and their defense of hereditarian views, followed by a personal conversation about dinner plans.

[00:00:00] Most progressives do believe in hereditarianism and dogs. And the question is why did they believe it there and not in humans?

And it is because they have raised and interacted with dogs. It is very hard to miss hereditarianism if you have actually been around young people . So what you're saying also is this is a product of the fact that they don't have human children.

I think the previous thing is what everyone's gonna freak out about in the comments. He wants to genetically modify dogs to be smarter? How dare he? But this is where things get spicy. The pit bull debate yeah. I do not think that there is a huge moral negative to neutering the pit bull population humans who love dogs, neuter dogs all the time.

Microphone (Wireless Microphone Rx)-5: Pit bulls in the United States kill an average of 8,730 dogs per year in 2,904 cats per year. That means that if you neutered the entire us pit [00:01:00] bull population,

You would be saving one cat or dogs, a life that is somebody else's pet for every 3.8, six pit bulls. You neutered.

Microphone (Wireless Microphone Rx)-3: Over the next hundred years.

And I will tell you the best argument for not neutering pitbulls. And then I will tell you why it doesn't even work.

Would you like to know more?

Hello Simone, I'm excited to be here with you today. Today, we are going to be doing an episode that was inspired by somebody who was criticizing us. It was an article that was actually not so bad. Where was the article published? It was like The LA Review of Books. Yeah, and what's really interesting in it is when you went to look up The the writer of the article to learn more about her and her perspectives.

She was in the middle of a fight on the internet based on this article because she called out us and a few of our friends like Johnny Anomaly and diana Fleishman podcast. Yes. And so she calls out a few of our friends. And so, you know, obviously they've got supporters as well online and she's getting trashed in, [00:02:00] in Twitter.

Which is actually interesting that it happened this way because Often when people attack us. Enough of a Twitter spasmob forms, like whenever we go viral, that we are on the minority side, but when they fail to go viral, the only people who notice are the supporters of the various people who are being attacked and they end up getting s**t all over.

So, she was getting having to be defensive and somebody found and she ended up defending this position, a post where she claimed anti hereditarianism in dog breeds. So specifically. Not only does she not believe that none of a human's personality is heritable, but she doesn't believe that any of a dog's personality is heritable.

Right. So like on, on, on Twitter, I can read a bit like how some of this conversation played out because this is a very common conversation we see again and again, which is really weird. With Emily Merchant, the author of this article representing [00:03:00] the, the kind of person who is very well educated and very well meaning but also very progressive and just will not believe, will refuse to believe that, that behavioral traits, including intelligence are heritable.

So Stegosauro Benedet writes, I can't help thinking I should really be screening for the gene that makes otherwise apparently intelligent people fall for pseudoscientific nonsense like eugenics. And then. Conchabar responds, I haven't read the essay yet, but the claim that we can't select for specific traits in a population is utterly wrong.

We've been doing it with animals for millennia. To which Emily Merchant, the author of this article responds, it's much easier with animals, but a project by behavior geneticists in the 1950s to 1960s to breed an dog failed utterly. And she links to this, this study. And , someone reads it and [00:04:00] then includes a screenshot of the study saying, just skimming this, they seem to suggest that.

That it can be successful with dogs. Emily merchant responds. No, they're saying that differences between dog breeds are small, especially under similar living conditions. She continues. Scott was a member of the American eugenics society in the 1960s, and he expressed extreme skepticism about the possibility of breeding intelligence and humans on the basis of his experience, trying to do it with dogs.

So she's trying to argue that, you know, this, this dog breeder. Okay. So first of all, I should note. The other study that she's citing here, because this is going to be important in a lot of progressives who do believe like anti hereditarianism in dogs is real, will cite this it was a recent study, actually, used a giant sample size.

Showed only about a 9 percent personality difference between breeds. What they won't tell you, this reminds me of the spanking studies where huge sample sizes did not control at all in the way they were collecting data, is the personality of the dogs is based on owner's self reports. Yeah. [00:05:00] Here's the problem with that.

The owner's self report of a dog personality is going to have more to do with the owner's personality than with the dog's personality. How many owners speak of their pit bull? They're just the sweetest little things, you know, because they use their dog to augment their own self perception, which is of course, you're not going to get much correlation there.

Man, you can just look at like, just to go into pit bull statistics so people can understand how absolutely insane this position is. Pit bulls make up 5. 8 to 6. 6, nice around. Let's say 6 percent of the total dog population in the United States, okay, but they're responsible for 69 percent of fatal dog attacks.

Okay. From 2005 to 2019, they killed 346 Americans, which is 6. 5 X higher than the next closest breed. So. 650 percent higher than the next closest dog breed.

 Which only killed 51 people. And [00:06:00] pit bulls inflict nearly half of 48% of all fatal attacks on infants. Those are babies under 1-year-old, not okay. And from 2015 to 2019, 76% of the fatal attacks on children under nine years old were from pit bulls. Keep in mind, they only make up 66% of the doll population.

Mm-Hmm. So you like, well, that's the people who maybe buy pit bulls and blah, blah, blah, blah. Like what? Like, it's very obvious to me. And if you've owned a dog, and this is the other thing that gets really interesting to me in regards to this. When you were talking to this lady, you were like, or you mentioned with somebody who was like, well, try to teach a non Well, yeah, I'll read it.

I mean, first someone, James Dog on Twitter Made a very good point saying, if you're concerned that EA, cause she also writes about effective altruism is a crude measure. Perhaps you should be campaigning for researchers to be permitted to access vast existing IQ linked databases, which is something that's being quite restricted right now.

But then he continues, alternatively, try teaching a Greyhound to memorize over 1000 distinct commands [00:07:00] and use it to herd sheep. And then Kanchabar comes back in with, OP should, should prove how intelligent these, these breed variations are by raising a pack of Basset hounds and putting them through IPO.

She'd lose her mind trying to get them to IPO, probably like a, maybe like an assistance dog training. I don't know. She'd lose her mind just trying to get them to stop sniffing, let alone competing against breeds specifically bred for it. I mean, the thing It's so clear with dog braids. Wait, here I need to talk about like herding dogs, for example.

So we, I've always believed that the core difference between dogs is what they're bred for. So I think that dog personalities predominantly, if you're like, what type of dog should I get? You're looking are, are you a ratting dog, a herding dog, a hunting dog, or A fighting dog. I mean, pit bulls are fighting dogs.

Let's, Oh yeah, fighting dogs. Like, is it a dog meant to kill other dogs? Yeah. The, the typically in my experience for like what my family [00:08:00] likes, I always go herding dogs and I find herding dogs are fairly similar across herding dogs, but if you've ever had a herding dog, it will be clear to you just how much of their behavior is genetic.

So a great example is I grew up with an Australian shepherd. Today we use corgis, which are another type of herding dog. But for, for our family's primary dog. We adopt Corgis. We don't use them. Yes. Australian Shepherds, they it, when it rained when I was a kid because they need to get the sheep to high ground whenever it rains.

So they didn't drown. And clearly we didn't teach it to do this. It would nip at all of the family's heels to try to get us upstairs. That is really sweet. And also, yeah, really weird. If you don't believe things are inherited because no one taught this dog to do that. Yeah, no one taught the dog to nip at our feet to try to get us to go upstairs.

So where did it get this really specific behavior pattern tied to hurting? And, and you see this yeah, just sort of like across, it's, it's, it's, I mean, it's so wild to me that someone could [00:09:00] think this, but then it gave me this realization, which was something I hadn't realized before, which is that most progressives, I mean, you've got a few crazy ladies like this lady here who are like dog breed differences.

Aren't heritable. I mean, she's not crazy. She's the weird thing is that she's. Very sane and reasoned and tempered in most of her analysis. I don't think so. I think you need to basically be an occult to believe this, or have never interacted with dogs. But this is what they I know. Here's the way that I look at it.

Like, if we were to frame this from a perspectives point of view, there are lots of Otherwise sane reasoned people who believe in scientific inquiry, but also believe that the earth is flat and the non hereditary and people, the blank slightest, I think are similar. You know, they can, they can engage. I don't think that's true.

I think you always want to see the best in people. I think that. A lot of the people who think the earth is flat are generally stupid. I think that people who believe on hereditarianism in dogs are generally just brainwashed [00:10:00] cultists. They are not. Well, and I think the other thing that's notable of course, is that most even blank slate as progressives who insist that no traits behavioral are heritable.

Or like, Oh yeah, I'm like, of course you've got a border Collie. They're going to behave this way. I was about to make, which is to say, it made me realize that most progressives do believe in hereditarianism and dogs. Most monoculture does. And the question is why did they believe it there and not in humans?

And it is because they have raised and interacted with dogs. It is very hard to miss hereditarianism if you have actually been around young people of a specific species. So what you're saying also is this is a product of the fact that they don't have human children. And I think that's a really good point.

I was listening to a podcast called The BCC Club, which is broadly about internet drama when, you know, I run through all my blocked and reported episodes and still need some kind of [00:11:00] Gossip, please. People recommend something better than that. That's about internet gossip that I can listen to as a podcast, but basically the BCC club is two very, very progressive lesbians who talk about internet stuff.

And there was one episode where they talk about buying pets online. They talk a lot about dog breeds and behavior and dog DNA. And then, you know, they also frequently talk in their podcasts about the amounts of money that they paid for medical care for their pets and things like that. And they, 100%.

Understand and empathize with each other and talk about the, the, the grief that they feel upon losing an animal. And then they, they like literally can't empathize the same way with what it would feel like to lose a human child. And I think really seeing it, I'm seeing exactly what you're talking about here where they can't understand.

They can't, they can't even really put it on the same level of their dog, their dog parenting, which is really interesting to me. That, that, that humans wouldn't be as lovable to them as dogs. Because. Well, I think they've still [00:12:00] disconnected from their natural instincts at that point. I mean, they're not sleeping with men.

They're not, you know, engaging with people who are interested in like rational discourse more broadly. They have artificially constructed a lifestyle. That masturbates, I think mostly status for them. That seems to be the core thing that they're focused on is individual status was in the urban monoculture, which is achieved through adopting more fringe and modern lifestyle choices which leads to them no longer, I think really identifying, and I'd say they don't really identify as human anymore, but what I really mean by that is it's, they don't identify most human behavior as human anymore.

They think they're still human, but when they look at like your average rural American to them, that individual is an animal. And that's what they are thinking about when they are trying to model kids and stuff like that. I don't think that's quite it. I think they're not thinking I just I just don't think they they have that like empathetic basis to work [00:13:00] with they don't their world is their cats and their, their partners, and it's not kids, so they just can't empathize.

If you see this in people all the time who have lots of kids, is one of the things I've noticed, like, that most, when I hear people's stories where they became hereditarians and they weren't formerly hereditarians, Yeah. Is after having kids. Yeah. Like, that's the biggest debate in their life. I had kids, and then I realized, eugh.

Well, both you and I were, I think, just intuitively from our upbringing, because I think, blank slate theory, if you go through a public school system, or a mainstream private school system, Is, is going to be more or less what's tacitly hammered into you. You can learn about genetics in school, but you're still kind of raised with blank slate theory, I think subconsciously.

And so I think you and I came into parenting kind of with a blank slate mindset, and then we're blindsided. By the traits of our children They're just very obviously hereditary. Yeah, even when it's stuff that we've never shown them never [00:14:00] demonstrated They're not picking this up from us. Like we've hid it from them.

And still well And the studies on this are incredibly compelling that look at babies. For example young infant Girls, for example, if you're talking about differences between males and females, they will look at an adult much longer like I think like 10 X longer, like dramatically, dramatically longer.

They crave social attention than male babies. But if you look between for example, ethnic groups there was a study in like the 1940s on we mentioned it in a different episode, but it looked at Caucasian babies versus East Asian children younger than six months. And if you put a blanket over their heads the Caucasian ones like freak out and we'll rip it off.

Where the East Asian ones will just clear a path for themselves to breathe. And it's a very different reaction to this negative stimuli and that you can see this reliably in infants shows that there are some clustered sociological differences. But I mean, again, I think that progressives in the [00:15:00] fact that they have to deny that this is true when it is so obviously true.

End up discrediting the claim that they make that their system that they are creating for the world that this urban monoculture can actually be fair if there is any degree of genetic differences between individuals. And this is something that's really made clear to us by one individual who is like.

Well, yeah, but if you intergenerationally select for IQ in your kids, and it does work, I mean, what happens if in a few generations, they're much smarter than other people? And it was clear that she didn't have a world framework where humans that are born differently from other humans can safely coexist with other humans.

It's like, well, if one group ever did show genuine superiority to another group, they would have like a moral mandate to erase that other group. Or the other group would have a moral mandate to erase it. Like that is genuinely what the urban monoculture believes. because they don't have a system for dealing with genuine diversity.

And that is really horrifying. Yikes. [00:16:00] Yeah. Another thing to go into here is the pit bull debate because we got to go into the pit bull debate. Yeah. Here is my thing on pit bulls. Okay. I believe that humanity does have a moral obligation to dogs and cats. Actually, this is. Before I get into the pivotal thing, I need to make one thing clear.

We have a moral obligation to dogs and cats that we do not have to other species. Somebody's gonna be like, why would you think that we have a moral obligation to dogs and cats that we don't have to other species? And it's because the partnership that humanity formed with dogs and cats was not a partnership of subjugation.

Most of the other species that we have, where we have domesticated them, it was us capturing them and forcing them, they're not, like, cows don't serve us because they wanted to serve us, because at some point, some cow in distant history made the choice to work with humans. That is [00:17:00] not the case for dogs and cats.

So we can start with cats, which were actually the later domestication event, and made human civilization possible, period. Okay, why did cats make human civilization possible? Because before cats we couldn't do long term grain storage, which was critical to To the types of bureaucratic infrastructures, it was the distribution and collection of long term grains, i.

e. early taxation that allowed, specifically in the Nile in Egypt, that allowed for the first real major civilization to start, which was Egypt. But you couldn't long term maintain grain in these primitive silos because they'd get rat and mice infestations. And so the introduction of cats, which were an obligate carnivore and wouldn't eat the grain, but would eat anything else.

There is a reason that the Egyptians worshipped cats. There is a reason they had cat gods, and they mummified cats, and they because cats made their lifestyle and civilization possible in a way that people today do not appreciate. And these cats were [00:18:00] not captured cats. These cats were cats that came and made themselves at home within these grain silos.

Okay. And then some Egyptians began to live with cats. But another important thing to note about cats as well is that cats were never fully domesticated. They do not in many categories of domestication count as a fully domesticated animal. Often when cats are living with humans, it is because to an extent they have chosen to live with humans.

Now dogs are a different, and I think an animal that we have even more responsibility to than cats. So what I mean by that is if you look at the early domestication events from what we could see about the way that dogs were likely domesticated, is it appears that some canines began to lose the instinct to basically attack and kill humans or fight humans whenever they see them.

You know, before they were a social animal and their tribe would be their tribe and our tribe would be our tribe and we would fight and kill each other and hunt each other and we were enemies. But the. The group that made the first [00:19:00] Overture was the dogs, it appears. What they did is some dogs began to hang out around the refuge piles of early humans, and then over time they began to become less afraid of humans, and humans began to integrate dogs, which already had a pre coded, you know, social clan structure in them, into our societies.

And it's important to note that our current concept of dogs as pets is likely not the way that they integrated into these groups. They likely integrated as a separate sort of cast, but as an independent cast. And we can see this in some primitive African communities when anthropologists have gone to learn about them.

There's this story that I found really interesting where one anthropologist was walking around a settlement and she was talking to a person about their dog. She goes, Oh, your dog. And they go, what do you mean my dog?

And they're like your dog. And they're like, I don't know what you mean my dog. And the person was like, well, the dog that sleeps in your house. And they go, Oh, well, yeah, I mean, it sleeps in our house because it chooses to, it could sleep in any house that wanted [00:20:00] to. It's not my dog. And this is likely the way that early Humans to animals, and we even see this in modern times where you will have a town dog or a town cat.

When I was in St. Andrews, we had a few of these. Did you have any where you grew up, Simone? Yeah. I mean, I think even in houses where people have domesticated cats, sometimes people like neighbors will start feeding one of those cats and the cats sort of two times families, you know what I mean? And we'll like sleep over at the other person's house and hang out in the other person's house.

And. I think animals do that in general. I certainly saw it a lot when I was in Mexico that there would be definitely like ownerless dogs that would just be beach dogs that everyone would feed and kind of take care of and the dogs would sleep wherever, and they were healthy dogs, but no one owned them in particular, but I do find it notable that even in scenarios where humans.

own cats where, you know, you can have cats more freely move between houses. If they're outdoor cats, you still see [00:21:00] this, this phenomenon. Well, and it's important to understand why dogs were such a useful partner to our early species. Dogs can help in terms of like their capacity to sense the environment around them.

They have like, I think like 15, 000 times our sense of smell. And, and like, I think like 15 X are hearing. So they make humans, they're the first bionic add on to humans. Yes. They were humans first bionic add on. And I'd also note here, another thing that we mentioned when we write about dogs, but people should note this.

Is because dogs have been selected for their love of humans. That is one of the things we breed them for. They likely experience an emotion towards us, which is a louder form of love than any love a human is capable of experiencing. Hundred percent. And we've always said, if you really actually, if you want one unconditional love, don't find a partner.

Don't just find a dog. Get a kid. Yeah. No, you're only ever going to get unconditional love from a dog. No human can give that to you or should be expected to give it to you, [00:22:00] you know, but with all of this being the case was dogs being a voluntary and useful partner to humanity. I think as we start encountering other species out there in the universe.

Or we start building our own other sentient species, and we begin to have to form what is our relationship going to look like with species that are strictly more intelligent than us? And when do we decide, like, where these relationship boundaries go? It's gonna be important to us that we have some voluntary relation with another species that we do not factory farm, et cetera, right?

That we treat with a dignity level that is To an extent comparable to human dignity and that is something that I think we should do with dogs. And I also think that we have a moral obligation to, if not have dogs on the spaceships we use to colonize the galaxy, bring their genetics so that they can be recreated when we get to these environments.

and potentially even to genetically uplift dogs. It wouldn't be that [00:23:00] hard to do. For example, even with our existing technology, you could give a dog like pox to, and it would likely be able to understand and respond to human speech, not with speech, but with other things much higher than dogs do today from the other experiments that we've seen.

I don't know. I feel like this, this may just be social media hokum, but there are definitely people on social media who set up buttons for their dogs that actually seem to be fairly effective. Yeah, but Now the question is, what do I think of pitbulls given how much I think of dogs, right? Okay, yes, yeah, now get into the controversial stuff that lost a ton of followers.

I think the previous thing is what everyone's gonna freak out about in the comments. He wants to genetically modify dogs to be smarter? How dare he? No, I'm not saying today, I'm saying eventually, okay? But the, the, this is, this is where things get spicy. I do not think that there is a huge moral negative to neutering the pit bull population for three reasons.

One is, [00:24:00] is humans neuter dogs all the time these days? Yeah. Humans who love dogs, neuter dogs all the time. Now humans, humans, neuter humans all the time. Humans neuter themselves all the time. Yeah. But I'm talking about the neutering of another being. Yeah. The non consensual humans should be able to sterilize another human.

I don't believe that's morally okay. But should a human be able to sterilize a dog? Absolutely. It's something we do all the time as to why. There shouldn't be a moral problem with humans neutering dogs. If people are wondering, like, why do I have such a different belief around this than humans, it's because dogs breed uncontrollably, which can lead to big problems in regions where they are not neutered.

They lead to more aggregate suffering of canines and humans. And so it's strictly and obviously a good thing to do. If humans bred like that then it might make sense to consider sterilizing humans, but humans don't breed like that. So that's not [00:25:00] Well, they don't breed like that anymore. You could argue that there was a time when they did.

No, I think it was always an illusion. But the point being is You're probably right, actually. If we lived in a world where if you didn't sterilize humans, humans would exhaust their food supply and eventually start killing each other that changes the moral equation around sterilization. Even and we do live in a world and we've seen this because a lot of cultural groups like well My cultural group lauds dogs.

You want to see more about this year episode? Why don't jews own guns? It's one of our best episodes we've ever done. But some groups like jews and muslims for example are pretty anti canine historically and in a modern context and just do not historically own dogs and they're What do these cultures have in common?

They were typically urban focused cultures in the middle ages Yeah, what did the fiddler on the roof do? Playwright writer say about dogs if a man owns a dog either that dog is no dog or that Jew is no Jew So [00:26:00] so if people don't know this has been a lot of papers like I sometimes mentioned to like Jewish friends I'm like, you know Jews don't own dogs and they're like What do you mean Jews don't own dogs?

I've seen Jewish people with dogs. I'm like, look at the literature. Jews don't own dogs. . And if you look at, and we know this goes back to early settlements because we can look at settlements to the ancient, ancient Israeli period and see that dogs appear very rarely in the Jewish cemeteries.

So we can actually see exactly when this cultural practice came about. As to why the practice came about, it was because if you're an urban based population, typically. Like urban specialist cultures are typically very wary of dogs because dogs can become major problems like stray dogs in cities and you don't really need them for anything.

Why, if I'm in an urban environment, do I need to be able to hear 15 times, you know, my range and smell 15, 000 percent stronger? If you are a rural person, dogs are critical to your way of life. So rural cultures usually have a much closer relationship with dogs. If you want to get a feeling of, is your family from an urban or rural background?

Think, what was your parents perspectives on dogs? [00:27:00] That's the core answer, right? Like, are they seen as a moral necessity, or are they seen as a moral negative and just a waste? But anyway where was I going with this? The pitbull scenario. Okay, so one, neutering. There doesn't appear to be any moral negative to neutering dogs, at least within our society.

And I, I, I could see the involuntary neutering of an animal as a moral negative. If there wasn't the sort of gun to our head of, but dogs will just keep breeding until they become a problem to other dogs. Right. So that's one problem. The second problem is, is then why am I okay with neutering pit bulls specifically the, the infant murder machines that they are right.

Like again, you've got to keep in mind, dog murder machines, even if you don't like humans, that is where it gets. It gets for me and I just see no way to defend this. Pit bulls were selectively bred for their tendency to kill other dogs. Not for their love of humans, not even for their ability to kill humans.

If you love [00:28:00] dogs, you should hate pit bulls. Because even today when we talk about all of the human deaths that result from pit bulls, it is Nothing. It is a drop in the bucket when contrasted with the pet dog deaths that are due to pitbulls.

Microphone (Wireless Microphone Rx)-1: Pit bulls kill an average of, and this is just in the United States, 8,730 dogs per year. 2,904 cats per year. And 10,250 other pets and livestock per year.

In total pit bolts are estimated to kill around 21,886 pets and livestock per year. Pit bulls were responsible for 81% of the animals killed by dogs in a documented attacks over a 10-year period.

For attacks on other dogs, specifically 90% were carried out by pit bulls.

All you need to do to top. This is neuter pitbulls. If you just neuter pit bulls. You could, within a few years save the lives of around 9,000 dogs per year, 3000 cats per year. The people who [00:29:00] don't do this are genuinely sociopath's.

Given how flippantly we neuter dogs for just about anything else.

Microphone (Wireless Microphone Rx): Well, what if you're not a dog lover and you're just an animal lover in general. This report here shows that pit bulls killed 30 times more animals than human crime dead. In fact, it found that pit bulls were 500 times more deadly to other animals and humans. Then all other dog breeds combined.

Microphone (Wireless Microphone Rx)-2: In fact pit bulls that are rehomed by shelters and rescuers killed more animals than persecuted Setas. Eve you are one of those people who's like, but my dog is so nice to me. And so sweet looking, you come off, like one of those parents of a serial killer, who was like, well, my kid was nice at home.

It's like, it doesn't matter. A dog can be the sweetest dog in the world. You know, Every hour of a year, but one where it murders a toddler. That dog was still better off, not existing that year. That's the problem. [00:30:00] If you are not weighing the statistics against your emotional connection with a specific dog.

And this statistics are reality.

Yeah. In fact, I'd go so far and say that you are probably saving one dog life for every probably hundred pitbulls that are neutered.

That seems like a safe bet. Just considering the number of people, I think if you know dog owners, you will probably know. You know, someone who at least knows someone or someone who themselves has had their dog attacked by, not necessarily killed, but attacked by, for sure, a pit bull. Yeah

Microphone (Wireless Microphone Rx)-3: so the breed is survey 2019 more puppies, yet fewer homes for pit bulls shows that there are around 4.5 million pit bulls in the United States. If that number is accurate. And if the above numbers are accurate, that means for every 3.86 pit bulls, you neutered, you would save the life of one cat or dog over the next hundred years. So it is neutering. [00:31:00] Less than four pit bulls for the life of every cat or dog you are saving. I just can't understand the moral equation of not neutering for dogs to save the life of one other.

Microphone (Wireless Microphone Rx)-4: That dog who is going to die has kids who care about it. A family who cares about it. People who love it, just as much as you love your pit bull. And they're not even asking you to put down your pit bull, they're just asking you to neuter it. That is insane. The moral equation at play.

and this then gets really interesting, because, well, some pit bull owners will be like, well, But when pit bulls are well raised, they don't do this, and I'm like, then we still need to ban the breed.

And people are like, wait, why would you say we still need to ban the breed if it's a problem with the people who are buying them? I'm like, those people shouldn't be buying dogs then! So we need to ban the breed, whatever the desire is that's causing these people to go out and raise them so poorly. And you shouldn't have a breed that when it's raised poorly, Horribly murders other small, innocent dogs.[00:32:00]

Okay. I think another problem too is the, one of the big elements of this controversy is the bully XL, which sounds like a uniquely terrifying version of pit bulls, but at least as marketed in some corners as a breed of pit bull that is actually much more docile and friendly. The problem is that even though it looks really, really tough is that, you know, breeding is not an incredibly well regulated.

Realm. It's, it's a little kludgy. And so you don't necessarily know if you are getting a docile version, someone could tell you that this pit bull that they're selling to you for between one and 5, 000 or more is a bully XL and is docile and will be super nice to your kids and won't hurt a fly. But you really can't know that for sure.

It's not safe. There's a reason that of under one year olds, 48 percent of them that were killed by a dog were killed by a pit bull. You know, that's mostly the dog owner's own children. Or children that they are [00:33:00] babysitting. Like, that is horrifying that we are allowing this to happen. These are infant Murder machines.

These are toddler killing machines. That is what they do. And again, I should note here that even if the owners, and this is what really gets me with the pitbull owners, they'll go out and when people are like, look, we really shouldn't allow, like we need to, and I'm not saying we should kill pitbulls, just saying we should neuter pitbulls.

When they're like, Oh, Presumably make their sale and breeding illegal. Yeah. How dare you do this because we, we like pit bulls because they're so sweet and kind. And it's like, yeah, but I can look at the ads of the pit bull breeders and I can see that functionally that's not the case. The high value pit bulls are being sold because of their adjacency to savagery.

And some of like pit bull ads here.

They're like, This is, this is like King Cyrus, the murder machine. He can murder 10 infants in a day. No, they won't. They won't, obviously they don't mention the infant murder, but they just, you know, mention how tough and strong and savage they are [00:34:00] because individuals who buy them are using them to modify their own self image often.

That is why they will buy dogs. And this is where I'm like, okay, well maybe these people are actually of this category of it's the. It's the owner's fault because they are buying a dog. They want to make them appear like a savage, tough individual. And so they are training it to be savage and tough.

Fine. Doesn't change the fact that we shouldn't have this breed. Right. When you consider that you are literally like how many dog neuters is a human child not being horribly savaged worth, right? Like I just don't understand the moral equivalency here when you could get another kind of dog. Yeah, and that's the thing is there are so many amazing dog breeds out there and dog breeds that are super tough, too.

Yeah. You just, there are lots of hunting dogs out there. There are lion killers. You could get a Rhodesian Ridgeback. You could get all sorts of very interesting and, and tough and [00:35:00] protective, but also sweet dogs. This is not going to be a challenge for you. It just seems so unambiguous that pit bulls are a step too far.

Yeah. Very polarizing. We're definitely going to lose followers. I think this is a lot like, Korean K pop stans and Taylor Swift fans. No, no, no, no. Here, if we have somebody who disagrees with us on this, I, I need them to answer a question. Okay? So, let's, let's deal with it. Let's bring the numbers down a bit.

Yeah. So that they can understand, would they neuter one Pitbull if it saved the life of one child? And from being horribly, horribly murdered, a toddler, a three year old, horribly murdered. And then I say, okay, they're like, well, of course I neuter one pitbull if it did that. People neuter pitbulls all the time, right?

You know, for different reasons. I say, well, would you neuter ten pitbulls? To save the life of one child, one toddler. I'm like, what number, what's the number that's too high for you? What's the number of pit bulls to save the life of a three year [00:36:00] old that is too high for you? Because categorically by the data, you can save a lot of individual toddler lives by doing this and other dog lives, right?

Like at what, what, what about another dog? So I want two numbers here. How many pit bulls need to be neutered for the life of another dog that was horribly. Mutilated. Yeah. And how many for a toddler? And if you're just like, not, I wouldn't even neuter one pit bull for one child. Then we don't want you as a follower.

I guess that's Yeah, like, you, you're, there's seriously something wrong in your ethical equations of reality, given that people neuter pit bulls all the time. Get out of my pocket! It's general population control. You can see the door, walk through it. Okay, I get you. And that's, that's entirely fair. Because I, I, I need to know how they are internally constructing this argument.

Because what they do is they do, do redirect the argument. They're like, well, it's not the dog's fault. It's the owner's fault. Yeah. Or, or, well, then you should accept bully, bullies [00:37:00] XL because. They, they're docile. But then, you know, how do you differentiate? But then the question is, is then why aren't you campaigning?

If you want the bully excels to be the thing, then you need a better system for determining which ones are the bully excels and you need to work on a breeding program to make them more docile and you more than anyone should want to get rid of these other pit bulls that are giving the bully excels a bad name.

But you don't do this. I don't see the people defending Bully xls saying, but of course we need to neuter the other pit bulls. They're just, they, they're just trying to redirect attention. It's like, well, we need to neuter pit bulls. And they're like, well, but what about Bully xls? Yeah. Or it's, well, what about the bad owners?

Or this whole thing is, I think. More largely, it reminds me of arguments around abortion. It reminds me of arguments around immigration. I think that, that we have as a society become at all. Really? No, I know. Hear me out here. I think people have come to a way of dealing with ideas where it's [00:38:00] no longer about the facts.

It's about once you've established your side. Your goal is to defend your mind from any ideas that are offensive to it. And that is an outcropping of progressives. Really? Okay, why? I think that that is something that happens, however, I think that if you are talking about immigration, or you are talking about abortion, abortion, there are genuine, well intentioned people with logically sound structures for arguing on both sides of these topics.

I have my own positions on these topics. But I think that there are individuals who seriously listen to all the evidence and have seriously thought through like different positions who genuinely fall on either side of this issue. I do not believe there is a single well intentioned person who has really thought through All of the arguments on the we should not neuter pitbull side of this argument.

I do not think that there is a logical structure when you consider how [00:39:00] lightly neutering is treated in our society for not neutering pitbulls. And I will tell you the best argument for not neutering pitbulls. And then I will tell you why it doesn't even work. The single best argument that you can create for not neutering pitbulls is the don't take my gun argument.

That is to say, Well, yes, I agree that I want a pit bull instead of another dog because of the effect that the pit bull has on my personal self identity. Right? Mm-Hmm. . Like I'm, I, I need it to be who I am is a deadly weapon. Yeah. And it may be a deadly weapon, but Americans are, should be allowed to own deadly weapons.

Mm-Hmm. , right? Mm-Hmm. . And we argue that. Here's the problem. Okay? A pit bull is closer to an autonomous AI with guns set up on it. That is, that is trained to, in some instances, kill people. Do you think humans should be allowed to own kill bo, like kill drones? That. And, and I actually, I'd [00:40:00] even go so far as to say humans should be allowed to own kill drones.

But I don't think they should be allowed to own kill drones that are constantly circling their house and sometimes randomly shoot people. That's where I'd be like, obviously a human should not be allowed to own that. Are you insane? Well, or, or kill drones with any any track record. of being a public safety threat, which is to say if a kill drone were to attack civilians or civilians fill a pets, obviously those would be considered extremely dangerous and unpredictable pieces of technology that would be immediately banned.

And yet, when this happens with dogs, for some reason, it's not banned with, you know, intensity. You're absolutely right. Yeah. And this is a, but there's the secondary reason, which is to say, I don't defend people's right to keep guns because of how guns positively augment their self image. I defend that right for two core reasons, one is that in certain parts of America, [00:41:00] guns are necessary for self defense.

If you were in an extremely rural area where it takes 30 minutes for the cops to get to your house or an hour for the cops to get to your house, you need guns. I'm sorry. Well, but also, you know, guns are sort of what prevent. Takeovers of, but that's the other core reason is that guns are a part of our checks and balances system in the United States.

And people are like, no, do, do guns really help in like a drone fight? Do guns really help? Like if the U S military wanted to take over and it's like, absolutely. Yes. We, we, if you even look at like, Hamas's raid in Israel, if more of these families had been armed and the families that were armed had a very easy time fighting them off.

The, the core reason they got hit so bad was just the Jewish cultural predilection to not own guns at high rates. Another really interesting thing about these raids that a lot of people don't know is the settlements that really got brutalized were not the conservative religious settlements. They were mostly spared.

It was the loosey goosey. Kibbutzes that were sort of like [00:42:00] hippie nonsense. Like, let's get along with them. It was like the peace concert that ended up getting absolutely massacred where nobody had guns. It was not the groups that were like, Hey, we need to be worried about these people.

We really need to, you know, be harsher in these scenarios that had to deal with, with that much bloodshed because they understood the risk and they were armed. So that's important to note as well. There are externalities to guns that don't exist with pitbulls. If you can explain to me an externality that can be resolved by a pitbull that either makes you safer as a citizen.

Okay. Or that makes us safer from like a democratic standpoint. I will take that argument as well. I just haven't heard one. A pit bull is genuinely differentially not better in a military context than a Rottweiler, which already exists. Like why are you using a pit bull and not a Rottweiler if you're using it for fighting humans?

Pit bulls are just toddler murder machines. They're not really useful for [00:43:00] anything else. They're useful for that in killing dogs. Horribly. Horrifically. Anyway, any other thoughts?

Nope. We like dogs. We'll take dogs to space. But, yeah. We, we, we only, I think, you know what? Actually, this is very similar to our cultural viewpoint. Which is that we We ultimately support pluralism and human groups that play nice with other human groups. And if you can't play nice then we have no interest.

That's actually a really good point is people wonder why we're both so pluralistic, but so quick to turn our back on any group that just attacks another group and say, okay, they lost their right to exist. But that's the way that we play more broadly. Yeah, I am okay with pluralism, but if you run out and attack your neighbors the pluralistic protection that I culturally believe that every human has a right to is immediately revoked from your group.

We support human flourishing insofar as you do, you [00:44:00] are not a net drag on human flourishing.

And we promote dog flourishing insofar as it is not a net drag on dog flourishing. And it would seem that pit bulls. are broadly a net drag on canine flourishing, so. Love you to death, Simone. You are so special and amazing.

I love you so much. I just got a call from George. Can you call him back to see what he wanted? I'll call him. Would you mind getting the kids? Yes, and I'll bring my food down and make you some fried rice tonight with oyster sauce. Will do. An egg or no egg? Egg, please. We've got chicken for a reason. Spring onions, but no vegetables?

I'd actually love it if you put in some other vegetables. I got like a frozen vegetable pack that could be good for a stir fry that would go pretty well with fried rice. Okay, I'll see what I can do there. That's what I got it for. You know, it's got like baby corn and yeah. All right, we'll give it a try.

Love you. Love you, too. I'll call him.

Speaker: What? It's impossible. [00:45:00] Yes. Oh my gosh, it's a heart. Wow. You can come sit with me. That was the best thing ever. Yay! Bye!

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