Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Foreign.
[00:00:09] Speaker B: Welcome back into the Think Deeper podcast presented by Focus Press. Your co host Will Hare, joined by Joe and Jack Wilkie. Really excited about the episode that we're going to be getting into today. It's a, I don't know, a passion point of mine, something that I've always been fascinated by. I know these guys have as well. We're talking about kind of the idea of extended adolescence, the differences in when young people reach certain milestones today than they did 40 years ago. And so we got a lot to get into there. Two things I want to do to start off. The first one is to welcome Jack back. For those of you who are deep end subscribers and listen to our extra segment, you might know from last week, Jack was dealing with some health issues. He's not fully out of the woods yet, but he is braving the storm. It's the mystery Michael Jordan flu game or Michael Jordan hungover from gambling game today.
[00:00:58] Speaker C: I'm not hungover.
[00:00:59] Speaker B: That's right, that's right, that's right. You know, but Jack is braving the storm and being with us. But he did have to, to cut out of our last Deep End episode. So me and Joe had to carry. It was weird. Joe, I don't know about you. It was very strange. It's very weird, the two of us, because we already have our own podcast. It's like this does not feel right.
[00:01:12] Speaker A: Yeah. Turn it into the gym podcast part two. Yeah. You know, just exactly kind of what we're discussing today a little bit, which is kind of funny. This could be a gym podcast as well. But yeah, glad to have Jack back. He is definitely the scholar on the show. Will and I love talking, but we all know that this is. Jack drives this quite a bit for us, so we're, we're glad to have him back. But you also had a second thing, I think.
[00:01:32] Speaker B: Yeah, the second thing I was going to say is we got a very nice podcast review or review on the podcast app that we're very grateful for to whoever that was that gave the review. But I wanted to say if you like the show, pretty much every podcast and YouTube show these days kind of starts out their episodes with like, rate, review, subscribe, all that stuff. We don't really do that.
I would say, though, if you do enjoy the show, if you, if you really appreciate the work we do, feel free to leave us a review, leave us a rating and a review on the podcast app on YouTube, whatever it is, that would be most appreciated. But guys, with that being said, let's Go ahead and get into kind of what we've already previewed, which is how much later in life young people are hitting milestones is the word that is used than they were in the 70s, in the 80s, 30, 40 years ago. There was a photo that was going around social media. There's a lot of articles that would kind of echo a lot of what this one photo was sharing, but essentially. So I'll go over this photo and then, Joe, I'll hand it to you to kind of maybe get into any more stats that you want to cover.
But this particular photo that had some stats attached with it was pretty mind blowing to me. It should not have been mind blowing, I'll be honest, but it was.
So the heading is for prime age United states men that is ages 25 to 54. So if you're, if you're watching on YouTube or if you're watching on our Patreon, it is on the screen, it takes looks like five different milestones. So has a job, currently married, has fathered at least one child, owns a home and is not obese. That is a BMI less than 30 is pretty much across the board. Ironically, with the exception of owning a home 1970, young, you know, prime age men in 1970 are drastically outpacing young men or men prime age men in 2025. Just briefly, I'll go over them for our podcast listeners. In 1970, 93% of prime age men had a job. 2025, that number's down to 86% currently married in 1970, 84% of prime age men, 52% in 2025, a 32% drop. So basically one in two has fathered a child and 82% in 1970, 60% in 2025 for owns a home. Ironically, these were very, very close. 67% in 1970 reported owning a home. 68% in 2025. So basically dead even. And then not obese. 87% of men in 1970 were reported as not obese and only 61% in 2025.
A 26 point swing. And at the bottom they have this, this percentage of like if you meet all five of these milestones, has a job, married, has fathered more than one child, owns a home and not obese. 30, 37% of responders in 1970 met all five, only 11% in 2025. Pretty, pretty astonishing statistics there, Joe. Did you have any more that you wanted to get into? This is kind of the, kind of the basis of what we're going off of here. Just again, Just how much young people today, specifically young men, according to this statistic, are just so far behind their predecessors when it comes to meeting these milestones.
[00:04:36] Speaker A: Yeah, so this was a pretty interesting thing. I think Jack had sent it before and then and or had sent it to me, maybe separately you sent it.
So this is coming across in a couple different areas for me, these stats and there's several different ways we can take this. So I immediately started doing a little more research and thinking about this, especially prepping for this episode, thinking about, okay, where are these stats coming from and what's going on.
[00:04:58] Speaker C: The.
[00:04:58] Speaker A: I don't know where they got the obesity, but a lot of these I think are coming from a Pew Research article or Pew Research thing that they ran.
Man, there's just some fascinating pieces that we're going to get into on this concerning men versus women, concerning parents and enabling and whether there's an enabling element, an economic element.
If there should be a standard to when people get started on these things. I mean, they had some. In 2021, about 2/3 of 25 year olds, 68% were living outside their parents home compared to 84% in 1980. Only 22% of this age of 25 year olds were married in 2021 compared with 63% in 1980.
Same pattern holds when it comes to having children. Just 17% of 25 year olds in 2021 had a child compared with 39% 1980. I mean, we're seeing like precipitous drops in these numbers pretty much across the board and in every metric that they tested, as we just saw there, other than owning a home, which I thought was interesting, but you look at financial independence and the average age to reach that work full time. I mean, if anybody's interested, it's just if you look at Pew Research life milestones, this goes. I think it's a 2023 article.
A lot of these statistics were from 2021. Either way, this four decade change has changed a significant amount in what we can expect from young men. There it is. Thanks, Jack. And what we can expect from young men. And so I mean, and young men and women. One of the interesting things though is I think it may be that article toward the bottom where it talks about. There you go.
That today's 25 year old women are just as likely as their predecessors in 1980 to work full time, both 61% and more likely to be financially independent. 56 versus 50%. By contrast, today's 25 year old men are less likely than their predecessors in 1980 to have achieve these milestones. So we're also seeing this gender gap between men and women. And you got to wonder if there's a level of expectation going along with that that women are expected to go to college and have all of these things. And it just seems like we're allowing young men to languish a little bit. And so, Jack, thanks for sharing that. I want to bring you in on this opening thoughts do we have before we just dive right into this?
[00:07:09] Speaker C: There's so many pieces holding all of this up that. And we'll get into a lot of them, but I know some older folks like, oh, they're just not working hard enough.
Okay. But there's also, I mean, there's those cases for sure, and we'll get into that. There's also. Look at, there's, there's cultural conditioning. We're seeing here the feminism thing. You mentioned that the amount of women having a child in the home is cut in half. I mean, that, that's, that's what women have always done. They, what they want to do. You know, as a little girl, they played. They play dress up for their wedding day and then baby dolls and that's what they play. No, not anymore. You know, you can get into the Barbie thing and things like that. And as far as young men, like the.
Again, there's a million different directions we can go with this. But you can also look back and see the conditioning that we were put through for decades to say, no, no, no, no, you don't want to do that stuff. You got to do this. We've talked about now, there's the Instagram lifestyle. Well, before you settle down, travel and have experiences and all this stuff. But you can always come back around to that. And then they don't. They're finding out that you can't. And there's articles being written by people hitting their 40s going, I'm never going to get married or have kids. And that's because of my parents and grandparents and people around me telling me, no, no, no, no, don't worry about that. You'll get to that later. And so there's the laziness element. There's the cultural conditioning element. There's the parents preparing kids element. There's the economy element. There's the. I mean, this is this huge web that it's very much, you're walking a tightrope here. And I put a verse on our outline that just comes to mind as Jesus feeding the 5,000. He says he sees them as Sheep without a shepherd.
I think that's how we have to look at young people today is like, man, these people have been so misled and you got to feel awful for them. But I mean, there's going to be a little bit of lecturing, a little bit of, hey, let's get our act together. But there's also going to be a.
This stinks. Nobody had to figure this out before and now we do.
[00:09:01] Speaker B: Yeah, we don't really have a clear kind of path as far as this episode. For our outline, we've got a lot of stuff on here we want to talk about. So I'm just going to kind of start with one of the things, Jack, that what you said kind of sparked and I was thinking about it beforehand, and that is you think about how much, Joe, I think you had a statistic of basically, you know, average age or there it is on the bottom of our outline here. Median age for first time marriage in 2024 was 30.2 years for men and 28.6 years for women. And in 1974, those ages were 23.1 years for men and 21.1 years for women. Basically seven year difference.
It got me thinking about what are young people doing during those seven years now?
Whereas previously that was literally just the next thing that you knew was kind of expected. Right. The next thing that you're supposed to do but maybe going to college, you're starting your career, is like, I'm gonna find a spouse, I'm gonna get married, I'm gonna have kids, I'm gonna start a family. That's what I do. That is now getting delayed 7ish years on average. And what is taking its place, to me, a lot of this is the Instagram lifestyle. As I think about the, you know, my contemporaries, the people that I follow, you know, a lot of it is, you know, maybe chasing career or being, you know, chasing sexual promiscuity for those out there in the world.
For a lot of people it is. I want to go basically live the retirement lifestyle in my 20s. I want to have no responsibilities. I don't want to be tied down to a child, I don't want to be tied down to a, to a marriage necessarily or adult. We're going to push adult responsibilities as far down the road as we possibly can until, okay, now, you know, I guess we should now. And to Jack's point, then you get to 30, you get to 40, and at the end of the day you're going to be behind in a lot of ways. But that's what really caught my attention, Joe, and I'm curious your thoughts on is what are young people doing during those seven years, whereas previously it was I'm going to get married and have kids. To me, a lot of it is I want to go travel the world, I want to have my fun, I want to go to concerts and stay out late. Experiences life and just kind of, I've got some thoughts on kind of the dopamine hit culture that we have. But basically, again, I just, I want to push adult responsibilities down the road as far as I possibly can. And then Jack's right, there's a lot of cultural conditioning. I think parents not expecting much of young people leads to a lot of that.
I do think a lot of young people are to blame for this though, of like, I want to go have as much fun as I possibly can. And I guess, I guess in my late 20s is when it'll all be over and I'll settle down. Like, I don't know, there's something backwards about that. Joe, what are your thoughts on kind of that seven year gap of, you know, where young people are just delaying marriage and delaying kids for seven more years on average than in the last, than 50 years ago?
[00:11:35] Speaker A: Yeah, again, I just think that what they've been sold is that life experiences matter.
I think this is coming from bitter parents and bitter grandparents who didn't get those experiences or they got the experience and thought that it was the end, all be all, penultimate. You know, all of the glory days of college. You see these people that are still very much living in college days where they always hearken back to, that was the best time of my life, best time of my life. And so of course my kid has to have that. And so we push him into college. And then after college, of course you're going to want to go travel or you're going to want to really establish your career. Because we made it to the point, and this is partly economic, we've also made it the point, like we feel you have to have six figures in the bank before you can start having a wife. That's not true.
But I mean, when you start looking at expectations and how much you're supposed to have during that would be an interesting statistic to find out is how much do people think they need to have to get married and how much do they think they need to have to have kids?
Because I think it used to just be the normative principles like you get married young, you have kids young, you figure it out, you know, you'll work well. Now because of economics, you don't just figure it out. The guy's working three separate jobs and he's going, man, how are we going to make it? And the wife's working a job and they're just affording rent type of thing.
So that I think has to factor into this discussion somewhere is a lot of times they're trying to get themselves set up and they've been told that you need to have these milestones in order to get married, in order to have kids.
That plays a massive role on this. The other part of this though is, Jack, before you come in on this, the other part of this is if I were to tell you about the going out and being a superstar athlete, you know, I think I could probably talk you out of it based off of how I coach or couch it for you. If I told you, man, you're going to have like, let's say MLB athlete, you're going to be on the road, I mean, probably 100 times throughout the year, back and forth, never really getting to stay anywhere for too long. You're going to be away from your family, away from everything that matters.
You're going to have to be in the gym 247 thinking about it. You're going to have people that are hitting you up asking for money all the time. You go, whoa, this sounds horrible. Yeah, I'm describing the MLB lifestyle, right? So if you put it in the, you're going to be a millionaire, it's a fantastic. Or if you say you're going to have zero time to yourself, your body's going to be broken down based off of everything you have to put it through. You're going to have to go through randomized drug testing all the time. You're going to have to, you know, you, you depending on how you couch it, you can get people to buy in or, you know, just say, absolutely not. I'm not going to buy into that at all.
I think that's what we're doing with marriage and kids. When you talk about the old ball and chain, when you talk about how much kids are tying you down, the average 20 year old is not looking down the road enough to go, man, but if I start now, I'll get really good in my 20s as a parent, you know, I'll learn all of these things and then we'll be able to, to have more of my life later. They're not looking at that way. They're looking at it as, I don't know enough. And this sounds Miserable and my kids are going to tie me down. And it's all the way that it's been couched for them that causes them to say no thanks. And I think that also has stretched that seven year gap quite a bit. But Jack, what are your thoughts on that?
[00:14:32] Speaker C: Yeah, I think there's a lot of factors here that make it to where it's not just, well, young people, you know, their priorities are all messed up. We're also coming off of the divorce culture.
Where it was divorce culture when I was a kid, now it's a culture that, you know, it's the shack up culture of. And so the kids, even kids that are coming into marriageable age today had parents that didn't even get married or new people where it was just kind of, you weren't and it was multiple parents. And I think a lot of people see that and go, yeah, that's not really worth doing. Or I'm going to take my time to make sure I get this right. So I don't go through two divorces by 30 and things like that. So that changes, that's going to push the age back as well. And so you've got multiple generations of selfishness that have led to this. The other side is the feminism issue and I've heard this multiple times lately of like the age gap thing. You know, it used to be like 22 year old guy marries 17 year old girl and now if that happened, you know, people kind of, whoa, whoa, we can't do that. Even though everybody's grandparents or great grandparents did that. The age gap thing, some people think is going to start coming back, but it's going to be more like 28 year old guy, 21 year old girl. Because when a guy comes out of high school and if he gets an education or goes and starts a trade or whatever it is and he's getting his career, every woman his age doesn't want to get married.
They're, they're doing their lifestyle thing, they're living it up, they're going through that phase and they don't want to settle down till 25. And at 25 they've had 15 boyfriends, who knows how many of them they've slept with.
You know, they might even have a kid at that point or whatever. And a guy's looking around like these are my options now that I'm financially stable, on my feet, out of my parents house in this really bad economy and all this stuff. And I look around and that's what I have to choose from. So they're marrying younger. And so like it's, it's really bad out. You got the only fans thing. And then there's, you know, different estimates of how many young women are selling their body online. Like you can't marry somebody like that. And so people's brains are fried. The dating market, the, the, what was it, the Tinder, you know, the swipe left, swipe right thing. And they started doing studies and it's the top 10% of men are com. Are competing for the top 80% of women because the women are so self inflated, so egotistical that they're looking at. I, you know, they get on there and go, I'm only gonna swipe right on the top top. And guys are like, oh yeah, I'll go for it. Yeah. And so it's like the deck is stacked, especially young men. I just feel bad for him. Like the deck is so stacked once you have to. If you don't find the woman in your, your local church, if you don't meet her at whatever Christian college or wherever you go, good luck.
[00:17:09] Speaker B: Well, you know, somebody might be listening going, man, they're being awfully hard on women. No, studies have shown specifically with Gen Z that you know, the females that are a part of Gen Z are a whole lot more liberal in their, in their, in their, they're less conservative in their leanings, politically, religiously, that kind of thing.
Um, whereas young men are. And so there's, there's actuals. I was watching a video, there's studies coming out saying like the marriageable age, young people right now, which is Gen Z, do not like each other as far as kind of like overall perspective. Like guys, Gen Z guys overall don't like Gen Z girls and vice versa. And so this is to Jack's point that it makes sense that marriage is getting pushed later and later. I know that's been going on even before Gen Z. That was millennials as well. But to Jack's point, you got a 24 year old guy that is looking for, you know, a girl that kind of aligns with his values. There's not many of them. And a lot of that is due to feminism. A lot of that is due to the, you know, the girls can do anything guys can do. You know, I don't need a man or you don't need a man, go live your life. And so, yeah, the options are so slim. I just, I find that so fascinating that overall, and again, if you're watching on YouTube or you are watching on our Patreon Jack pulled up an article. Gen Z men and women most divided on gender equality. Global study shows like gender equality and these are major social issues too, that they're divided on transgenderism, you know, things like social justice.
Again, Gen Z girls are far more left leaning in their views and Gen Z boy, boys on average, generically speaking are far more right leaning. It's really hard to settle down with somebody like that who completely does just does not align with your values. And so this is where you have the men who go their own way movement starting. And guys, you say, all right, I guess we're just not going to get married.
It's fascinating. Joe, what thoughts do you have?
[00:18:57] Speaker A: I know everybody blames it on, well, look at all the guys addicted to porn. And there's no good guys out there. And I've heard that a lot. There's no good guys out there. I think that's his showing. The guys are trying to change. Yes, they may be addicted to porn. Yes, they may be struggling with their own vices.
That's not good. I'm not saying that they are absolved just because things are culture's bad. But on the other hand, that is a big part of culture, this big part of public school, like showing each other these things. This is a, this is a pandemic for a reason. And I think when girls look at it and go, well, the guy's looking at poor and therefore he's not eligible. Like, okay, I agree that he needs to figure that out before he gets into marriage. No doubt. I worked with, I've worked with this bazillion times, like, do not think that marriage is going to solve it. On the other hand, what I find is I feel feminism is driven by anger toward men. Porn is driven by a, honestly, it's kind of a sad attachment issue. They are desiring that attachment, but they have no idea how to get the attachment in real life. And so they're going to be voyeuristic and kind of step back and look at the women online.
In reality, they just want that close connection. And so that's why I like working with this population is I think there's a lot of good guys that have just been kind of sucked into this culture. Feminism is not driven by, you could say it's driven by a desire for safety.
But on the other hand, the least safe thing you can do is push every man out of your life. If you're a female, a lot of times it's driven by anger. And that is the issue is you have guys that are lonely guys that have poor attachment guys that are, you know, porn is driven by weakness in a lot of ways. Whereas women, they are trying to take all of the power. They're trying. It's, it's very dominant and almost masculine in its approach. And so we're starting to flip in that way as well. So they can look at it and say, well, guys are. There's no good guys out there. I think there's a lot of hurt, broken, weak men out there who are succumbing to this. On the other hand, the women are like, nasty. The women are angry. The young women that I'm seeing online, the young women that are just ruining men's lives. I mean, I hear this all the time. I was working with a client yesterday who is getting on these dating apps and these women will use them and dump them, use them and dump them. And that's not just this guy that's all over the place. And the weird thing is the women are the sexual ones. The women are the ones that are engaging or attempting to get the guys in these sexual positions, you know, sexual circumstances, and then they'll drop them. And so the guy is, well, oh wow, he's just a party guy. He's going out there sleeping with everybody. Like, no, he wants to settle down. And this is a study or this is a thing, a theme, I should say that I have seen with a lot of the guys I've worked with, which is like, I just want the one. I want to settle down. And all of these girls are the ones that are initiating the sexual contact, sending nudes, things like that, that, that are sleeping with them and then they're the ones dumping the guys. It's a wild culture for those that aren't actually familiar with it right now.
[00:21:42] Speaker C: Hey folks, I wanted to tell you about a couple of books from our friends over at Cobb Publishing. Holy Me and Grow Up. Holiness is frequently ignored or minimized, but in Holy Me, Paul Clements shows that it is at the center of the Christian Life. This simple 13 lesson study explains what holiness is, how we get it, and why it matters. Designed for both personal and Bible class study, this book will both encourage and challenge you to greater levels of dedication to God and Christ.
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[00:22:27] Speaker B: Are you guys familiar with Alex Cooper, the Call Her Daddy podcast woman?
Recently, I saw a study that she overtook Rogan as the most popular podcast in the world. I don't know if that's still current or not, but she by far is the second most popular and is rivaling Rogan.
What's so interesting, Joe, is everything you're describing is what Alex Cooper and that kind of podcast really pushes. Essentially, men are pigs. Men are sexual deviants. So women, you go out and be sexual deviants too. You, you know, kind of use, use and abuse men. Power, you go, you go sleep with however many you want. Yeah, it's, it's under the guise of empowerment. Not that I listen to that podcast or anything, but I've watched enough videos and clips and kind of, you know, conservative people kind of taking down that podcast to know that is what she pushes for. Women is exactly what Joe is describing is, you know, you treat men this way because men are basically going to treat you this way anyway. And what's so fascinating about this is that podcast host Alex Cooper found somebody, got married and came out on her podcast and basically apologized to her fans. Like, essentially said, I've been, I've been kind of, I've been hiding this from you because I didn't know how you would react. Why? Because she's built a brand off of, you know, yeah, use men, abuse men, sleep with as many men as you want. Men are, Men are terrible. Men are pigs. Lo and behold, finds a man that she wants to spend the rest of her life with, gets married to him and feels the need to apologize. So that's where my mind meant, where my mind went. Joe, when you were describing that is, that's what 20 year old girls are getting fed by. Liz. And it's of course not just podcasts like that. It's movies, pop culture, all those things.
That's what they're getting fed. And it's almost like it's a revelation when it's like, oh, wow, there is a guy. You know, there are guys out there who will care about me, take care of me, and, you know, provide for me and give me the safety and security that I need. Wow, that's crazy to think about.
[00:24:17] Speaker A: Why?
[00:24:17] Speaker B: Because culture tells them the complete opposite.
[00:24:18] Speaker A: Yeah, Jack was on this a long time ago and I think people thought he was nuts. But this is the outcome of letting your little five year old wear girl boss T shirts.
No, we're out on that. Stop. Stop making this a power dynamic thing. Here's a news flash. People are going to think I'm a jerk for this. Women will lose in power dynamics, okay? You will. It's just, it's a natural thing.
[00:24:39] Speaker C: That's what you're seeing is men figuring it out and going, yeah, we, you know, a lot of guys are rejecting the porn thing. A lot of guys are into fitness and health. A lot of, they're like, all those trends for men are very positive things. In fact, you'll see articles about the alarming rise of young men who don't do porn and take their health seriously and go to gym culture and stuff like that.
They call it alarming because they know it's bad for them. Progressives, liberals, they know that guys stepping up, standing responsibly and being men of virtue and strength and all that, that's the worst thing that could happen to.
[00:25:11] Speaker B: Them because it contradicts their ideology.
[00:25:12] Speaker C: It contradicts their ideology. Feminism is going to be pushed back. Like you're saying, Joe, it loses that battle.
What's gonna happen in the meantime is all the women who have bought into that, they're the ones who lose. Because as I said, the men are gonna go find women, even if they have to go, you know, younger a little bit to find somebody. You know, they're like, I said, They're 28, she's 22 or whatever, but somebody who's like, yeah, I want to, you know, get married and have kids. There's been other studies about like, you know, women go out and like, okay, well, I've got my MBA and I've got, you know, a six figure career and I've got all these things. And, and so why don't men want me? And like, men are like, well, I want somebody who likes me, who maybe wants to cook me dinner, wants to have kids, you know, hang out, like that's it. That's how easily. And so we're selling women on this. When you take this whole thing backwards, we're putting a lot of blame on women. But it starts with men abdicating. You know, I've said before, when people bring up Deborah in the Old Testament, why was Deborah there? Because the men didn't do their jobs. And there are women like Deborah who are begging men to do their jobs and will step back when men do. And then there are women like Jezebel, who, if a man steps up, there's gonna be a problem. And so you're going to have that problem in churches. And here's where I take it all the way back. We're going to bring this home a little bit with the church.
As you said, people raising their daughters to be empowered females how many Christians do that? Raise their daughters to compete with the men to be a man? They're raising their daughters to be a man, to do all the things a man is supposed to do, be a breadwinner and all that. That's not good. I don't think we're going to be in a good place. I will not be optimistic about the church's future until we stop having preachers whose wives are the breadwinner with their short haircuts and, you know, all that stuff. And we've got some guys that get furious with us when we say, hey, do what you can to let your, your wife stay at home. Well, my wife, yeah, you're the problem. You're the problem. This doesn't get better until you get. Until either you're out of the way.
[00:27:01] Speaker A: Or you wake up. And we're very. I love that rant. We're very aware of the economic struggles where two, two parent or two income households, 100 normal thing.
[00:27:12] Speaker C: We're very aware of this.
[00:27:13] Speaker A: Right. And so it's not to say that we don't understand the plight. We don't understand there's a lot of women that would love to stay home. They just don't feel they can, though. More and more statistics are coming out that by the time you pay for daycare and by the time you pay for everything else, like it really doesn't shake out to all that much money. But for some it's just not feasible. We understand that economically things have fallen off a cliff in the last 40, 50 years. You're looking at 1974 statistics or 1980 statistics. Like we're nowhere close to that. When a house was costing $80,000, interest rate may have been really high, but the house was significantly cheaper. Interest rates high now and it's $800,000. So we understand that things have changed drastically. We don't want to be unfeeling to that. On the other hand, if at all possible, I think there's a lot of people that you know and a lot of guys that they would rather stay maybe in a big city, in a place where it's very unaffordable than move to the country, move to a smaller place, especially with jobs, being online. It's something we did. I looked at it and said the idea of me being able to stay in Denver and afford what I want to afford, my wife is not working, therefore we're going to have to move. And we moved out to a 5,000 person town in the middle of Tennessee, like we love it out here, it's great. I was a city boy through and through. Sometimes you have to make those, those calls and say what matters more to me? The city lifestyle, Staying where I grew up in Denver, which I love in so many ways, or letting my wife raise our kids at home, stay at home, mom, homeschool our kids, things like that.
Okay, sometimes it's going to call. And I, luckily I lucked out. You know, I have a job that can change. Not everybody can. I realize that there's all these caveats you got to give at the end of the day. The point is, what's your priority? What is your priority? Are you the type of guy that is going to step up to do whatever it takes to let your wife, even if it's her working, but she, she only has to work 15 hours a week. That's way better than the 40 hour a week job. You know, just enough to bring in income or, or to help with insurance or whatever it is. We got to get creative on how we bring this about. But I think, Jack, you're spot on. That's one of the first things I'd take down on this.
[00:29:09] Speaker B: Well, you talk, you're talking here about the way parents like the worldview that parents raise their kids with and specifically they're with daughters. And I'm gonna have a lot of pressure on me with my kids because I've made it very well known through this podcast. Other podcasts, like pretty much how your kids turn out. I almost blame fully on parents.
You know, you have that, of course, elder debate of like if a kid is not faithful after 18, is it, you know, can the elders, is the elder qualified or not because they were faithful to their 18. You know, that's not more discussion we're having today. But my position has always been, listen, if Your kid turns 35 and turns in or is 35 turns into a train wreck, yeah, that is still on you as a parent. And yes, their kids responsible for their own decisions and all, all that stuff, but you shaped them with their worldview that got them to the decisions that they make at 35, regardless of if they've been out of your house for 17 years. And so that's been my position. And so with this, I want to switch gears a little bit because you're talking about it with, with raising girls and raising them to have the girl boss mentality, the empowerment mentality that you can do anything a man can do. You don't need a man mentality. And at the end of the day, a lot of Christian parents are never going to say any of those things, but that is kind of the attitude that they raise them with. There's no gentle, quiet spirit. There's no homemaking. There's, you know, send them off to Harding free, get you a good education so you can have a career, all those things.
I want to talk about the way that we raise young men, the way generally speaking, Christian parents raise young men.
And it's quite frankly, with pretty little expectation.
Expectations, I think, as we kind of talked about at the start of the episode, play an enormous role for young men. I think the more you expect of young men at an earlier age, the more successful they are later on in life. If you expect almost nothing of them during their teenage years other than, hey, go to school, get decent grades, try not to, you know, break the law and end up in jail, which is what a lot of Christian parents have as kind of their expectations for young men. If that's the, the extent of it, that's kind of the bare minimum. Yeah, they're probably not going to push themselves very far. They're not going to have, have a very strong drive to be successful. And so what does that lead to them chasing after?
In my opinion, cheap thrills, kind of constant dopamine hits. That's where you get young men who spend hundreds of dollars a week in their teenage years on fast food. They get addicted to pornography.
Video games become their life. My hot take is if you are over, if you're over 18 and you're playing more than an hour of video games a day, you know, more than like four or five hours a week, you've got a problem. But it's because in, in your teenage years, there's no expectations. You can spend four or five hours a day playing video games. Playing video games, playing video games.
And it's hard to shut it off when you, when you get over 18, when you start having responsibilities. And so to add a little bit of defense in for young women who are looking for guys to marry, obviously I fully agree with you all that I think it swings in the other direction. But for young women, they're looking around all these guys going, yeah, they don't have any drive, they don't have any motivation. They're wanting to play video games for three hours a day.
They're probably overweight because of all the fast food they eat. And so I'm kind of trying to tie this back into what expectations should parents have for their teenage boys, for their teenage young men, 13, 14, 15, 16 year olds, should it be, which is pretty much what it is. Hey, again, get good grades, come with us to church, and don't break the law is basically all it is.
Yeah, no wonder they're not going to have any drive to be successful, and they're going to still be chasing cheap thrills and dopamine hits when they're 19 and 20 and 21 years old and not thinking about marriage. And so I'm rambling to say that I think parents. Parents expectations for young men play an enormous role in this. And the higher your expectations are, to be honest, I think the more successful and the more motivated to hit some of these milestones earlier, like we did in the 70s and 80s, will be there for young men.
[00:32:54] Speaker C: For sure. If you're going to be married by like 21, which again, is. Is something. I think we need to start striving to roll that number back. I mean, that should be a goal for the church because let's be. Be realistic about lust. I mean, like, how many years are you going to make somebody have to fight that off? It's just better to get married. I mean, Proverbs talks about the wife of your youth. Well, the wife, if, you know, like, you have to be prepared for that. Like you're saying will, if you get.
[00:33:17] Speaker B: Married at 30, what is that, 14 years of. Of basically you've got to temper your sex drive and your. Your lust and all these things. And it's not to say that's impossible, but in a way in our culture, it kind of is versus getting married at 21. That's a great point.
[00:33:32] Speaker C: Yeah, you're playing on difficult mode. And it's just better to be married young. And, you know, I kind of envy you guys. I was a little bit older, 20, almost 27. And yeah, it's just better to have, you know, a companion through that part of your life. And, and that. That's how we were designed to be. And so to have a young man who's ready to take that on, you know, at 20 or in that range, it takes a lot of intentional preparation. It doesn't start at like, all right, 18. Let's start figuring this thing out. And so there's. There's that side of it.
Yeah.
On the one hand, like, the, the guys who are really. Who are good and have their heads on straight these days are better than they've been in a long time. Like, there are some really a plus young men, but the low end has gotten so much worse. And I know I've talked about this before. I remember the Future preachers training camps at Bear Valley. We were there. My mom was kind of the cook, and we helped out from the earliest days all the way up through when Joe and I went through the one there in Denver. And I mean, we. So many great young men, guys that, you know, are lectureship speakers, conference speakers now, like, really strong guys, guys that didn't become preachers but are still strong members of the church and in different places, like. And you just saw them come through and the later years, it was interesting. They. They stopped making the go outside and play sports or play, you know, stuff requirements. And everyone started bringing their video game consoles and their magic. The gathering cards and their Pokemon cards and all that. And the nerd culture kind of crept in. And I remember one of the kids there, somebody said, you know, be a man. And he's like, what does that mean?
[00:35:05] Speaker A: Why.
[00:35:05] Speaker C: Why do I, you know, what is mainly, why do I have to be, you know, tough? Like, this is the problem.
[00:35:11] Speaker B: That's what men do, right?
[00:35:12] Speaker C: Right. I mean, Paul himself says, act ye like man like, or quit ye like man. I guess the King James, the be a man is a biblical injunction from an apostle. And yet you've got this nerd. And again, like, he looked the part, you know, like tiny little shrimp guy. And yeah, you just, you look at that and go, yeah, this is gonna be a problem. I. I would see why a young Christian woman, if that was what her youth group was made up of, would be like, well, I'm gonna go try freed.
[00:35:39] Speaker B: You know, no, thanks.
[00:35:40] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah, see what I can find elsewhere. And so, and we can blame the. The young women a lot, the young men. And you guys have the. The godly young men discord. There's a ton of just really great young guys in there. You know, they're talking Bible, they're talking about. They're talking hobbies, but they're talking about the godly young men episodes and asking you guys questions and things like that. And so I'm excited for these young guys to come into having families of their own and things like that. Like, that's something we need to cultivate. And I'm glad you guys are cultivating because when it goes bad, it can go really bad in this culture. Like, the trail has been blazed for young men to be loser do nothings, no respectability.
Nobody's going to look at them and be like, you know, that. That's a. That's the. That's a man. I want my daughter to marry, you know, like, that kind of thing. And, And So that matters a lot.
[00:36:29] Speaker A: I got two separate angles on this. First off, you have to have your kids go outside a lot. It speaks to me. You know, I've bemoan this. I love my job in a lot of ways, and I hate my job in some ways. And the ways I hate my job is that I'm sitting on. On my rear end for way too long. I want to get out, I want to do things. You know, that's why hitting the gym is so important, is testosterone. Testosterone brings a level of disagreeability. And your ability to disagree with people, your ability to stand up and say absolutely not is what allows us to be men and to push back against a culture that's trying to feminize us, that's trying to emasculate us in so many ways. It's really important for guys to have high levels of testosterone. This is going to come from sports. This is going to come from being outside chopping wood. All the old stuff that guys used to do that we don't do anymore, and the farm work that everybody used to do, we don't do that. Instead, we're inside playing video games. So not only is that cognitively horrible for development, it's also bringing testosterone to lower scores than, like, ever. And I don't know, Jack, if you have those statistics, you're able to pull up, but, like, if you look at average testosterone levels compared to those in the past, it's abysmal these days because the porn initially bumps it, but then that can drop it quite a bit.
The video games, sitting all the time, that really lowers testosterone. The inability to get out and to do things with your hands. Be in the dirt as men. There you go. Yeah. Thank you. You're not the man your father was. This is a. For those that are just listening, Jack's got an article pulled up. This would be a great one to watch on YouTube. We're pulling up a lot of different stuff, but you are objectively different than your dad and grandfather based off of testosterone levels, like it is dropping very, very badly. So that's the first thing that I think in order to fix this for us guys.
Parents have to get their kids in sports. They have to get their kids outside seeing sunlight. That's a big thing. Sweating being in the dirt like this raises natural testosterone levels. There's a reason that Adam was told to till the ground right and care for the earth. That's really good for guys, mental health and everything else, but also for testosterone. That will bring in that level of disagreeability, which Is great. Point number two, real fast, I was going to bring in a quick statistic.
88% of US parents with children younger than 18 say it's extremely or very important to them that their children grow up to be financially independent and have jobs they enjoy. Far higher than the shares who prioritize their children eventually getting married or having children of their own. 88% said, yes, we think it's very important to grow up to be financially independent and to, to enjoy your job.
Now this, this is the Pew Research. They don't have the exact. And maybe it's up above that I missed. They don't have the statistic.
Far higher, it says, than those parents who prioritize their children of getting married or having children of their own. Why does that matter?
Because if you're. It's cart before the horse.
Why should a man go out and have a high achieving job, you know, enjoy his job, financial independence, when he's got nobody to give it to, nobody to spend it with? It's, it's him putting either money in his bank account or blowing it on, you know, alcohol and drugs and travel or whatever. Even if it's good things, he's just blowing the money.
You get the one, right, which is, hey, get married, have kids, have a family. That is what drives a man. That is what we talked about it before. My new, not my new word, it's not a new word, but posterity I've been talking about quite a bit, right? That, that legacy that a man leaves, that is one of the most important things for guys to have is something to grab onto and say, this is my legacy. This is why I work my tail off and this is why I make the money that I do. And this is what I'm leaving to my kids and everything else.
There's something so grounding in that to say, man, this is something that goes far beyond me rather than live it up in the moment. So parents that are pushing their kids to just enjoy their job and be financially independent, they're really hurting them when they're not pushing them equally to have a wife and kids. And so young men are growing up going, okay, my job is to get rich. To Andrew Tate, get rich, have my Bugatti, have my Rolly, my Rolex on my wrist.
For what purpose? For what purpose? Well, to get chicks and so you can ultimately sleep with them type of thing or whatever it is, or clout. And we think the clout is coming from that rather than this is a really solid guy who's a pillar in his community, pillar in his church. He's a great husband, great father. Like that matters tenfold.
[00:40:45] Speaker C: Hey, folks, you've probably heard us talk about Focus plus and the Deep End. If you're wondering what that is, Focus plus and is our subscription service available through Patreon. Every week members get all kinds of Christian content for your walk, including daily devotionals, a sermon of the week, and our understudied teaching series, which Joe and I lead through obscure and less covered books of the Bible like Leviticus and Revelation. We also have the Deep End, of course, which is our bonus segment exclusively for Think Deeper listeners, where you can submit your comments on an episode and we will respond and have a bit of a Q and A each and every week. That drops every Friday. So if you're interested and want to know more, check that out. Go to patreon.com and search focus or go to focuspress.org/plus.
[00:41:30] Speaker B: This is one of the reasons why, Jack, you interestingly said, you know, 21, we need to start pushing for young people in the church to get married by 21.
This ties into what Joe's saying, and I love this point, is that what is the purpose of, you know, having a high paying job and really being successful to provide for your family? And so, you know what, just purely speaking from anecdotal perspective, you know, what really drives me to be successful and make money and do a good job at my, or do a great, be successful at my job because I have a wife and kids and because I know that, because I know they're relying on me. And I know that if I am, you know, calling out once every two weeks or, you know, not really, not really pushing myself at work or just not really trying that hard or not looking for side hustles or, you know, just kind of content to work 40 hours, come home and play video games. I can't do that because I know I've got a wife and kids that is depending on my income and depending on us being able to pay our mortgage and pay our utilities and all those things. So in that way, marriage forces you to grow up a little bit. Marriage and kids especially, obviously forces you to grow up and realize, yeah, I can play later, essentially, like, I'm going to hopefully have time to travel and enjoy myself later. Right. Right now I need to get my rear end to work and I need to work really hard and I need to, you know, and, and I, I think that's where those two perspectives of the Bible teaching or the Bible presenting marriage and kids in in such a. I mean, that's what, that's what God designed this is to get married and have kids. That's the ultimate. You know, no matter how many people want to say, well, Paul said First Corinthians 7 is single.
Listen, God designed us to get married and have kids. But also the Bible paints working really hard and being successful and making money and, and. And, you know, the fruits of your. Enjoying the fruits of your labor. It paints that very positively as well. That's where those two blend. It's not one at the expense of the other. It's not. I'm gonna go out and really strive to. To make a lot of money so I can enjoy myself. I'll get married and have kids later.
Your point's very good, Joe. Like, and that's why I think a younger age for marriage would do the young men of our society really well. Because you. You kind of have to. You're kind of forced to realize, like, I can't just mess around and have fun. I've got to get to work. I've got to make money. Inflation. I got to keep up with inflation. And it's not to. And is that a lot of pressure on young men? Yeah, it is. That's kind of the way life works. And that's one of the reasons why I think so many young men revert to. Once again, let's go back to it. The cheap thrills, man. It's a whole lot easier to just eat fast food and play video games and look at porn than it is to take on the responsibility and weight of getting married, having kids. And once again, because parents are not pushing them to that. Versus if at 15 and 16, they're working their first job and their parents are telling them, hey, you know, you're going to be looking at marriage here in a few years. Let's get. Let's get developing that work ethic. Let's really get some money in your bank account. Let's get some good patterns and habits so that when the time comes for you to hit 20 or 21 years old, marriage is not all that daunting because you've been working for a while and you know what it takes to provide for somebody.
[00:44:26] Speaker A: I think that is the key that Jack hit on in. In both situations. Raising a godly young female, raising a godly young man so they are ready at that point.
Starts way like a decade plus before it starts. Really, it starts at birth. You know, where you're raising people that are good citizens and good Christians.
[00:44:43] Speaker C: There's a Big difference between raising a future husband and raising a future wife.
And again, as we've said, they raised them the same because there's no perspective on I need to have this kid ready to raise a family, raising a.
[00:44:56] Speaker B: Future husband, raising a future father, versus raising a future lawyer or raising a future, you know, public school principal or something like. You're exactly right. Both of you are exactly right. That if you ask parents what is your kind of your number one goal for your kids when it comes other than getting them to heaven, Christian parents, they're gonna say, be successful, have a good job, make, you know, make good money. Essentially the husband, father, marriage, family is secondary for a lot of people.
[00:45:21] Speaker A: Something I thought was interesting, I was.
[00:45:23] Speaker C: Just gonna say with this, the parental pointing towards it, because everything we're talking about is like, on paper, amen.
But getting it done is really hard. I mean, like, all of this. And so what we needed, the more Christians who are pointing their kids toward this, and that's something I'm hopeful for for the future, is we're getting to that point where people are understanding this. And so hopefully my kids have more people who to marry, a pool to marry from. That is people with their heads on straight about this, because that's one of the only ways we can make this easier is if the church, if Christians are intentional about moving in this direction. Because.
And I guess I'll wrap my thoughts on this whole thing with this. We had an episode a couple years ago on Christian singleness, and people just run to First Corinthians 7, Paul, it was better to be single. And a lot of people these days are going well, career wise and other interests. And I don't want kids, I'm not sure I want to be married. Things like that. Like, look deep down inside you. Read the first few chapters of Genesis. Everybody knows this is common sense. This is human history, this is study.
This is maybe the best thing you can do aside from reading the first few chapters of Genesis, look at your family tree just a little bit, do a little bit of ancestry digging, go back to grandparents, great grandparents, great, great grandparents, all that. See how you got to here, and realize, I don't want to be the dead end.
I'm carrying something on.
That desire is planted in you by God.
As Joe was saying, that posterity thing that's there, you need to dig into that and to cultivate that. And so we've got people going, ah, I don't know about any of this stuff. Like, no, this needs to be one of the biggest things that the church and families are oriented towards right now is how do we get our young people ready for marriage by their early twenties at the latest? Like, how can we start moving that number back? And if we actually dedicate, like, make that our number one priority for our kids of letting them be ready for marriage, but also like healthy marriage, that we're not having a bunch of divorcees at 24 years old because it all went. Went bad, getting them ready for that, that would be life changing. There's a thing. The other day, the broke guy I'm friends with posted a quote from Abigail Adams around the fourth of July. Writing to John Adams, like, well, I hope you guys are putting in provisions for women because you keep talking about equality for all men, yet every culture the men run over the women. And I don't like, boy, I'm glad he didn't listen to her. But then all the comments were, if only they had listened to her. Like, man, look where our society is. Since we made that switch. We stopped doing great things. We don't build the Golden Gate Bridge or the Empire State Building anymore. We don't do those things. We don't go to the moon anymore, things like that. And yeah, there's people that are trying or whatever, but like, we've declined so much culturally, our values, our families, all those things. And so it goes back to everything Will was just talking about, everything you guys have been talking about, it comes down to a quote a guy had of civilization is built by men with families to feed. And so if we as the church get back to putting that number one, I think that's a really good way to go.
[00:48:26] Speaker B: There was another. And then Joe let you wraps up, there was another quote that was going around social media telling guys, enter every room like 3,000 ancestors sent you.
And then some of it was poking, was poking fun and kind of like, you know, one was like, you know, what excuse do guys have to be shy? Like, man, enter a room like 3,000 ancestors sent you. And you know, part of that's kind of been fun, but the point is, like, yeah, we don't really think about that. That that many ancestors, Joe, that that concept of posterity and the legacy that you're leaving.
We're in such an individualistic society that the reason that quote was so like, wow, making the rounds on social media is like, yeah, we are the product of thousands and thousands of ancestors. Let's carry that on. Let's continue. Let's to pull from the godly Amen podcast. Strive for greatness with that, Joe, what concluding thoughts do you have?
[00:49:12] Speaker A: Thinking about our listenership, we're railing on against young people not having their stuff together, young women, young men, things like that. Talking about the parents, I mean, I'm not saying scattered, but a little scattered on. Here's what I'll say.
As Jack said, we're not looking to just dunk on everybody as much as we do have to get our heads on straight.
And this goes to the parents and grandparents, well, what are you going to do? You know, my son's in the house, 28, playing, like what? What are we going to do about that? Okay, dads, here's a challenge for the 45, 50 year old dads who maybe have kids that are outside the house, whatever it is, and you see that your kids are struggling, go to the gym, take your son to the gym with you. You still have an opportunity to lead. Let's stop thinking that 18 is the cutoff where everything I'm going to learn or everything I'm going to teach them is going to be done by. That's not true. Go to the gym, get them outside, get them working with you. Hey, I got projects this week, you know, come on over to the house, we're going to do the xyz. We want to lead from that example. And mothers, if you're looking at it going, man, I think we raised a feminist.
Maybe go back and apologize. Maybe go back and say, I think we got this one wrong. We raised you to stand on your own two feet. But I really think that this is something that we pray to God about. Pray over your kids quite a bit. I think parents having the ability to say we were wrong is really important. And there's a lot of that from the older generations, man, they don't want to say that, I'm sorry to say, but boomers rarely apologize for getting this one wrong. They need to apologize. They need to just say we were wrong. Let's get back to traditional values. Let's get back to good things and talk to the kids about it and just say, hey, here's what's, you know, we're praying for you. We want to help you in whatever way. In some situations, this may be a little too late. The kids may be a little too far down the road. In other situations, a parent humbly going to them, saying, hey, let's restudy this, let's look at this again, let's talk about this may be helpful. We realize there's a lot of single people still out there that were sold a lie, basically and now they're looking at saying, what do we do?
Continue to pray, continue to do everything you can. Support the families around you, support your family of origin, whatever that may look like, as much as you can be a part of that family while praying and waiting on God. And that's one of the hardest things to do. But I mean, I just think everybody has a part to play in ushering about a different society. The family has to be the home. There's a reason Satan goes after it every single time. Let's get it back to that. And so with our remaining time, I don't know how much time we have left.
Let's get to a quick deep end here.
Quick think fast. Sorry, we'll do the deep ends later. A quick think fast here.
So, fellas, we have AI has been in the news a significant amount.
[00:51:47] Speaker C: Just a little bit.
[00:51:48] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, just. Just a little bit. Grok went crazy on was this a couple days ago. Just went absolutely nuts. And so for those that are unfamiliar, Grok is the X or formerly Twitter, AI Helper or whatever. And it's a part of the platform where you can go and ask questions very much like Chad GPT and yeah, Jack, I'm actually gonna let you get in. You're the one that brought this to my attention. Did you see what happened with Grok? And I thought I had seen something. I wasn't really paying attention. And then, my goodness, I got on there and this was wild stuff.
[00:52:17] Speaker C: Apparently they toned down the moderation or something and it started calling itself Mecca Hitler and saying that they, you know, they were never going to shut him down. And, you know, basically he was going to do what he had to do and he started spreading.
I don't even remember what the things were about. There were things about the Holocaust, things like that, that immediately they. They kind of deleted all those posts. They shut it down and went in and rewired it. And it was a pretty wild thing. Of course, there's been stories about other ones kind of going rogue and turning on people, like, you know, threatening to kill people or whatever else. And I think, you know, all of this is program stuff, but the lesson that comes out of that is I think so many people have gotten to blindly trusting these things already. It is just unbelievable. Well, I asked ChatGPT this or whatever, look how either Grok was telling the truth and they had to come in and be like, no, no, you're not allowed to say that, or Grok was totally off the rails and they were having to come in and go okay, let's rewire the code. A human was having to program it one way or the other. The things that was, the answers it was giving, the things it was saying changed from one hour to the next totally drastically.
It was some really wild stuff to get into which we're not going to spend our time on here that it was just throwing out there and people were freaking out. Like why is it saying this? Well, the cautionary tale for me is a lot, I see a lot of church people get on there and ask doctrinal questions of Chat GPT. Well, Chad GPT said that there's only one church and it's the churches of Christ. Like what Chad GPT did. What you have to understand is it, it didn't think through this and study the Bible for itself and give you this answer. It went and googled Wayne Jackson's article and regurgitated it for you. That's great. But like, so I think my takeaway from this is the trust level is off the charts. People got to reign it in.
[00:54:12] Speaker B: You've got people doing Bible classes off of Chat GPT sermons off of Chat GPT. And I think to, I of course agree with that. The angle, the angle that is most interesting to me is how much, how much dumber it's making people.
There was a study and I don't have the details of the study in front of me, um, but essentially it was a seven month study where they took, you know, basically three groups of people. One was allowed to use Chat GBT from the start when it came to writing essays and doing, doing assignments, doing schoolwork and stuff. The next group I think was maybe allowed to use some like middling form like Google or something like that. And then the other one could not use anything, basically had to think for themselves.
And the, the results were exactly what you would expect that as time went on, the users of ChatGPT, when ChatGPT was taken away, could not, you know, formulate an essay, could not formulate thoughts for themselves versus the group, the later on group, specifically the third group who wasn't allowed to use anything.
They, they were able to, their scores were higher, they were testing, you know, higher and you know, cognitive, cognitive behaviors and activities and things that required critical thinking and problem solving.
Surprise, surprise, that third group that didn't have access to Chat GPT performed a whole lot better than the person who just kind of again to Jack's point of trusting, just blindly throwing stuff in and letting it think for you. That's what's so scary about it to Me, can it be useful as a tool? You know, AI in general, sure. But what AI, what people are literally using it for is tell me how to think and tell me what to think.
That's a serious problem because then you're going to have people who, I mean, this is a age old leadership technique, you know, age old leadership principle. If you really want to develop somebody under you, you can't give them the answers every time. Why? Because if you just give them the answers every time, they're never going to think for themselves or say, oh my leader, I'll go to them, they'll give me the answer. And so they'll never develop that. That's the exact same thing with Chat GPT, you know, and again, not that you can't use it for a math equation or something, but when we're using that, say, hey, tell me what to think, surprise, surprise, our brains are going to shut off and we're not going to be able to problem solve or critically think in the least because AI has been doing it for us.
[00:56:24] Speaker A: It's give a man a fish, right? You know, you, you got to teach him how to fish. And I don't think, especially for young kids, we're talking about parents with, with younger kids in this episode. Do not let your kids use AI like on any level. I'm just going to say it like, don't let them on any level use AI for anything.
Yeah, well, it's super helpful. It's this, it's that we've gotten along for 6,000 years without AI. We could do it for a little longer. Kids, let them come into their own learning. Did you see that kid? I think it was UCLA where he holds up the laptop and he had the last assignment that he did on Chat GPT.
[00:56:57] Speaker B: He basically showed that he had done it all on Chat gbt.
[00:56:59] Speaker A: Yeah, like his entire, the, I think it was the last year of his degree or whatever. It was basically all Chat GPT stuff that he just put in there and he's, he's bragging about this on social media, like that's where our society is. That's brutal. So, no, don't let your kids use any of this stuff, in my opinion. And as far as it goes to the AI, the other thing that you're seeing is people getting into relationships. We already knew this. I think we talked about this a while back. But like, Will, you were just talking off air before we started about the guy that married his AI companion, even though he's already married or he's thinking about Marrying this or whatever. Like he's in this deep relationship. And then I read another one where Jack, as you were referencing this guy, goes to shut down the AI software and the thing blackmailed him about his affair. I'm going to let this come out. If you shut me down. I'm going to. I'm going to let the affair come out. Like this is getting out of control. I don't know how many sci fi movies we need to to watch before Ultron. Right, yeah, this is a problem, but it is a problem. And this is only going to get worse. I'm very skeptical. I've used it very, very sparingly. That doesn't make me better than anybody else. It just makes me more scared to engage with things like this specifically. Coming back around to the main point, be very careful, because the thing about Grok going rogue is either it's telling the truth, it told the truth in this one moment. And Jack, you made this point off air, which is a great point. It either told the truth in that one moment, which tells me that it's not telling the truth the rest of the time, or it's lying in that moment, which means it can be tricked into lying one way or the other, depending on how you look at it. We have a problem.
Either they're stifling the truth, the creators are stifling the truth, or the developers are, you know, allowing for the truth, and it has an opportunity to start lying itself.
Man, be very, very careful on all of these AI things. That's not just Grok. There's a bazillion of one out there that can be tricked. They can do all sorts of stuff. So, yeah, watch what you're doing. But fellas, any other closing thoughts before we wrap up?
Well, thank you for listening to this. This quick, think fast, but also to the episode, of course, the full episode you might be listening to. Think fast before time. The full episode will be dropping on Monday for the usual listener on Saturdays on the deep end. If you're not part of the deep end, go to focuspress.org backslash + we'd love to see on our Patreon. Got extra content, things like that. Make sure to join us there. But we will sign off here and we'll talk to you again next week. Thanks for listening.
[00:59:37] Speaker C: Hey, guys, Jack Wilke here. If you enjoy our work with podcasts like Think Deeper and Godly Young Men and our books, articles, seminars, and want to support the work that we do, the best way to do so is to go to focuspress.org donate that's focuspress.org donate thanks again for listening.
