H.I. No. 67: Doctor Brady

"H.I. #67: Doctor Brady" is the 67th episode of Hello Internet, released on July 31, 2016.
==Official Description==
Brady and Grey discuss: Brexit and emoji flags revisited, Brady doesn't want his problems fixed -- just his jokes laughed at, jousting and golf at the Olympics, Brady gets an honorary degree, and Grey's split-brain video which inevitably spills over into another discussion of free will in which Grey says part of the universe might not make sense but forgot to mention one key point of the argument.
==Show Notes==
Great, for this episode and this episode, I only. Mm-hmm. Will you call me Dr. Harron? Um... Last time we spoke, we talked about Brexit, and at that point in time we had no Prime Minister and no idea of what might or might not happen. And now we do have a Prime Minister. Things have moved along in the world, but I am still of the opinion that I think it seems unlikely that maximum Brexit is going to occur. I've been following the news ever so slightly, and I just keep seeing a whole bunch of, like, mustn't be so hasty news with regard to Brexit. Just yesterday, even so I headlined, which was a new Prime Minister announcing something like, we will not do Article 50 until the beginning of 2017 at the earliest. So I feel like the campaign to push this back has begun. That's my feelings on what the current state of play is with Brexit. I have to say, I'm sort of set about Brexit for so many reasons, but one of the main ones is, I've never been one of those people that's that into politics, and I always find people who are, like, really into politics and talking about all the time a little bit annoying. Yeah, it's like when people talk about sports. Well, I can't, yeah, fair enough. For me, politics was that annoying thing, and I've become one of those people lately, like, I find myself at dinner parties talking about politics, and I go out with people and I talk about politics, and I'm like, oh, no, I've become that annoying person. And I blame Brexit, so I'm really fighting against it. Fighting, I don't want to be that guy, because I know politics is, well, I mean, I'm not going to say it's boring, because everyone finds different things interesting, and like you say, I find sport interesting. So I'm not going to say politics is boring, but politics is usually a disagreeable thing to talk about a lot. You know, they say it's one of those topics you shouldn't bring up. I need to tone that down. But it's politics has been so interesting lately, though. Brexit or no Brexit. It's just triggered such interesting stuff in the political parties, as they've all sort of turned on themselves. It's like the Hunger Games. You can't stop watching, so. It's funny. I kind of agree that for a long, long time, I was avoiding following any of the Brexit news, and I'm still not hugely following it now. But just around when we recorded our last show, I finally realized, like, oh, there is something interesting to talk about here. And I keep feeling like this has given us the most perfect dilemma for a representative democracy ever. I'm never super interested in the particular details of the in-party fighting or who's doing what, but I do find the bigger picture quite interesting now that if I'm right that the conservatives don't really want to do this, then I think it is like this quandary of what is a representative democracy to do. And so I think that's really interesting. But again, as far as I could tell, it looks like they're just totally stalling for as long as they possibly can. I thought your Brexit video was quite good, too. It was a nice sort of crystallization of what we discussed in the last episode. I thought it was a nice return to form after a couple of Bollocks videos you've done lately, so well done. Thank you. I really appreciate that. Yeah. How's that from a backhand compliment? I've also found like you that it is absolutely unavoidable to discuss Brexit with almost everybody in the whole of the UK for the past couple of weeks. Like, since I came back from America, and since I've been here, it's like literally everybody wants to talk Brexit. You go to like a dinner party, you end up talking Brexit. I've ended up like just in cafes like the person giving me the coffee wants to talk Brexit. And like, this doesn't seem like an appropriate venue for this, but just is clearly on everybody's mind and is unavoidable. Oh, dude, it's worse in America. Well, if you're the British guy, like if you're the British in quotation marks guy, like me, because every party you go to, every dinner you go to, every conversation, it's all anyone wants to ask you about. It's like, what the hell happened man? What's going on? Explain to me and being someone who didn't vote for Brexit, I'm having to sort of try and explain what's going on and I'm like, it puts you in a really difficult situation, but I feel like sort of the freak in the room all the time. So I was glad to get out of there and no longer have to answer questions about it. We are again going to be passing each other because you have just recently gotten back to the UK and I am going back to America again tomorrow. So we keep flipping continents. So you're back here, you don't have to keep explaining to people what's going on. You're not the representative of the whole of the UK as the Australian guy. Anyway, having done the video, I mean, obviously we talked about it on the podcast, but it's another order of magnitude when you do a video on something. Did you find your sort of your inboxes and the ways that people try to get to get sort of more demand than usual or did you manage to show to yourself from all the hordes? It was a hugely, hugely active discussion on the Reddit. I sort of have a whole bunch of ways now to filter out my emails so that it doesn't get exploded when this occurs anymore, which is useful. But yeah, there was a whole bunch of discussion about it and as always, YouTube comments aside, at least on the Reddit comments, I've found, you know, for the most part, people were pretty civil in their disagreements and discussions on what to do. Otherwise, be a touchy topic. Yeah, people are passionate, but I think that's fair. I think generally people are more civil about it than some other topics. I do have some advice for people, though. I mean, people are obviously aware that one of the places they could get the attention of Gray or to a lesser extent myself is to go into our subreddits. I don't know if this is true for you, Gray, but it's true for me. If you do want me to read your comment and reply to it, keep it short is my recommendation. If you say, here's what I have to say, and I see like 19 sentences, you are wasting your time. And I think you're probably wasting your time for anyone to read it. It's just like posting a five minute YouTube video versus a 40 minute YouTube video. People don't even start when they see how long it is from the start. Can size is key. Even if you've got a lot to say, you've got to think, no, just say one thing because that's the only chance anyone will read it. I feel sorry for these people that write these big long essays. Like, I've got something to say and I want you all to read it. And then you see this like eight pages of text. It's like, dude, no one's reading that. I hope you realize it. Yeah. That's what they call the wall of text, right? You just see a giant wall of text and you feel like, am I going to climb over this wall of text? No, I'm not. I'm totally aware of that same thing. Every once in a while, I read it. I think perhaps the time in my life when I read the most biggest, longest walls of text ever was the great gunned germs and steel debate. I did read like all of that stuff. But in a regular Reddit thread when someone leaves one of those, you just like, forget it. I'm not going to read this. My other personal annoyance is when people try to put two different things in a single comment. I always feel like if you have multiple things to say, leave multiple comments so that the thread structure is really clear. I always get annoyed when people try to have like two totally separate unrelated ideas in a comment. Keep it clean people. Nice and simple. One idea per post. Every post very short. There's only a far not amount of attention in the world and you need strategies to get people's attention. It's totally true. Without a doubt that is the case. I think I've said it before at some point on this podcast, but I really do think that in the modern internet interconnected info dense world that attention is a kind of currency. Yeah. That this is a thing that you have to be mindful of and collecting up a bunch of people's attention is a valuable thing and how you spend your own attention is a valuable thing. And then that rolls into what you're saying here of how do you attempt to get the attention of somebody else. You have to be strategic about it. I mean, the people who are most successful on YouTube, people like yourself. I mean, I think your greatest skill is the curation and management of people's attention much more than the quality of the video which you make, which are good. But I think your cannioness with managing people's attention is your greatest asset in many ways. What do you mean by that? I think you put lots and lots of thought and strategy into how to get people's attention and sort of keep them interested in what you're doing and engaged with you as a creator. I think you think about it a lot more than I do. I think if I was going for maximum amount of attention, more list videos. No, no, no, but in some ways, I imagine you as someone who weighs that up, weighs up the click baitiness of a list video or attention grabbing thumbnail versus the goodwill and respect and longer term attention of someone who has more credibility and is a bit more proper about such things. I think you think about all these things a lot because there's a downside to list videos as well. I can imagine you thinking, do I make a list video? Here's what would be good about it. It would have a lot of short term upside, but it might have downside in the longer term. I imagine you as someone who thinks about all this stuff. I think you're very canny. It's true. I do think about that stuff. And actually just yesterday I came up with I thought was a really good idea for a list video. So I'm not against list videos in principle. It just depends on if it works. But actually since you bring this up, I have a question for you, which is this is one of those times where I feel like I don't know if I'm having a subjective experience, you know, like you tune into a thing and then there's just a whole bunch of confirmation bias about the thing or not. But I feel like the click baitiness of headlines and thumbnails on YouTube has really gone up in the last six months. Titles that are just ambiguous or they have very clickbait style thumbnails. I don't know. I have a feeling like some switch got turned somewhere in YouTube and they got even better about AB testing. What it is that humans will click on YouTube. But maybe this is just my own subjective experience of this. I don't know. I think it's possible. Certainly I think a number of people creating content on YouTube obviously is going up. But I think it's going up exponentially. And I think every man and their dog now considers themselves like a YouTuber, which is fine. Like they can be. But it's inevitably going to result in an arms war when it comes to attention seeking. Yeah. Well, that's why it's on my mind because I've been aware for the last couple of videos and some of the things that I'm trying to work on now. I've had this feeling of like has this arms war gotten strong enough that I kind of have to give in and do more clickbaity titles or more clickbaity thumbnails? Because I generally don't like kind of clickbait stuff. It doesn't just sit well with me, but I've been wondering if I'm just being foolish at a certain point. And maybe it's because I'm thinking about that. I am now more sensitive to super clickbaity kind of stuff on YouTube. But it's interesting. I might come up later on because if we talk about one of your videos later, we'll talk about CGP Gray, bait. Okay. All right. We can talk about that later. Go. So saying we're doing follow up with bed and I go too far down the rabbit hole. Amogies? What's going on here? Yes. So we were discussing the emoji flags last time. Who should and who should not get emoji flags? I believe I had a rock solid, unmovable argument about how the new flags should be generated. I think that's my memory of how it went. Basically, anything American or that you fancy? Yeah, I think that might have been the conclusion that we came to. I wondered aloud in that episode if Vatican City had a flag. And the answer is yes, Vatican City does have a flag. Oh, really? Did someone get back to you? And that did they? I only got a thousand messages about that. I think every resident of Vatican City must have sent us something about it because I got at least that many emails. Yeah. This one from the Pope, right? Who listens? Let's us know. I use the Vatican City emoji flag every day. Tim the third. Yeah. So of course, yes, there was a lot of feedback about that. But what I really liked is a couple of people pointed out some of the more unusual flags that are already in there. So these include places like Western Sahara, which is sort of ambiguous, but not really a country has a flag. The I don't know how to pronounce it. I think it's Owland Islands has a flag. French Polynesia has a flag. The British Indian Ocean territory has a flag. There's a bunch of just funny places like Greenland and Kirkow, Kirkco. I never know how to say it even though I said it in a video once. So there are already a bunch of places that are sort of semi-savarin independent places like Gibraltar, like Gernsey, like Jersey, like the Isle of Man. So there's already in this list of country flags in the emoji standard. There's just a ton of weirdness already. I just I thought that was interesting. The Isle of Man has an emoji and Scotland doesn't. That's correct. That is nuts. Right, isn't it? All I can think of is how did someone sit down and make this list where they're like, Isle of Man, yes. Right, Gibraltar, yes, Scotland. No, no Scotland. Right, what is the reasoning for this? Also, I thought you might enjoy. Have you seen the Nepal emoji? There we go. Oh, no, they've had me to have a problem there with the Nepal one, haven't they? To describe what has gone wrong with the Nepal emoji flag. Obviously, the Nepal is not a rectangular flag. It's these two sort of triangles stacked on top of each other. But what they've basically done for the emoji is had an all white rectangular flag and then just put the Nepal triangles off to the left hand side. So it looks like it's the triangle set on a white background. Yeah, that is a bit of a disaster. And the thing that I find strange about that is it's not as though emojis are required to be rectangular, right? Yeah. The emojis come in all kinds of crazy shapes. But for some reason, the Nepal one, they have to put a little white background on it. It's like, oh, no, this is terrible. You know, there's going to be a technical reason, Gray, that old flags have to be standardized and you're going to have like a nerd avalanche of people explaining why now. No, there is no reason why they have to be standardized. I've no, but I bet there's a reason the flags stick. For some reason, it's been decided all the flags must be the same shape for some silly reason. Look like all software stuff. Some human made it this way. You could make it a different way. You could have the Nepal one just be a special one, right? They have the bizarre like business man floating over a whole shape emoji, which I don't understand at all. Like I don't get that one. If they can do that, then Nepal one, it can just be the two triangles. Yeah, but there were some reason that they said flags have got to be rectangular because they're in some subset that need to be standardized to be compatible with some other thing. I'm very confident that there is no reason for this. And if there is a reason, please let Brady know. Is the Switzerland flag more square or is that sort of rectangular as well? Because obviously, Switzerland has that much more square flag than others. Let's see Switzerland flag emoji. The Switzerland flag emoji is also rectangular if I say this is playing into my belief that they've decided to rectangularize or national flags for some reason. Hey, don't get me wrong. You know how much I love the Nepal flag. I'm outraged. I think it's silly. I'm just saying there'll be some stupid reason. I think it's laziness. That's probably what it is. Laziness is the reason. Well, inertia might be a better way to describe it. That might be right. All right. So we had an email from a listener named Caleb who wrote all sorts of things that I won't go into but some of them were quite interesting actually now that I'm reading it back off, I've forgotten half of these things. What are you doing here? Are you teasing the listeners? Are you going through this email that what, you're now going to pick out the least interesting of the things to mention as you go through it? It's a very pro Brady email which I find quite funny because so many halloween listeners are sort of big gray fans. So he actually says if you're keeping track, I was a Brady fan first. Periodic videos is the first channel I subscribe to. My wife is a fan too. She loves objectivity. She also wants you to know she has a crush on you. This seems very likely to get cut from the podcast. I'm probably I'm making it up. So the thing that's really interesting that Caleb says is I did a small experiment in listening and I listened, this is to Hello Internet, I listened in reverse chronological order. It is kind of funny how often follow up was the big conversation about something that in earlier episodes has only been brought up in passing. It actually worked well. The only problem is that I finally made it through the archive and I think this raises an interesting question because you know how you get these people that say you should watch like Star Wars films in different orders and that sort of thing and they even have names to these orders. Machete order. Yeah, could we have the Caleb ordering of listening to Hello Internet, which is listening in reverse chronological order and I wonder what the pros and cons of listening to a podcast in reverse are and what your thoughts are on that. I don't know, it depends a lot on the podcast. What do you do when you get into a new podcast and you think this looks good? Will you tend to pick it up from where they're at? Will you go to the start? Will you ever go backwards? Will you just pick and choose based on topics? When you go into a new podcast that's been around for a while, what's your immersion strategy? Okay, so I generally listen to podcasts in chronological order. So if I find something that I think I might like, I will go back and I will download the whole of the archive and I will listen in chronological order. And I always feel like that's the best way to do it. Like that feels like the best way to experience it because if you're doing it in reverse chronological order, like I have done this with some shows and I just think it ends up in this weird state where as you're listening to new episodes as they come out but then you're also listening to old episodes so you are a time traveler who is both going forward and backward in time. Well, that just sounds awesome. No, it's confusing, it's jarring, it's no good. In my podcast player, which is I'm currently using Overcast but you can do this in a bunch of different podcast apps, I have all of my podcasts ordered oldest to newest by podcast. So when I open up my podcast player, I'm always seeing the oldest episodes and then I am working my way through my podcasts that way. And there's a bunch of reasons why I like to do this, but I think that is the best way to see how it changes and to understand how a podcast is later on. I mean, the disadvantage is very often podcasts kind of start off in the beginning a little bit different than they end up towards the end, but I think all the to newest is clearly the way to go. But what about you? That's disappointingly boring of you, Gray. I thought maybe you would have some twist on it, not just luck. I go to the start and then follow it through to the end. I mean, of course, that's the logical way to do it, but what do you want me to suggest here? Do you think I'm going to do random order? I think you should listen in completely random order so that nothing in the universe makes sense. Well, in some ways, that's what I do. Of course. Of course. Right. Okay. Uh-huh. If there's a new one, a new podcast, because of most podcasts do get better over time. So just going straight back to the start, you might have to wade through some treacle before they find their feet. But also, if I find a new one, I'll listen to the most recent episode because that basically puts a marker in the sand that says, is this good or not and is the future bright or is the future gloomy. And if it is good, I would tend to look at the back catalog and just cherry pick the titles that I think look like they'll be about things that interest me. Because I'm very aware that if you listen to old episodes, they'll be talking about things that are no longer in the news, their opinions may have changed on things. And I could be getting riled up by things that are no longer relevant. So I tend to just go back and look at the ones that are, oh, that's that's really going to be in my sweet spot. Oh, the plane crash episode. I'll listen to that one. Right. And ignore lots of the back catalog. So cherry pick from the past and pick up from where they're at at the moment tends to be my philosophy. But see, here's why I really like doing all kinds of media in terms of oldest to newest. I think there's a lot of advantages in going oldest to newest. And I do the same thing like when I save articles to read, so like I can press a button on my web browser and save them into an app to read later. I also have those kinds of things open up oldest to newest because I find that time acts as a kind of attention filter. So if I'm always listening to stuff kind of behind the actual current time or I'm reading articles that passed me saved several weeks ago, instead of what passed me saved minutes ago, it acts as a kind of filter like, do I actually care about this thing anymore? And so very often like when a podcast will come up, I feel like, oh great, this podcast is talking about things that are totally not relevant to me anymore. I can just delete. And I feel like, great, I cut an hour of my life back because this thing would have mattered when I would have listened to it, but it doesn't matter now that I'm listening, you know, weeks behind. And I feel like it's an excellent way to have a bit of perspective on what matters or what doesn't matter, like with articles as well. It's really easy to save a bunch of articles to read later that you realize later, I don't really care. I only just cared in the moment. And so you're acting as a kind of chronological attention filter for the media that you consume. It's the same reason why I do this with like movies to watch and books to read. Like I put them all on a list and you let future you see what still matters or what is still relevant. That sounds like you're describing my method more than your method where you pick up from where it's at now, but you look at the past and cherry pick the things that are worthy of your attention rather than listening to everything. You're just advocating what I said, not what you said. No, but I don't just go through the back catalog and select randomly. I will say like download absolutely everything and then I just delete as I'm going through. If something isn't relevant to the current. Oh, well, that's that's just semantics. I mean, it's just a mechanism. I mean, I'm looking at the whole back catalog. I may not have put them onto my player. I'm just looking at the feed. And then I'm deleting in my mind, aren't I? Oh, okay, I'm not going to listen to that one. That's not worthy of my time. The place where you can come unstuck with your strategy. And maybe it doesn't matter because you wouldn't listen to this sort of podcast anyway. It's because you live in your bubble. You might not know what's relevant to tonight. And if I can give you an example, okay, there's a podcast I quite like at the moment. It's the BBC Politics one with this guy called John Pina. He's really good. And every Sunday he does interviews. So I download it. And a week or so ago, his Sunday show was about the battle for the Prime Minister ship of Britain and the two women who had come down to this face off. And they were previewing the candidates and talking about it. And I downloaded it and thought, oh, that's going to be a nice listen tomorrow. And of course, the next day, one of those candidates dropped out and Theresa may became Prime Minister. Now, if I lived in the grey bubble and didn't know that, I could have settled in with my pipe and my smoking jacket and sat on the sofa and thought, oh, this is going to be a nice listen. I would have spent an hour and a half listening to this great setup of this great contest that was about to happen. And then I would have thought, oh, I can't wait to find out who wins. And then I found out it all finished to cup the days before. And I would have felt like, oh, that was a waste of my time. That preview of that battle didn't even happen. It'd be like watching a two hour preview of a big football match that then gets cancelled. I can never understand the way you've even phrased things. Two things here. First of all, you always imagine that I'm just totally isolated from the outside world 100%. It was very likely that you would know that a Prime Minister has been elected. It's the same way when I'm going through stuff oldest to newest, I am dimly aware of events that have occurred in the world, which is the very reason I'm able to select what it is that I do or do not want to listen to. And secondly, if you did settle down with your pipe to listen to this excellent, excellent preview of the Prime Minister battle that was coming up, when it was over, wouldn't it be incredibly satisfying to say, I wonder who won this battle? And then you immediately get to know the answer. It's like binge watching TV. I have actually done that on occasion with stuff where I know an event has occurred, but I'm listening to people discuss an event beforehand and I sort of listen and then I think, I'm going to sit here and try to make a prediction about what will occur and what's fantastic is I get to know if I'm right instantly. Don't get me wrong, right? In response to your response, first of all, I don't think I underestimate how out of touch you are, you never cease to amaze me with new stories you haven't heard of. It's never. That's another argument. That's another argument, but it's still never ceases to amaze me. And second of all, there's nothing wrong with living your life with a little bit of a time offset. I don't think I do it quite as dramatically as you, but I do do it sometimes. I think it's hugely beneficial. Yeah, and I do it. If I'm out shopping on a Sunday, because I will often record the Grand Prix that day and avoid all social media, so I don't know the result. And then night I will watch the race. And I'm five or six hours behind the rest of the world, but I'm getting just as much excitement from watching it five or six hours later. So there's nothing wrong with the time offset. And in many ways, I see that's what you do in your life in a lot of ways. You offset time. And that's fine. The problem with this politic situation is you'd be doing a time offset. And there'd be nothing wrong with hearing about the contest and then finding out what happened later with the contest. But if the contest gets cancelled altogether, there is a little bit of a robbery that's happened, because they'll be talking about things that they think will happen over the next six weeks. And they could tell you and then they're going to be doing this in two weeks time. And they're going to be having a debate in the community hole in three weeks time. And I think when that debate comes, you know, and if none of that stuff even happens, I do think you have sunk a little bit of time into something you probably shouldn't have. So there is value to be gained from thinking, that's what everyone thought would happen. And none of it happened. Isn't that interesting? But put it this way, I didn't listen to it, because I thought it would be a waste of my time. Right. And great. You saved yourself an hour of your life. I mean, this is, you know, when I started doing this, I mean, a long time ago now, I used to listen to more political shows than I currently do. I mean, I don't think I have anything that could be even described as a political show on my subscriptions anymore. You know, but of course shows sometimes touch on politics because it's unavoidable. But it was precisely this time offset that made me realize, like, why am I even listening to these political shows anyway? It's almost always stuff that totally doesn't matter in a week. If I wait a week to listen to it, and then it has no impact on anything, well, why am I listening to it the moment that it comes out? There's not really any benefit there. So I'm feeling extra intensive about this because I was just talking to a friend of mine who I was trying to talk out of for a while, paying attention to the news. And he did do my like, read newspapers a week later experiment. And he was like, oh yeah, like introducing this time delay makes it really obvious that none of this stuff actually matters. And so I feel like everybody should have a little bit of a time delay with everything they have to do. Because time acts as an excellent filter of what are you going to be interested in long term? Not just what do you think you're interested in immediately? Well, yeah, where does that end? I mean, nothing matters in the long term. Does that we're all going to be dead in 60 or 70 years? We might as well just stop doing anything. Excellent extrapolation, Brady. 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Sometimes they just want some sympathy or they want a vent. And trying to solve it is not what you should do. Disagree. Well, I'm sorry, it's true. If your wife come home from work and has had a difficult day and says, oh, it's been so difficult, I had a really tough day today. They don't necessarily want you to say, well, you should have done this or tomorrow you should do this. Sometimes they just want an arm around the shoulder or a sympathetic word saying, wow, that sounds tough. Good on you for getting through it. Let's have dinner. And I think the same is true on social media. If I'm sometimes gripping about something that annoys me, for example, the Twitter app, and I'm saying, oh, it's so annoying Twitter, I don't want a huge big long list of all the other different apps I should use or the different things I should do or be told, oh, that's a crap app you shouldn't be using anyway. Sometimes I just want people to either say, yeah, Saks doesn't it? Or just say, you know, don't worry, that was a funny joke you made. It there expense anyway. Good on you. That's all so drawn. I don't want to be told all the things I'm doing wrong and all the things I should change. Just put your arm around my shoulder and say, yeah, I hear you, man. You don't have to solve problems. Why do you want to wallow in your own problems and not receive solutions? Because that's humans are just like that sometimes. Sometimes they don't want to solve the problem. They just want to grunt. If someone has a solution, don't you want to hear the solution? No, not necessarily. No, no, no. Because usually a solution implies that I'm doing something wrong. And if I'm feeling pissed off, you're just going to piss me off even more by telling me I'm doing something wrong. Just tell me you're on my side, don't like. But what if you are doing something wrong? If you and I agree, if you and I played football together and I was the goalkeeper for the team and we made the World Cup final and right at the end of the World Cup final, I jumped the wrong away and lit in a go and we lost the World Cup final. At the end of the game, when I'm in tears in front of a hundred thousand people in the stadium, I would not want you to come up to me and say, Brady, if we make the World Cup final again in four years and that happens, next time jump to the left, it was obvious. It was the worst comparison ever because there's no, because there's no solution for that. That's a situation where is there a solution that could be offered? No, there's no solution at all. It's like, oh, you just lost us the big game. I'm sorry, buddy, right? I'll put my arm around you. But if you're like, oh, I have a problem with the Twitter client, I don't like this thing about it. And somebody says, oh, there's a different Twitter client that does things differently. That's a solution. What you're saying here is a bit like if like someone's talking about like a death in the family and someone's like, well, you know, if we invented anti-death technology, right, then this wouldn't be a problem. It's like, no, this is not even remotely comparable. You're giving an analogy for which there is no solution. I would not offer a solution for like, you should have jumped the other way. That's just, what is it? Like Monday morning quarterbacking. If we had a time machine and could go back in time, things could have been different. That kind of stuff is just obnoxious. No, because at the end of the game, there would be value in you telling me, if that happens again in a future game, Brady, you should jump to the left, you know, learn from your experience. In the heat of the moment, and in three or four weeks after the football game, there would be value in us watching the video together and saying, now Brady, if you're goalkeeping again, and that same player does that thing, now you know what to do. But in the heat of the moment, when passions are high, that is not the time for solutions. This is the time for sympathy and a consoling arm. And it's the same on Twitter. If I'm venting on Twitter and making a joke or saying something angry, I just want my friends to kind of agree with me and agree that things are crap. I don't want them to be with their arms crossed and their serious CGP-grade voice telling me, well, in fact, there is a solution to that problem which you're venting about. I just let the steam rise and let the passions go. And then later on, I'll probably fire the solution myself. I'm just venting. I don't want you all telling me stuff like that. I'm sorry. And if I'm wrong, okay. But then why are there like thousands of books and bits of advice along these lines, too, about like, you know, relationships and stuff saying, when one person's like, you know, upset and venting about their problems, it doesn't mean they want you to sit there and solve them. This is like a known thing. But we're not married. So it doesn't matter. Yeah, we're not married, right? This doesn't matter, right? So in the big book of why Brady and Gray cannot be shipped together, right? This would be another one of these examples of like, Brady comes home and just wants to talk about his feelings and wants no solutions to easily solvable problems. And Gray has no patience for this whatsoever. Don't get me wrong, Gray. I'm guilty of this. I am guilty of this when people are like upset. I'm also Mr. Noid all saying, well, you should have done this or next time you should do that, or you could fix the, but I do it. But the minute I do it, I realize it's a mistake. Would you do it anyway? Yeah, because it's like it's what it's what we do. And it's certainly what everyone who follows me on Twitter does. I mean, the closest I can get to sympathising with this is if I complain on the podcast about something or if I complain on Twitter about something, people often offer solutions. But where I get annoyed at is when someone's solution is no good, right? When their solution doesn't work. And usually it's because you have not adequately understood the problem domain solution offerer. You are just giving me a thing that doesn't actually make stuff better. It's just an alternative. This is not actually a solution. And that's where I get annoyed. It just feels like you don't understand the problem. If I want a solution, I will make it clear that I want a solution. If I'm just trying to be a wise person making jokes at Twitter's expense, okay, just go with me. You keep flipping around a couple of things here, which is you're joking on Twitter or like you're complaining about a thing that has a solution. Those are two again, totally different social scenarios, right? I don't think so. I think if something's pissing me off, I'm saying I've got a sore hand because of the way I'm holding the iPhone. I can make some joke as my way of venting my frustration. Or I could say, has anyone got any suggested alternative ways to hold an iPhone? Because my hands hurting. There are two different ways of dealing with problems. Sometimes you put the call out for help. Sometimes you say, this is pissing me off. I'm just going to take a swipe at them because that's what we do these days. Look, if people have adequate solutions, they should offer them. This is clearly the better path in society. Just sitting around everybody feeling sorry for everybody else, it gets you nowhere. I disagree. I totally disagree. All right. Well, I guess I'm suffering from expert fatigue because everyone's an expert. And I have, when I've got hundreds and hundreds of them sharing their expertise with me, I can only handle so much expertise. But you want solutions, don't you? And this is what I don't understand. I don't understand this part. Not always. And look, this is behavior that you can train people out of. Well, why do you think I'm talking about it? No, no, I'm talking about you can train people out of the behavior where all they're doing is complaining because they want a bunch of sympathy from other people. Just shower me with sympathy so that I feel better in my own wallowing. Like, no, you can train people out of this. If this is a thing that you can do, you can learn to stop doing this. And I think you're better off if you stop doing that. All right. Just complaining to get sympathy from other people. There's not a good personality trait. Well, when you say it like that, it sounds pretty bad. Yeah, because that's what it is. But let me phrase it another way. It's turning to my fellow men and women for comfort in times of need. Oh my god. All right. But again, there's like a whole range of scenarios here, right? We'll put like death in the family of turning to humankind for comfort and need to on the other side, complaining about stuff that is potentially fixable at the other end. All right. And I just think so many people like to complain about stuff that's potentially fixable. I mean, the classic example of this is someone comes home and they start complaining about a bunch of stuff related to their job. Right. This is like the standard scenario. And the answer in that is, okay, well, let's talk about this. Let's come up with solutions. Like are there things that you can do differently at your job or can you leave your job? This is where it is good that you are matched with your wife. Because you are wrong about that. You are wrong. You are wrong that you should always sit down when someone is complaining and say, let's talk this through. I know for a fact that I'm not wrong on this. I disagree with you. And I also disagree with some of the analogies you're drawing for a change with deaths in the family, but it's not really something we should widen to. No, we can totally wait into it. Look, just to make it simple, like I know teenage, much younger me used to have this thing that everybody does where like you complain about a thing and then you're like you're wanting people to express sympathy with you. Right. Like I used to do this when I was a kid, but then you can train yourself out of this behavior. Right. Nothing useful is happening to you. Nothing useful is happening to the people that you're talking to. Like you can learn not to do this. I don't agree. I don't agree. If I say, oh man, Twitter's crap. And I make some funny joke. And everyone's like, yeah, Brady, you made a funny joke and we agreed Twitter's crap. I feel better. The hop right there. Humor is the thing that is valuable in and of itself. If you are complaining about a thing in such a way that other people are laughing and it's a funny story, that is valuable. But you're moving the goalposts here. This was my original goalposts. Oh, these are your original goalposts. Okay. Yeah. Well, I wasn't saying Twitter is really poor and causing me some frustration today post and then being upset by people saying alternative to Twitter. I was making like a wiseass comment about the Twitter app about something about it. I didn't like. I was making like a joke about it. Oh, okay. And then everyone's like, well, if you use this button, use this, use tweet bot, or use this and you've got this setting. I'm like, oh man, I was just making a joke that they're crap. You know, I'm using the wrong app. Now I understand clearly everybody, when Brady makes jokes on Twitter, just laugh at his jokes. That's all he wants. That's the only thing for anyone. Or just ignore me or unfollow me or mute me. But don't give me tech support. If I want tech support, I'll ask for it. Actually, if I want tech support, I'll call Gray. Yeah, it's going to happen there, really. I am the tech support for a bunch of YouTubers and that's fine. Now, you've been going to ground too much lately. You're impossible to get. You're worse than usual at the moment. What do you mean? I'm always as readable as they ever have been. I think you've been a bit less reachable lately. I don't agree with that. Okay. Maybe I'm wrong. I think you are wrong. So as you know, the Olympic Games are about to start shortly. Do you know where they're being held? No. All right. They're being held in a couple of weeks in Rio. I literally did not know this. Okay. That's okay. To be honest, I've been a lot less excited by these Olympics. I haven't been getting as hyped by them as I normally would. Oh, yeah. You normally get super excited for the Olympics? I wouldn't say I get super excited by them, but I'm not looking forward to them that much. But I hopefully that changes. And so obviously, normally I wouldn't have much to talk about with you about the Olympics. But there was a story that caught my eye a couple of days ago that I thought even you may slightly raise one eyebrow to. I think it's a bit of a publicity stunt, but I still think it's awesome. The people from the charity English Heritage here in the UK have started a petition calling for the reintroduction or not the reintroduction. I think the first time introduction to the Olympics for the sport of jousting. Oh, can you imagine jousting at the Olympics? I think even you would watch that. Yeah, I'd watch that at least once. That's something. So I haven't actually looked at the petition yet, but they're sort of arguing that jousting requires a lot of skill and strength and things like that. And I find that hard to argue with. I think jousting must be a pretty difficult sport to be good at. And I think I'd be up for it. I think I'm willing to potentially pending further investigation, particularly regarding the well-being of animals. I'd be up for consideration of jousting. I was just quickly trying to pull this up here. And of course, you know, when you google for Olympic Games jousting, there's all kinds of pictures of people on horseback in armor in front of castles. I feel like, yes. We need more of this. This looks amazing. It would definitely be a condition of my support that the jousters war, metal armor and not some rubber modern suits with helmets. You know, that have to be wearing old-school jousting outfit. I don't want the Nike rubber jousting suit. 100% agree. Go metal or go home, right? I don't want to be like, oh, we've made a super safe jousting suit. Not interested. And they're not to use like virtual cyber poles jousting sticks or anything. It has to be jousting sticks. That seems unlikely that that's the name of them. The whole thing that makes this exciting is it seems stupidly dangerous. Right? Yeah. And there's all kinds of dumb sports in the Olympics that people bring up all the time. I don't see why jousting couldn't be part of this. I mean, if you or someone else, now I would get into a conversation with you about Gulf and the Olympics, which has been the big controversy. Is Gulf and the Olympics? Gulf is in this Olympics. No, thumbs down. Yeah, well, it's causing a lot of problems actually. Is this new this year? Yes. I totally disagree with it. And the problem is all the good players are pulling out partly because of the Zika virus, which is this problem in Rio at the moment. But it also is just basically betraying how unsuriously they're taking it. And the introduction of Gulf into the Olympics, I think, was a very cynical move by the International Olympic Committee. And it's just turning into a bit of a debacle. I would much rather watch jousting than Gulf at the Olympics. Why is it a cynical move? Is it just get the golf eyeballs onto the Olympics? Is that the idea? Particularly in Asia, because in Asia, Gulf has a huge following. And in Asia, there's a bit less engagement with the Olympics than in some other parts of the world. So I think they thought if we get Gulf in there, that will increase people's interest. And also just Gulf as a sport attracts huge corporate sponsorship in general. So I think they're thinking if we've got Gulf at the Olympics, you know, we'll have more big corporate deals and better sponsors and things like that. I mean, I guess Gulf is the sport of the corporate world. Yeah, of course. Yeah, exactly. But it doesn't mean it has to be in the Olympics. And I think they've been shown up now because the players don't care. The players have the four tournaments they really want to win every year. The Olympics isn't one of them. So they're quite happy to pull out. And they're citing this Zika virus concern, which is fair enough. But it's not hitting other sports in the same way. Just sounds really boring. I mean, it's my own personal bias against Gulf. It's really dull. No, it's a good Gulf tournament. Don't get me wrong. I like watching a good major. If there was any sport that was present in the house when I was growing up, it was Gulf on TV via my father. And I always thought this is incredibly boring. Does your dad play Gulf? Yeah, he does play Gulf. I'm not sure how much he plays currently. But at least when I was in high school, my dad played Gulf pretty regularly. And I was out on the court a couple of times. The court. I just realized that's not the right way. I didn't describe it. The course. And of course, as you might expect, the best part of playing Gulf was driving the Gulf Guard for me. That was the super fun part. And those things can really move when you floor it. That is my fondest memories of being out on the Gulf course is riding in the electric Gulf cart. Well, other Gulf Terminology DNA. You have the wooden clubs and you have the iron clubs. Yeah, kind of. What do you mean? Kind of. There's no, you have the wooden clubs and the iron clubs. You have woods and ions. Yeah. But most of the time they're not actually made of wood. They're just cold woods. Right. But the wood clubs are for long distance shots, if I remember, the ions are for the closed shots because they have their steeper. So you can do a little fun upward trajectories. Yeah, that's your nine ions and your pitching wedges and sand wedges. Right. And there's the a par for the course when you get the expected number of strokes per hole. What if you get one less than you should have got for that hole? Is that a birdie? Something's a birdie. Is it really? Yes. Yes. What if you get one more than you should have got for that hole? I have no idea. I got nothing. Nothing. Birdie is the only only one I knew there. That's a bogey. Oh, bogey. Okay. Yeah. All right. I feel like I should have known these things, but I don't. What if you get two less than you should have got for the hole? Two less. That's awesome. What's better than a birdie? I have no idea. I got nothing. A berry. That's an eagle. An eagle. Oh, okay. Oh, yeah. That sounds familiar. Yeah. So what if you get two worse than you should have got for a hole? What's worse than a bogey? Penguin. Is it a penguin? Rather boring me. That's just a double bogey. Double bogey. Oh, okay. I bet you can guess what you get for three worse than a hole. Triple bogey. Yeah. You're learning fast, man. There we go. What an exciting sport this golf is. So I tell you what though. I might know a lot about golf terminology, but I know nothing about jousting terminology. So that's next for me. I couldn't name you anything about jousting. I know that they joust. It's a tilt yard. Is the word for where they're jousting? Have you still got the Wikipedia article? I have the BBC News article right? Today's episode is brought to you in part by audible.com, who has more than 180,000 audiobooks and spoken word audio products. Audible is offering our listeners a free 30-day trial membership. Just go to audible.com slash hello internet. Take a look around. Find something that interests you. Download and start listening. It's that easy. This summer my wife and I are doing a bit of a mini road trip and we're going to end up at Las Vegas and an excellent book to listen to if you're taking a road trip to Las Vegas would be fear and loathing in Las Vegas by Hunter S. Thompson. It's impossible to describe the writing of Hunter S. Thompson. You just have to read it for yourself. When you sign up at audible, you can listen on any of the apps they have for iPhone, iPad, Android and even Windows phone. You can listen anywhere you want. You can access your library from anywhere. So if you want to re-listen to old favorites as I often do, that is a breeze to do. And if you're going to be reading a lot of books at the beach during this summer, if you use a Kindle device, Amazon will automatically synchronize your position between your audiobook and your real book on the Kindle. So you can jump back and forth between listening and reading and get through even more books this summer. So once again, if you want to give audible a try, go to audible.com slash hello internet. Pick a book out of the 180,000 they have, maybe fear and loathing, maybe whatever catches your interest and start listening today. Thanks again to audible for supporting the show. Well, Dr. Harran. Yes. How are you feeling today? Do you feel knowledgeable? Do you feel worldly? I'm feeling wise. I'm feeling esteemed. Congratulations, by the way. Congratulations on your honorary doctorate. Thank you very much. It was a really, really great day for those who don't know the University of Nottingham where I've done a lot of work over many years now awarded me an honorary doctorate a few days ago as we are recording. And it was at the graduation ceremony for the school of physics, for all the physics and astronomy students who did real hard work and were getting their richly deserved degrees and doctrics and things. Also had to put up with a short speech about me and me getting an honorary doctorate at the University and I got a nice certificate and I got to dress up in funny clothes and I got treated like a VIP and it was one of the best days ever. And it was like I had a smile from ear to ear and it was just a few notches below wedding day in terms of just super, super happy days. Oh, that's fantastic. I watched your speech online. The video is available and in the show notes for anybody who wants to see it. I think you did a very good job. Kept it nice and short, nice and punchy. Short is usually good. Short is good at things like that. It's a funny thing that the day, like I compared it to a wedding and it is like that. It's one of those days where like there's lots of attention on you and there's lots of good will and everyone's just really happy for you and you're feeling a lot of love and that's really nice. It's a really great celebration. But the thing that's funny about it is you're very aware that it's happening for like 150 people at the same time in the same room and their families and friends are there and they're the centre of their world and the person next to them has their family and friends there and as they come up in like that conveyor belt and they're all having their names read out and they're shaking the hand of the vice chancellor. That's a really big moment in their life and for their family and it's all happening so much and so simultaneously it's a really difficult thing to get your head around and I tried to reflect some of that also and what I said you know I realised that the day wasn't about me in many ways it wasn't about me because I just had an honorary doctorate and these people had done the real deal and they were the real heroes of the day. So I hope I reflected that in some way but it was a really great day for me and it was a really great day for there's 173 other people as well. So how did it come about that you got an honorary doctorate? Like what is the process for selecting an honorary doctor? Well I don't entirely know. They give out some every year I don't know how many they give out I would guess in the range of a dozen. Normally to people are a lot more esteemed than me that have done amazing things in business or whatever for umpteen many years so it was really nice for them to give one to me. Names are submitted by people. I don't know I didn't submit it. I don't you know I don't know anything about it. Names are submitted. Discussions that had committees meet the Senate of the University then considers I imagine they considered recommendations and approved of them. I don't know what gets disapproved but it all happened behind my back. My wife was actually aware of it because they needed information about me to consider the application so it turns out Professor Merrifield at the University of Nottingham who I think had a bit to do with this contacted my wife to find out things about my past and history and work and things like that. Is this the doing background checks I need to make sure there's something terrible? Well maybe yeah there was some some of that so it all happened behind my back and I knew nothing about it whatsoever at all and then I got a letter from the Vice Chancellor of the University a few months ago actually my wife was with me at the time and like this University envelope came and my wife was like what's that? Are you going to open it? And because obviously I do business with the University I was like oh it'll just be some boring letter about something funny actually I've got to do or something so I wasn't going to open it and she said you should open it. So I opened it and it was of course it's lovely letter from the boss of the year and he's saying we're going to give you the sonery doctorate so I was over the moon and then obviously waited a few months and went and did all the official ceremony stuff this week and it was great it was great they had that I got there was a special VIP lunch beforehand and got to wear the robes and the silly hat and walk down the aisle and all the fancy pompous music and national anthems and I loved all the formality of it and got my nice certificate and very cool a doctor of letters is what I am. I have to say the picture of you signing the certificate I guess that's what that is in front of you that you have up on your blog which might be one of my favorite pictures of you ever somehow I don't know it's just it just looks perfect you're there and there's a little fancy outfit you have a funny look on your face I really really like this photo of Dr. Brady at the ceremony I think it's it's absolutely fantastic. So of course you don't have a doctorate as far as I know do you you didn't reach that level did you? No I have not reached the heights that you have reached Brady. So is there anything you'd like to ask me then that's probably the more personal question now that you know I can is there anything I can help you with? No I mean mostly mostly when I'm saying stuff I usually just want sympathy I don't want the kind of answers that a learned man of letters might be able to provide. So I just like to throw stuff out there and I mean that's basically what I'm doing is I'm sympathizing with your your lower level of education is true it's I am a mere a mere peasant in your shadow now Brady. Oh so do you think you could change the Halleouin tonight website to say it's presented by C.G.P. Gray and Dr. Brady Harron? Well I mean I think that is an interesting question because although I you know I don't want to dwell on this fact but I understand that there are some questions about whether or not honorary doctors can use the doctor on a horrific outside of the day of ceremony that occurs this is a fair question and I think it should be addressed. I mean I don't want to bring it up I don't want to I don't want to poop on your parade here. No no of course it's basically the only question anyone will have about the Halleouin. Exactly right phrase perhaps in the way of yeah but are you a real doctor? My position is that I am not. There is mixed opinion on it actually and different people do different things with it and you can read different things about it but I think the proper way is to not use it and the only way it gets used is in official correspondence with the university that bestowed it on you but there are people who have taken the name doctor within an honorary fick degree like this. I think Benjamin Franklin was one of them. Oh yeah yeah so I may be wrong about that but I'm sticking with it until you Google it and find out otherwise. I'm not doing that at all. I can hear you steam punk keyboard he's singing away in the background. I don't know that me. So other than for this week and times of convenience I'm not going to roll out using it maybe on some plain bookings. In the hope you get a upgrade. I'm not going to roll it out. I haven't done it and I won't necessarily do it but I want to leave that option open. Do you think that's how they do upgrades on your lives? I don't think that's how that works. Probably not. Probably not. I mean some people are saying yeah you should do it. You know get some of your things changed and that but I don't think it's the done thing and it's not going to be the done thing by me so I'm just having a couple of days of glory. Lording it over people like my sister who was ahead of me in the education stakes for so long so I'm now telling her that I'm ahead of her. But other than that it's just like a nice price and some nice recognition and a really fun day with all the people at the university who I really like and care about and they did a nice thing for me. And being able to stick it to your sister is a really nice bonus. That is nice. That is nice. She didn't realize till the day she just thought I was getting an honorary degree. She didn't realize it was this doctor of letters so when she found that out she went from being really like proud and congratulated her to a little bit pissed off. Perfect. Does this sibling rivalry is supposed to work? Yeah so we had a bit of band together on the I-message come to the big moment but she is the one person I am going to insist calls me Dr. Harron in all correspondence. Yeah I think that's legitimate that's the way that should work. It's funny though the longer this conversation goes on like I mean normally I have always just been of the opinion of like oh honorary doctorates obviously those people shouldn't use the word doctor but I find myself thinking like well presumably most of the time an honorary doctorates are given out it is to acknowledge work that is done in a field. The presentation that was given for you was about the genuine work that you have done in the field of science. It was a doctor of letters so it's about creatives because you can be made a doctor of science as well and there is a doctor of letters which apparently it's just actually a peg above a PhD in like the pecking order of university things but it's supposedly for like you know a body of work over an extended period of time which you've become an expert and this was for educational videos and films over a 10 year period and there's a whole duration and reasons given for it and I have to say my impression and it was also my wife's impression was on the day it suddenly seems like a bigger deal than we realised. Like suddenly at the end we were like that's actually like a really big thing they just did for me that like I just thought it was like a prize that you sometimes get in life but it felt like a really big deal and I was really I was bursting with pride at the end of it I was 95% proud and honored and 5% humbled. But humbled in the proper sense of what I would consider the proper sense of the word because I kind of felt like I'm not sure I deserve this this seems like a really big thing they're giving me and I'm just like some crappy guy who does a podcast with Gray and the podcast and Gray did get a mention in the speech by the way when they were listing off the things I did. Yeah I believe they they referenced it as clearly the most relevant part of this award. Yeah but again like in all seriousness I'm finding my mind kind of changing in the course of this conversation. I'm thinking how again the idea like you said of a doctorate is some contribution over a period of time like a unique thing that you have done and I feel like I do know people who's actual work for their doctorate while yes they did a unique thing that no one else has ever done. The end result of that was like a document that sits on a shelf somewhere in a university which is never looked at again by a human being and I feel like you've gotten this for doing a body of work that genuinely has a bunch of influence on other people. I feel like if universities are giving out honorary doctorates for comparable kind of things to individuals who are doing bodies of work then it feels like how is this kind of not real like you are hearing me having a discussion in which I feel my mind is is changing on a thing. It is partly contingent upon I don't know how seriously all universities take honorary doctorates. Yeah I mean obviously I would like to have some sympathy with the argument you're making having just received right right and I also have like a conflict of interest now. Of course you do. I say that you know if you've been doing something for 10, 15 I mean I've been journalist for over 20 years doing science for a lot of her I guess you do get a level of expertise that's comparable to someone who studies something for three years in an institutional environment. So I see the argument for that it probably means a lot of people are eligible for honorary doctorates of course because a lot of people become experts in their field so where do you draw the line but it does come unstuck because some universities and I don't think the University of Nottingham is guilty of this but some universities do turn them into sort of attention seeking events and therefore give them to celebrities or people they think will get lots and lots of media attention or just do it for more gimmicky ways and that probably devalues them sometimes much the same way that the Nobel Prize the peace Nobel Prize sometimes gets devalued when they give one to people who other people don't think deserve it but everyone knows that's the laughing stock Nobel Prize. Oh, the peace Nobel Prize. I think that to everybody. Anyway yeah I hear your argument and I'd like to think it's true but well because I'm just thinking this thing about oh giving out honorary degrees unsurprisingly is it well is this problem many different from things like diploma mills right universities where you can essentially just buy a diploma or get that just hand out diplomas to absolutely everybody maybe this is a kind of self sorting problem where universities have reputations that they care to maintain so those universities are less likely to do just pandering kind of things with honorary degrees I don't know I just I feel like my whole world view about what does a degree mean is being thrown into confusion all of a sudden. Yeah I mean people have a very set idea of what it means and I think I probably have that set idea as well which is why I'm quite self-deprecating about the one I received because I'm I'm more that old school that a degree in a doctorate means you set in a university and did x, y and z but like I said whether I should call myself doctor or not which I don't think I will be doing well I know I won't be doing whether that's the case or not and how much of it is symbolic and how much of it is kind of an earned thing is debatable and for sure people have their own views but I just consider it like just a really nice thing that they did for me and it was kind of you know we've had a relationship for a long time and it made me really happy it was kind of like a little celebration of lots of years and years of work together as well and you definitely deserve it Dr. Brady Harren. 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Brady thanks to hover for supporting the show so gray you've had a few videos out like you do I said that I enjoyed your Brexit one right your split brain one uh-huh I've watched it a few times now I refreshed my memory watching it out while I was walking the dogs earlier not digging that one so much oh yeah it's this new path you've gone down in a few videos that's just not for me oh yeah tell me tell me I like a good map and I like a good border and I like I like some factual stuff but starting with your transporter one and now with your your brain one uh-huh it's marking a sort of a new path you're taking that's not in my wheelhouse but I do think it is in your viewers wheelhouse not just judging from the response but judging from what I know of your viewers and I am therefore going to start labeling videos like this either gray bait this is where we're going before okay yeah I see I think the gray bait or or maybe even reddit bait uh-huh because I think the sort of things reddit people likes pretty similar to what the gray fanboys and fangirls like you mean with the great audience likes yeah but I wanted to use the term fan you know fanboy because it's such a cool term and it's it's more inflammatory of course yes that's exactly what you want to do it yeah like poking people okay right go ahead yeah so it just wasn't my bag and I was watching it and you know of course it was well written and your researcher and you know it back to front and therefore I'm a bit reluctant to talk about it because you'll start citing papers and studies and things I know nothing about but it also felt like just a bit speculative and hand wavy like maybe yeah I've noticed in a couple of videos now you have this little gear change in the middle where you say speculation time or fantasy time like speculation time happened in one video the last video no but there was something in the middle of the bright there was a word you said in the middle of the brain video two where basically it was a euphemism for the next part is like not I don't know I can't remember what the word was now in the middle of the video like just before you go off on a tangent you basically said some little phrase like this next bit is just me what I think and that's fair enough you know you think interesting things but I prefer when you show me the border between America and Canada has an airport with a runway in the middle or something something a bit more real that's what I always like yes yes and if it's just like one guy's opinion it happens to be a guy I'm friends with and therefore I watch the videos because I'm interested in what my friend thinks but I just think this you are two thing is bollocks so what's your beef with it what's your beef with it I don't think that human beings are two people having a fight inside a head I think that just doesn't ring true to me and I saw like some of the examples and studies you've done but I think and I know one of the ways you learn how things work is to break them but I think a broken malfunctioning brain or a brain that's been cut in half with a scalpel is like of course it's going to start doing weird things because it's been broken and the thing I keep thinking about and you hate it because you hate my analogies but I only hate them when they're bad breeding well you're definitely gonna hit this one when I was little a friend of mine her mum had a car and something broken the wiring and steering wheel and whenever the car turned left the car horn would toot so we would sometimes do laps of the block and she would just go left around the block time and time again and every time she turned the wheel the car horn would toot and all us kids in the back would crack up laughing because it was the funniest thing we'd ever heard but that doesn't mean every car on the road has this silent horn that wants to toot every time the car turns left but it's being muted by car society it just means that car was broken and the wires had gone all wrong and it started behaving in a way that cars aren't supposed to behave and just the same if you go into a brain and start messing around with it you can start getting some behaviors that give the appearance of maybe something a little bit strange and abnormal but that doesn't mean that's happening in a normal brain that's just you know the brain has all these different departments and different things and everyone has a different job to do and they integrate in some ways we understand in some ways we don't but I think it's gray baity or red at baity to then make the leap that there's some tortured soul spending 90 years screaming for attention or shrugging its shoulders inside our heads I think that's a nice story and it's a sort of thing that will make people say mind blown but I don't think it's true the split brain stuff it's one of these things that I came across I mean like when I was a teenager I have this dim memory of like a discover magazine or something which originally talked about some of these studies this was a really weird and interesting topic to read I like it when things are super clear I prefer when there's an obvious answer to stuff but I really do think that there is an interesting part of life that revolves around a kind of very difficult question to answer which is a question about human consciousness like what is human consciousness why does it exist it's an idea that the more you think about and the more you try to probe it it can lead you in some interesting directions and I'll just say like directions that I think probably most of the listeners probably think of me as like an incredibly like logical consistent like we can only talk about the things that we can observe sort of super-siancy person and I am mostly that way but I am very interested in ideas around consciousness because I think they start to push you into places that are kind of uncomfortable so thoughts about like how is it that a collection of atoms is able to be aware of itself and you can start thinking all kinds of things about this like oh well maybe consciousness is a side effect of information processing and then you start thinking okay but wait what do you mean by the words information processing and so I feel like the two videos that I've done that have touched on this the trouble with transporters and the you are two I feel like they're each kind of dancing around this idea of what does it mean to be an individual in the world and if you are correct in your starting first principles you are led down roads that seem kind of crazy and the you are two one like looking at a bunch of the old brain study stuff and one of my big problems with a lot of the split brain research is it's very old so there's a lot of stuff where I feel a little bit suspicious about it I think there is no topic I have ever done that I have also felt more suspicious about than this one because I was reading a bunch of papers and they are all from ages and ages ago about what happens to people with split brain phenomenon and I totally agree with you that there is something that's occurring here which is that a person's brain is just broken right what has happened is you you've literally cracked open someone's skull you've reached in you've cut their brain into and once you do that you can start to observe all kinds of strange behavior but the reason that I think it's interesting and the reason why I wanted to do that video is because unlike I think your analogy with the car there's a real question of like what is happening inside the broken person's brain like ignore for a moment a normal brain that's connected but if we're thinking about okay we know we can go in you slice a person's brain in half and I see no way around assuming that all the papers that I'm reading through are accurately describing the situations I see no way around the idea that there is something that is separately conscious in the other side of your head if you cut someone's brain into like I have a very hard time trying to do what I think some people do when you read through papers and you're reading about what are possible descriptions that are going on and people will come up with explanations like oh the other brain is just like reacting automatically to information that it's getting so it seems like it's answering a question but there's nobody really at home it's almost like it's a reflex like what's occurring when the other brain seems to be acting like it's an independent entity but my feeling on a lot of that stuff is if you think this through how is that argument any different than the speaking half of the brain talking when you say oh we ask this person a question and they were able to answer yes or no it just feels like there's some kind of bias towards the speaking part of the brain being the quote like real you obviously conscious person I don't know I'd my feeling was just reading through a bunch of this stuff I can't come up with any seemingly consistent answer for what is occurring other than the right side of the brain at the very least when you cut it off becomes a kind of separate consciousness and whether or not what it's like to be the right half of your brain is the same as what it's like to be the left half of your brain like whether those are the same is a totally different question that's up in the air it feels like to me there's some evidence that consciousness can be cut into as a result of some of the stuff that you see in split brain patients and I think that is really weird and it is really interesting and what does that mean for a person's brain that is whole and that is simply together all the time I think there's some really interesting questions to be asked about that and the one that I hit upon in that video that's a really big question is why is it that if you go in and you cut someone's brain into that they seem mostly fine afterward what seems to be incredibly traumatic brain surgery actually doesn't have very much of an impact on the person and I feel like one of the most consistent explanations that I have come across in the literature is this explanation that your right hemisphere is already separately conscious and that it has already been coordinating with the hemisphere that you think of as you I'm not in that video trying to do what I think is like here's some wild speculation that's cool because I really hate that kind of stuff what I feel like I'm trying to walk towards is you're totally done I mean you've even called the video you are too yeah but that's because my reading of the literature and my sitting down and thinking about it is I really do think that this is the most logical conclusion that explains what is observed in the papers right I think that's a very different thing from saying like I'm just going to toss out a crazy idea it's the same thing that we had with that transporter video of like you seem to think that the thing at the end where I'm talking about like you die every time you go to sleep was like just fun speculation and that was that was the gray bike component of all the reddit bike component of it but from my perspective it's like that is actually a thing that I take very seriously and I think if you start thinking too much about what does it mean to be a continuous person that this is a conclusion that you are pushed towards unwillingly and I feel like the same thing kind of occurs in the you are too video of I'm not just speculating for funsies like I'm doing that because I think that this is the only conclusion that I feel like can be drawn that explains why does this traumatic brain surgery seem to leave people kind of mostly normal why is it that the two hemispheres can seemingly act independently and be totally unaware of each other that's what I'm trying to do with that video do you think there's like an evolutionary reason that brains would have evolved that way like are we talking about some form of redundancy or like why would this have been the way it happened well I mean this this brings up some interesting things that are observed in other animals like for example there are several species particularly aquatic species that can sleep one hemisphere at a time which is just super weird to even think about but there are animals that essentially never really fully go to sleep and like well like that's very interesting like what is it that is occurring inside their subjective brains when this is happening and of course like you can't know you can't really know what it is subjectively like to be a duck when one half is asleep or the other half is asleep and that the brain is just a crazy very difficult to understand also very plastic and flexible organ this whole video fell out of what was supposed to be a much bigger broader topic which is more about how the idea of what you think of yourself as as this stream of thoughts that we have a lot of evidence that this isn't even exactly correct that when you put people into brain scanners what seems to happen is that brain patterns kind of fight with each other inside a person's head until one of them becomes dominant and then that feels like oh this is the thought that I had and maybe one of the other conclusions is not that you are too but maybe the conclusion is like your brain is a whole bunch of like separately conscious entities that are working with or against each other and that the experience we have of a consistent person going through life that this is a little bit of a story that some part of the brain tells itself after the fact if people think about it this is an experience that people actually have right that experience of feeling like you decide to do one thing but you actually end up doing something else like what like why does that occur if you if you really go deep down that rabbit hole it's a bit of a strange thing to think about how you don't always do the things that you want to do what's an example of that I mean just totally simple going to the gym every day it's a thing that you want to do but sometimes you don't do it okay I don't agree with that I think that's a different that's a lot more easily explained isn't it well tell me what do you think about that that's just competing desires isn't that that's not like two thoughts happening simultaneously and like I think I'm walking out to the gym and then suddenly I look down and think oh my god how did this donut get in my hand it's not like that it's a lot more like I have a desire to have a beautiful body and be healthy I have a desire for that yummy sugary thing and then in the end one desire defeats the other but it's not like it's a hidden thing or it's a probability or there were two scrambly thoughts in my brain and one popped out I think that's a lot simpler to explain I know what you're saying there but I still think even the notion of having conflicting desires in your brain I think it's something that it's very easy for us to just accept as normal because it is our experience of the world but is a strange thing the more you sit down and actually focus on it and think about it I like why is it that a person has conflicting thoughts in their head why is it that you decide things one way or another I think there are real rabbit holes that lead in in interesting directions this is all sort of like a bit of a side tangent but I think the UR2 was originally going to be a smaller part of this bigger thing but I think the UR2 stuff is the clearest way to talk about one part of this that we can at least under some circumstances demonstrate that you can unambiguously get a brain to disagree with itself in ways that quote the person the talking person finds confusing and finds difficult to understand what's going on I just feel that the idea that there's some other consciousness in your head answers a lot of questions about a lot of the weirdness that goes on but just one other consciousness you think it's two which I can say like the brain is a very symmetrical two-half thing so you think there's two there's not like a thousand or a million or three you've settled on two when I'm talking about the split brain stuff I think yeah like we can talk about there being like two different entities in the brain or what if we found another line somewhere we could cleft off and get a third interesting phenomenon going on could you be three I don't see in principle why not there's this question of okay either we have a single consciousness that you can divide into two by cutting in the right place and if that's the case I don't see the reason why if we didn't cleverly cut somebody's brain in a different area you could siphon off another part that seems like it is acting independently there's also the possibility of just like minds arise as a byproduct of the way neurons are structured this is the thing I'm not entirely comfortable with as well though say I accept that a brain cut in half has two different consciousnesses right okay if I then rewire them the way they were before I cut is it not acceptable that they just merge into one why when the wiring is connected between the two do they still have to be two different consciousnesses why can't then they just click if your fingers become one consciousness again why does this second one still have to be in prison and shrugging its shoulders and unable to talk and working sometimes with and sometimes against like surely then maybe when I plug the wires in it it just becomes one system that is a total possibility right we don't know because we have no ability to regrow someone's corpus calosum inside of their head and even if we did and we'll have to get back to this because there's one thing where I have like severe doubts about the reality of this whole thing like let's book note that and not forget it I want to return to it but let's say you were able to regrow someone's brain it would be hard to know like how would you interrogate the other brain to see if it's still there I think that would be the interesting question of it is sort of unknowable maybe it's hard to imagine the scenario in which you could know for sure did these two consciousnesses combine or is one now just hidden from view in a way but I feel like okay if you can cut consciousness into with a knife I don't see why in principle it would be impossible to bind to consciousnesses together with a needle and thread right putting it back and fixing it I'm not opposed to that that very idea like I said I see that there are two options here that the cutting creates a separate intelligence or that the separate intelligence exists all and I feel like the second theory is the more explanatory theory it explains why this brain surgery seems to not affect patients very much afterward why they don't need to re-learn the basics of interacting with the world even though their two halves are not able to communicate in the same way that they were able to before for someone who doesn't believe in free will and believes the universe is just a series of you know to simplify it dominoes falling over in sequence and we're just falling as we have to follow why are you so preoccupied with consciousness at all I don't see how those two things are not related if consciousness is an ability to perceive the world around us well because we live in this no free will world where we have no control over anything we don't have any control over the way we perceive it anyway like that's inevitable too so the things you're looking at and thinking and the way you're perceiving the world the way you're conscious of the world is not yours either I agree I'm surprised you can't just talk that out of existence as well and not even bother with this stuff the thing that is fascinating about it is that there is no talking consciousness out of existence like if if I know anything I know that I have some experience of the world right that this is a subjective experience that I have that to me is a very different question than do I control my subjective experience and I agree with you since I don't think that there is free will I don't think that I control my subjective experience of the world like for example I'm sitting in my office right now and it's way too hot the hotness is a subjective experience that is created in my brain I have no ability to control it and as we've just got before I have no ability to select my thoughts or even really no ability to choose what I'm saying in this very conversation I've always said like if you focus on things you can realize like you don't even know how you talk right words just come out but you're not selecting them you're not really choosing them I don't even really know how I'm getting to the end of the sentence right now it's a thing that if you look at it with your attention you notice that it just happens but I am thinking of options like well you talk I'm thinking of will I say this next and then I'm I am running a filtering process I'm saying oh no I won't say that because it'll make me look like a dick right right maybe I'll say that because it'll be fun oh no actually no that's not funny don't say that say this instead or say this but change that word to that like I am it's not like I'm just like wow man what just happened I have made a series of decisions sometimes they're long considered decisions because you're waffling and I have time to think about it exactly and other times I'm making those decisions at the speed of light like on the fly like I am now but I do think the decisions are being made yes but you're you are choosing from the options that occur to you yes I think that you've just pushed the problem up one level well no according to you I'm not even doing that according to you options are passing by and then I'm choosing the one I had no choice but to choose but yeah I can't wait to say I'm trying to go on your level here like let's pretend for a second that you choose right what the the doctrine level that is well always with this stuff I think you end up getting wrapped you as in like the conversation that occurs right yeah you end up getting wrapped around the axle of the very word choose right yeah I think choose and decision are always the words that that you get everything messed up on but even let's say like granting the idea that you are choosing from the things that you think in in your head and everybody has this experience right I have the same experience too like trying to think of things to ask someone but you are still quote choosing among the alternatives that appear in your head but you have no choice about the alternatives that appear in your head and I feel like this is what always happens when we have a discussion about like talking with other humans and you tell me Brady you're always like oh just it's easy to talk to other humans you just say what pops into your head I always feel like but things don't pop into my head right I'm just sitting here with a totally empty head and I don't know how to make things pop into my head in the course of of human conversation but just because I haven't got all the options great doesn't mean free will doesn't exist I mean I lean towards free will existing of course yeah but anyway whatever maybe it doesn't maybe it does but even in my world of believing it exists I can't jump to the moon right now if I say oh the moon looks nice I'm gonna jump up there I can't do that it's not in my palette of options right and likewise when I'm thinking of something to say in a social situation and I'm choosing between the eight options that come into my head that's just my palette of you know the realities of the world just because the palette is limited doesn't mean free will doesn't exist so just because I'm having three or four thoughts and I'm deciding which one to say from this limited palette that was presented to me that doesn't explain away free will yeah I mean I understand what you're saying here and this is where we reach the crux of our disagreement because I like I agree people do not have an infinite number of choices an infinite number of choices would not prove that there was free will either I just think that that the thing that I imagine is happening is happening on both levels you are not selecting from the options that appear in your brain you are not choosing among them either right that the things just occur and you have a subjective feeling of choice but there is no other thing that would have occurred worry to rewind the universe to that exact position but where this connects with consciousness and why I find it so interesting is consciousness feels like this thing that shouldn't exist and I don't use this word lightly but I feel like this is perhaps the closest thing to a miracle that exists that there is anything to experience the universe at all I feel like there's almost no explanation that can ever possibly occur that answers this question like again I am a very sciencey kind of guy but I can imagine a universe where we fast forward the clock on scientific progress 10,000 millennia and are still no closer to an answer about what is consciousness why does it arise then we are today then we were a thousand years ago we may be very good at describing exactly how the brain works in every possible way but that's a different question from how does this bundle of nerves know that it's there how does it have an experience of the world does your thinking in that way there's your kind of bewilderment at consciousness and confusion about consciousness ever make you think maybe there's something else going on and does that ever weaken your thoughts about free will do you ever think well if consciousness can exist and that is completely ridiculous and bewildering maybe there is something going on at some other level and therefore free will is also an option or it is your free will position on clad and consciousness is just bewildering too what I would say is I am open to the possibility of free will existing I am harder pressed on that one because I feel like any explanation that may possibly occur is always just kicking the problem up one level like we were saying before about choosing right but you're choosing from options right but how do those options get there those options got there because those are the things that we're going to pop up in your mind you know it is the idea that that's even if there was some kind of magic part of humans I can still see a way in which free will doesn't exist even if we accept the idea that there's magic in the universe and and consciousness gets to it as close as I'm going to get to be like maybe there's magic in the universe or the other thing which I sometimes have conversations with very sciencey people who really really really don't like this line of thinking but it seems quite reasonable to me is well why do we have to assume that every single part of the universe is perfectly logical and understandable like maybe built into the clockwork of the universe are parts that are not logical like we don't know how the universe works we don't know how everything happens and maybe consciousness is one of these things like this is just how the universe is consciousness exists and there's no ability to explain it in the same way that ultimately there's no ability to explain why an electron has the charge that it does it just does and at a certain point you lose the ability to explain things any further but you won't give that get out of jail free card to free will I don't because I feel like it's a different kind of question hmm I'm open to this I'm not I'm not shutting that down but I just haven't yet found a line of inquiry which I find convincing well great if nothing else you've given some great fodder to all those people at bad philosophy or bad talking or whatever they call the people where people who think they know all the answers to the universe but little people who they think don't yeah those are absolutely always the best and I feel like in these podcasts where I'm like I'm very happy to acknowledge my total uncertainty and lack of knowledge in those conversations that always comes across as oh this guy tells everybody he knows everything I'm like uh okay I guess he don't actually listen to the podcast it's just because you sound too damn authoritative gray it's just your curse that is perhaps what I think is the funniest complaint that I get from people will they'll say like oh he shouldn't speculate because the sound of his voice is too authoritative I'm like okay I'm sorry I didn't realize I am forbidden from expressing my thoughts because they sound too legitimate when I say that okay did we cover the item you wanted bookmarked which was something you are unsure about okay yeah so I do want to bookmark one thing here with the split brain study if I didn't think it wasn't the case I wouldn't have made the video but there was one thing that kept niggling at my mind and I would not be surprised if in like 30 years as happens in science sometimes there comes a study where people say oh we know for a fact that the split brain phenomenon is garbage right that this isn't this isn't true and one of the things that just kept making me suspicious is in all of these studies there are limited ways to communicate with the silent hemisphere right with with the brain that can't talk and it's clear from reading some of the studies that the silent hemisphere it can read right it can it can understand written language it can point to answers it can do all of this kind of stuff and in reading a bunch of these studies spanning over decades it felt like none of these studies ever got past the party trick phase right the kind of stuff that I talk about in the video like yes you can have it select a different block right you can have it disagree with the main hemisphere but I kept feeling like if there are scientists who are working on this for decades and there are some people who made their whole careers out of studying split brain phenomenon it always felt to me like why doesn't this ever go further the obvious question to me would be like okay let's try to communicate with the silent hemisphere more than just asking yes no questions let's try to get it to right answers like we have time we have decades of time let's try to ask the right hemisphere what does it think is going on because the left hemisphere and this is this is a thing again everybody's brain does it's a thing that you can notice in yourself sometimes the left brain has this confabulation effect where it wants to weave together a coherent story about events that have occurred in its past and you can pull hilarious tricks on normal people just with this kind of stuff like it's just something that those brains do so you're kind of not going to get a useful answer out of the regular talking hemisphere but does the right hemisphere do that too we don't know because I could never find any papers that went into this in any depth everything was always a party trick in a way of getting some disagreement but never going too far and I was a little bit suspicious about that and what it made me think of was Hans the horse Hans the horse was this this horse I don't know whatever it was in like the early 1900s that could supposedly do math like you could ask the horse math questions and it would click its hopes the number of times for the answer right it would stop its who's for the number that I wanted yeah it would always get the math right and there were two things that were occurring here one of which was that the trainer was unintentionally unknowing to the trainer giving little signals to the horse of when to stop like when to tell yeah little little tells and there are a couple of examples of taking Hans the horse away from the actual trainer and answering math questions and it was still able to get it right but the thesis is that essentially the horse was reading the audience right that people are getting more and more tense as the horse gets closer to the correct answer and then kind of relieved when the horse doesn't and I don't know some of this blip brain stuff like it just put a little doubt in my head of is maybe what's occurring people have a broken brain but the investigator it is kind of leading them down this path so that these phenomenon are the same all the time and the only reason I worry about that is just partly because all of these papers are so old because this is not a surgery that's done anymore because there aren't very many of these people around and it's just like I just don't know there's like a tiny niggle in the back of my mind that that maybe this is one of those those cases like cases with false memories where the investigator is putting something into the mind of other people and so I just had like a tiny doubt about this I don't know okay okay that's all right that's the first little chink in the arm it's all I need I'm gonna bring your jenga tower down over the years but but again my view of it reading through all of this stuff was that was not the case like if I really thought that was the case I would have made this video in an entirely different way or not have made it yeah yeah but it's a thing that I was just aware of like all this stuff is really old all of these different papers over different years are showing this this exact same kind of stuff and I just see no progress ever of somebody trying to investigate the silent hemisphere I will just mention now briefly the creepiest thing which I left out of the video but there's one paper which is called conflicting communicative behavior in split brain patients support for dual consciousness by Victor Mark and there's an old paper with one of these patients but the freakish thing here is that this guy found a patient that had speech centers in both brains which is actually something that occasionally occurs in the population like not everybody has the speech center localized to one hemisphere some people do have it in both and so this guy happened to find someone who was both a split brain patient and had speech hemispheres in both brains that's the fairy tale it's remarkable but it's super creepy because he was able to get this patient to verbally disagree with herself so he would ask her questions about what's in your hand or you know can you feel something in your hand and she would essentially argue like yes no yes no and then would yell at herself that something is right and something is not right and the thing that I thought was it was just kind of like sad and creepy was he describes how she would get like really upset during these experiments and at one point would say to the experimenter why do I lie to you like she's not able to explain her own scenario and so I'm reading through this paper I'm like this seems like oh this I must have found the gold mine here right this is finally going to be the case where somebody is asking the other hemisphere like what does it think is going on but even with this one it's like oh of course now this patient happened to be mentally subnormal so like apparently he wasn't able to investigate or talk to the other hemisphere very well it says like I don't know it was just like everything worked out this way I don't know it's it was strange it's a weird weird project to research I mean it felt there like we're varying towards the issue of people who don't have split brains but have multiple personality disorders yeah I mean do you think that's a whole separate thing or is this evidence of people having multiple consciousnesses or did you even go there this was one of these rabbit holes that I felt like I couldn't go fully down but obviously there there is a lot of overlap here for a question of what is uh multiple personality disorder or I think that I think the modern term for it is like dissociative identity disorder it definitely like points in that direction as a place to go like maybe this is part of the explanation for what is occurring in those kinds of disorders you have other hemispheres or other parts of the brain that are way more active than they would otherwise be who knows who knows it's all very strange and I think this stuff is super interesting because consciousness is intrinsic to everybody's life well most people's lives probably but is maybe never explainable and I think that this split brain stuff is the most concrete stuff that I could kind of point to to talk about to say like maybe our experience of consciousness is different than what we think it is I think it's totally explainable CGP greatest called it the miracle of the universe
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