H.I. No. 42: Never and Always

"H.I. #42: Never and Always" is the 42nd episode of Hello Internet, released on July 7, 2015.
==Official Description==
Grey and Brady discuss: the paperwork of death, podcasts and falling asleep, explorers revisited, how many watches is too many watches, robot reporters and the nature of free will, world's ugliest dog, the Glastonberry music festival, karmic justice for Brady, and the latest reddit riot.
==Show Notes==
*Discuss this episode
*Ship tracking
*Brady: 1 + 2 + 3 + 4 + 5 + ... = -1/12
*Dead Whale Found Footage
*Hello Internet as a sleep aid
*River of Doubt
*Apollo 13: Fixing the CO2 scrubbers
*The many watches of Buzz Aldrin
*Computer-generated copy
*Narrative Science
*Grey: Humans Need Not Apply
*Fermi Paradox
*Glastonberry music festival
*Derek of Veritasium
*Destin
*Bradley Haran
*Roman Mars
*99% Invisible: Children of the Magenta -- Automation Paradox, pt 1
*Reddit discussion about the reddit shutdown
*The Streisand Effect
*Reddit discussion about banning subreddits
*Pew Poll on Confederate Flag in 2011
*Grey: This Video Will Make You Angry
*Grey: This is Not The Confederate Flag
Hang on, Grey, I'm just warning you, I'm about to touch on my microphone. I finish touching the microphone. Now I haven't, I'm going to touch it some more. I don't think I've told you this, but I mean, as you know, when I look at my office window, I can see out to the Bristol channel. And I quite often see ships going by. But I recently found out there's a website that is a bit like those flight trekking websites, where you can follow planes, except for ships. So now whenever I see a ship, I call up this website. And I can look at what it is and what it's cold and where it's from and stuff like that. It's really cool. Oh, that is, that is very cool. That is very cool. I have to say, I am way more interested in that than than planes. I am obsessed with cargo containers. I love cargo containers. And the idea of a gigantic ship that is filled with cargo containers is extremely interesting to me. So I would be very interested in seeing the live ship tracking website in a way that I would be not so interested in seeing a live aircraft tracking website, even though they're almost the exact same thing. If I could arrange for us to do like a trip on a cargo ship across the Atlantic, would you do it? That's interesting. We could do the podcast from a container ship. They take a long time though. They take a long time, don't they? To get across the Atlantic? They do. I know a guy that does a, he's a scientist. And I think the University of Derby, and he's quite environmentally conscious and doesn't like to fly. And whenever he has to go to conferences in America, he goes on containerships. That is way worse environmentally than flying on an aircraft. Those enormous containerships put out, put out ungodly amounts of carbon dioxide. That's not being environmentally conscious. But they're doing it anyway. It's not like he's creating demand for them. Yes, but the plane is flying anyway. This is the kind of environmental stuff that drives me crazy. I'm going to help the environment by doing a thing that sounds better, but is actually worse. I hate that kind of stuff. I hate that stuff. What's his alternative? Everybody starts taking cargo ships. If everybody does what he does, then the demand for cargo ships goes up and we're in a much worse situation. That is just, I hate that stuff. Sorry. The University of Nottingham Chemistry Department, who I've obviously much loved to meet in close to my heart, building this carbon neutral lab, which is a big deal and it's like the world class environmentally friendly building. It's made from wood and things like that. And it was nearly finished. It was nearly finished building it about a year ago. And there was a fire at the site and the whole thing burned down and they're having to do it again. And they made a grief. They're getting there. People jokingly saying, I'll carbon neutral. You just burnt the whole stack of wood. That's all gone. I've been to all the carbon. It's gone straight back up into the sky. But at least that's accidental. That's not on purpose. Sometimes I find some of the environmental stuff is the equivalent of intentionally burning down a carbon neutral building. Traveling on the cargo ship is the equivalent of that to me. I don't know. I haven't thought through the implications of what you say about the cargo ship yet. And quite often I just accept what you're saying and I haven't. I don't know. I'm sure people let us know. Yes, we'll hear about it. I may be wrong, but my impression is that there are far fewer cargo ships than you think there are, but that they have an enormous carbon footprint. I thought it wasn't the carbon. It's other chemicals that they release that are bad and their carbon emissions aren't catastrophic. It's the other poisons. I don't know. People let us know. People are smarter than us. The internet will know vastly more about this topic than we do. Just with wildly speculating and getting off topic before we have even begun. Yes, well, this is a great tradition. Now, I'm just going to do with some personal news because people see very sensitive to our voices and our emotions and our moods. So people might think I sound flat or terrible or something today. There has been a bereavement in my family this week. My father-in-law, who was very, very much loved by all of us, including me, died this week. As you know, and you've been really understanding and we've had to reschedule the podcast and all sorts of things like that. And it's a terrible loss for the family. I won't talk too much about him on the podcast because frankly, he was just a real down-to-earth man. And I think he was bemused by things like my job and YouTube and podcasts. He was a proper man's man. But he did like my work because it provides for his daughter. So anyway, rest in peace today, who I really, really loved. And I'll tell you what, the final week or so with him also taught me what fabulous people, the people who work in hospices are. And people who follow me on Twitter and things like that are probably going to see me raising a bit of money for hospices over the next few weeks. So you'll understand why. So that said, there was some, I did find it something interesting as a result later in the week because we went along to handle some things to do with the death certificate. Obviously, there's this paperwork and things like that when people pass away. So I went to this registrar's office and I found out two really interesting things about death certificates that I didn't know. One is that all the registrars around the country that do all the births, deaths and marriages have special ink that is supplied only to them. You and I can't go and buy this ink from the shops, but it's the special ink that you then stick the fountain pen in and do all the signing with, presumably for sort of forensic reasons. So they can say, yes, this was registrar's ink that it was signed with and not just a pen from Staples. I thought that was interesting. So it's a security feature? Yes, yeah. I believe so. But the other thing that was interesting was when we were having the certificate printed out, the registrar said, how many certificates would you like because you need a number for dealing with all the different banks and things like that? So we said, I don't know, I think we said 10, I think, which was a bit higher than normal, but we thought, well, we may as we'll get a bunch. So she pulled out the sort of the watermarked paper from a drawer in her desk and just put them in the printer, like in the printer tray and outprinted the certificates onto this special paper, which she then signed with her special ink. And I was looking at the paper, which she just had a rim of sitting there. And I don't know, I made some comments. She could tell I was interested in all these things. And she told me that these bits of paper that they print death certificates on and birth certificates and things like that is also highly secure. And a blank piece of that paper, a blank A4 piece of paper that UK death certificates and birth certificates are printed on will sell for 500 pounds on the black market. A blank piece of paper. They use the same paper for the birth certificates and the death certificates. That's recently they have changed to that, I believe. They used to be different, but now I think they use the same. Isn't that amazing? Life beginning and ending on a piece of paper. Yeah, well, that's a whole other thing. But it is, it is, there is a funny sort of paperwork feeling to these things, isn't there? She was telling me that one time from her offices, a safe got stolen. They used to have a small safe that Berg was were able to pick up, and the safe got taken, taken to a local park and somehow they opened it. And they took her out all the petty cash. And then the police called and said, do you want to come and get your safe back? And they went and got their safe. And it still had reams and reams of this paper with 500 pounds of sheet left in it. That's the case of the thieves not knowing what they have. Exactly, exactly. Those drugies man, they've got a lot to learn about the value of piece of paper. These must have had egg on their face when they heard about that. Anyway, 500 pounds for a piece of paper. It's amazing. It's the value of something like a birth or death certificate on the black market. Presumably, you were trying to create fictional people with birth certificates. I imagine they're probably using it for birth certificates more than death certificates. Yeah. And to do things to do with citizenship, I would imagine and things like getting to live in countries you're not supposed to live in. Yeah, that's what they want the paper for. Yeah. Anyway, Shawshank Redemption. There you go. Interesting. Yeah. Yeah. So also as a result of sort of events in my family this week, I haven't sort of been exercising and I've been eating out a lot and doing a lot of that sort of thing. So I have abandoned my diet for the last week and a half. I'm back on it now, grow. I've been calorie counting since yesterday again, but I did give myself some time off. I think that's more than fair. Thank you. Thank you. So I have, I also have not weighed myself because I did not look, but also I can't find my scales at the moment because our house is being majorly redecorated at the moment and I'm having to fill up rooms with things here, there and everywhere and my scale is a hidden away in an office somewhere probably under a pile of books. So I am, I am forfeiting my point to you. We shared the point, said our first weigh in and I'm just going to have to forfeit a point. I mean, we couldn't, we could not do away in, but I don't think that would be fair either because you will have a massive advantage next time. And so I'd rather just forfeit the point and so here, here is, here's what I think we should do. Okay. I think it's special circumstances. This week, the point doesn't count, but I'm going to start from this point, right? Because yes, if we weigh ourselves in a month, you are like a week and a half behind, right? If you see what I'm saying. So while, while I have a, a victory this week in terms of weight loss, I don't want this to actually go on the, on the chart, who's winning more points than other points. Okay. Why don't agree? I feel like I would make it more glorious if I can come back from adversity and, okay, if you are able to come back from adversity and win anyway, then we can give me this one point. But like, if I win by one point, I don't want that situation. Okay. This is good. I like this. It's a win-win for me because I can do the epic come from behind victory, but if I can't, it doesn't matter. I thought you might agree to this scenario in which it's all upside for Brady and downside for me. You've been too generous, but anyway, how did you do? I was really determined this week of making sure that I beat you and I was thinking, oh man, all right, I'm not going to, I'm not going to let Brady win. I'm all in on this and I've been very good with what I'm eating. And in the way of these things, I lost less weight than the first time round, which I didn't think I was being very good at all. So I am down two pounds, which is 0.9 kilograms. Oh, good to say. I'm going to go and weigh myself. I might get the point anyway. Hang on a second. I'm going to go and find the sky. I was under those books and find that just in case. Hang on. I'm doing it. Are you really? He's actually gone away now. And I'm just sitting at home, listening to the sounds of Brady pushing around books or boxes or other things. I hope you're doing all right. Internet. Listening to just me rambling on while I wait for Brady. I hope he gives the point. I genuinely do. I hear the sounds of returning Brady. I hear him giggling in the background. Do you know what's funny? Hello? Yes? I actually just took like all my clothes off for the way in. I like to rip my jeans off and my t-shirt off so that I'd be as light as possible. Which means I'm now sitting here in my boxy shorts. Uh-huh. Hang on. I'm just going to check what my previous weight was. You need a spreadsheet. I had to make a spreadsheet for this. I knew I wasn't going to keep track of this. My app does it. So hang on. This will be so glorious if you win anyway. Uh-huh. I only lost point two over a kilogram. What did you at least point three? I lost point nine. Oh, okay. I only lost point two. So you do win. You can have your fake point for now. And I'm now sitting here in my boxy shorts hanging on. I'm going to put a t-shirt on because I feel a bit exposed hanging off. You know what? Yeah. I would feel really uncomfortable if we did the rest of the podcast with you just in your boxy shorts. I'm going to do it. I'm not putting my jeans back on, but I'm going to put a t-shirt on. Hang on. Yeah. At least put a shirt on. All right. I don't know. It doesn't matter. Like it doesn't make any difference to the practicalities of it, but it would just feel weird to know that you're sitting there. Okay. Let me get dressed. Hang on. This is a good start to the show. All right. I'm decent. You know what? Even if you weren't, I am just glad to know that you are. Just, you know, like I hear those words and now I feel like I can relax. I'm not really placed that I've even lost weight at all. So that's a real victory for me. That's really encouraging. So yeah, my opinion on this stuff is the absolute values don't really matter. No. What matters is the trend line. Of course. That's the thing with this stuff. And so I figure, and anything that's a loss number, even if it's a tiny loss number, that's still totally a win in terms of health. And we have seen all the messages from people telling us all the things we're doing wrong and what matters and doesn't matter. But to me, it's not even about that. It's about seeing numbers that motivate you. And even if the numbers are a shame and don't mean anything, if they motivate me to stay healthy for another week, they're doing something for me. So yeah. So after that unusual interlude, there's been also, I've been really busy in the show notes. Like I've I've paced lots of little things in here, but they're all very bitty. So I'm just going to go through them in a bitty kind of way. Yeah, we have a bunch of little things to go through. So I think the this this show is probably going to be follow up heavy, but it's just has a lot of little topics. So let's let's start going through some stuff. So the first thing I see here is that you someone found some of the dead whale footage you were mentioning from last episode or two episodes again. Well, it was kind of me because remember we talked about the dead whale near Adelaide and all the sharks eating it and the tourists being stupid. And I vividly remember saying on tv and I used to have a lot of friends who work in television in Adelaide. So I called one of them up. Thank you to my friends at 10i witness news. And and if you're in if you're in South Australia or even in Australia, make sure you watch channel 10 news this week as a as a little thank you. Sorry to all my friends who work for channel seven and channel nine. And the zero sum game. Yeah, exactly. So and I have found some for the footage, all my friend found it. Provided to me, I have made it available. Gray will link to it on the blog. You can watch it. It matches my memory very well, but the thing I have still not found. And maybe it was a figment of my imagination. I have not found someone holding a child standing on the whale, but I have found an idiot standing on the whale. And this is actually not an uncommon thing. In fact, it's happening at the moment of Australia, a dead whale. And another one happened a few years ago that people sent, but the one that I was talking about from where we wanted to show it near Adelaide, I now have the footage. And I think it was from 2000 and 2001 or two. I don't remember when it was was anyway, it was a sort of footage that normally wouldn't be able to find on YouTube because it was two old, but I have got it on there. So check it out. You want to see sharks eating a dead whale. The link in the show notes is for you. Not just any sharks eating a dead whale. Adelaide sharks. Adelaide sharks. That makes them better sharks. But I still insist that someone did something stupid holding a child. So I've actually got some more emails out to other media friends in Australia. My quest is not over here. Yeah, you're going to track this down. I'm going to get there. All right. All right. Now another picture that I was sent that I found interesting is this one. Hello internet as a sleep aid. Someone has been using hello internet episodes to put their baby to sleep. If you click on the link there at the top of the show notes, I have clicked this was from Jeff who has put his young baby Vivian to sleep using what appears to be our Royal Society episode. So happy to help. But I often fall asleep to podcast in audiobooks. They do sometimes have that effect. Yeah. So I have I have a theory about this because I have also seen people on Twitter complimenting us on our ability to help put them to sleep at night. Which which I I totally understand that as a valuable service that we can provide to people. But it does always feel a bit. I know people who use podcasts for the explicit purpose of falling asleep and audiobooks and similar things. My I don't do it myself. But my theory is that the commonality of the people I know who use podcast to fall asleep is that when they're trying to get to sleep, they find that their brain is racing. Your brain is doing that thing where it's talking to itself about all kinds of stuff that you can't do now because you're about you're in bed. Yeah. You're going to sleep. Yeah. But your brain thinks this is an excellent time to think about all the emails that you haven't replied to or start thinking about taxes. Does that happen to you? It does appear at my also my wife is a big one for this and she does use audiobooks in that way. If she's if she's buzzing too much, she'll sometimes say I just need to put an audiobook on for 10 minutes because I'm thinking about work or all the work that needs to be done tomorrow in the house and things. Yeah. That most of the time when I fall asleep that isn't the case, but it does happen every once in a while. Where again, I use the phrase of it feels like my brain is just talking to itself. It's just like it's talking away about stuff and like shut up brain shut up. There's nothing you can do about any of this. And so my my theory is that podcast and audiobooks, the reason that they work is that they're engaging the language part of your brain that your brain can't talk to itself while it's listening to something else. Yeah. And I think that's why podcasts are effective for helping people fall asleep. There might be people drifting off into slumber at this very moment. Yeah. Should we? Should we? Should we? Should we? Should we? Should we? Should we sing them a lullaby? Maybe we should sing some of those sweet dreams. Sweet dreams. Tim. Don't dream about dying on an airplane. No. But yeah, so that is that is that's my theory anyway. That the linguistic part of your brain is getting derailed so it can't talk to itself when it's listening to another podcast. And I think that's why many people use podcasts and audiobooks as a way to fall asleep. It makes perfect sense to me. I think you're onto something you should write a paper about it. This baby, however, this baby looks like it probably doesn't even have a language center of its brain. No, I'm not I'm not good with how old babies are. I'm betting this baby can't talk. That probably could have gone to sleep to the center of a jackhammer. Yeah. Well, babies, the babies, you can turn them off with white noise. If you just play white noise for babies, it's like a it's like a neurological shutdown switch. It's magic. It puts them right to sleep. Babies aren't the only people I know that doesn't mind sleeping to white noise. I do sleep to white noise as well, but it doesn't put me to sleep. It's you can take a baby and put it to sleep sometimes with white noise. It's it's it's really interesting. In fact, I seem to recall sharing a hotel room with someone who rarely shares hotel rooms who liked to use white noise to go to sleep. Oh, just this kiyato. So cute. You thought it was cute that I listened to white noise while I sleep. Yeah, like a little baby. You're like a little baby. If that's if that's what you want to that's how you want to think about it. Yes, we did share a hotel room many years ago. When we knew each other far less well, you'd never do it now. That was that was a long time ago in San Francisco for YouTube.edu.com. I believe. See, we couldn't do it now because now that I know you better I would feel more emboldened to write things on your face with a sharpie while you're asleep. That's exactly it. Because we're better friends now, I could actually trust you less. When we were much more like strangers, you have the social contract still holding things together. But now that's just out the window. I'd wake up with something in decent triner. My favorite. You need to look yourself in a room now. Now I seem to have struck a nerve of some people with my talk about saying that explorers don't really exist anymore except as a TV job. Right. Like a title that people on TV call themselves. Yes. I'm sorry, everyone. I was being a little bit general and a people have brought up various exceptions and definitions and semantics. Anyway, I'll let you go. I feel like you've got more to say about this than me. Someone to Cannerrow in the Reddit gave a definition that I thought was a really good one. I don't know if this is original to them or if it's pulled from somewhere. But the thing that they wrote is an explorer is someone who travels somewhere, possibly not known when they set out, with poor expectations of what it will be like when they get there with a poor idea of how they will survive and without being able to contact anyone that can help them. I don't know if that's perfect, but I thought that's a, that like this captures a lot of the things that I think in my mind when I'm thinking about an explorer. And particularly that last part about not being able to contact people who can help you. And then the first part of not having a good expectation of what the place will be like when you get there. That to me is the idea. That's what exploring is. If you know what it's going to be like before you get there, I'm not sure it counts as an explorer. And the example that I wanted to bring up here is someone sent a link to this guy who discovers new rivers. He goes into the forest and discovers new rivers that nobody's charted before. And it's like, well, yes, you know, like is this person in the explorer? It's sort of. I couldn't quite figure out why in my mind I thought I don't feel like this really counts. And to me, it's that first part of the expectations. You know what the forest is going to be like. It's not like a surprise when you find a river and go, this river is unlike any other river we've ever seen before. It's purple. You know, that's not, you know what a river in the forest is going to be like. And the person probably has abilities to get in contact with people who want to help them. Oh, I think if you're going down a river that no human has ever gone down before, you are an explorer. You are an explorer. I read an excellent and terrifying book a while back called The River of Doubt, which was about Teddy Roosevelt's expedition in Brazil, along what was called the Rio de Dubia at the time, which was then given the the Vasley and Ferrier name, River Roosevelt after he went there. Oh, come on, man. Like River of Doubt is such an awesome name. You know, the Roosevelt River is so boring. It's like falling asleep. You've been saying it. Well, the River of Doubt sounds like a chapter in getting things done. If you are in the time of Teddy Roosevelt and you are doing an exploit, because I'm just looking at when was it this so. Ah, that's right. This was after his failed re-election campaign as the Bull Moose candidate in 1912. So I think if you are going into darkest Brazil in 1912, along a river that nobody has any idea what all those tributaries are, I'm going to count that as an explorer. I think in 2015, if you're still finding rivers, I don't think it's a remotely comparable situation. Oh, I think the world is too young. I think it's hard to carve out a nation. That's why I think it is a bit like that little tiny river there. No one's been down. But yes, now here is my question to you. The example many people brought up is deep sea divers. What are your thoughts on deep sea divers being explorers? Yeah, I think there is a degree of exploration going on there. I think when someone jumps in one of those mini submarines and goes to the bottom of a trench, they're exploring. That's exploring. You're an explorer. I think even James Cameron was an explorer when he went down to the bottom of the Pacific. I know he wasn't the first to do it, but I think that was exploring. I agree completely. That was the best counter example of deep sea divers. You still are deserving of the term explorer. And even though you probably don't have swords. People in caves too, a lot of people doing stuff in caves, I think, can also get away with calling them so as explorers. That cave stuff is terrifying. The people who explore those deep caves, that stuff is... I can't remember where I heard some podcast talking about an interview with the people who'd gone down on one of the deepest caves in the world. And it's just terrifying, terrifying, just in the total darkness. I'm not 100% sure I count that as exploring, but that's close. But I'm going to say deep sea divers are unambiguously modern explorers. Using the definition that you gave a moment ago, what do you say about the astronauts who landed on the moon? They kind of knew what to expect to... I guess they didn't really. They could communicate with people that could help them, although not physically. Yeah, they're unquestionably explorers, but that definition doesn't help them a whole lot. It doesn't help them a whole lot. My mind's rubbing up against something with astronauts going to the moon. I'm going to give it to them, but I feel like there's something in my brain is going against this forever so slightly. But yeah, I think maybe the thing about the contact is even when you're going to the moon, the people on the ground can help you, but maybe not out of all kinds of situations. No, a lot of the time they help is just saying it was nice now and yeah. Except for that scene in Apollo 13, which is still like my favorite movie scene ever of we have to make. We have to make this tube go into this port with only using these materials. That is probably one of the best movies in the world. Surely your favorite saying in Apollo 13 is when Gary Seney spends hours and hours and hours trying to put a checklist in the correct order. I don't remember that. Remember they had to power up the lamp, they had to do it in a certain order, so they didn't go over a certain voltage and they had to keep tweaking the board. Oh, right. Yes, yes, yes. I do remember that. I do remember that now. The scene of trying to connect. They were trying to connect the like the air input to the oxygen scrubbers. I think is that it you would know. No, they had to get the wrong shape, CO2 scrubber. They had and they had to make a scrubber of a different shape fit a different hole basically. Right. But I don't know. There's something that viscerally gets me about that. It was something the material is on the table and it's like, okay, we have a problem. There's a limited domain here and we have a limited amount of time. We need a bunch of smart engineers to figure it out. That's the kind of help that they can give, but it's very different from, you know, you missed the moon and you're going to fly off into deep space and just, oh, sorry. So exciting news. Gray has given me the password for the Hello Internet Patreon account, which means I can now post things into our Patreon feed, which I think gives you even more bang for your back if you are supporting Hello Internet on Patreon. Because I feel like you could give more love than you give. That is definitely true. I could give more love than I give to the Patreon feed. So now I will endeavor to also go in there occasionally and give people a few little behind the scenes, pictures and nuggets. As a small thank you for those people who give just that little bit extra to help make this podcast possible. Yes, thank you to all of them. But Brady, you have you have plans, you're going to post updates from the penguin. So what you're going to do? I would like to do that. Have you got any kind of rules? I mean, you gave me the password very, very without any kind of conditions. Is there anything I'm not allowed to do with it? I trust you entirely with this thing. You are free as a bird. Okay. So stay tuned there if you're one of these people who are following us in that way as well. Stay tuned as I unleash the power as Brady shows you his love. I won't be posting any pictures of me doing my weigh-in earlier. I don't think the internet's ready for that. It would be amazing. It would be quite a sight. So I had a realization the other day. As you know, I had two copies of getting things done. I had a hard copy and I had it on my audible as an audiobook. It was on my phone. So some people may not be aware of this, but I sold my hard copy on eBay. The one with my notes is scribbled all over it. It was purchased by a Hollywood internet listener. It was signed by you and I. Yes, you sent it to me, designed and then to send on to the lucky winner of that auction. I hate to admit it, but I actually turned a totally profit on that book. The funds will be reinvested into the purchasing of toys, which I film for our Hollywood internet videos when we put them on YouTube. So in fact, it's already been spent on various and named toys from toy shops around the UK. And I had a sudden realization that audible says it claims that if you are not completely satisfied with your audiobook, you can get your money back. And I never return things. If I have something I like, I'm just a guy who doesn't return them. I don't go back to the shop and ask my money back. I just put things in a shelf and never ask for my money back. But I decided I was going to put this to the test. Do they really give your money back if you're not happy? And is it a really difficult process where you have to navigate through a field of alligators and things like that turns out very, very easy. And when I'm lying, I ticked a box, said I didn't like it, got my credit back straight away, bought another book, and brilliant. So I now feel like I have not lost out as a result of buying those books, which I didn't like. You are a net win. I'm getting things done. Well, I'll, anyway, well, I'll never get that time back that I spent reading and listening to it. I like to think it gave us some good podcast follow, but it's still hours of my life that I've gone. Yes, it is still hours of your life that's gone, although it is our most popular podcast episode so far, at least according to the new tracking system that I've set up. So I think we came out on a net win of your great dislike of getting things done. And yes, you're right. It is. This is not an audible advertisement. I don't actually know if there's sponsors for this show. I never know when we record these things. But yeah, I've done that a couple times. And I, that is one of the things that I really like is, because I listen mostly to nonfiction stuff and very often nonfiction books have a promising first chapter. And then the book is just terrible. And so I have returned quite a few audiobooks with that with that policy. So I definitely, I appreciate it because all your books are not always super cheap. So being able to return one that's crappy is great. I have another email from a listener that I wanted to share with you. This is someone called Carter. I don't know how much I would to read because it's quite long. I always like to pick out the points where they praise me in particular. Yes, those are the best parts. Yeah, and because it was it was written to me. This is this is someone it should have been written to you as well. But this was one of those people who realized that would be wasting their time writing to you. I have basically not even opened my email in the last week and a half. So yeah, they emailed me. It's not going to happen. In fact, one part that praised me here and that I quite liked was I have this number five video that a lot of people won't be familiar with. But great, you probably are, which is all about what happens if you add all the numbers together. One plus two plus three plus four plus five. And actually comes to minus a 12th depending on depending on various interpretations. It's quite a controversial video. Yeah, we talked about that one a while back. So anyway, Carter talked about how he was recently at a job interview and was asked to tell the interview what is the most interesting fact you know. And he immediately told him that fact and the interviewer was blown away and offered him the job. So that's the part that praises me. But that's not really what I want to tell you about. The part that is interesting to both of us says, lastly, before I let you go, I know this is a long shot, but both you and CGP and your wives are cordially invited to my upcoming wedding to my fiance. She and I would love to have the stars of Hello Internet at our wedding. It is the weekend of April 2nd in Chicago. CGP can do with the jet lag. Oh yeah, you're going to go Brady? I'll go if you go. Oh, nice try. Nice try. I'll tell you what, the things stopping me going Carter to your wedding. And I thought your email was brilliant and you sound like an awesome person is not distance or jet lag or even necessarily plane tickets although they weren't expensive plane tickets. The things stopping me going is how awkward it would be being at that wedding after about eight seconds. Like because Carter, I've been to a wedding of my own and you have a lot to do and a lot of things in your mind and it's going to be the best day of your life. And talking to someone who does a podcast you listen to is going to be very, very minor and that will be like a five second thing. And the rest of the time I'm there, I'm just going to be standing around feeling a bit of an idiot. Yeah, weddings, weddings are strange events. Attending weddings is weird, going to other people's weddings are weird. They're just being at a wedding where you're not where you don't really know the people getting married because I've done this numerous times because I've filmed some weddings but also it just happens sometimes is a pretty awkward experience and I think this would take the awkwardness to a whole other level. So I don't think I'll go but I do wish Carter and his fiance the best and I hope they have an incredible wedding and I hope he sends us a picture. And if you send us a picture from the wedding, I'll put it on the Patreon feed. There we go. I feel the same way. I hope the wedding goes well but I will not be flying to Chicago for a wedding. No, it's really kind though. I once went to a party. It was in Adelaide where I was living and the theme of the party was Adelaide. He had to do something sort of typically or iconically Adelaide and everyone had to twist on this right. You Adelaideians love your Adelaide. Ah, it's a great place. So anyway, one of the guys had a bright idea which was to invite, do you call them a busker? Yeah, you know what a busker is doing. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Like a street musician on the underground. Like a street performer. And there was this one guy in Adelaide who he was a bit strange. He was a he was an odd character and he also had odd dress sense and odd hygiene. I mean, in hindsight, he probably wasn't particularly well. Anyway, he was a busker and he used to do weird performances on a harmonica or something like that or on a little little organ and things. And the guy organising the party thought it would be a bright idea to approach him in the street and invite him to this party which was just a party in a house. So we all turned up and there was this guy like playing as little music in the corner and I was like, oh my goodness, it's amazing. It's an Adelaide legend. It's like a piece of the furniture in the streets of Adelaide and here he is at a party and we all thought it was great and he did a few songs for us and we gave him a clap and it was brilliant. And then he was just standing there in the room with like 20, 30 other people and it was really, really awkward and no one knew him. So no one really knew, we talked to him and say hello but it became a really, really difficult and I think the guy organising the party in hindsight realised this was something that seemed like a good idea and then afterwards had created a really awkward social situation. I think that's what Carter would think later on if he invited if we turned up to his wedding. Yeah, that's exactly right. He felt like, oh, it's Brady and CGP. I love your podcast. I sometimes fall asleep to it and shake our hands and then like two or three minutes later people would be coming up whispering to him saying, can you ask those take us to leave now? Yeah, exactly. I can imagine that situation would just be awkward all around for everybody. That's why the fact that the wedding is in Chicago is a lovely excuse but I can say that if the wedding was downstairs in my own building, I would still say, oh, I'm sorry, I can't possibly make it. Anyway, thank you for the invitation. Yeah, good luck with the wedding. Yeah, someone sent a fascinating picture to us which was of Buzz Aldrin, obviously a man of some interest to me, second man to sit foot on the moon, well known as a brand ambassador for the Omega Speedmaster, unsurprisingly, because he was the first man to wear an Omega Speedmaster on the moon, because Neil Armstrong of course didn't wear his. And it was a picture of Buzz Aldrin posing with a child or something like that at some publicity event. He's wearing what appears to be an Omega watch, probably a Speedmaster, on his right hand and on his left hand, an Apple watch. Yeah, yeah, you sent me this picture and it is definitely an Apple watch on his other hand. You were unsure, which I found surprising because I thought that you found that there, what was their cold dead faces were distracting to you or you don't like them. But yes, he is wearing an Apple watch on his own. It's quite a small thing in the photo. It's not like it's a big zoomed-in picture. I do know what an Apple watch and he's wearing lots of things on his wrists. I was pretty sure it was an Apple watch. But we didn't we make a joke about you wearing two watches a couple podcasts ago. I can't quite remember. And now here is one of your idols sporting two watches. I wouldn't call Buzz Aldrin one of my idols. Oh, okay, I'm sorry. It's terribly sorry. Oh, it's got serious all of a sudden. Yeah. So I'm not going to go there, but I could tell. The other thing that's interesting, though, is on the hand where he's wearing the Omega. It almost appears as though he's wearing an Omega with two different watches, like it's one band, but it seems to have two watches attached to it. Like yes. Like he's inserted two watches onto the one band. Yeah, I zoomed in on this and I sent this to you and it definitely looks like he has one band with two Omega speedmasters on it. So that one one face is on his wrist and that one face is on the top of his on the top of his or sorry. Yeah, so it looks like one face is on the inside of his wrist and then one face is on the top of his wrist. He's a man who wears a lot of stuff on his wrists. He's an eccentric character. Buzz Aldrin. He did a he did a he was part of a great thing and he did a great thing, but he remains one of a kind. So what do you think about him wearing two maybe three watches? What is your what is your thought on this? What do you think? I think I'm I'm gonna guess that you just approve of this. Yes, of course I do. He looks ridiculous. You think that looks ridiculous down the Apple Watch and then it makes speedmaster. Yeah. You don't think this is in your future at some point. I think wearing an Apple Watch is just ridiculous full stop as you well know. Uh-huh, uh-huh, right. And I think having two speedmasters on one band is kind of ridiculous too. So he's managing to go ridiculous both ways. Uh-huh. It's not a look I would go for, but I would if it meant being in a spacecraft would you allow Armstrong when they landed on the moon, I would wear two watches. If that was the price I had to pay to help to have done that achievement, I would do it, but I don't think it's I don't think it's necessary to wear essentially three watches on your wrists to have done that. So I think he's just doing it voluntarily. I you might be starting a trend though. Yeah, yeah, I'd be starting to get me wrong. I can see it because like we said, you kind of have to wear the Apple Watch all the time to get the maximum value from it and the Apple Watch does have its good points, but I think you've just got to make a decision and stick with it. You either you either you either adopt this new silly future or you be a classy man of the past. Right. Which which where are you going with that, pretty? What's on your wrist right now? Classy man of the past. Actually, no, there is no watch on my wrist at the moment. I actually just went back to the speedmaster a couple of days ago, but I took it off for the podcast because I didn't want to risk it tapping on the desk, but it is sitting next to me. I'm looking at it, but I am not wearing any watch just at this particular moment. Also, it would have been extra weight for the way in and I couldn't be risking that. That's the most way many, many dozens of grams. It's a heavy watch the speedmaster. You say that yourself. It's weighty. It is. It's weighty, but it's not weighty compared to a person. It's no significant amount of weight compared to a human being. Every gram counts. Every gram counts. Who knows where this thing is doing the rounding. There must be a rounding point somewhere. I don't want to push up above a rounding point. That's true. That's true. Maybe your scale is doing four decimal places like mine. Yeah. So on the what do you think about wearing two watches then? Because could you do it? Because you obviously do want to wear the Apple Watch. You do still like analog watches. I think it's ridiculous as well. I can't imagine ever wearing two watches. That is not going to happen. I still have the watch that my wife got me for our anniversary, which I really like. I have kept it. I can imagine wearing it on special occasions in the future, but I could never imagine wearing both the Apple Watch and my nice mechanical watch. It's just not going app. You have to pick one or the other. Maybe on some days I will be a classy gentleman of the past, but on most days I am wearing my Apple Watch. If you were going out for your anniversary like for dinner or something like that, and you decided this would be a nice time to wear my classy watch from my wife, would there be a niggling part of your brain that would be disappointed that there's going to be like a gap in your data? I'm going to be doing all this walking tonight. That's not going to be measured and there's going to be a gap in my heart data. Would that nor are you really cool with it? No, I'd be fine with that. I'm not a... Yeah, that wouldn't really bother you. You're not like this stupid completionist that wants everything, if everything's going to be recorded, then everything must be recorded. For some things, I am a completionist, but this thing doesn't flip that switch in my brain. Just a quick little correction from last time. I talked about my slow watch and I mentioned it being mechanical. I was actually kind of misspoke there. I used the wrong context of mechanical. I basically was meaning I had moving parts and moving hands and it wasn't just a computer. It is a quartz watch, not a mechanical watch, the slow watch. It doesn't get wound up by springs and things like that. Like my speed master does. It is using a battery and quartz movement. I used mechanical in that exact same sense 20 seconds ago. Exactly. That's kind of... We are aware there is a difference between a mechanical watch and a quartz watch. You and I, I think, tend to make that mistake a little bit. The real watch enthusiasts did call me on it, so I will make that little nod. I will also thank all the people who listened to the last podcast who contacted slow watches about me becoming their brand ambassador on the tweets and the emails. Quite a few. I was looking at that as well. There were a lot of content. As a result, the excellent people at slow who do make that watch that I really like have been in touch. I have spoken with them. But things move slowly at slow. I have nothing new to report at the moment, but that may come at a later time and I'll let people know what happens. But I will say in the meantime, if you are thinking of buying a slow watch as a direct result of my advocacy, just hold out a bit longer. Don't make your purchase just yet. Just wait a bit longer. You want to have a little bit of pent up demand? Yeah. I think so. I think there was a rush, but now I need to... Do some maneuvering. Slow might be hearing from people who are just on the edge of purchasing a watch. They just need a little bit of a push from an amazing brand ambassador to get them over that hurdle. Maybe. I will also get back to you later, Gray, with my more thorough review about the whole reading the time in different ways. Obviously, now I'm doing the first transition from 24 face back to 12 face. But we can't be giving them too much free advertising in them. Right. We'll talk about that at an end point. So thank you very much. More follow-up with the Squire Love Follow-up. This is another one of our follow-up shows. Another favorite topic of ours is different occupations of people who listen to our podcast. I love this topic. I don't know why I find this fascinating or hearing from people hearing from people about what they do or their jobs while they're listening to the podcast. I love this kind of feedback. So what do you have? What do you have in these? Two here. I've got one from Pat. He got in touch. He said, is it a heirish? I don't know. It's Pat. So it could be a heirish. Recently started listening to Hello Internet. I listened to it before and after shows I'm a professional bass player and audio engineer. So my immediate thought is that sounds like way too cool a person to be listening to a podcast. The second one is I think it really ups the pressure on our audio production. If we have audio engineers listening it does it does put a little bit of pressure on but those audio files you can never make those people happy. They they will just keep asking for more and more always. So we do the best we can but I'm not going to even try to make the intense audio files happy because they'll always be unhappy. Good for you. That's a good attitude to have. Another one here. What's this one? Oh yeah this was this was interesting. Dear, dear Gray. It says, it says, dear Mr. CGP Gray and then in brackets and Brady I guess. So it sounds like it's almost begrudgingly addressed to me as well. So it's great. So anyway, there you go. I'm Brady. I just want to have disappointed as this person going to be that I'm the one bringing up their comment rather than you. I've got another job where people or at least I listen to the podcast. I work as a drone operator and while I might look cool in the ads it's not most of the time I spent flying over oceans to the target and then circling at for hours. This is super boring so we operate as fine ways to occupy ourselves. We've got little games on PowerPoint which we play to take up time. Usually only the mission operators not it says usually only the mission operators not the operators. I don't quite get that but I think they mean the people in control of the people who are operating the actual drones. That's the mission operator. And while I can't actually listen to the podcast while flying a real mission this is against the rules. I don't know if that's just being put in there as a qualifier or it's true. I did enjoy listening. I'm sure it's truly against the rules. I did enjoy listening while in the simulator and got very annoyed when you had an episode which was only 45 minutes long. So keep up the good work and I will be and I will sure be listening regardless of on or off the job. So I think drone operator has to move pretty close to the top of the list now as interesting jobs listening to how that is very interesting. Yeah. Someone who's a drone operator. Yeah. And certainly never listening to it on a mission because that would be against the rules. That is against the rows. But yes drone operator that is that is pretty high on the list of interesting jobs to be listening to or to be doing while listening to a podcast at least in the simulator. Several jokes popped into my head because that's the kind of guy I am but I'm not going to make any jokes about drones. So I just go into the next item. How could it how could a drone joke go wrong? I don't I don't see where this could possibly go wrong. There was a very possibly go wrong. Yeah. I'm not I've stopped. I've already walked away from this gray. Don't try and draw me back in. I'm trying to fish you back in. You're not going to be trying to fish you back for me. Come on. Come on. I'm not going there. Come make it make an offhanded snarky remark about a drone. This could be fine. Are you finished? I'm sorry. This episode of Hello Internet is brought to you in part by hover. Hover is hands down bar none the best way to buy and manage domain names. When you have a great idea for a website hover gives you exactly the tools you need to get the domain you want. It is really so simple. Hover takes all of the hassle and confusion out of registering a domain and I registered domains at many companies. Hover really is the brain dead simplest way to do it and it looks so nice. Their website just looks great. You can go from nothing to having the domain name you want in five minutes or less. And Hover doesn't do tricky upselling techniques that other domain registrars use. The pricing is really clear and they don't do any of this tricky stuff where you have to uncheck the box to not get a service that you didn't want in the first place. It's so clear and the little detail I like the best is that they give you free domain name privacy so that when you register your personal details aren't spread all over the internet for anyone to see pretty much every other registrar charges you that because they know that you want to use that who wouldn't want to use that. But Hover considers it just part of buying domain and if you have your domain names trapped at some other registrar hover has a free valet transfer service so that you can skip the hassle of trying to move your domains over from wherever they are registered. And Hover has the best customer support around they have a no wait no hold no transfer phone service so when you call you get a real live human being that is ready to help. These are some of the many reasons why I have my dozens and dozens of domains registered at hover dot com. So if you want to register a website go to hover dot com use the code freak to get 10% off your first purchase that's hover dot com offer code freak to show your support for hello internet. There was a really interesting article in the Guardian which Gray will link to no doubt it was all about computers doing journalism and the time I read it I was really excited I put the link in the notes and told Gray we had to talk about it. I've pretty much now forgotten what was in it but it's worth a read you have read it too how many. Yes I read I just read it I just read it right before the show let me just let me just say that's my that's what I should have done yeah that's that's what the show notes are that's why I go through the show notes right before we're about to do the thing otherwise it all falls out of my brain I was a sleeper right before the show started I can't be reading before the show that was sleep time yes that's true the thing that the show or the thing that this article talks about a couple points it's largely talking about a company called narrative science which is one that I don't know if I mentioned them by name but I was talking about them in the humans need not apply video and broadly speaking they are a company that is working on algorithms that can produce human readable material of all forms and so one one of the things that this article is talking about in particular is computer algorithms that can write up a story about what happened in sports games but their their their focus is broader than that they want to be able to feed an algorithm a bunch of data from a company and have it produce a quarterly report in the same way human would this is all the all the stuff that they're that they're working on but there were two two points that I wanted to bring up because whenever you mention this stuff people just people just push back on it when they show people articles written by humans versus written by the algorithms people rate them slightly differently in terms of which ones are friendly and accessible or informative and authoritative yeah but the the key here is that there is not some huge difference where people say oh this is obviously written by machine and it's crap people don't like everybody thinks that they can tell the difference but they really can't when you put them in a in a double blind situation even if they rate things slightly differently so yes they said oh the human written ones were a little bit more friendly and the computer written ones were a little bit more authoritative but this is the same thing like in that in the video that I made I mentioned about the music and I say oh this this music is written by a computer computer algorithm and everybody writes back oh I could totally tell it was written by a computer because it sounds repetitive and blah blah blah but when you again if the Emily Emily Howell is the name of the computer program that writes the music when you do it with double blind and you don't tell people which ones are written by the human and which runs written by the computer people can't tell everybody just thinks they can tell once you tell them what the answer is and this is why I mentioned in the video when I did that almost certainly anybody who reads newspapers has already read something that was summarized by a computer algorithm like this is this is already already happening and people just underestimate how how good this stuff is it's not perfect but it's good enough to to fly under the radar of people telling the difference between a human and a computer I'll tell you what gray there is one there is one I do have one issue here it seems to me at this stage for obvious reasons the real strength of these algorithm written articles seems to be in the sphere of things which are very quantitative oh yeah that's why they're going to be because because I mean I could just look at a baseball box score or a financial report and write an article having not been at the game okay so that's fair enough but when they do these double blind tests and they show you two match reports from a game of baseball the thing that the people doing the double blind tests don't have and didn't do was go to the game so it's very hard to know how good a report of the game it is if you didn't also see the game for example say I went to a game say I went to the Yankees versus the Red Sox and the Yankees 1 3 2 and so and so hit a home run and there was a double and this picture had this record believe the journalist who wasn't at the game could write a report and the computer could write a report and maybe someone couldn't tell the difference but what if halfway through the game Derek Jeter stood on second base and took off his trousers and painted his legs pink and started doing car wheels that's not going to be in the box score that's not going to be anywhere so the computer writes the report of all the noteworthy things that happened during the game that's going to be completely omitted someone who is actually at the game I think they're probably going to start their report with that and give very little to the actual score of the game because it was such a remarkable thing that happened that that is what needs to be reported on and that's an extreme example but what I'm thinking but I just think the computers and the algorithms sometimes you know miss the wood for the trees or whatever you want to call it they can't they won't they don't really know what's interesting and sometimes you can't be taught what's interesting because the thing that's interesting is something that's never been seen before and that's what that's the thing the value of reporting and you know they can't a computer will never know what the emotion of the crowd was the computer can't know what noise the crowd made when Alex Rodriguez came out to back did they boo him did they cheer him did they start off booing him but then cheer him when he hit the home run all of these subtleties and things that matter to humans are very hard to pick up with a computer oh yeah and when I talk about this stuff like I completely agree with you that in in very very many domains the best human is still always going to be able to crush the computer today like that's that's no there's no doubt about it like I can send Brady to a cricket game and I can send an algorithm to the cricket game and Brady's going to write away better article about that cricket game that the computer possibly can that but I think that this all of this stuff is we're looking at we're looking at the toddler version of of what these computers and these algorithms can do like I don't doubt that at some point in the future you could feed just the straight video of a computer game of a you could feed just the straight video of a sports game to a computer and the computer could write out a story about it I think that's going to be able to happen sometime because we already know that humans can do that and unless unless you think that there's something magically different about the human brain I think anything that a human can do a computer algorithm will eventually be able to do at some point and we're just looking at the very very beginnings of of all of this stuff hmm what do you think about that I remember when I was reporting sometimes something would happen like like a tragedy I remember a really bad tragedy once happening and a little boy a little boy died and I had to write a story about it and the family let me come to the house and sit in the room with them and talk to them for a couple of hours and a lot of things happened in that room and that that colored and painted the way that I wrote the story about the tragedy of this boy dying and I just can't see in the next hundreds and hundreds of years that a computer could have got from that what I got from it I can't I can't see it great and I know they're going to get good but I just can't see a computer thinking to ask the things that I would have asked and looked at the places I would have looked and taken in the subtleties I took in and maybe one day they will and also maybe I was pretty ham-fisted and didn't write the final story very well anyway but but I just can't see it I can't like I can I can read if all I want to know is who won the baseball game I don't care if it was written by some 17-year-old intern watching it on TV or an algorithm and if the algorithm is a bit cheaper for the new service then okay I only want to score anyway but I just can't see journalists being replaced by computers journalists won't be replaced by computers before certainly before airline pilots and things like that because there's just things computers can't do and the human brain is quite unique in some of those abilities in my opinion oh yeah well the unique part is a bit different you pick an example which is the most intensely human example there can possibly be right and a bereavement and another human in the room so I will grant you that on the on the list of jobs that computers are doing that that little moment there is one of the farthest down the lines you can possibly have yeah right but that is not 99% of what newspapers are doing yeah like that is shockingly shockingly rare and my you know in the economy of these things my my concern has always people talk about the things that machines can't do would you have a problem long before the the last few things that humans do fall also when you're talking about hundreds and hundreds of years in the future I I would actually bet that a machine could do that job that if you're talking 500 years in the future you could have a robot that looks as good as a human that can be more empathetic than a human could be but at that point you're talking about just science fiction kind of futures but if you're saying never like never in 10,000 years can humans create a convincingly human machine I'm going to go know on that because otherwise I feel like you're just saying there's something magic about humans and I never I don't see I don't see that stage like I just I don't go along with gray I think there is something magic about humans see that's and this is this is where we just have a fundamental disagreement if you believe in magic I can't un-argued you I don't mean magic is in Harry Potter I mean something you mean but do you mean magic as in something that is outside of the physical constraints of the universe no okay then what then like I don't think that it is impossible to imagine completely simulating a human brain in a computer do you do you think that that's an impossibility that in 10,000 years of human progress we'd never be able to do something like that I don't know see that and this is this is what I mean is I I think that you could simulate a human brain that it ultimately comes down to neurons and electrical connections and you can reproduce that inside a computer and so that to me is is why I can get to the argument of if you can simulate a human brain and there is a human brain simulation project that the European Union is working on right now if you can do that then then it's at some stage it's game over for humans physical meat-based humans being the best at everything because once you get a brain on increasing computing power you can start simulating a human brain at 1.1 x the speed of a regular brain and then 2x and 5x and 10x and 100x and and that's why I mean I even think like stuff that I do you know intensely creative work that is you know it's it's singular in a way like there's no reason that that my brain couldn't be perfectly simulated or that you couldn't just like like the stuff that I used to do with with genetic algorithms back in my university days of this has like vast moral and ethical implications but just go with me for a second you can do the kind of thing where you spontaneously create 10,000 simulated human brains and have them produce artwork and see how other simulated brains react to them and you could create amazing works of art that humans would find better than anything that has ever been created because you know what gets reactions out of people and that's why I think all of this is eventually at some point machines will be better than humans at everything. Great take take away take away the can you tell the difference thing for a moment okay if there was if a new podcast came out that was made by a bot that basically just crawled all the podcasts in iTunes found all the best bits and what works and doesn't work and created a simulated two dudes talking where they weren't two dudes they were just two max talking to talking to each other in a human voice I just you know talk and crap about whatever like we do but it was just drawn upon you know all the stuff that was out there that it could find and what worked best would you just would that be a podcast you would get a lot of pleasure from knowing that it wasn't two dudes okay so here's the thing you're proposing something that sounds terrible which is just trying to do something today but if you're can I imagine a podcast that is between two computers talking to each other being better than than our podcast I can imagine that being the case at at some point because why do I listen to podcasts I listen to podcasts to be entertained I listen to podcasts because I like the personalities of the people who are talking even if I don't care what they're talking about you said personalities that's interesting I didn't think you'd say that but because that's that's a crucial thing to me but yeah but that's entirely there are several podcasts where I don't care or even understand what the people are talking about sometimes but I listen because I like the personality of the person talking but it ultimately comes down to me that my personality and your personality are the result of neurons firing in a particular order in a sequence in our brains and that's why I can say that yes I can imagine an algorithm creating an enjoyable podcast to listen to with with voice synthesis that's gets good enough because I just don't think that there's anything special about the brain like my my personality is the way it is because of the neurons and the order that they're connected in my mind it's not it's not magic there's that that's what I mean when I say magic is is some kind of other not reproducible thing and and that's what that's what I mean by that but does the free will at the other end does the does the fact people listening to us know that we're doing this by a free will add to their pleasure because let me let me ask you let me ask you this great this is a purely hypothetical question and therefore you should feel safe answering it because this technology does not exist and will not exist in our lifetime but if the technology did exist for there to be really good simulated human beings and customized to your every whim would you be happier with a robot wife than with your wife could they make a better suit and you know I feel you're well I'm good to stop you right there I'm good to stop you right there this is this is an argument in my marriage and my wife thinks that we have a no holodex rule and I think that we don't and I think that this is not a this is not necessarily a not within our lifetime kind of argument you know I can imagine computer simulations taking off and having a holodeck like situation so again it to me this just always comes down to first principles of if you can completely simulate a human mind there's there's nothing that humans do that you can't do better ultimately with machines and the the the the holodeck thing about you know if a holodeck or virtual reality exists in some ways I'm pretty convinced that's that is a that is an end of civilization moment and you know the Fermi paradox I don't know I have that right yes I think it's I think I have the name right off to this from a great paradigm recon for me yeah it is it is a it is the question about why haven't we been visited by aliens right that that you can you can run a calculation that basically says you know no matter how low you think the probability of intelligent life developing is the number of stars and the number of planets is so astronomical that there has to be intelligent life elsewhere in the universe and I go along with that hypothesis like I believe in aliens not that they have visited the earth but I believe that there there is intelligent life elsewhere in the universe but the paradox is is that if there is intelligent life you can also run the numbers and say that we are probably a later to the civilization stage than other people so why haven't aliens actually visited our earth or why haven't we found any messages from aliens this is the Fermi paradox is why does it seem like there are fewer aliens than everything that we know about science tells us there should be and there are many there are many questions about why that are there many answers to this possible question and two of them which relates to to our current question is is that one that intelligent civilization ends up in some kind of self destructive loop yeah no matter what it is that once you get smart enough there are mistakes that you can make that are very probable that are also civilization ending mistakes yeah and so we used to think nuclear weapons were one of these things it seems like we're mostly past that but you we still have the possibility of destroying the earth but the one the the answer that I actually think seems like it might be one of the most most relevant and I read this on I think edge dot org a while back is that the late game of civilization is intelligent life creates simulations that are better than the actual physical universe and so entire civilizations just just say we're done with the real universe and that because because the virtual universe can be designed in a way that is vastly more attractive than the real universe so that sort of basically say should we go and explore the stars or just play cold of JT for the next 10,000 years yeah I mean when you put it that way it's it's a it's a thing that sounds really trivial but what I think you have to imagine is it's not like it's called a duty but you talk about you talk about something which is almost irresistibly attractive in a in a simulated universe because it is designed to hit every single one of your buttons and the possibility as well is that you don't even know that you have put yourself inside of an amazing simulation right if that's like if that's what your brain needs like that's what you do and so Brady you get to live the life of you know a 18th century explorer and that's just the perfect thing for your brain and you just love it all day long but part of the simulation is that you don't even know the truth in simulation well if you don't know fair enough okay if you don't know you're in a simulation well how can I argue with that but the thing I think is there's something very powerful about the free will thing so even if I made x 30 uber robot 10,000 that looked amazing and just acted and did everything you want that still wouldn't be the ideal life for you because you know that it's just it has no choice but to be your life there's something very powerful about someone who doesn't have to say yes saying yes and I you know when you asked your wife to marry you or even something is even simpler when you first tried to kiss her maybe the fact that she didn't have to let you but she did is so is such a powerful drug and and means so much to us and I don't think robots and simulations give us that okay if we don't know if we're in the simulation too and we don't know that that we're making a choice well how can I argue with that but if we do know I think having that taken away from us is a huge huge sacrifice and will be a huge loss and I think that's what I think that is always very motivating and that's where my problem with robot life comes from okay but here's the thing we're coming to another fundamental problem which is that I think free will doesn't exist I think this idea that that people are making decisions is not real either okay right that it it feels that way but it isn't that like free will is an incredibly convincing illusion but that it that it's not real that I feel like I make choices but I have no ability to explain like who is the me that made this choice like why did I choose one thing or the other I think if you pay attention to the way your mind operates it's easy to see that that you have a feeling of being in control without actually being in control and this is one of the reasons why I tend to use a lot of language where I describe I'll say something like my brain does X because I don't know I feel like I'm very aware of this this distinction between how things feel and how things actually are okay great well let's say you and I don't have free will yeah I still want to call what we have free will light because I think it is something different to what a robot has so even if it even if it is or predetermined by the arrangement of whatever I still think it's different to the robot thing and it means more to me than the robot thing yeah I know what I know what you're saying and the thing with a computer is that the nature of of what it does is laid bare the computer I mean a computer in a way is like a very complicated a very complicated flower mill you can go into a flower mill and you can look at all of the pieces and how they move around and you can see that this is a machine that just does something that the flower mill doesn't have any choice in processing flower it just does it because of all the mechanical parts and ultimately a computer is the same thing it doesn't have any choice in what it does but it's it's a much more complicated version you can't look at a computer and see how it works but you know conceptually okay a computer has pro someone has programmed this it's running through code it might be running through millions and millions of pieces of code but it's still just it's still just operating on inputs and getting outputs and if you understand all of the inputs you can perfectly predict all of the outputs I think that humans are just one level above that in terms of complication that if you perfectly understand all of the inputs going into a person you could in theory perfectly predict all of the outputs and we can't do that right now because it's just too complicated in the same way that when a person looks at a computer most of the time they can't perfectly predict how it does everything because it's too complicated but there's no fundamental difference here it just feels different because it's complexity squared but I think from from the first principles that it's not any different at all so great when your wife comes home from work and brings you like a surprise present or I phone you up and say something nice to compliment you you've never known okay I was just using a hypothetical there let's go back to when your wife does something nice when you're sitting next to your wife and she strokes your arm or gives you a gift or says something nice to you does that give you no pleasure do you just sit there and think well you had no choice but to say that you had no choice but to do that because you were pre-destined to do it and you must sit there and go well that means nothing to me because the universe decided that or do you think wow she just did something nice because she loves me which which like how how do you gain any enjoyment from anything if you think it's all that like that but where does the pleasure come from? Where does it two totally separate questions? I'll say for question when your wife strokes your arm and smiles at you where does the pleasure come from for you if you think that was pretty determined? Okay the predeterminus of it doesn't make any difference it's it also you also start getting it to just absolutely bizarre questions here of that like I like my wife can make me happy but she makes me happy because of the very structure of my brain in perceiving happiness do you know what I mean? Just just just here just think for a second like here's here's a bizarre thought exercise for people it's and so I've done this with a few people in real life it's a bit it's a bit hard sometimes to think about but whoever you are listener think about someone that you find attracted right imagine their face in your mind now if you if you think about this too too much you can realize wait there's there's nothing intrinsic about the face that you're imagining that actually is attractive right the the whole notion of attractiveness is something that exists in your brain it doesn't exist on the person's face right you are not perceiving attractiveness on someone there their face is coming into your mind and because of the way that your brain is structured you perceive it as attractive but it's not a thing that's really there what you're really looking at is a thin layer of meat on top of some bone right with some watery sacks in the middle that look out at you as well that that's what a face really is great that's laugh it was that part of your wedding vows yes but it doesn't change the fact that you perceive it is as being beautiful or being attractive right these are these two things can be the same attractiveness does not exist in other people and I end that but you subjectively perceive a thing as attractive but here but here's why I I perceive things as attractive because of the structure of the way my brain is set up and that's true for absolutely everybody and here's a great example when a dog looks at a person they don't see that person is being beautiful or attractive because they're a dog their brain is wired differently so that they look at other dogs and think boy that dog is really attractive but it's nothing about the dog right it's everything about the person's brain or the dog's brain so that's why these like these things are these are separate questions about how can you derive pleasure of the universe has no free well is like like things that make me happy make me happy because of the way my brain is structured this is what I've said before in the podcast sometimes of of like interest there's no explaining why some things are interesting to people and other things are not even we just talked about it earlier why am I interested in containerships but I have no interest in airplanes there's no there's no explanation for that there's no reason for that it has something to do with with the very structure of the way that my neurons have happened to be connected which has everything to do with the way that I happen to have grown up and then my genetics and all the stuff but like I'm not in control of that I don't choose to be interested in containerships but not interested in airplanes yeah but Greg you talk like you're on a higher plane than I agree I agree I just have this basic structure of wiring and I find that person good looking at that person not right etc but I but my wiring seems to be quite happy to let me live with various illusions or what you would describe as illusions but you seem to say I don't fall for those illusions you know I'm not I'm above that like I don't think I don't think that my wife chose to bring me flowers I don't think that because I I know better and therefore if you know better see I do think my wife chose to bring me flowers you say but if you know better and you think yours didn't I think you're your once your one step further away from being pleased by or you there's no there's no knowing better here there's no knowing better here at all and this is always this is always the argument when you start talking about free well it's like you there's two different there's two different things going on do people make choices and I think that the answer is is no that ultimately people are deterministic but then there's a whole separate thing which is the layer in which you subjectively live your life which feels like you make choices and and that's why I let's let's say let's say science tomorrow came out with a study that said we proved for 100 percent 100 percent sure that free will doesn't exist you know we we got out of big enough microscope when we looked and oh it turns out it's nothing but gears below the quantum level right this is just all gears and spring yep and then the day after that scientists come out and say oh actually we discovered no for 100 percent sure there is free will because we looked at the bottom of the universe and below the gears there's pixie dust that's magic yeah and so free will exists yeah I don't think anything about the way I live my life changes on either of those two days both of those days I have the same reaction of huh that's interesting but it doesn't matter it doesn't matter because the subjective level in which you live your life is so all encompassing that the the mechanics behind it don't don't really matter is it free will or is it pixie dust you know or is it is it a mechanistic universe it doesn't make any difference in my daily okay it doesn't it doesn't change anything in in how I relate to people or how people relate to me let me ask you this let me ask you this then when something nice does happen I keep clinging to the silly the scenario of your wife bringing you flowers right yeah you say that day to day you're just like me and you you this illusion of choice and things helps bring you pleasure right how long for you is it until that illusion is snatched away and your intellect takes over and says oh silly silly emotional grey of course you realise you didn't choose to bring you those flowers how often do those thoughts come to you how often is the rug pulled away from the illusion in someone like you every day once a year the answer to that is is never and always right it's because I never I never think this way because what I was trying to say before is it doesn't it doesn't matter for a guy that never thinks that way you talk about egg of a lot but what I mean is like in your personal human reactions it doesn't matter if if my wife does something nice out of free will or out of a deterministic universe it doesn't make any difference from my perspective which of those is true like I I personally think that it that we live in a universe where there is no free will but it doesn't make any difference okay like it doesn't it doesn't diminish acts of niceness to think that they have not been done by free will I think this is this is the argument you're making and maybe you'll be a bit more sympathetic to this the argument you're making to me sounds very similar to the argument I sometimes hear from people who are not sciencey people who say that oh don't you think learning about a rainbow makes a rainbow less beautiful that's that's a bit what it's I think this argument is similar to yeah and I I would bet your opinion is is the same that knowing more about a rainbow doesn't make looking at a rainbow any any less of an enjoyable experience if anything it it might make the experience more enjoyable I don't think knowing that we live in a universe without free will makes anything more enjoyable but I certainly don't think it detracts I don't agree maybe this is you think knowing about the rainbow does make it less beautiful I remember as a child when I would see a rainbow and I still believe there was a pot of gold or I still believe maybe we would get to the point where I could see it hitting the ground just being captivated and completely charmed and in love with rainbows and the right seeing a rainbow was like a life changing experience and as we would drive along I would pray that we would get to the point where it actually touches the ground because I've never seen the point where rainbow actually touches the ground now that I realize that those things don't exist I still think rainbows are very beautiful and we'll get at my smartphone and take a picture of it but it has nowhere near the effect it used to have on me when I thought there was a pot of gold at the end yeah but you're also talking about when you were just an idiot child I mean that's okay can you can you compare something where you're an adult you're not a little kid who believes in leprechauns I mean that's I think that's you're comparing to wildly different things is there any of these extreme example but I think it still makes the point that I don't agree with this whole science-y argument that's always made that once you know the truth of what's going on it's it's more beautiful or more captivating I agree it's more interesting and I love knowing how things work and knowing all the details and then telling all those details to people but I do think there is a degree of there is some nice things that get stripped away with that that we have to accept that's part of becoming an adult and becoming knowledgeable I'm just I don't know I'm just I'm just I'm just unconvinced here and I don't know we're getting off now into an argument about does does science make things less beautiful which of course I'm gonna I'm gonna come on to the side of no it does not but it makes things less magical and because magic isn't real yeah because magic is made up yeah because magic of course it makes things less magical yeah but but things that are made up can still bring great pleasure you love Lord of the rings and I hate to tell you this great and I know if that's real but you still get pleasure from escaping into that fantasy and I think there's beauty in fantasy and beauty in things that aren't real you like Star Wars that's not real either great but you still like it yeah I know that but but I you're metaphor is they break my brain sometimes Brady they really do there's nothing what I'm saying is there is pleasure to be gained from things that aren't real and believing that there's a pot of gold at the end of a rainbow can bring more pleasure I believe sometimes then understanding what's happening with the light being refracted and bouncing here there and everywhere okay but what kind of crazy argument is that because Lord of the rings is written as a as a kind of alternative history like a lost mythology for England this is this is part of why it was created would you say cling to Lord of the rings just use fiction in general no no but but no no but would you would you argue that we should instead of teaching actual history teach Lord of the rings because now you're being enjoyable now you're being unfair now you're being unfair I didn't say that we should be teaching in school that there's pots of gold at the end of the rainbow that's not what I said okay yes but I'm genuinely not understanding what point you're trying to make I'm saying once you know the truth once science trips bear the truth that doesn't mean it's nicer or prettier or more enjoyable or more beautiful what I'm trying to say is that knowing the truth amount of thing doesn't detract from it I don't think it detracts well I think in I think in some ways it does detract from I think it does detract from and I'm not saying it means we shouldn't do it and I do it more than anyone I make a career doing and making videos about how things really work I don't make videos that I have made videos about how rainbows work I have not made videos about leprechauns being at the end of the rainbow but I get I got more pleasure from rainbows when I didn't know the truth I'm glad I know the truth and I wouldn't I wouldn't change it for a million dollars because I'm someone who has to know the truth right but there was there was a lovely pleasure I gained when I didn't know the truth and and I almost feel more fondly about those times okay so to try to bring it back would you would say that if we knew for sure tomorrow that there was no free will that the universe was deterministic yeah that would make you sadder I would be glad I knew the truth and I would make videos about it and I would always be at pains to tell my friends the truth and tell them look guys this is the way it is science has proven it but I would think more fondly of the time when I thought that my wife chose to marry me I would I would wish that had been the case but I would accept the truth and adopt the truth how heartedly I think I think this is now just coming down to the fundamental difference with us whereas I don't have that reaction and you do so here we are then just like I think you should never get an apple watch I think you should not think for too long about the nature of choice in the universe I think just after the toothbrush perhaps razors and razor blades are among those things we wind up buying the most and for the rest of our lives it can easily become a bit of a chore but Harry's makes it a pleasure Harry's a response for today's show and in a second I'll tell you how you can get five dollars off your first purchase but first of all who or what are Harry's basically Harry's offer high quality razors and blades for a fraction of the price of those bigger brands Harry's was started by two guys who basically just wanted a better product without having to pay the GDP of a small nation to get it it's crazy some of the prices you pay for razor blades and shops these days now Harry's make their own blades in their own factory in Germany and as a result you get factory direct pricing a starter set which includes a razor moisturizing shave cream or gel and three blades will cost you as little as 15 dollars and that's without the discount and when you need more blades you're looking at as low as two dollars each or less now this is going to make me sound crazy but in my family we're a little bit bathroom proud it's one of the nicer rooms in our house and my wife and I are always really careful about what we buy even shampoo bottles have to look right for the room with Harry's it's a no-brainer they've got such classy designs and great packaging they're always a welcome addition to the bathroom I told you that's going to sound a bit crazy but it is a product that not only does a really good job that's the most important part actually giving someone a good shave but it does look really nice now if you'd like to get started with Harry's either for yourself or as a lovely gift for someone else in your life check out their website it's harries.com and use the promo code h i as in hello internet h i and that's going to get you five dollars off your first purchase the site's really worth a look and it gives you a really good idea of what the products all about in fact I was just on there and they have a new product or product I hadn't seen before these little stands that you can put your razor on they're like these little cool silver cubes really nifty so check them out that address again it's harries.com and the offer code for the five dollars off is hi our thanks to harries for supporting hello internet can I talk about world asteroid day which was just it was just the other day we are 0% of the way through I show now something got a huge huge derailment there I'll keep this quick I'll keep this quick because we've talked about asteroids before it was well asteroid day the other day so we were driving a lot and I was talking with my wife about asteroids we both know our positions on whether we would want to know if a global killer was coming and is that a good thing right the question my wife asked that I found very interesting and I wonder what your opinion on this is for all the people who follow asteroids and I guess it's you know nassas and other bodies like that and they know the percentages of this happening and that happening and this one's going to miss by that much what do you think the sort of threshold or cutoff or trigger point is for taking one of these things to the president at what point how many of these things do they sit in the and tell the president about are you are you asking how often does the president get a memo about there's an asteroid that might hit me if at all or what would trigger him getting a memo or a visit to his office of someone saying look we think you need to know I don't know does the president need to know is there anything he can do about it I don't think that's an actionable item almost all the time so you think they wouldn't tell the president if I thought Nassau was going to hit the earth I don't know I'm in my brain I'm trying to think about what the policy what the policy decision for this would be I don't know what do you think would how often should the president know I don't know what the trigger point is but I definitely think that they would tell him if they thought what was going to hit at some level of certainty I don't know if the president if the president takes a sudden vacation with his family an unexpected vacation we should all figure well that's not good news okay maybe every presidential vacation announcement should be treated in that way that's my advice to people when you are the president's gone on vacation you should think this is what it doesn't sound but if we suddenly announce that we're not going to be doing a podcast for the next four months we're going to take a little break for five weeks and three days we'll talk to you all then back after that and I just want you all to know we love you very much yes all right yeah I don't I don't know but so what is it I'm more interested in what is this world asteroid day now I know some are way in a state probably for people who are trying to get funding for asteroid tracking or something I mean there should be there should definitely be funding for asteroid I'm a big fan of that you know mainly because even if even if it is not a even if it's not a probable event the downside is huge you need to protect yourself against massive downside events and that's that's one of those cases so if world asteroid day gets more funding towards looking to the skies for asteroids I'm all at a time when let's be honest we probably couldn't stop an asteroid what is the point of now of spending millions and millions well I think part of the point would be to try to figure out how to stop it as well okay yeah okay yeah if if I mean honestly if we're just looking and we have no ability to do anything well it's wasted money yeah why bother I would shut down it if we're not even thinking about how to how to stop stuff I wonder what percentage of space expenditure is spent on exploration versus protection from impacts the the thing that I used to have to mention in the physics curriculum for asteroid impacts which did come up as a little thing was very cost effective ways to stop asteroids and one of the ones that I thought was was the most interesting to talk about if I don't know the actual practicality of it from a scientist perspective but talking about how if you can spot it very far in advance that one of the possibilities is to just paintball it basically yeah to just hit it with a big thing of white paint yeah and that just by slightly changing the reflectivity of it if you know the asteroid is far enough away slowing it down because there are more photons bouncing off of it from the Sun even just an infinitesimal amount will will accomplish your task of making it not hit the Earth yeah because the Earth is such a tiny target and the asteroid is so far away so that's why I think I can imagine that if you have enough warning there's crazy stuff like that that you could do that could affect it but if it's a oh it's it's land it's it's going to hit us in a week it's probably too late it's probably not going to help the other good thing about painting at white is even if it doesn't stop hitting us we'll get a better look at it coming yeah yeah it's just a cool thing to do to hit the asteroid with the paintball yeah it's like the military they just want to whitewash everything yeah that's exactly okay I have to ask you now I've been looking at this item in the show notes and been very curious about it you have written worlds ugliest yeah well every year every year they have this competition and it ends up getting you know lots of YouTube videos and it's one of those like annual novelty stories that the media like so much it's a competition I imagine it must be held in America because where else would it happen and that good old journalist is doing their jobs they just hard they just had one recently and I've been aware of this for years but I this is a competition yeah it's like a competition and you get usually get like you know ten freakishly ugly dogs and then the judges pick which one is the ugliest it just happened about a week ago okay now I've never really mined it too much I watched a video about it this week and I am now suddenly I feel strongly about it all of a sudden and I don't like it now they argue that because they have to have an argument for it don't they because they have to have some kind of justification and they argue that it's all about showing that all dogs are beautiful and even the ugly ones should be loved and win prizes and get some attention what kind of bullsh** is that I think that's a hollow argument for what is essentially like a you know 19th century freak show yeah it's this is a circus side show and I watched a freak show is not about the beauty of humanity it's about look at these freaks and I watched the other day and it honestly it made my heart feel sad watching them watching them make a spectacle of these dogs because they believe that ugly and I almost wanted to I wanted to punch the screen now I admit I'm a bit biased because there seems to be a much higher than average number of chihuahua's in these competitions well that's not surprising because chihuahas are at the at the end of the spectrum of genetic freakishness of dogs I mean you've taken a wolf and you've turned it into Audrey yeah you know what most of the time that science experiment is going to go terrible and that's why I mean even Audrey sometimes is sometimes skates the line between being ridiculously cute and a little bit like funny looking but for Audrey men it just to come down on the cute side every time but but she's she's a little close to that uncanny valley I get I'm upset about this thing and I just want to say I think we should stop worlds ugly as dog and I do not believe this hole it's for the greater good of course not and I'm gonna try to avoid it next year yeah I mean I didn't even know this exit that's you you mean just if they did worlds ugly as person and the organizers were telling you it's all about the beauty of humans it's just you're obviously full of it you just you just make your money off of a freak show that's all that way anyway so don't don't let me find out you're good going at gray because I'll be really upset I'm not googling it right now I'm not going to put it in the show notes good good now the next item in the show notes is Glastonbury music festival and so you were at the Glastonbury music festival I was nothing tells me how little you know about Glastonbury more than how you spilt Glastonbury did I write it in the show notes did I write this well I didn't write it because I sure was heck wouldn't spell like that how I wrote Glastonbury just the way it's out yeah but you wrote berry like berry with a straw berry B E W R Y is that not right no it's B U R Y okay whatever yeah um this is this is an audio format nobody knows if I'm saying Glaston berry with a berry or Glastonbury even even the way you say Glastonbury gives up like you don't say Glastonbury it is more Glastonbury okay whatever I'm super into music I know I know I did go I went on the first Friday but I did come back early because well to be honest the lineup wasn't as good this year and there were the other family things going on so we wanted to get back back to the hometown to be with family so I was only there for one day I had a one night I had a really good time I do enjoy going and I imagine we will keep going each year because we like it so much but man you know how there are lots of things in life that I enjoy and I kind of try and voice them when you and say great you should do it you know you should try it just for the experience and stuff I'm not even gonna try with this one there's just the you would heighter you would heighter yeah I know I would hate it I see even you send me you send me these pictures or I see on Twitter you're trying to post pictures of how of how great it is you're there with a little umbrella in your drink or whatever you're doing it just but in the background it looks like Calcutta it just looks awful and that was in the VIP section that's why I sent you a picture of some ten city you know in some third world country because like this is what this festival looks like it looks horrible there is something there is something funny about something so posh and expensive happening in such third world conditions there yeah so I there is there is no universe in which I'm going to the glass and berry festival with you it's never going to happen I'm not even good I'm glad you like it I'm glad that the neurons in your brain are set up in such a way that you can derive pleasure from this event but my brain is not trying the the the curtain is pulled back on a regular basis when you're at Glastonbury and you realize what the heck am I doing here very often when you're standing at the toilet our need for our human need for toileting is a big problem isn't it yeah it's awful but like it is a big problem this this was almost the this was almost the the civilization ending problem of oh we get too many people together in a city and toilet problems equals cholera equals plagues you know if we didn't if we didn't look out with our our medicine tech tree progressing you know cities cities were a disaster for a long time so you're basically creating horrible glass of berry looks like you're got you it's like a ten city slash 18th century plumbing situation yeah that you're going to boy I can't wait I can't wait to go next it has got a lot of good things though and I and I would recommend it to most people but not you uh-huh it did make me think though saying all these bands if you and I were in a band presumably presumably with a few other people because you know bands are cool up in the number there's a four people I think it's about the coolest number for a band yeah there aren't many two band bands either there are but you have a team yeah but um need someone on the drums there's two guitars we were if we were in a band with a few other friends uh-huh I did wonder what our positions in the band would be what do you think if you in a band what would you be what do you mean what what what what what instrument would you play like what would you position you know would you be the lead singer the guitarist the drummer like what would you be uh uh uh could I could I be the accountant okay that's it you could you could be that uh you'd enjoy you'd enjoy putting together the set list every night because that's a list yeah yeah I could do more of the the admin side if you had to be on the stage though come on because I've been thinking about it and I initially had you down as drummer uh because you kind of down the back and hidden away a bit and stuff but I've now decided I think you'd be on bass guitar bass guitar yeah because the guy on bass guitar is normally off to the side he doesn't talk or sing much he always seems to look the most serious and stern when they perform uh-huh so when we start a band I'm putting you down for bass guitar okay I mean I know nothing about music so I I bass guitar sounds good yeah you kind of look a bit like a bass guitarist too is that is that uh is that the deep left field of being on a band it kind of is yeah it kind of is you can sort of be hidden away and like uh get less attention oh my doorbell just went I've been a chick I've been a chick what that is in case like my wife's locked out of the house do you mind okay go go go right I'll just sit there and think about you think about what I'm going to be in the band while I go okay he's gonna go okay Brady's gone internet this is me talking to you again hello I think there's no doubt about this my prediction Brady obviously should be the drummer that's what it seems like Brady should be however however I think in Brady's own mind he might imagine himself as the lead singer so that's my prediction here Brady should be the drummer that's where I would put him but he might think that he's the lead singer so we're gonna we know wait for Brady to get back and see what happens sorry Gray oh no there's a great big there's a great big storm rolling and I can see it coming in over the sea and um that was an Amazon delivery but my wife was outside bringing stuff in because it was gonna rain so she didn't hit the door hmm and then Audrey chased me up the stairs and wants to come in but I'm not letting her in you're not letting her in she's very cute though she is but my wife will think she's gone missing and have to come looking for her so I'll let her stay do you need a minute to catch a breath because you are at the top floor of seven oh yeah you don't have an elevator in your house all right I think I'm right now yeah where were we okay I was talking to the people while you were gone what did you tell them I'm not telling you what I told you okay what I want I want to know from you is where do you see yourself in a band well are we gonna ignore how bad my singing voices because I can't sing for pain ups I mean I can't play bass guitar so we're just we're gonna presume that you have the talent to be in any of the positions where do you see yourself I have decided not to be the lead singer really yeah but I am gonna be like the like the showy lead guitarist because I do like a bit of attention sometimes but I don't like being the absolute center of attention I like being a little bit to the side so I'd be I'd be like I would sometimes do a bit of accompanying singing and I'd be like the main guitarist so but not so think of me more like a bit more like the edge rather than bono what means nothing yeah yeah so you want to be lead guitarist lead guitarist things as well I didn't know that yeah it depends on the band sometimes they look yeah I can sing a bit too so I'll occasionally sing there maybe there'll be one or two big hits where I'm the singer like everyone's like oh I love this song this is the one that Brady sings but I wouldn't be the lead singer because I couldn't handle that much attention hmm interesting interesting I would put you on drums yeah you seem like a man who would enjoy the drums I would enjoy the the violence of the drums the caveman banging yeah it's like brushing your teeth yeah you're a bit too much down the back though although when I do go to gigs I quite often watch the drummer and think well they're so coordinated the drummer seems like they're doing the most they seem the most active good exercise to be good for our weight loss thing yeah yeah would it so great I have you know how I want to tell you about this this invention of mine which is called the Bragg humble oh god not this again okay I have a Bragg humble but not only this let's forget the Bragg humble side of it I cannot wait to tell you this because this is going to be a very special moment for my good friend Derek from Veritasium this is who I was just thinking would be the lead singer in the oh yeah yeah or he in destined would be slugging it out for over that so this is a great moment for Derek this is like this is his karma moment so enjoy this Derek but this is also an example of what I think is Bragg humble okay my my friend Matt Parker who you know as well friend of yours as well with metanumerous times he's number five videos and he's a calls himself a stand-up mathematician he sort of mixes comedy and mathematics last year he brought out a book very good book it's called things to make and do in the fourth dimension I recommend going by it came out and hardback it's just come out and paperback so he phoned me up the other day and said Brady got some news for you in the in the new edition in the paperback edition I've put you in the acknowledgements that's you know because I've helped promote his book and I've helped promote him in his and lots of videos and stuff and I'm like wow like I don't think I've ever been in the acknowledge knowledgements of a book before I was a bit touched I'm not gonna I'm not gonna like right I was a bit pleased with myself I bet you were so I said oh thanks man you know you didn't have to do that that's really good thank you very much and then he said unfortunately some copy editor took it upon themselves and changed your name from Brady to Bradley and it's been printed however many thousand times in the new in the new paperback edition of Matt's book so I went from not being in the acknowledgements of the hardback to being in the misspelled acknowledgements so I've got it here in front of me Matt has signed it's Matt sent me a couple of copies and he signed he said do not look at page 453 from Matt so I went straight to page 453 and here it is in black and white thanks also to Bradley Heron of number five fame obviously not much fame if no one knows how to spell my name Bradley Heron of number five fame who's filmed me for YouTube with Domino's pies, mile on pieces of paper and the number zero now I think I think that is a brag humble because the whole point of saying hey I'm in the acknowledgements of a book is to then say and nowhere knows who I am and they got my name wrong and I think Derek should also have a nice little smile to himself after all I mean this is just yeah this is just karmic justice for for your constant making up of his names and the I think it was the last podcast you did it you had one that was so distorted I didn't even know so I didn't I got in my usual yes I thought you were making some just bizarre reference to other people I didn't realize that that was supposed to be Derek a veritasium so that's why I didn't have my usual whisper of trying to make sure that people who don't know who the heck you're talking about actually get to hear the correct thing that was say again that one was really was far off the reservation so I think this is just you you getting some karmic payback this is I got my comeuppance what you do I got my capants yeah I still don't get how this is this is brag humbling this seems to me just like a humble brag they're like oh I'm in the acknowledgments of a book but these build my name wrong that's what I don't think I think that I think having I think being so unknown that the copy editor thought well that can't be anyone's name they've just changed it to what they think the name must be you you were just imagining what a copy editor is thinking this is there's no there's no evidence for us there's no there's no reason to assume it's anything other than just a typo whatever it is I for an all over it's they wouldn't they wouldn't get it wrong if it was if he was thinking Tom Hanks but you're you're presuming that it could have been Tim Hanks if auto correct does something weird if someone's typing in and they just don't know yeah but I think you're just humble bragging here okay you're just humble bragging well you're wrong and you're trying to make this bizarre brag humble that I still can't even understand in my mind I think you're trying to make this telling you if the story is hey hey look at me get me I'm in the initials of a book I'm awesome and then they got my name wrong this is just a shaggy dog humble brag that's all this is don't agree that's all this is no because humble brag is all about intent and I know my intent and this you're accusing me of having different intent is that what you're doing are you accusing me are you accusing me Gray do you think do you think I'm telling the story because I want to brag about being the lodge with this book or because I think it's funny that my name's wrong I think you're telling this story because you think it's funny that you're name wrong thank you very much I rest my case I know no more questions no more questions you're on no more questions and pow pow pow next but don't worry I'm going to pull this from the fire I do see opportunity here because there can be because they will correct this in the next edition at which point it will become a humble brag but also that means like that upside down plane on the stamp this is this is a collect this is a super collectors edition but I'm going to go one better because I've got three copies here signed by Matt and I'm going to sign these three copies from Bradley Heron how's that for limited edition I think I think you're getting things done auction has gone to your head this could be the only chance anyone ever has to own this book dedicated one I'm saying it's dedicated to me now rather than being listed at the end of the advertisements this is this is again this is just how conversations go everything gets exaggerated and it's it's soon going to be that Matt Parker wrote a book about through which the entire thing you were misnamed is Bradley that's the end result here that the book is actually called Bradley Heron a life of awesomeness yeah anyway that's in three years when you tell this story again that's what it's going to be all right all I'm saying just just just imagine just to make gray feel bad all I'm saying is keep a lookout for the signed Bradley Heron edition which will be sold to raise money for cransley hospice hello internet it's your old pal Gray trying to make your life better with backblaze.com the online backup solution that you need installed on your computer backblaze keeps buying ads which means that some of you haven't done it yet you really need to go to backblaze.com slash hello internet and to sign up for their online backup service it'll protect all of the 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There's so much stuff going on. Yeah so here's the thing we're two hours into this. Oh wow. We're two hours into this this podcast is already going to be late. The longer it is the later point. I'm just looking through the other things here for things that might be time-sensitive. The only other one that I think is time-sensitive perhaps is plane-crash-corner. No that's what you pick out okay all right and that wasn't where I thought you were going. Yeah this is why don't you tell me about your plan. Oh no there's two other time-sensitive ones you're right we have to do two I'm sorry Gray you're right we have to do two let's quickly do plane-crash-corner let's do it really quickly because I haven't got much to say about this and I almost never have anything to say about it so we can get through it very fast. Lots and lots of people have been in touch with us to tell us that Gray's nemesis. Roman Mars. No no let's not turn this into a thing. No I'm not turning this into a thing. I'm joking I'm joking you're a big fan of his you're a big fan of his work and there was the funny little thing with the flag that happened a while back. He's he's brought out another episode of 99% invisible and this time he's managed to combine two of our interests one being plane-crash-crash-for-me and the other one being automation for you and it's a good listen I believe we've both listened to it it's a good episode to listen to Gray we'll link to it in the notes I do want to point something out though because last time when he when this Ted talk came out from Roman all about flags it was like a bit unlucky for you because you were planning to do a video on flags and and that kind of scuppered your plans a little bit and we joked about it right that's all good but because of that everyone now thinks because this podcast came out and he talks about plane-crash-ers and automation it's like he's done it again but like how how could he hasn't done it again I mean it's not like we've been talking about plane-crash-ers for far longer than you certainly want to and and you've done even just today and you've done your big like you know seminal automation video that got ten hundred billion views so it's not like it's not like like we've been we've been scooped or anything he's just done a good podcast on some interesting topics and done a good job and made a nice thing to listen to and go and listen to it but it's not like every time someone does a podcast or a video about something that we're interested in it means like we've been scooped towards bad news for us that flag thing was a little stroke of bad like a while ago but you know like we say no one owns the facts and he just made a nice podcast about a plane crash that happened quite a long time ago did you listen to it did you like did you have come away with any thoughts on it yeah I listened to it I thought it was a very good episode and if you haven't listened to 99% of visible I think this is a good place to start it really it really drew me in and yes he's talking he's talking about the intersection of why do plane crashes happen and how much are humans reliant on automation yeah and my general opinion on that is not reliant enough but he puts together a very good story about the kinds of problems that can happen what I would say I would describe it as during a transition phase yeah where air plane travel is more automated than it used to be but it's not completely automated and what what happens to pilots in that phase when it was it was just very interesting talking about how little time behind the the steering wheel pilots actually have now that even pilots who have been working for a long time if you go back through the logs and say how long were they flying the plane for it's a terrifyingly short number even for pilots who've been around for a while I didn't see very much of people trying to kick up a fuss mostly I just thought this was a perfect episode of the intersection of hour two hour two interests but I really I shouldn't have listened to it because I hate to listen to stuff about planes crashing especially because I'm going to be getting on a plane in a couple of weeks and flying across the Atlantic again and so of course I'll be thinking about this that whole time great but despite my my best interests and not listening to this stuff it really drew me in right away so I will highly recommend that people give it a listen unless they're on an airplane right now don't give it a listen if you're on an airplane I'm not going to recommend it quite so heartily because if you are playing crash enthusiast like me this this felt like trading over old territory and in fact this yeah this is old habit this is pretty much every single episode of air crash investigation it's like this it's like all the pilots did the wrong thing and then the plane crashed so I wouldn't make it my introductory podcast to 99% visible there are there are others I like more but like any one of his podcasts it is really well done and if you're just then if you're just to have a casual interest in plane crashes then you will like very much and it was interesting it was interesting the automation part was quite interesting because I almost felt like it was building to this kind of anti-gray argument along the lines of see if you get too reliant on automation when the poo hits the fan you've got no idea what you're doing and that was that was kind of true that's that's what came that's what was said and I found it really interesting when the guy was saying that he thinks pilots who sometimes mid flight just knock it out of autopilot and just have a little fly for themselves just to keep their skills I just hope they don't do that on my flight but but then at the end he kind of the argument is undercut and basically they say yes there are going to be crashes because of this reliance on automation but overall it's a price worth paying because the automation makes things safer overall so it's kind of like a big top of an argument then undercut it quite a bit yeah there are vastly fewer accidents because of that and I haven't it's on my listening Q I haven't listened to the part two which is out now I haven't you know which is supposed to be about cars I haven't listened to it either but I'm imagining I'm going to guess that that's a similar a similar argument that you might you might end up with for a while drivers who are less experienced but overall I mean the car crash numbers are always terrifying I forget I think it's like 40,000 people in America a year are killed in car crashes it's like if you can do anything to pull that number down it's it's a tremendous good and an automation we'll do that but I haven't listened to that episode yet so I don't know anyway now I know I'm sitting visible good podcast this is a good episode I would have liked a few more questions answered maybe it was a bit superficial for the plane crash enthusiasts among us but for the for the layman like Gray give it go this is the this is the difficulty of making things for the internet though of course is this little thing is who are you making it for because to me everything was novel and to you it's it's old hat and I mean I'm sure when you when you make videos when I make videos you get the same kind of feedback where when you have something that's popular you end up hearing from people who just know everything about the top course yes and so yeah like oh and I yeah I've had to be hearing from a whole bunch of confederate scholars this way again it's like I know that you know way more details about this but I am going an audience of people who know nothing about this but you you can't possibly please both of those both of those crowds so if you know a lot about plane crashes maybe this is not the episode for you but if you're like me and try to avoid everything about plane crashes yet somehow do a podcast with a guy who always wants to talk about them it was more interesting so one lot there's a lot of other things we wanted to talk about but taught we're at a time really but there is one more thing that seems timely and I have to ask you about it because you seem to be you you are the unofficial brand ambassador for reddit in my opinion and that this is not a job I want no this is not a job I do not want to be reddit's brand so there there be these problems with reddit and my way into it was actually quite personal because a guy called ed frankel who's another number file contributor he's a mathematician based at Berkeley who I make films with was doing one of these reddit ask me anything and I noticed he was doing it and I wanted to send more traffic towards it not that not the reddit needs my help building traffic but so I went on twitter and read it myself and said I buy hey everyone my mate ed is doing and ask me anything if you want to go and catch him go to it and about five minutes after I tweeted it I went back to see what was happening and it had been shut down and I thought poor old ed he's had some glitch on his particular AMA isn't that unlucky and then over the next few hours I began to realize this was a small part of something much much bigger and I haven't completely got my head around what's going on but there have been problems at reddit this week and now it's been in the mainstream press and everything do you want to explain can you give me the executive summary of what's going down yeah so you you mentioned you wanted to talk about this and I was reluctant to talk about it primarily because it's a it's a complicated thing to explain and it's also really inside baseball stuff so I I'm not quite sure how to explain it without going into a whole bunch of details that people who don't know anything about reddit won't care at all about could I should I explain it as I maybe it would help you to hear me tell you what I think happened at let's do that yeah that's a good starting point I'll tell you what's your perception I'll tell you my perception of what happened my perception of what happened is there's this woman who works for reddit as like a paid employee of reddit and her name is Victoria and she organizes lots of things and is involved with various parts of reddit and one of her jobs also is running they ask me anything section where quite often famous people come on and answer questions from reddit users now she was suddenly and abruptly fired or lost her job at reddit the reason for this is unclear now some now many of the volunteers of reddit who really keep it all going these moderators who are so important to reddit but are not employees of reddit they just kind of volunteers that help it run smoothly were very displeased about this woman losing her job and how it was handled they thought it was unfair and as their way of protesting they've basically crippled sections of the website by setting things to private making them inaccessible and have made they've basically shut down bits of reddit out of protest and as a result normal users like me who aren't really moderators or anything a lot of the sections we like using are now hamstrung as this battle goes on between the volunteer moderators who are sticking up for this woman called victoria and the actual business people who run reddit who who took away this woman's job for whatever reason that's what I think happened yeah yeah I think that's a that's a that's a fair description of what has occurred but even even that even that to me is a bit as a bit specific right I think I think I think maybe here's the way I would try to describe this in the most general terms about what's going on at right okay is I want to say about a year ago there was a change in leadership at reddit the people who were running reddit the company did ownership change gray it was it just new people were employed to be the boss there's a new new CEO and a couple of high-level people brought on board is the is the way to put it okay and since since that time there have been a lot of things that some portion of the people who use reddit don't like yeah and as reddit has gotten popular there are there are other kinds of problems with the site that they don't seem to be addressing and what what I would say has happened with reddit in just the past few days is is a bit like a riot in in that the people running reddit have what I would describe as as high negative numbers that the vast majority of people who visit reddit don't know anything about anything how the sites run right they're just going to see funny cap actions but insiders have a very negative reaction to the leadership of reddit so if you imagine a graph there's like a spike at the at the left hand side for negative numbers and the vast majority of people are neutral yeah and when you say leadership you're defining the people the money people leading it not the people who are like these informal leaders as lot moderators yeah I mean people who are employed or the owners of the company and the using leadership in a slightly broad term here for a reason I'm talking about like people who own the company or run the company that that's what I mean again it's the vast majority of users don't really care they don't really know anything that's going on like I like I'm then care when bus drivers go on strike like I don't really care about bus drivers salaries but suddenly I get affected when all the bus drivers stop driving the buses yeah yeah and so there's just a lot of problems that have been building up among a small group of people this is particularly the moderators the people who are running sections on reddit but are not employed by reddit have felt that they don't reddit has not helped them with the tools that they need as the site has gotten popular that it has been neglected and so this this Victoria person who this now this is a case where I fall into it as I am only dimly aware of her but it also falls into the category of Victoria is a bit like the opposite of the reddit administration and that the vast majority of users don't know who she is but the people who do know who she is she has a big spike in her positives so her so her curve her likability curve is the exact reverse of the of the leadership and so this is like a riot situation where there's a small group of people or a minority of people who intensely dislike the leadership and then they affect the leadership has gotten rid of someone that who has very high positive numbers and and this is like a collision that has occurred that has made a group of the users very angry and then has has caused this little bit of a like I say it's a bit like it feels like a riot like it doesn't necessarily have anything to do with the particulars of what happened anything could kick it off but like stuff has just been building up and yes I think the the the details of the way this situation have been handled have have been very hand-fisted have been very poorly done but it just felt like there was a fire that's been waiting to happen and this firing of Victoria happened to be the the thing but but it was just building up and building up so I think that's the highest level way to describe what is what is occurring how do you say the future things how do you say the like is this is just going to blow over or do you see change happening as a result like how how fierce do you think this fire is it's it's really interesting I I don't know how to judge this and the one thing one thing that is a a number that you can put on it is that there is a petition on change.org asking for the CEO of Reddit to step down that has 100,000 signatures on it which is not an insignificant number of people and I would say that the CEO has definitely demonstrated a a lack of understanding for internet culture might be the might be the way to put it. It's a bit like you know your grandma is trying to do something in hotmail and it's just like everything that they're doing indicates to you that they don't know what they're doing. There've been a few events like so that aggravates people like you're running the biggest discussion website on the internet. You should really know maybe he should put out a statement on his mind space. I don't I don't know where the future of this is going. I feel partly that this is the this is the recurring problem that we see on the internet that in many ways are like the things that we have talked about with YouTube that the internet has a funny way of trending toward monopolies. Yeah. Of of the best video site becomes the only video site and the best comments discussion board becomes it's not the only discussion board but it's it's like it's like YouTube versus Vimeo. There are other discussion sites out there that people use but there's no doubt about it that Reddit is the biggest and I use it because I I'm like YouTube which I think has many technical problems. I think the Reddit the discussion algorithms they use are by far and away the best that's why I still use them for all of my discussions. But I think this is the same kind of problem of we have everything is is now in one basket and so if there's a leadership change or if things aren't going very well people get really frustrated really fast because there there aren't very many options and I don't know if there's a way to do like an open source distributed commenting system in the same way that email is an open platform or RSS is an open platform the way we host our podcasts. I don't know if that's a kind of thing that can happen with with comments but because I just don't because here's the thing. People have talked about before how before Reddit dig was one of the bigger sites and then dig went through problems and everybody left dig for Reddit and now is Reddit going through the same thing. Well if everybody leaves Reddit for something else I mean that probably the largest contender right now is a site called vote. If people leave Reddit for vote I don't see how this is necessarily going to be any different. We've just we've just kicked the can down the road of what happens then when some other website then becomes the monopoly as time goes on and then it's just it's a difficult it's a difficult thing and I don't know I don't know what's going to happen to Reddit in the future. I think that Reddit is is great in the comments but the the way things have been handled I don't I do not think have been handled very well and there's this the thing I mentioned a couple of times is there's this problem on the internet called a strizand effect. Are you aware of the strizand effect? For the listeners strizand effect comes from barbastryzand and it's it's a reference to when you try to cover up something on the internet you often make it worse and the example here is that barbastryzand many years ago was unhappy that there were some photos of her house on the internet and her her very actions to try to get rid of those photos is what caused those photos to become popular and everybody to see pictures of her house and to eventually have an effect named after it's like the exact opposite of what anybody would ever want and there are there are a few things that Reddit has done which I think are strizand effecti in in in the past couple months where there are things about the site that they don't like and then they try to change them and I think it just ends up making those things more popular or more intense or it ends up making those things have higher visibility. Sorry are you talking about these abusive sections of Reddit that I try to sort of silence so get rid of and everyone start looking at the moral. Yeah again the details of those things are very hard to even talk about without making everybody angry or I also think without making the situation worse but that is definitely a case where they they try to I don't know there was something on my mind which is kind of related to this that I don't don't know how to articulate this but it's something on my mind of how there are bad things that happen in the world or there are like there are bad things that exist in the world but sometimes I don't know how to talk about them in a way that I don't that I don't think makes the situation worse. Yeah I think there are very much I mean again just talking about in a very broad context I when people try to do something like banning an idea I think all that happens very often is you end up consolidating and strengthening the group of people who believe in that idea. Yeah you've ended up making them feel now like they are warriors against injustice and so I'm when I think about stuff on the internet and one of the reasons why I always liked Reddit is the internet is kind of a horrible place but it's a horrible place because people are horrible and I much prefer to have a situation where all the ideas are on the table and everybody can everybody can see what those ideas are even if they're not good ones but I think what can happen sometimes is when you when you try to say oh we want to remove some of these ideas from the table I think it just makes the whole situation worse I think it makes people angry and it makes people who are trying to do good in the world less aware of what the what the nature of people's minds are if you can't see what all the ideas on the table are there are some that are hidden underneath the table I don't know I'm trying to talk about it in very general terms because talking about anything in particular you end up just in like in flaming and arguments I mean I wanted to ask you about the confederate flag on this episode and then I thought there's no way guys can talk about no no but see this this is the very thing like like we discussed that confederate flag video my most recent video my most recent video before it went up because I was I was having this same feeling and I talked to a bunch of people about that video and I could see that I was getting the same kind of reaction that people from different ends of the spectrum yeah yeah like they strengthen their opinion so I'm gonna give hold on say I just want to see if I can pull up something here let me see if I can pull up something really quick because this is a perfect example okay here we go perfect I found it oh that's just great okay so yeah the confederate flag stuff I don't want to get into any of the details about this argument I just want to talk about about one thing so when I was doing the research for the confederate flag video I happened to stumble upon a poll from a Pew research that people who do all the polls in America about people's reactions to the confederate flag now this is from 2011 so here we were talking about like positive negative reactions to Victoria before this is the same thing for for this flag so in 2011 when shown a confederate flag the reaction that Americans had 9% of Americans had a positive reaction 30% of Americans had a negative reaction and the rest said that they had no reaction to the confederate flag they didn't feel one way or the other okay so this is several years ago now we've had this whole big brujaha over the confederate flag recently I would bet money that what has happened now is that that almost 60% of people who had no reaction to the flag that group is now gone right that there's almost no Americans who would say they have no reaction to the confederate flag but here's the thing I would bet that both numbers have increased that Americans who feel negative about the flag have vastly increased but I would also bet that that 9% of Americans who have a positive reaction that that number has increased as well yeah well that's good you've taken a bunch of neutrals and how do I was going to say how to gun to the head that's massively inappropriate you've taken a bunch of neutrals and forced them to decide you know there's no there's no room for neutrality anymore getting camp out your camp and of course both of them up yeah and and when I was trying to put together that confederate flag video I had several people tell me this this exact same thing of the I don't know even how to put this but people people said you can no longer make a video that is neutral on the confederate flag that if you if you just want to talk about where the flag came from and you don't finish that video with and by the way it's a horrible symbol of injustice and should be banned from people's brains for all of time that you are implicitly endorsing horrible I had people tell me that I had several people tell me basically that that if you don't come out and say that it's awful that that there's no middle ground left anymore and this this is a bit like I don't know I felt like I was trying to get at this with my my my video about like this video will make you angry that there are conversations that just spread and I don't I don't know if it's I don't know this is what I mean where I think it's hard to have a conversation about a thing that doesn't make the situation worse like it is it is undoubtable now that seeing a confederate flag in 2015 going forward has different much worse reactions for people than it did in 2014 and earlier and we can know that because of this this pupil and it's been like my parents retired down to the south and it was just like I would see confederate flags around and I I always thought that was kind of weird as a northerner but I'm going to be really curious that when I visit my family this summer are they all gone like I wonder I don't I don't know which way this is going to go I'm sometimes hesitant to talk about some topics but it's not because it's not because I don't feel strongly one way or the other it's because I don't know how to have the conversation in a way that I think makes things better it's not your job to make it just it's not your job you don't have to do that I would I would encourage you not to make things worse but you are allowed to be neutral I think that there are ways in which you can be thinking that you're making something better and you're actually making it worse that that just by talking about a thing like it spreads memes or like it spreads ideas in a way that makes things worse than they were before I don't know I'm not doing a good job of explaining this but this has been on my mind for a while this is just kind of I think what you say is true everything you're saying is true but I also think it greatly reflects your just kind of your cautious nature and you you think a lot about all the different ways things could go before you act I'm a little bit more hey if someone takes out the wrong way and goes crazy well I wish they wouldn't but that's not what I meant but you you do think that through quite a bit I think I think it's perfectly valid to do something in neutral on the topic and discuss things in neutral I have no opinion on what's going on at Reddit I don't really have a strong opinion on the Confederate flag thing I'm a little bit I'm a little bit misinformed or uninformed I should say rather than misinformed I did read today that the person who owns the general Lee Car from the juxtaphasard who happens to be the golfer famous golfer called bubble Watson is planning to paint over the Confederate flag on that car with the United States flag and I think that's a bit crazy I mean I don't think you should be painting whatever you think about that flag now I don't think you should be painting or rewriting history but but I mean it's it's a pop-up's a long bow to describe the general Lee's a piece of history but it kind of is so I don't know I think it's perfectly fine to talk about it and explain the facts of a situation and not not have a strong opinion on it I have no strong opinion on it I find it funny that the unfortunate murder of people has turned into a discussion about flag control but yeah that's yeah that's the details of the of the situation of which I am woefully uninformed I mean I as usual I'm living in my little news bubble and this came across my attention when people were talking about how Apple was removing all games that have the Confederate flag and then I was like that's outrageous where did this come from and then I have to then I'm in the weird position of always having to trace the news back to you're like where did how did how did this end up and and you know because again I because I don't follow the news you see this pattern really clearly of the news cycle and how things always reach their most absurd later in the week because something like something starts off in the beginning of the week and then by the end of the week it has reached its maximum absurdity and then next week the cycle starts over again with something new and everybody forgets whatever we were talking about before but so that's why I came across this very late in the cycle so for you it started as flags being banned from computer games and you had to track your way back to a mass shooting that's exactly right which you can see from my perspective like what the heck is it where did this come from right and I know nothing about anything that has occurred from my perspective it's just out of the blue apple says Confederate flags are not allowed in video game I like how we tried to have a general conversation to immediately ended up discussing the specifics of the Confederate flag but yeah to draw it to draw it back to to Reddit I guess is what I was going to say with the strizand effect and where I was originally trying to go with that is that the people on Reddit have been critical of the leadership but then the leadership has then taken down threads discussing the situation and like okay that is a perfect example of a strizand effect situation of people are criticizing you on your website the only way to roll is to let that go right to let people talk about it but I don't think there would be nearly as much anger if it wasn't for the fact that there's there's trying to try to be suppression of the discussion and and that's why I'm generally very hesitant against any kind of moves to remove ideas from the table to say we can't discuss this here I just I don't think that that's that's good even if the ideas are awful like that's that's the price that you pay for living in a free society I don't know 100% agree with that Grave someone writes a comment under one of my videos about the person in the video and says something completely outrageous and offensive I would not be uncomfortable deleting that comment if they want to go and make that comment somewhere else well they're okay you know they go and to go and do it on your own on your own real estate but you're not doing that in mind just like if someone write if someone if someone wants to make a billboard saying something really terrible and offensive I can't stop them doing it but I can't stop them boating it to the front of my house it's a bit different on your YouTube channel because that's something you you are not running a general purpose platform for discussion yeah and ideas for them yeah okay that's like that is what it is come here to talk about anything and then that's why in the in the last year it's been more about come here to talk about anything except the things that we don't want you to talk about and I think that's that's why it's like but they're like oh well we don't want you to talk about the horrible things like because they're horrible we're not discussing if they're horrible right where it's the ultimate thing here is like you're making a decision about what is allowed or what is not allowed to be talked about and I'm okay with it like red it has taken down stuff discussion forums before about stuff that was illegal and I think like that is an acceptable boundary to have yeah you are operating within the United States and the United States says you are not allowed to have this section of the forum fine it's taken down I don't think anybody argues with that that's quite reasonable but there's many more things that that are in a in a different area and so if stuff is illegal I'm always okay well obviously you should take that down like you have to take it down but other than that I think you it's it's very difficult to have conversations that are are bounded are bounded in in some way I just generally don't I generally don't react very well to that outside the specifics of of what the discussion is but then I find myself in the weird situation if you're always on the side of of people that you don't necessarily like but that's but that's what you have to do if if if you want ideas to be on the table if you don't want them to be removed from the table is you have to be able to defend the ones that you don't like their presence if not their content okay I'm all right with that we've been very we've been very wandering today but not for the first time you know for the last no not for the last other I tell you what there's like a long there's lots of things we didn't talk about so we've already got the next episode or each ahead and care of great yeah and we're finishing but in here we're done I think we're done I don't I think I think we've been recording for quite a while we have yeah it's been two hours and 42 minutes yeah I mean in that time it started off sunny the weather turned stormy and rainy here and now it looks like it's getting sunny here again so we're actually going through like complete climate changes where I am let's discuss climate change
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