Transcript
Speaker: I'm
Speaker: going to hit record right now and then we can change our tone and enter the kind of tone of the podcast. Oh my god, this is seriously so fun already.
Speaker: I'm having a New York blast. You guys are basically playing tricks and it's like hilarious. I'm loving it. Gotcha. Gotcha. We're happy to have Charlie Bardet on our podcast, co-host of Exploration Live. Thank you. The concept of which I will admit that I have basically suggested that we completely ape where yeah guests and hosts alike bring in their thoughts so that they can be discussed in a sort of comedic fashion. Yeah, and you know what? The concept totally works. And i think it's so good and I'm happy to share it. And I'll say this, like, I don't think we necessarily came up with it. The idea of like discussing ideas as much. as It's always so embarrassing when someone's like, what's your podcast about? and I have to be like, um...
Speaker: It's about, i it's like the the premise of it is people bring in ideas. a conversation about chosen topics. And I also want to make something else clear, which is that I asked to do this podcast.
Speaker: Right. So everyone's off the hook, really. Exactly. Including Derek, who I think is completely without any reproach or accusation so far. I should say you asked to be on the podcast, but we begged you to follow through. Because that was just ah that was a passing desire on your part. and we knew there's a chance maybe you would change your mind the next day. we're like, commit to know commit to your wish.
Speaker: I did act out by being 18 minutes late. like By being like, I don't want it that bad, bitch. like I don't care that much. I'm like, that's cool. You're matching the spirit of the podcast.
Speaker: Yeah, yeah, exactly. I knew that if I wanted it too bad, that it would seem weird and desperate and I would be like a loser. And I couldn't go into the podcast with that energy. Somehow the scales have been tipped, re-tipped, adjusted and teared.
Speaker: What is it called? Teared, yeah. ten i love david I love tearing. um and I love when you tear something. I just want to say I love that. On the on the kitchen scale, I think it's so elegant. you like to put the ingredients into the container, but only after you've teared the container.
Speaker: Well, you know what I love it is when you put the bowl on and then it the scale is like, um it's like a pound. And then you like tear the scale and then it's like, okay, so there's nothing on here. Let's forget that. Let's forget you ever said Okay. Oh my God. So, well, they're just like, this is now the new, like regular. And then you take the bowl off and they're like, I'm floating. The scale is like, it's a negative one pound on here. It's extremely awesome. It's like making a scales day really is by tearing it to something that exists, removing it. The scale feels like, Oh my God, it's my birthday. it's I'm of as light as a feather. I'm on Molly.
Speaker: I'm rolling. Right, right, right. The scale should start basically floating up to the ceiling. That's my premise. You can also, you can weigh something by standing on the bottom of a scale as long as you can slip in some kind of ah camera to capture what the actual numbers are saying, right?
Speaker: You can weigh something by standing on the bottom of a scale. Turn the scale upside down and now you're standing on the bottom of it. Technically, you're weighing yourself because the scale's pressure that's going into the floor is still your own weight.
Speaker: If you're floating up. Wait, but can a scale weigh itself? Or does it is it always teared even when you... Yeah, if you put a scale upside down, does it weigh itself? You're saying if... should I could go get mine, honestly.
Speaker: It's interesting. like If I held it up in my hand like this, would it weigh itself? Right. Let's test this. That's actually worthwhile... should I be right... Should I die? Yeah, you should be right back. And then just like... I'm like gone. should Ideally, you'll be right back. It would be horribly wrong. he look at numbers Should I be right back or should I never return? Hard to say really. It's an unpredictable conversation. My hesitation is that like then everybody sees me walk out the room and that's like awkward. You have to see like my little body. well Another thing that we're ripping from Exploration Live is that we are recording videos but only for clips. so No one will see you exit unless it makes a fabulous clip of you exiting your room. well
Speaker: By the way, we now have a YouTube channel. Exploration Live has all video episodes now. I know you guys love. okay um I'll go get my scale. hold on right Let's place our bets on what is going to be the effect of weighing a scale upside down.
Speaker: but Nothing. Nothing's going to happen. we're not even It's not even going to be a result. um I'm going to bet that he'll drop the scale. Really? how' that boy He's to hold it in one hand?
Speaker: Has Charlie been a waiter before? Because that's a tricky move. It is a tricky move, right? Now, part of me is just like, is it going to is it just somehow going to equalize? But no, because there's going to be some kind of the weight of the scale will be pressing on the on the spring. That's right.
Speaker: And how how heavy is the scale? 40 pounds? Marble scale? i guess How heavy is the scale, Derek? it's either It doesn't look that heavy, but it's about 40 pounds. i'm just It's dense, and I'm very strong. yeah i want to I want to say something in terms of personifying the scale a little bit. When I was holding it I turned it on as I was carrying it, and it gave a message that said, unstable, which I liked. I was like, oh there it's like... um I'm not going to try this. like This is not how I work.
Speaker: Yeah, they're like, i don't I'm not going to do this. Scales are pretty persnickety about stability, whereas calculators and other devices, they don't care if you if you shake them around.
Speaker: Oh, yeah, look at this. It does. it does Really? Although it's changing a little bit, but it's about 0.13 kilograms, which seems like kind of right for this. It seems right for that. It's perfect. I'm surprised. My other question is if you put the scale upside down on a surface and then put something else on top of it, it would now weigh the weight of the scale plus whatever is on top of it, and then you would have to see what is... um Yeah, so I see, I see, I see. Okay, so let's try that.
Speaker: Stand on the scale and put your hands underneath and... I see. And we're going to weigh my Princess Diana compact mirror. Okay. So just for everyone who can't see what's happening right now, Charlie is balancing a scale upside down with an item on top. It's Princess Diana magnet or a compact mirror.
Speaker: Compact mirror, like I said. And it seems like the compact mirror is about... I'm trying to it too. By tilting my head. was about 0.6 extra. Now we can test that hypothesis by putting the compact mirror on top of the scale normally. Mm-hmm.
Speaker: That's exactly right. Wow. That's exactly right Okay, so it turns out that the hypothesis was supported. The hypothesis is that scales weigh things. even Even when they're oriented... And they're upside down. Yeah, even when they're oriented in the reverse configuration as suggested by the user manual.
Speaker: And I also have a calculator. have a TI 30XS that weighs about 0.14 kilograms. really That's awesome. Thank you. but it's Now we can begin. Things that deal with numbers have number weights. of weight yeah yeah I totally agree.
Speaker: That's crazy. It's like, um, you're biased. Yeah, definitely biased. The calculator is always like, um, I think like that's probably about 0.14. You type in 99999 times 99999 and the calculator actually adds a kilogram for every huge equation that you put in.
Speaker: They're just like, um, it's it's that plus about 0.14 just because that's how much I weigh. They're yeah, i weigh about that. So I just threw that in there because I felt like it wouldn't hurt. It's close enough. That's why when you do math in your head, you have to also add, and by the way, my brain weighs this much.
Speaker: Right, exactly. if that's relevant. I add my whole body weight because that is, i use, I tend to use my body to do math. Instead of counting on your fingers, you count each individual hair just to like get a mental map of what you're doing.
Speaker: When people ask how much your body weighs, you tear your brain's weight. Yeah. exactly yeah they're asking about the body do you want me it's like first of all let me tear my brain okay now how much does your personality weigh right exactly heavy it's really holy shit it's not good y'all and ain't right uh this has been amazing this this has been great this is such a blast the first night we really should do this again sometime I'm like, yeah, I got a head out. But this has been seriously so fun. Yeah, we all have like appointments over the rest of our lives, right? Of course, of course. yeah I'm going to yeah get really nervous before an upcoming appointment at some point soon, probably.
Speaker: What kind of how do you think you'll get nervous? i don't know. Anxiety. what am I even going to say? hope it goes well. Mm hmm. Mm hmm. I see that. I see that. Because you don't know what the appointment's for. no No. That's already kind of scary. no but what's what's a kind of appointment but's What's a kind of appointment you would get nervous before? Something where you'd get results there?
Speaker: Certainly something where you're being evaluated. Maybe reapplying for a ah driver's license and then hoping that you walk out with a temp driver's license. you know God, that sounds like hell. Oh, God.
Speaker: Trying to get a rush order on your passport so that you can actually travel in time? Yes, yes. that I actually had that recently. And I actually was nervous before it. Yeah. You know what? That exactly happened to me.
Speaker: And I was nervous for it. Yes. It's an That happened to me. And I was nervous for it. This is another proven hypothesis that it is possible to be nervous for an appointment. Rightly, rightly nervous. It's like, well, first of all, let's try to prove the null hypothesis. It's not possible to be nervous for an appointment. We need just one counter example to see if that is wrong.
Speaker: I have one. I had to get my passport renewed, rush order, and I need i was hoping they wouldn't be mad because I changed... the flight to make it work. Like I basically did like a trick. Yeah. You made it, you made it so that it would, they would be more in a rush. You changed it to make it more urgent.
Speaker: Yes, exactly. And then it was, I actually can't even get into the logistics right now because I don't remember them. But then what ended up happening was the guy who was doing it was not only like totally amenable, but was really friendly. And I, we actually riffed a little bit. Damn. Really? Yeah. It was like a particularly easy, nice, fluid interaction.
Speaker: Guys whose job it is to make you nervous for an appointment in the abstract always come through on the day of the appointment. They always riff. Yes, exactly. Yes, exactly. They're like, oh, what?
Speaker: You're going somewhere? I've been known to do that a time or two. That was his riff? I guess anything goes when he's that nervous. Anything's a relief. I bet you was funnier than that.
Speaker: But you weren't listening? I was just just so relieved I couldn't hear. I was texting. I'm just glad something's funny happening. It was AirPods in, AirPods in. And I pressed them like this to hear. was like, sorry, what was that? Oh, that's funny. It's like someone's backing your groceries. They're giving you a federal ID. You really need listen to anything anyone says as long as you know they're friendly. That's all the information you need. Okay, this person is friendly to me. I'm going to push it. Yeah, all good. Uh-huh.
Speaker: That ah it must be such a relief to be deaf because all you have to do is check for smiles. I wonder if that's true. No, it can't be. That's just a sartonic joke. What a relief when a big bang deafens you for life.
Speaker: ah last. You're like, finally, some peace and fucking quiet. I don't need to do so much work. Just examine the smile. Is it quiet when you're deaf or is it just permanent loudness? Or can you not tell the difference? here forever It's just like really long.
Speaker: Yeah, it's a long gunshot or techno. I know this to be a question, not of deaf people, but I know this to be a question people are asked of blind people Yeah, do you see black? Do you see black or do you see nothing? It's the Aurora Borealis. Do you just no visual? And it's classic, like, you don't have a common reference. I mean, maybe it is. It's like if people have gone blind, and I'm also sure there's different kinds. But I feel like if people try to explain it, they're just like, I just don't see anything. Yeah, I mean, they'll even say that in response to, so if you're blind, does that just mean you see nothing? And they go, no, I don't see nothing. I don't see anything.
Speaker: yeah Yeah, but once you fix their vision, they always say, oh, that was black. That was black. yeah They say, no, oh, you know, it was more of like a room. I just didn't get it. yeah Like it was kind of a, it was a darkened room. I just couldn't see Yeah.
Speaker: I just couldn't see it. and My eyes closed. I mean, regarding like bats echolocation, you guys just feel nothing? When I echolocate? When echolocate, is it just black? yeah Isn't there this very famous essay about it?
Speaker: Pierce, Pierce. What? What? Help. you know about this? There's there's a pi so philosopher philosophy paper. um I think it's called What It's Like to be a Bat. Yeah, yeah. It's this very like famous... Okay, Pierce, you're i'm out. de Derek knows.
Speaker: Derek, take it away. ah Yeah, so as you were saying... click who wrote that? I don't know. Some bat. Thomas Nagel. What It's Like to be a Bat.
Speaker: Thomas Nagel, right? An American. Analytic philosopher. Handsome guy, according to Wikipedia. Really? Let's see, let's see. Handsome according to Wikipedia's text or according to a picture according to you looking at a picture of him. I'm distilling the text. I'm distilling the page so that you understand what's going on. He's a handsome guy. The Wikimedia image description says, here's the handsome fellow.
Speaker: He is. And by the way, he's still alive and he's Serbian or from Yugoslavia. Pretty good. Angela Nagel, huh? Wait, is that his... kid or something? Thomas. Oh yeah, maybe. Probably, right? No, no, no. It would say it would say like...
Speaker: Maybe, maybe it would. Yeah, let's put it out there. Angela Nagel is Thomas Nagel's tyke. This kind of brings me this idea of, um I don't want to be too overzealous and start with a question, but it is so insanely relevant to what we're talking about. Okay, but I just want to say really quick here on the what is it like to be a bat page. Yeah. um There's some criticisms of the paper. and it no And it basically says, like, you can't even know what it's like to be a bat.
Speaker: Writing can't address this mystery. Sorry. no no, no, no, no. But that's the whole, the thesis of the paper is like, we can't know. Like, even if we can imagine what it's like to be a bat, we can't know what it's like for a bat to be a bat. Like that it's fundamentally, but then Daniel Dennett, who I recognize the name. I was really, oh, it's because he was an atheist. And as a kid, I was like an atheist. Hitch slapped. Daniel Dennett was kind of like the smartest, ah technically of the the four horsemen of the atheism or whatever.
Speaker: Yes, the four horsemen. He was the only one that wasn't going crazy about the Iraq War. we the Were the other ones like, we should bomb Iraq? Hitchens invented the term Islamofascism to describe why we needed to invade. Sam Harris, and then, you know, of course, Dawkins. Was Dawkins a ah War on Terror guy? I mean, he's he's generally like kind of a Western society is crumbling because of this like pervasive influence of ah these other guys. And I think he also said, I don't care about war. I only care about stars and planets. And I think that that basically is siding with the dominant yeah superpower, if you say something like that. you care about stars and planets, you are a bloodthirsty monster, generally. Yeah. If you support stars and planets against against the Earth, I mean, yeah i have that preference that's just how the world is.
Speaker: ah That's so, like, annoying that they were like that. It's true. Yeah. I wish the four Westmen were pacifists. At the same time, Indy Sleaze was really taking off. but Cut to M.I.A. in her bedroom in London, England, playing around with her board, making beats. Listening. i don't know if that's true. Well, she sampled. She certainly sampled ah an album off of Combat Rock by The Clash. Guys. That's right. I have a question that's so related to our discussion about bats and the blind.
Speaker: And I'm just... I do too. i'm Okay. so But you go first. I'll first. And we can we don't have to make a meal out of this one. I'm going to maybe just call it right now at the outset that we might ask a lot of questions this this episode that don't really demand that much answering. Yeah. I agree. here's a question. Yeah.
Speaker: The brightness or darkness of light is definitional. However, the spectrum of brightness and darkness is invoked for less obvious qualities, including mood, bright equaling positive, sound, bright equaling high frequency, highness, high attack, high clarity, etc., and taste, bright equaling tart and fruity. Are these additional uses all equally intuitive?
Speaker: Is goat cheese or a lemon bright tasting simply because they are brightly colored? Is chocolate dark tasting because it's darkly colored? That's my question.
Speaker: You know what? What I think about this is it's like... um This is like an empirically testable question. It's like Kiki You could do like... yeah Well, you could just do like sociolinguistic research. So let's get to fucking work. Let's open up. ah what is What's the website? i didn't I'm just like brightening it. like to Have you guys ever read that book, Metaphors We Live By? George Lakoff.
Speaker: Yeah. Oh, my God. I like this podcast. That's nice. We read. I'm having fun. We read. Yeah, this is kind of his... I can't get one over you This is his big thing, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. but and it's like And sometimes... I mean, it's always so cool to find out something is universal and is like kind of intuitive that it's like, yep, pretty much every culture, or every like linguistic culture like associates these two things. And then sometimes it's like...
Speaker: But then isn't it funny when it's like actually 95% of them do and then 5% of them don't? They're like, yeah, most cultures associate like time with forward. But actually, this one random culture doesn't. And you're like, so what do we make of that? Like they were just being weird or like oppositional or like like if it's like so, so common to do it in one way, but then... Yeah. Like what would we do if we found in this question the answer was that like...
Speaker: Yes, most cultures associate citric taste with brightness, but 10% don't. i mean like What would we make of that information? Is it what we want to do is find a blind person who is ah pre-verbal and lives outside society and then test them on this?
Speaker: Yeah, but i't I think you do need, it like, these examples, because they're derived from the definitional source, which is the brightness or darkness of any given light, I do i don't think it it would need to work on a pre-verbal person, but they would also need to intuit what brightness and darkness is with respect to light in order for any of this to make sense, I think. I don't know how you could test that on a pre-verbal person. Let's just do it.
Speaker: All well here's mike we'll figure it We'll build the plane as we go. There's lots of things we could test on a pre-verbal person. One of my theories is... yeah People, he i'll I'll just say something like a tautology here. Whistling is bright and humming is darker by comparison.
Speaker: Now, I think that can be true for multiple reasons. I think whistling can be seen as bright, although there is such a thing as like a scary dark whistle. A dark whistle. A creepy dark whistle. A clown serial killer doing a dark whistle in the alleyway. Yeah.
Speaker: A dark whistle. Is it harder to do a dark whistle or a bright hum? Well, there are scales that are dark. Yes. Well, my question is, maybe brightness is associated with sort of whistling or tinny or or higher frequency sounds because birds chirp during bright hours.
Speaker: However, is a cricket's chirp a bright sound or a dark sound? It's as bright as the moon's glow, right? It's as bright as a firefly's ah blast.
Speaker: But can you describe a cricket's chirp? I want to say that a cricket's chirp is darker than a bird song. But why? They're almost the exact same frequency. It's just that a cricket happens to come out in the dark. Maybe when they were figuring all this shit out, um everyone had synesthesia and nobody has that anymore because we can watch TV.
Speaker: I think brightness is associated with like higher energy activation, right? Which is why like a cricket does have brightness, but maybe not as much as a bird, which like birdsong is...
Speaker: like Especially when you think of the brightest bird songs, they're like kind of frenetic. it's like do do the tappu couldoo but they did but you know and And light is like, ah you know obviously, more light is more energy. So to me, that feels like there is like an implicit connection.
Speaker: the citric thing, I actually don't think... i would I would hypothesize that there's cultures where citrus is not bright. But to me, that's a really interesting question. Or that those are like kind of an arbitrary, like that's like a specific cultural connotation. had learn that for sure. Hearing people talk about citrus taste being bright.
Speaker: And I'm not allowed to like Google or do any research. No, you're allowed. and Okay, I want to. This is a game show. You're allowed to do anything really. Yeah, and but I don't want to do all that. Like it's fine. I mean, it's so easy to say that champagne is a bright wine and that like a a darker red wine is a darker, more whatever, full-bodied wine. But at the end of the day, they're both vinegary.
Speaker: It's just that one is darker in color and the other is brighter in color. So it's so much easier to say that one wine is bright. No, it's because it's effervescent. I think it does. I think it is. It's because bubbles, which has energy. Bubbles implies like a kinetic energy, the crackling energy, which is closer to light. Light is movement. Yeah, movement. I mean, you talk about someone who you know is intelligent you call them bright.
Speaker: it's It's simply because their mind is moving fast, right? Yeah. Brightness is speed. i want to check the book. I want to see what he says about it.
Speaker: Well, this podcast isn't about checking books, okay? It's just about i know coming up with stuff from first principles. Guys, I feel very satisfied with the conversation generated by my question. I'll even say it's time to move on. And we recommend Metaphors We Live By for further reading.
Speaker: Uh-huh. It's a cool book. And I actually think it's cool because your question was like not... Your question is like totally testable, which I think is kind of hard to come up with.
Speaker: My questions are not testable. And actually now I'm like, they suck. But I knew I would feel that way. That's fine. Let's hear one. Okay. The question My first one, which is like... I thought it was okay because it's actually an honest thing I'm thinking about, even though it's like a pretty old and maybe banal question. But it's, is there a ghost in the machine? Basically, I'm wondering. Like, I'm wondering, like, is consciousness an emergent property of material or is it like...
Speaker: I just don't know. like you know There's that thing of the fly going around where they're like, we made a fly play play Fruit Ninja. like We uploaded the entirety of a fly's consciousness to Claude and then put it into Minecraft and then built Fruit Ninja in Minecraft and now the fly is playing Fruit Ninja. Mm-hmm.
Speaker: this is ah This is a really tough one. It would be great if we could test consciously. We all have very pot answers to this that we're just ready to get. can we Can we all answer it in less than five words? Yeah, let's try. Let's try. You can first hear it. Okay. all right. Fuck.
Speaker: m Nope. See, I just used four. I would say that thought about thought is rare. That's my five word answer. We're rarely conscious.
Speaker: I just think that i mean a consciousness, i would say that all I would say that many sentient creatures can probably think. This comes from Julian Jaynes' book, The Origin of Consciousness. But he says that only human beings so far are capable of what we call metaconsciousness, thought about thought.
Speaker: I would say that I'm one of these people who believes in a rare Earth. I think that life probably only exists on this planet just because they' just because you'd think that there'd be some evidence other than... Although, did they... i wouldn't think that. Did that come and go, that evidence about ancient life on Mars and we all kind of just looked over... there's enough It's one of those things. it's like It's like there's a kid who found a chemical, who found a a way to recycle plastic. yeah it's like That's like one of the news stories that CNN will put out. And then it's like, great, like definitely keep me in the loop as to like whether there's updates on that. And then they dont they ghost you. Pierce, you think consciousness only exists on Earth and the whole universe?
Speaker: No, I mean, I think that, well, this is what I'm about to say is if consciousness is an emergent property of of like life or or materials, then the intelligence the intelligence that we are or the intelligent life that we're seeking out there in the universe is evident in like geode formations, at least on Earth. It's evident in the construction of like celestial bodies. It's trivial.
Speaker: but I think so. I think just structure is as intelligent as anything's going to get. Beyond that, the organization of life, genes, DNA, and even what we call human consciousness is basically just decorative on top of the fact that reality exists.
Speaker: It's already like, it's like, isn't there enough? Yeah, that's I think I agree with that. Okay, that's fine. I don't think hard stuff becomes conscious very much. Bricks and mountains and stuff like that doesn't become conscious.
Speaker: Maybe there's some plants that have some pseudo proto conscious. If they're soft. If they're really soft and nice and they react to when like I spray them with something acid, for example. They smile or frown. Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah. hello but my plants My plants grow more when I play friends for them. They love friends and they they grow more. They grow to become like the friends characters. Exactly. You're definitely conscious if you like friends. My plants bark whenever men come over.
Speaker: um um Matthew, do you have a do you have an answer that's brief? ah yeah Yeah, I don't really i don't believe in that stuff. kind Consciousness.
Speaker: it's just ah It's just a nice interpretation of other people that you can make. Or number of other things. If you like like a fish, you're like if you love if you're attached to like a doll you have, then that's conscious if you choose to think of it that way.
Speaker: yeah Seems nice, right? Isn't that All you can really say that is just a nice thing you think. It's what happens when you play with something. that's it Like when you move your doll and just go like, oh, my doll wants pizza. you've like It's just another way of saying something is special. Man is the only being that plays with itself.
Speaker: That's right. i don't think I don't think that's true. We're the only being who does touches ourselves. Well, I'm just building off of what Pierce said. Is that true? Wait, what? I guess ah I was just saying that to think of something as conscious is to play with it.
Speaker: But to be conscious is maybe to be played with. Earlier you said that, you know, we we are the only ones that think about thinking. Right. I know what what line you're trying to draw, but I do think that maybe maybe I don't accept it now that you say it.
Speaker: Okay, so your argument falls apart. Only because it was characterized so clumsily. But i can't I don't have it in me to correct your characterization, so I i i accept defeat. Okay.
Speaker: You're like, I'm bored. So yes, you win. You win. I lose. I don't care. And therefore you win. And often, by the way, that is how it works. um and This is my answer. And I'm going to stick to five words.
Speaker: But one of the... Okay. Yes, semicolon. Harder than we think. So that's five words in the semicolon is just punctuation. I guess I don't know what harder is referring to. No, of course. More difficult than thought. How about that? More difficult than... Than previously thought. Right. I'm just like, people are like, oh, if you just like put all these like diodes in or whatever, like that counts as thinking. I'm like, I bet you it is material, but it's just like... Brains are just more complicated than we think. They're just more like...
Speaker: um I don't know, whatever. like at There's meat. i mean it has to to For me, consciousness has to be meat-based. they can't be um It can't be a computer i mean a computer. By the way, this is all going around the AI question. yeah basically is what i' I do think that a computer can sorry i think a computer can do all the things that consciousness does, but the purpose of consciousness isn't it the evidence of it. The purpose of consciousness is the experience of it. And Whether or not a computer can convincingly portray the signs and symbols of a conscious is no evidence of our consciousness.
Speaker: Well, other than other than the first, the most primary one, which is language. and and our first well yeah Our first. But you're saying that the only real experience of consciousness is your private, incommunicable, internal experience. reverie The reverie. yeah Which you really can't talk about with any certainty about anything or anyone.
Speaker: No, I guess, but that's that's love. that's what That's people's anti-A position. That's I'm saying. Their consciousness is love. Right. It's just something you generously attribute. he It's a gift. I guess that's a good point. I mean, love love is what happens when you've basically forgiven someone for thought crime. like love You forgive someone for being non-entity. You forgive someone for being meat, and you attribute a soul to them. I forgive you for being an object. Oh, you're a subject. That's sweet.
Speaker: That is kind of sweet. Thank you. Wow. But yeah, ah thought crime or like, you know, all of our personal data getting harvested so that these tech overlords and maybe even this like super sentient pseudo divine being can come up with an image of us that is maybe even more real than the one that our friends and family have of us. It's just like, well, it's not more real. It's just more evidence-based. My friends and family don't love me because of all of the evidence of my private reverie. It's because of how much they forgive me for all of the bad thoughts that I necessarily have, all of the bad behaviors that I necessarily want to do but don't.
Speaker: like I think it is the the act of forgiving someone for their private reveries that is the ah wow you know love. That is love. I think that's that's totally smart.
Speaker: Pierce, I think that's really, really smart. Well, i couldn I couldn't get there without everyone's help. You know, building off of what you and Matthew are saying, i would say perhaps what's so frightening about Cloud and Isabella or whatever the other one's called is that they're maybe like too conscious. You know, they're too evidence-based. We can see all of their thoughts and they can even link up to other computers and like, quote, prove their consciousness to each other.
Speaker: And so we don't ever get to give them the gift of saying, I believe you're conscious. Oh, oh like they're, it's actually like they're too exposed. We have too much like access. I mean, that' that's why like those early two thousands, um, like little robot dogs that could only like bark and do a flip.
Speaker: Those seemed a lot more conscious to me, um, than Alexa and, and, and Siri and her whole group of girl robots. You know I'm saying? Because that little sweet little robot dog that could only do one action.
Speaker: you could project onto it. You could say, that's Fido. I love this Flips also, as a behavior, flips are really associated with brightness. Like, oh, he's flipping because he's happy. You would never say he's flipping because he's upset. A dark flip.
Speaker: <unk> no such thing that's a It's a funny idea for a character. It's a funny idea for a character in a story. Flipping darkly. Like, oh God, he's flipping. Who wants to go talk to him? Speaking of old school Twitter, Matthew, I don't know if you remember Emails USA or Eodillon, but I remember I tweeted one time, I can do a front flip if you get me really pissed off.
Speaker: And then Keith Dillon replied, this is so Dillon Klebold. And that's like still one of my favorite Twitter interactions I've ever had. That's funny. I like this thing of like love like and is necessitated by or or like not knowing necessitates love. like Actually, to love someone, you have to be like, there's an unknowable thing that I am kind of committed to loving because it goes against the like kind of there it complicates the sort of normal understanding which is like love grows with knowing or that knowing you know that whatever the thing of like to get the rewards of being loved you have to submit to the humiliating ordeal of being known Yeah, but it's not your being known. It's the lover's being known to themselves. The more you get to know yourself, the more you realize you don't know anything yourself. have to submit to being invented by your lover. Yes, yes, exactly. They create you. I think that's also the calcification of one's self-image is the more you get to know... You're not getting to know yourself as you get or ah older. You're just committing to believing certain things about yourself because they're convenient. so Narratives. Yeah.
Speaker: i like I like your idea, Derek, that the problem with AI is that it's it's whatever the definition of consciousness is, it's too conscious. It's pure language and thought. And that's the problem. that like Maybe maybe what actually what this problem of AI actually reveals is not the problem of consciousness, but what we value about each other isn't our consciousness. It's our deadness. yes it's hard like our materiality.
Speaker: and the lack of consciousness or meatness that we have to like you do feel the meatness when you like go out on a date with a girl and she she's like i need to use the bathroom and it's like you're just pipes so you're not conscious you're just yeah you're not conscious at all you have all these needs it's like okay what about this like this moment of love of like when you see someone sleeping like It's the only time can really love someone.
Speaker: they so It's the only truth. And by the way, I love watching my lover sleep. And I love being watched sleep by a lover. I'm at my best when I'm sleeping. I know that I'm putting on a great show when I'm sleeping. but and it's so and You love being watched? How do you know?
Speaker: cause when you I love finding out about it later. When you wake up, they say you were so cute when you slept. they say They say you were so cute when you slept. Oh, you did this thing. I love hearing about it. You know you do all these things when you sleep that you aren't aware of.
Speaker: I was on Fire Island. Recently was sharing a bed with two friends. and One friend was in the middle of this king bed. and He said at one point in the night he like was too hot. so We had like kind of like had to scoot out from the cover.
Speaker: And then like got on top of the cover and he told me, apparently I like turned over, got up, and laughed at him and then went back to bed. Oh, you did full behavior. i did full behavior and I was like, oh my God, I had no idea that I did behavior. i think you've talked about this on Exploration Live. is like you You can't stand snoring people and you're just like, I would never snore for the record. And then someone tells to snore and you're just like, well, that's just your opinion that I snore. Yeah. kind of like, I'm like i'm not a snorer. I might have snored, but I'm not someone who snores. Right, there is a distinction there.
Speaker: Right, I can't be that. like i don't and it's I mean, and maybe that is more in line. I'm losing the thread, actually. I'm not a violent felon. Do I hit? Yeah, hit.
Speaker: Yeah, but only when you're asleep. Sure, yeah. But it is it's like when you're asleep, it's like, wow, like that's a machine. like that's tubes too. yeah I think it's right. Like when someone goes to the bathroom, you're like, oh, I'm actually. They had to.
Speaker: and the The like practice of like you are an emergent property of flesh kind of is the thing. You're like almost loving the audacity of that. Right, you see them going to the bathroom and then you think, holy crap, you're gonna die soon. Well, I think the other thing about sleep, I mean, is that you you can imagine being on a date and someone goes up to piss and you're like, oh, my pipe friend, my friend who's full of pipes, I was just reminded. If they go, like I do on dates or in almost any social function, if they go 30 times over the course of like four hours, that can get pretty tiresome. And then you can kind of think like, oh, this person's neurotic. This person's hysterical.
Speaker: you You would never say that about someone who's sleeping. You would never say like, oh, they're only sleeping because they're a fucking ball of nerves. They're only sleeping because they're they're self-soothing all of their weird hysterical neuroticism. People would say that. Really? Sleepers? I hate...
Speaker: I hate to say this, but people say, yeah, I mean, you could you could totally imagine someone like sleeping and then someone else finding a way to problematize that as part of their personality. Yeah. People would be like, oh my God. Yeah, I nap when I feel shame.
Speaker: Yeah, maybe you're right. No one's ever noticed. Matthew and matthew k naps when he feels shame. right. And I completely judge it. Good, as you should. And i think it's I think it's fucking weird. It's weird. it makes it hard for me to love him. I nap on dates.
Speaker: While they're peeing, I take a quick power nap. You're like, I'm tubes too. Me too, I'm tubes. My tubes are... um I need to power down to clean them or whatever. My tubes need a little resting.
Speaker: yeah My tubes need resting. That's just what they're for. But then it's interesting because computer is tubes too. right Computer needs sleep. But so why can't we love computer? like And many can.
Speaker: Many do. Maybe if you're like the custodian of the data center, you'll like the computer because you'll see the embodied quality If you're the janitor of the data center, you'll love it. It's true. like you're ah You're falling in love with your chatbot. it's like what What embodied quality are you seeing in them? Is it like, oh my god, you need Wi-Fi. like That's like water to you. but Falling in love with a chatbot is like a long-distance relationship. You should be falling in love with a data server. Right there. right right right right right right Right, right, right. That makes more sense to me, actually. Gatsby should have just fallen in love with the light, not what the light represents.
Speaker: My girlfriend and I were walking around Central Park after visiting the Natural History Museum for like the third time, and this time our objective was to just see the taxidermied animals. And so you spend three hours looking at all these dioramas of taxidermied animals. You walk outside, you start seeing people enjoy their life out in Central Park, and they all look like taxidermied dioramas.
Speaker: My girlfriend asks me, if you died and you were going to be stuffed and put up on display, what would you like to be doing forever? And I was like, well, if it's something that I do, it would probably just be me in my underwear with my hand on my pants going on my phone or playing video games. But if it's something that I would like to be immortalized doing, that's a whole different question. But then it's like, damn, you really have to start acting as if you're going to be eulogized any second.
Speaker: We eulogize our computer and we say, RIP my computer. It was so awesome. What did it do, though? What actually made it love? like The guys who you eulogize were just like, he was always smoking his pipe and saying the weirdest thing you've ever heard. like He was strange.
Speaker: But computers are just not strange enough to be loved, I think. They're not eulogizable.
Speaker: this is that's a ri I like that. does it Did you guys ever follow Pang Melly on Twitter? Did you know her? I really loved her account. <unk> I'm sure she's... i Whatever. I don't know if she's still on there. But she had one thing about specifically the quality of a eulogy where she's like, I don't like it when...
Speaker: in a eulogy or at a funeral service or in memory of someone, people like only vaunt them. They only like celebrate them. And actually like a real way to honor someone is to honor someone like totally as they are.
Speaker: Now I think about this because it's like, I have like, I actually have family members and like, I wonder if when they die, like, you know, I really like them. i like really like my family members, but also they're all, or many of them are complicated and have like pretty negative traits. And I'm like, I wonder if, if you'll go for the throat.
Speaker: Yeah, like I wonder, I mean, um I bet you they wouldn't like it, but maybe that is a way of honoring someone is being like, this is like more fully they're like their struggle, their, you know. You learn more about a person like through the things they do wrong.
Speaker: Yes. too yeah And you can learn more from them probably too. It's a little bit instructive. You can always say like, you know, don't be like Aunt Sally or whatever. She was a total fuck up. Although maybe don't put it that way at the funeral. You you kill them that way. That's the problem. By being honest about someone, you by finally, you know...
Speaker: ah admitting that the kayfabe is is over the kayfabe of life that's the final that's nailing confidence that's true we're gonna stop pretending when someone at the funeral is like can we be honest here about her yeah finally yeah finally can we be honest i mean the truth is is that like you are you're only doing it if you're trying to um realize a person in death it's because you might just have a problem with them. And it's like, you could you could argue all day. It's like, no, i actually love them more deeply than anyone else did. It's like, sure, that means that you had a problem with them. If you love them that hard that you're willing to throw a metaphorical heap of dirt on their memory by making them more real in death, then you might have just had a chip on your shoulder about it. My dad tried to my dad tried to um be real about his mom when she died, and I was at the funeral, and he like read his...
Speaker: draft of his eulogy to his brother and his brother was like you can't fucking read that so he got talked like it was like it was too far because it was too dark it was too yeah just wasn't kind enough it wasn't bright and bubbly it was bassy and dark it was it was more like coffee than a lemon coffee can be bright yeah coffee can give you a bright feeling coffee can be right but it makes you fast And it can taste bright.
Speaker: was more like a hot chocolate. Now we're talking. Now that's what I call music. I mean, every eulogy should really just be like a statement of like an honest statement about the person and their final years. Like, yeah, they were, let's all just face the facts. They were an aging body.
Speaker: Not much more to be said. It's kind of like, what's the truth of... It's like, is the truth... like It's like the taxidermy question. like Is the truth like what you aspire to to be? What you are moving towards? like They are a still thing. on Exactly. They're like, he's not much. He's actually dead. He doesn't say anything that much. Let's be real for once. He was always dead. The way we see him right now, he was always this corpse in a coffin. You're like, now correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't remember him being any different than this. Somehow we liked this ah back in the day. we used like this You're like, I have all these memories of all the stuff he did, which are really hard to square with my current experience of him, which is that he is dead. So yeah i don't I can't imagine how he took us on all those fishing trips. What was so bewitching about this corpse? Was he bait? You can only imagine.
Speaker: like Did I drive? or i was so young. It couldn't it couldn't make sense. and Our entire friendship with with him was one long ruse to get us to show up to this event. And what's in it for him?
Speaker: Well, good questions all around. Does anyone want to... I have a question for you guys. Yeah. Let's do it. Let's face it. However pleasant this may be, recording this episode is almost certainly not going to become a core memory for any of us.
Speaker: A year from now, are any of you going to remember this particular afternoon? Does it bother you that you can spend entire stretches of your life having perfectly enjoyable experiences that disappear almost completely?
Speaker: And what could we do before this recording ends to guarantee that none of us ever forgets today? Well, my first instinct is that we have to come up with a mnemonic. You're going right to memory shit. I was going to say like I could punch through my window and get a really bad cut.
Speaker: Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's a kind of mnemonic. That's turning your actual palace into a memory palace. Yeah, you just need to hurt your palace. You're like, what happened to your... I mean, isn't that funny when you get, like, a scar and you, like, the scar is from something kind of small, but you're like, so randomly now I remember that time, like, my hand brushed against the door. And it randomly cut me kind of deep and, like, now I have the scar and I remember that afternoon. That's horrible. Anyhow you step on glass, you're forced to remember shards of glass. Usually that stuff just goes the trash. Right.
Speaker: It can be arbitrary. You're like, that's what I remember? That's good trick, though. A guy covered in scars probably has an incredible memory. Yes. Tattoos. A memento. Or brutally, they don't. Or brutally, it's like, what's that from? And they're like, don't know. I've lived a life. clumsy.
Speaker: I just don't know. just I'm sorry. These are all from one day. You know, what's I will remember this more than you guys, I would guess. Because this is a little bit more different for me because that's not my podcast. Although...
Speaker: I remember when Pierce was on. I remember when I was on No Problem. Because I ran into a guy that I was... We went to eat or something and I ran into a guy that... And Pierce was like, who is that? I was like, that's a guy i was flirting with. And Pierce was like, yeah, I could tell because you made your voice way lower. i was like, damn you got me there. Holy shit. Yeah. It was interesting. And then we went to a restaurant where I was served by another another guy I was flirting with.
Speaker: Yes. That was a great day. And... I loved that day. it was really fun. And I actually, we had one of my favorite, to me, maybe one of my favorite ever discussions on my podcast, which was about how dogs are bred as and like entertainment. And then how like our generationally, it's one of the only like generational insights that I've ever really liked, which is that like,
Speaker: post-Boomer, it's like we were bred as like kind of an entertainment. like That was a a prominent cultural idea. I thought it was very smart. Yeah, the idea that um we're part of the... like I'm sure we told English Bulldogs the same thing. It's like, you're going to be part of what we call the creative class. Yeah, Your previous dog ancestors, they toiled and they suffered and they wiped dirt from their brow after catching rats in ah in a dingy, futile livestock area. And now you get to ah chase your dreams. it's just Are these quotes from the episode? No, just a different sort of ah take, a re-riff. But it's so potent that it's actually taking over this episode. Yeah. Sorry. No, no, i'm I'm just impressed. You were right. It's ah it's a really good riff. It's a really good... I mean, to me, it was totally smart.
Speaker: The question is, i think it's a very smart question, does it bother if this is not remembered? Like, is a good time still good or worth anything if it wasn't remembered?
Speaker: Or does it bother you if you do think you're going to remember it? i mean, it could. Yeah, people do sometimes bothers me that I remember just kind of random days. And people also say, like, I'll remember this about, like, a horrible...
Speaker: ah wrong that's been committed against them. It's funny because you I feel like to make peace with that, the idea like I could have a good time but I won't remember it is like i have to be like, oh, but it'll be part of a like gestalt. Right. Like it'll be like, like... It'll be further proof of everything you already believe and feel about your life. Yeah, exactly. Further like confirmation.
Speaker: I'm really doing this. That it'll it'll orient me in a certain way. it'll It'll contribute to a feeling. It'll like, you know, you know this thing. Okay, okay, okay, okay, okay.
Speaker: like All right. Okay, we got something. Do you know how sometimes you go to like a specific place a lot or you have like a pattern in your life of like we go to this bar a lot and you you very rarely remember any individual moment of going to that bar or oh, when my friend lived there, we always went to parties at her house. You just have a montage in your head. You have kind of a montage, and that can be kind of nice.
Speaker: And you sort of like, and what any individual moment, you're kind of choosing, like, so do we go to that bar that we always go to, or do we kind of maybe try to do a new thing? You're like, well, the new thing we could really remember singularly, we know if we go to this bar again, it will just fall into this kind of general kind of...
Speaker: soup of memory, but it will therefore, we know that it will be counted. Like we will remember the soup. Like it will go somewhere. I feel like this question comes up a bunch of like, do we do the thing that is our pattern? So all of which is to say, i don't know if we will remember this podcast specifically.
Speaker: i feel pretty confident that God willing, 20 years from now, if we're in a position to be remembering anything, we will be like, remember that era where we were doing this kind of thing. And this will be is somehow essentially part of that. This will show up in the X-ray. This will show up in the soup of that. This will show up in the soup of like, we were doing podcasts. We were having these kind of discussions. We're at this place in our careers. This fit in in this way.
Speaker: You know, maybe that's a kind of way of reckoning with it. I just realized we won't remember this simply because the 25th anniversary of 9-11 was so over the top with people like re-investigating, sharing videos, talking about like, again, as if it's the first time that this has been appropriate to talk about where they were and how they experienced it because the big two five and 9-11 always creates this never forget memory vortex on the preceding five and the subsequent five days And unfortunately, this memory will just get swept up in the 25th anniversary of 9-11. Yeah, but this is more memorable than that because is something we do every year.
Speaker: we do it. This is a singular experience. We watch the videos again every year to celebrate. We watch all those people die every year.
Speaker: To celebrate. Sometimes stuff happens where i'm like I'm like, I'll look back, I'm like, oh my God, that was such a fun day. And I'm like, oh my God, that was October 7th, 2023. Like, holy fucking shit. I'm like, oh my God, that was so cute and fun. Remember when we all did that? I was like, that was the day after 2024 election. Admittedly, neither of those are as memorable as 9-11, but kind of same vibe.
Speaker: Still there. Anytime anyone's talking about a fun day, you can point to an on this day in history and kind of pour cold water over their good experience. Right, exactly. Someone's sister got third degree burns. Someone's sister got second degree burns. it's like Oh my god.
Speaker: and While you were out partying five years ago. Like two days before the anniversary of my sister's second or third degree burns, you went shopping with your friend and had a good time.
Speaker: How does that feel to hear? How does that make me feel? Ask yourself that. It's funny. It's random what you remember. It's random what you remember. something like But sometimes you remember an example of an experience that becomes kind of a placeholder for like a whole genre of experiences. And maybe this will be the one for us. Yeah. I doubt it. This will usurp all other sort of default flashbulb podcast memories. God, I hope so. This is our new checkpoint.
Speaker: Something really Derek, you have to punch the wall to make that really happen or break something or get or someone has to get really bad or really news. Does have to be something bad? Yeah. Like I'm moving around at shit I can break, but I don't see anything that I can easily improve. Derek, you should have a piece of candy. You're like, oh my God, of course was it was. We recorded the podcast and then Derek had the piece of candy. It made him so happy. And we were all so happy.
Speaker: Should we have Derek or how about Charlie? You can read your one more. Yeah, I support that. wish I knew. i think I would have had more fun writing them if I knew the part of it where it's like they're long and have like an argument in them.
Speaker: And I want to pitch right now. I want to come back again on the podcast later, later, later. no rush. And I want to do it again. Now I really see it and I'm ready to... This is a new thing that we're trying out. And we ne we can't tell what's more enjoyable. Short questions that are extremely open-ended or long questions that basically prescribe the answer in the question. No, they didn't. I thought both of you guys asked really, really, really smart questions. Legit.
Speaker: I thought they were really good. Thank you. Derek, why don't you do one? Eh, but... We're not going to get to yours then. And I'm just going to be here for the next recording. Yeah, all right. I only second this, Charlie. I think Derek should do yeah exactly. i want to see if I have a better, smarter question, though. Okay.
Speaker: but Here's my question. Okay.
Speaker: What do you guys think about ukraine the Ukraine war? My God. I'm skipping this. I want to have Charlie ask a question. I'll give it a shot. That's awesome.
Speaker: Against. but so You don't think it happened? Or should happen? I don't think it happened. It's definitely really sad.
Speaker: It's definitely like totally a bummer when things come to that. I know it's really like I can I really can't imagine what it's like to live under that. Like geopolitically, I have like instincts. There's also an interesting thing that happens where it's like because like it's positioned in such a way by like people we kind of politically don't like here.
Speaker: I sometimes I'm like, oh, shut up about it. You know what I mean? it's like the New York Times is so addicted to it that I'm like, oh my God. like And you guys are always fucking wrong. So this must not be like this must not be as righteous as you think. I wish I knew one thing about it that was true. I'll tell you something about Here's something that is a verified fact. People say it all the time, and I have read in the New York Times.
Speaker: People say that Zelensky was like the Jon Stewart of Ukraine. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. That's a fact, Pierce. All right. So imagine that. But I don't even know if Jon Stewart is the Jon Stewart of America right now. so its yeah He's a war-hungry right-winger. He used to be the Jon Stewart of America. But he's just that he is that now.
Speaker: They made a movie about Robin Williams being the Jon Stewart who win becomes president or something. Oh, yeah, they did. They did. What is that? Good Morning Vietnam? No, it something else. It was like 2004 or 2003 or something. What is Good Morning Vietnam about? is that That can be my last question. ah That is a good question. What is about?
Speaker: Yeah. Breakfast. It can't be about breakfast only. Surely that's the opening montage. Eggs and hash. man Okay, I have questions. Let's have it. Can I give all three of them and you guys choose one?
Speaker: Yes. Yeah. Okay, these are three questions I have. This one is the... um ah Can there be a whole without a part? Is anything indivisible?
Speaker: That's one question. this one This next question, I'm completely, completely stealing from XKCD. Webcomic, which... Yes. um They had a panel. They had a comic that was like basically asking the question...
Speaker: So I'm just bringing in. I'm just a conduit for this question. They're basically like, people talk about wine as if it has this great depth. By the way, my boyfriend slash husband is like a wine guy. So he really talks about this. This is in my life now.
Speaker: And I've always wondered via XKCD, does anything have that depth if you spend that much time with it? Like the joke in the XKCD is like,
Speaker: um could you find that much depth about a series of photos of joe Biden eating a grilled cheese sandwich? ha ha ha ha ha I wonder this in my life because something i see is I know a lot of like gay guy artists and gay guy photographers, and they all take so much gay guy art is representations of like sexy gay guys.
Speaker: They love, love representing the sexy male form. And I wonder, I'm like, is this a total limitation or is this one of those things where you're actually using a really narrow constraint and finding like a ton of depth in it? Is there like in does it go is there infinite depth in like representation of sexy gay guys in the same way that wine is actually just like kind of one arbitrary random process? But that's my my gay guy wine question.
Speaker: Great. And then... My last question is about taste, which is I'm basically wondering, like, I've never quite figured out what makes a movie good. and if there's like a goodness to a movie that's like outside of like our own reaction to it or what it does for us.
Speaker: i've never I've never quite felt at ease in conversations about like a movie being good. Have you never felt a movie you've watched is good? I have. Okay. But you can't justify it?
Speaker: i can't ground it I can't quite tease apart like it's telling a story. I know there's a craft thing that I can get behind. Movies have good craft. They have bad craft. They do storytelling effectively or not effectively. But then sometimes I'm like, I like a movie and it's because it's like this story is particularly resonant for me and it's telling it in this effective way. And then other people are like, that story is boring. And I'm like, well, what are we doing here? And and like I'm supposed to be like, it's good? You're supposed to be like, it's not good? Before we go too far into answering the third question, i think that we should... By the way, I think that your third question and your second question are so related. There's something about movies... There's something about movies that are just obviously the highest form of art because they combine basically every other form of art right into one expression. right And for that reason... ah
Speaker: appreciating a film will never be as narrow as appreciating wine because there's just too many possibilities um and so that's why i feel like taste but taste being a sommelier is much easier to imagine than being ah a film critic who can ground his criticisms in anything other than preference um yes okay but maybe we should all do a silent vote on which question we want to answer in the chat on three okay One was, can a whole exist without a part? Two was, ah can depth can depth be derived from something just by time with spent with it? And ah we got it. We got it. We got it. We remember. It's for our listeners. What were the questions? Please.
Speaker: It seems like it's two. Two was mine. Yeah. Yeah, let's do it. yeah Okay, great. Well, to me, this seems very related to the consciousness question, or at least my take on it. Oh, that's interesting. Where the consciousness is sort of like the depth of the wine, where you spend enough time around people, eventually you're going to start ah imagining, ah use like qualia. Is that the right word? Ooh, I liked that word. I hope it's right.
Speaker: i don't know. I'm looking it up. It's another dinnet thing. Is it? He deals with qualia. Qualia? What does it mean? I used it because it felt right. ah In philosophy of mind, qualia are defined as instances of subjective experience. I feel like there's so many like philosophy terms that are that. Yeah. It's like life world or something. Isn't that yes what that means? That's a German thing, yeah. Yeah, I do i i kind of agree with Matthew too. It's almost like um the complexity...
Speaker: And depth and complexity, I guess, are two different things. I can imagine something being complex, but once you understand it, the complexity is still there, but it's completely accounted for. Depth is almost just like, if something is deep, it's like, yeah it can't ever have all of its depth accounted for. There will always be something more to plumb. i think it has to do with depth, but it also has to do with difference and having like many experiences of the same kind.
Speaker: and noticing differences that you wouldn't notice if you'd only had like three of those experiences. Right. Like otherwise, kind of like the what we were saying with memory. ah ah If you've only been on podcast once, you probably would remember that. But this this is more likely to blur. Well, actually, no, that doesn't really answer that question. huh Why would this be blurring? But no, we can assess. We can say a lot about this recording. Right. Because we it gets blurrier the more podcasts you do. And if we took like ah a pre-verbal f French. Does that happen with wine? Or wait, why did say French? The more wine you drink, the blurrier it'll
Speaker: What were we saying earlier? Pre-verbal blind If we raised a child in a box where they could only podcast, well, I don't know what I'm getting at here. That's how I raised. would blurry experience for them.
Speaker: Basically, every question like this is rendered completely moot when you imagine raising a child to do any one specific thing and only that. So you raise a child to only engage with wine. Let's imagine that, actually. Let's imagine sommelier wild child. That's funny. Who...
Speaker: A child who's never able to see the sun, is never able to leave their tiny four foot by four foot cubicle, and they're forced to engage with the depth, body, flavor profile, tannins, and so on. Wine. is that child going to be Is that child going to grow up to be a sommelier prodigy, or are they going to be completely dysfunctional in all matters social and wine-based? Isn't that how they make fa-gra? Like they trap an animal. It's not a child, I don't think, but they trap some kind of animal in a cage and then ah put a tube of wine down its throat. just like It's not wine, it's feed. It's like fat. Yeah, they they do that to geese. You might be thinking of Ortolan where they drown the they drown the bird in wine. Does the goose get really good at knowing about feed because it's supposed to it? and' true no there's No, the answer to that question is there's no way. It's going back to the blur.
Speaker: Even though foie gras goose's life is spent with just deeply, deeply consuming food, it all blurs. Yes, but you know when you have a job or you're doing something so menial and you do start to like... Flow state? No. More like you're so not in the flow state that you have to engage with like the most minute differences. And you're like, if your job for like a thing, you're doing something that involves like, I have to like fold this thing again and again. You're like, ah when they are when i'm when they're here, it's easier for me because I have a slight little lip underneath. Like you become so attuned to like completely...
Speaker: what would otherwise be imperceptible differences. actually think, I think the thing about it is that you isolate a variable. yes And so if there's, it's like with wine, it's like otherwise with foods, you would you wouldn't get to go that deep because there's like,
Speaker: so many different variables going on that you can't really like... You can get a lot of breadth, but you don't always get as much depth, whereas... I think you're right. There's like a question of irritability that comes up with overexposure. yeah And that's what gives you insight into any given thing's complexity or depth, is you just have to have a sensitive... Not even sensitive, like a like a dermatological problem when it comes to yeah interfacing with this stuff. Like it it has to be hypersensitive yeah in a way that like, if you touch it, I will bleed. Like for the instance of the foie gras goose, if something gets stuck in the foie gras goose's tooth,
Speaker: that is going that The consciousness of that experience is going to be so overwhelming compared to a wild goose who gets a piece of sand stuck in his bill. Yeah. you know There's like a sensitivity.
Speaker: Although it probably passes a point where it like you know where if you do something long enough, you cannot... I feel like there's maybe like an arc of this where it's like at first when you're doing something to make to try to make it interesting, you find nuance, you find little you know things to pay attention to, and then the act of paying attention becomes untenable and exhausting.
Speaker: and it's not interesting. And so you you probably just shut down. The conscious goose probably maybe starts by being like, oh, the feed right now is actually a little bit more it's actually a little bit more mushy than normal. Oh, there's a little bit of an air pocket here. And then probably in that case, because it's a totally awful and gruesome metaphor, probably pretty quickly, the goose is like, if I'm thinking about the feed, I'll just want to fucking kill myself. so you probably I'm just going to think about baseball. you just are Or you just like, your brain shuts off.
Speaker: Probably. Yeah. um So I think that would probably happen to the the child. The sommelier wild child. The wild child who is maybe outside of the box and maybe the only food they eat is wine or the only drink they have. Maybe that they have enough going on where they can find a way to make that continually interesting. Yeah, give it variety in life, but only wine to drink. i And it probably depends on the child.
Speaker: Yeah. Some kids are just not suited to that. Some kids are such bad sommeliers, it's embarrassing. And it's it's it makes me so mad. Yeah. Have you seen Joe Castle Baker's bit that's like the sommelier who like, but it's like sense memory brings him back to something? it's Like some dog millionaire sommelier? Yeah, I can't remember the exact kind of punchlines in it, but it was like, wow, let me taste it. Let me sniff this wine. And he sniffs and it's like...
Speaker: 1922, was blah, blah, blah. And she was, it's like, you know, kind of trance. um It was funnier when he did it. I like the sound of it. It's funny. It's a good premise, basically. We're going to play it at the end of this episode. Thank you. So I think we covered that.
Speaker: I'm basically completely satisfied. too. i have more I want from life, but as far as this episode is concerned, yeah, it's doing pretty good. It's entertaining, clever. This episode was bright and bubbly. It was.
Speaker: Moving even. they said Well, I don't know. there was We got into it, though. We explored something deep, which is hard to do when when brightness is the key. If there's a light at the bottom of a pool. Or if you're just wearing a headlamp.
Speaker: I mean, is is a spelunker wearing a headlamp and exploring a dark cave? Is that a bright experience? or I feel like whenever you're thinking about something in a deep way, you should say, you've got your headlamp on. Hey, Derek, that's not bad at all. I feel like you're more pithy than you give yourself credit for. I feel like sometimes you'll just spit out a slogan.
Speaker: No. No, i did so much I don't. I don't spit out a slogan. I wouldn't do that. He's fishing. I agree. I think you're spitting out slogans. I'm not going to say anything interesting in response to that.
Speaker: Yeah, don't. Don't worry about it. We covered it. Don't meet expectations, yeah especially if they're realistic. Right, exactly. be humiliating. Well, guys, this has been Chamber of Reason. This has been life-changing. Um...
Speaker: you
