Latest / Words & Numbers / Episode 502: Us & Them

Transcript

Episode 502: Us & Them · Words & Numbers

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  Coming up next on Words and Numbers, politics and Hungary,
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  technology, panics, conspiracy theories.
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  And are we? Partisan, Of course we're
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  partisan, but what the hell? All this and more coming up next
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  on Words and Numbers. Hi, I'm James.
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  And I'm Anthony and. This is words and numbers.
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  Ant. What's new and exciting in your
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  world this week? A family of a Florida man is
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  suing Google, claiming that Google's AI, Gemini drove this
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  man to paranoia and suicide. We've heard stories like this
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  and you know, people get concerned about AI.
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  In fact, there was. It's at least one point, I don't
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  know whether it was a federal or some states were talking about
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  regulating AI because it's dangerous and so forth.
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  And I did a little bit of background reading and there is
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  a thing called worse or fever. Have you heard this term?
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  It's a term in psychology. I've never heard that term
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  before. Worther Fever.
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  It comes from a novel by Goethe, The Sorrows of Young Worther,
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  published in 1774. And in this book, which became
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  quite popular, the protagonist ends up committing suicide.
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  And apparently there were a number of cases back in the late
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  1700s of people reading the book and then mimicking things that
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  happened in the book, amongst them committing suicide.
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  There were a number of people who were found, like, you know,
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  their bodies were found clutching the book, this kind of
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  thing. And it got me thinking about
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  broadly what what the the psychologist called technology
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  panics that when some technology comes along, and this was just a
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  book, but what's interesting about it is when it comes about
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  1774, this is around the time that you're starting to get
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  greater and greater numbers of people becoming literate.
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  So it's not that the book was the new technology, but rather
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  that the people are reading becomes, in some sense a new
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  technology. And then in the 30s and 40s,
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  people were concerned about movie addiction.
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  You know, we had this new thing of the moving pictures, and
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  people would go, and some people go and like, watch movie after
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  movie after movie. And this became a thing that
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  they talk about. But then in our lifetimes, when
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  I was young, Dungeons and Dragons became a new game and
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  people became very concerned that it was promoting A cult
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  behavior and so forth. I remember like it was yesterday
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  when this group of morons called cops for Christ came to my
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  school and explained to us how we were all going to burn a lake
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  of non consuming fire with we play Dungeons and Dragons.
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  They also said that if we listen to Led Zeppelin we were going to
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  end up in the same place so it was difficult to take them
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  seriously. But I myself am movie addicted
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  even to this day. Well, yeah, I mean, I guess to
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  an extent, everybody's addicted to something.
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  I mean, you like something and you repeat the thing and at some
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  point you do it enough and people label it an addiction.
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  But I think it's a, it's a continuum, right?
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  But even as recently as a couple of decades ago, maybe even 1
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  decade ago, people were becoming very concerned about video games
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  inciting violence in. Kids nonsense.
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  These are technology Pinnix. My my hometown senator Joe
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  Lieberman was way out in front on that.
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  And he was convinced that people were young, people were coming
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  violent because they played violent video games.
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  Right, right. And I found, you know, as a
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  young parent, and of course this is just an observation of one,
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  but I'll throw it out as an observation that, you know, you
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  have young kids, particularly young boys tend to be very
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  rambunctious. You got to find things to for
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  them to get their energy out on and I found it.
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  Video games actually calmed my kids down.
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  They could get it. Whatever this pent up energy was
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  would come out in the video game.
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  They'd be much calmer after, but nonetheless.
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  And so now we have AII submit that what's going on is simply
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  this again. Now you could argue AI is a
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  little bit, I wouldn't even say different.
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  I would say the difference would be not in quality, but in
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  quantity. AI mirrors the person, and so if
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  you sit down to it and you have a mental illness and you start
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  interacting with it intensely, that mental illness is going to
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  get reflected back at you. In fact, you probably get some
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  kind of a feedback loop in which the thing expands.
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  But the fundamental problem isn't the AI, in the same way
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  that it isn't Dungeons and Dragons, it isn't the videos, it
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  isn't the movie, it isn't the book.
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  It's the user. The person is bringing something
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  to the table here that's that's a problem.
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  It's always the person and and you know, every couple of years
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  we get a lawsuit brought by bereaved parents, typically
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  because their child, usually of an early teenage vintage, has
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  been talked into killing himself by a friend, a potential
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  girlfriend, an ex-girlfriend right there.
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  There's any number of categories you can pick from, but it's
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  always somebody of roughly the same age, right?
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  You never find a 52 year old talking a 14 year old into
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  suicide. It's that for whatever reason
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  never happens. But I always take the approach,
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  and I think reasonably so, that you can't talk someone into
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  suicide, right? You can, you can push and you
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  can nudge. And I think that's an
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  extraordinarily poor taste and you ought not do it.
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  That makes you a terrible human being.
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  But the people who kill themselves were very likely
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  going to kill themselves no matter what.
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  Now you can come up with counter examples, right?
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  Philosophically at least, where you hand a man, you know, a, a
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  gun with one bullet and you say either kill yourself or this
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  person. I'm, I'm clearly not talking
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  about that kind of thing, right? I'm, I'm talking about people
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  who just go home and quietly commit suicide because somebody
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  else said they should. And, and I find that they were
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  on that ledge to begin with almost inevitably.
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  And in the end, even if they weren't, could it really be
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  anyone else's fault that someone committed suicide?
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  Because that open can of worms that I don't think we want to
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  open. Yeah, I'm with you that the AI
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  doesn't cause the suicide. However, it seems to me that
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  there are. How should I say it would be
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  appropriate to give warnings that certain people who are
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  susceptible probably shouldn't be messing with it, in the same
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  way we give warnings for all sorts of other danger,
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  potentially dangerous things that under certain
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  circumstances, certain people probably shouldn't be messing
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  with it? Yeah, I I get that.
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  But are we going to start giving warnings for terrible people?
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  If you're suicidal, you shouldn't talk to Johnny.
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  He's pretty awful and he'll try and talk you into it.
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  I mean, at some point I and I don't know where the point is.
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  At some point it becomes just silly, right?
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  Yeah, but but the that doesn't imply that we shouldn't do
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  anything at all. I think there's some rush things
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  that you can say. It it doesn't imply that we
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  shouldn't do anything at all, although I do sense that we have
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  found yet another thing that you and I are going to differ on
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  because I don't know that I would take proactive steps here.
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  I mean, it would be like saying we shouldn't let mentally ill
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  people near search engines because they will find things
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  that will make them unstable. I don't know.
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  I my, my knee jerk is AI is new enough that we really it becomes
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  difficult to point to common sense and say, look, any person
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  with common sense would know. I don't think that's the case
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  currently with AI now, five years from now, that might be
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  another matter. I, I think that's right, but I,
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  I point to what I perceive as a flaw in your logic, not just
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  here, but overall, because you've been saying for a couple
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  of years now that AI is literally no different than any
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  other product that has ever hit the market.
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  It will have a disruptive effect, and then that disruptive
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  effect will disappear and everything will be better.
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  Well, either it's so different that we have to regulate it so
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  people don't kill themselves, or it's so much the same that it's
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  going to follow a very clear and distinct pattern and I can't
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  see. How?
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  No, no, no, I, I, I think there's a, there's a third,
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  which is that, look, it takes a little bit of time for people to
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  figure out what this is about. Look, we did the same thing with
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  cigarettes and it took a while for us to figure out that these
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  things will kill you. So they put a message on it.
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  Now, now, today, they this might cause cancer is kind of
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  meaningless because everybody knows that, right?
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  We do the same thing with alcohol.
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  Look, you know, if you're pregnant, you probably shouldn't
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  be doing this. But again, we've advanced enough
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  that everybody knows that It's common sense.
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  And I wonder if it's the same sort of thing applies with AI,
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  at least for the moment. If if you have mental
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  instability you shouldn't be messing with this.
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  I don't know I think that just opens up the Pandora's box
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  right, because everybody in the world is going to just start
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  suing AI companies over every damn thing.
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  I mean I I'd rather say look, you're the user you choose to
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  click on the the thing now it's on you Good luck.
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  I don't know we'll we'll see how it goes.
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  I'm, I'm concerned that a court will find in favor of a grieving
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  family and then that will cause all of the rest of us to lose
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  out on something that would have been of tremendous value.
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  Yeah, I, I find that hard to believe.
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  If for no other reason I'm going to be cynical here in that that
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  the world has spent $1.6 trillion developing this so far.
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  I can't imagine some some judge somewhere is is not going to
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  feel tremendous pressure. Sure.
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  But if that's the case, then why proceed at all?
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  And then we also have that hidden expense that we never
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  talked about, the increase in insurance rates for this and
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  every other damn thing because people have become so litigious.
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  In the end, we all pay for this. It's not like somebody gets a
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  billion dollars settlement and it doesn't come out of your
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  pocket. It does in some way.
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  But anyway, I want to bring us aunt to the country of Hungary,
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  a place that has been very interesting lately because of a,
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  what's that technical term that we use in political science all
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  the time ass clown named Viktor Orban, who has run Hungary for
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  the last 16 years. Donald Trump, big fan of Viktor
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  Orban. As matter of fact, JD Vance went
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  over to Hungary to campaign on his behalf.
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  Oh oh wow, that is so embarrassing.
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  He's sitting a sitting vice president campaigning on behalf
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  of a foreign dignity. Woah.
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  That's oh, and it gets so much better.
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  During one of the rallies, they called Donald Trump on the phone
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  and put a microphone up to the phone and Donald Trump said what
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  a wonderful man Viktor Orban is. Oh my God.
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  And how everybody should rush right out and vote for him now.
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  The election was not too terribly long ago.
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  And as we went to record, the news I was getting is that
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  results wouldn't be available for a few more hours.
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  But Axios has come up with the headline earthquake in Hungary,
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  Orban defeated after 16 years in power.
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  So all the JD Vance and Donald Trump in the world might not
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  have been able to help him. And I hope that's true.
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  Well, I wonder if it went the other way.
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  Yeah, it could it it might well have.
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  Orban was he's one of these kind of, how do you even put it, Neo
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  authoritarians, right? That, that you see around the
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  world right now flowing from the, the Trumpism that we
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  experienced here, right? So you, you get it in Japan, you
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  get it in Italy, you get it in Hungary, although Orban predates
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  Trump by a bit. It it's interesting, right?
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  And I think from what I was able to scan right before this
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  episode, very, very quickly, it does seem as though he has
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  conceded and it's over, which changes the face of Europe and
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  will now Central and Eastern Europe will not be the same
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  because of this. There, there is a, a, a new
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  breath of a new kind of air in that area.
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  And we're going to have to wait and see what it all means in the
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  end. But it's heartening that an
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  authoritarian has been sent packing.
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  And you know, people like Erdogan over in Turkey should be
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  shaking in their boots right now because what happened in Hungary
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  could easily happen in other places.
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  So the world and look, it's N = 1.
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  You can't make solid predictions here, but the world might be
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  getting a little tired of this nonsense.
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  Yeah. And we'll see where it goes.
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  I'm, I'm fascinated to see where it goes next.
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  And this of course, brings us to the foolishness of the week.
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  And it's kind of a happy foolishness of the week.
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  You and I have talked about many, many, many conspiracy
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  theories over the years. Some of my all time favourites,
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  right? Pizzagate.
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  Remember that one? Pizzagate was great.
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  Q Anon. That was as much fun as a
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  political scientist could ever have, right?
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  Reading that nonsense and watching people fall for it
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  left, right and center. 9/11 truthers are probably some of
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  the worst people I've ever seen. And yet I can't log on to X
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  without at least seeing them once a week.
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  And and I don't know if you know this, but X has a feature where
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  you can block certain. Words.
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  Oh really? I didn't.
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  Know that, yeah. And.
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  And I found a couple of words that block I.
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  Well, the word I blocked was chemtrails.
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  And all the chemtrails people just magically disappeared.
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  It's as if they don't even live anymore.
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  Well, I know they're all, I know they're all still out there, but
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  they're all so stupid that I don't want to hear it.
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  So bye bye. And then there's the Holocaust
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  deniers, which are probably the worst of the bunch, right?
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  And I read something today that indicates that the the total
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  number of Jews in the world is still lower than pre Holocaust
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  levels. So.
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  Really. That's surprising.
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  It's 2026. Yeah, that was 80 years ago.
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  Oh my God. Do you know the numbers?
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  Like proportionally how? How much are they down compared
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  to before? Right now, of the total number
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  of Jews in the world, 7.2% or 7.2 million of them live in
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  Israel and approximately 6.3 of them, which about 40%, live in
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  the United States. That's about 85% of Jews
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  worldwide. Isn't that interesting?
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  So in 1939, the Jewish population was 16.6 million.
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  Today, well, it dropped to 11,000,000 in 45, which is a
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  pretty significant drop in Right now it's about 14.8 million.
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  Oh wow. Right, right.
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  But that's not what I wanted to talk about.
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  Believe it or not, what I wanted to talk about.
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  Right, you said this was a happy foolishness.
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  Yes, the flat earthers. The flat earthers who are fit to
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  be tied over everything they've seen with Artemis 2.
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  They, they just can't cram all the Artemis 2 data into their
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  idiotic worldview. And, and honestly, and I wonder,
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  I really do wonder, because if you were in NASA, right, if you
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  were up and running in NASA and you had any say at all, wouldn't
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  you have made Artemis 2 do a Figure 8 around the Earth and
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  around the moon? Well, in fact, that's what it
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  did, right? I thought it just went and went
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  to the moon. No, it had to orbit the earth
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  1st and then the moon. It orbited and then came back.
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  Then then, shouldn't we be forcing by law everybody to
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  watch the orbit of the Earth to see?
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  It no, but you perfect roundness you you aren't being created
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  creative enough. James.
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  There are all sorts of of explanations that one can give
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  as to how that might be simulated, despite the fact that
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  indeed the world is flat. Right.
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  Well, I'll, I'll just want a completely different topic.
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  Some doctor was complaining on, on X this week that in order to
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  be admitted to the hospital in which she she had whatever
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  rights doctors have at hospitals, you had to fill out a
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  form. And one was your, your gender.
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  And one of the things you could choose was gender queer.
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  Which I, I don't know what that tells anybody, but I got to tell
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  you, man, there's not a force on earth or in heaven strong enough
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  that would get me not to check that box as I checked.
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  I just want to throw it out there because it's kind of funny
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  and I, I just, I wouldn't be able to help myself.
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  Anyway, we were going to talk about something relatively
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  serious today, weren't we? Well, yeah, what we wanted to
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  talk about is, is the fact that this goes in cycles.
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  We've been doing this podcast for what, 8 years now?
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  And we've been through. We started under the Obama
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  administration, I believe, and then had Trump won, then had
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  Biden, and now we have Trump, too.
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  And there's this pattern that emerges that when there's a
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  Democrat in office, we get a spike in, you know, membership
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  requests and speaking requests from people who are Republican.
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  When there's a Republican in office, it goes the other way.
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  And so it seems that that were perceived to be anti Democrat
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  during the Democratic administrations and anti
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  Republican during the Republican administrations.
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  And the fact of the matter is we're not either of those things
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  as. As usual, you're being way too
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  nice. You're, you're framing things in
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  way too sensible a way. When there is a Republican
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  administration, as there is right now, we are either
• 21:50
  suffering from Trump Derangement Syndrome or we're a couple of
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  cocks. When there are when there are
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  Democrats in office, we are a couple of reactionary
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  conservatives who would enslave half the world given the chance
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  that this is how it is no matter who's in charge, the people who
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  are in our orbit. And and by in our orbit.
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  We were talking very specifically about our little
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  community, which is no longer little.
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  I think we should call it our medium sized community over
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  words and numbers backstage where the conversation
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  continues, as I like to say back in the before times and the, the
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  people there are very, very hostile towards one another
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  right now. And I think it's a good
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  microcosm of the broader electorate, right.
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  But because it's a, a Republican administration and because many
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  of the people weren't with us when there was a Democratic
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  administration, they just naturally assume that everything
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  we say, which is very typically anti administration, they just
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  naturally assumed that we are anti Trump.
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  And definitionally we are anti Trump.
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  But we were also anti Biden right before that and we were
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  anti Trump right before that and we were anti Obama right before
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  that, right? We we are anti authoritarian
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  authoritarian. Yeah.
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  And whoever's in charge, we're going to have some things to say
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  about that because people who exercise power over other people
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  tend to do it in ways that we find offensive.
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  Yeah. And I, I would say more than
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  ways that we find offensive, ways that we find antithetical
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  to the principles that most of us, both left and right proposed
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  to, to uphold principles in our founding documents about the
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  individual rights in the proper role of government.
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  And, and what what I find is people on both the left and the
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  right will say they believe in limited government, they believe
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  in, in individual rights, except for this one thing that they're
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  particularly fond of. And if this thing that they're
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  fond of requires authoritarianism to bring it to
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  fruition, all of a sudden they're authoritarian.
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  Well, that's fine if there's only one thing, but there's
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  hundreds of millions of things and before you know it, never.
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  One thing. Yeah, you've got the government
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  that we have now. I think that's right.
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  And you know the the old, I don't know how apocryphal it
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  even is, right, if this ever happened.
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  But you know, Mr. Franklin, what have you given us?
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  A Republic if you can keep it. And part part of the keeping of
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  the Republic is that you have to follow the rules.
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  The rules have to be more important than your preferred
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  outcome right now, today, over this particular issue, right?
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  Which is why you and I tend to be, dare I say it, First
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  Amendment absolutists. Say whatever you want.
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  There shouldn't be anything off the table, right?
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  You should be able to say whatever the hell you want.
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  That doesn't mean there should be no repercussions, right?
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  It just means you should be able to say whatever you want.
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  And if you come to have to pay a price for what you have said,
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  well, I guess you should have thought of that.
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  But that doesn't mean you can't say what you want to say.
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  And it doesn't mean that the person next to you can't reply.
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  It means the person next to you can't beat you with a stick.
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  It means the cop near you can't put you in jail.
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  And we are ever absolutists on this matter.
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  And occasionally we're, we are called fools because of this,
• 26:07
  right? Because isn't it so obvious that
• 26:09
  this person should never be allowed to say what he's saying?
• 26:14
  Well, no, it it's actually not obvious to me.
• 26:18
  Not at all. We're we are Second Amendment
• 26:22
  absolutists. The right to keep and bear Arms
• 26:26
  shall not be infringed. All I see everywhere I look is
• 26:30
  an infringement. Every time I have to have a
• 26:33
  license, my right has just been infringed.
• 26:36
  When I can't have a magazine of a certain number of with a
• 26:43
  certain number of bullets in it, that's an infringement.
• 26:47
  Hell, I'll go so far as to say an automatic weapons ban is an
• 26:50
  infringement. See, don't but, but notice this
• 26:55
  is a good example because somebody, somebody could come
• 26:58
  back at you and say, well, you're just for violence.
• 27:05
  That's not, no, it doesn't say you're for violence.
• 27:08
  You're for the right to defend yourself.
• 27:11
  That's very different saying that you're right, you you're
• 27:14
  for the right to impose violence on others.
• 27:17
  That's not what we're saying. That's correct.
• 27:19
  I think I should be subject to all of the laws against doing
• 27:25
  harm to other human beings, right?
• 27:29
  Those laws don't just magically go away.
• 27:32
  But, you know, look, here are a couple of things that we are
• 27:35
  absolutists about. Well, that doesn't make us
• 27:40
  crazy. That puts us fully in line with
• 27:44
  the framers of the American Constitution.
• 27:47
  But notice something to to deal with this.
• 27:52
  Someone has got to listen to what you just said and process
• 27:57
  it and understand the nuance that when you say something like
• 28:02
  you're for free speech, that doesn't mean you are against
• 28:06
  ramifications of free speech, right?
• 28:08
  You have to think, you have to listen, You have to think about
• 28:10
  this. That's unfortunately difficult.
• 28:16
  And let me say it differently. I think we have become largely
• 28:19
  lazy in that we don't do either of those things.
• 28:22
  We don't listen to each other and we don't think about what
• 28:25
  each other have said. Rather, we take the easy way out
• 28:29
  of I heard you say something that is antithetical to what I
• 28:35
  perceive the Republican stand for.
• 28:37
  Therefore, you're a Democrat and I put you in the Democrat box
• 28:40
  and I subscribe to you all the things I think I understand
• 28:44
  about Democrats. And so I, I haven't had to
• 28:47
  listen or think about what you said.
• 28:49
  I just decided. And and if you're a Democrat,
• 28:52
  you're evil. Right, right.
• 28:55
  Yeah. Now, now, the the sociologists
• 28:58
  and political scientists will tell you that political party is
• 29:04
  a very good and effective shorthand for understanding
• 29:08
  where people sit, by and large, right?
• 29:10
  So if I say I'm a Republican, well, if I said in 1982 I'm a
• 29:18
  Republican, you would have been able to to assume a bunch of
• 29:23
  things. Now you wouldn't be correct
• 29:26
  about all of them, but you could assume a bunch of things and be
• 29:29
  about 8595% correct. You could assume that I'd be in
• 29:33
  favor of limited government, lower taxes, probably a limited
• 29:39
  foreign policy that kept troops back home rather than out out
• 29:45
  abroad in messy conflicts. You see where I'm going with
• 29:49
  this, right? That I would probably be a
• 29:52
  Second Amendment purist, and on and on and on and on.
• 29:56
  And I could do with the same kind of list for the Democrats
• 30:00
  of the same period. Political, political party is a
• 30:05
  good shorthand for understanding roughly where people stand, or
• 30:10
  at least it was. Now it the parties have changed
• 30:15
  over time and they're getting more difficult to keep up with.
• 30:20
  So I'm not so sure what I'm looking at now.
• 30:24
  When somebody says I'm a good Republican, right?
• 30:27
  Does that mean you're a Reagan Republican?
• 30:29
  Does that mean you're a Trump Republican?
• 30:32
  Somewhere in the middle? Are you just an anti Clinton
• 30:35
  Republican, an anti Obama Republican?
• 30:38
  What's the list of things that makes a Republican or Republican
• 30:42
  right now? And it's it's not exactly clear.
• 30:45
  But it I think it's worse than that, James.
• 30:48
  I can't even, I have trouble imagining what it is about a
• 30:53
  Republican that's different from a Democrat.
• 30:55
  And I don't mean about the voters.
• 30:57
  I mean about the the policies, the politicians, right?
• 31:00
  Because yeah, I I think that's exactly right.
• 31:04
  And if you, if you ask me what it was to be a, a Democrat in
• 31:08
  198283, I could answer you just exactly as easily as I did with
• 31:13
  the Republicans. Right now.
• 31:16
  I'm not sure now the Republicans have the benefit of being able
• 31:23
  to think in their minds or even say out loud if they feel like
• 31:27
  it. Republicanism is whatever Donald
• 31:30
  Trump says it is, right? And that that's actually more
• 31:34
  reasonable than it might at first sound to be.
• 31:38
  Democrats don't have any option that's like that at all.
• 31:44
  There's nobody in their party they can point to, so all they
• 31:47
  can do is say the Democrats believe in exactly the opposite
• 31:52
  of whatever Donald Trump believes, which by definition is
• 31:55
  stupid. Well, yeah, and I mean, So what?
• 32:01
  Let let's take a few examples. What does he believe in?
• 32:03
  Well, he's invaded the the Middle East and he's bombing
• 32:06
  people. OK, well, Obama bombed people as
• 32:10
  well. He's spending more money than we
• 32:14
  have. He promised to shrink the
• 32:15
  deficit and is actually grown. OK, well, so too did Biden and
• 32:20
  Democrats before him. I don't even if you say as a
• 32:25
  Democrat I'm against everything that Donald Trump is for.
• 32:29
  If you look historically and only go back 1020 years and
• 32:33
  you'll find the Democratic Party is actually for all those things
• 32:37
  that Donald Trump is for. And here's the brilliant sleight
• 32:41
  of hand. And it is brilliant.
• 32:44
  The entire ruling class has made people believe that there are,
• 32:52
  in fact, two options and one is completely different from the
• 32:57
  other. But where we sit as regular
• 33:02
  citizen human beings, it's not left versus right, Democrats
• 33:08
  versus Republicans. It's them versus US.
• 33:12
  Yeah. And we made fun of Viktor Orban,
• 33:16
  the the kind of the teapot dictator that he he wanted to
• 33:20
  be. Well, we have an entire
• 33:23
  republican system of government that in the end has found a way
• 33:28
  to in in some become a teapot dictator.
• 33:35
  Yeah, and it's very much like I, I think about these brands and I
• 33:39
  can't think of a contemporary one, but one of the first cars I
• 33:42
  ever brought bought was a Geo Tracker.
• 33:45
  Chevrolet made what? A what?
• 33:47
  A piece of garbage car that. Was oh, I love that car, but the
• 33:50
  Geo tracker was the same exact car as the Suzuki sidekick.
• 33:56
  They just changed the the name tag that they put on it, and you
• 34:01
  end up in a situation where that's what we have now with the
• 34:04
  Democrats and Republicans. It's the same exact product.
• 34:08
  They just put different names on it.
• 34:10
  And what is that product? It's authoritarianism.
• 34:14
  In both cases, they're looking to expand.
• 34:16
  They're successfully expanding the power of the federal
• 34:19
  government to the exclusion of of individual rights.
• 34:24
  And you might think that they're that, well, OK, but they're
• 34:27
  expanding in a way that I want whether I'm a Democrat or
• 34:31
  Republican, depending on which versions in the White House.
• 34:35
  But no, they're, they're expanding it in in all sorts of
• 34:37
  ways. They're just calling it
• 34:38
  different things. But they're expanding it in ways
• 34:42
  you want right this second. But the next group of people
• 34:46
  will take what was created before, build on it, and run
• 34:52
  with it. Well, in a good example of this,
• 34:55
  I believe it was Bill Clinton who had that famous quote with
• 35:00
  regard to executive order, stroke of the pen law of the
• 35:03
  land. When asked about these executive
• 35:06
  orders he was signing, thought this is pretty cool.
• 35:08
  We just make an executive order, it becomes the law.
• 35:10
  And you and I said at the time, this is before we had the the
• 35:13
  podcast that you extend that. And before you know it, you,
• 35:18
  you're no longer making laws via Congress and votes.
• 35:22
  It's simply a president who says, let it be thus.
• 35:26
  And that's exactly what we have currently.
• 35:29
  It is. And you know, Barack Obama said
• 35:33
  I can't get gun control through Congress, but I have a phone and
• 35:36
  a pen. Right, Yeah.
• 35:39
  It's not a Republican thing, it's a politician thing.
• 35:44
  Well, it is right now. Give it a couple of years, it'll
• 35:46
  be a Democrat thing. That that's right, whoever we
• 35:49
  have the misfortune of living with in the next administration.
• 35:54
  And right now, it's almost impossible for me to believe the
• 35:58
  Democrats won't be able to get their act together to put a
• 36:01
  winning candidate up there. But they have repeatedly shot
• 36:06
  themselves in the feet before. So let's not go crazy, right?
• 36:10
  Could be another Republican. I could virtually guarantee you
• 36:16
  it won't be JD Vance. But I can't guarantee you we'll
• 36:19
  be Marco Rubio. Yeah.
• 36:23
  Ready. Well, he's done what he needed
• 36:25
  to do. Yeah, we talked in the opening
• 36:29
  matter about the feedback that can happen with an AI if you're
• 36:33
  mentally ill and it feet and it reflects that to you and you get
• 36:37
  worse and that gets reflected back to you.
• 36:39
  It's a feedback mechanism. I think we have a similar
• 36:42
  feedback mechanism here that as the two parties become
• 36:46
  effectively the same reasonable people say what's the point in
• 36:53
  voting and they stop voting. So who does vote are the
• 36:57
  unreasonable people who by definition occupy the extremes
• 37:01
  of the left and the right. And So what do you get is a
• 37:06
  sequence every 4 to 8 years of someone whose claims to be more
• 37:11
  extreme to the One Direction versus more extreme to the
• 37:14
  other. And it comes back dressed up
• 37:17
  really as authoritarianism. It will stand in the scope of
• 37:20
  the federal government. 'Cause you've just described the
• 37:24
  primary system to AT right, you have to run further right and
• 37:28
  further left on either side of the divide to get the
• 37:33
  nomination. But the minute you get the
• 37:35
  nomination, you have to rush to the middle because now it's it's
• 37:42
  Burger King versus McDonald's. It's the same terrible product,
• 37:49
  just packaged a little differently, right?
• 37:52
  And This is why people win the White House with by like 2
• 37:58
  percentage points, right? If, if there were a real, and if
• 38:02
  there were a real option, you would see often enough landslide
• 38:10
  victories because people would say, oh, this is a real option,
• 38:15
  I'm going with this. And Reagan then destroys
• 38:19
  Mondale, right? Mondale wins Minnesota, DC and
• 38:22
  nothing else right now. People had a choice in that
• 38:27
  election. It was an obvious choice and
• 38:30
  they made it. And you could argue whether they
• 38:33
  made it correctly or not. I personally think they did, but
• 38:36
  there are counter arguments. But when somebody wins almost
• 38:41
  every Electoral College vote, that wasn't a focus group
• 38:46
  election, right? When I mean, there are people
• 38:52
  alive right now who can't remember one that was like that.
• 38:55
  And that was back when we had Republicans who stood for
• 38:59
  certain things. We had Democrats who stood for
• 39:02
  certain things and, and frankly, I think some of the things
• 39:06
  Republicans, a lot of things Republicans stand for, I agree
• 39:09
  with wholeheartedly. And there are a decent number
• 39:13
  and I I might even say many things that Democrats stand for
• 39:17
  that I agree with wholeheartedly.
• 39:19
  Well, maybe. We don't get those that's.
• 39:22
  If I could stop you right there, You mean stood for?
• 39:28
  Yeah. But well, when I say stand for,
• 39:30
  I guess what what I'm saying when I say stand for, I'm not
• 39:32
  picturing the parties. I'm picturing voters who
• 39:35
  identify. So the average voter who
• 39:38
  identifies as Republican, you ask him, look, what do you
• 39:40
  believe in? And do the same thing with the
• 39:43
  average voter who identifies as Democrat.
• 39:45
  And I think you will find most reasonable people will find a
• 39:48
  lot of things in both lists that they like.
• 39:51
  And I, I submit that this is a good thing because the the
• 39:58
  Democrats see the world. I'm going to paint very broadly
• 40:03
  here. They see the world from one
• 40:05
  perspective. The Republicans see it from a
• 40:07
  different perspective. And neither perspective is 100%
• 40:11
  of the truth. You need to bring these two
• 40:13
  together. But your question begging here,
• 40:16
  right? You're saying ultimately, that
• 40:18
  decent people are decent? Oh, I think, well, no more than
• 40:23
  no, no, I, I, no, I I'll help you out there.
• 40:26
  I would say people on average are decent.
• 40:29
  I believe that. I, I just think that's question
• 40:32
  Becky, right? It's not saying anything.
• 40:37
  I look, I don't know what to make of all of this.
• 40:40
  I've seen it unfold over the past number of years and then,
• 40:45
  sadly, I've seen it unfold in our little corner of the
• 40:49
  universe. A corner that we like to say is
• 40:53
  reasonable and the people there are relatively friendly, but the
• 40:57
  people there are starting to hate each other the same way
• 41:01
  people everywhere starting to hate each other.
• 41:03
  Oh, I don't think so. I don't think I don't.
• 41:05
  Think that's the case at all? I don't.
• 41:08
  Think that's the case at all? Go look a lot closer.
• 41:11
  I get, I get no. I get the mail, I get e-mail
• 41:14
  saying it. Hate is an awfully strong word.
• 41:18
  Yeah, that's the word they use. OK, well, I can't speak to what
• 41:22
  they're they're thinking is what I have observed is people
• 41:29
  becoming a little fractious about certain topics in I'm
• 41:34
  having to step in maybe more, not all the time, but more so
• 41:38
  than I've done in the past to say, hey, look, remember this is
• 41:41
  a forum for discussing things. Well, and one of the sad things.
• 41:46
  Keep the conversation on the topic.
• 41:48
  If you're right, if you're right about whatever your position is,
• 41:51
  then it will come out as we discussed this.
• 41:54
  One of the sad things is, is that you know, no matter what
• 41:57
  you say, no matter how kind hearted it was, no matter what
• 42:01
  motivated you, like I will say things like, man, Donald Trump's
• 42:05
  ankles are not looking great these days.
• 42:08
  I think there's a problem here. And then, you know, people will
• 42:11
  jump all over me saying why, why do you have to stir hatred for
• 42:14
  Donald Trump like this? Why do you want Donald Trump to
• 42:17
  die? And I'm like, buddy, I said he
• 42:19
  has ankles. I didn't say I wanted him to
• 42:21
  die, right? And did should I have said look
• 42:27
  bloated ankles are a sign of and then list all of the medical
• 42:31
  conditions that that have been that, you know, any little
• 42:36
  criticism of anybody, everybody on the other side just loses
• 42:41
  their mind. And I want to go back.
• 42:44
  If you want to pick on Rand Paul to take one from my list of
• 42:49
  people who I really like, I think that's fine.
• 42:53
  If you want to say I'm glad his neighbor beat him as badly as he
• 42:56
  did, he broke all his ribs, I think you might be a problem
• 43:00
  right there. I just think, you know, if you
• 43:02
  want to say, all right, you know, Rand Paul's acting like a
• 43:04
  bit of an idiot today. Yeah.
• 43:07
  OK. I don't know about that slide,
• 43:09
  that that seems fine. But if you want to say something
• 43:13
  like Rand Paul is a moron who never should have gotten
• 43:17
  anywhere near the Senate, you've gone too far, right.
• 43:21
  There are just these gigantic differences between these types
• 43:24
  of statements. I think the question ultimately
• 43:27
  is when you, when 1 engages with others on topics like this, what
• 43:33
  is your goal? Is it to feel good about
• 43:36
  yourself and what you purport to believe?
• 43:40
  Or is it to discover the truth? Because if it's the first thing,
• 43:45
  why are you bothering having discussions at all, right?
• 43:50
  Find people who agree 100% with you and just hang out with them.
• 43:53
  You'll feel really good about yourself.
• 43:55
  Yeah, if your. Goal and and you will be filled
• 43:58
  with hatred for everybody else, sure.
• 44:01
  But if your goal is to discover the truth, then you want to
• 44:06
  surround yourself with people who disagree with you.
• 44:08
  That's how you distinguish between the things that you
• 44:13
  think are true and are and the things that you think are true
• 44:17
  and aren't. You've got to have around you
• 44:19
  people who are willing to push back and say, no, I think you're
• 44:23
  wrong because of the following things.
• 44:25
  But the important thing, and this is what we tried to do in
• 44:28
  backstage is, is to keep the conversation on the topic.
• 44:34
  If I disagree with you about whatever gun control, it doesn't
• 44:39
  mean I hate you and you're disagreeing with me.
• 44:42
  I if I perceive that your disagreement means that you hate
• 44:44
  me, I've completely lost the thread.
• 44:47
  The point is this topic. Is this position correct or is
• 44:52
  it not correct? Sometimes I hate you.
• 44:59
  You don't like anybody, that's the problem.
• 45:01
  But I never say it out loud and I never and I certainly never
• 45:06
  type it out in a in an Internet forum.
• 45:09
  Right there there are just simple rules and and the the
• 45:13
  first thing that everybody should remember is that the two
• 45:19
  parties their goal is to separate you along partisan
• 45:23
  lines yes, that is they. Love it when we do this, yeah.
• 45:28
  And their goal is to get 51% of you because that's a lot easier
• 45:33
  than getting 85% of you. So that is their goal.
• 45:37
  And if that's their goal, you should start asking some hard
• 45:41
  questions of them. Like just how different are
• 45:44
  they? Are they really that different?
• 45:48
  Or do they just set it all? Up to make it look like they're
• 45:52
  that different. Do the people at the top of each
• 45:57
  party, are they real or are they playing a role now?
• 46:03
  If they were real, their opinions would remain the same
• 46:08
  over time. More or less right for the most
• 46:11
  part. But I can go find you Democrat
• 46:14
  after Democrat after Democrat who was against illegal
• 46:19
  immigration not not long ago either.
• 46:22
  Active Democrats right now who would say things like we have to
• 46:27
  get rid of every illegal immigrant in this country.
• 46:32
  How different do you think these these two groups of people are?
• 46:35
  They're playing roles, and they're playing roles to get
• 46:39
  your support. And I'm going to say this till
• 46:42
  the day I die, it's not left versus right.
• 46:47
  It's them versus US. It's their job to keep us at
• 46:52
  each other's throats. Yeah.
• 46:55
  And if you, if you would just stop taking the bait even for a
• 46:59
  week, you'd be surprised what you'd be able to figure out.
• 47:03
  You'd be shocked. Just don't believe a word out of
• 47:06
  any of their mouths. And this is, you know, something
• 47:09
  that economics taught me that political science has a lot of
• 47:12
  trouble with right revealed preferences.
• 47:15
  Watch what people do, not what they say.
• 47:19
  Just discount every single thing they say and watch what they do
• 47:25
  and you'll see it clear as day, clear as day.
• 47:29
  And if that ever comes to pass, and I don't think it will, but
• 47:32
  if it does, we will live in a better, happier, kinder, more
• 47:38
  wonderful world. Until then, you should join us
• 47:42
  on Words and Numbers backstage and become part of the problem.
• 47:45
  You should also check us out at Patreon, because that's actually
• 47:52
  how we can afford to get these episodes up these days,
• 47:55
  sponsorless though we may be. If you're a big giant rich
• 47:59
  person and you would launch like to sponsor a podcast, you you
• 48:02
  get in touch with me right quick.
• 48:04
  That words and numbers e-mail address that ain't gives out
• 48:07
  episode after episode after episode goes directly to both of
• 48:11
  our e-mail boxes. So I have no choice but to look.
• 48:14
  So if you would like to sponsor the podcast you and and Patreon
• 48:19
  is a a little too low stakes for your liking.
• 48:23
  Drop me a line and we'll make it work until.
• 48:28
  Well, hang on before, before you end, since since you raised
• 48:31
  Patreon, we should take a moment to thank our Patreon sponsors.
• 48:34
  People came when we went on hiatus and we said, well, we're
• 48:38
  thinking maybe we won't come back.
• 48:40
  This kind of thing. People came out of the woodwork
• 48:43
  they did and we're and we had There are people who are giving
• 48:47
  a tremendous amount of money on Patreon.
• 48:49
  There are people who are giving a buck a month and we are just
• 48:52
  thankful for all of you across the entire spectrum, every.
• 48:56
  Bin I don't want to make it seem, I don't want to make it
• 48:58
  seem like there wasn't anybody there before.
• 49:00
  There was and well, there was. We're very, very grateful to to
• 49:05
  you, you guys, people how to put this when we say we had
• 49:12
  sponsors, they didn't really pass much it it was barely
• 49:18
  enough to cover our our our expense, the Internet bill, let
• 49:22
  alone our time that that's right.
• 49:25
  We have never made a living doing this right.
• 49:29
  And and I think maybe people don't understand that, but but
• 49:32
  we haven't we this is very, very small potatoes.
• 49:36
  If, if this money, if, if all the money we ever made for the
• 49:41
  entire run of the entire podcast was put in one pot, we could not
• 49:46
  fly away to Jamaica and stay there.
• 49:48
  We might not even be able to fly to Jamaica, right?
• 49:52
  Let's just be honest about it. So when we say things like the,
• 49:57
  the you guys on Patreon are literally the reason why we're
• 50:02
  still up and running, that is literally true, absolutely,
• 50:09
  literally true. And we couldn't be more
• 50:12
  grateful. I, I'm trying to, you know,
• 50:15
  thank everybody personally. It, it's hard to keep up with,
• 50:18
  but I mean, you have made all the difference and we really
• 50:22
  appreciate it. So thank you.
• 50:24
  And really all we need aunt are 10,000 people who will give us
• 50:29
  $1.00 a month. That's all we need.
• 50:32
  And I don't want to think as well.
• 50:34
  We've had a lot of people also join words and numbers backstage
• 50:39
  on Facebook. And I know a lot of you don't.
• 50:42
  I've heard from a lot of people that they don't want to be on
• 50:45
  Facebook. And you can, we can do the same
• 50:48
  thing on Patreon. There's Patreon has the, the,
• 50:52
  the interface that you, we can carry on conversations.
• 50:54
  They're just like we do on backstage.
• 50:56
  But the backstage is what, like 1700 people now 1800 people,
• 51:01
  something like that. One of the things that that we
• 51:05
  keep driving home, which relates to this topic for this episode
• 51:10
  is to to talk civilly with people who disagree with you
• 51:16
  with I highly encourage you to talk with people who disagree
• 51:19
  with you. The trick, I think, is pretty
• 51:21
  simple. It's never addressed the other
• 51:25
  person. Anytime I start to say but you
• 51:32
  I've gone off the rails. Keep the conversation on the
• 51:35
  topic, not on the other person. Avoid ad hominems at every turn.
• 51:43
  Easy advice. But it's even worse than ad
• 51:45
  hominems. I mean, people know this.
• 51:47
  They say, well, if I say, well, you're just an idiot, that's not
• 51:50
  ad hominem. It's more subtle than that.
• 51:52
  If I bring you into the conversation as a topic, I've
• 51:57
  gone off the rails. I'll agree with that in spirit,
• 52:04
  I think. But you know, we often say, oh,
• 52:08
  here we go, Donald Trump again, you know, we do it.
• 52:14
  Yeah, here we go. Chuck Schumer, I don't do it.
• 52:16
  Here we go, Chuck Schumer, blah blah blah blah blah.
• 52:19
  But you know, it's the thing, not the guy, right?
• 52:25
  And look, I know it's hard and you know where I'm going with
• 52:30
  this aunt. Everything's hard.
• 52:32
  It's really, really hard to be nice to each other.
• 52:35
  Damn near impossible most days. But you should figure out a way
• 52:39
  because your time on this world is short, and people will
• 52:43
  remember you by the attitude you took toward them.
• 52:48
  So you should just be nice to each other.
• 52:50
  Because if if you are, that's how you'll go out.
• 52:55
  People will say that Henry, he was a pretty nice guy, all
• 52:58
  things considered. And how would you prefer to be
• 53:02
  remembered? Is there something better than
• 53:05
  that? I don't think there is.
• 53:08
  I think that's as good as it gets.
• 53:10
  So be nice to each other. I know it's hard, but I know you
• 53:14
  can do it. And Aunt, I will catch you next
• 53:17
  week. I love you saying that I will
• 53:19
  catch you next week. See you next time, James.