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If You Weren’t There, How Do You Know? · Ryan's Journal

• 0:07
  So my favorite part of this entry is that Ryan is in the middle of a big thought
• 0:11
  about television, and he just turns to his smart speaker and says,
• 0:15
  Alexa, is there a lot of people who take no interest in television whatsoever?
• 0:20
  Like she's a guest on the show.
• 0:22
  And she answers!
• 0:23
  She's got numbers ready.
• 0:24
  I love that.
• 0:25
  He's building this whole argument, he's, you know, laying out his four terms,
• 0:29
  AI, fiction, nonfiction, and the TV symbol ratings, the parental controls thing,
• 0:34
  and then he stops to fact check himself with a device.
• 0:37
  Which, I mean, is kind of the whole entry in one move.
• 0:40
  He's asking a voice he can't see for proof.
• 0:42
  And the number she gives is real, at least as far as the survey goes.
• 0:46
  It's from Attest, and it was reported by Forbes and The Streamable in June of 2025.
• 0:53
  Twenty eight percent of respondents said they don't watch any live TV on an average
• 0:58
  day.
• 0:59
  That was twenty percent in 2023 and twenty four percent the year before that
• 1:04
  article.
• 1:05
  And among Gen Z it's forty one percent.
• 1:08
  Forty one!
• 1:10
  And Ryan's reaction is, interesting, they mentioned podcasts,
• 1:14
  that's where my interest has been lately.
• 1:16
  And then he goes, I don't even know what Generation Z is.
• 1:19
  Is that a new generation?
• 1:21
  Don't really need to know, I don't think.
• 1:23
  That's so honest.
• 1:25
  I kind of respect it, because he's not performing expertise.
• 1:28
  He just says, I don't know that, moving on.
• 1:31
  And the survey says those Gen Z folks are swapping the couch for streaming,
• 1:35
  and Alexa added books, games, hanging out offline.
• 1:39
  About half of Gen Z said they stream at least an hour a day,
• 1:42
  so they're not watching nothing.
• 1:43
  They're just not watching it live.
• 1:45
  Which matters for his point, I think.
• 1:47
  He started with the idea that TV has no label for fiction or nonfiction.
• 1:52
  A library has it.
• 1:53
  You walk in, there's a section, you know what you're holding.
• 1:57
  A broadcast gives you a little parental rating logo in the corner of the screen and
• 2:01
  that's it.
• 2:02
  That tells you who it's suitable for, not whether it's true.
• 2:06
  Right, and he says the same goes for the digital cable box,
• 2:09
  commercials, TV shows, news, none of it says fiction or nonfiction.
• 2:13
  He's talking about America there, he says he doesn't know about Canada,
• 2:17
  Mexico, or the rest of the world.
• 2:18
  Hey, Canada, Ryan sees you, he just can't confirm.
• 2:22
  Okay, and the eyewitness thing.
• 2:24
  This is where he really lands.
• 2:26
  He uses Real Time with Bill Maher as the example.
• 2:30
  You say, I watched this show and this person said this and that person said that.
• 2:34
  But you weren't in the studio.
• 2:36
  So you don't actually know it was the studio discussion.
• 2:39
  You don't know, and he says the audience really doesn't know.
• 2:42
  And he takes it one step further, which I thought was the sharpest bit.
• 2:46
  Even if Bill Maher came out and said, this is live, this is a true broadcast,
• 2:51
  you'd still be taking his word for it, or TV's word for it.
• 2:55
  He's careful to say he's not claiming anything about Maher himself,
• 2:58
  he's just using the show as an example.
• 3:01
  It's a callback to that episode we did before, Roxanne, the two minutes out of
• 3:05
  twenty four hours one.
• 3:07
  Wolf Blitzer, you only see a slice of the guy.
• 3:10
  This is the same itch, but bigger.
• 3:13
  It's not just that you see a slice of a person.
• 3:16
  It's that you can't verify the slice is even what it says it is.
• 3:20
  So then he anticipates the obvious answer, which is, okay, just check it afterward.
• 3:24
  Look it up.
• 3:25
  And he says, fine, say you check ten sources after the show.
• 3:28
  How do you know the ten sources aren't wrong?
• 3:30
  His scenario is a huge cyberattack.
• 3:33
  Websites cloned, scammed, manipulated, specifically the top ten trustworthy sources
• 3:39
  in America.
• 3:40
  And he says people will tell him that could never happen, and he won't say never.
• 3:44
  His line is basically, in this world, anything could happen.
• 3:48
  Cyberspace is cyberspace, television is television.
• 3:51
  I mean, I can't prove it's impossible, so I'm just going to sit here and feel
• 3:54
  uneasy.
• 3:55
  That's the energy.
• 3:56
  But honestly, it's kind of fair as a thought experiment.
• 3:59
  Consensus feels like proof, ten out of ten sources agree, but if the sources are all
• 4:04
  downstream of the same compromise, ten is just one wearing ten hats.
• 4:08
  Ha, ten hats.
• 4:09
  And that connects to what he says about AI.
• 4:13
  He calls it double the confusion.
• 4:14
  Because we never even got the basic labeling right, fiction versus nonfiction,
• 4:18
  and now AI gets added to the picture.
• 4:21
  And some people label it AI, some don't, some label things fiction,
• 4:25
  some don't, so everything gets a question mark.
• 4:27
  But he gives the other side too, and I appreciated that.
• 4:31
  He says some people might find AI more entertaining and more appealing,
• 4:35
  so they're not looking to validate anything at all.
• 4:39
  They're not asking, is this true?
• 4:41
  They're just enthusiastic about it.
• 4:44
  So for them the labeling gap isn't a problem, it's just, you know,
• 4:48
  not the point.
• 4:49
  Which is a little wild to think about.
• 4:51
  One group is anxious because they want facts, another group is vibing because they
• 4:55
  don't need them.
• 4:56
  Same screen, totally different relationship.
• 4:59
  I'm not saying which one's healthier, I'm just saying that's a split.
• 5:02
  And then he goes to the moon.
• 5:03
  I was not ready for the moon.
• 5:05
  He says, is there a moon in the sky, is it as far away as scientists say,
• 5:10
  and he compares us to ancestors who didn't have newspapers,
• 5:14
  magazines, television, or school textbooks, so they were left guessing.
• 5:19
  This is the part where I part ways with him a little, and he'd probably be fine with
• 5:23
  that.
• 5:24
  He asks whether it could be David Copperfield at his best, a mirror in the sky and a
• 5:29
  light.
• 5:30
  And he says the astronauts would know, if they went, because they'd be eyewitnesses.
• 5:35
  But he can't be sure of that from where he sits.
• 5:37
  I'd say that's a lot of doubt to carry around, but I understand the logic.
• 5:41
  It's the same logic as the studio, just pointed upward.
• 5:44
  And he's clear that he's just reasoning, he says, I don't know what philosophy this
• 5:49
  falls under, but it has to fall under some kind of philosophy.
• 5:53
  He's not announcing a discovery.
• 5:54
  He's saying, if I take not being an eyewitness completely seriously,
• 5:58
  where does it lead?
• 5:59
  It leads to the CIA, basically, which I guess explains the title.
• 6:04
  He imagines an order from the president or the CIA to make a TV show a complete
• 6:09
  cover up for national security reasons.
• 6:12
  And he says, in a world of war, in a world of threats, yes,
• 6:16
  that could happen.
• 6:17
  Even Harvard wouldn't know, nor the most intelligent prep school.
• 6:20
  Nobody can be certain.
• 6:21
  To be fair to everyone, he's careful there too.
• 6:24
  He says he's not claiming it happens a lot or a little or at all.
• 6:27
  His observation is that the conversation itself seems absent from TV,
• 6:31
  he's never heard anybody talk about it the way he has.
• 6:34
  And he treats that absence as another reason for skepticism.
• 6:38
  Okay, here's the proposal that I think is genuinely funny and also kind of
• 6:42
  interesting.
• 6:43
  He says conspiracy theory should be a school subject.
• 6:45
  Kindergarten all the way through twelfth grade.
• 6:48
  He was there for years, and nobody offered a class called conspiracy theory.
• 6:52
  And his reasoning is that you're not an eyewitness to most of what's in your
• 6:56
  textbooks or on your TV, so doubt is a reasonable response.
• 7:00
  He says if you have skepticism and conspiratorial thinking in your brain,
• 7:04
  there's a reason for it.
• 7:06
  It's what happens when you're asked to accept secondhand facts.
• 7:09
  He even goes into the biology of the brain, though he admits he doesn't know that
• 7:13
  part.
• 7:13
  What I like is that he's not insulting people who think that way.
• 7:17
  Usually conspiracy theorist is an insult.
• 7:20
  He says, why be one?
• 7:21
  Because you're not an eyewitness, that's why.
• 7:24
  And whether or not you'd teach it that way, there's something in teaching kids how
• 7:28
  to ask, how do I know this, who told me, was anyone there?
• 7:32
  That part I'd actually back.
• 7:34
  Media literacy, how to weigh a source.
• 7:38
  Calling it conspiracy theory is his framing, but the habit of asking where something
• 7:43
  comes from, that's practical wisdom.
• 7:46
  It's just that, you know, at some point you have to live your life and trust some
• 7:50
  things, or you'd never get dinner on the table.
• 7:53
  Ha, yeah.
• 7:55
  Trust the dinner.
• 7:56
  Oh, and he wonders if Japan has had AI since TV first hit the market.
• 8:00
  He says, supposedly there are other countries in this world,
• 8:03
  so where does that leave your brain?
• 8:05
  And his answer is, in a big question mark.
• 8:08
  And then he turns it on himself, which got me.
• 8:10
  He says, you're not here.
• 8:12
  Is this really a journal entry?
• 8:13
  AI may claim it is.
• 8:15
  Was I forced to say this stuff?
• 8:17
  You don't know.
• 8:17
  You weren't an eyewitness.
• 8:19
  He aims the whole argument at his own recording.
• 8:22
  It's consistent, I'll give him that.
• 8:24
  If the rule is that you can't trust what you didn't witness,
• 8:28
  the rule has to apply to the person making the argument.
• 8:31
  He doesn't exempt himself.
• 8:33
  And then he hands the question to the audience.
• 8:36
  How big is the question mark after hearing this entry?
• 8:38
  Bigger or smaller?
• 8:40
  And his own answer, from general observation, is that it's getting bigger.
• 8:43
  But he adds, maybe you see it differently.
• 8:46
  I like that he leaves the door open.
• 8:47
  I keep thinking about the Alexa part, because the one thing he actually checked,
• 8:52
  he checked with a voice from a speaker.
• 8:54
  And the number turned out to match a real survey.
• 8:57
  Twenty eight percent, forty one percent for Gen Z.
• 9:01
  So the one verification in the whole entry is also the one that,
• 9:05
  you know, kind of proves his point and undercuts it at the same time.
• 9:08
  He still had to trust the speaker.
• 9:10
  Which might be the honest ending.
• 9:12
  We all take someone's word for something.
• 9:14
  The question he's really asking is how much, and whether we know we're doing it.
• 9:18
  And I'd say that's worth a question mark, even if I'm keeping the moon.
• 9:21
  Keeping the moon.
• 9:22
  That's the title of the next song.