Latest / Words & Numbers / Episode 460: Echo Echo Chamber Chamber

Transcript

Episode 460: Echo Echo Chamber Chamber · Words & Numbers

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Coming up next on Words and Numbers, The Rapture.
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The cost of housing. HO as in Phoenix?
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And living in bubbles. All this and more next on Words
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and Numbers, a Civil original production.
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Check us out at civil.com. That's C ivl.com.
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Hi, I'm James. And I'm Anthony and.
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This is words and numbers, aunt. It's doing exciting in your
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world this week. Somebody sent me an article.
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I'm just looking it up here. It's one of these things that
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that gets repeated all the time. And it's the title.
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I'll read you the title 8 everyday things lower middle
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class families could afford in the 80s but can't anymore.
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And it's a whole list of stuff. And let me start by saying I
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also run across articles saying, well, anybody that says the cost
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of living is not as bad as what people say is just out of touch.
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I'm going to look at some numbers and people are going to
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get all bent out of shape. But this guy, The article lists
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all kinds of things we could take issue with, but the one I
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thought was most interesting is the cost of housing.
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And specifically this article is talking about the price of
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housing in the 80s versus the price of housing now.
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And we couldn't can't afford the price of housing now to why
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can't it be like the 80s? In fact, in it, he says my
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parents bought a house for $100,000 in the 1980s, turned
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around, resold it for 800,000. And it's the same, you know,
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house that would have sold for 100,000 back in the 70s and
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nobody could afford it today. And he uses this as an example
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of look at what's happening to the cost of housing.
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Now, let me start off right here.
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I looked up the median price of housing in the US and it's
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nowhere near 800,000. It's around 400,000, so somewhat
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less about half of that. Furthermore, in 25 of the 50
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states it's below 380,000. In fact, you can go all the way
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down to Iowa, the median single family homes 230, Oklahoma it's
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about 250. Same in Ohio, Michigan 250,
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Louisiana, Mississippi 250. Right the house he was talking
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about California, where the median, the median house in
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California is $866,000. I would submit that that might
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have a lot more to do with California than much, much
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anything else, right? So.
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First, first statement here is if you're going to start saying
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things about price of housing now versus the price of housing
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in the past, at the least don't cherry pick things like price of
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housing in California. That's a way outlier.
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But Aunt we, we all know that when n = 1 you can make a much
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better argument. It is, yeah.
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It's a much more enticing argument to say, well, the how's
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the things cost 800. $1000 You show up with your median cost of
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housing in various States and all this other nonsense that you
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spew on a regular basis, this is just going to anger everybody.
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Yeah, sorry. All right, so let me anger
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people a little bit more. I'm looking at and again,
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understand averages are are kind of dicey because very rich
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people can pull the averages up. So everything we're going to
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talk about here are medians, the guy in the middle.
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So the median house, the median full time worker, all of this in
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the 1980s, because that's what he was talking about here in the
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1980's. The median house cost about 260
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weeks worth of work for the median worker.
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So whatever it is, you're earning 260 weeks worth of those
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wages. That buys you a house in the
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1980s, today 360, so significantly more.
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But the price of a house, excuse me, not the price.
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The the square footage of the house is significantly higher.
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It's back in the 1980's. The median house again, this is
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the one in the middle. The median house was about 1600
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square feet. Now it's about 2400.
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So you're getting 50% more house today than you got in the 1980s.
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So granted is going to cost you a little bit more, but 50% more
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house. Now you could still argue you're
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behind the 8 ball here because if you've done them, actually
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you're not, you're better off because the price of the house
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today is 38% more than in 1980. And understand what I mean when
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I say that. I don't mean it's 38% more in
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terms of the price, It's way more in terms of the price.
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But relative to your income, it takes 38% more labor today to
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buy a house than it did in 1980s.
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But you're getting 50% more house, so you're actually better
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off. And that's not the end of the
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story. Tell me more, Aunt.
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In 1980, the average mortgage rate 12%.
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Yeah, today things were. Things were kind of rough back
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then. Today, 6.7.
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And that's not great either. No, it's not.
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It's. Not a great, it's not a great
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rate. Yeah, yeah, I know.
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I was. I bought one of my first houses
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early in our marriage at like I maybe I had 5.25% and I even
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then I thought that's a bit hefty.
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Yep, when I lived in western Pennsylvania, right around the
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corner from you, I had 5.7. Yeah, heck of a lot better than
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6.7 today. So I think part part of what's
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going on here, and I want to give, give people their, give
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people credit here when they say the price of housing is rising,
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they're absolutely correct. If you look at the past, let's
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say 10 to 15 years, housing is way more expensive than it was
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10 to 15 years ago relative to wages.
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If you take a much wider perspective and you look at
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today versus in 1980s, it's actually the other way around.
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It was more expensive in the 1980s.
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So, so so to to both the Boomers and the and the Gen.
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Z's. You're both correct.
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The Boomers are right, it was, it is more expensive back then
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than it is now. But Gen.
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Z is also correct. It's more expensive now than it
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was 1015 years ago. All right, so your assignment
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aunt, should you choose to accept it, is to for next week
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or next time or however we're saying this.
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Now for a future iteration of words and numbers, I want you to
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tell me about the median citizen.
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Does the median citizen live in a house?
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Does he own a house? Does he rent a house?
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Does he rent an apartment, etcetera, etcetera?
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Because there's an interesting question, right?
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It's a really good question and it's it's something that I find
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people who rent seem to think that they are flushing money
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down the drain. Because they suspects they are.
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Yeah, what they're they're missing and they don't catch it
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until they buy their first house.
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All. Of the things that the landlord
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is handling, all of a sudden now you got to deal with that.
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Yep, that's right. And and you know, I don't, I
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don't cast a lot of blame on them.
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They just don't see it. They think I'm paying my bill
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every month, go fix the damn dishwasher, right.
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So, you know, OK, but where does that median citizen fall?
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And what's happened to the cost of rent over the same period,
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etcetera, etcetera. And there's all kinds of great
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further questions we can ask. There are.
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And as long as you're on the topic, let me shift gears a
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little bit and talk about household wealth because as I
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was digging into these these house pricing numbers, this came
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up and it just shocked me. I've never seen these numbers
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before. And this comes from the Census
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Bureau, right? So they're all on the up and up
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household wealth and it's comparing across the ages.
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So we break it down to the young people, the middle-aged, the
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older, and then the the elderly. Household wealth for married
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couples is 3 to five times what it is for unmarried.
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So an unmarried male or an unmarried female?
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Let's leave that as a teaser for the next episode we will record,
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which will be about wealth. Fair enough.
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Let me put a footnote. Apparently, according to the
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numbers, getting married is as valuable to your wealth as
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getting a higher education. But if you're a man, you'll die
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a lot sooner and you'd be a lot crankier.
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All of this is for Naughty Aunt. Do you know why?
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Tell me. Because tomorrow, A matter of
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fact, there's no reason we should even be recording this
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episode. Because tomorrow, September
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23rd, or perhaps the day after September 24th, there's a little
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murkiness in the prediction the Rapture will occur.
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Again, yes. Are they going to be?
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Are they right this time? But this time they mean it, damn
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it. And it, it's, it's apparently
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now to be coincidental with Rosh Hashanah, our Jewish friends,
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celebration of their new year. They've got way more many years
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than we do. It's like, are you 20,000?
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755. Are you the one that years ago
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said to me, tongue in cheek, you want to invest in a whole bunch
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of clothes and like, on the day of the purported rapture, like
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lay them out on sidewalks and stuff?
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Come on, you have to admit, that'd be hilarious.
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That would be hilarious, no? Offense to those who who believe
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in the rapture, but I will point out that this has been predicted
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many times and nothing has happened.
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Well, well, you know the raptures predicted endlessly,
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the the return of Jesus has been again endlessly, and the end of
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the world has been predicted endlessly.
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Pick your poison. Which of the three will we talk
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about today? Well.
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Well, it's like an economist predicting a recession.
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Eventually, they're right. Yeah, that's right.
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Sooner or later, you got to be right.
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But I mean, come on, come on. This all starts.
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This version of it starts with a viral video made by somebody
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named Joshua. Oh, here's the last name I'm
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never going to be able to pronounce.
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Malaikala. I bet that's right.
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A South African preacher who shared his quote, UN quote
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divine prophecy to YouTube. And then this thing called
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Christian TikTok, of which I was blissfully unaware until just
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this afternoon, got a hold of it and ran with it like a bunch,
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like, like the bunch of fools they are.
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And now they're all, I mean, there are reports of people
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quitting their jobs and giving away their cars and, and sorry,
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pumpkin, but you're gonna, you will regret this.
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You will regret this. And in the future, when anyone
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within the the very distant sound of my voice believes that
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the Rapture is upon us, or it's to be the end of the world, or
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that Jesus is verifiably returning, I will bet any amount
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of money up to and including my full net worth that it's not.
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It's not so. Well, Speaking of betting money,
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I know someone personally who back in the turn of the century,
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remember the whole thing about when the dates change from 1999
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to 2000, The end of this computer in the world, right?
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He maxed out every credit card he could, figuring that he'd
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never have to pay because the world was going to end well.
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Yeah. Not exactly the the sharpest
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move one could have predicted, but understandable knowing what
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we know of human nature. Well, he put his money where his
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mouth is, I'll give him that. Yeah.
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And then he paid it back over the course of the next 20 years
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or just simply declared bankruptcy, which a lot of
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people like to do. I once knew a couple and the I
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want to make it clear that these these were not my friends.
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I just knew them. The woman was technically my
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boss. Not technically she was my boss.
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And they went on a big, expensive vacation that lasted a
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very long time. And when she got back, I said,
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'cause, you know, I knew what she made.
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We had essentially the same job. And I said, how the hell could
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you afford that? And she said, oh, we're
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declaring bankruptcy next week. Oh my, yeah, that's got.
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That's got to be illegal to knowingly rack up debt.
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Yeah, I that's the word. So do you know what happened
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thereafter? Is there?
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AI do not, and espiculously, just kind of disappeared and was
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replaced by another person who did not declare bankruptcy, to
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the best of my knowledge anyway. Today, aunt, we're supposed to
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be talking about those little ideological bubbles that we all
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find ourselves in. And you know, this, this Charlie
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Kirk business that that is getting to be in the rearview
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mirror is, is not a bad way to start framing it, right?
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Because there were obviously at least two different groups of
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people who I observed in in the wake of the murder.
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One group was horrified by what happened and and couldn't stop
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weeping, and the other half was celebrating with tremendous Glee
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and couldn't stop making fools of themselves on social media.
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Fast forward a little bit and the people who were broken
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hearted, I, I've got nothing to say to or about them.
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I, I understand they were broken hearted.
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They comported themselves relatively well, all things
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considered, and we don't really have to talk about them so much.
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There was a bloodthirsty group, not perfectly coincidental with
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those who were heartbroken, who decided they wanted to go after
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all of the people who laughed and giggled about the death of a
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human being. And how better to go after them
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than by trying to take a chunk out of them in their personal
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lives and, you know, getting them fired and, and things like
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this. And then the wave of new videos
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from the people who were laughing and dancing and singing
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about how unfair it was that they just got fired.
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And all of a sudden they were thinking very, very differently.
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But the the thing that kept coming back over and over and
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over again was that they couldn't believe anybody could
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see it any other way. Right.
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Yes. And I think, you know, there,
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there's a lot of blame to go around here.
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A lot of people acted very poorly, as is often the case
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when things happen. I just want to talk about this
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propensity that we have to think that every but every rational
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person just naturally agrees with us.
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Yeah, but how do how do people miss so many other people on the
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other side of every issue? How do you just miss them all
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together? It's like they're not even
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there. Part of this there's a
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psychological phenomenon. Who?
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This name escapes me. You, you may well know what it
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is that everybody thinks that they're average.
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And This is why, you know, earlier in this in the previous
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segment, we were talking about people complaining about the
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price of housing. And, and This is why I think
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people have a tendency to report anecdotes rather than data
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because whatever experience they have, well, of course that's
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average because the presumption is that one is average, when in
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fact that's often not the case. Yeah.
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And you know, as I sit here thinking about it, we talk about
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this sort of thing a lot, right? Where not only what what you
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just said that that's a weird phenomenon, right?
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That people just naturally assume that everybody's kind of
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like they are and they're like everybody else.
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And that makes a lot of sense until you get to the level of
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opinions. And you know, we have radically
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different opinions. You and I agree on almost
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everything. And we would go to the
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mattresses against each other over any number of things,
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right? We probably agree 90% of the
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time. Yeah, easily.
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And and we don't allow the other 10% to make us bloodthirsty
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against each other, but we know that that 10% exists.
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Oh, not only does it exist, it's it's, how should I say it
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involves fundamental stuff on both of our case, in both of our
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sides. And yeah, that's right.
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That's right. We're happy.
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We're happy to put it aside. And and move forward, right.
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And it's so unimportant in the grand scheme of things.
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Not in the scheme of things, but in the grand scheme of things
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that we can let it go because, you know, we both know we have
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bigger fish to fry and the things that we agree on are
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infinitely more important and and deeper than the things we
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don't agree on. Yeah.
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Let me, let me put just a little bit of color on that.
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We're not saying that there are these things are important to us
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that we've decided just to put, put aside.
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We both still hold them very dear.
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We just don't make them part of our relationship.
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Yeah, and but it but more than that, Aunt, I know what yours
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are, and you know what mine are. Right.
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Yeah, yeah. We, we operate under no
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illusions, right? There are things I will never be
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able to prevail upon with you and vice versa.
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And OK, notice there are two very important things here.
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A we understand and B we don't let it affect us.
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Yes, and you know why? Because we both believe
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fundamentally in human dignity and I respect you as a person.
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Doesn't mean I have to agree with you, but it does mean that
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I'm going to interact with you in a respectful manner.
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Right. So how is it that we've managed
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to come to a place where people seem to be genuinely shocked
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that other people might disagree with them?
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They they seem to have no understanding that there are
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large swaths of humanity that agree with them on almost
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nothing. Yep.
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And, and I'm not talking about insignificant disagreements, I'm
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talking about massive wholesale disagreements.
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I think a large part of it is is kind of trite to blame things on
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social media, but but I think this is true.
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A large part of it is, is the way social media does what it
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does. It's designed to show you things
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that you have expressed an interest in.
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Now here I am. I'm I'm a a admittedly right
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leaning economist. My sister, whom I love dearly,
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is a left-leaning professor of theatre and dance.
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From time to time, I notice her on Facebook, on her phone,
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looking at Facebook. It's like a completely different
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app. I've never seen the stuff on
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there that she's looking at. No.
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And, and I notice it most on Twitter where if I say something
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that's particularly what's the word, I'm looking for it.
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It's, it's more than just critical, right?
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If if I say something that comes off as a condemnation of group
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XI, get group not X over and over and over again to the
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exclusion of everything else, until I make a remark that is in
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the same neighborhood about Group not X.
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At which point it kicks me right back to group X again.
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As if there are only two flavors of humanity and I must be one of
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them or the other of them. And and X Twitter, whatever the
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hell we're supposed to call it now, it's going to carefully
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insulate me from what it thinks or opinions I won't agree with.
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I mean, I, I go out of my way to follow people with whom I have
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severe disagreements just so I see it.
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Yeah. I don't want to get, I don't
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want to get stuck in a, in a, an ideological bubble.
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I want to see what all the crackpots are saying from every
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conceivable side of every story I see.
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I'll never get that, but at least I'm trying.
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A lot of people aren't even trying.
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Well, and I think you and I want to see it for, for the same
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reason. I need to know when my own
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thinking has gone off the rails and asking people in my bubble
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is not going to get me anywhere. They're all going to agree.
21:42
Oh yeah, you're absolutely right.
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I need, I need to hear from people who disagree with me.
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And unfortunately, Facebook, Twitter aren't the places to do
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that. Because if indeed you do manage
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to break out of the bubble and start interacting with people
21:57
who disagree with you, all you get is vitriol.
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Well, all you get is a new bubble.
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All right. Sure, sure.
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Right. Our bubbles just bounce off each
22:07
other over and over again as if that's really what we all want
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and need. And and you know, it's gotten
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bad when because here we are, aunt, it's what, September 22nd
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as we sit here, which means that my favorite and the best
22:24
American holiday is coming up soon.
22:28
It's almost time for Thanksgiving.
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And I'm I'm going to make this bold prediction about the
22:36
future. One month hence, many, many
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people on the political left bubble are going to make public
22:47
how they're not having Thanksgiving dinner with anybody
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in their damn families ever again because they disagree with
22:54
them politically. Now that makes you a bit of an
22:59
imbecile. Now look, if I woke up and found
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out that everybody in my family was a member of the Klan, I
23:06
might say the level of political difference in my family is such
23:10
that perhaps Thanksgiving is better spent somewhere else.
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Now something short of that, I'm.
23:20
Pretty sure. I'm not going to say anything of
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the sort because that would make me the biggest jerk in the
23:28
world. And oddly enough, you don't see
23:31
this from the political. Right.
23:34
Oh, I I do. I don't, in fact.
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In my bubble, I'm not allowed to see any of this from the
23:40
political. Right Oh, I see, I see.
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I was going to say I see on both both the left and the right, I
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see this same phenomenon that the people who get most angry
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when they dis when I encounter them disagreeing with me.
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The ones who get the most angry are also the ones who are least
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able to defend their positions in.
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Some level I'm talking about, I'm talking about people who
24:07
disavow their families, right? But, but I, I think it, I think
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it comes from the same thing at some level.
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At some level you're aware of this disconnect that you hold
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this thing to be important, yet at the same time you you
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recognize that you're unable to articulate why it's important or
24:26
why you're holding it as opposed to something else.
24:29
And that creates that creates tremendous discord within the
24:33
person. And that's what comes out as
24:35
anger. Yeah, that's a level of
24:37
self-awareness that I don't. Think no, I'm not saying it's
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no, no, no. I don't think has anything to do
24:41
with self-awareness. It's, it's an automatic thing.
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How how best can I resolve this tension within me?
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It's to get away from you. Because when you're not here,
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you there's nothing pointing to this, to this tension, to my
24:56
inability to articulate why I believe this thing that I think
25:00
is so important. Yeah.
25:01
I'm going to have to think about that.
25:03
I, I don't know if I agree with you, but I agree more with the
25:08
more formulated version you just offered than I did with the,
25:12
the, the earlier one. It's just, and, and I do want to
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lay this at the feet of social media, right?
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We, we are in no uncertain terms now programmed by algorithm and
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we always have that look in, in any time where there was media
25:33
that was sold, you are going to be programmed by algorithm.
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It, it just becomes more obvious.
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The companies that develop the algorithms are much more
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sophisticated about it now than they ever have been in the past.
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And, and people miss the most important thing because in the
25:59
past, you and the viewer of television, the the reader of
26:08
newspapers and magazines, you got to kind of go and pick and
26:13
choose this or that. And you made some obvious
26:17
decisions, right? I'm going to read the Wall
26:19
Street Journal of the New York Times.
26:21
Very few people read both, right?
26:24
So it's, it's one, it's the other.
26:26
And we fall on largely ideological lines.
26:29
You're going to watch this news channel or that news channel,
26:34
etcetera, etcetera. But notice what was happening.
26:37
You were the consumer and those were the products.
26:41
You're not the consumer anymore, you're the product.
26:45
Right. Yeah.
26:47
And and you're being manipulated.
26:49
Why Sales, that's what, that's why we always manipulate
26:54
everything. So if you're the product, it's
27:01
in the interest of the social media provider to keep you
27:05
whipped in a frenzy. Hate scrolling, doom scrolling
27:09
day after day after day, saying things like those bastards on
27:14
the other side. I can't believe it.
27:16
Look at what they're doing now. Those are the people you made a
27:19
soccer practice. Right.
27:21
Yes, yes. That's, I mean, come on, give
27:26
it, give it a rest, for the love of God.
27:28
And the more seriously you take your membership in in your
27:36
insular bubble, the less human you will be, right?
27:42
You're just going to turn out to be a partisan crank that nobody
27:45
wants to be near except all the other partisan cranks who happen
27:50
to believe with your definition of correct partisanship.
27:54
And it's going to be just that simple.
27:56
And yeah, in America, we breakdown, roughly speaking,
27:59
into a couple of camps. But it it's not that simple,
28:03
right? There's a number of bubbles out
28:06
there. Earlier I referred to Christian
28:10
TikTok. There's a bubble if I ever heard
28:13
of 1. How much interaction do you
28:18
think is happening between Christian TikTok and us?
28:22
I'm guessing not, I'm just guessing done.
28:25
And and hey, that might be to everybody's preference, but look
28:31
at what's lost. Any idea of social cohesion is
28:35
just gone. What you're describing is very
28:38
similar to what people have started to experience with AI.
28:43
People who have, who have gone down rabbit holes in largely,
28:46
not always, but largely they there's some mental illness that
28:51
they bring to the table in AI. All AI does is magnify and send
28:56
back to you what you show it. So in that sense, your bubble is
29:01
no different. And yes, you're talking to human
29:03
beings, but the human beings are being selected by an algorithm
29:07
to tell you what you want to hear.
29:10
It's like going to Catholic school from K through 12 and
29:13
then going to college finding out there are non Catholics in
29:15
the world right? Is it?
29:18
What do you mean you disagree with me and being legitimately
29:22
shocked by it, right? Words and Numbers is part of the
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30:32
Let me point out a counterexample.
30:35
At least it's a partial counterexample, and I'm not sure
30:38
why it is, but maybe we can hash this out.
30:41
There is one place in social media where you still get what
30:46
you're describing, but I see it way less, and that's YouTube.
30:51
I've got hundreds of videos on YouTube.
30:54
All of our our episodes are on YouTube.
30:56
And often people will get on there and leave comments and
31:00
they're disagreeing with something we've said.
31:02
And not all the time by any means, but by a huge fraction of
31:07
the time compared to Facebook and X.
31:11
When I engage with them, I get a decent, we get a decent back and
31:14
forth. We don't necessarily come away
31:15
agreeing, but it's a civil conversation.
31:19
It's weird because I I always took the admonition not to read
31:24
the comments very seriously. So in all the thousands of
31:28
things, I dare say 10s of thousands of things we have
31:32
released into the wild, I have read exactly none of the
31:36
comments on any of them. But with the new move to put the
31:40
podcast on YouTube, I I started dipping my toe and I have to
31:46
admit I've been really pleased. Right now, I don't care if
31:51
people agree or not, I just care that they're decent about it,
31:55
and they almost always are. Yo.
31:58
So now, in an unlikely turn, I'm actually participating in the
32:03
comments in our own videos. Right.
32:06
Yeah. And you know, when I find that
32:09
it what brings the temperature down quite a bit is when they
32:13
realize that we're the guys in the video.
32:16
Yeah, and. Usually I get something like,
32:18
well, I disagree with you, but I, I respect the fact you came
32:21
on here to, to, to talk to me. And I think it's that humanizing
32:24
element that that makes things people are inherently we're, we
32:29
want to be social. We're inherently good to you see
32:32
each other at the at the soccer game, and we're much more
32:34
accepting. It's when you get, when you
32:37
become the keyboard warrior and you're responding not to a human
32:40
being but to text on a page that the, the, the hatred comes out.
32:46
So two things. First, I don't want to meet
32:48
anybody at a soccer game. It's just a bad example I used
32:52
I'm I'm never going to a soccer game.
32:53
Soccer's horrible and it should not be played here or anywhere,
32:59
but but having set that off to the side, people respond to a
33:04
characterized version of other people, right?
33:09
They don't see you, they see your caricature and they say,
33:12
all right, well, aunt believes this, this and this.
33:15
Therefore he must believe all these other things that other
33:19
similar people believe these first three things.
33:22
They all believe these things. So I'm just going to call him an
33:25
ass. And they never stopped to think,
33:30
you know, maybe ants, an actual human being who is going to take
33:34
being called an ass to heart. It's going to ruin his day.
33:38
So, you know, we, we tend just not to think of each other in
33:42
the way we should as human beings.
33:45
And, and I'll say it again, humans are ends, not means.
33:50
You have to treat a human being as an end in and of himself, not
33:54
as the means to get you something that you want.
33:58
Now, we all serve as means to other people.
34:01
I, I don't want to just say that's never appropriate, but
34:04
human beings are first and foremost ends.
34:07
And it does us all well to remember that.
34:10
But how do we remember it if we never see other people who
34:15
aren't like us at all, right, When when the algorithms spit
34:20
out carbon copies of all of our worst characteristics and throws
34:26
those people in one room functionally together and then
34:31
does it for this group and this group and this group and this
34:33
group. You're not going to get the best
34:36
of humanity in those groups. It it takes a little bit of
34:41
interaction in a lot of people have been using the word empathy
34:47
a lot lately. And and I think empathy is kind
34:50
of I'm with Charlie Kirk on this one.
34:52
Empathy is a bit of a new agey nonsense work, but what it
34:55
really takes is sympathy, your ability to see another life and
35:00
and understand what a person is very likely feeling.
35:05
And, and part of that part of that is opening your mind to the
35:10
fact that we're not split into left and right.
35:14
Humans are complex creatures and someone may agree with the right
35:20
on certain things and with the left on other things.
35:22
There is no line of demarcation like that.
35:25
And I, I think that's actually one of the places where
35:28
libertarians, to the extent that they've succeeded at anything,
35:32
they have managed on their better days to be accepting the
35:36
people who believe with, who believe some of the things they
35:39
believe without having to believe all of them.
35:42
On their better days. But This is why, you know, back
35:46
to the idea of caricature. I defy you to turn on Fox News
35:51
or MSNBC and tell me that you really think that's right, that
35:58
either one of them is doing a nice job of covering the news.
36:02
These are cartoons that are made for echo chambers and they.
36:07
Were they're made, They're made to attract your attention and
36:10
make you mad, so that you can keep coming back, so they can
36:13
sell advertisements. That's right, because you are
36:16
the product over and over and over.
36:20
You see it again and again. And you know, if your echo
36:26
chamber is so pervasive that you don't hear the echo for what it
36:31
is, that's a you problem. And you, you should take some
36:35
positive steps. And I would say the very first
36:38
positive step you should take is to go out of your way to consume
36:44
media that you think is from the other crazy side that you don't
36:49
think should ever be listened to.
36:52
Whatever your site is, I don't care what your site is, Go find
36:56
people with whom you have severe disagreements and consume their
37:02
product. And then I want you to go one
37:04
step further and find a way to understand them in the most
37:11
charitable way possible. And that's the hard part.
37:15
Anybody can turn something on. But can you explain your
37:21
opponent's political beliefs as well as your opponents can?
37:28
Because then don't write. And don't write it off as well.
37:32
My opponent's beliefs are stupid.
37:33
They're not logical. No, no, no, they are.
37:36
They're smart and they are logical.
37:38
And only if you can explain your opponent's beliefs as well as
37:43
your opponent can, are you now qualified to comment.
37:49
Yes, right, right. It would be like asking me about
37:53
the finer points of the rules of soccer, going back to that tired
37:57
example that we're using. I have no idea.
38:01
I don't want to know. And if you ask me to opine on
38:06
the rules of soccer, anything that comes out of my mouth is
38:09
definitionally ignorant. Now if you want to talk about
38:13
American football, which is the only kind of football there is
38:16
except for Australian rules football, yeah, now I've I'll
38:22
have something to say. You're talking about the
38:24
football where you use your hands.
38:27
Shut up. This is why nobody likes you.
38:32
It's this kind of thing. Right here.
38:34
In the past, James has talked about Erica Kirk forgiving
38:40
Charlie's murderer and how much strength that it takes.
38:45
That's the same kind of strength, albeit on on a smaller
38:48
scale. But that's what we're talking
38:50
about here, is forgive the other person.
38:53
The other person's going to say things that make you mad, Let it
38:56
go. The other person's going to say
38:58
things that you think are stupid, Let it go.
39:00
Engage with other people you disagree with as human beings.
39:05
Wouldn't that be something? And look, I understand better
39:08
than most the the very strong desire to live in an antisocial
39:15
way. Maybe that's the best way of
39:17
putting it. I've said repeatedly that in the
39:21
seven years I've lived in my house, I've not met my
39:23
neighbors. I have no idea who my neighbors
39:25
are they The only one of my immediate neighbors who I've met
39:30
is when some poor girl took my, took my, my mail back my mailbox
39:36
off it's pedestal when she rammed her car into it.
39:40
Right? This, this is what it takes to
39:42
get me to answer the door when there's a neighbor ringing the
39:45
bell. You know, a lot of us would
39:48
rather be left alone a lot of the time.
39:51
But that, that's, that's not really what what we're talking
39:53
about here. Because I like to be left alone.
39:56
And yet there's an X feed open on my computer, literally if I'm
40:00
sitting at the computer. So I'm interacting with other
40:04
humans somehow. I try to approach X with a
40:07
certain sense of humor because I know it's not real life.
40:11
I'm not convinced other people realize that that's not real
40:16
life, right? Facebook is a little more real
40:19
lifey to me. Why?
40:20
Because people who I've actually met are there and we interact in
40:24
in certain ways. But you know, social media is
40:28
still media. It's just a thing.
40:30
It's not reality. It's a, it's a, it's a, a
40:34
carnival mirror held up to reality.
40:37
And you have to do your part to go find out what real reality
40:41
looks like, because if you fall for it, you'll fall for
40:46
anything. Words and Numbers is a Civil
40:48
original podcast. We work with Civil to advance
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40:55
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40:58
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41:01
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41:06
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41:13
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