Latest / Plausibly Live - The Dave Bowman Show Podcast / Echos of OJ?

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Echos of OJ? · Plausibly Live - The Dave Bowman Show Podcast

0:07
For the On Air Across America network, this is your Morning
0:10
News update. Iran says it attacked 10 ships
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near the Strait of Hormuz after American forces destroyed 5
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Iranian oil tankers. the United States says it strikes followed
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Iranian missile attacks against American warships.
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Several commercial vessels were reportedly damaged, but complete
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casualty figures are not yet available.
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Oil has risen above $100 per barrel.
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The Pentagon has acknowledged losing an autonomous underwater
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vehicle near Hormuz. Iran's Revolutionary Guard
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displayed what it identified as an American Dive LD underwater
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drone. The Pentagon attributes the loss
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to a malfunction and says the vehicle contained no classified
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systems or data. Nearly all 35,000 customers on
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Kauai's electrical system lost power as Hurricane Lowell passed
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near Hawaii. The storm has since weakened
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tonight. The Seahawks host New England at
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5:20. Pacific.
1:07
Seattle safety Ty Okada is out, while Nick M and Wari and Tori
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Horton are questionable. The Mariners lost to Texas 4:50
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despite Lazaro Montez hitting a 474 foot home run.
1:21
For the On Air Across America network, I'm Alex Ross.
1:35
This is the definition of reasonable.
1:38
We have the hardest time getting off the fact that Lindsay
1:42
viciously killed her children. The world is a complicated
1:46
place. Fortunately, Dave Bowman has
1:49
opinions, some informed, some inconvenient, and a few that may
1:53
require supporting documentation, history,
1:56
politics, and the absurdity of modern life.
1:59
This is the Dave Bowman bubbles, echo chambers, social
2:26
isolation and perhaps even OJ Simpson?
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Don't touch that dial. Just try to hear me out for a
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little while. Text machine 209565, Dave,
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that's 209-565-3283. e-mail Dave at the Dave Bowman show.
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It's been a stressful morning. Computer issues.
2:51
I don't know what was going on. There was an update for Windows
2:54
that I had to install and you know how that goes.
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Most people assume, and yes, I know what the word assume means.
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And for those of you who don't, when you assume something, you
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make an ass out of you and me. Get it?
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Most people assume the echo chambers are passively created
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by algorithms. And we always assume that
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everyone else is in an echo chamber, not ourselves.
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We always take that approach. Those people are just getting,
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they're just, they're just an echo chamber.
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They only hear what they want to hear, and we never seem to say,
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am I? The reality of echo chambers is
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that we tend to build them ourselves.
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We choose the sources we trust, the voices we permit into our
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daily lives, and the arguments we dismiss without any
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consideration whatsoever. Over time, those choices become
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basically intellectual bomb shelters.
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They protect us from friction, you know, stress interpersonal
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relationships to protect us from ambiguity and the discomfort of
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having our basic assumptions challenged or questioned.
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Now, the problem is, of course, that that comes with a cost.
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Life inside an ideological monoculture gradually weakens
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our critical facilities. We don't think anymore when we
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never encounter arguments that genuinely challenge us.
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Now, I'm not talking about the people that just, you know, just
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want to argue because the day ends and why when we don't get
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that genuine challenge to our positions, we can cease to be
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reason in our own convictions and we harden ourselves into
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into fragile dogmas that we're afraid.
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We're more afraid will come apart than we are.
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We'll actually be challenged. We may become more certain of
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what we believe while becoming less capable of explaining why
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we believe it. I think there's a verse
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somewhere in that New Testament thing about that, right?
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The result of this is an apparent confidence that cannot
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withstand serious disagreement. Anyone who questions the
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accepted position is no longer merely mistaken.
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That person becomes ignorant, immoral, malicious, dangerous,
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biased, bigoted, racist, and of course, Dun Dun Dun fascist.
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And don't think that both sides don't do it because we do.
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There is a process that is described.
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There's a there's a really good article in Skeptic magazine this
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month, which is one of my favorite reads.
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I I enjoy Skeptic magazine. I would say off the top of my
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head that the, the editor, Marco Shermer and I have very little
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in common when it comes to politics.
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We, we don't see things the same, but his magazine, it's
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just fantastic. I really enjoy it.
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And there's an article in there this month that talks about how
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groups isolate themselves to keep out people who disagree.
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And in this article is a young man who's talking about how the
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fact that he was interested in Scientology because, I mean,
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hell, it's got science right in the name of it, right?
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I mean, and he was a scientist. So he thought, well, maybe this
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is where I need to be. Maybe science is is what I'm all
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about. So maybe I should look into
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this. And of course, he went to the
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introduction to this thing where they showed a video of an
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interview with L Ron Hubbard and the interview.
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I, I don't want to spoil the article in case you want to read
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it. The, the, the interview was
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complete nonsense. The, the stuff that L Ron
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Hubbard was spouting was not just illogical, it was wrong to
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anyone who had a basic understanding of the science
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that was being discussed. It was like he was just making
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stuff up, which of course he was.
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And the young man began to realize that, look, these people
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are why would I? This isn't science.
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This is Scientology, which is not the same thing.
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And what he came to realize very quickly was that he was being
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isolated out, that the entire purpose of showing this
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completely nonsensical that anybody with the most basic
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scientific knowledge could see was wrong.
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They were using that as a test to see who would believe and who
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would not. And the people who were not
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going to buy into this, they didn't try to convince them.
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They didn't say, well, look, you, you haven't considered
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this. What about this argument?
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Let's talk about that. None of that.
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What they said was, well, we don't think you're going to be a
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good fit. Buy and the people who were
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willing to put aside common sense, actual science, actual
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thinking were allowed to stay. And so this, this organization,
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Scientology, was self isolating itself by getting rid of people
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who disagreed with them. The story this morning out of
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Walla Walla, WA, which is all over on the east side of
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Washington state about Whitman College.
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I know nothing about Whitman College except that it's in
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Walla Walla and it's very close to the Oregon border, which
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could explain some things. Like most colleges, they have
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student government and that student government takes upon
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itself the right to authorize student organizations.
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And recently a student organization was formed, a
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Republican club that applied for membership as as recognized
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student group this this week. And we're told, no, you cannot.
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And the story talks about how they went to the, to the the
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student, you know, to the, to the student council, whatever it
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was for their interview process. And it had nothing to do with
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the organization, had nothing to do with their bylaws, had
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nothing to do with anything. It was all about their political
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views. And ultimately the student
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council decided 26 to 0 that they didn't want those views
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here. And so no, which is kind of
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absurd if you think about it, because they didn't actually get
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rid of the views. They just said you can't be
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officially a group, which means that now the views are
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considered heretical. I guess I, I don't know, just
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like the Scientologists, they were getting rid of views that
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they don't like, not because they couldn't be challenged, not
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because they didn't want to be challenged, because can't have
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that. There are discussions in the
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past about prophetical groups and these these groups that I
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think it was a group called the Seekers that Once Upon a time
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promised that the world was going to end.
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And of course it didn't. And instead of leaving the
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group, instead of leaving the group, think the members doubled
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down on it. So it must have been our fault.
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This is very similar to what some people like Alex Jones do
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where they tell you that this absurd thing is going to happen,
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and then when it doesn't happen, they tell you that they stopped
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it. It's it's designed to convince
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you of the lack of a need to challenge things you know in
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your head. Now, perhaps they don't intend
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it as an ideological purity test when they do these things, but
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it functions as what disconfirming evidence drives
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away the skeptical while strengthening the commitment of
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those who are who are willing to stay and listen to this stuff.
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Now, there are some organizations that may employ
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this effect more consciously. Extreme claims, escalating
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demands, ideological barriers that can't repeal, people
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inclined that can repeal. Sorry, people that are inclined
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to ask difficult questions. Boy, did I run into this a lot
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in my life. You know it, it it happens even
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in the world of government and social services it it really
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does you you get invited to a meeting because we're going to
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we're going to do we're going to do a 10 year plan to end
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homelessness. I'm Minuta Bhuta.
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What I have a question. Well, they didn't like that.
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And I would point out that that meeting happened in 1999, still
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haven't ended homelessness. Recently, the Seattle Times made
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the news again because Matt Calkin, who had been a sports
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columnist, made a public and loud resignation.
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Now, for what it's worth, I don't think you needed to, but
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that's my opinion. But he made a very loud, very
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noted across the country resignation because The Seattle
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Times spiked one of his columns. His column was about
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transgenderism in the WNBA and he felt like they were ignoring
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the issue, which, you know, had become a pretty big issue in the
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country. And so he made a really loud
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break about it. Set up a, a, a sub stack where
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you can pay him now to read his stuff.
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To, to be, to be clear, I don't pay people to read stuff.
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If you got something to say right and you want me to pay for
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it, write a book. If, if you're just going to say
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it on the Internet, if you're not smart enough to figure out
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how to get around paywalls, there's really not much I can do
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about that there. There really isn't.
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It's it's hard to explain. It's also hard to explain why my
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thing isn't working here. I may only have audio today.
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Just sorry. I just realized that the the
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video audio is not working and I don't know why.
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I told you it's been a tough morning.
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At any rate, Call can set up a sub stack.
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You can pay him now to read his ongoing columns about how he's,
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you know, been wronged and how everything is terrible and those
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kind of things. Now, that said, he did publish a
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column this week about the fact that the Seattle Times editorial
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board also does this. They don't do it by spiking
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necessarily a column or that. But the Seattle Times will
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publish a story which they know is going to be controversial,
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and then they will close the comments section on their
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website so that no one can comment on it.
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Or on their Facebook page, they turn off comments so that no one
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can comment on that. And that does more than just
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control incivility or people being, you know, upset about
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sensitive subject. The practice creates an
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appearance of consistence of consensus by making the reader
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opposition invisible. So no one appears to disagree
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with this because there's no comment saying that.
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So therefore, everybody must begin, must, must believe the
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published argument that the Seattle Times has put out, but
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any objections to it are not raised.
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So what happens when institutions manage disagreement
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by removing the places where disagreement can be expressed,
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especially a newspaper. A newspaper is going to hide
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behind First Amendment, First Amendment, First Amendment.
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Doesn't that apply if I disagree with you?
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Now, the absence of visible opposition does not prove that
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the consensus exists, but it kind of does, doesn't it?
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Because we've suppressed that it does mean that the descent has
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been moved somewhere else, which is possible.
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But how likely are you to find that?
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Where can you find dissent about, I don't know, global
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warming? Now, if you obviously, if, if,
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if you know where to look on the Internet, you can find it pretty
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easily. But if you don't know, if you're
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just reading about it in the Seattle Times and the comments
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section are shut off and someone says, hey, wait, this is non
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because this, you know, mathematic, whatever, you might
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never see that. Is that really the job of a
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silo? Is that why would they choose
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that? In theory?
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The jury room is one of the few places in American life where
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citizens cannot simply opt out of dealing with someone who sees
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the world differently. In theory.
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In theory, the jury room is supposed to be the one place
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where you can actually say what you think and, and, and.
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You can't be muted for it. You can't close the comments
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section. You can't block an account.
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You can't ask an algorithm to replace uncomfortable opinions
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with agreeable ones. You have to stay in that room.
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You have to examine the same evidence.
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You have to apply the same instructions, and then you have
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to explain your conclusions to to each other.
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That's how a jury works. Hopefully you've been on a jury.
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Hopefully you're not one of these lunatics that has always,
16:26
always got to get out of it. That's, that's a discussion for
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another day. I will say this, if you are one
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of those people that's always trying to get out of jury duty,
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you're not an American. You're not living up to your
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duties as a citizen. That's another thing.
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According to the foreperson of the Lindsey Clancy jury, the
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eleven members of the 12 favoured finding Lindsey Clancy
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not guilty by lack of criminal responsibility, reason of lack
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of criminal responsibility. This is important to distinguish
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Massachusetts does not have not guilty by reasonable insanity.
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They have lack of, They have guilty, not guilty, sorry, by
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reason of lack of criminal responsibility, which is a
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little bit different than than just insanity.
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There's some technical stuff. I'm not a lawyer.
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I don't want to, I don't want to drag this into the legal systems
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of this, but but you need to understand that it's not
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reasonable. It's not temporary insanity or
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even insanity. It's a lack of criminal
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responsibility, which means that the defendant, the accused did
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not understand at that instant that there was criminal
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responsibility. You can disagree with that, I
17:47
can disagree with that. Whatever.
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We're not on the jury. These 11, these the three jurors
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that spoke said that the remaining juror acknowledged
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that there was reasonable doubt concerning her, her criminal
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responsibility, but would not join that verdict.
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What the actual quote was he couldn't get off the fact that
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she viciously murdered her three children, even though he,
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according to them, acknowledged that there was reasonable doubt.
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Reasonable doubt is not necessarily not guilty.
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Who knows? We haven't heard from him.
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We may never hear from him, so we don't know.
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This is the This disagreement ultimately results in the
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mistrial in which none of us listening were in that jury
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room. None of us listening were in
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that courtroom. We did not see the evidence.
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We didn't. But what we're doing instead is
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getting into our silos, our bubbles, our echo chambers, and
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hearing exactly what we want to hear, what we already agree
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with. And damn anybody that might
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disagree with us. Damn anybody that says, well,
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maybe she was not guilty by reason of lack of criminal
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responsibility. Don't like that.
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But I wasn't in the jury room. If I were sitting in Lindsay
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Clancy's seat, how would I feel about it?
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Massachusetts, by the way, places the burden on the
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Commonwealth to prove criminal responsibility beyond a
19:25
reasonable doubt once the issue has been properly raised.
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So when when the defense brings that up, not guilty by lack of
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criminal responsibility, now the prosecution has to prove that.
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For whatever it's worth, I think that's correct.
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The burden of proof should always be on the government,
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always be on the prosecution. There are some places where,
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believe it or not, that's not the case.
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Massachusetts has kept that the case in in this particular plea,
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the distinct the distinction is not just determining whether or
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not she killed her children, which she admitted.
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The issue is, did the state, the Commonwealth, prove beyond a
20:06
reasonable doubt that she was not guilty by a lack of criminal
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responsibility? I don't know.
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I wasn't there. I do not know.
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I know what I feel, but is what I feel and what I hear in my
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silo is what I hear in in the websites I go to, in the
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Facebook posts I see in my echo chamber.
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Is that asking questions that I should be asking?
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And if it's not, don't I have a responsibility to get outside of
20:43
my echo chamber and start asking those questions?
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It's easy to evaluate that single jury from inside our own
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ideological shelter. Yay on the right, Boo on the
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left. One audience may regard him as
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someone who refused to understand postpartum mental
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illness. Another may see him as someone
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unwilling to allow the killing of three children to end without
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a criminal conviction. Both reactions may tell us more
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about our own assumptions than what actually happened in the
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jury room. And that's what matters.
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Our assumptions, our beliefs, our thinking is important.
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I'm not going to minimize it, but it isn't the be all, end all
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of things without having considered the issue from every
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side. Relevant question is not whether
21:38
the holdout reached the conclusion we wanted.
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It's whether or not every juror honestly examined the evidence.
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Do we know that that's what happened?
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There have been trials in this country where we can pretty much
21:52
honestly say there was no consideration given to the
21:54
evidence whatsoever. And that's the real problem with
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the jury system. It isn't that the juries are
22:02
coming to the wrong conclusions. It isn't that the it's that,
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wait, did you even look at this? The jury system does not design
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to guarantee agreement, nor should it.
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A hung jury is not necessarily a failure of justice.
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It's a legitimate outcome when twelve citizens cannot honestly
22:22
reach unanimous decisions. I can't say the word unanimy,
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which is what I wrote, but I can't say that word.
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It's like renoirosaurus. I can't say it.
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The deeper danger comes when citizens enter the room having
22:37
lost the ability to explain themselves, test their own
22:41
assumptions, or listen in good faith.
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And I guarantee it right now, there are people who are hitting
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stop going. Well, I don't want to hear this.
22:49
This guy's stupid. She's guilty.
22:51
She should be hung. Maybe.
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But unless I'm willing to consider all the angles of it,
23:00
is that really the case? The jury room depends on habits
23:04
that must be learned and practiced outside the courtroom.
23:08
The jury room depends on understanding that habit of the
23:11
heart that is Liberty. We talked about this in Liberty
23:15
250, folks, all the way back at the beginning.
23:17
We have to live that life. We have to understand that if
23:21
the broader culture continues treating disagreement as
23:24
something to be suppressed, filtered, or or escape from,
23:28
eventually we may end up discovering that we no longer
23:30
know how to deliberate when the law requires us to remain in the
23:33
room. And that, my friends, is going
23:35
to be a huge problem. That's where we're going to
23:38
start running into issues because we don't know what to do
23:42
if someone disagrees with us. We don't know how to think.
23:49
Not a good sign. Welcome back, I'm Dan.
24:13
Speaking of trials, I I freely admit I was an OJ junkie.
24:18
The OJ trial junkie, I don't know why it's, it's one of those
24:24
things that I look at myself and I think that's just sick, Dave.
24:28
But we all have things that, you know, guilty pleasures, whatever
24:31
you want to call it. For whatever reason, I was
24:34
really into that and I still am. The OJ Simpson saga just
24:40
fascinates me. I grew up in the 70s when OJ was
24:42
a hero. We all wanted to be OJ.
24:44
My Little League coach used to yell at us just running backs
24:47
because I was a running back in Little League.
24:50
And every time we'd try to Juke a little bit or move a little
24:54
bit, you know, and stop OJ ING it, he would yell at us run NS.
24:59
My, my, my Little League coach, Jim Spivey, was very much a
25:03
Lombardi wannabe, you know, 3 yards in a cloud of dust.
25:07
The idea, which is weird because we lived in Denver, which was an
25:10
AFL city. So you'd think we would have
25:12
understood, you know, opening up the offense a little bit, but we
25:15
we didn't. We ran a full house tee and you
25:18
know, 44 dive, 24 dive, 34 dive. This is where play.
25:22
We got a sweep in there somewhere and won the biggest
25:26
game of our, of, of my time there on a broken play that
25:31
turned into just an absolute fiasco that he was so mad, not
25:35
that we scored a touchdown that won the game about.
25:37
He was mad because we didn't do what we were supposed to do,
25:40
which was, you know, run the ball off tackle or maybe it was
25:43
a flat pass. I don't remember.
25:44
But the, the bottom line is we didn't do what we were supposed
25:47
to do. And we literally got yelled at,
25:49
not because we won the biggest game of our our time there on a
25:53
broken play, but because we didn't execute the play
25:56
properly, which is weird. But OJ was one of those heroes.
26:02
And every now and then, you know, there's a special on OJ or
26:06
whatever, but there's a new show that's come out.
26:08
OJ Juiced exploitation of evil. And one of the things that OJ
26:14
did after his conviction was he did a punked show.
26:19
It was, it was a virtual copy of the TV show Punked or Girls Gone
26:24
Wild. That was their inspiration.
26:28
And the idea was OJ would punk people only they called it
26:31
juiced and you could buy the DVD or you could pay for
26:37
pay-per-view. I did not I, I didn't have any
26:41
interest in watching that and I'd only seen clips of it in
26:45
later documentaries. There was a a documentary after
26:50
he was convicted in the robbery thing that had some clips of it
26:54
and it was OK, maybe I should look at this.
26:56
But but then again, no. But now there's this new
27:01
documentary out OJ juiced exploitation of evil.
27:07
And I got to be honest with you, I watched the first episode and
27:11
a half last night. This is hard to watch.
27:14
This is hard to watch, not because it's not interesting,
27:19
but because it's so obviously and exploitation.
27:29
OJ is being exploited by these film makers who who thought that
27:33
they could get him to confess on camera.
27:35
That's their stated goal. We're we're going to get him to
27:37
confess on camera and we're going to do this by putting him
27:39
in situations where he punks people, where he pretends to be
27:42
a Bronco salesman. I'm not kidding.
27:45
He can. He pretends to be a rap star and
27:48
they bring these these young girls in to dance and or backup
27:53
sing and they discover when they get juiced at the end, punk that
27:58
that they've been had and they're not even going to get
28:00
paid. And it's like one of them's
28:02
pissed. I took a day off from work to
28:04
come here and do this. I'm and and this is what you do
28:07
to me and OJ. It's uncomfortable, man.
28:11
It's uncomfortable. The bigger question is why are
28:16
we watching #1 Why am I watching this?
28:19
And, and I'm, I'm debating whether I'm going to watch the
28:21
rest of it. I will.
28:23
I'm just pretending that I'm debating it.
28:25
But #2 why was this even made? Are they are, are they just
28:31
dancing on the grave of Oji mean or worse than that?
28:37
Are they playing on our bass emotions?
28:41
Whether you believe OJ did it or not, he did is is really not the
28:46
issue here. They never get him to confess.
28:47
And in fact, one of them even says well after the show, I
28:50
believe he didn't do it, which is insane, but there you go.
28:56
What does a show like this say about us as viewers?
29:01
Is this back into a silo? Am am I so convinced that OJ did
29:05
it that I, you know, like the jury refused to consider the
29:08
evidence? And, and I, it just fills a need
29:11
that I have to remind myself that OJ viciously murdered two
29:14
people. Does it change anything at all?
29:16
I don't know. And yet I'm, I'm going to watch
29:21
it probably just because it repels me so much.
29:27
It's horrible. It's an exploitation of evil.
29:30
And watching these people who did this, made this be
29:33
interviewed as if there's some kind of hero is every bit as
29:38
weird as the whole thing was to begin with.
29:44
But yeah, I'm going to watch it just because it repels me so
29:49
much. Take the time right now.
29:52
Tell the people that matter in your life you love them very
29:54
much. You'd miss them if they weren't
29:55
there. So don't pass up those
29:56
opportunities. You don't want to have that
29:58
regret. I'm Dave Bowman.
30:00
This is my show. Plausibly live The Dave Bowman
30:02
Show. No video today, obviously.
30:04
We'll see you next time right here on The Dave Bowman Show.