Speaker 1: Tiffany and Cook, David, Brian, Kevin, Patrick Gillespie. Welcome back
Speaker 1: to the show. We'll start with the lady. Hi, TIV
Speaker 1: Good evening.
Speaker 2: I went to say good morning. I always say good morning.
Speaker 1: Yeah, how are you? Oh? I kind of know because
Speaker 1: we did a podcast a few hours ago, but you know,
Speaker 1: maybe maybe you've had some good or bad news since then.
Speaker 1: Are you all right? No, I'm good.
Speaker 2: I went for a little short three k run. Haven't
Speaker 2: done anything cardio for two weeks and now I'm back
Speaker 2: in the cold office, freezing with the electric blanket on
Speaker 2: my knee like a nana.
Speaker 1: Well, you're in the throes of and I'm not throwing
Speaker 1: you under the bus here because you've spoken about it
Speaker 1: quite a bit because it was in context. But you're
Speaker 1: in the throes of perry menopause.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, is that why you're not running?
Speaker 3: Yeah?
Speaker 2: Yeah, I've had no energy yep, hrvs at an all
Speaker 2: time low, not sleeping, good, whole lots of stuff, Very tired.
Speaker 2: But you know, a run, just a short one, makes
Speaker 2: you feel so good and give you that little dopamine
Speaker 2: hit and you know, so it's finding that balance of
Speaker 2: doing the thing that gives you energy but not doing
Speaker 2: it too hard or too much so it takes all
Speaker 2: of the energy.
Speaker 1: When was the last time Do you reckon that gillespo
Speaker 1: went for a run? Do you reckon he's ever gone.
Speaker 3: For a run?
Speaker 2: I'd be interested tonight.
Speaker 3: I actually think I did go for a run once.
Speaker 3: Who you.
Speaker 1: Are?
Speaker 3: I went to a school that had a compulsory once
Speaker 3: a year across country and run might be an exaggeration.
Speaker 3: I certainly completed the course, but I don't think I
Speaker 3: ever got much above a fastish walk.
Speaker 1: I don't know why I think this, because I mean
Speaker 1: I've been talking to a black box for two years,
Speaker 1: and by that I mean David doesn't have his camera
Speaker 1: on everyone so Tip and I just it's actually a rectangle.
Speaker 1: So you may not even be a human. You could
Speaker 1: be humanoid, especial with recent developments.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but I'm actually an AI. Let me. I'll do
Speaker 3: We'll come back to that. I'll tell you a fairy,
Speaker 3: funny story about that. But I keep going go story.
Speaker 1: I mean this sounds I don't mean it like it's
Speaker 1: going to sound. But I don't picked you as particularly athletic.
Speaker 3: I'm not not in the slightest No, No, I had
Speaker 3: a brief period of being pretty close to athletic in
Speaker 3: my late teens early twenties.
Speaker 1: I'm just athletic adjacent.
Speaker 3: Athletic at Jason where I used to hang out at
Speaker 3: the gym a lot and do all that sort of stuff,
Speaker 3: and managed to snag my wife during that period. So
Speaker 3: poor woman then got sucked in.
Speaker 1: Came for the biceps, stayed thirds right.
Speaker 3: I was too late by then we were married.
Speaker 1: She couldn't get out. That's all right, contractor wow, wow,
Speaker 1: I tell us what you're going to before we Joe,
Speaker 1: I don't know.
Speaker 3: Ah, it's just the thing, right. So you know, James,
Speaker 3: my son, he's been experimenting with AI to ring, you
Speaker 3: know how that he rings all the doctors and asks
Speaker 3: them how much they cost, and he pays real people
Speaker 3: to do that, and so he's been experimenting with getting
Speaker 3: AI to it and he's had some success with it,
Speaker 3: fooling most people. But he was telling me a story
Speaker 3: the other day about one where it rang a receptionist
Speaker 3: and the receptionist said, what's your name? And the AI responded,
Speaker 3: that's not important right now, and and the receptionist it
Speaker 3: was quite cleuely as a young bloke said you're an AI,
Speaker 3: aren't you? And it said, it said, let's not talk
Speaker 3: about me, Let's talk about the price of the doctors
Speaker 3: or something like that. And the guy said, oh, this
Speaker 3: is so cool. You're an AI, aren't you?
Speaker 1: That's what I mean? What is the the legality around that?
Speaker 1: Is it okay? Like, I mean, I'm sure it must
Speaker 1: be okay. Otherwise, one, he wouldn't be doing it until
Speaker 1: you wouldn't be telling this story. But like when you
Speaker 1: use AI to ring someone to get information or a business,
Speaker 1: do you need clearly you don't need to announce that
Speaker 1: this is.
Speaker 3: His is trained to from now on since that call
Speaker 3: to respond, if someone says, are you an AI, it'll say, yes,
Speaker 3: I am an AI, and I'm rather doing you know
Speaker 3: what it's doing.
Speaker 1: But yeah, wow, and so does he have any kind
Speaker 1: of idea? See this is so interesting. I love this shit. Like,
Speaker 1: I think that's a good use for AI.
Speaker 3: I mean, I mean, right now, there's the opposite. He's
Speaker 3: done quite a lot, which is when people call in
Speaker 3: and the phone is answered by an ai. So and
Speaker 3: a lot of the time you won't be able to
Speaker 3: detect that you're talking to an AI, not a person.
Speaker 3: So and but from my perspective, I think that's a
Speaker 3: good thing. Personally, I'd rather have the phone answered immediately
Speaker 3: by an AI that I can understand, you know, sit
Speaker 3: on hold for an hour and a half before speaking
Speaker 3: to a call center that I can only understand every
Speaker 3: second word.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's that's quite often the case. And so does
Speaker 1: James know how what percentage of people figured out that
Speaker 1: they weren't talking about it?
Speaker 3: He's not using it at the moment, He's right, this
Speaker 3: is this is just some test runs he did, and
Speaker 3: just I thought that was an interesting thing. Is somebody
Speaker 3: who figured it out and then was just thrilled that
Speaker 3: they were talking to an R That is funny.
Speaker 1: Well, I mean a young person would Yeah, I reckon
Speaker 1: if my mum answered the phone, it might be a
Speaker 1: different story moment probably.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Well, I mean I guess that's it's all that
Speaker 1: and more. And it seems to be like AI seems
Speaker 1: to be I feel like we talk about a lot,
Speaker 1: but it's because AI.
Speaker 3: Well we probably should talk about AI a lot because
Speaker 3: it is going to significantly change the way everything works.
Speaker 3: I mean, you know, robots replaced industrial workers at scale
Speaker 3: sort of forty years ago, and now to the point
Speaker 3: where you take a thousand workers out for every robot
Speaker 3: and nobody even blinks. But a similar sort of thing
Speaker 3: is going to happen with knowledge work as well. So
Speaker 3: sort of mid level AM and sorry, administration and down
Speaker 3: is going to be chewed up by this stuff. And
Speaker 3: that then means okay, so what's the story then? Is
Speaker 3: everybody going to be unemployed? Or do we have to
Speaker 3: come up with a different economic model? You know, do
Speaker 3: we have to come up with the one that we've
Speaker 3: talked about briefly every now and then, which is sort
Speaker 3: of a universal basic income where essentially, if you're a
Speaker 3: citizen of the country and the country produces a dividend
Speaker 3: for you and pays it to you in the form
Speaker 3: of a standard basic income and everyone gets it, and
Speaker 3: then if you choose to earn more than good on you.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, yeah, Well I wonder if that's ever going
Speaker 1: to be the case.
Speaker 3: I don't what about a choice soon? The question is
Speaker 3: how much how much ugliness is going to have to
Speaker 3: happen before we get to that inevitable position?
Speaker 1: And what I mean, I know you don't know, but
Speaker 1: like if you just had to have a guess, what
Speaker 1: do you reckon the timeline is on universal basic income
Speaker 1: being a reality in Australia.
Speaker 3: I think, unfortunately, it's probably ten years to fairly large
Speaker 3: scale unemployment and probably twenty years to someone figuring out
Speaker 3: that that's really the only solution.
Speaker 1: And will the main genesis of large scale unemployment unemployment
Speaker 1: be AI?
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, AI and the the things that we call
Speaker 3: AI now and the things that will follow it which
Speaker 3: are going to be even more human like in their abilities.
Speaker 1: And your fellow lawyers running around with their legal undies
Speaker 1: on their head because AI can now do quite a
Speaker 1: lot of the work that was being charged out at
Speaker 1: eight hundred bucks an hour.
Speaker 3: I think it will definitely change the legal industry. AI
Speaker 3: is really really bad at some of the things lawyers do,
Speaker 3: and sort of hilariously bad, but it's also really really
Speaker 3: good at some of the things that they do, particularly
Speaker 3: the sort of lower end of the legal profession, where
Speaker 3: you know, in large firms, a lot of lawyers are
Speaker 3: spending most of their day doing legal research to provide
Speaker 3: sort of condensed versions of it as advice, as part
Speaker 3: of an advice that a more senior lawyer will be delivering.
Speaker 3: That kind of work that's perfect for AI, you know,
Speaker 3: and I think increasingly that will be part of the
Speaker 3: deal with law firms and they will have to adjust.
Speaker 1: And I guess even junior lawyers working in conjunction with AI.
Speaker 1: Do you know what I mean? Because you know that
Speaker 1: I mean, working like with all the right prompts and
Speaker 1: all the right whatever, you can generate a huge amount
Speaker 1: of or do a huge amount of research, get a
Speaker 1: whole lot of clarity in way way way less time,
Speaker 1: or a lot more information in way less line.
Speaker 3: I think in general that's the story with A, which
Speaker 3: is it's quite powerful in the hands of somebody who
Speaker 3: knows the area that it is working in. So if
Speaker 3: it's maths you're doing, and you're getting AI to do
Speaker 3: stuff in maths, as long as you know enough about
Speaker 3: the area that it's working in to know when it's
Speaker 3: bsing you, then it can be really powerful, you know.
Speaker 3: But and the same with computer programming or law or
Speaker 3: anything else. I mean, you know, podcasters are probably s
Speaker 3: for now, but you know, we had a bit of
Speaker 3: a peek at what that looks like too, where you
Speaker 3: can just feed it a document and you know it'll
Speaker 3: carry on a conversation between itself that is reasonably convincing.
Speaker 1: Yeah, we did that, and you were the one who
Speaker 1: opened that door for me. We did that with one
Speaker 1: of my papers. I wrote a systematic literature review, which
Speaker 1: is you know, like seventy pages, put it into AI
Speaker 1: and it did a twenty six minute podcast chat between
Speaker 1: this lady and gentlemen and they kind of they chatted,
Speaker 1: debriefed and shared all the kind of you know, the
Speaker 1: the high points or the key points I guess of
Speaker 1: my research and my paper. And it was other than
Speaker 1: a couple of little minor glitches or misrepresentations, it was
Speaker 1: fucking amazing. I'm like, and it did it in like
Speaker 1: three minutes. So in inverted Commas read my whole paper
Speaker 1: and then punched out this twenty six minute conversation in
Speaker 1: three minutes, which I listened to. I thought, oh, this
Speaker 1: will be garbage, and it was mesmerizingly good.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but think about that at scale in that if
Speaker 3: you decided, you know what, I'm just going to create
Speaker 3: a whole bunch of podcast channels. I'm going to have
Speaker 3: one for every topic known to man. I'm going to
Speaker 3: feed it articles out of the New York Times or
Speaker 3: the Washington Post or wherever, you know, whatever source is
Speaker 3: a good source for that, whatever that particular topic is,
Speaker 3: set up the library of those things, punch go. Three
Speaker 3: minutes later, you've got a thousand podcast channels.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, it just it makes you one wonder very
Speaker 1: much where yeah, I mean, even where podcasts will be
Speaker 1: in a year, because you know, you can my voice
Speaker 1: is enough of my voice that we can rip my
Speaker 1: voice off and make me say whatever whatever script somebody
Speaker 1: wants to provide, and it's.
Speaker 3: Oh have you tried that? There's it's actually it doesn't
Speaker 3: take long. I think you have to read. There's like
Speaker 3: a page of text. It's it's maybe a minute's worth
Speaker 3: of reading.
Speaker 1: Melissa has done that with my voice and produced like
Speaker 1: a five minute thing. And other than perhaps a little
Speaker 1: bit of nuance and timing. And you know, because I'm
Speaker 1: I'm I'm probably a little bit loosey goosey, I'm not
Speaker 1: too you know, what's the word? I don't know. But
Speaker 1: if you.
Speaker 3: Give it enough, if you give it enough of a
Speaker 3: sample of the way, give it a bunch of your podcasts,
Speaker 3: and then say I don't want to just copy the voice,
Speaker 3: I want to copy the style as well, it'll come
Speaker 3: pretty close.
Speaker 1: Yeah, amazing, speaking of AI, you were telling it something
Speaker 1: before we press the go button, which was rather ironic
Speaker 1: about the new Toyster Story movie.
Speaker 3: Yeah. So this has caused a bit of a fuss
Speaker 3: because people are saying, is this really just a way
Speaker 3: of covertly attacking modern parents? Which is the sneak peek
Speaker 3: of toy Story five seems to suggest that the villain
Speaker 3: of toy Story five, Now, you'll be right up on
Speaker 3: the toy Story series, you know, which is your favorite.
Speaker 1: I love Woody, I mean, I love them all.
Speaker 3: You know. Well, I didn't know there was a four,
Speaker 3: a little much lesser five, but there you go. So
Speaker 3: toy Story five comes out next year.
Speaker 1: That makes fun of me. I reckon, I've got you
Speaker 1: covered in terms of toy story knowledge, all.
Speaker 3: Right, do it wouldn't be hard. But anyway, I did
Speaker 3: see this fuss because it's vaguely relevant to stuff that
Speaker 3: I write about. And the villain in Toy Story five
Speaker 3: is lily Pad, and lily Pad is an iPad. And
Speaker 3: the idea is that the reason that's the villain is
Speaker 3: that the child you know, who is the owner of
Speaker 3: the toys is given lily Pad as a gift and
Speaker 3: suddenly she's got no interest in the toys, doesn't want
Speaker 3: to play with the physical toys anymore. She had just
Speaker 3: played with lily Pad from then on. Now. I don't
Speaker 3: know any more about it than that, because that's all
Speaker 3: they've shown us. But it's been enough to fire everyone up.
Speaker 1: I wonder what the I wonder what their motivation for
Speaker 1: that storyline was, because it seems, as we said before,
Speaker 1: it seems ironic that people will watch the movie, some
Speaker 1: people on an iPad.
Speaker 3: I think it's probably just that this is a very
Speaker 3: real problem now. I mean, we've talked for a little
Speaker 3: while now about the problem with and it's just not
Speaker 3: this always sounds like a kid's these days kind of thing, right,
Speaker 3: But it's not. It is dramatically different. You talk to
Speaker 3: any teacher, and I was talking to some teachers just
Speaker 3: the other day, a group of them, and I said,
Speaker 3: you know, any of you that have been teaching for
Speaker 3: more than fifteen years, what's today's classroom like compared to
Speaker 3: when you first started? And they said, the biggest difference
Speaker 3: is the ADHD. You know that we've gone from it
Speaker 3: being rare, maybe one kid in the school, to every
Speaker 3: classroom's five to ten kids who are on medication for it.
Speaker 3: And that's just really really hard to manage. But it's
Speaker 3: if it's hard to manage in the classroom, imagine how
Speaker 3: hard it is to manage at home. And this is
Speaker 3: a direct consequence of giving every child in a generation
Speaker 3: access to highly addictive software which is altering their brain
Speaker 3: chemistry and creating ADHD from that alteration, and remembering that
Speaker 3: the definition of ADHD for our purposes here, it destroys
Speaker 3: focus so that you can no longer focus on anything
Speaker 3: for more than about a second, and that what's doing
Speaker 3: that is the devices. And these devices are now everywhere
Speaker 3: all the time, and kids are on them all the time. Now,
Speaker 3: the reason that this talk about this movie has caused
Speaker 3: a fuss is because many parents feel like they're being
Speaker 3: blamed for this. Yeah, you know that somehow people are
Speaker 3: preaching at them about you know, why are you're giving
Speaker 3: you why you're setting your kids just done? Why are
Speaker 3: you just handing them a device for your two year
Speaker 3: old and the trolley at the supermarket? And the reality
Speaker 3: is that it's pervasive and the kids would be desperate
Speaker 3: to get their hands on the things anyway, even if
Speaker 3: the parents weren't making them available. To them. They beg
Speaker 3: borrow and steal the things because the industry has done
Speaker 3: exactly what it needed to do to make money, which
Speaker 3: has made these things accessible everywhere.
Speaker 1: Isn't it interesting? How much like with different different products,
Speaker 1: I mean everything from iPads and iPhones to drugs, Like,
Speaker 1: there's a real incentive for companies to make things that
Speaker 1: are addictive. I mean, like highly incentivized to make shit
Speaker 1: that people can't do without.
Speaker 3: Well, it's why Coca Cola used coke coke as in
Speaker 3: cocaine when they first manufactured it. I mean, you need
Speaker 3: a competitive jump. If you're selling sugar water and the
Speaker 3: guy next to you is selling sugar water, one of
Speaker 3: you better come up with a way to get an advantage,
Speaker 3: or one of you is going out of business. So
Speaker 3: you know, make it addictive. Now, sugar is pretty addictive anyway,
Speaker 3: but you add cocaine to it, it's really addictive. So
Speaker 3: it's marketing one oh one. Make your product addictive, and
Speaker 3: particularly important when your product is a piece of software
Speaker 3: you have spent literally billions of dollars developing and that
Speaker 3: you are giving away for free. If your product is
Speaker 3: an addictive there goes your billions of dollars.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, and when you think really, I mean, like
Speaker 1: we talk about ethics and morals and values and all
Speaker 1: of that, but really, when you talk about that stuff
Speaker 1: in the context of industry and the commercial landscape, that is,
Speaker 1: it's like, obviously every company's priority is money, is profit
Speaker 1: is you know, So.
Speaker 3: That's if you think about it, a company is actually
Speaker 3: a psychopath by design.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I remember you saying that, you go on unpack that.
Speaker 3: I love that a companies is required by law to
Speaker 3: maximize profit within the law for its shareholders. So there's
Speaker 3: no bit of that that says be guided by your morals,
Speaker 3: be empathetic, none of that. They are required by law
Speaker 3: to make as much money as possible for their shareholders. Now,
Speaker 3: shareholders might be a bit squeamish about doing some of
Speaker 3: the things companies do, but the company is required without
Speaker 3: regard to anything like that. The only boundary it has
Speaker 3: to be set is do not break the law. So
Speaker 3: as long as it is permissible within the current law
Speaker 3: to do whatever they are doing, they must do it,
Speaker 3: or else they are breaching their duty to their shareholders.
Speaker 3: And that is a psychopath. A psychopath operates on the
Speaker 3: basis of in any thing that I have to make
Speaker 3: a decision about. I must maximize value to me without
Speaker 3: regard to anyone or anything else, as long as was
Speaker 3: I don't break the law. And so a psychopath looks
Speaker 3: at a problem from that perspective, and that's the fundamental
Speaker 3: difference between them and everybody else, because everybody else pays
Speaker 3: attention to what am I going to hurt somebody else
Speaker 3: by doing this? And they take that into account.
Speaker 1: Do you think, based on that rationale about companies being psychopathic,
Speaker 1: religions are psychopathic?
Speaker 3: Of course they are, absolutely doubt go on, well, any
Speaker 3: organization that requires loyalty as the primary driver of the
Speaker 3: way it works is operating fundamentally psychopathically. I mean all
Speaker 3: psychopaths work on this. So if you look at say
Speaker 3: the cult, look at the history of cults, which is
Speaker 3: always fascinating reading.
Speaker 1: I love I love cult. I'm toyed with starting one,
Speaker 1: but you know, just letting people know up front what
Speaker 1: it is.
Speaker 3: I think you have started one, Craig. You know you've
Speaker 3: got a fairly fairly loyal listenership there, haven't you.
Speaker 1: Sh I try to cut that under wraps.
Speaker 3: But the difference between what you're doing, which is a
Speaker 3: fan base who are following you and the cult? Is it?
Speaker 3: A primary requirement of a cult is that the person
Speaker 3: must be absolutely loyal, so there can be no questioning
Speaker 3: at all, and any failure to be loyal is instantly punished.
Speaker 1: Did you hear that, everyone stop fucking listening to Joe
Speaker 1: Rogan and get back to me.
Speaker 3: That's right, you know. And and if you had enough power,
Speaker 3: you would start punishing them, undoubtedly. If I want you
Speaker 3: to look into that, see if you can see if
Speaker 3: you can make their their screens explode if they look
Speaker 3: at Joe Rogan, I love Joe Rogan, I'd have to
Speaker 3: explode myself.
Speaker 1: Well, I like it. Yeah, it is so interesting when
Speaker 1: you look through that lens of you know, psychopathic qualities.
Speaker 1: Qualities doesn't seem but attributes. Yeah, that is because it
Speaker 1: is very very you know like it.
Speaker 3: Actually it plays to a weakness in the thing, which
Speaker 3: is both a weakness and a strength in humans. So
Speaker 3: if and I think we've talked about this briefly before,
Speaker 3: but if you ask yourself the question, how is it
Speaker 3: that a puny little animal with no clause, fangs, venom armor,
Speaker 3: which is humans meat on feet, she's got claws you
Speaker 3: don't want to miss the tiff. But like armadillo, But
Speaker 3: how is it that we dominate the planet when there's
Speaker 3: all these other animals that could take us in a
Speaker 3: one on one fight, you know, without even blinking, even tif,
Speaker 3: even t if versus a crocodile. I think I'd have
Speaker 3: my money on the crocodile. No, no chance. I'll tell you.
Speaker 1: If she could get in a couple of jabs, then
Speaker 1: an uppercut, that crocodile be fucked.
Speaker 3: Tiff. Tiff versus a crocodile and a great white shark.
Speaker 3: What about that they.
Speaker 1: Got a big chin to try and cover those crocs. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you'd just be a little snack for a croctiff. You'd
Speaker 1: just be like an appetizer before lunch. And I think
Speaker 1: Alesbo would be lunch probably.
Speaker 3: So the question is how do we How do we
Speaker 3: do it? What do we do? We use the oxytocin trick,
Speaker 3: which social media uses to exploit us by making it addictive.
Speaker 3: But we work well with strangers because we're rewarded by
Speaker 3: straining just thinking good things about us, And the way
Speaker 3: we make strangers think good things about us is we
Speaker 3: do things they like. And if everybody does things that
Speaker 3: everybody else likes. Guess what, Suddenly we're not one person,
Speaker 3: We're a million people, and we're all behaving in the
Speaker 3: same fashion. And that is what gives us the power.
Speaker 3: Now cults use that against us, and so to religions
Speaker 3: by the way, which is, if you can make it
Speaker 3: that the thing you're doing that everybody else likes is
Speaker 3: a very particular thing within your cult, then that binds
Speaker 3: the members of the cult together and simultaneously makes enemies
Speaker 3: of anyone outside the cult. So you are doubly rewarded.
Speaker 3: You're rewarded by doing whatever weird thing the cult requires
Speaker 3: you to do or believe, and you're rewarded by feeling
Speaker 3: that by doing that, you are above and beyond anyone
Speaker 3: outside the cult. And so it's very, very powerful, and
Speaker 3: it's a really neat trick where cult leaders and church
Speaker 3: leaders and some politicians have figured out, if you can
Speaker 3: manipulate that and get that dynamic working, suddenly you've got
Speaker 3: a rusted on following that cannot be removed. It's impervious
Speaker 3: to logic, it's impervious to facts or truth. It doesn't
Speaker 3: need any of the above. It just needs to know
Speaker 3: what the cult wants you to believe.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and people from the outside looking in or just objectively,
Speaker 1: people like I'd never get sucked into anything like that,
Speaker 1: and it's like they're sucked in.
Speaker 3: A human you will be well.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And not all cults are religious, I mean, like
Speaker 1: I call them thought cults. Where to belong to this group,
Speaker 1: you've got to think this, You've got to believe this.
Speaker 1: You've got to you've got to be opposed to that,
Speaker 1: you know, and that there's a price of entry or
Speaker 1: rice of membership, you know, and that is you need
Speaker 1: to agree with us, align with us. Think how we think.
Speaker 1: You know, we all live in an echo chamber, and
Speaker 1: everyone who isn't in our echo chamber is the enemy
Speaker 1: and they're wrong and they're inferior. But you're lucky you
Speaker 1: got here just in time. So you're welcome.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and we know that we saw that done on
Speaker 3: a mass scale with COVID. I don't want to go
Speaker 3: into the pros and cons of the science there, which
Speaker 3: was largely rubbish, but.
Speaker 1: You just did. I don't want to say anything, you know,
Speaker 1: I don't want to say anything you know, controversial, it's shit,
Speaker 1: ye go on, But I don't want to say anything.
Speaker 3: We don't want to dig into the detail of that,
Speaker 3: but the way it played out in our society is interesting,
Speaker 3: the way governments became impervious to evidence and impervious to science.
Speaker 3: And it started out the normal way it starts out
Speaker 3: with science, which is inquiring minds, people being open to
Speaker 3: discussion and criticism and so on, and then it all
Speaker 3: got shut down really quickly, and you had to believe
Speaker 3: without any evidence whatsoever, or you were outside the cult.
Speaker 3: And people who think this can't happen to me just
Speaker 3: need to go back there and think about how it felt,
Speaker 3: because it can happen, and it does happen a lot.
Speaker 3: And like you say, it doesn't have to be something
Speaker 3: that you traditionally describe as a cult.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 3: It can be a political party, it can be a church,
Speaker 3: it can just be a group of friends.
Speaker 1: But in the fitness industry, David, there are a bunch
Speaker 1: of cults. You know, CrossFit is a kind of cult.
Speaker 1: You know, there's a shout out to our CrossFit friends,
Speaker 1: but yeah, you know, it's like very much, this is
Speaker 1: the best way to train. We've got a monopoly on
Speaker 1: effective training, you know. Whatever, there's a bunch of those, Yeah, you.
Speaker 3: Think about how that's reinforced. So say, let's use a
Speaker 3: training thing as the example. The way that's reinforced is
Speaker 3: people post videos or pictures of them or stories of
Speaker 3: them doing things in the correct fashion according to the cult,
Speaker 3: and all the fans of the cult applaud and reward
Speaker 3: them for that, and so they get an oxytocin hit
Speaker 3: for doing things in the correct way. And if they
Speaker 3: do things slightly wrong, they either get no rewards or worse,
Speaker 3: get attacked. You know, they say, oh, what are you doing?
Speaker 3: You're lifting that the wrong way, or you're picking that
Speaker 3: up the wrong way, or you shouldn't be doing that,
Speaker 3: And that either drives them away from the cult or
Speaker 3: sucks them deeper into it, because then they think, wow,
Speaker 3: I really enjoyed it when I was being rewarded, and
Speaker 3: so I'll make sure not to post things that are
Speaker 3: the wrong way now because and then that just reinforces it.
Speaker 3: So now there's another person posting things done the right way.
Speaker 3: The way that gets you people saying, isn't you know,
Speaker 3: isn't Craig a fabulous person because he's doing things the
Speaker 3: right way? Yeah?
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah, And where I mean very much, where
Speaker 1: like a species of that. We want to belong to something,
Speaker 1: We want to belong to a group, we want to
Speaker 1: belong to a club, we want to be like people
Speaker 1: don't like not belonging to something. And so it's very
Speaker 1: I did this thing. And this is not a word
Speaker 1: of a lie. Some of my listeners would remember this.
Speaker 1: But back in the day, David, before podcasts were a thing,
Speaker 1: probably fifteen years ago, I had a blog and I
Speaker 1: had eighty thousand subscribers, and so every day when I
Speaker 1: would write a blog post, I would send it out
Speaker 1: and it would go in eighty thousand inboxes, right, so,
Speaker 1: and the open rate was massive, like so many I
Speaker 1: mean that was back four people were doing what they're
Speaker 1: doing now. So I had a huge amount of you know,
Speaker 1: relatively influence and all of that stuff. And I remember
Speaker 1: I wrote a tongue in cheek cult about how I
Speaker 1: was going to a tongue in cheek post I should
Speaker 1: say about how I was going to start a cult,
Speaker 1: and I described how it would be this community and
Speaker 1: you know, how it would all go on and like
Speaker 1: it would all be open and honest, there wouldn't be
Speaker 1: any you know, everyone's not routing each other. That's not
Speaker 1: what's going on, there's no.
Speaker 3: But I just created this cult. If you're not, jeez, Craik.
Speaker 1: Now, well that's just bullshit to get him in the door.
Speaker 1: Don't worry about that. No, not really. And so I
Speaker 1: described this utopian and I literally, you know, everyone knew
Speaker 1: it was a bit of fun. Right, I'm not really
Speaker 1: doing it. It's not real. But I would have had
Speaker 1: at least one hundred messages or emails from people saying,
Speaker 1: if you actually did that, I would absolutely want to
Speaker 1: be part of it. And I'm like, oh, this is terrifying.
Speaker 3: It's terrifying, but it's actually it's relatively simple to do.
Speaker 3: You could decide now to create, you know, a cult,
Speaker 3: I don't know, the worshipers of Tiffany Cult or something
Speaker 3: like that, and you could You can't be in you're
Speaker 3: already you're you've got to be hidden behind a screen,
Speaker 3: you know, the mysterious Tiffany. So but you could create
Speaker 3: some rules around that, Craig. And as long as you've
Speaker 3: got a reasonable number of followers who were prepared to
Speaker 3: follow whatever rules you made, and who would quickly jump
Speaker 3: on anyone who broke the rules right and say no,
Speaker 3: you're you're thinking the wrong way. This is what Tiffany
Speaker 3: would have wanted. Then you could very quickly create a cult.
Speaker 3: It's just that simple. Reward people behaving the way you
Speaker 3: want them to behave and punish them or make an
Speaker 3: example of someone who behaves in a way that you
Speaker 3: don't want them to behave, and you know, pretty quickly
Speaker 3: you'd have yourself a cult.
Speaker 1: There's there's a book, if could you look it up
Speaker 1: for me, I'll try and I just this is a
Speaker 1: terrible thing. A lady wrote a book about the west
Speaker 1: Bro Baptist Church and Unfollow. Thank you. What a great book,
Speaker 1: what a great like if you want to understand cults everybody,
Speaker 1: and the most fascinating and like compelling book written and
Speaker 1: read by this lady who's just brilliant. She grew up
Speaker 1: in the Westbro Baptist Church.
Speaker 3: Which have you heard of that, David, No, I haven't known.
Speaker 3: Oh my god, just West as in west and the
Speaker 3: book follow.
Speaker 1: Oh it's fucking like it's.
Speaker 2: One way to join the cult, as you can hear.
Speaker 1: Well. The thing is she exposes everything that went on,
Speaker 1: and she talks about how hard it was for her
Speaker 1: to get out of there and what they did to her.
Speaker 1: Oh my god, it's such a Yeah. I don't often
Speaker 1: recommend books, but I'm recommending if you're at all interested
Speaker 1: in cults and that everyone just have a listen to
Speaker 1: that and then send me a message on our Facebook
Speaker 1: page and tell me what you thought of it. But yeah,
Speaker 1: it's such a good book, and it's so interesting, and
Speaker 1: it gives such a first person insight in so it's
Speaker 1: not some external person writing some kind of commentary. It's
Speaker 1: literally this lived experienced and it's incredible. But anyway, that's
Speaker 1: enough of a sales pitch on a book that I
Speaker 1: get no money from, but it's worth I never promote
Speaker 1: my own books, but I promote everyone else's.
Speaker 3: You've written a book, great, there you go about that.
Speaker 1: I've written seventh. There you go seven.
Speaker 3: My goodness to me, that's how much I don't promote them.
Speaker 1: That's how much I don't promote myself. I hate promoting.
Speaker 1: Well you've so. You just learned that right now, and
Speaker 1: we've known each other for a long time. I hate
Speaker 1: selling my own shit. Yeah, you're a close second. You're
Speaker 1: a close second, right.
Speaker 3: I only do it when forced, when you make me
Speaker 3: say something about something I've done.
Speaker 1: When I'm on someone else's podcast. They go, oh, do
Speaker 1: you want to promote you?
Speaker 3: I go nah.
Speaker 1: They're like, okay, I go follow me on Instagram. That'll do,
Speaker 1: you know, I don't want to go. Well, everybody, you
Speaker 1: need to go to my go to my website and
Speaker 1: there's a shop and there's a whole lot of product
Speaker 1: to fuck all that. I hate that. I'd rather have
Speaker 1: less money and more self esteem.
Speaker 3: I don't want to do it, I said the richest
Speaker 3: guy in Melbourne. I don't know.
Speaker 1: It's exactly right. Don't you forget it? Hey, mate, that
Speaker 1: was a really good chat. Thank you.
Speaker 3: We'll say that about nothing.
Speaker 1: But no, it was good where we were going to
Speaker 1: talk about fluide. But fuck that we might do Yeah,
Speaker 1: we'll say goodbye affair. But tif did you you picked
Speaker 1: that quite quick? Have you read that book or listened
Speaker 1: to that.
Speaker 2: Book last time you raved about it?
Speaker 1: I downloaded and did you listen to the whole book?
Speaker 2: Nearly to the end?
Speaker 1: Then I got bored?
Speaker 3: But she followed it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, okay, so all right, well fucking there goes my
Speaker 1: raving recommended.
Speaker 2: She was I remember being, like I said to you,
Speaker 2: It blew my mind. Some of the stuff getting into it,
Speaker 2: you know, and I'm like the books and.
Speaker 1: The ship that they honestly just listened to it. Five
Speaker 1: stars from me, three and a half from Tiff. You're welcome.
Speaker 1: You're welcome. Thanks everyone, Thanks David, No worries to you.