Speaker 1: Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. My name
Speaker 1: is Robert Lamb.
Speaker 2: And I am Joe McCormick, and it's Saturday. So we're
Speaker 2: going into the vault for an older episode of the show.
Speaker 2: This time we're going back several years to an episode
Speaker 2: we did on the Black Mirror episode Bander Snatch. This
Speaker 2: was before Weird House Cinema. Not a Weird House Cinema episode.
Speaker 2: We featured it in a We featured it in a
Speaker 2: core episode and talked about all kinds of things connected
Speaker 2: to the plot. This sorry, this was not a Weird
Speaker 2: House Cinema episode. This pre dates Weird House. It was
Speaker 2: a core episode where we talked about all kinds of
Speaker 2: things related to the plot. It originally aired January ninth,
Speaker 2: twenty twenty.
Speaker 1: Now why are we talking about it right now? Well,
Speaker 1: it's my understanding that Netflix is set to remove Bander
Speaker 1: Snatch from its platform on May twelfth, And unlike most films,
Speaker 1: you know, when it leaves one platform, or it can
Speaker 1: just pop up on another, right, some other streaming service
Speaker 1: can offer it, or it'll come out on physical media maybe,
Speaker 1: or you know, or if you can find a stream somewhere.
Speaker 1: But of course the thing about Bandersnatch is that it's interactive.
Speaker 1: It is a choose your own path experience, and therefore,
Speaker 1: if it's not, it's one of the it's one of
Speaker 1: the few of the interactive experiences that they actually did,
Speaker 1: and once it is off of the Netflix platform, you're
Speaker 1: not going to be able to experience it in the
Speaker 1: same way, which I thought was brilliant. I thought it
Speaker 1: was an amazing interface of not only the technical aspects
Speaker 1: of it, but just the way that Black Mirror made
Speaker 1: use of that technology to tell a compelling story about
Speaker 1: choices and the illusion of choice.
Speaker 2: Going to be a shame to lose it, but it
Speaker 2: seems like a fitting end for an episode of Black
Speaker 2: Mirror to actually just be destroyed by the kind of
Speaker 2: whims of a technological behemoth.
Speaker 1: It does, it really does. So Yeah, so you've got
Speaker 1: you've literally gotten like what a couple of days, maybe
Speaker 1: even down to hours at this point by the time
Speaker 1: you're listening to this episode. So jump in there experienced Bandersnatch,
Speaker 1: or re experience it while you have time and enjoy
Speaker 1: our thoughts from the year twenty twenty about it.
Speaker 2: And the Banker Inspired with a courage so new it
Speaker 2: was a matter for general remark, rushed madly ahead and
Speaker 2: was lost to their view in his zeal to discover
Speaker 2: the snark. But while he was seeking with thimbles and care,
Speaker 2: a bender snatch swiftly drew nigh and grabbed at the banker,
Speaker 2: who shrieked in despair, for he knew it was useless
Speaker 2: to fly. He offered large discount. He offered a check
Speaker 2: drawn two bearer for seven pounds ten.
Speaker 1: But the bandersnatch merely extended its neck and grabbed at
Speaker 1: the banker again without rest or pause, while those frumiest
Speaker 1: jaws went savagely snapping around. He skipped, and he hopped,
Speaker 1: and he floundered, flopped till fainting he fell to the ground.
Speaker 1: The Bandersnatch fled as the others appeared, led on by
Speaker 1: that fear stricken yell, and the bellman remarked, it is
Speaker 1: just as I feared, and solemnly told on his bell.
Speaker 3: Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind, A production of
Speaker 3: Iheartradios How Stuff Works.
Speaker 1: Hey, Welcome to stuff to Blow your Mind. My name
Speaker 1: is Robert Lamb.
Speaker 2: And I'm Joe McCormick. And Robert are you feeling more
Speaker 2: frabjess or more frumious today.
Speaker 1: I guess more frumious frumious would be my answer. That was,
Speaker 1: of course the poem The Hunting of the Snark by
Speaker 1: Lewis Carroll, But I guess a number of people are
Speaker 1: probably more familiar with the Bandersnatch from another poem by
Speaker 1: Lewis Carroll, that being the jabberwock Jabwacke, Yes, where the
Speaker 1: Bandersnatch is just alluded to as another monstrous creature that
Speaker 1: my i'd be running around the woods.
Speaker 2: I love it when a poet first named something in
Speaker 2: a kind of in a listical kind of way, you know,
Speaker 2: poem as listical, and then later it comes through in
Speaker 2: another poem with more force. I think that sort of
Speaker 2: happened with the demogorgan, right.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I think so. And in this case, yeah,
Speaker 1: the Bandersnatch. There's not a lot really said about it
Speaker 1: in the writings of Lewis Carroll. Lewis Carroll, by the way,
Speaker 1: was the pen name of Charles Lutwich Dodgson, who lived
Speaker 1: eighteen thirty two through eighteen ninety eight, and he first
Speaker 1: introduced the bander Snatch again just in a list of
Speaker 1: creatures that might pop up in his eighteen seventy two
Speaker 1: novel Through the Looking Glass in that poem the Jabberwackie,
Speaker 1: and then pops up again in this eighteen seventy four
Speaker 1: poem that we just read, the Hunting of the Snark,
Speaker 1: which we didn't.
Speaker 2: Read the whole of the poem. That was just an
Speaker 2: exerpt from it. I think where the like who's the banker?
Speaker 2: The banker is one of these people who goes on
Speaker 2: a voyage hunting the snark. I've read that that poem
Speaker 2: has been interpreted by some as metaphorical of you know,
Speaker 2: that it's supposed to be an allegory about the search
Speaker 2: for human happiness and contentment. But then also I think
Speaker 2: i've heard it alleged that the poem actually has no
Speaker 2: allegorical meaning, that it's just kind of silly.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, in that sense, it's kind of enigmatic.
Speaker 1: And the creature itself is enigmatic, scarcely described, but certainly
Speaker 1: best avoided at all costs. There's no way to outrun it,
Speaker 1: no way to escape its intensity. And by the way,
Speaker 1: frumius is a combination of fuming and furious. Carroll just
Speaker 1: ran these two words together to make a nice new
Speaker 1: adjective for a strange monster is.
Speaker 2: A perfectly cromulent word, very frabjous. And I was wondering,
Speaker 2: do you need a vorpal sword if you go up
Speaker 2: against a vander Snatch or is that only for the
Speaker 2: jabberwock Well.
Speaker 1: It certainly worked on the Jabberwockie. I don't know about
Speaker 1: the vander Snatch. There are no tales of slaying it,
Speaker 1: are there, at least not in Lewis Carroll's original work.
Speaker 2: Does the vorpal sword show up as an artifact in
Speaker 2: D and D It does?
Speaker 1: Yeah, it certainly does. Yeah, pretty good sword. Oh yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: very good sword. Now, the name Vandersnatch has been evoked
Speaker 1: many times over the years and works of fantasy and
Speaker 1: science fiction. I've seen it pop up as a space
Speaker 1: slug and other such creatures. Sometimes it's just kind of
Speaker 1: an enigmatic name for like a government project or something,
Speaker 1: because it's a great it's a great name. In depictions
Speaker 1: of Lewis Carroll's work, it is often take on a
Speaker 1: mammalian character. Nineteenth century children's illustrator Peter Newell depicted it
Speaker 1: is kind of a furry, horned beast that might resemble
Speaker 1: a cat or maybe a wolf like creature, and this one,
Speaker 1: this is a very popular image, and then film adaptations
Speaker 1: have depicted it as both borlike and cat like. The
Speaker 1: twenty ten Tim Burton adaptation has a very memorable creature
Speaker 1: design for the Bandersnatch.
Speaker 4: Oh, the Tim Burton Alice in Wonderland? Is that what
Speaker 4: you're talking about?
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I have, I've seen the first one.
Speaker 4: I never ventured that far into late Burton.
Speaker 1: Well, it had some things going for it. It had
Speaker 1: had a really good cast, it had some interesting character designs,
Speaker 1: I'll say that, and a very monstrous looking Bandersnatch. Okay, Now,
Speaker 1: just a couple of other interesting tidbits about Lewis Carroll.
Speaker 1: He was a mathematician. He worked in geometry and new
Speaker 1: ideas in algebra, logic, machines, ciphers. So between this and
Speaker 1: other details of his life, there's a lot of black
Speaker 1: mirror to the originator of the Bandersnatch. Also, in Hallucinations,
Speaker 1: the book by Oliver Sachs, the Late Oliver Sacks, Sax
Speaker 1: points out that Carroll was known to suffer from classical migraines,
Speaker 1: and that Caro W. Lippman and others have suggested that
Speaker 1: his migraine experiences may have contributed to the way he
Speaker 1: envisioned through the looking Glass and Alice in Wonderland, like
Speaker 1: the skewing of time and space. Also, you have auditory
Speaker 1: hallucinations that are not uncommon in migraines, as well as
Speaker 1: old factory hallucinations. I've also seen descriptions of this lifting feeling,
Speaker 1: this feeling of being moved through space.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I guess the extension of the lightheadedness that comes
Speaker 2: on with the aura and all that.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: You know, there's actually an asteroid named bander Snatch.
Speaker 1: Oh I didn't know this.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I look this up. Nine to seven to eighty
Speaker 2: Bander Snatch. It's a Main Belt asteroid, so it's out
Speaker 2: beyond the orbit of Mars. Discovered in nineteen ninety four
Speaker 2: by Japanese astronomers Takashi Urrata and Yasuhiro Shimizu at the
Speaker 2: Nachi Katsura Observatory, and it was named, of course after
Speaker 2: the Frumias Bandersnatch.
Speaker 1: Awesome. Now, one of the this is just sort of
Speaker 1: the introductory material on the Bandersnatch, because for the vast
Speaker 1: majority of this episode we're going to be talking about
Speaker 1: what as I guess the most recent cinematic invocation of
Speaker 1: the bandersnatch, and that is the Black Mirror episode. Well,
Speaker 1: it's not even an episode. It's a Black Mirror film
Speaker 1: that came out on Netflix December of what was it,
Speaker 1: twenty eighteen, so a little over a year ago, and
Speaker 1: there's a lot to unpack here.
Speaker 2: I actually didn't watch it until this week, so I
Speaker 2: knew you wanted to do an episode about it, and
Speaker 2: I was like, Okay, I'll finally see what all the
Speaker 2: fuss is about.
Speaker 4: I was very impressed.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'll get I'll certainly get more into my very
Speaker 1: thoughts on it later. I was impressed with it when
Speaker 1: it came out, and then since we were going to
Speaker 1: do the episode, I rewatched it for the first time
Speaker 1: since its original release earlier this week, and I have
Speaker 1: to say it, I thought it held up. I even
Speaker 1: got a different ending and a different dead end at
Speaker 1: one point than I had encountered previously. So it was like,
Speaker 1: why every time you watch a film that you like
Speaker 1: again you find new things, but in this case you
Speaker 1: can actually get a different ending.
Speaker 2: Yeah, now we're going to be exploring today some of
Speaker 2: the science and the ideas and philosophy that are alluded
Speaker 2: to in Vanderson. But in doing so, of course, this
Speaker 2: will involve some spoilers for this strange film. So I
Speaker 2: would say, there are a couple of places we're not
Speaker 2: going to like go through and explore every possible ending
Speaker 2: or anything like that. But if you are in the
Speaker 2: case where you haven't seen it yet and you don't
Speaker 2: want anything at all spoiled, you should probably stop here
Speaker 2: and go watch it first before you listen to the
Speaker 2: rest of the episode. But if you've already seen it,
Speaker 2: or you haven't seen it, and you don't care about
Speaker 2: minor spoilers that don't go all the way to all
Speaker 2: the endings, then you know, forge ahead with us.
Speaker 1: Please. However, some of you may be asking the question,
Speaker 1: what are you talking about? What is Black Mirror? So
Speaker 1: we should probably take a few minutes to just refresh
Speaker 1: you on what this is. It is a is the
Speaker 1: word refresh? Would that be the word? We should shock
Speaker 1: you to the bone? All right? So Black Mirror is
Speaker 1: in essence a sci fi anthology television series in the
Speaker 1: same vein as The Twilight Zone, the Outer Limits, these
Speaker 1: various shows we've discussed in the past.
Speaker 2: I might call it pretty often techno horror. Not every
Speaker 2: episode is the same, but there's essentially no horror movie
Speaker 2: as scary as the scariest episodes of Black Mirror, especially
Speaker 2: the ones that manage to take fairly plausible technological scenarios
Speaker 2: and follow them to their logical conclusions. I mean, it's
Speaker 2: it's a show that's very good at conjuring up the
Speaker 2: worst possible nightmares of like the intersection of capitalism and technology.
Speaker 1: Yeah, definitely, episodes tend to have a technological swing to
Speaker 1: the story, and they tend to deal on some level
Speaker 1: with contemporary anxiety about current technology and emerging technology. What
Speaker 1: are these technologies doing to our lives? What may they
Speaker 1: do to our lives in the future, And you know,
Speaker 1: sometimes they take varying specuative leaps there, of course, since
Speaker 1: it is science fiction. But you, I would say, you
Speaker 1: typically leave an episode of Black Mirror feeling a little
Speaker 1: worse about the world. I know that Netflix, their current masters,
Speaker 1: are very into the whole binge model, but I personally
Speaker 1: find it very difficult to binge Black Mirror, in part
Speaker 1: because each episode, of course, is a self contained story
Speaker 1: with characters and a plot, et cetera. But then also
Speaker 1: It's like they're often like a punch in the gut,
Speaker 1: and I just can't just sit there and take one
Speaker 1: punch after the other.
Speaker 2: Apart from one very sweet, very nice episode, there's essentially
Speaker 2: nothing that makes me feel as bad as Black Mirror.
Speaker 1: Well, you know, I was thinking. I was thinking about
Speaker 1: this because there are definitely some very bleak episode. There
Speaker 1: are episodes of Black Mirror that I admire that I
Speaker 1: will never watch again. But then I look back at
Speaker 1: my some of my favorite episodes. My favorite episodes are
Speaker 1: probably san Ju Napero, The Uss Callister, and metal Head.
Speaker 1: Two of those, one of those is still pretty bleak,
Speaker 1: but two of those are actually pretty upbeat, probably the
Speaker 1: most upbeat episodes of the show. And maybe that's the
Speaker 1: reason I would come back to them, because if I'm
Speaker 1: going to double dip, I want to double dip for
Speaker 1: optimism's sake. Now, in terms that we can't talk about
Speaker 1: Black Meir without talking about the creator behind it, the
Speaker 1: main creative individual behind it, and that is Charlie Brooker,
Speaker 1: a British writer and humorist who the earliest thing that
Speaker 1: he worked on that I was familiar with was that
Speaker 1: he worked on Chris Morris's excellent news satire Brass Eye,
Speaker 1: and then he also created a pretty great zombie movie
Speaker 1: titled Dead Set in two thousand and eight, in which
Speaker 1: the zombie apocalypse breaks out in and around a Big
Speaker 1: Brother style reality TV production.
Speaker 2: I feel like two thousand and eight was sort of
Speaker 2: like maybe two thousand and seven. Two thousand and eight
Speaker 2: was like peak zombie satire movie.
Speaker 1: Yeah. And the thing about this one, though, the premise
Speaker 1: sounds like a comedy, and so I acquired a copy
Speaker 1: of it, thinking, oh, this is a comedy, and this
Speaker 1: is a guy that worked on Brass Eye. This is
Speaker 1: going to be hilarious. And it is not a straight
Speaker 1: up comedy. It is a pretty terrifying film. But you
Speaker 1: see shades of that in Black Mirror. Sometimes there is
Speaker 1: a premise that could sound like a joke, but then
Speaker 1: it is taken and considered with such intensity that it works. Yeah.
Speaker 2: What if like a major tech company used eye tracking
Speaker 2: software to make sure you were always watching their ads
Speaker 2: and if you didn't watch them, they would ring sirens
Speaker 2: in your brain and deduct money from your bank account
Speaker 2: until you started watching the ads. Again, sounds like a joke,
Speaker 2: but like if you just said take that seriously for
Speaker 2: a bit and explore that becomes like a nightmare of
Speaker 2: technoci fi.
Speaker 1: Absolutely. Now. Black Mirror began in twenty ten two seasons
Speaker 1: in a holiday special came out and ran on Channel
Speaker 1: four in the UK. Then Netflix started carrying it, and
Speaker 1: Netflix became the owner of the main pub We'll share
Speaker 1: the program however you want to look at it, starting
Speaker 1: with season three in October of twenty sixteen. All in all,
Speaker 1: it has thus far gone five seasons twenty one episodes,
Speaker 1: and that's not counting the film Bandersnatch, which again came
Speaker 1: out in December of twenty eighteen.
Speaker 2: These bits of publisher information will actually become relevant later
Speaker 2: on as we discussed the story.
Speaker 4: Because the the ideas there.
Speaker 1: Yeah, because at the end we definitely get into some
Speaker 1: citiz scenarios where we have to consider the fact that
Speaker 1: Netflix is the business daddy behind Black Mirror.
Speaker 2: So Vandersnatch the film. The Black Mirror film was actually
Speaker 2: directed by David Slade, who I was like, where do
Speaker 2: I know that name from? He's done several things, but
Speaker 2: one of them was he did one of the Twilight movies.
Speaker 1: Yes, and I've seen that that particular one. It was
Speaker 1: the second one, I think, and it's that's a I'm
Speaker 1: not a huge Twilight fan, but that is a very
Speaker 1: watchable Twilight movie and it has a great soundtrack. It's
Speaker 1: got Tom York on it. Oh yeah, yeah. He also
Speaker 1: directed the Black Mirror episode metal Head that I alluded
Speaker 1: to earlier, and there are some callbacks to metal Head
Speaker 1: in the Bandersnatch episode.
Speaker 2: Now, I guess one thing we haven't gotten fully into
Speaker 2: so far is the fact that the Black Mirror movie
Speaker 2: Bandersnatch is it's an interactive movie, which makes it very unique.
Speaker 1: Right. This was the big selling point on it, and
Speaker 1: indeed is one of the mean it's a key part
Speaker 1: of the way you consume it, but it is also
Speaker 1: very important thematically, like you know, true to form, The
Speaker 1: creators here really thought long and hard about how to
Speaker 1: utilize an interactive system within the work and make the
Speaker 1: work comment on that system as well.
Speaker 2: Right, the interactive system being Netflix, like the fact that
Speaker 2: the user can make inputs on the movie.
Speaker 1: Yeah, basically, that's what it amounts to is you start
Speaker 1: off watching it, it seems like a normal Netflix presentation, but
Speaker 1: then your in my case, my Xbox one controller would
Speaker 1: suddenly vibrate and then this little the screen at the
Speaker 1: bottom of the screen. You're suddenly with two choices and
Speaker 1: a timer, and you have to choose, you know, what
Speaker 1: is going to happen, what the character is going to do, etc.
Speaker 1: Now this is you know, when you're just checking out
Speaker 1: the film, you might not realize how much work goes
Speaker 1: into this, but it took apparently a huge amount of
Speaker 1: work to shoot all these various branching paths, because it
Speaker 1: becomes this tree, this branching system of possibilities when you
Speaker 1: start presenting the user with these interactive choices. For instance,
Speaker 1: the previously the longest episode of Black Mirror was an
Speaker 1: episode called Hated in the Nation, which was eighty nine
Speaker 1: minutes long. That's future length, right, what ninety minutes is
Speaker 1: usually the length you shoot for with a shot film. Well,
Speaker 1: when you're watching Bandersnatch, depending on your choices, the film
Speaker 1: can run anywhere between ninety minutes and two and a
Speaker 1: half hours. And in order to make this work, as
Speaker 1: pointed out by a Jackie Strauss in The Hollywood Reporter,
Speaker 1: this means they had to shoot like five hours of
Speaker 1: footage so that they could actually cover all of these
Speaker 1: various choices. Wow, and you may watch it like, for instance,
Speaker 1: the first time I watched it, there were plenty of
Speaker 1: scenes I did not see, and then when I watched
Speaker 1: it again, there were films, there were scenes that I
Speaker 1: saw the first time that I did not see, and
Speaker 1: I got an entirely different ending that I'd never I
Speaker 1: didn't even know about. And then there are of course
Speaker 1: various Easter eggs and even I've read quote golden Easter
Speaker 1: eggs that are spread throughout, things that most viewers will
Speaker 1: not find unless they spend a great deal of time
Speaker 1: going through and going back through and backing up, etc.
Speaker 2: With this interactive piece encouraging unhealthy obsessive behavior.
Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly, I mean it is black mirror. Now, as
Speaker 1: far as the choices you make in Bandersnatch, you start
Speaker 1: off making very small choices, it seemed very consequential. For instance,
Speaker 1: choosing the main character's breakfast series he's presently his father
Speaker 1: shows two boxes and you decide which one he's going
Speaker 1: to have for breakfast. Yeah.
Speaker 2: I think it was what like frosted flakes or sugar
Speaker 2: puffs or something. I remember what I realized after I
Speaker 2: made that choice was I was like, oh no, I
Speaker 2: think I chose the brand that I was more familiar with.
Speaker 1: Ah, we'll come back to that later. That is an
Speaker 1: important point that we'll come back to later on in
Speaker 1: the episode. But yeah, at first, it's it's what kind
Speaker 1: of cereal does he want? All right? It doesn't doesn't
Speaker 1: seem to matter much, and it also gives you a
Speaker 1: chance to try out the technology low stakes. But and
Speaker 1: then also later on, you choose what music is going
Speaker 1: to listen to in when he's on the bus, which
Speaker 1: is kind of fun. I think you get to choose
Speaker 1: between a eurhythmic song and something else. I can't remember
Speaker 1: the other one.
Speaker 4: I think it's Thompson Twins.
Speaker 1: That's it. Yeah. And then later on he's in a
Speaker 1: record store and you get to choose which record he's
Speaker 1: going to buy. And this is also pretty great because
Speaker 1: one of the choices is Tangerine Dreams excellent nineteen seventy
Speaker 1: four album Phaedra, which is incredible.
Speaker 4: Absolutely.
Speaker 2: In fact, I was listening to that again this morning
Speaker 2: while I was doing some prep for this episode.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's excellent stuff. However, this time around I forced
Speaker 1: myself to choose the other album instead, the other album
Speaker 1: being a Seo Tamita's the Bermuda Triangle, which very strange. Yeah,
Speaker 1: very strange work, but very good. I was really not
Speaker 1: that familiar with this artist or this work, which is
Speaker 1: apparently kind of hard to come by on streaming unless
Speaker 1: you just find like a YouTube full album rip. But yeah,
Speaker 1: this is just a taste of the soundtrack. The Bandersnatch
Speaker 1: is a wonderful soundtrack, including not only these artists but
Speaker 1: also deep esch Mode, Laurie Anderson. Great stuff. But let's
Speaker 1: come back to the choices you make in this interactive system.
Speaker 1: So again, they start off seeming largely inconsequential. They start
Speaker 1: off seeming a little bit fun. You know, it's just
Speaker 1: surface level stuff like what's his breakfast cereal, what's his
Speaker 1: musical choice? But then they become increasingly high stakes and
Speaker 1: even nerve racking to decide on. Suddenly, when you're controller
Speaker 1: vibrates and you're presented with this choice and sometimes dread, Yeah,
Speaker 1: you fill this dread because sometimes the choices neither one
Speaker 1: is all that great. Sometimes the choices are kind of horrible,
Speaker 1: and there's at least one point where you have no choice.
Speaker 1: There's something to select, but there's no alternative selection, and
Speaker 1: that feels maddening as well. And and you have a
Speaker 1: time or you have like what I think it's ten
Speaker 1: seconds to choose something, and if you don't choose, Netflix
Speaker 1: chooses for you. But Netflix reports ninety four percent of
Speaker 1: viewers actively made choices when they watched Bandersnatch.
Speaker 2: Now, in my experience, it wasn't that they chose for
Speaker 2: you at random. It was that whichever one of the
Speaker 2: two options was highlighted, and it was like a you know,
Speaker 2: on off toggle, like you couldn't select neither one. You
Speaker 2: were just selecting one or the other, and then you
Speaker 2: could and you could go with it or you could
Speaker 2: not go with it in whichever one you had highlighted
Speaker 2: would just proceed. So there's this kind of there's this
Speaker 2: horrible sense of like helplessness that that poses on you
Speaker 2: as the viewer.
Speaker 1: I have not seen it. Sometimes I'll go into a
Speaker 1: restaurant or a bar and they'll have Netflix on playing
Speaker 1: some show. I've never seen them showing Bandersnatch. Probably for this.
Speaker 2: Reason, letting all the bar paytrens vote to decide.
Speaker 1: Well, yeah, or just going crazy like why is nobody
Speaker 1: clicking a button? Why is nobody interacting with this? Don't
Speaker 1: let don't let that choice go through. So eventually, as
Speaker 1: you as you interact with Bandersnatch, a warping of time occurs.
Speaker 1: You find yourself coming back around to pass choices like
Speaker 1: a wanderer or lost in a maze. And of course,
Speaker 1: befitting of a maze, there is a sort of minotaur
Speaker 1: in all of this. There is the bander Snatch.
Speaker 2: Wait is it the Bandersnatch or is it the Demon Packs?
Speaker 1: It is the Demon Packs, yeah, but I also it
Speaker 1: is also the Bandersnatch. Like it's design. Okay, it's design
Speaker 1: is roughly based on that illustration of the Bandersnatch we
Speaker 1: talked about. Okay, cool, All right, We're going to take
Speaker 1: a quick break, but when we come back we will
Speaker 1: get into the themes of bander Snatch and into the
Speaker 1: nature of choice and free will. All right, we're back.
Speaker 1: So there are a lot of interesting ideas, cool themes,
Speaker 1: historical tidbits that are thrown together, well not thrown together,
Speaker 1: stitch together, reassembled in Bandersnatch that give it its unique feel.
Speaker 1: Here's just a list of some of the things. First
Speaker 1: of all, video game design circa nineteen eighty four, because
Speaker 1: that is the setting nineteen eighty four.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it takes place in the eighties with eighties music,
Speaker 2: eighties fashion, all that stuff. But they're also programming you know,
Speaker 2: old school adventure games for like the Commodore sixty four
Speaker 2: and stuff.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Another huge part of it are Choose your Own
Speaker 1: Adventure books which are directly referenced. And then there is
Speaker 1: a book within Bandersnatch titled bander Snatch that is this
Speaker 1: enormous tone that we're told is essentially a choose your
Speaker 1: own adventure type scenario. Do you have any fond memories
Speaker 1: of choose your own adventure books?
Speaker 4: I was obsessed with them.
Speaker 2: I loved them when I was in elementary school, and
Speaker 2: I would love them despite the fact that you know,
Speaker 2: you die in most of the endings, like it imposes
Speaker 2: a kind of horrible paranoid fatalism on a child. I think,
Speaker 2: where you know, oh, this is a book about exploring
Speaker 2: the Arctic, but almost no matter what you do, you
Speaker 2: get eaten by a polar bear, or you fall beneath
Speaker 2: the ice and you can't get out. I guess my
Speaker 2: young brain was drawn to that kind of thing, though,
Speaker 2: you know, I had that like morbid obsession with peril
Speaker 2: and danger and death and all that. But also I'm
Speaker 2: curious what is so appealing about the choose your own
Speaker 2: adventure books, because one thing we should say is that
Speaker 2: this is not the first interactive film Bandersnatch, and previous
Speaker 2: attempts at interactive films have generally been very unpopular. I
Speaker 2: think a lot of times people don't actually enjoy the
Speaker 2: experience of choosing the outcome of a film, and I
Speaker 2: think there are reasons for that. I mean, for one thing,
Speaker 2: it's just like hard to make a story where like multiple,
Speaker 2: like so many different options of how the story could
Speaker 2: go would all be equally satisfying. I mean, there's a
Speaker 2: reason that an author writes a story a certain.
Speaker 1: Way, right. For instance, one film that we've talked about
Speaker 1: on the show before, William Castle's Mister Sardonicus from nineteen
Speaker 1: sixty one, was presented was marketed as having an interactive
Speaker 1: element in that at the end of this you got
Speaker 1: to choose the fate for the villain would it be,
Speaker 1: you know, justice or mercy? And the thing is, audiences
Speaker 1: never chose mercy for this horrible villain. Of course, they
Speaker 1: always chose justice, and so there were even accusations that
Speaker 1: they never even shot the alternate version, like there was
Speaker 1: the idea that it was interactive was just you know,
Speaker 1: the pitch was just the marketing, but there was no
Speaker 1: actual interactive element. William Castle, I think, claimed otherwise, saying
Speaker 1: yes they did shoot the sequence. I do not know
Speaker 1: personally if that's true or not, if this footage has
Speaker 1: ever materialized, but what I did did read was that
Speaker 1: generally people point to nineteen sixty seven's Keino automat as
Speaker 1: the first truly interactive film, but even that, I think
Speaker 1: there are only like four choices that could be made,
Speaker 1: and this film was also I think, largely comedic.
Speaker 2: Okay, well, I mean I would say there are many
Speaker 2: reasons why this format doesn't always work. For some reason,
Speaker 2: it worked for me as a kid with to choose
Speaker 2: your own adventure books. I loved those. But I mean,
Speaker 2: one problem I think is that it's hard to make
Speaker 2: all the narrative branches as good as each other, but
Speaker 2: another one is just the like.
Speaker 1: Yeah, like, for instance, when you finish it, I don't
Speaker 1: think there was ever a sense where I'm like, Okay,
Speaker 1: that's the ending I got. No, I want the good ending,
Speaker 1: or I want the robust ending you go.
Speaker 2: Back and do it again. It's more like a video
Speaker 2: game or.
Speaker 1: So I don't want the ending where I randomly die,
Speaker 1: Like the story of Super Mario is not that he's
Speaker 1: killed by a mutant turtle three minutes into the game,
Speaker 1: you know, I mean, that's not an epic tale.
Speaker 2: So in some ways, I think the choose your own
Speaker 2: adventure books are sometimes better thought of as like a
Speaker 2: puzzle to solve than as like a narrative to be experienced.
Speaker 2: And another big difference I will say is that one
Speaker 2: of the great pleasures of watching a movie or reading
Speaker 2: a book, or you know, engaging in any kind of
Speaker 2: narrative with an author's storyteller and you as the passive audience,
Speaker 2: is a surrendering of responsibility for what is about to
Speaker 2: happen in your own mind. You give up that responsibility
Speaker 2: and suddenly you know when when bad things continue to
Speaker 2: happen in the story, when characters make disastrous decisions that
Speaker 2: unfold and increase the peril and heighten the drama, you're
Speaker 2: not responsible for what's happening. You're just witnessing it, and
Speaker 2: that witnessing is very fun. It's peaking through a hole
Speaker 2: in the wall and what's happening to somebody else. When
Speaker 2: they make you make decisions, it introduces this horrible tension
Speaker 2: between what you want to see versus what you think
Speaker 2: you should do. You know, like that, I think there's
Speaker 2: this ten whenever. A great example would be in Bandersnatch,
Speaker 2: I often felt, in a bizarre way, morally compelled to
Speaker 2: make the tamer, safer options, where at the same time
Speaker 2: I felt more interested in seeing the more kind of
Speaker 2: like dangerous disastrous options play out.
Speaker 1: Yeah, this was definitely my experience with my first viewing
Speaker 1: a Banterer Snatch is that when the decisions start start
Speaker 1: hitting you, like later on they become like this horrible
Speaker 1: choice or this horrible choice and becomes harder to play
Speaker 1: this game. But earlier on there are moments where you're like,
Speaker 1: are you going to do the sensible thing or the
Speaker 1: more rebellious thing, or even the more dangerous thing? And
Speaker 1: I found myself choosing the safer thing. Like minor spoiler here,
Speaker 1: but he is he's offered the choice between producing his
Speaker 1: dream game with this company at their offices, with their support,
Speaker 1: or saying no to them, and so like the responsible
Speaker 1: part of me is like, yes, say yes to this
Speaker 1: is employment this is going to be good for you. Like,
Speaker 1: clearly you're you're stuck in a weird situation at home.
Speaker 1: You need to get out of the house, protagonists, and
Speaker 1: and so that's the way I went. But it's ultimately
Speaker 1: not the best choice, and it kind of dead ends
Speaker 1: if you take that choice.
Speaker 2: Well yeah, it almost kind of gives you a little
Speaker 2: slap on the wrist for making that choice, you know.
Speaker 2: So so I don't want to spoil anything, but yeah,
Speaker 2: there's like a slight shaming of the viewer for choosing
Speaker 2: the safe option.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and this is very early on, so we're not
Speaker 1: really you know, spoiling anything, I think nature, But yeah,
Speaker 1: I would do that a lot. I would take I
Speaker 1: would make safe choices. And in fact, it ultimately ended
Speaker 1: up reminding me a little bit of the Spacing Guild
Speaker 1: and Doune, who of course used the spices to see
Speaker 1: into the future to figure out how to navigate the
Speaker 1: dangers of space, which is helpful if your navigating the
Speaker 1: dangers of space. But in life and in politics and
Speaker 1: all these other choices, it's this road to stagnation for
Speaker 1: the Spacing Guild because they always make the safe choice.
Speaker 1: And when we look at the narratives that we love generally,
Speaker 1: they're not about people making the safe choice after safe
Speaker 1: choice after safe choice. They're about people flying off the
Speaker 1: handles or making huge mistakes and having to deal with those,
Speaker 1: And so there is I think there's a learning curve
Speaker 1: there with Bandersnatch, And so my second viewing of it,
Speaker 1: I tried to do more of that. I tried to
Speaker 1: make choices that I felt were interesting or more dramatic,
Speaker 1: and that seemed to work really well, and I feel
Speaker 1: like the product rewards you for doing that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So I think that tension is definitely there with
Speaker 2: the movies, and I wonder if it's more the case
Speaker 2: in a movie than in a book, just because a
Speaker 2: movie is more sensorily visceral. The fact that you know
Speaker 2: that it's actually visually presented to you in video and
Speaker 2: audio makes it harder to just pursue, you know, your
Speaker 2: sort of lust for drama and weirdness and whatever it
Speaker 2: is you want to see as opposed to making the
Speaker 2: safer choices. I don't recall feeling compelled to make the
Speaker 2: safer choice the same way with Choose your Own Adventure books.
Speaker 2: That could just be because of like the lower sensory
Speaker 2: salience of books compared to movies.
Speaker 1: I don't know, Yeah, maybe, So I finally finally remember
Speaker 1: the Choose you Own Your Adventure books as well, in
Speaker 1: part because they had them at the library and I
Speaker 1: could check them out. Yeah. But also another series that
Speaker 1: I finally remember, the Lone Wolf series. Were you familiar
Speaker 1: with these? So these there's a series of these. The
Speaker 1: first one was by Joe Deaver and Gary Chalk, and
Speaker 1: this is they're like a Choose your Own Adventure series,
Speaker 1: very much fantasy Dungeons and Dragon style high fantasy, but
Speaker 1: there's more of a role playing element to it. So
Speaker 1: for instance, when you open the book, it has not
Speaker 1: only a map of the adventuring world you're taking a
Speaker 1: part of, but there's also an action chart and a
Speaker 1: combat record because you're going to end up having to
Speaker 1: pencil in your stats as you go through the story,
Speaker 1: picking spell and so forth.
Speaker 2: It's more like a one player D and D module.
Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly. It's like imagine it's like a Choose your
Speaker 1: Own Adventure book and a one player a D and
Speaker 1: D module come together into this one little tone. So
Speaker 1: I finally remember those, and I might be misremembering here,
Speaker 1: but I think I did get turned off later on
Speaker 1: when I reached an artificial dead end in one of them,
Speaker 1: like there was something broken and I couldn't go back.
Speaker 1: Oh no, yeah, but again my memory may not be
Speaker 1: perfect on that. If you're at all interested in this format,
Speaker 1: I do highly recommend picking up one of these old,
Speaker 1: fabulous used copies of the Lone Wolf series. And I
Speaker 1: think they've republished them again with new artwork, but I
Speaker 1: don't know. The classic artwork is exactly the kind of
Speaker 1: thing I love.
Speaker 2: The Choose your Own Adventure book that I brought in
Speaker 2: today for you to look at Robert is called You
Speaker 2: Are a Shark by Edward Packard. It has a kid
Speaker 2: turning into a shark. He's like mid animorph sequence, oh man,
Speaker 2: but he also looks like he's slipping sliding as he
Speaker 2: turns into a shark.
Speaker 4: Is pretty good.
Speaker 1: That's pretty brilliant too, like channeling something that children, especially
Speaker 1: of that time, would have been familiar would have likely done,
Speaker 1: and giving this fantastic spin on it.
Speaker 2: But the story is essentially the fingle doppling scene from
Speaker 2: Overdrawn at the Memory Bang, where he just gets transformed
Speaker 2: into various different animals. Do you know you get turned
Speaker 2: into an elephant or a seagull, or of course a shark.
Speaker 2: I think I recall one death where you get turned
Speaker 2: into a squid and you're being chased by something, maybe
Speaker 2: it is a shark, and you run out of ink
Speaker 2: to disguise yourself with and you're doomed.
Speaker 1: All right. Well, coming back to Bandersnatch, we mentioned the
Speaker 1: video game aspect nineteen eighty four Choose your Own Adventure books.
Speaker 1: There are a number of other elements and homages in
Speaker 1: there as well. It deals with mental illness, it deals
Speaker 1: with LSD. There are allusions to Philip K. Dick. There's
Speaker 1: mention of alternate timelines, and of course it spends a
Speaker 1: lot of time contemplating this idea of a free will
Speaker 1: and the potential illusion of choice.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 2: I think that's the main theme of it, is interrogating
Speaker 2: the idea of what it means to be in control
Speaker 2: of one's own actions.
Speaker 1: Yeah. And the basic plot is as follows. A young
Speaker 1: programmer named Stephan Butler is obsessed with a choose your
Speaker 1: own adventure style book titled Bandersnatch that was written by
Speaker 1: the late troubled writer Jerome F. Davies, and he really
Speaker 1: wants to turn this into a computer adventure game, and
Speaker 1: he's begun work on it on his own. So he
Speaker 1: ends up falling in with this video game company called
Speaker 1: Tuckersoft and meets its lead creative, this programmer named Colin Rittman.
Speaker 1: And from there it departs through these varying winding paths,
Speaker 1: reality warping, through madness and sometimes horror, and through all
Speaker 1: of it, there's also this feeling that there is a
Speaker 1: minotaur like monster pursuing you, pursuing our protagonist as well.
Speaker 1: And this is the Bandersnatch, but more specifically, it is
Speaker 1: titled Packs. Its name is Packs, and it is we
Speaker 1: are told it is the Thief of Destiny.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there's a great moment where the game appears to
Speaker 2: give you an option to either deny worshiping packs or
Speaker 2: submit to worshiping packs.
Speaker 1: Oh yes, this is the game within a game.
Speaker 4: It made me want to play the game.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, it looked really cool.
Speaker 4: So something that.
Speaker 2: Made Bandersnatch different from most of the choose your own
Speaker 2: adventure books that I remember reading. I'm sure there are
Speaker 2: probably exceptions, but in the classic books I remember reading,
Speaker 2: the story is written in the second person. The protagonist
Speaker 2: is an unnamed you. You know, you go down the
Speaker 2: left hall, you get eaten by a swarm of feral pigs.
Speaker 2: You go down the right hall, you get turned into
Speaker 2: a bowl of ice cream by magic pirate. You know,
Speaker 2: you explore all the different dooms on offer to you,
Speaker 2: but it's you.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Likewise, in the Lone Wolf books, as I recall you,
Speaker 1: you kind of make choices regarding how this characters put together.
Speaker 1: You have a fair amount of control. It is your character.
Speaker 2: But band ver Snatch challenges this formula a little bit
Speaker 2: by making the protagonist a third person character with a
Speaker 2: name and pre existing individualized circumstances. You've got Stefan right.
Speaker 2: But then this is where it starts getting even weirder.
Speaker 2: So not only is it this definite third person character
Speaker 2: with their own characteristics and not just a second person protagonist,
Speaker 2: there are moments where the options are you choose, not
Speaker 2: what Stefan does. That's how it mostly is. You know
Speaker 2: what does Stefan pick? You know what, what does he
Speaker 2: listen to? What does he answer to somebody who poses
Speaker 2: a question to him? It then changes and gives you
Speaker 2: the option to dictate what happens to him from the
Speaker 2: outside The specific example I recall is what messages he
Speaker 2: believes he is receiving on his computer screen. Oh yeah, Now,
Speaker 2: of course, if you go with the most straightforward interpretation
Speaker 2: of the story, which is that Stefan is experiencing symptoms
Speaker 2: of psychosis, in a way, you're still dictating the activity
Speaker 2: of his brain. Activities of his brain that he as
Speaker 2: a character does not perceive as coming from himself. They're
Speaker 2: hallucinations that he believes to be coming from the outside.
Speaker 2: And you know, this makes me wonder about the framing
Speaker 2: of how we should think about hallucinations that are generated
Speaker 2: internally by the brain but perceived to come from an
Speaker 2: external source. Are those hallucinations best understood as you or not?
Speaker 2: Are there processes within your own brain that are, in
Speaker 2: some legitimate sense not you, even though they are your brain,
Speaker 2: they're not anybody else.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's not really the voice of God. It is
Speaker 1: is it is something coming from inside your brain that
Speaker 1: you are perhaps imagining or interpreting as the voice of God.
Speaker 2: But is you more synonymous with your whole brain and
Speaker 2: everything it does, or is you more synonymous with the
Speaker 2: part of your brain that you identify as yourself.
Speaker 1: That's going to be very key to some interpretations of
Speaker 1: the base theme explored in Bandersnatch right, and they do
Speaker 1: explore this theme amazingly. Well, I felt the second time
Speaker 1: I watched it, I found all these additional layers. You know, again,
Speaker 1: I'm I'm tempted to make the best choices for a protagonist,
Speaker 1: or at least there's still that inclination that I want
Speaker 1: to do that. And at one point there's this song
Speaker 1: playing with the lyrics doing what's best for Nigel, and
Speaker 1: it's all in the stc or I think so. Yes, Okay,
Speaker 1: I was not familiar with that group or that this
Speaker 1: song before, but yeah, it's playing, and the whole scene
Speaker 1: is about like how his father is making choices for him,
Speaker 1: or other times it's you know, it's his therapist that
Speaker 1: is giving him advice about how to how to make
Speaker 1: choices in his life. And so you have all these
Speaker 1: forces that help him make his choices or make choices
Speaker 1: for him. And then that's also what we are doing
Speaker 1: as we interact with the product.
Speaker 2: Well, yes, and in a weird way, it kind of
Speaker 2: brings you back around to this question of wait a minute,
Speaker 2: is he is he a third person narrator or are
Speaker 2: you supposed to identify as him. So when these choices
Speaker 2: are in some cases things coming to him apparently from
Speaker 2: the outside, you know, they might be messages he's receiving
Speaker 2: from some kind of otherworldly source or hallucinations, are you
Speaker 2: still making choices for him or not? And it leads
Speaker 2: back into this theme of whether or not you are
Speaker 2: really in control of your own actions and what does
Speaker 2: it mean to be in control of your own actions?
Speaker 1: And in this we come to the subject of free will,
Speaker 1: which is a huge topic that we return to time
Speaker 1: and time again on stuff to blow your mind. And
Speaker 1: we're not going to try to encapsulate everything about that here.
Speaker 1: You know, we've talked about in the past, we're talking
Speaker 1: about it today, We're going to talk about it in
Speaker 1: the future. But it suffice to say philosophies vary, scientific
Speaker 1: interpretations vary, and then it drags in additional drags in
Speaker 1: just about everything about the human condition, right, I mean,
Speaker 1: moral responsibility, theological quandaries, etc.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's a problem that it is such a huge
Speaker 2: topic and that almost all discussions about free will that
Speaker 2: I encounter in the wild are an absolute mess.
Speaker 4: This is my personal take.
Speaker 2: I noticed, do you ever notice how conversations about free
Speaker 2: will almost never seem to clarify anything. They almost never
Speaker 2: seem to provide any more focus or clarity than you
Speaker 2: had to begin with.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Like sometimes it's at times it feels like having
Speaker 1: a conversation with somebody in a swimming pool about whether
Speaker 1: water is wet. Yeah, because it does get down to like,
Speaker 1: like it seems wet to me, I am in it.
Speaker 1: It seems like free will to me because I am
Speaker 1: immersed in it, and it's difficult for me to remove
Speaker 1: myself from the experience that I'm having and all of
Speaker 1: and everything in my life that supports everything in the
Speaker 1: culture at large, that supports the idea that I am
Speaker 1: making choices and form choices about my life.
Speaker 2: I mean, I feel like some dilemmas having to do
Speaker 2: with free will or like they force you to choose
Speaker 2: between two options that.
Speaker 4: Are both tautologies or both absurdities.
Speaker 2: And any time you encounter a problem like that, I
Speaker 2: think there's a pretty good chance that the underlying disease
Speaker 2: causing that is poorly defined terms.
Speaker 1: Right, Yeah, and yeah, to your point, the extreme versions
Speaker 1: of this are to tend to come off as kind
Speaker 1: of loony, Like if someone is just like I am
Speaker 1: a completely free moving soul, Like no, you're not dummy.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 1: It's like when we discussed in the Thankfulness episode that
Speaker 1: we put out, you know, like everybody's life is shaped
Speaker 1: by these other factors. These are other individuals in their
Speaker 1: life to some extent, and I feel like to argue
Speaker 1: against that is just lunacy. On the other hand, if
Speaker 1: someone is saying I am a just a pure automaton,
Speaker 1: I mean, there you can back that argument up with
Speaker 1: some very intriguing arguments, and we'll get into some of those.
Speaker 1: But at the end of the day, does that match
Speaker 1: up with your experience of reality?
Speaker 2: I totally agree, But I think even talking about it
Speaker 2: at that level, that's already like a level up, like
Speaker 2: having accepted some terms as unproblematic more than I think
Speaker 2: they should be. So like anyway, I mean, I think
Speaker 2: the main problem with free will is people aren't being
Speaker 2: clear what they're talking about before they start talking. And
Speaker 2: I'm totally guilty of this as well. This is usually
Speaker 2: the case when it comes to free will, and this
Speaker 2: happens even when we're not aware that we're being unclear,
Speaker 2: So we can't do it full justice. In the short segment.
Speaker 2: I think we will try to do better than an
Speaker 2: absolute mess. So to try to understand what our terms
Speaker 2: actually mean.
Speaker 4: What is free?
Speaker 2: Will A common understanding is I am in control of
Speaker 2: my own actions. And I think most of the time
Speaker 2: for most people this feels true, though curiously, of course,
Speaker 2: not all of the time and not for all people.
Speaker 2: We can come back to that, but I would argue
Speaker 2: that it only feels true in a general way, and
Speaker 2: it gets stickier and thornier the more you try to
Speaker 2: think about it, and the more precisely you try to
Speaker 2: define those terms. So, if I'm in control of my
Speaker 2: own actions, who is I.
Speaker 4: We brought this up a minute ago. Is I my
Speaker 4: whole brain?
Speaker 2: I mean? Also, I think there's a good case to
Speaker 2: be made that other parts of your body gets some
Speaker 2: kind of vote in your decision making. So is it
Speaker 2: my whole body? Is it everything with my genome? Even then,
Speaker 2: I would say your microbiota sort of gets a vote.
Speaker 2: I think there are questions about what the eye is.
Speaker 2: But then also what counts as control? If I am
Speaker 2: in control of my own actions, does it mean that
Speaker 2: that I make my decisions with no outside influences? I mean,
Speaker 2: that's obviously not true, as you were alluding to a
Speaker 2: minute ago. But once you accept that outside factors have
Speaker 2: some influence over whatever it is you're talking about controlling,
Speaker 2: what's to stop you from assuming that they have total influence?
Speaker 2: I mean, what part of your decision making is not
Speaker 2: influenced by pre existing factors like your memory and your
Speaker 2: physical circumstances and so forth, Like what part of you
Speaker 2: can you identify that stands outside of the world. And
Speaker 2: then from the other end, paradoxically, if you were to
Speaker 2: suddenly act in a way that made no sense given
Speaker 2: your own history and memory and all of the inputs
Speaker 2: coming in that you think of as influences on you,
Speaker 2: wouldn't that action actually feel less like something that comes
Speaker 2: genuinely from you, whatever you are. Wouldn't by this metric,
Speaker 2: the most objectively free action seem like something coming from
Speaker 2: the outside.
Speaker 1: You mean, like if you go to a restaurant where there's,
Speaker 1: say there's a drink menu, and you always tend to
Speaker 1: order something that is made with a base of say
Speaker 1: rum or bourbon or whiskey, and instead you throw caution
Speaker 1: to the wind one day and you get a mescal
Speaker 1: or a vodka drink.
Speaker 2: Uh, does that actually make you feel more free or
Speaker 2: does it seem like something you know, something.
Speaker 4: Got into you. Where does that phrase come from?
Speaker 1: I don't know. When I do things like that, I
Speaker 1: think it does make me feel more free, because I'm like, no,
Speaker 1: I'm not gonna be the same person I've been every
Speaker 1: time I'm gonna try I had a different direction. You know,
Speaker 1: I'm going to I'm going to get a different type
Speaker 1: of drink, I'm going to try a different type of food,
Speaker 1: I'm going to walk a different way to the train station,
Speaker 1: et cetera.
Speaker 2: Well, I mean, I would say that this just highlights
Speaker 2: that neither branch either acting in character where your character
Speaker 2: has been shaped by everything that ever happened to you,
Speaker 2: nor a by acting out of character where you know
Speaker 2: something got into you. Neither way really cites the origin
Speaker 2: of decisions or the origin of actions in something that's
Speaker 2: out without outside influence. So a lot of the arguments
Speaker 2: about whether we have free will actually seem to me
Speaker 2: to reduce to the question of whether we feel we
Speaker 2: have free will. But what would it actually mean to
Speaker 2: settle the question of whether we are like physically objectively free?
Speaker 2: So maybe we should look at like a more thought
Speaker 2: out dictionary definition. So one that I found is quote
Speaker 2: the power of acting without the constraint of necessity or fate.
Speaker 1: Oh or fate. Now that that brings me back to
Speaker 1: this demon Packs, the thief of destiny, I find myself.
Speaker 1: I found myself with the second viewing of Bandersnatch, returning
Speaker 1: to that title and trying to figure out exactly what
Speaker 1: it means. Because destiny, on one hand, means like, you're predestined, right,
Speaker 1: There is a destiny in place for you, and you
Speaker 1: perhaps don't have any real control. It is the thing
Speaker 1: that the gods have laid out for you. That's like
Speaker 1: one way of looking at But another way of looking
Speaker 1: at destiny is that destiny is the thing you aspire to. Like,
Speaker 1: you choose your own destiny, You choose your own adventure. Right, So,
Speaker 1: which of the two is the demon Packs stealing from you?
Speaker 1: Is he stealing from you the power to make your
Speaker 1: own decisions? Or is he stealing from you a pre
Speaker 1: destined path? Is he liberating you from this from the
Speaker 1: same tired walk to the train station and the same
Speaker 1: tired choices on the menu.
Speaker 2: Well, the funny thing about it choose your own adventure
Speaker 2: is that even though you are making the choices on
Speaker 2: each page about which page to turn to next. Somebody
Speaker 2: else wrote the whole thing.
Speaker 1: That's true, and I mean, to a certain extent, like
Speaker 1: you can. You can apply that to life, like as
Speaker 1: rebellious as you might seem, ordering something else on the
Speaker 1: menu that you normally don't get, it's still on the menu.
Speaker 1: And other things in life are like that too. Like
Speaker 1: you were large, you are constrained by the possibilities of
Speaker 1: your culture, of your station in life, of you know,
Speaker 1: political realities, et cetera.
Speaker 2: But even then, is the unpredictability of a behavior at
Speaker 2: all evidence of your control or your personal volition.
Speaker 4: Of that behavior. I don't know.
Speaker 2: I mean those things seem perhaps unrelated to me.
Speaker 1: Actually, yeah, I mean you can also be predictably unpredictable.
Speaker 2: Yeah, But anyway, coming back to this definition, the one
Speaker 2: that's you know, acting without constraint of necessity or fate.
Speaker 4: So I think it can be.
Speaker 2: Hard to pin this down to a concrete claim, but
Speaker 2: I think what it comes closest to is saying that
Speaker 2: for any given action or moment in my life history,
Speaker 2: anything I do or think or say, given the exact
Speaker 2: same inputs, I could have produced different output than I
Speaker 2: actually did, And this would be I think, some way
Speaker 2: of making free will a kind of like a physical proposition. Right,
Speaker 2: If exactly the same inputs went into you, everything was
Speaker 2: exactly the same, you could have done something different than
Speaker 2: what you did. Unfortunately, I think this is just a
Speaker 2: completely untestable assumption. R. You know, given the complexity of brains,
Speaker 2: you can never have all of exactly the same inputs
Speaker 2: that somebody had at a given moment, So you can't
Speaker 2: experiment on this to find out what's true.
Speaker 1: Though we certainly love ruminating on this in our fiction. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Like any kind of time travel film, any kind of
Speaker 1: Groundhog Day scenario is exploring this subject.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Though, even with most of those time travel things where
Speaker 2: people want to go back and relive it, what they
Speaker 2: actually are imagining is they want to go back and
Speaker 2: relive a moment with the wisdom and knowledge that they
Speaker 2: have now that they didn't have then. So it would
Speaker 2: be funny to just like replay the same instance over
Speaker 2: and over again with exactly the same physics involved, and
Speaker 2: see if anything different happens without having.
Speaker 4: Any new knowledge or whatever.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, but even then, I mean imagine maybe you
Speaker 2: could do that somehow, You know, you could just watch
Speaker 2: the same period of time play out over and over
Speaker 2: again and see if anything different happens. Even if it
Speaker 2: were true that you could have produced different outputs given
Speaker 2: the exact same inputs, would this really mean you were free?
Speaker 2: Would this be what people mean when they see free will,
Speaker 2: like they're in control of their own actions? You know,
Speaker 2: imagine there's some random dice rolling machine inside your head,
Speaker 2: or a ghost or a spirit in your brain which
Speaker 2: pushes you in different directions even if every single iota
Speaker 2: of input is the same. Is that actually freedom? That
Speaker 2: just sounds like a different kind of impetus or control.
Speaker 1: That's interesting. You bring up a randomization via some sort
Speaker 1: of technology like dice or a casting of bones, because
Speaker 1: we've discussed that in the past on the show. How
Speaker 1: that is sometimes brought up as being like that, Like
Speaker 1: that's the purpose of these early divination technologies techniques, a
Speaker 1: way to randomize choice and to sometimes force us towards
Speaker 1: a decision that we otherwise wouldn't make, like in a
Speaker 1: way to free us from these predestined paths that are
Speaker 1: before us, or at least, you know, lean us over
Speaker 1: towards a different path that we would that is available,
Speaker 1: but we normally wouldn't go for Well.
Speaker 4: It's funny.
Speaker 2: I mean either way you go there. So yeah, say
Speaker 2: you're doing the etching or throwing bones. Does either or
Speaker 2: not doing that either way is one making you more
Speaker 2: the author of your own destiny than another? I'm not sure.
Speaker 2: I mean, they have differences in outcomes, right, but does
Speaker 2: that actually change what people mean when they say when
Speaker 2: they say free will?
Speaker 1: I don't know. I mean, even if you randomize your choices,
Speaker 1: you are the one that will then enact that choice,
Speaker 1: Like you're still the actor in your narrative.
Speaker 2: And the randomization is still an input on you.
Speaker 4: So I don't know.
Speaker 2: So anyway to sort of sum it all up, I've
Speaker 2: got a theory here, and it is that I think
Speaker 2: what a lot of us are actually circling around when
Speaker 2: we're trying to figure out how to articulate our concept
Speaker 2: of free will is this claim. And the claim is
Speaker 2: our consciousness dictates our choices of how we act, or
Speaker 2: in other words, we're conscious of the process by which
Speaker 2: our choices are made or by which our actions are generated.
Speaker 2: Right that when we act, we are able to consciously
Speaker 2: be a part of the impetus to act, or consciously
Speaker 2: cause the impetus to act. And I think this one
Speaker 2: is actually testable, and we can come back to that
Speaker 2: in a minute.
Speaker 1: So this is, of course, this is one of the
Speaker 1: big riddles of the human experience. And so people have
Speaker 1: been thinking about this and you know, essentially banging their
Speaker 1: head against the wall about this for thousands of years.
Speaker 1: The philosophers Democritus and Lucippus saw the universe as wholly
Speaker 1: governed by natural laws and composed of you know, essentially
Speaker 1: indivisible atoms. They took the determinist view of life of
Speaker 1: one propelled down a flowing stream of events. Aristotle, on
Speaker 1: the other hand, is a great example of someone who
Speaker 1: stressed the individual's responsibility for their actions. The indeterminists view
Speaker 1: of life is a boat propelling itself through a body
Speaker 1: of water. So, yeah, to what extent are you just
Speaker 1: sailing down the river, you know, you know, with no
Speaker 1: power on where you're going, or are you in a
Speaker 1: boat that in which you have the power to move
Speaker 1: about and even move upstream if you need to. On
Speaker 1: that note, we're going to take one quick break, but
Speaker 1: when we come back, we will start rolling through some
Speaker 1: arguments for and against free will, and then we will
Speaker 1: return to bandersnatch. All right, we're back. So let's start
Speaker 1: with some arguments against free will, because ultimately I think
Speaker 1: these are these are often easier to discuss.
Speaker 2: Sure, I would say the most basic one, right is
Speaker 2: just the science of physics, Right.
Speaker 4: Physics is very predictable.
Speaker 2: You can, you know, given given the inputs of forces
Speaker 2: and energy and all that, you can determine what's going
Speaker 2: to happen as an output of that action. And if
Speaker 2: we assume that applies to everything, then why doesn't it
Speaker 2: apply to us?
Speaker 4: Right?
Speaker 1: And it basically comes back to Democritus and Lucipus, right,
Speaker 1: the idea that their natural laws and they that are
Speaker 1: in place, and we are not above those laws.
Speaker 4: Sure.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So we're acting on the inputs that come in
Speaker 2: and you know that be being pushed in one way
Speaker 2: or another by our life history and our brains and
Speaker 2: all that we're going to act a certain way as
Speaker 2: physically reactive objects. Now this is an argument, of course,
Speaker 2: it's the most common argument I think against free will.
Speaker 2: But one question is our free will and causal determinism
Speaker 2: really incompatible? Not that it settles the issue but I
Speaker 2: think the majority of philosophers who look at this issue
Speaker 2: pretty closely actually end up becoming what are called compatibilists.
Speaker 2: They accept causal determinism, they say, yeah, you know, we're
Speaker 2: physical objects being pushed around by physical forces, but they
Speaker 2: define free will in some way that it is compatible
Speaker 2: with that. That you are a physical object being pushed
Speaker 2: around by physical forces, and the whole history of your
Speaker 2: life and everything, and yet somehow free will still applies
Speaker 2: to you. This often comes down to like an understanding
Speaker 2: or feeling of free will, like I was talking about earlier, like,
Speaker 2: even if your actions are causally determined, somehow you feel
Speaker 2: like you have agency, and that's what we mean by free.
Speaker 1: Will, right right. Another take on this that I came across,
Speaker 1: and this goes back to something we were talking about earlier,
Speaker 1: contemporary British analytic philosopher Galen Straws, and their argument is
Speaker 1: that that basically free will is impossible because we act
Speaker 1: the way we are right in this argument, This argument
Speaker 1: always makes me think of Yates in the poem No
Speaker 1: Second Troy. There's that line what could she have done?
Speaker 1: Being what she is? And I think about that with myself,
Speaker 1: like what when I look back on past choices, what
Speaker 1: else could I have done being who I am? You know,
Speaker 1: without the you know, some sort of sci fi foresight
Speaker 1: brought on by time travel or groundhog day shenanigans, Like
Speaker 1: I am who I am? I am influenced by all
Speaker 1: these these things in my life, and my mind is this,
Speaker 1: and then what other choice would that mind have made?
Speaker 4: Right?
Speaker 2: I mean, this is That's a very good way of
Speaker 2: putting it. It almost like it maybe emphasizes the fact
Speaker 2: that free will is a difficult concept because of some
Speaker 2: of the baggage brought by the word free. Yeah, to
Speaker 2: act in accordance with your nature and your circumstances is
Speaker 2: not necessarily not.
Speaker 1: Free, right, Like it was in my nature to responsibly
Speaker 1: come to work this morning, and so therefore I did.
Speaker 1: Could I have decided not to come into work? Could
Speaker 1: I have gone to the local at an arcade or something,
Speaker 1: or whatever whatever one does when one skips quirk, I
Speaker 1: guess I could have.
Speaker 4: In theory, there's nothing stopping you.
Speaker 1: Yeah, nothing at all, except that is not my nature,
Speaker 1: and that is not what I did. Because of my.
Speaker 2: Nature, given the circumstances of who you are and who
Speaker 2: you were, this morning and what was going on this morning.
Speaker 2: You didn't do it, and that's all we know is
Speaker 2: that you know you acted the way you were at
Speaker 2: that time because that's who you were at that time.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Now that being said, yes, events could have been different.
Speaker 1: We could have had an email from our boss saying
Speaker 1: that there was going to be like a rock concert
Speaker 1: in the in the office today. That would never happen,
Speaker 1: and it might make me think, well, maybe I don't
Speaker 1: want to come into work today, and maybe the easiest
Speaker 1: thing to do would be just to skip. I don't know. Again,
Speaker 1: you can tease your brain all day thinking about what
Speaker 1: if and how this would have this little detail where
Speaker 1: this other detail would affected your choices, but ultimately we
Speaker 1: only have the version of the path behind us to
Speaker 1: look back on when we think about all of this. Now,
Speaker 1: two other basic arguments against free will. This is when
Speaker 1: I think we'll come back to Experimentation has pointed to
Speaker 1: breakdowns between what feels like the moment of choice and
Speaker 1: what physically signals a choice being made.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think this very much complicates the idea that Again,
Speaker 2: what I think people are actually really getting at with
Speaker 2: their idea of free will is that they have conscious
Speaker 2: control over their actions and thoughts.
Speaker 1: And another one, and this is again we've been touching
Speaker 1: on this the whole episode, but myriad causal influences at
Speaker 1: least guide our decisions, if not make them for us.
Speaker 4: Yeah, hard to deny.
Speaker 1: All right, So here are some arguments for free will.
Speaker 1: The big one, of course, is that subjectively, we tend
Speaker 1: to feel like we have rational, reflective control over our
Speaker 1: choices and actions.
Speaker 2: Sure, I mean, I can decide to do anything that
Speaker 2: occurs to me to do right now. You know, I
Speaker 2: could throw my computer across the room if I really
Speaker 2: wanted to.
Speaker 1: Yeah. And and the idea, the way that that our
Speaker 1: brains enable us to simulate these possibilities really I think
Speaker 1: allows us to lean into that interpretation because it's like
Speaker 1: the Choose your own adventure book. The other choices are
Speaker 1: in there, and if we want to, we can cheat,
Speaker 1: and we can check one out and then back up.
Speaker 1: And in a way, you know, we can't do that
Speaker 1: in real life except through our ability to simulate possible futures.
Speaker 1: And and of course that has an important evolutionary role,
Speaker 1: It has important role for our survival. We can think
Speaker 1: about the different ways we might try to say, steal
Speaker 1: a piece of meat from a hungry lion and escape
Speaker 1: with food and our lives, and then choose the best
Speaker 1: course of action. This is this is important, but it
Speaker 1: can also lean into these interpretations that you know that
Speaker 1: certainly you know I have more choice than I actually have,
Speaker 1: or even ultimately an idea that of course is explored
Speaker 1: in Bandersnatch, the idea that these other alternate choices are
Speaker 1: kind of alternate timeline. It's that they're out there like
Speaker 1: I saw it in my head to a certain extent,
Speaker 1: that reality where I tried to take more meat than
Speaker 1: was feasible and was killed by the lion in a
Speaker 1: way that exists because I just saw it.
Speaker 2: Unfortunately, I would say about this argument, it does often
Speaker 2: feel that way that you know, like I could have
Speaker 2: done anything a minute ago, but you didn't. You did
Speaker 2: what you did. So again, this comes back to the
Speaker 2: untestability of this one, like there's just never any way
Speaker 2: to prove that you could have done differently than you
Speaker 2: did in the moment.
Speaker 1: Like if you ever had a like a close call
Speaker 1: where say you're almost in a wreck or you almost
Speaker 1: do something that could have conceivably gotten you killed, and
Speaker 1: then you have that moment of reflection granted. On one level,
Speaker 1: like it may get you just bodily you're excited, right
Speaker 1: because this has happened and your body's on high alert.
Speaker 1: But on the other hand, part of it is sort
Speaker 1: of realizing your close proximity to this other possibility, like
Speaker 1: I was just some minor choice, some mine, or a
Speaker 1: bit of input data away from something more catastrophic.
Speaker 2: Yes, it makes you suddenly you come face to face
Speaker 2: with how dependent you are on moment to moment circumstances
Speaker 2: and awareness. Though I would say a lot of times
Speaker 2: when I get that like that, like oh, you know,
Speaker 2: catch your breath about what could have happened. It wasn't
Speaker 2: because I narrowly avoided something really bad happening. It's because
Speaker 2: I suddenly, out of nowhere, imagined something really bad happening.
Speaker 2: Like you're going down a flight of stairs and it's
Speaker 2: going fine, but you just imagine, ooh I could fall
Speaker 2: and hit my teeth on that thing, and.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, oh yeah, I do that. This is of course,
Speaker 1: this is one of my pitfalls, is to almost constantly,
Speaker 1: essentially fantasize about bad things that could happen. And I
Speaker 1: think a lot of us do that you know, and
Speaker 1: part of that is your mind is exploring possibilities, sure
Speaker 1: of what is happening or could happen or has happened.
Speaker 1: But in doing that we can lean into the negative
Speaker 1: possibilities too much, and then our lives become this abysmal
Speaker 1: choose your own adventure book of mostly terrible ends, even
Speaker 1: though the path that you're actually on may not be
Speaker 1: leading to any of them.
Speaker 2: It seems like the curse of all this confusion about
Speaker 2: whether we have free will or not and what that
Speaker 2: actually means, could just be rooted in the fact that
Speaker 2: we can consider hypothetical alternative scenarios. The fact that we're
Speaker 2: able to imagine counterfactuals is what makes is what gives
Speaker 2: rise to this whole argument.
Speaker 1: So another thing I have in the list here, and
Speaker 1: this basically is just an extrapolation of everything we're talking
Speaker 1: about right now, is Philosophers Stephen Cave and also Bruce
Speaker 1: Waller have both argued that animals evolved with the capabilities
Speaker 1: we tend to associate with free will in order to survive,
Speaker 1: such as opinion generation, deliberation, will, power to stick to
Speaker 1: a choice, and the large human brain has all of
Speaker 1: this in Spades. Cave argues that the level of free
Speaker 1: will that we have may actually vary from individual to individual,
Speaker 1: and he argues that we could potentially even put together
Speaker 1: a method of measuring one's freedom quotient or FQ in
Speaker 1: the same way that we will roughly measure one's intelligence, creativity,
Speaker 1: and other psychological factors.
Speaker 2: I do think that's possible, but I also think that
Speaker 2: that would be subject to a lot of debate about
Speaker 2: exactly what.
Speaker 4: It is you're measuring.
Speaker 2: There as a lot of these actual you know, human
Speaker 2: or animal quotients are I mean, when you measure human intelligence,
Speaker 2: there's debate about what exactly are you measuring, And I
Speaker 2: think the same thing would be true of freedom subject
Speaker 2: to all of these you know, crazy caveats we've been
Speaker 2: talking about so far.
Speaker 4: What do you mean when you say freedom?
Speaker 1: Yeah. Another take on this that I had read in
Speaker 1: the past was something that neuroscientists David Eagleman called the
Speaker 1: principle of sufficient automatism. And the idea here is that
Speaker 1: the more that we map the human genome and study
Speaker 1: the brains many subconscious machinations, the more it becomes clear
Speaker 1: that a free will exist. It's only a hitching a
Speaker 1: ride on top of enormous automated machinery. So again it
Speaker 1: comes there's plenty of ground in between automaton and self
Speaker 1: moving soul where you can sort of move the slider
Speaker 1: towards one direction or the other and still have something
Speaker 1: that we can at least refer to as free will.
Speaker 4: But it might only be a very very little bit
Speaker 4: of something.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it might, And it's interesting to sort of do that,
Speaker 1: to do a little self reflection and think about that, Like, yes,
Speaker 1: I had choice in the Senate situation, but really, how
Speaker 1: much choice was there?
Speaker 2: Yeah, and I think for me at least some of
Speaker 2: the definition problems would still remain, Like, I'm not sure
Speaker 2: that even then that's clarifying what the concept of freedom means. There,
Speaker 2: So we can't test whether it's possible for a person
Speaker 2: to produce different outputs given the exact same inputs. That
Speaker 2: just seems beyond the bounds of empiricism. You could believe
Speaker 2: that if you want, but I don't think there's any
Speaker 2: evidence for it. But this might not be what we
Speaker 2: really mean by free will. Maybe, as I mentioned earlier,
Speaker 2: what we mean by free will is that we are
Speaker 2: conscious of the process by which we make decisions or
Speaker 2: generate actions. And I think the empirical research is pretty
Speaker 2: clear that this is not true, at least not in
Speaker 2: many cases. So just to look at a few studies
Speaker 2: undercutting traditional notions that our consciousness dictates our decisions or
Speaker 2: that we're consciously aware of how all our decisions are reached.
Speaker 2: So first of all, I want to look at one
Speaker 2: by us soon Brass, Hinds and Haynes, published in Nature
Speaker 2: Neuroscience in two thousand and eight, called unconscious determinants of
Speaker 2: free decisions in the human brain. In this study, the
Speaker 2: authors found that they could use brain scanning to detect
Speaker 2: a person's choice between two options before the person believed
Speaker 2: that they had made a choice. So you've got a
Speaker 2: very simple setup. You're supposed to freely choose between pressing
Speaker 2: two buttons. You got a left button I pressed with
Speaker 2: your left hand. You got to right button pressed with
Speaker 2: your right hand. The two different hands were used because
Speaker 2: this made it easier to see which hand was about
Speaker 2: to be engaged through motor control and brain imaging. And
Speaker 2: so you take your time, you decide which button you
Speaker 2: want to press, and then you note which letter in
Speaker 2: a timed sequence is displayed on a screen in front
Speaker 2: of you at the moment you believe you've made your
Speaker 2: decision about which button to push, and in some cases,
Speaker 2: the researchers could detect brain activity of the prefrontal and
Speaker 2: parietal cortex indicating which choice a person was going to
Speaker 2: make up to seven to ten seconds before the person
Speaker 2: believed they had made their choice. So this study indicates
Speaker 2: that at least in some cases, at the moment you
Speaker 2: believe that you have consciously made a choice to do something,
Speaker 2: machines can look at your brain and show that the
Speaker 2: brain has made a choice before you believe you have
Speaker 2: made a choice and predict with better than chance accuracy
Speaker 2: what that choice is.
Speaker 1: This is a study that really intrigued me. I remember
Speaker 1: when it came out because it's basically this idea where
Speaker 1: I think that I'm the lightning, but perhaps I am
Speaker 1: the thunder, or at least my experience is that of
Speaker 1: the thunder. But then the other question is, well, does
Speaker 1: that mean I'm not the lightning? Am I not? Both?
Speaker 1: And maybe just like I have a thunder level awareness
Speaker 1: of what I am, but there is this lightning that
Speaker 1: precedes this experience of me.
Speaker 2: Well, I mean, I don't know, I mean the decision
Speaker 2: is generated by the brain. So again you're back to
Speaker 2: this question of what free will means. But if it
Speaker 2: does have something to do with consciously being a participant
Speaker 2: at the moment that a decision is made, there's pretty
Speaker 2: good evidence that that's not going on. The brain is
Speaker 2: making decisions before the person thinks I have made a decision.
Speaker 2: But okay, that was two thousand and eight. Is there
Speaker 2: anything since then? Sure? Here's one study with findings along
Speaker 2: these lines but applied to voluntary mental imagery who is
Speaker 2: published just last year in twenty nineteen in the open
Speaker 2: access journal Scientific Reports. It's by Kenning, Robert and Pearson
Speaker 2: in I said Scientific Reports called Decoding the Contents and
Speaker 2: Strength of Imagery before Volitional Engagement. And again this was
Speaker 2: published in twenty nineteen. The short version here is that
Speaker 2: the researchers exposed people to two different images. You got
Speaker 2: a red circle with horizontal lines and a green circle
Speaker 2: with vertical lines. And then the researchers were able to
Speaker 2: correlate images of brain states with mental representation of the
Speaker 2: different pictures, so they know it's what it looks like
Speaker 2: in your brain when you're thinking about these two images separately.
Speaker 2: They could use this brain imaging to predict, again above chance,
Speaker 2: which image subjects would choose to visualize in their head
Speaker 2: before the subjects believed they had made a choice about
Speaker 2: which one to imagine in their head, and they could
Speaker 2: make these predictions at a rate above chance an average
Speaker 2: of eleven seconds before the person's actual choice about which
Speaker 2: one they were going to imagine. So, one of the authors,
Speaker 2: Joel Pearson, was quoted in a statement I believe to
Speaker 2: a medical express quote. We believe that when we are
Speaker 2: faced with the choice between two or more options of
Speaker 2: what to think about, non conscious traces of the thoughts
Speaker 2: are there already, a bit like unconscious hallucinations.
Speaker 4: That comes back to something we talked about recently.
Speaker 2: Yeah, As the decision of what to think about is made,
Speaker 2: executive areas of the brain choose the thought trace which
Speaker 2: is stronger. In other words, if any pre existing brain
Speaker 2: activity matches one of your choices, then your brain will
Speaker 2: be more likely to pick that option as it gets
Speaker 2: boosted by the pre existing brain activity. This would explain,
Speaker 2: for example, why thinking over and over about something leads
Speaker 2: to ever more thoughts about it as it occurs in
Speaker 2: a positive feedback loop, and then to quote from the
Speaker 2: study abstract, the authors say, our results suggest that the
Speaker 2: contents and strength of mental imagery are influenced by sensory
Speaker 2: like neural representations that emerge spontaneously before volition. So there
Speaker 2: are things going on within the brain that we can
Speaker 2: detect with machinery from the outside that suggest what you're
Speaker 2: going to think about before you think about it now.
Speaker 2: I think we should be fair that it's possible. This
Speaker 2: isn't always the case, but there's plenty of evidence that,
Speaker 2: at least in some of the at least in some cases,
Speaker 2: when people think they're consciously making a choice, the brain
Speaker 2: in a measurable way has already made a choice that
Speaker 2: can be detected from the outside. The brain has already
Speaker 2: set one course of action in motion before the conscious
Speaker 2: part of our brain is aware that we're going to
Speaker 2: choose that course.
Speaker 1: So again, kind of a thunder and lightning scenario right now.
Speaker 2: Of course, this stuff we've been talking about is true
Speaker 2: of typical human brains. Once you start looking at atypical
Speaker 2: neurological situations, you can find all kinds of evidence of
Speaker 2: action without the sensation of conscious awareness or choice. A
Speaker 2: lot of these are things that have come up on
Speaker 2: the show before, like blind sight, the fact that people
Speaker 2: can physically react to visual stimuli while believing consciously that
Speaker 2: they are blind, or that they're blind in some part
Speaker 2: of their visual field, like you can react to raise
Speaker 2: your hand to catch a ball without believing that you
Speaker 2: have seen the ball, or you got alien limb syndrome,
Speaker 2: where something like a brain lesion can cause part of
Speaker 2: the body to act in a way that you do
Speaker 2: not feel in control of. The hand moves on its own,
Speaker 2: it moves against your will, It picks up the spoon
Speaker 2: when you meant to pick up the fork. Of course,
Speaker 2: the experiences of split brain patients, which we did a
Speaker 2: deep dive on in January of twenty nineteen. The short
Speaker 2: version is that some patients who undergo a surgery called
Speaker 2: a corpus calisotomy, in which the main avenue of information
Speaker 2: sharing between the two hemispheres of the brain is severed,
Speaker 2: can seem to show signs of the right hemisphere acting
Speaker 2: and making choices without the conscious awareness or control of
Speaker 2: the left hemisphere, which seems to be the part of
Speaker 2: the brain that can usually talk. And example led to
Speaker 2: hypotheses like Michael Gazaniga and Joseph Ledu's left brain interpreter model,
Speaker 2: where they argue that part of what the left hemisphere
Speaker 2: of the brain does is generate an ongoing series of
Speaker 2: narrative explanations that reconcile past and present and give us
Speaker 2: the sense of that we understand why we do what
Speaker 2: we do now. Of course, their model could be incorrect,
Speaker 2: but I think it's also possible that they're really onto
Speaker 2: something that the brain seems to have a major function
Speaker 2: of trying to convince itself that its behavior is coherent
Speaker 2: and has rational justifications, and if possible, to convince the
Speaker 2: conscious part of the brain that it's in control. I
Speaker 2: think this is kind of like at work when you
Speaker 2: give the boss three options. You know, it's like, here
Speaker 2: are the three things we came up with, and you've
Speaker 2: got the one you actually want to go with, and
Speaker 2: then you've got two like terrible options that are designed
Speaker 2: in order to be ignored and discarded by the boss
Speaker 2: and flatter the boss and give them a sense of control.
Speaker 1: Right, which can be a dangerous exercise.
Speaker 2: Absolutely, I'm not advising that as a good strategy. I'm
Speaker 2: just saying people do it to look quickly at one
Speaker 2: more study.
Speaker 4: I found.
Speaker 2: This was published in twenty eighteen in PNAS by Darby, Jautza, Burke,
Speaker 2: and Fox called lesion network localization of free will. Very briefly,
Speaker 2: the authors here define the neurologically relevant parts of free
Speaker 2: will as having two parts. So first of all, there's
Speaker 2: the desire to act, that's volition. You got volitional control,
Speaker 2: and then a sense of responsibility for that action, which
Speaker 2: is the feeling of agencies. So you got volition and agency.
Speaker 2: And then they looked at two neurological conditions, one that
Speaker 2: is believed to disrupt each of these functions. They looked
Speaker 2: at focal brain lesions that disrupt a volition causing a
Speaker 2: kinetic mutism. And a kinetic mutism is a condition where
Speaker 2: patients are unable to voluntarily move or speak. This would
Speaker 2: of course be a disruption of the volition part of
Speaker 2: the brain. And then lesions that disrupt agency, and this
Speaker 2: would of course cause alien Limb syndrome. Again, alien limb syndrome,
Speaker 2: that's where you've got part of your body acting or
Speaker 2: moving in a way that does not feel voluntary.
Speaker 4: It moves, but you don't feel like you did it.
Speaker 2: And then they basically found that brain lesions that disrupt
Speaker 2: volition occur all over the brain, but they're within a
Speaker 2: brain network that is connected in some way to the
Speaker 2: anterior cingulate cortex. And they found that lesions that disrupt
Speaker 2: agency also occur in different locations around the brain, but
Speaker 2: they tend to be defined by connectivity to a part
Speaker 2: of the brain called the precuneus. Now, again I would
Speaker 2: note that this this acknowledges physical evidence that there are
Speaker 2: distinct brain processes involved in generating action, you know, volition
Speaker 2: versus recognizing personal agency in that action, and typical brains
Speaker 2: executing typical actions have both of these acting in sync.
Speaker 2: But brains can have either one without the other.
Speaker 1: Now, obviously we could keep going here. We could keep
Speaker 1: discussing free will and what feels like free will and
Speaker 1: how it matches up with neuroscientific data, etc. But at
Speaker 1: this point the podcast, we probably do need to bring
Speaker 1: it back around to Bandersnatch and the question like, Okay,
Speaker 1: given all this stuff that we've talked about, what does
Speaker 1: Bandersnatch seem to be saying about all of this? Well,
Speaker 1: it does seem to be largely a rumination on the
Speaker 1: idea that we do not seem to have as much
Speaker 1: free will as we think we do that we can resist,
Speaker 1: but it takes considerable effort to run counter to the
Speaker 1: current that we're stuck in.
Speaker 2: I would say a thing that is a theme that
Speaker 2: is hammered home about free will, and it is the
Speaker 2: more we look at the concept of free will and
Speaker 2: think about whether we have control over our actions, the
Speaker 2: less we feel we have it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Like I was thinking, I'm trying to list, like
Speaker 1: all the various factors and agents that are influencing Stephan
Speaker 1: in the story. I mean, we have his mental health,
Speaker 1: his past trauma, his father, his therapy, the work and
Speaker 1: tragic life, the influence of Jerome F. Davies, his boss
Speaker 1: at Tuckersoft, his mentor slash hero slash friend Colin Rittman,
Speaker 1: conspiracy theories, music media, et cetera. And that's not even
Speaker 1: getting into the speculative elopment that there is either an
Speaker 1: actual demon entity that is the literal thief of destiny,
Speaker 1: or that a power beyond himself is influencing his decisions,
Speaker 1: some sort of voice from beyond or the machinations of
Speaker 1: a player in another world.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the story really brings home this paradox, which is
Speaker 2: that I think it is the case that the closer
Speaker 2: we look at free will, and the more we bring
Speaker 2: our sharpest scientific tools and philosophical instruments to understand it,
Speaker 2: the less it seems to make sense, and the less
Speaker 2: it seems to be there. And yet at the same
Speaker 2: time that we acknowledge that to feel like your actions
Speaker 2: are not under your own control is not a heightened
Speaker 2: state of consciousness, that is still a problem. Yeah, and
Speaker 2: it and I don't know exactly what that signals. That
Speaker 2: may be yet another unresolved tension in the issue of
Speaker 2: free will, that like, the more closely we examine it,
Speaker 2: the less we feel like we have it, and yet
Speaker 2: genuinely feeling like you don't have it, the more you
Speaker 2: feel that way, the more this is a serious impediment
Speaker 2: to you living a healthy life.
Speaker 1: Absolutely, now, this seems this may seem like a logical
Speaker 1: place to end the conversation, but one of the things
Speaker 1: that's really interesting here is that is that we were
Speaker 1: talking about an episode of Black Mirror that deals with
Speaker 1: free will and our choices in life. And certainly again
Speaker 1: Black Mirror frequently comments on our unease regarding new technology,
Speaker 1: but then band or Snatch itself this show on Netflix
Speaker 1: this this movie. This movie itself factors into some user
Speaker 1: concerns about the future of this sort of interactive viewing technology.
Speaker 2: Yes, you know, I would say one of the things
Speaker 2: that is a legitimate concern about free will, however you
Speaker 2: define it as murky as it is. At least one
Speaker 2: thing that we want is to we want to think
Speaker 2: that we understand the incoming influences on our behavior, right
Speaker 2: Like you'd like to think that if I did X,
Speaker 2: I can sort of make sense of that it was
Speaker 2: because I read this book, or I read this article,
Speaker 2: or I had a conversation with this person, and I
Speaker 2: connect the knowledge I gained through that or the influences
Speaker 2: of those past experiences with the decision I just made.
Speaker 2: Life starts getting more difficult when you have trouble understanding
Speaker 2: what the influences on yourself are.
Speaker 4: Does that make sense?
Speaker 1: Yeah? Yeah, And we've we've discussed some of these in
Speaker 1: the past. We've discussed a number of these in the past,
Speaker 1: but technologically speaking, we have discussed advertising and we have
Speaker 1: discussed social media, which are good things to keep in
Speaker 1: mind as we continue here. Because there might not be
Speaker 1: a band or snatcher, a demon awaiting you in the
Speaker 1: maze of future interactive media technology. But there there might
Speaker 1: just be some highly targeted advertisements for example. So two
Speaker 1: individuals that I ran across wrote about this topic or
Speaker 1: touched on this topic. One is Matthew Galt, who wrote
Speaker 1: about this last year for Vice's Motherboard, and then Tiffany
Speaker 1: Schu wrote about it for The New York Times. So
Speaker 1: Galt wrote about Michael Veil, a technology policy researcher at
Speaker 1: University College London, who utilized Europe's General Data Protection Regulation
Speaker 1: or GDPR law to request a copy of the data
Speaker 1: Netflix collected about him and his choices through the use
Speaker 1: of the Bandersnatch program. Now they complied, perhaps in part
Speaker 1: because of veil status as a public person, but basically
Speaker 1: Netflix acquires this information in order to carry out the
Speaker 1: Bandersnatch experience, which makes sense, right, it has to chart
Speaker 1: your path through this complex system. But then also Netflix
Speaker 1: keeps this in which the company claims is in order
Speaker 1: to quote determine how to improve this model of storytelling
Speaker 1: in the context of a show or movie. And I mean,
Speaker 1: on one level that sounds well and good as well,
Speaker 1: except that Vial thinks that Netflix quote should really be
Speaker 1: using consent, which you should be able to refuse or
Speaker 1: legitimate interest, meaning that you can object to it instead. Now,
Speaker 1: in Shoe's article, she points to the early choice we
Speaker 1: make between Kellogg's Frosty's and then Quaker Sugar Puffs. Now,
Speaker 1: both of these are real serials, though I have to
Speaker 1: admit I thought Quaker Sugarpuffs was made up because it
Speaker 1: has this ridiculous honey monster mascot that's like super fun,
Speaker 1: kind of a cheddar Goblin sort of thing.
Speaker 2: Nice.
Speaker 1: But it turns out this was an actual UK product.
Speaker 1: It was just a UK only product, so Americans such
Speaker 1: as ourselves were perhaps not privy to it. But again,
Speaker 1: both were real products, and neither one was a paid inclusion,
Speaker 1: so it was not a official product placement or product integration.
Speaker 1: And Netflix, of course is like an ad free system anyway.
Speaker 1: But Shoe points to some of the words of Read Hastings,
Speaker 1: co founder, chairman and CEO of Netflix, who pointed out
Speaker 1: during a webcast tied to an earnings report that seventy
Speaker 1: three percent of Bandersnatch viewers selected kellogg Frosty's over the
Speaker 1: Quaker Sugar Puffs.
Speaker 4: Oh no, I did too. I feel so vulnerable right now.
Speaker 1: I don't remember what I did the first time around
Speaker 1: the first time I watched it, I also watched with
Speaker 1: my wife, so we were voting on which choices. You know,
Speaker 1: we're having a discussion. I guess I should have mentioned
Speaker 1: that earlier, because that has a whole other wrinkled as
Speaker 1: a scenario of making communal choices and voting on something.
Speaker 1: But on my own, I chose the Quaker thing just
Speaker 1: because I thought it looked weirder. Okay, but again I'm
Speaker 1: in the minority for doing so. So first of all,
Speaker 1: I think this is a shame because I think the
Speaker 1: cover and TV advertisement for Quaker Sugar Puffs is awesome
Speaker 1: and weird. Again, but more to the point, as Shoe
Speaker 1: points out, Spencer Wang, a Netflix vice president, chimed in
Speaker 1: and joked, and let's be clear he was He was
Speaker 1: apparently joking that this was the most critical data point
Speaker 1: of the quarter.
Speaker 4: Now.
Speaker 1: She writes that while Netflix doesn't run commercials and has
Speaker 1: stated that it would not use bandersnatch information for anything
Speaker 1: like this, others outside the company do see the potential, namely,
Speaker 1: in quote, the possibility of inserting brand name products into
Speaker 1: streaming shows based on data generated by interactive programming. Now,
Speaker 1: Shoe stresses that the technology to roll this out isn't
Speaker 1: here yet. But I suppose we have to consider two
Speaker 1: key factors in that statement. So, first of all, we
Speaker 1: were in the early days of truly interactive features like
Speaker 1: this on major streaming platforms, you know, assume, and that
Speaker 1: is just assuming that it really catches on at all.
Speaker 1: As we've discussed, interactive cinema is not new. It's been
Speaker 1: around for decades and it has largely failed to catch on.
Speaker 1: It is not like a driving force in our entertainment.
Speaker 1: You'll find plenty of examples of it. You also find
Speaker 1: a lot of computer games that kind of fulfill this
Speaker 1: this niche right, Yeah.
Speaker 4: Those are also sort of failed.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you know, I would have there are certainly deeper
Speaker 1: dives and say the history of things like what Telltale
Speaker 1: Games I think was the company maybe that did a
Speaker 1: number of these things that were again not really released
Speaker 1: as they weren't marketed as interactive movies so much as
Speaker 1: they were interactive gaming experiences. So that's one thing to consider.
Speaker 1: Interest in interactive films has essentially gone up and down
Speaker 1: over the years, and again it hasn't really like ignited
Speaker 1: still Netflix and also Netflix itself has only released a
Speaker 1: handful of interactive titles, mostly kids stuff. Bandersnatch is their
Speaker 1: only true adult drama release in this of this product type,
Speaker 1: though they claimed to be doubling down on interactive content
Speaker 1: in the future. Given you know how Netflix tends to
Speaker 1: be a little bit secretive about what's coming out, or
Speaker 1: at least they don't tell you a lot, I guess
Speaker 1: we'll just have to know about it when we see
Speaker 1: it pop up. But also it's also worth reminding ourselves
Speaker 1: that a great deal of work went into creating Bandersnatch
Speaker 1: as well. I think I've seen it written that like
Speaker 1: three times as much work went into Bandersnatch versus say
Speaker 1: that long episode of the show that was approximately ninety minutes,
Speaker 1: So is it cost effective content? Are all the limitations
Speaker 1: worked out yet? For instance, I don't believe Bandersnatch works
Speaker 1: on many mobile formats or older models, like you have
Speaker 1: to have something more updated. Like I tried to load
Speaker 1: it onto my phone and I have an older iPhone.
Speaker 1: I tried to load it on there to watch on
Speaker 1: an airplane and it wouldn't work. I had to watch
Speaker 1: it through my Xbox One. And another big concern is
Speaker 1: there would need to be I guess enough interactive content
Speaker 1: out there tuned for this sort of thing to generate
Speaker 1: the necessary user data to then be employed.
Speaker 2: I can really see this kind of thing being used
Speaker 2: as a as a major data mining I mean, I
Speaker 2: don't know, it seems very possible to get psychologically salient
Speaker 2: information through this.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Now, of course that they're already getting information through all
Speaker 2: kinds of things. You know, the tech business can get
Speaker 2: your information through through what you buy online, through what
Speaker 2: websites you visit, through what you do on Facebook or
Speaker 2: other social media.
Speaker 1: Right Like, a website like Netflix already knows what kind
Speaker 1: of movies you have watched, what kind you like, what
Speaker 1: kind of movies you want to like, and then also
Speaker 1: you know how you have rated things as well, and
Speaker 1: then they can serve you a recommendation of what you
Speaker 1: might want to watch in the future.
Speaker 2: Right now, This is so, of course we're talking about
Speaker 2: this and possibly going multiple ways. One is using interactive
Speaker 2: choices in a film to gather data about you, and
Speaker 2: the other side would be giving like specially user tailored
Speaker 2: media experiences, which we already get somewhat of course on websites,
Speaker 2: you know, you get websites loading with the ad of
Speaker 2: stuff you searched for on Amazon and all that. But yeah,
Speaker 2: I guess we're being forced to consider what if that
Speaker 2: starts happening within the movies and TV shows you watch,
Speaker 2: So you start seeing product placement for specific products that
Speaker 2: are aimed at you individually within the shows you watch.
Speaker 1: Right right, Like, you know, they know that given the
Speaker 1: serial scenario, like potentially the master of the content, be
Speaker 1: it Netflix or some other company, Hypothetically, they might know
Speaker 1: that you are, say more inclined towards, you know, healthy
Speaker 1: lifestyle choices, and therefore some sort of granola, you know,
Speaker 1: health wrapped content would be ideal for you in that scenario.
Speaker 1: Or they might know that that's not your ideal cereal,
Speaker 1: or maybe they know that you have children in the
Speaker 1: house and therefore a children's cereal would be more appropriate.
Speaker 1: Like that's the kind of information that they could conceivably
Speaker 1: have and then feed into the cereal that appears before
Speaker 1: you on the screen.
Speaker 2: Now, that would be, of course, something we're more familiar with,
Speaker 2: just like inserting ads. And you might imagine a character
Speaker 2: walking past a billboard or something in a movie like
Speaker 2: happens all the time now except that billboard can be
Speaker 2: you know, dynamically inserted with new imagery or something.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 2: I think things start getting even creepier when you imagine
Speaker 2: something more like Band or Snatch Itself, where there are
Speaker 2: alternative versions of a film that are specially tailored to you,
Speaker 2: that have different narrative content depending on who's watching. I mean, so,
Speaker 2: one thing Robert and I were talking about briefly before
Speaker 2: we came in here is the idea that you know,
Speaker 2: we often know that movies can embody values, of course,
Speaker 2: you know that, like sometimes the values of a filmmaker
Speaker 2: creator come through and what happens in a story, and
Speaker 2: then other times there are sort of like cheap attempts
Speaker 2: to display values what would often be called like pandering, right,
Speaker 2: you know, like you know, cheap appeals to patriotism or
Speaker 2: something like that in a movie.
Speaker 1: Or I don't know, I guess you could make an
Speaker 1: argument for awards season Academy Awards bait as well.
Speaker 2: Right, yeah, sure, you know, just like sort of cheap
Speaker 2: attempts to exploit the specific desires or value interests of
Speaker 2: a specific target audience.
Speaker 4: Right, And so you can imagine.
Speaker 2: Okay, well, now if a movie is made and it
Speaker 2: wants to pander, it needs to at least make a choice. Right,
Speaker 2: It's hard to pander to everybody at the same time.
Speaker 2: But you can imagine, Okay, what if somebody just starts
Speaker 2: making more like a Bandersnatch kind of thing where maybe
Speaker 2: you don't make the choices, the choices are made for
Speaker 2: you based on what is known about your user profile.
Speaker 2: And so what I was imagining beforehand was you could
Speaker 2: have different versions of the movie Independence Day.
Speaker 4: You remember that speech Bill Pullman gives before they all
Speaker 4: get in the planes and go fly off and fight.
Speaker 1: Oh yes, So it's.
Speaker 2: This rousing moment where Bill Pullman gives this kind of
Speaker 2: innocus speech that could appeal to basically anybody. But you
Speaker 2: can make that speech a much more tailored, specific interest
Speaker 2: group pandering kind of thing, where you could have one
Speaker 2: version of the film that plays for somebody that's that's
Speaker 2: very inclusive. He gives a speech he's like, humans will
Speaker 2: join arms together around the world. There will be no
Speaker 2: more nations and borders and creeds and all. You know,
Speaker 2: we all unite as one and stand in brothers and
Speaker 2: as brothers and sisters against this. Or you could have
Speaker 2: a version where he gives a speech about American exceptionalism
Speaker 2: and how we're the first and we stand up and
Speaker 2: fight when no one else will, or you could get
Speaker 2: you know, you can imagine a million versions of this
Speaker 2: depending on what kind of user they think you are
Speaker 2: who are watching.
Speaker 1: Right, I mean, and that that kind of personality profile
Speaker 1: or worldview profile would be pretty easy to acquire. I mean,
Speaker 1: basically websites like Facebook have that information. Like sure, they're
Speaker 1: not feeding you independence day to a tailored speech in it,
Speaker 1: but they are feeding giving you a feed that that
Speaker 1: reflects your world views and values.
Speaker 2: And people are very invested in like the values of
Speaker 2: what media they consume these days. I can imagine it
Speaker 2: being judged a very profitable enterprise by some studios to say, well,
Speaker 2: let's just cover all the bases. You know, we'll have
Speaker 2: way less trouble if we make a movie, you know,
Speaker 2: a version A of the movie for you and a
Speaker 2: version B of the movie for you. It doesn't have
Speaker 2: to be a coherent vision or picture of the world.
Speaker 1: Yeah, this is you know. I can't help but think
Speaker 1: on past films, like, for instance, we talked about Conan
Speaker 1: the Barbarian on the show in the past, like that
Speaker 1: is a film that has a has a very particular
Speaker 1: view of what strength means and what, uh you know,
Speaker 1: how power works, et cetera. And it's not everybody's political
Speaker 1: or philosophical cup of tea. Sure, I mean you can.
Speaker 1: I think you can enjoy that film without focusing on
Speaker 1: all of that. But still it's definitely there. And that's
Speaker 1: not a film, I mean, especially at the time it
Speaker 1: came out. It's not a film where you would necessarily
Speaker 1: ask for an alternate version of it. But again, it's
Speaker 1: very clear in what it's saying. But then you have
Speaker 1: films like say Patent. Patent is often brought up as
Speaker 1: example of a film that meant one thing to one
Speaker 1: part of a divided America and another to the other
Speaker 1: part of a divided America without having to have like
Speaker 1: an ab version.
Speaker 2: Right Yeah, I think you could say that about a
Speaker 2: lot of like war movies, especially. I think that might
Speaker 2: be sort of true of Platoon, right yeah, is that
Speaker 2: like an anti.
Speaker 4: War movie or a patriotic movie?
Speaker 2: You know, you sort of have some elements of each
Speaker 2: you can latch onto what you want to see there,
Speaker 2: But yeah, I don't know. I'm somewhat disturbed by the
Speaker 2: idea of like of media filling up with these like
Speaker 2: personally tailored options that are designed to make a sort
Speaker 2: of like generic media template individually palatable to the user,
Speaker 2: as opposed to standing for something on its own and
Speaker 2: allowing you to judge it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, or having some level of ambiguity, like does the
Speaker 1: as the modern audience and like the near future audience,
Speaker 1: do they want ambiguity in their work or do they
Speaker 1: want like a clear cut view that is expressed clear
Speaker 1: cut values not only of the film, but of like
Speaker 1: the creator or creators behind it, like they you know,
Speaker 1: is there is there an increased hunger for that? And
Speaker 1: if that is the case, you could easily see a
Speaker 1: way of worming around that by taking this ABC approach
Speaker 1: to film creation, because then nobody can say, well, I
Speaker 1: like the character of Cone in the Barbarian, but I
Speaker 1: think your view is pro totalitarianism and you know, I
Speaker 1: don't know, celebrates toxic masculinity or whatever the critique might be,
Speaker 1: And then they could say, well, that's all good, well
Speaker 1: and good, but you're you're only talking about one version
Speaker 1: if you watch Cone in the Barbarian.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 1: The twenty twenty eight relaunch of the platform then you
Speaker 1: will get what is tailored to you. It's treatment of
Speaker 1: masculinity and power will be exactly what you want to see.
Speaker 1: And I mean that opens the door to just a
Speaker 1: big question of like what art is and what does
Speaker 1: that do to you know, to the role of these
Speaker 1: narratives in our culture.
Speaker 2: I remember many years ago how much of like the
Speaker 2: new Internet and the new media landscape was being sold
Speaker 2: to us. It was so often on the selling point
Speaker 2: of customization and individualization. You know, get what's right for you,
Speaker 2: get an experience that's personally tailored for you. And somehow
Speaker 2: I just feel like we were not able to anticipate
Speaker 2: how scary and messed up that would feel when it
Speaker 2: actually happened.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Yeah, I like to come back to Bandersnatch. The
Speaker 1: first time I watched it, I think it probably was
Speaker 1: over two hours that I spent questing after the happy ending,
Speaker 1: and I got it, and I have to admit I
Speaker 1: felt a little empty when I reached it. The second time,
Speaker 1: I tried to just again make more dramatic choices, make
Speaker 1: a choice here and there that were just different from
Speaker 1: what I did. The first time. I got a bleak ending,
Speaker 1: but it felt more authentic so yeah, it's interesting to
Speaker 1: think about how choice potentially impacts our appreciation of a
Speaker 1: work like this, especially if we're talking about increasingly interactive
Speaker 1: work in a hypothetical future.
Speaker 2: Had to find a good bleak note to end on.
Speaker 2: I think that's it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I mean, if we're talking about black Mirror,
Speaker 1: that's where we have to leave it. All right, Well,
Speaker 1: we covered a lot of ground in there. I imagine
Speaker 1: listeners will want to chime in, certainly on Bandersnatch if
Speaker 1: they have experienced it. I'd love to hear from anyone
Speaker 1: who's like, how much time did you spend on Banderstatch?
Speaker 1: How many viewings have you given? Did you do like
Speaker 1: Joe and go in and try and find every golden
Speaker 1: Easter egg?
Speaker 4: I didn't get all of them, but I got a
Speaker 4: lot of them.
Speaker 1: Or did you do like me? Did you sort of
Speaker 1: go through it once and maybe go through a second time?
Speaker 1: And maybe you haven't seen or haven't read about the
Speaker 1: other endings. And of course free will you all have
Speaker 1: it or maybe you all don't have it but you
Speaker 1: think you have it, which however you want to look
Speaker 1: at it. You all have some thoughts about free Will.
Speaker 1: You all have some experience to share about this, and
Speaker 1: we would love to hear from you in the meantime.
Speaker 1: If you want to check out more Stuff to Blow
Speaker 1: your Mind, you can find us anywhere you get your podcasts.
Speaker 1: You can certainly go to stuff to Blow your Mind
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Speaker 1: where you can find the episodes and wherever you get
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Speaker 1: us by rating and reviewing and subscribing. And don't forget
Speaker 1: we have another show out there titled Invention and Invention
Speaker 1: covers human technohistory, one invention at a time.
Speaker 2: Huge thanks as always to our excellent audio producer Seth
Speaker 2: Nicholas Johnson, who is doing a heroic quick turnaround on
Speaker 2: today's episode, So praise him, everyone, praise him. If you
Speaker 2: would like to get in touch with us with notes
Speaker 2: on this episode or any other, to suggest a topic
Speaker 2: for the future, just to say hi, you can email
Speaker 2: us at contact at stuff to Blow your Mind dot com.
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