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Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of

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Speaker 1: I Heart Radios How Stuff Works. Hello, welcome to Stuff

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Speaker 1: to Blow Your Mind. My name is Robert Gooley Lamb.

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Speaker 1: I am Corrosive Joseph McCormick, and we are here with

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Speaker 1: our producer death Nicholas Johnson. Yes, and it is that

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Speaker 1: time again. Uh it's it's been a year since we

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Speaker 1: did Anthology of Horror volume one, and so we're about

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Speaker 1: to uh assault you with Anthology of Horror volume two,

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Speaker 1: and then guess what the episode after this is going

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Speaker 1: to be Anthology of Horror volume three. It's not an

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Speaker 1: anthology unless they're at least three volumes exactly. So yeah,

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Speaker 1: I've been looking forward to this all year pretty much, Robert.

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Speaker 1: I know the back corners of your brain are just

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Speaker 1: full of cobwebs made of old horror anthology TV episodes.

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Speaker 1: Every time we get talking about this, you dredge something

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Speaker 1: up from the void, something you saw on TV as

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Speaker 1: a kid. Am I wrong about this pretty much? Because

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Speaker 1: when I was a kid, I watched a lot of

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Speaker 1: television and of the various joyfully weird things that were

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Speaker 1: on television reruns or syndicated horror anthology shows. Were one

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Speaker 1: of the best because you never knew exactly what you

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Speaker 1: were going to get each episode. It's an anthology. So

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Speaker 1: each episode of something like The Twilight Zone or Night

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Speaker 1: Gallery or Outer Limits or Tales from the Crypt, each

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Speaker 1: one is its own thing, its own world. It has

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Speaker 1: its own cast, its own monster or threat or sci

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Speaker 1: fi weirdness, and it's completely encapsulated. I love especially some

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Speaker 1: of these are really good. Actually, the Twilight Zone I

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Speaker 1: think is even better than a lot of people remember,

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Speaker 1: and I think a lot of times it's because The

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Speaker 1: Twilight Zone was not an hour long show, or I

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Speaker 1: think maybe it was in one of its later seasons

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Speaker 1: which turned out to be disastrous. I mean, you know,

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Speaker 1: this is a type twentysomething minute short story. It's it's

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Speaker 1: a good way not to get bogged down and stuff

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Speaker 1: that doesn't matter with when you're not going into like

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Speaker 1: in depth character storytelling, but you're like exploring high level premises. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: you know, it's it's more it's more in line with

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Speaker 1: certainly some of the short stories you you know, the

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Speaker 1: classic short stories you think of to say, like a

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Speaker 1: Philip K. Dick, where it's it's really about rolling out

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Speaker 1: a cool idea, maybe a cool twist or a shock,

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Speaker 1: but mostly about you know, to make you think about something.

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Speaker 1: And uh, yeah, so I I love a really great

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Speaker 1: episode of an anthology show. Certainly, like you said, some

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Speaker 1: of those Twilight zones hold up amazingly. Well, we're gonna

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Speaker 1: be talking about one of my favorites of all time today. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: but then also some of the worst examples. I love

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Speaker 1: one show, and this is a show I didn't I

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Speaker 1: don't think I even watched when it came on, but

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Speaker 1: Perversions of Science, it was sci fi sort of spinoff

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Speaker 1: of Tales from the Crypt And uh, I haven't watched

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Speaker 1: Polly Sleazy, but very like Future Smooth. Yeah yeah, lots

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Speaker 1: of cursing, some gratuitous nudity, but like a lot of

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Speaker 1: these shows off tremendous talent packed into each episode, like

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Speaker 1: some great actors, some great directors. Um So every horror

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Speaker 1: anthology show, I feel like the ones that i've I

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Speaker 1: look back on finally are the ones I haven't even

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Speaker 1: seen yet. Uh, there's so many treasures to uncover. I

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Speaker 1: watched so many of these things. It's very specifically on

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Speaker 1: Beach Hotel cable. This is what I remember. Yeah, it

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Speaker 1: was like I watched Mystery Science Theater three thousand that way.

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Speaker 1: I mean, I guess basically when my family went to

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Speaker 1: the beach, everybody else would be out in the sun

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Speaker 1: and I'd be watching the Sci Fi Channel. But that's

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Speaker 1: how you see reruns of Monsters, which is a show

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Speaker 1: that I had completely forgotten about until you, uh, you

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Speaker 1: sent me something about it the other day and I

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Speaker 1: was looking at the images from the opening credits and

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Speaker 1: I was like, oh my god, Yes, that's way back

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Speaker 1: in there, somewhere deep in the recesses of my mind.

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Speaker 1: This is there. I've seen it before. All right, Well,

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Speaker 1: before we get more properly into into Monsters, I just

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Speaker 1: wanna tell everybody, like what the basic format here is.

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Speaker 1: If you haven't heard one of our anthorogy of horror

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Speaker 1: episodes before, or the creepy Pasta episodes that preceded it,

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Speaker 1: the idea is, uh, we're gonna grab a few in

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Speaker 1: in each episode, We're gonna each grab one episode of

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Speaker 1: a horror anthology show. We're gonna tell you what it's about,

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Speaker 1: remind you what it's about if you've seen it before,

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Speaker 1: and then we're gonna break down some of the ideas involved.

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Speaker 1: There you know some of the science of the thing,

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Speaker 1: whatever it happens to to be, even if we have

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Speaker 1: to shoehorn it a little bit. And uh, and that's

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Speaker 1: where the fun is exactly. We are nothing if not

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Speaker 1: experts at dragging deep thoughts out of strangely shallow places. Yes, uh,

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Speaker 1: though again we're gonna also go to some I think,

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Speaker 1: some rather deep waters in these Twilight zonela. So let's

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Speaker 1: begin with Monsters. Okay. This this ran for three seasons

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Speaker 1: from through nine, and I think I only caught it

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Speaker 1: once at like my aunt's house back in the day,

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Speaker 1: and I don't even know if it was in syndication

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Speaker 1: or on the Sci Fi channel after it had finished

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Speaker 1: its run. But today you can find all of it

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Speaker 1: on Amazon Prime. You can find a lot of the episodes,

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Speaker 1: maybe all of them just on YouTube. But yeah, it's

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Speaker 1: like a lot of these shows, it's a wealth of

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Speaker 1: talent and weirdness. I was wondering how many people were

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Speaker 1: hoping that this show would have disappeared into history forever,

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Speaker 1: only to have the digital age to revive all of

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Speaker 1: these old things that these actors did. Yeah, yeah, possible. Possibly, Yeah,

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Speaker 1: Because there you see some some interesting people show up

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Speaker 1: in Monsters for instance. Uh, you know you have you

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Speaker 1: have some great authors like Dan Simmons shows up tom

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Speaker 1: Noonan shows up writing and directing like a couple of episodes,

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Speaker 1: Tony Shalhub shows up, Gina Gershawn, Steve you Simmy in

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Speaker 1: an excellent pig monster related episode that I won't spoil

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Speaker 1: for anybody. Oh man, we were just talking about pig monsters. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: and this is a great pig monster episode. I gotta

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Speaker 1: dive in. But yeah, this show is kind of a

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Speaker 1: spiritual successor to Tails from the Dark Side, which one

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Speaker 1: eighty eight I did see a lot of and was

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Speaker 1: traumatized times by as a child. Uh. And the The

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Speaker 1: Monsters featured many of the same people and again an

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Speaker 1: incredible opening sequence, like a lot of these anthologies shows had,

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Speaker 1: in which a humorous family of monsters settled in to

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Speaker 1: watch TV together. I believe, right before they start watching

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Speaker 1: their show, the mother monster shows up with a dish

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Speaker 1: full of something she's been cooking, and the child monster declares,

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Speaker 1: candied critters, Yeah, it's it's cheesy, it's great. Uh and

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Speaker 1: then it and then you proceed into some new story

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Speaker 1: that's going to center around a monster. And usually that's

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Speaker 1: like really cool practical effects too. So these episodes it

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Speaker 1: can be a little hokey intentionally. So at times the

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Speaker 1: music is a little weird, this kind of sense music

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Speaker 1: that I even have trouble loving. Uh, at times like

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Speaker 1: synthetic saxophone music. You've got a very open heart for.

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Speaker 1: Since Yeah, but great cast, cool monster And Uh, the

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Speaker 1: episode I'm going to talk about today is one title

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Speaker 1: far Below, And the reason I was so excited I

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Speaker 1: didn't even know they had covered this. But Far Below

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Speaker 1: is one of my favorite short stories by Robert Barbour Johnson,

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Speaker 1: who lived nineteen o seven through seven. Uh, this is

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Speaker 1: what like a Weird Tales era story that I read

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Speaker 1: years and years ago, and I've just I've lived my

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Speaker 1: entire life up until like this week, having no idea

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Speaker 1: that anybody had ever adapted it. So so I was

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Speaker 1: instantly excited and I and I said, all right, I've

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Speaker 1: got to cover this. So it takes place in the

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Speaker 1: deepest depths of the New York subway system, one of

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Speaker 1: my favorite places anyway, And uh, you have a you

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Speaker 1: have a special segment of city services that wage an

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Speaker 1: endless campaign against the ghouls that burrow up from the depths.

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Speaker 1: It's a it's a haunting tale. The positions them as

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Speaker 1: workers in a dark, in human place against an inhuman enemy,

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Speaker 1: and they all are on the risk of losing their

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Speaker 1: own humanity in the process. So this season two adaptation

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Speaker 1: of Far Below has a lot going for it. So

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Speaker 1: not only do you have Johnson's short story as the

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Speaker 1: you know, the the inspiration for it. He was adapted

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Speaker 1: for the screen by Michael McDowell, the screenwriter who gave

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Speaker 1: his Beetlejuice The Nightmare Before Christmas and, perhaps to a

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Speaker 1: lesser extent, Thinner Two out of three ain't bad. Yeah.

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Speaker 1: Plus it's directed by the legendary producer Deborah Hill, whoa

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Speaker 1: Deborah Hill of like John Carpenter movie fame, Yeah Yeah.

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Speaker 1: Longtime collaborator and producer of John Carpenter's films such as Halloween,

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Speaker 1: Halloween to the Fog, Halloween three, Season of The Witch, Yes,

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Speaker 1: Escape from New York, Escape from l A. She also

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Speaker 1: produced Clue, The Dead Zone, The Fisher King, and Big

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Speaker 1: Top Peeweek. So, but this was one of the only

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Speaker 1: two things she ever directed, So I was instantly you know, intrigued.

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Speaker 1: And then the cast is small but pretty fun in

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Speaker 1: that veteran actor Barry Nelson places his character Dr Vernon

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Speaker 1: Rathmore Barry Nelson, was he in Planet of the Vampires? Oh,

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Speaker 1: he might have been. Maybe you can do a quick

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Speaker 1: look upon that. Well, I cover some of other things

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Speaker 1: he was in. Uh, you know, he's one of these

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Speaker 1: character actors that was in everything. A lot of TV

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Speaker 1: work back in the day, a few classic horror anthology

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Speaker 1: shows as well, like Twilight Zone Suspense and The Alfred

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Speaker 1: Hitchcock Hour. But I think most people will probably remember

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Speaker 1: him from Stanley Kubrick's The Shining, in which he played

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Speaker 1: Ullman opposite Jack Nicholson in the job interview scene. That's

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Speaker 1: correct that I was also mistaken Planet of the Vampire,

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Speaker 1: says Barry Sullivan. Okay, different bar There were lots like

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Speaker 1: there are a lot of Berriers back in the day.

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Speaker 1: Um So the adaptation itself is pretty fun. It introduces

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Speaker 1: a new twist, and they opted to present the Ghoules

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Speaker 1: which are not really referred to as such if I

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Speaker 1: remember correctly. Uh, they present them much more like the

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Speaker 1: more Locks from the nineteen sixty adaptation of HD Wells

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Speaker 1: The Time Machine, which I think is a fine choice.

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Speaker 1: You know, you need some sort of subterranean humanoid but

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Speaker 1: in human creature. If you're not gonna go for like

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Speaker 1: what I imagine is the straight up Google, or perhaps

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Speaker 1: sort of the dog like uh, Crafty and Google, then

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Speaker 1: I think a morelock is a solid choice. Now, I

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Speaker 1: want to know more about the the ghouls in the

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Speaker 1: story in the in the segment, are I mean, are

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Speaker 1: they sort of the grave flesh eating scavengers we we

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Speaker 1: know of as schools? Um, not so much. I mean,

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Speaker 1: there's clearly an inspiration from um Pigman's model the Lovecraft story,

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Speaker 1: in which ghouls are bubbling out from the like the underworld,

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Speaker 1: um and uh and potentially corrupting mortal minds. Like, clearly

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Speaker 1: that was part of the inspiration. That's part of the

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Speaker 1: world from which the story emerges. But in in the

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Speaker 1: story itself and in the adaptation, it's more like these

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Speaker 1: are creatures that are wandering up from the depths like

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Speaker 1: we've It's kind of a tolken Esque idea of if

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Speaker 1: we've dug too far into the earth and now these

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Speaker 1: things are coming up and we have to stop them

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Speaker 1: because they're going to continue to pick off subway workers

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Speaker 1: and uh, you know, vagrants and then eventually other people,

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Speaker 1: and if we don't keep them in check, they will

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Speaker 1: just overwhelm us. This is funny. I was just reading

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Speaker 1: The Two Towers in the chapter where Gandalf explains what

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Speaker 1: happens after, you know, after he plunged down after the

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Speaker 1: bal Raggie says, they went into the depths of the earth,

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Speaker 1: far below where any you know, the thing that lives

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Speaker 1: above it is the abode of slimy things and things

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Speaker 1: that cannot be named. Yes, and and indeed these are

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Speaker 1: these are some of those nameless things. So on the

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Speaker 1: subject of ghouls, we of course have an entire episode

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Speaker 1: in the Vault about the idea of ghoules. We've talked

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Speaker 1: at length as well about life underground and the effects

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Speaker 1: of human life underground, and so I don't want to

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Speaker 1: retread on much of that content. It's it's definitely there,

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Speaker 1: and we love it. And if you want more subterranean

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Speaker 1: humans and googles, go check those episodes out. But I

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Speaker 1: did find a line of inquiry on this that I

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Speaker 1: think is pretty solid. So we have an underground war

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Speaker 1: in a great modern metropolis against inhuman enemy that rises

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Speaker 1: from the depths, and yet these more lockesque creatures are

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Speaker 1: drawn up to feed on humans, the humans that have

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Speaker 1: overpopulated this region. They seem to feed stone, vagrant and

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Speaker 1: subway workers, and would feast on far more of the

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Speaker 1: populace if not for the efforts of Dr Rathmore and

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Speaker 1: his you know, basically, the premises auditors have come to

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Speaker 1: check him out because his department is seems to be

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Speaker 1: way overfunded, way over armed, and the outsiders asking why

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Speaker 1: do you need all these weapons, why do you need

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Speaker 1: all this funding? And and then the story is about

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Speaker 1: presenting exactly why this funding is needed. But basically, in

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Speaker 1: this fight, uh, the fictional characters are far below have

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Speaker 1: much in common with those who battle various organisms that

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Speaker 1: we label pests in the real world. And the most

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Speaker 1: obvious parallel is the rat, the true citizen of the

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Speaker 1: subway tunnels exactly. I mean, when you go down there

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Speaker 1: to take a train, they're not in your way or

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Speaker 1: you know, getting into your stuff. You're in their world.

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Speaker 1: You're just a guest. Yeah. Now, to be sure, a

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Speaker 1: single rat can be a problem even in a you know,

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Speaker 1: a sort of a prehistoric, precity sense of human existence.

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Speaker 1: And the same can be said of say, mosquitoes, Uh,

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Speaker 1: you know, they both can spread or help spread pathogens. Uh.

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Speaker 1: The same can be said of something like the locust.

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Speaker 1: But but all these examples of our organisms as well,

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Speaker 1: they can become an even greater problem when they are

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Speaker 1: imbalanced by human activity. So let's let's think about the rat.

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Speaker 1: As biologists Ken Appland put it quoted in the Case

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Speaker 1: for Leaving City Rats Alone by Becca Cudmore for Nautilus,

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Speaker 1: rats are disruption specialists, so they thrive in disrupted ecosystems.

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Speaker 1: They spill into unbalanced realms and carve out a kingdom

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Speaker 1: for themselves. And he points out that the very few

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Speaker 1: wild animals have done this quite as well as the

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Speaker 1: rats in the human world without undergoing domestication. That's an

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Speaker 1: interesting point. Yeah, So we we think about organisms that

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Speaker 1: can successfully thrive at the edges of human civilization. You've

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Speaker 1: you've got two main versions. You've got those that become

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Speaker 1: tame and and eventually get bred by humans, like dogs

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Speaker 1: or our animals or even cats, which are a little

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Speaker 1: bit wilder versions wilder are but still definitely domesticated. Yeah.

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Speaker 1: Then you've got the ones that are just sort of

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Speaker 1: destroyed by our presence, which are i'd say maybe the

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Speaker 1: majority of animals, and like when we change an ecosystem,

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Speaker 1: they suffer. And then yeah, you've got this third category,

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Speaker 1: the ones we think of as unwelcome survivors in our environments. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: because you've disrupted everything. But this is an organism that

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Speaker 1: thrives on disruption. It can go right in there and

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Speaker 1: find a place for itself. You know, all arerat needs

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Speaker 1: is a is a is a place to borrow fifty

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Speaker 1: grams of calorie rich or moderately calorie rich food per

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Speaker 1: day and some water to drink um. And they they're

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Speaker 1: going to find that they're going to find an abundance

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Speaker 1: of that in our environments. I mean, in our garbage,

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Speaker 1: in our in our you know, in our refuse, in

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Speaker 1: in the in the the leavings of our civilization, and

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Speaker 1: for all of our domesticated minions, for all of our

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Speaker 1: traps and our poisons. Rats still rule cities New York City.

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Speaker 1: In previous episodes, I think we've even talked about rat

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Speaker 1: societies in New York City. Yeah, there are sort of

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Speaker 1: separate subcultures of rats within the cities that that they occupy. Yes,

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Speaker 1: and that's gonna that's indeed gonna become very important to

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Speaker 1: here in just a minute. Okay, the rat was already

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Speaker 1: perfectly evolved to do all of this. Uh, they were

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Speaker 1: stealing from other organisms before us. Most likely, we just

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Speaker 1: continue to offer more and more to steal, creating waste,

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Speaker 1: disruption and hiding places everywhere we go. And of course

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Speaker 1: we went absolutely everywhere, bringing rats in our wake. Becca

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Speaker 1: Cudmore's article, however, deals mostly with the Vancouver Rat Project,

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Speaker 1: which points out that some experts identify the potential dangers

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Speaker 1: posed by fighting back against the rat occupation too hard.

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Speaker 1: And part of it comes down to this, to the

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Speaker 1: disruption of the stable rat colonies. Uh, these these stable areas,

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Speaker 1: these little little pocket civilizations that the rats have established

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Speaker 1: in these disrupted ecosystems. These are some of the key

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Speaker 1: points that have been made. First of all, drive rats

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Speaker 1: out of one home or block and into another home

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Speaker 1: or block, and you might be spreading rat pathogens that

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Speaker 1: would otherwise be quarantined within this stable group. Plus, urban

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Speaker 1: rats have a garbage based diet, meaning that they absorb

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Speaker 1: a lot of bacteria, and this is often place specific bacteria.

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Speaker 1: It's tied to the building, to the people that live

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Speaker 1: in that particular building. Drive them out and you spread

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Speaker 1: these particular bacteria elsewhere. You're stirring the pot right, and

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Speaker 1: then rats in one area will wage bloody war against

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Speaker 1: any stranger rat that arrives. This applies to New York

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Speaker 1: City as well, where I've read and I think we've

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Speaker 1: talked about this before about how a native rat population

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Speaker 1: tends to do a decent job of fighting off rat

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Speaker 1: invasions that come in on ships, etcetera. Um, so it's

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Speaker 1: a perpetual turf war. But these turf wars, especially when

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Speaker 1: you stir them up up by fighting back against the

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Speaker 1: rats too hard, potentially, Uh, those turf war wars spill

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Speaker 1: rat blood. They cause rats to urinate out of fear,

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Speaker 1: and so what we get is a mix of rat

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Speaker 1: blood and rat urine and rat gut contents, a real

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Speaker 1: witches brew. In fact, Kaylee Buyers of the Vancouver Rat

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Speaker 1: Project points out that these brawls allow bacteria to converge,

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Speaker 1: to mix and potentially create new diseases. Bacteria that wouldn't

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Speaker 1: otherwise interact with each other are pooled together swap genes

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Speaker 1: inform new diseases such as UH, methocillin resistant STAFF or

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Speaker 1: m r S. A. Oh wow, I didn't even think

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Speaker 1: about that as a consequence of another thing we've talked

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Speaker 1: about before, of course, horizontal gene transfer between single celled

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Speaker 1: organisms like bacteria. You know, if one acquires a useful

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Speaker 1: adaptation and say resisting a certain antibiotic, they can share

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Speaker 1: that gene for that adaptation via a sort of analogy

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Speaker 1: of bacterial sex. It's not sexual reproduction, but they can

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Speaker 1: take part of their genome and just put it in

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Speaker 1: another bacterium. Yeah. Yeah, So we have a situation where

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Speaker 1: we disrupted the environment. Organism that thrives and disruption has

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Speaker 1: moved in, and then if we attempt to remove that organism,

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Speaker 1: we bring more disruption into the scenario. We bring more

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Speaker 1: more chaos. Uh So the idea of of fixing these

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Speaker 1: probably becomes more of a hard problem of dealing with

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Speaker 1: these rat infestations. Uh So. Anyway, not not to say

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Speaker 1: that we shouldn't fight against rats and keep them from

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Speaker 1: living too high on the hog, but we got here

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Speaker 1: through disruption, so we shouldn't be surprised if there are

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Speaker 1: consequences for disrupting it further totally. And if you're going

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Speaker 1: to fight a secret war against the ghouls, well then

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Speaker 1: perhaps it's worth fighting. Uh, you know, at a perpetual stalemate,

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Speaker 1: right White turn a cold war into a hot war exactly.

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Speaker 1: All right. I'm gonna have more about the war against

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Speaker 1: rats and potentially ghoules here in a second, but first

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Speaker 1: dot com slash mind blown. All right, we're back to

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Speaker 1: city rats, the ghouls of the real world. Yeah, and

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Speaker 1: comparing it to that episode of Monsters far Below based

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Speaker 1: on a beloved Google short story. Uh so, here's another

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Speaker 1: thing to think about here. Uh. We've talked about how

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Speaker 1: rats spread with human civilization and they are such a

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Speaker 1: highly successful organism, and yet there are a few areas

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Speaker 1: of the world that have remained essentially rat free, the

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Speaker 1: most notable of which is the Canadian Province of Alberta. Uh,

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Speaker 1: it's virtually free of the Norway rat. Uh. Now, wild

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Speaker 1: rats do turn up from time to time, brought in

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Speaker 1: through traditional means, you know, they come in, you know,

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Speaker 1: on a ship ment or or so forth. But the

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Speaker 1: province has been very proactive in squashing these flare ups

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Speaker 1: to hold onto that rat free championship that they've that

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Speaker 1: they've earned. You know, I have been to Alberta, actually

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Speaker 1: have been to the city of Calgary and and driven

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Speaker 1: around in there, and I never noticed roving teams of

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Speaker 1: anti rat sorcerers, rat exorcists of any kind. So so

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Speaker 1: what's the secret? Yeah, that's like everybody's next question. How

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Speaker 1: did they get rat free? What they do? What can

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Speaker 1: I do to get that in my city? Well, basically

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Speaker 1: they were just able to keep the rats out before

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Speaker 1: they moved in, which I think lines up rather nicely

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Speaker 1: with the story of far Below, the idea of keep

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Speaker 1: the ghouls from boiling up into New York City because

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Speaker 1: once they're up, there's no getting rid of them. Announce

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Speaker 1: of prevention is worth a pound of cure. Yeah, So

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Speaker 1: basically this is how it went went down. The Norway

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Speaker 1: rat arrived in North America. And roughly seventeen seventy five

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Speaker 1: keyports cities never had a chance. But from there they

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Speaker 1: gradually spread across the continent and uh and that took

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Speaker 1: time for certain areas. The rats didn't enter eastern Saskatchewan

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Speaker 1: until the nineteen twenties, and according to Alberta's official website

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Speaker 1: on their history of rat control, the rats continued to

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Speaker 1: spread northwest at a rate of fifteen miles or twenty

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Speaker 1: four kilometers per year. So they first reached the eastern

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Speaker 1: border of Alberta in nineteen fifty and that's where they

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Speaker 1: stopped them with rat control measures, keeping the province and

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Speaker 1: its cities free of the furry invaders. And uh and

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Speaker 1: that also includes its largest city, Calgary. Basically, they realized

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Speaker 1: the threat to all levels of human activities, especially agriculture,

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Speaker 1: you know, which there was a lot of, which is

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Speaker 1: why the Department of Agriculture did a lot of the

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Speaker 1: heavy lifting, especially early on. But legislation also mandated control

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Speaker 1: of pest by quote every person and every level of

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Speaker 1: government like county clerks or yeah, well, I mean I

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Speaker 1: mean essentially like they basically they've spread the message to

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Speaker 1: absolutely everyone, and then every municipality had to have a

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Speaker 1: pest control inspector. A control zone was established and and

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Speaker 1: this is good far below hinges in part in the

425
00:23:16,880 --> 00:23:20,920
Speaker 1: idea that a bureaucratic outsider, uh you know, like most

426
00:23:20,920 --> 00:23:23,359
Speaker 1: of the world has no idea about the Google threat.

427
00:23:23,640 --> 00:23:26,800
Speaker 1: The whole tale is his education into the reality of

428
00:23:26,840 --> 00:23:31,399
Speaker 1: the struggle against the ghouls. And Alberta's efforts actually mirrored

429
00:23:31,440 --> 00:23:34,239
Speaker 1: this in some to some degree. They had to. They

430
00:23:34,240 --> 00:23:38,000
Speaker 1: sought to enlist the population against the rat threat, you know,

431
00:23:38,040 --> 00:23:41,159
Speaker 1: to build up, you know, the public awareness. So they

432
00:23:41,200 --> 00:23:44,199
Speaker 1: had to educate the public about rats. Most people in

433
00:23:44,200 --> 00:23:48,119
Speaker 1: Alberta had never seen a rat before. It's hard to imagine. Yeah,

434
00:23:48,200 --> 00:23:52,919
Speaker 1: so Alberta's uh so, Alberta agriculture educators traveled around with

435
00:23:53,000 --> 00:23:57,280
Speaker 1: preserved rats specimens to inform the public. There's a fabulous

436
00:23:57,600 --> 00:24:03,639
Speaker 1: photocolor photograph that Alberta's website includes of these educators on

437
00:24:03,680 --> 00:24:06,720
Speaker 1: a farm in Alberta with a bunch of preserved rats,

438
00:24:06,760 --> 00:24:09,960
Speaker 1: not in a container, just laid out on the grass.

439
00:24:10,200 --> 00:24:12,800
Speaker 1: There's a child holding one up by the tail, and

440
00:24:12,800 --> 00:24:14,760
Speaker 1: they're just saying, like, these are rats. This is why

441
00:24:14,800 --> 00:24:16,280
Speaker 1: you need to be vigilant about. This is what you

442
00:24:16,320 --> 00:24:18,480
Speaker 1: need to look out for. It's like teaching New Zealanders

443
00:24:18,520 --> 00:24:22,600
Speaker 1: about squirrels. Yeah, I guess so, um and what better

444
00:24:22,600 --> 00:24:25,240
Speaker 1: way than the physical thing itself. But on top of that,

445
00:24:25,280 --> 00:24:28,480
Speaker 1: there were conferences, there were posters, there were pamphlets, you know,

446
00:24:28,520 --> 00:24:31,720
Speaker 1: some of these like straight up propaganda posters about the

447
00:24:32,320 --> 00:24:35,119
Speaker 1: terror of the rat. They advocated the use of poisons

448
00:24:35,160 --> 00:24:37,520
Speaker 1: to fight back. Uh. Though they also had to bring

449
00:24:37,560 --> 00:24:40,760
Speaker 1: in outside experts to help them because again, most Alberta

450
00:24:40,800 --> 00:24:44,200
Speaker 1: residents had no experience with rats, and that includes experience

451
00:24:44,280 --> 00:24:46,840
Speaker 1: fighting them. Uh. So they were able to battle the

452
00:24:46,920 --> 00:24:49,960
Speaker 1: rat infestations along the eastern border and keep them mostly

453
00:24:50,000 --> 00:24:52,840
Speaker 1: within ten to twenty kilometers with a border and the

454
00:24:53,119 --> 00:24:56,400
Speaker 1: program continues today in an altered but still effective form.

455
00:24:56,440 --> 00:24:59,680
Speaker 1: It's actually illegal to own a pet rat in the province.

456
00:25:00,280 --> 00:25:02,760
Speaker 1: You've got to be a zoo, a university, or a

457
00:25:02,760 --> 00:25:07,880
Speaker 1: recognized research institution. Uh. There's also a rat hotline where

458
00:25:07,880 --> 00:25:10,399
Speaker 1: you report rat and flare ups in case, you know

459
00:25:10,440 --> 00:25:13,200
Speaker 1: they when they do occur. But one of the problems

460
00:25:13,240 --> 00:25:16,160
Speaker 1: is that, again most Alberta residents don't have a good

461
00:25:16,200 --> 00:25:19,800
Speaker 1: eye for rats. Hello, and extremely tiny dog just ran

462
00:25:19,840 --> 00:25:22,960
Speaker 1: across my kitchen floor. Well, what happens if they end

463
00:25:23,080 --> 00:25:27,159
Speaker 1: up reporting muskrats, gophers, ground squirrels, and other similar organisms.

464
00:25:27,480 --> 00:25:29,520
Speaker 1: And then you know, the rat police come out to

465
00:25:29,600 --> 00:25:31,360
Speaker 1: check and they're like, oh, those are not rats, those

466
00:25:31,359 --> 00:25:33,679
Speaker 1: are muskrats. Uh. You know, we can't really do anything

467
00:25:33,680 --> 00:25:38,399
Speaker 1: about that. Uh. By the way, to come back to Monsters,

468
00:25:38,440 --> 00:25:41,879
Speaker 1: the Anthology series if if you're wondering if there is

469
00:25:42,000 --> 00:25:46,119
Speaker 1: an episode of Monsters that expressly concerns rats, uh, there is.

470
00:25:46,160 --> 00:25:49,639
Speaker 1: There's one called Stressed Environment, in which a female scientist

471
00:25:49,680 --> 00:25:53,320
Speaker 1: who spent twelve years raising rats in a stressed environment. Uh,

472
00:25:53,359 --> 00:25:56,440
Speaker 1: you know, in the hopes of evolving their intelligence, faces

473
00:25:56,600 --> 00:26:00,480
Speaker 1: the terrifying results of your experiment. It stars care Linley,

474
00:26:00,880 --> 00:26:03,080
Speaker 1: and it has stop motion rats that end up using

475
00:26:03,119 --> 00:26:07,600
Speaker 1: spears against their human captors. Smart rats. Indeed, so this

476
00:26:07,680 --> 00:26:11,320
Speaker 1: whole thing from far Below about this team of bureaucratic

477
00:26:11,359 --> 00:26:14,239
Speaker 1: professionals who work for the city who have to go

478
00:26:14,440 --> 00:26:18,359
Speaker 1: underground to fight the uh, the menace coming up from below.

479
00:26:18,400 --> 00:26:20,639
Speaker 1: Of course, in the story it's ghouls. You've got the

480
00:26:20,680 --> 00:26:22,879
Speaker 1: analogy to rats. But I can't help but think of

481
00:26:22,920 --> 00:26:26,720
Speaker 1: the fat bergs. The people up above are completely oblivious

482
00:26:26,800 --> 00:26:30,120
Speaker 1: to the fact that there are workers down beneath the streets,

483
00:26:30,160 --> 00:26:33,639
Speaker 1: in the tunnels, in the darkness, waging battle against a

484
00:26:33,680 --> 00:26:37,040
Speaker 1: monster that lives down there. And of course the agglomerations

485
00:26:37,080 --> 00:26:40,920
Speaker 1: of fats, oils, grease and wet wipes and various fibrous

486
00:26:40,920 --> 00:26:45,200
Speaker 1: substances that clog up kilometers of sewers, especially in places

487
00:26:45,240 --> 00:26:47,760
Speaker 1: like England and or I guess the UK more broadly,

488
00:26:47,800 --> 00:26:50,880
Speaker 1: but also in US cities. It seems like another perfect

489
00:26:50,880 --> 00:26:54,720
Speaker 1: analogy for the wars being waged on our behalf below

490
00:26:54,720 --> 00:26:56,760
Speaker 1: our feet that we don't even think about. Yeah, you

491
00:26:56,840 --> 00:27:01,200
Speaker 1: create this vast, unnatural underworld and it's going to it's

492
00:27:01,240 --> 00:27:05,680
Speaker 1: it's gonna end up potentially being populated by by opportunistic

493
00:27:05,800 --> 00:27:09,040
Speaker 1: organisms or you know, they're going to be situations where

494
00:27:09,640 --> 00:27:12,080
Speaker 1: things like fat burgs emerge and you need people to

495
00:27:12,119 --> 00:27:14,000
Speaker 1: go wage war against them. If you want to learn

496
00:27:14,000 --> 00:27:16,000
Speaker 1: more about fat birds, we have a whole episode about

497
00:27:16,000 --> 00:27:17,920
Speaker 1: them from earlier this year that you can check out.

498
00:27:18,240 --> 00:27:21,679
Speaker 1: So that was Monsters. Monsters I think falls more in

499
00:27:21,800 --> 00:27:25,400
Speaker 1: the you know, the category of fun but often kind

500
00:27:25,400 --> 00:27:28,200
Speaker 1: of a little bit cheesy when it comes to horror

501
00:27:28,200 --> 00:27:30,879
Speaker 1: anthology shows. But again, some of the like one of

502
00:27:30,880 --> 00:27:33,480
Speaker 1: the big names, so one of them the classier names

503
00:27:33,480 --> 00:27:37,080
Speaker 1: in horror anthology is of course the classic Twilight Zone,

504
00:27:36,800 --> 00:27:39,480
Speaker 1: right uh. And so there there are so many great

505
00:27:39,480 --> 00:27:42,359
Speaker 1: episodes of the Twilight Zone that really do pose interesting

506
00:27:42,440 --> 00:27:45,719
Speaker 1: questions that still remain interesting today. I mean, there are

507
00:27:45,760 --> 00:27:49,080
Speaker 1: some that also have kind of hokey premises that don't

508
00:27:49,080 --> 00:27:50,720
Speaker 1: hold up. But I want to talk about one that

509
00:27:50,760 --> 00:27:54,040
Speaker 1: I really think does hold up and is still more

510
00:27:54,119 --> 00:27:56,600
Speaker 1: and more mind blowing the more you think about it,

511
00:27:56,880 --> 00:28:00,600
Speaker 1: and yet at the same time has an incredibly simple premise. Us.

512
00:28:00,920 --> 00:28:03,320
Speaker 1: I feel like this is a great example of a

513
00:28:03,359 --> 00:28:05,880
Speaker 1: story premise getting a lot of bang for its buck.

514
00:28:06,280 --> 00:28:08,119
Speaker 1: And so this is one of my favorite episodes of

515
00:28:08,119 --> 00:28:11,439
Speaker 1: The Twilight Zone. Originally aired in nineteen fifty nine, and

516
00:28:11,480 --> 00:28:14,600
Speaker 1: it's called shadow Play. So in the beginning of this

517
00:28:14,680 --> 00:28:17,840
Speaker 1: episode of The Twilight Zone, a man named Adam Grant

518
00:28:18,400 --> 00:28:22,040
Speaker 1: is awaiting the verdict after being put on trial for murder.

519
00:28:22,480 --> 00:28:26,440
Speaker 1: The jurors return from deliberation and they proclaim him guilty,

520
00:28:26,520 --> 00:28:29,159
Speaker 1: and then the judge sentences him to death by the

521
00:28:29,200 --> 00:28:33,960
Speaker 1: electric chair. But as he's being sentenced, Grant begins to

522
00:28:34,040 --> 00:28:37,960
Speaker 1: laugh hysterically, and in a fit of rage and frustration,

523
00:28:38,040 --> 00:28:41,280
Speaker 1: he runs around the courtroom yelling at people, not again.

524
00:28:41,560 --> 00:28:45,800
Speaker 1: You can't do it to me again. You'll all die. Uh.

525
00:28:45,840 --> 00:28:48,640
Speaker 1: So in his jail cell, Grant starts talking with his

526
00:28:48,720 --> 00:28:51,880
Speaker 1: roommates about how this has all happened to him before

527
00:28:52,480 --> 00:28:56,480
Speaker 1: the trial, the sentencing, the imprisonment, and the execution have

528
00:28:56,600 --> 00:29:00,320
Speaker 1: all happened to him a thousand times, but not as reality,

529
00:29:00,680 --> 00:29:04,760
Speaker 1: always as a nightmare. Grant says, he's in a dream

530
00:29:05,000 --> 00:29:08,440
Speaker 1: right now, and at the moment of his electrocution, he's

531
00:29:08,440 --> 00:29:12,240
Speaker 1: going to wake up screaming back in reality. And because

532
00:29:12,320 --> 00:29:14,560
Speaker 1: it's always been a dream in the past, this time

533
00:29:14,600 --> 00:29:17,720
Speaker 1: it must be a dream too. So he tells everybody

534
00:29:17,760 --> 00:29:20,200
Speaker 1: he can don't let them send me to the chair,

535
00:29:20,320 --> 00:29:23,480
Speaker 1: because when I die, I'll wake up, and when I

536
00:29:23,560 --> 00:29:27,000
Speaker 1: wake up, you'll all die because I'll stop dreaming you.

537
00:29:27,320 --> 00:29:30,920
Speaker 1: Then there's this newspaper reporter who was present at Grant's trial,

538
00:29:31,560 --> 00:29:34,120
Speaker 1: and he starts to become a little worried that he is,

539
00:29:34,240 --> 00:29:38,600
Speaker 1: in fact, maybe only being dreamed by Grant, and if

540
00:29:38,640 --> 00:29:41,719
Speaker 1: Grant wakes up, he and everybody else in the world

541
00:29:41,960 --> 00:29:44,880
Speaker 1: will cease to exist. So he gets drunk and he

542
00:29:44,920 --> 00:29:47,040
Speaker 1: goes to the house of his friend who's the district

543
00:29:47,120 --> 00:29:50,280
Speaker 1: attorney who was in the courtroom also who presented the

544
00:29:50,280 --> 00:29:53,760
Speaker 1: case against Grant, And the newspaper reporter begins to beg

545
00:29:53,800 --> 00:29:57,840
Speaker 1: the district attorney to stay the execution, and the d A,

546
00:29:57,960 --> 00:30:00,600
Speaker 1: of course, thinks this is preposterous obvious as Lee, But

547
00:30:01,000 --> 00:30:03,520
Speaker 1: the More's friend talks to him about it, the more

548
00:30:03,680 --> 00:30:06,360
Speaker 1: doubts begin to creep in, however much he tries to

549
00:30:06,400 --> 00:30:10,880
Speaker 1: resist them. Doesn't the world ever feel just not quite real?

550
00:30:11,720 --> 00:30:15,400
Speaker 1: Isn't it sometimes just too perfect or just too full

551
00:30:15,440 --> 00:30:19,160
Speaker 1: of too many coincidences? I think most people can actually

552
00:30:19,200 --> 00:30:21,920
Speaker 1: identify with having this feeling every now and then about

553
00:30:21,960 --> 00:30:25,120
Speaker 1: their own lives. Yeah, yeah, I mean especially we've talked

554
00:30:25,120 --> 00:30:28,600
Speaker 1: before about some about coincidence, you know, and how we've

555
00:30:28,600 --> 00:30:30,960
Speaker 1: would devote a whole episode to it, I believe, and

556
00:30:30,960 --> 00:30:33,360
Speaker 1: and how we can over interpret that or at least

557
00:30:33,360 --> 00:30:35,520
Speaker 1: that there's some vast conspiracy of foot well. I mean,

558
00:30:35,560 --> 00:30:37,760
Speaker 1: this is what led like Carl Young to believe in

559
00:30:37,760 --> 00:30:41,120
Speaker 1: this concept of synchronicity, that there could be that there

560
00:30:41,200 --> 00:30:44,680
Speaker 1: was a connecting principle in reality that was not based

561
00:30:44,720 --> 00:30:49,040
Speaker 1: on physical causation but was based on like, based on

562
00:30:49,200 --> 00:30:53,400
Speaker 1: meaning essentially that events could be not caused by one another,

563
00:30:53,480 --> 00:30:56,080
Speaker 1: but connected to one another through meaning. And this is

564
00:30:56,160 --> 00:30:58,520
Speaker 1: why we have this feeling that there are too many

565
00:30:58,560 --> 00:31:02,600
Speaker 1: coincidences in our lives now. But anyway, so after this moment,

566
00:31:02,960 --> 00:31:05,720
Speaker 1: the District Attorney agrees to go speak to Grant in

567
00:31:05,760 --> 00:31:10,280
Speaker 1: the prison before the execution takes place. Grant expects him

568
00:31:10,320 --> 00:31:14,120
Speaker 1: before he arrives, and the d A tries to interrogate

569
00:31:14,160 --> 00:31:16,400
Speaker 1: Grant on his theory. He tries to convince him that

570
00:31:16,440 --> 00:31:19,160
Speaker 1: it couldn't be true. It's not possible that you are

571
00:31:19,320 --> 00:31:21,760
Speaker 1: dreaming all this and we're just in your dream. The

572
00:31:21,880 --> 00:31:23,680
Speaker 1: d A says, like, what you mean to tell me

573
00:31:23,720 --> 00:31:26,760
Speaker 1: that my family, my friends, everybody in this city, in

574
00:31:26,760 --> 00:31:29,920
Speaker 1: this state, everybody in the world is just living inside

575
00:31:29,960 --> 00:31:33,960
Speaker 1: your dream? And Grant says, a dream builds its own world,

576
00:31:34,520 --> 00:31:36,440
Speaker 1: and the d A asks, well, how can I be

577
00:31:36,480 --> 00:31:38,800
Speaker 1: a part of your dream if I sleep and dream

578
00:31:38,880 --> 00:31:42,280
Speaker 1: myself every night? And then Grant says, in this great line,

579
00:31:42,320 --> 00:31:45,120
Speaker 1: you only sleep and dream because I dream you that way.

580
00:31:45,840 --> 00:31:49,000
Speaker 1: So Grant is then headed to the electric chair at midnight,

581
00:31:49,320 --> 00:31:51,440
Speaker 1: and the d A is faced with this choice. Should

582
00:31:51,480 --> 00:31:54,360
Speaker 1: he call the governor to get a stay of execution.

583
00:31:54,600 --> 00:31:58,760
Speaker 1: But that would be ridiculous, wouldn't it. But he has doubts.

584
00:31:59,320 --> 00:32:02,120
Speaker 1: I'm not gonna oil the ending beyond that, but I

585
00:32:02,120 --> 00:32:04,920
Speaker 1: will say my favorite part of this episode, aside from

586
00:32:05,160 --> 00:32:08,480
Speaker 1: the great performance by Dennis Weaver as Adam Grant, is

587
00:32:08,480 --> 00:32:10,640
Speaker 1: is in the middle part of the episode. It's the

588
00:32:10,680 --> 00:32:13,120
Speaker 1: part where the doubts begin to set in for the

589
00:32:13,160 --> 00:32:15,600
Speaker 1: reporter and the d A and the other prisoners on

590
00:32:15,640 --> 00:32:20,080
Speaker 1: Grant's row. I feel like this story at once raises

591
00:32:20,280 --> 00:32:23,560
Speaker 1: several of the deepest, most challenging questions at the core

592
00:32:23,640 --> 00:32:27,920
Speaker 1: of metaphysics, psychology, and the philosophy of mine. Questions like

593
00:32:28,200 --> 00:32:30,640
Speaker 1: how do you know for sure that other people in

594
00:32:30,680 --> 00:32:33,680
Speaker 1: the outside world are real? And how do you know

595
00:32:33,840 --> 00:32:36,680
Speaker 1: your current experience is real as opposed to a dream?

596
00:32:36,720 --> 00:32:39,680
Speaker 1: How do you know you're not dreaming right now? And

597
00:32:39,720 --> 00:32:42,400
Speaker 1: then I think that the most mind blowing question from it,

598
00:32:42,440 --> 00:32:44,560
Speaker 1: of course, is that if you're one of these other

599
00:32:44,600 --> 00:32:46,760
Speaker 1: people in the story, like the d A or the reporter,

600
00:32:47,160 --> 00:32:50,239
Speaker 1: how do you know that you're real? Could you, in

601
00:32:50,360 --> 00:32:54,719
Speaker 1: fact be an imaginary person in somebody else's dream. And

602
00:32:54,720 --> 00:32:56,760
Speaker 1: of course, with that last question, you may think the

603
00:32:56,800 --> 00:32:59,680
Speaker 1: answer is just obviously self evidently. No, I think it's

604
00:32:59,680 --> 00:33:01,800
Speaker 1: probably you know, but it might not be as cut

605
00:33:01,800 --> 00:33:03,840
Speaker 1: and dry as we might hope. I want to come

606
00:33:03,840 --> 00:33:06,440
Speaker 1: back to that in a minute. Yeah, I watched this

607
00:33:06,480 --> 00:33:09,600
Speaker 1: episode this morning, and yeah, it's it's really good. It's

608
00:33:09,640 --> 00:33:11,560
Speaker 1: it's one of the again, a lot of these Twilight

609
00:33:11,640 --> 00:33:14,040
Speaker 1: Zone episodes, they they hold up so well, the shot

610
00:33:14,080 --> 00:33:17,400
Speaker 1: and like stunning black and white. Uh. These you know,

611
00:33:17,560 --> 00:33:19,720
Speaker 1: I guess at times the acting might feel a little

612
00:33:19,800 --> 00:33:21,680
Speaker 1: dated to what you might have today, but it's it's

613
00:33:21,680 --> 00:33:25,920
Speaker 1: all really solid. Also, this episode was adapted in the

614
00:33:27,040 --> 00:33:32,800
Speaker 1: revival of The Twilight Zone, starring Peter Coyote. Uh in thee. Yeah,

615
00:33:32,920 --> 00:33:35,560
Speaker 1: I haven't either, but but I looked it up and

616
00:33:35,560 --> 00:33:37,640
Speaker 1: I was like, oh, yeah, there's Peter Coote. And then

617
00:33:37,680 --> 00:33:41,120
Speaker 1: of course this episode was written by Charles Beaumont, who

618
00:33:41,200 --> 00:33:44,560
Speaker 1: is one of like the legendary names of the Twilight Zone.

619
00:33:45,000 --> 00:33:47,920
Speaker 1: You have a number of killer episodes. Yeah, it's really

620
00:33:47,960 --> 00:33:52,560
Speaker 1: really good. Uh, it's a really tight, well told story. Um,

621
00:33:52,640 --> 00:33:54,840
Speaker 1: and I highly recommended, and in fact, I was just

622
00:33:54,880 --> 00:33:57,160
Speaker 1: I was watching it on Netflix. The Twilight Zones all

623
00:33:57,200 --> 00:33:59,000
Speaker 1: on Netflix right now, so you can go look it

624
00:33:59,080 --> 00:34:01,000
Speaker 1: up if you've got a subscrib option, and it's also

625
00:34:01,040 --> 00:34:03,400
Speaker 1: on Hulu, I believe if anyone wishes to to watch

626
00:34:03,440 --> 00:34:06,200
Speaker 1: them there. But there's tons of Twilight Zone awaiting you.

627
00:34:06,400 --> 00:34:08,359
Speaker 1: I always forget just how many episodes of the show

628
00:34:08,440 --> 00:34:11,000
Speaker 1: they did. I think there's like thirty six episodes in

629
00:34:11,040 --> 00:34:13,840
Speaker 1: the first season, and not all of them are great,

630
00:34:13,880 --> 00:34:17,399
Speaker 1: but a striking number of them are great. Yeah. Yeah, Well,

631
00:34:17,440 --> 00:34:19,000
Speaker 1: maybe we should take a quick break and when we

632
00:34:19,040 --> 00:34:21,960
Speaker 1: come back, we can address these questions about dreams and

633
00:34:22,040 --> 00:34:28,040
Speaker 1: being thank all right, we awaken you from the dream

634
00:34:28,080 --> 00:34:31,280
Speaker 1: of advertising and back into the reality of our episode.

635
00:34:31,800 --> 00:34:33,719
Speaker 1: All right, So I think we should deal with some

636
00:34:33,760 --> 00:34:36,080
Speaker 1: of the questions I was just posing that are raised

637
00:34:36,120 --> 00:34:38,560
Speaker 1: by this episode of the Twilight Zone. Uh, And the

638
00:34:38,560 --> 00:34:40,560
Speaker 1: first one I think would be the most basic question,

639
00:34:40,880 --> 00:34:43,799
Speaker 1: how do you know that your entire life hasn't been

640
00:34:43,840 --> 00:34:46,160
Speaker 1: a dream? How do you know that the people you

641
00:34:46,239 --> 00:34:50,680
Speaker 1: interact with aren't just figments of your imagination? I think

642
00:34:50,719 --> 00:34:53,600
Speaker 1: we all assume that other people are real and independent,

643
00:34:53,719 --> 00:34:56,400
Speaker 1: or at least you probably should assume that the outside

644
00:34:56,400 --> 00:34:59,640
Speaker 1: world really exists. Will it will continue after I die?

645
00:34:59,719 --> 00:35:02,120
Speaker 1: And so forth? But it's harder than you might expect

646
00:35:02,160 --> 00:35:05,920
Speaker 1: to prove this with certainty. Uh though, I think almost

647
00:35:05,920 --> 00:35:09,279
Speaker 1: nobody actually holds this view. If you actually were to

648
00:35:09,440 --> 00:35:12,400
Speaker 1: believe that your mind is the only thing that exists

649
00:35:12,400 --> 00:35:14,120
Speaker 1: in the rest of the outside world and all the

650
00:35:14,120 --> 00:35:16,600
Speaker 1: people of it, and they're just merely products of your

651
00:35:16,640 --> 00:35:20,320
Speaker 1: imagination or your dream or whatever, this is known as solipsism,

652
00:35:20,400 --> 00:35:22,560
Speaker 1: and to be more specific, I think it would be

653
00:35:22,640 --> 00:35:26,680
Speaker 1: metaphysical solipsism, metaphysical meaning this is how the world is,

654
00:35:26,760 --> 00:35:30,359
Speaker 1: as opposed to something like methodological solipsism, which you might

655
00:35:30,840 --> 00:35:32,680
Speaker 1: say is one of the tools of Saint Descartes, who

656
00:35:32,680 --> 00:35:34,759
Speaker 1: I'll talk about in a minute, which would just mean

657
00:35:34,840 --> 00:35:38,320
Speaker 1: like solipsism might be a useful philosophical tool for a moment.

658
00:35:38,880 --> 00:35:40,840
Speaker 1: And by the way, listeners who are fans of the

659
00:35:40,920 --> 00:35:44,080
Speaker 1: excellent sitcom The Good Place will recognize this is one

660
00:35:44,080 --> 00:35:47,439
Speaker 1: of the philosophies that is currently being explored in season three.

661
00:35:47,520 --> 00:35:50,160
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, yeah, I haven't gotten there yet. I think

662
00:35:50,200 --> 00:35:52,879
Speaker 1: I only did season one. Doesn't stay good? Oh yeah,

663
00:35:52,960 --> 00:35:55,680
Speaker 1: it it just gets better. They do a really good

664
00:35:55,760 --> 00:36:01,080
Speaker 1: job of mixing it up and defying expectations. Uh yeah,

665
00:36:01,160 --> 00:36:04,200
Speaker 1: but I do want to stress I think solipsism is

666
00:36:04,200 --> 00:36:06,960
Speaker 1: one of those points of view. That especially can be

667
00:36:07,000 --> 00:36:09,520
Speaker 1: frustrating to normal people because you can point out that

668
00:36:09,560 --> 00:36:11,880
Speaker 1: it's really hard to disprove, and that can create the

669
00:36:11,880 --> 00:36:15,320
Speaker 1: false impression that, like, some philosophers actually believe this. I

670
00:36:15,360 --> 00:36:18,879
Speaker 1: don't think any philosophers actually believe in solipsism, But it's

671
00:36:18,880 --> 00:36:21,880
Speaker 1: one of those weird edge cases, right that everybody just

672
00:36:21,920 --> 00:36:24,040
Speaker 1: sort of accepts that you have to leap over it

673
00:36:24,080 --> 00:36:27,040
Speaker 1: with an axiomatic assumption. I can't prove it. I'll just

674
00:36:27,120 --> 00:36:30,759
Speaker 1: assume the outside world is real and other people are conscious, right,

675
00:36:30,840 --> 00:36:33,080
Speaker 1: because if you give you if you were to believe this,

676
00:36:33,239 --> 00:36:37,239
Speaker 1: like things get pointless or silly or dangerous really quickly, right, Yeah,

677
00:36:37,440 --> 00:36:39,879
Speaker 1: of course, I mean it's not a disprove But there's

678
00:36:39,880 --> 00:36:43,520
Speaker 1: a funny implication of instability that follows from the assumption

679
00:36:43,560 --> 00:36:47,160
Speaker 1: of metaphysical solipsis um uh. And it would go like this,

680
00:36:47,360 --> 00:36:51,000
Speaker 1: if you're actually a metaphysical solipsist, you believe nothing that

681
00:36:51,040 --> 00:36:54,319
Speaker 1: you experience is real, none of the other people actually exist. Uh,

682
00:36:54,360 --> 00:36:56,919
Speaker 1: They're just figments of your imagination or something like that.

683
00:36:57,160 --> 00:36:59,720
Speaker 1: What would be the point of telling anybody about it,

684
00:36:59,800 --> 00:37:02,319
Speaker 1: just like for your own amusement? Like would any of

685
00:37:02,320 --> 00:37:06,640
Speaker 1: the imaginary people you interact with benefit from you explaining

686
00:37:06,680 --> 00:37:10,279
Speaker 1: why you think that solop sisum is true. Now for me,

687
00:37:10,320 --> 00:37:13,560
Speaker 1: I guess the two reasons to tell people come to mind, though,

688
00:37:13,640 --> 00:37:16,080
Speaker 1: though neither is really grounded in the reality of living

689
00:37:16,120 --> 00:37:19,359
Speaker 1: within a dream. On one hand, you know, what better

690
00:37:19,400 --> 00:37:21,920
Speaker 1: way to dismiss the stressors in your life than to

691
00:37:22,000 --> 00:37:24,799
Speaker 1: tell them there but figments of your imagination, right to

692
00:37:24,880 --> 00:37:27,239
Speaker 1: go just full Scrooge on them. But you'd also have

693
00:37:27,280 --> 00:37:29,240
Speaker 1: to tell that to all the people you like and love,

694
00:37:29,640 --> 00:37:32,440
Speaker 1: and and that though is actually more attractive than one

695
00:37:32,520 --> 00:37:37,160
Speaker 1: might think. I mean, this is essentially an exercise of detachment.

696
00:37:37,440 --> 00:37:40,440
Speaker 1: Buddhist and Hindu teaching speak to the importance of freeing

697
00:37:40,440 --> 00:37:44,080
Speaker 1: ourselves from the chains of attachment. Both chains of iron,

698
00:37:44,520 --> 00:37:47,440
Speaker 1: you know, chains to two things that are less desirable,

699
00:37:47,440 --> 00:37:51,600
Speaker 1: but also chains of gold uh change to the things

700
00:37:51,640 --> 00:37:54,560
Speaker 1: in life that we love or or or give us,

701
00:37:54,800 --> 00:37:57,360
Speaker 1: you know, stability and peace. We have to free ourselves

702
00:37:57,440 --> 00:38:00,239
Speaker 1: from our hates and our loves and connect with the

703
00:38:00,360 --> 00:38:05,520
Speaker 1: true underlying reality of brahmin and uh and and so

704
00:38:05,800 --> 00:38:07,759
Speaker 1: you know, that feels a little on par with what

705
00:38:07,840 --> 00:38:10,239
Speaker 1: we're talking about here. So I think some of the

706
00:38:10,280 --> 00:38:13,600
Speaker 1: incarnations of this philosophy is realized in like Hinduism. I

707
00:38:13,600 --> 00:38:17,600
Speaker 1: think especially I recall them being even more radical than

708
00:38:17,640 --> 00:38:21,399
Speaker 1: sollipsism actually and saying, not only is the not only

709
00:38:21,480 --> 00:38:23,560
Speaker 1: is all of the sense data of the outside world

710
00:38:23,880 --> 00:38:27,120
Speaker 1: potentially an illusion, but also the self is potentially an illusion.

711
00:38:27,440 --> 00:38:29,480
Speaker 1: So it's not it's not that I am the only

712
00:38:29,520 --> 00:38:32,640
Speaker 1: thing that exists, but maybe even I don't exist. Yeah,

713
00:38:32,920 --> 00:38:34,799
Speaker 1: and I think we're going to get into even more

714
00:38:34,840 --> 00:38:38,080
Speaker 1: of this continue. But then again, since almost nobody who

715
00:38:38,080 --> 00:38:40,960
Speaker 1: thinks about it seriously is tempted to believe in sollip sism,

716
00:38:40,960 --> 00:38:43,520
Speaker 1: I think we can just like use the axiomatic pole

717
00:38:43,600 --> 00:38:46,120
Speaker 1: vault and jump over the question. Yeah, I mean, I

718
00:38:46,160 --> 00:38:48,840
Speaker 1: guess we don't even really follow into full blown sollip

719
00:38:48,840 --> 00:38:52,799
Speaker 1: sis um via social media, in which we all have like,

720
00:38:53,800 --> 00:38:57,880
Speaker 1: you know, we have a carefully maintained version of ourselves,

721
00:38:57,880 --> 00:39:01,120
Speaker 1: an unreal version of ourselves that interacts with real versions

722
00:39:01,160 --> 00:39:03,640
Speaker 1: of other people, like it's just a bunch of masks,

723
00:39:04,160 --> 00:39:06,359
Speaker 1: and uh, you know, I think if anything we're going

724
00:39:06,400 --> 00:39:08,960
Speaker 1: to lead us to like this full blown solipsism, it

725
00:39:08,960 --> 00:39:11,719
Speaker 1: would be that Yeah, well, I mean, there's there are

726
00:39:11,719 --> 00:39:14,040
Speaker 1: plenty of ways the word solop sisum is used that

727
00:39:14,080 --> 00:39:16,120
Speaker 1: aren't exactly the same. I mean, I think one thing

728
00:39:16,160 --> 00:39:18,720
Speaker 1: you're getting on there is like people often do behave

729
00:39:18,800 --> 00:39:22,000
Speaker 1: very solipsistic lee on on social media. But that's more

730
00:39:22,000 --> 00:39:25,080
Speaker 1: in the sense of not necessarily not believing that other

731
00:39:25,200 --> 00:39:28,200
Speaker 1: minds exist or that the outside worlds exists, but just

732
00:39:28,520 --> 00:39:32,200
Speaker 1: acting as if you only care about yourself. True. Yeah, yeah,

733
00:39:32,239 --> 00:39:34,319
Speaker 1: So it's it's beyond that. It's not just I'm the

734
00:39:34,360 --> 00:39:37,680
Speaker 1: only one that matters, or that everybody is that everybody

735
00:39:37,719 --> 00:39:41,279
Speaker 1: else only matters insofar as their attention to me. It's

736
00:39:41,360 --> 00:39:44,520
Speaker 1: that they are not real. They are all figments of

737
00:39:44,680 --> 00:39:47,759
Speaker 1: my mind. They are all but a dream. All right.

738
00:39:47,800 --> 00:39:50,040
Speaker 1: So we're gonna jump over this question. If somebody actually

739
00:39:50,080 --> 00:39:53,000
Speaker 1: holds metaphysical solipsism, I can't disprove them. I'm just gonna

740
00:39:53,040 --> 00:39:56,480
Speaker 1: push them in a ditch. Um, So we go onto

741
00:39:56,520 --> 00:39:59,160
Speaker 1: the next thing, which is maybe a more vexing problem,

742
00:39:59,200 --> 00:40:02,160
Speaker 1: which is the problem of Cartesian skepticism. How do you

743
00:40:02,239 --> 00:40:05,320
Speaker 1: know that your experience right now, in this very moment,

744
00:40:05,480 --> 00:40:08,600
Speaker 1: is real and not a dream? In shadow Play, Grant

745
00:40:08,680 --> 00:40:11,960
Speaker 1: repeatedly explores this question. He's looking for clues in the

746
00:40:12,000 --> 00:40:16,160
Speaker 1: opposite direction, trying to notice details about his environment that

747
00:40:16,239 --> 00:40:19,120
Speaker 1: would tell him he's in a dream. He'll point out, Hey,

748
00:40:19,160 --> 00:40:21,480
Speaker 1: this thing doesn't make sense. That must mean I'm in

749
00:40:21,520 --> 00:40:24,320
Speaker 1: a dream. They wouldn't put that right there. They wouldn't

750
00:40:24,360 --> 00:40:26,400
Speaker 1: let you have this in there. They wouldn't, you know,

751
00:40:26,480 --> 00:40:29,200
Speaker 1: this wouldn't be scheduled in this way. Why am I

752
00:40:29,360 --> 00:40:32,440
Speaker 1: Why am I getting executed the same day I got sentence?

753
00:40:32,560 --> 00:40:35,080
Speaker 1: That doesn't make any sense. I must be in a dream.

754
00:40:35,320 --> 00:40:37,640
Speaker 1: Why are steaks being cooked in the oven? That sort

755
00:40:37,640 --> 00:40:40,200
Speaker 1: of thing. That's a good one. No, I think that's

756
00:40:40,239 --> 00:40:45,520
Speaker 1: just the nineteen fifties. But yeah, nineteen fifties culinary culture

757
00:40:45,520 --> 00:40:49,399
Speaker 1: in America. It might be a largely bad dream. Uh

758
00:40:49,640 --> 00:40:53,840
Speaker 1: so Uh. The seventeenth century French philosopher, scientists mathematician Renee

759
00:40:53,840 --> 00:40:56,680
Speaker 1: de Card, of course, was famously concerned with this question

760
00:40:57,080 --> 00:40:59,160
Speaker 1: in a lot of his philosophical works, such as his

761
00:40:59,239 --> 00:41:04,239
Speaker 1: Meditations on first philosophy. Uh, having doubts about philosophy that

762
00:41:04,320 --> 00:41:07,480
Speaker 1: gave primacy to the evidence of our senses. So like,

763
00:41:07,600 --> 00:41:10,160
Speaker 1: if I assume is a starting point that I'm sitting

764
00:41:10,160 --> 00:41:12,799
Speaker 1: in a chair in a studio talking into a microphone,

765
00:41:13,360 --> 00:41:16,640
Speaker 1: I could turn out to be completely wrong, because I

766
00:41:16,640 --> 00:41:19,400
Speaker 1: already know there have been thousands of times in my

767
00:41:19,480 --> 00:41:22,600
Speaker 1: life when I was a hundred percent convinced that I

768
00:41:22,640 --> 00:41:26,960
Speaker 1: was really physically in my elementary school lunchline next to

769
00:41:27,000 --> 00:41:30,920
Speaker 1: Foghorn Leghorn, or on a boat headed to Greenland wearing

770
00:41:30,960 --> 00:41:33,600
Speaker 1: a I don't know, a Superman cape or something, only

771
00:41:33,640 --> 00:41:36,040
Speaker 1: to wake up and realize that I was actually asleep

772
00:41:36,080 --> 00:41:39,319
Speaker 1: in my bed dreaming. And I was totally convinced in

773
00:41:39,360 --> 00:41:42,160
Speaker 1: the moment. Yeah, I mean, granted, it's it's it's a

774
00:41:42,239 --> 00:41:44,279
Speaker 1: reduced version of us to a certain extent, Like we

775
00:41:44,680 --> 00:41:46,840
Speaker 1: there are things that were not picking up on that

776
00:41:46,880 --> 00:41:49,120
Speaker 1: we would otherwise pick up on a lot of the times,

777
00:41:49,120 --> 00:41:51,400
Speaker 1: but within the context of the dream, we buy it

778
00:41:51,440 --> 00:41:53,799
Speaker 1: as our reality. Well, yeah, that's one of the things.

779
00:41:53,800 --> 00:41:56,520
Speaker 1: So you say that, and I agree with you. There

780
00:41:56,640 --> 00:42:00,799
Speaker 1: is a textural difference to dreams, Uh, dreams. You know,

781
00:42:00,880 --> 00:42:03,960
Speaker 1: our our waking reality doesn't feel like a dream, right.

782
00:42:04,239 --> 00:42:08,800
Speaker 1: Dreams are hazy and ethereal and and absurd in ways

783
00:42:08,800 --> 00:42:11,440
Speaker 1: that we don't notice in the moment. And my surroundings

784
00:42:11,520 --> 00:42:13,960
Speaker 1: right now feel very lucid and solid, right, and it

785
00:42:14,000 --> 00:42:17,680
Speaker 1: feels like there's a qualitative difference, of course, until we

786
00:42:17,719 --> 00:42:21,320
Speaker 1: start really looking at how we observe the world right exactly, Yes,

787
00:42:21,719 --> 00:42:24,920
Speaker 1: there does seem to be a qualitative difference, But maybe

788
00:42:25,000 --> 00:42:30,520
Speaker 1: dreams only seem hazy and ethereal in comparison in retrospect,

789
00:42:30,960 --> 00:42:34,839
Speaker 1: because in the moment, doesn't a dream often feel exactly

790
00:42:34,960 --> 00:42:38,279
Speaker 1: as solid and lucid as real life. I've actually had

791
00:42:38,320 --> 00:42:42,040
Speaker 1: a number of dreams I recall that almost became a

792
00:42:42,120 --> 00:42:44,399
Speaker 1: lucid dream, and the sequence goes pretty much like this.

793
00:42:44,480 --> 00:42:47,600
Speaker 1: Every time in the dream, I think, wait a second,

794
00:42:48,000 --> 00:42:50,840
Speaker 1: I'm dreaming, aren't I? And then I look around and

795
00:42:50,880 --> 00:42:53,440
Speaker 1: I test my surroundings. Doesn't this seem like a dream?

796
00:42:53,480 --> 00:42:56,200
Speaker 1: Doesn't anything seem out of place? Can I fly that

797
00:42:56,280 --> 00:42:59,520
Speaker 1: kind of thing? And whenever this happens, I conclude, oh no,

798
00:43:00,120 --> 00:43:03,680
Speaker 1: everything around me is normal. I can't fly totally real

799
00:43:03,760 --> 00:43:06,360
Speaker 1: and lucid. This must be real and not a dream.

800
00:43:06,880 --> 00:43:09,440
Speaker 1: I don't know if you've ever had this experience. Mine

801
00:43:09,520 --> 00:43:12,560
Speaker 1: is similar. But what happens with me is I'll realize

802
00:43:12,560 --> 00:43:14,480
Speaker 1: it's a dream, and I'll be like this annoying, and

803
00:43:14,480 --> 00:43:16,799
Speaker 1: generally it's an annoying dream. It's something that's it's not

804
00:43:16,840 --> 00:43:19,319
Speaker 1: a full blown nightmare. But it's like it's annoying. I

805
00:43:19,400 --> 00:43:21,919
Speaker 1: realize it's a dream, and then I just fall back

806
00:43:21,920 --> 00:43:25,239
Speaker 1: into it anyway, like like as if it's just I

807
00:43:25,280 --> 00:43:28,719
Speaker 1: don't know that, and that in itself is frustrating. It's like,

808
00:43:28,760 --> 00:43:30,640
Speaker 1: I I woke from the dream, I could have why

809
00:43:30,640 --> 00:43:32,560
Speaker 1: didn't I go lucid at that point? Now? Instead I

810
00:43:32,600 --> 00:43:35,000
Speaker 1: just kind of shrugged and went right back into the

811
00:43:35,040 --> 00:43:37,160
Speaker 1: same old crap. Well, this is one of the things

812
00:43:37,200 --> 00:43:40,440
Speaker 1: that the studies of dreams have found is that our

813
00:43:40,520 --> 00:43:45,760
Speaker 1: critical reasoning abilities are extremely limited in dreams. Dreams suppress

814
00:43:45,840 --> 00:43:49,560
Speaker 1: certain kinds of brain function, especially the types of brain

815
00:43:49,640 --> 00:43:53,279
Speaker 1: function that cause us to question our surroundings and think

816
00:43:53,320 --> 00:43:57,360
Speaker 1: critically about sense data, which of course inherently makes us

817
00:43:57,400 --> 00:44:01,520
Speaker 1: a very prone to thinking dreams are reality even I

818
00:44:01,520 --> 00:44:03,799
Speaker 1: don't know. I mean, it's hard to know how real

819
00:44:03,920 --> 00:44:06,440
Speaker 1: they really seem in the moment, except for the fact

820
00:44:06,480 --> 00:44:09,640
Speaker 1: that we feel like they're real right like. Well, like

821
00:44:09,719 --> 00:44:12,120
Speaker 1: one bit of sort of folk wisdom is often thrown

822
00:44:12,160 --> 00:44:14,640
Speaker 1: around is like, oh, well, letters are backwards and dreams.

823
00:44:14,760 --> 00:44:17,080
Speaker 1: You can't read text in dreams, or you know, something

824
00:44:17,120 --> 00:44:18,879
Speaker 1: like that. I don't think that's true. I don't think

825
00:44:18,920 --> 00:44:21,200
Speaker 1: so either. But I have had situations where I've been

826
00:44:21,239 --> 00:44:24,160
Speaker 1: reading something in a dream and it's difficult. But my

827
00:44:24,320 --> 00:44:26,680
Speaker 1: experience and then of that is like, this is difficult

828
00:44:26,719 --> 00:44:29,200
Speaker 1: to read. I must be dreaming. It's more, this is

829
00:44:29,200 --> 00:44:32,279
Speaker 1: difficult to read. What's wrong? You know? I don't think

830
00:44:32,280 --> 00:44:36,160
Speaker 1: about it about the dream answer being the solution, right.

831
00:44:36,200 --> 00:44:39,400
Speaker 1: And so this whole dream problem is one way of

832
00:44:39,440 --> 00:44:42,839
Speaker 1: getting to the position sometimes known as Cartesian skepticism, named

833
00:44:42,840 --> 00:44:48,279
Speaker 1: after Descartes, and also affecting our our mailbot Carnie Uh.

834
00:44:48,640 --> 00:44:52,160
Speaker 1: Since dreams and also hallucinations such as the kind generated

835
00:44:52,200 --> 00:44:55,680
Speaker 1: by this figure, Daycard imagines this evil demon who wants

836
00:44:55,719 --> 00:44:58,560
Speaker 1: to deceive him with false visions of the world, since

837
00:44:58,600 --> 00:45:00,759
Speaker 1: they demonstrate that it's post sable for us to be

838
00:45:00,880 --> 00:45:04,680
Speaker 1: totally convinced of perceptions about the outside world while also

839
00:45:04,719 --> 00:45:07,680
Speaker 1: being a hundred percent wrong. Descartes thinks, you know, we

840
00:45:07,680 --> 00:45:10,719
Speaker 1: should doubt all of our perceptions unless we justify them

841
00:45:10,760 --> 00:45:13,680
Speaker 1: in a logically airtight way. And of course, the Decart's

842
00:45:13,719 --> 00:45:16,600
Speaker 1: ultimate justification for the evidence of it of his senses

843
00:45:16,640 --> 00:45:20,080
Speaker 1: invokes a benevolent God who wouldn't trick him. But is

844
00:45:20,120 --> 00:45:23,080
Speaker 1: there any non theological way to get around this, and

845
00:45:23,160 --> 00:45:27,399
Speaker 1: he tells or tests to separate dreaming life from waking life.

846
00:45:27,440 --> 00:45:29,600
Speaker 1: There have been philosophers who have looked into this and

847
00:45:29,600 --> 00:45:32,239
Speaker 1: tried to come up with here's how you tell the difference.

848
00:45:32,640 --> 00:45:35,560
Speaker 1: The English philosopher John Locke thought he had one. He

849
00:45:35,600 --> 00:45:38,880
Speaker 1: had one that was pain. Right. Locke said, you can't

850
00:45:38,920 --> 00:45:41,840
Speaker 1: feel pain in a dream like you can in waking life,

851
00:45:42,480 --> 00:45:44,920
Speaker 1: and that's your easy way to tell the difference. Right.

852
00:45:44,960 --> 00:45:48,360
Speaker 1: So maybe if you think you're in a dream, I

853
00:45:48,360 --> 00:45:50,359
Speaker 1: don't know, poke your finger with a needle and see

854
00:45:50,360 --> 00:45:52,920
Speaker 1: if it actually hurts, and if it does, you're awake,

855
00:45:52,960 --> 00:45:55,600
Speaker 1: and if it doesn't, you're in a dream. But twentieth

856
00:45:55,640 --> 00:45:59,640
Speaker 1: century psychology research has found this is not true with

857
00:46:00,000 --> 00:46:02,920
Speaker 1: so this is where we get the whole pinch me situation.

858
00:46:03,040 --> 00:46:05,800
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, I think it may very well be. Yeah, yeah,

859
00:46:05,840 --> 00:46:08,239
Speaker 1: that's interesting. I hadn't thought about that. Yeah, pinch me

860
00:46:08,320 --> 00:46:11,040
Speaker 1: see if I'm dreaming. I think this would not actually

861
00:46:11,440 --> 00:46:13,560
Speaker 1: due to the research though, I think this would not

862
00:46:13,640 --> 00:46:16,200
Speaker 1: actually be a full proof test, because people do, in

863
00:46:16,280 --> 00:46:19,040
Speaker 1: fact sometimes report the impression that they have felt pain

864
00:46:19,120 --> 00:46:22,520
Speaker 1: in dreams. Just one example is a nine study in

865
00:46:22,560 --> 00:46:25,319
Speaker 1: the Journal Sleep by Nielsen at all uh and to

866
00:46:25,360 --> 00:46:28,080
Speaker 1: read a couple of quotes from them, uh quote. Some

867
00:46:28,080 --> 00:46:30,840
Speaker 1: studies indicate that pain is rare and it may be

868
00:46:30,960 --> 00:46:35,440
Speaker 1: beyond the representational capability of dreaming. However, the present study

869
00:46:35,480 --> 00:46:40,000
Speaker 1: describes experiences of dreamed pain that were reported incidentally in

870
00:46:40,080 --> 00:46:45,160
Speaker 1: experiments on the effects of somatosensory stimulation administered during rapid

871
00:46:45,160 --> 00:46:48,400
Speaker 1: eye movement sleep. The results indicate that although pain is

872
00:46:48,520 --> 00:46:52,000
Speaker 1: rare in dreams, it is nevertheless compatible with the representational

873
00:46:52,040 --> 00:46:56,640
Speaker 1: code of dreaming advantage Freddy Krueger. Right, And this actually

874
00:46:56,680 --> 00:46:59,200
Speaker 1: comes out comes through in shadow play. Right. There's a

875
00:46:59,239 --> 00:47:02,480
Speaker 1: part where, uh, where Grant talks about going to the

876
00:47:02,520 --> 00:47:04,600
Speaker 1: electric chair and how he doesn't want to be sent

877
00:47:04,640 --> 00:47:07,759
Speaker 1: there to die again, and somebody's arguing with them. They say,

878
00:47:07,800 --> 00:47:10,880
Speaker 1: if you're just dreaming, you won't feel it, but he says, no, Wait,

879
00:47:11,040 --> 00:47:14,120
Speaker 1: I mean when you dream something bad, doesn't it doesn't

880
00:47:14,160 --> 00:47:16,600
Speaker 1: it terrify you? Doesn't it hurt when it happens in

881
00:47:16,640 --> 00:47:19,080
Speaker 1: the dream? Yeah? I mean, I'm struggling to think of

882
00:47:19,120 --> 00:47:22,880
Speaker 1: examples from my own remember dreams in which I experienced

883
00:47:22,880 --> 00:47:26,719
Speaker 1: physical pain, But but yeah, it sounds completely possible. I'd

884
00:47:26,719 --> 00:47:28,879
Speaker 1: be interested to hear from any listeners who have had

885
00:47:29,160 --> 00:47:31,839
Speaker 1: dreams in which they have felt pain. Yeah, they also

886
00:47:31,880 --> 00:47:34,080
Speaker 1: acknowledged that it might not be very common, but it

887
00:47:34,120 --> 00:47:36,200
Speaker 1: does appear to happen. So I think it looks like

888
00:47:36,239 --> 00:47:39,640
Speaker 1: the scientific research disproved lock here. Now there was another

889
00:47:39,680 --> 00:47:42,040
Speaker 1: test I came across, and it was that the American

890
00:47:42,040 --> 00:47:45,839
Speaker 1: philosopher Norman Malcolm wrote a couple of influential works about

891
00:47:45,880 --> 00:47:48,759
Speaker 1: dreaming in the nineteen fifties in which he argued that

892
00:47:48,880 --> 00:47:50,920
Speaker 1: dreams could be put to the test of quote a

893
00:47:50,960 --> 00:47:54,680
Speaker 1: principle of coherence. So the ideas, do the events of

894
00:47:54,719 --> 00:47:58,680
Speaker 1: your present circumstances connect logically with the preceding events and

895
00:47:58,760 --> 00:48:01,920
Speaker 1: the rest of your life? So if you are currently

896
00:48:02,040 --> 00:48:05,120
Speaker 1: having a sword fight with Christoph Lambert, why are you

897
00:48:05,200 --> 00:48:07,879
Speaker 1: having that sword fight? How did you get there? Does

898
00:48:07,920 --> 00:48:10,960
Speaker 1: the sequence of events make sense to you? Uh? And

899
00:48:10,960 --> 00:48:12,880
Speaker 1: this is kind of similar to the test used in

900
00:48:12,920 --> 00:48:16,120
Speaker 1: the movie Inception when you ask how did I get here? Right?

901
00:48:16,960 --> 00:48:19,000
Speaker 1: The characters do that there to see if they're dreaming.

902
00:48:19,200 --> 00:48:21,520
Speaker 1: If you find you can't recall how you got where

903
00:48:21,560 --> 00:48:24,240
Speaker 1: you are, this allows you to realize that the present

904
00:48:24,280 --> 00:48:27,280
Speaker 1: moment does not connect coherently with the rest of your past,

905
00:48:27,600 --> 00:48:30,319
Speaker 1: and thus you're probably dreaming. But then again, I'm not

906
00:48:30,360 --> 00:48:32,440
Speaker 1: sure this is a full proof test. It might be

907
00:48:32,480 --> 00:48:35,000
Speaker 1: a sort of helpful test, but it doesn't get you

908
00:48:35,040 --> 00:48:37,319
Speaker 1: to the right answer all the time. We know that

909
00:48:37,400 --> 00:48:39,840
Speaker 1: the dreaming mind state, again, as we were saying earlier,

910
00:48:39,880 --> 00:48:43,960
Speaker 1: greatly reduces critical reasoning capacities, and it often seems to

911
00:48:44,120 --> 00:48:48,600
Speaker 1: short circuit logical inquiries with false answers. Right, So you

912
00:48:48,680 --> 00:48:51,280
Speaker 1: might ask a question that would be a good question

913
00:48:51,320 --> 00:48:53,719
Speaker 1: if you could really think it through to get to

914
00:48:53,760 --> 00:48:55,799
Speaker 1: the bottom of whether you're dreaming or not. But in

915
00:48:55,840 --> 00:48:59,120
Speaker 1: your dreaming state, you don't think it through very well. Right,

916
00:48:59,120 --> 00:49:01,960
Speaker 1: You don't have full control of your critical thinking. So

917
00:49:02,719 --> 00:49:05,680
Speaker 1: that's a self reflective question like that might not be helpful. Right, So,

918
00:49:05,719 --> 00:49:07,960
Speaker 1: as far as I can tell, no one has introduced

919
00:49:07,960 --> 00:49:11,040
Speaker 1: an airtight test to tell the difference between a dream

920
00:49:11,120 --> 00:49:14,000
Speaker 1: and reality. Waking life, of course, seems real enough. It

921
00:49:14,040 --> 00:49:17,480
Speaker 1: doesn't feel the way dreams feel in retrospect and our

922
00:49:17,520 --> 00:49:20,600
Speaker 1: memories of them, but that still doesn't help us achieve

923
00:49:20,680 --> 00:49:23,560
Speaker 1: certainty in the moment. And then this year gets us

924
00:49:23,560 --> 00:49:25,960
Speaker 1: to one final thing, which I think is the weirdest

925
00:49:25,960 --> 00:49:28,800
Speaker 1: place we might go about dreams. This is the crazy

926
00:49:28,840 --> 00:49:33,040
Speaker 1: part of shadow play. Grant tells people around him that

927
00:49:33,120 --> 00:49:35,880
Speaker 1: if he sent to the electric chair, he's going to

928
00:49:35,960 --> 00:49:39,160
Speaker 1: wake up from his nightmare, and if he wakes up,

929
00:49:39,640 --> 00:49:43,560
Speaker 1: everybody in the world will die, because this entire world

930
00:49:43,719 --> 00:49:46,800
Speaker 1: is nothing more than his dream. And this is my

931
00:49:47,120 --> 00:49:50,000
Speaker 1: favorite part of the episode. So on one hand, you

932
00:49:50,040 --> 00:49:52,600
Speaker 1: might think, well, what would it matter. You know the

933
00:49:52,640 --> 00:49:54,920
Speaker 1: people that you imagine in your dream are not conscious.

934
00:49:55,280 --> 00:49:57,480
Speaker 1: Of course, there are many different ways to fear death,

935
00:49:57,560 --> 00:50:00,359
Speaker 1: but one common neurosis here is the anxiety of being

936
00:50:00,440 --> 00:50:03,399
Speaker 1: snuffed out right, of no longer existing, of their being

937
00:50:03,440 --> 00:50:06,640
Speaker 1: a permanent end your conscious experience. And if the people

938
00:50:06,640 --> 00:50:09,200
Speaker 1: in Grants dream are not conscious, there's nothing for them

939
00:50:09,239 --> 00:50:11,600
Speaker 1: to be afraid of, no experience to exist in the

940
00:50:11,640 --> 00:50:13,839
Speaker 1: first place, and thus nothing to come to an end.

941
00:50:14,360 --> 00:50:17,439
Speaker 1: But in the story they do seem afraid. The ones

942
00:50:17,480 --> 00:50:19,800
Speaker 1: who start to doubt their reality. They don't want to

943
00:50:19,840 --> 00:50:22,680
Speaker 1: be snuffed out, and the story seems to imply that

944
00:50:22,719 --> 00:50:25,560
Speaker 1: they actually do have minds that they want to live on.

945
00:50:25,960 --> 00:50:28,560
Speaker 1: They don't want to be blinked out of existence by

946
00:50:28,600 --> 00:50:32,759
Speaker 1: alterations in Grant's brain activity. And this is also the

947
00:50:32,800 --> 00:50:36,560
Speaker 1: only part of the story that's actually fantastical, because otherwise

948
00:50:36,920 --> 00:50:39,480
Speaker 1: the story isn't even fantasy or science fiction. Like, it's

949
00:50:39,520 --> 00:50:41,960
Speaker 1: just perfectly plausible, right, that a man has the same

950
00:50:42,280 --> 00:50:44,879
Speaker 1: mayor over and over. Uh. And I want to take

951
00:50:44,920 --> 00:50:48,319
Speaker 1: this idea seriously for just a moment, could you the

952
00:50:48,360 --> 00:50:51,680
Speaker 1: conscious entity with a mind, the person you are now

953
00:50:52,320 --> 00:50:57,120
Speaker 1: actually be a person in someone else's dream to spare

954
00:50:57,280 --> 00:51:00,520
Speaker 1: some similarities to the simulation argument that we've discussed on

955
00:51:00,560 --> 00:51:03,760
Speaker 1: the show in the past. Yeah, yeah, the idea that

956
00:51:03,760 --> 00:51:07,760
Speaker 1: that the reality we're experiencing now is a simulation created

957
00:51:07,800 --> 00:51:11,360
Speaker 1: by a far future society that's currently just really excited

958
00:51:11,360 --> 00:51:15,359
Speaker 1: about the idea of the twenty right, Um, that we

959
00:51:15,440 --> 00:51:19,120
Speaker 1: really want to simulate nineteen again, Oh thank god for that.

960
00:51:19,280 --> 00:51:22,839
Speaker 1: Well look, I mean, look at our cycles of nostalgia, right,

961
00:51:22,920 --> 00:51:25,560
Speaker 1: I mean, you know, look at some of our video

962
00:51:25,600 --> 00:51:28,440
Speaker 1: games simulated worlds that we get into going back to,

963
00:51:28,560 --> 00:51:31,040
Speaker 1: you know, like an Old West setting, or a hard

964
00:51:31,080 --> 00:51:35,279
Speaker 1: boiled detective world, or or the nineteen eighties, etcetera. So

965
00:51:35,880 --> 00:51:38,920
Speaker 1: it's it's not impossible. But but just as Grant argues

966
00:51:38,960 --> 00:51:42,600
Speaker 1: that the perfection of one's life is an argument for

967
00:51:42,880 --> 00:51:45,400
Speaker 1: simulation like this is too perfect, it's it's too you know,

968
00:51:45,880 --> 00:51:48,480
Speaker 1: there's something wrong here. I believe there was a character

969
00:51:48,520 --> 00:51:51,480
Speaker 1: in one of Ian M. Bank's culture novels who observed

970
00:51:51,520 --> 00:51:53,560
Speaker 1: that the world is just too full of viciousness to

971
00:51:53,560 --> 00:51:56,640
Speaker 1: be a simulation. That this must be the base reality,

972
00:51:56,719 --> 00:51:59,600
Speaker 1: because who would dream it up otherwise. Now, I suppose

973
00:51:59,640 --> 00:52:02,120
Speaker 1: that's kind of interesting, uh, to think that that that

974
00:52:02,360 --> 00:52:04,600
Speaker 1: these are the thoughts attributed to a character within a

975
00:52:04,640 --> 00:52:07,319
Speaker 1: fictional sci fi novel. But still I think it's an

976
00:52:07,360 --> 00:52:10,200
Speaker 1: interesting point. Right. But then again, like, what kind of

977
00:52:10,200 --> 00:52:12,080
Speaker 1: frame of reference do we have if we have no

978
00:52:12,200 --> 00:52:16,480
Speaker 1: memory or no understanding of the world outside of the simulation? Right?

979
00:52:16,640 --> 00:52:19,520
Speaker 1: But I mean thinking about one way to think about

980
00:52:19,520 --> 00:52:23,160
Speaker 1: the idea of being a simulation in a computer program

981
00:52:23,320 --> 00:52:27,160
Speaker 1: is that you are being dreamed by the computer. Uh. Now.

982
00:52:27,520 --> 00:52:31,200
Speaker 1: One hurdle to the simulation argument has always been is

983
00:52:31,239 --> 00:52:35,280
Speaker 1: it possible for a computer to generate and host conscious minds?

984
00:52:35,560 --> 00:52:39,040
Speaker 1: We don't know. It's impossible. It's often assumed to be possible,

985
00:52:39,080 --> 00:52:41,640
Speaker 1: but we just don't really know. The only thing we

986
00:52:41,680 --> 00:52:45,560
Speaker 1: can be relatively certain works to generate and host consciousness

987
00:52:45,680 --> 00:52:47,920
Speaker 1: is a brain. We know for sure they can do

988
00:52:47,960 --> 00:52:50,960
Speaker 1: that because your brain is doing it right now, right.

989
00:52:51,239 --> 00:52:54,360
Speaker 1: But here's where, in some respects the possibility of living

990
00:52:54,400 --> 00:52:58,120
Speaker 1: in someone else's stream becomes more plausible, maybe than living

991
00:52:58,160 --> 00:53:01,719
Speaker 1: in a computer simulation. We know a brain can generate

992
00:53:01,800 --> 00:53:06,120
Speaker 1: at least one conscious mind. Who says it can't generate

993
00:53:06,239 --> 00:53:10,239
Speaker 1: more than one. There have been a number of experiments

994
00:53:10,239 --> 00:53:13,560
Speaker 1: in fact and observations and neuroscience too, especially throughout the

995
00:53:13,560 --> 00:53:17,000
Speaker 1: twentieth century, that have led some experts to believe it

996
00:53:17,120 --> 00:53:20,960
Speaker 1: might be possible to have at least two distinct conscious

997
00:53:21,000 --> 00:53:26,120
Speaker 1: minds occupying the same brain. One big example, of of course,

998
00:53:26,239 --> 00:53:27,880
Speaker 1: is something we've covered on the show in the past.

999
00:53:28,280 --> 00:53:30,080
Speaker 1: We did I think a two part episode about it

1000
00:53:30,120 --> 00:53:33,000
Speaker 1: that you can look up, and it's the split brain experiments.

1001
00:53:33,040 --> 00:53:36,720
Speaker 1: These were originally experiments done by Roger's Ferry and Michael

1002
00:53:36,719 --> 00:53:39,600
Speaker 1: Gazaniga in the middle of the twentieth century, and they

1003
00:53:39,640 --> 00:53:44,440
Speaker 1: dealt with epilepsy patients, people who uh suffered really intense

1004
00:53:44,480 --> 00:53:47,960
Speaker 1: seizures and no other treatment worked, and so the treatment

1005
00:53:48,080 --> 00:53:50,600
Speaker 1: that they eventually went in for was known as a

1006
00:53:50,600 --> 00:53:54,879
Speaker 1: total corpus callisotomy, a severing of the corpus colossum, which

1007
00:53:54,920 --> 00:53:57,640
Speaker 1: is a bundle of nerve fiber that connects the two

1008
00:53:57,640 --> 00:54:03,040
Speaker 1: hemispheres of the brain, and the procedure apparently worked pretty well.

1009
00:54:03,040 --> 00:54:06,560
Speaker 1: When you sever that the corpus colosum, it does help

1010
00:54:06,600 --> 00:54:09,799
Speaker 1: to stave off these these horrible seizures. But there were

1011
00:54:09,840 --> 00:54:12,399
Speaker 1: a lot of interesting side effects that made the people

1012
00:54:12,440 --> 00:54:17,680
Speaker 1: who underwent this procedure very valuable to neuroscience research. For example,

1013
00:54:18,040 --> 00:54:20,960
Speaker 1: to give a very short version, you could show in

1014
00:54:21,080 --> 00:54:25,600
Speaker 1: some experiments that the part of the brain that talks,

1015
00:54:25,680 --> 00:54:28,640
Speaker 1: which appears to be primarily in most people, the left

1016
00:54:28,680 --> 00:54:32,320
Speaker 1: hemisphere of the brain, which is capable of speech, could

1017
00:54:32,360 --> 00:54:37,400
Speaker 1: not explain what the right hemisphere was doing. And so

1018
00:54:37,440 --> 00:54:41,040
Speaker 1: if you show an image to only the part of

1019
00:54:41,080 --> 00:54:44,360
Speaker 1: the visual field that connects to the right hemisphere of

1020
00:54:44,400 --> 00:54:47,360
Speaker 1: the brain and controls only one of the hands, the

1021
00:54:47,480 --> 00:54:52,080
Speaker 1: hand controlled mostly by that hemisphere of the brain could

1022
00:54:52,160 --> 00:54:55,880
Speaker 1: do things like select an object that was associated with

1023
00:54:55,920 --> 00:54:58,840
Speaker 1: the image displayed in that part of the visual field.

1024
00:54:59,360 --> 00:55:03,239
Speaker 1: But then the person talking against speech is thought to

1025
00:55:03,239 --> 00:55:06,799
Speaker 1: be mostly generated by the left hemisphere, couldn't explain in

1026
00:55:06,840 --> 00:55:11,040
Speaker 1: a logical way why that object was chosen, And that

1027
00:55:11,080 --> 00:55:14,319
Speaker 1: in many experiments like it, led some researchers to an

1028
00:55:14,360 --> 00:55:19,080
Speaker 1: obvious question. Is it possible that both hemispheres in split

1029
00:55:19,120 --> 00:55:24,960
Speaker 1: brain patients are conscious but separately conscious within the same skull.

1030
00:55:25,360 --> 00:55:28,560
Speaker 1: In some sense, could there be two conscious minds within

1031
00:55:28,760 --> 00:55:31,719
Speaker 1: one brain? Yeah, it's one of the This is a

1032
00:55:31,800 --> 00:55:35,879
Speaker 1: total like real life Twilight Zone scenario that we've we've

1033
00:55:35,920 --> 00:55:38,560
Speaker 1: thought about before on the show, Like maybe by virtue

1034
00:55:38,560 --> 00:55:41,399
Speaker 1: of once being one, like there's still like each one

1035
00:55:41,440 --> 00:55:45,000
Speaker 1: still thinks they are the one, but they are too. Yeah. Well,

1036
00:55:45,040 --> 00:55:47,000
Speaker 1: and another thing that would be very creepy is again

1037
00:55:47,000 --> 00:55:50,960
Speaker 1: because of the localization of speech function in the brain,

1038
00:55:51,239 --> 00:55:55,360
Speaker 1: maybe only one of these can really talk to the

1039
00:55:55,400 --> 00:55:57,799
Speaker 1: outside world and the other one just can't really. It

1040
00:55:57,840 --> 00:56:00,960
Speaker 1: can still act with the body, but it can't generate

1041
00:56:01,040 --> 00:56:05,000
Speaker 1: complex sentences or anything, which would be an obvious asymmetry

1042
00:56:05,000 --> 00:56:07,480
Speaker 1: in which one of the conscious minds within the brain

1043
00:56:07,520 --> 00:56:10,440
Speaker 1: gets represented to the outside world. Well, one of them

1044
00:56:10,440 --> 00:56:13,279
Speaker 1: has no mouth and cannot scream. Now, I definitely want

1045
00:56:13,280 --> 00:56:15,839
Speaker 1: to acknowledge that I think our picture of this has

1046
00:56:15,880 --> 00:56:18,880
Speaker 1: been somewhat complicated by more recent research. I think we

1047
00:56:19,080 --> 00:56:21,040
Speaker 1: do talk about the center split brain episodes if you

1048
00:56:21,040 --> 00:56:23,720
Speaker 1: want to go revisit those and and see more detail.

1049
00:56:24,320 --> 00:56:27,640
Speaker 1: But our picture on how information might or might not

1050
00:56:27,760 --> 00:56:31,120
Speaker 1: be shared between brain brain hemispheres, even in the cases

1051
00:56:31,160 --> 00:56:34,799
Speaker 1: of a full corpus calisotomy seems to have been complicated

1052
00:56:34,800 --> 00:56:36,959
Speaker 1: by recent studies. I remember there was one we talked

1053
00:56:36,960 --> 00:56:39,520
Speaker 1: about by researcher named I think a Ya or Pinto

1054
00:56:39,680 --> 00:56:43,080
Speaker 1: who uh did research undercutting the idea that there could

1055
00:56:43,080 --> 00:56:46,400
Speaker 1: be two conscious minds within the same brain. Um. I

1056
00:56:46,400 --> 00:56:48,400
Speaker 1: feel like this is an issue that that's not fully

1057
00:56:48,400 --> 00:56:51,480
Speaker 1: settled and is still full of like weird mysteries. We

1058
00:56:51,520 --> 00:56:54,399
Speaker 1: don't know exactly what's going on. Another example from neuroscience

1059
00:56:54,719 --> 00:56:58,799
Speaker 1: case history that has been taken as possible evidence that

1060
00:56:58,880 --> 00:57:01,960
Speaker 1: there could be multiple conscious minds within the same brain

1061
00:57:02,120 --> 00:57:05,400
Speaker 1: is the the idea of alien hand syndrome, where you know,

1062
00:57:05,920 --> 00:57:09,960
Speaker 1: hands may interfere with one another's behaviors as if they're

1063
00:57:10,000 --> 00:57:13,880
Speaker 1: guided by different wills. So one hand tries to button

1064
00:57:13,920 --> 00:57:17,240
Speaker 1: up a shirt, the other hand tries to unbutton the shirt. Now,

1065
00:57:17,240 --> 00:57:19,440
Speaker 1: I want to stress that there is by no means

1066
00:57:19,480 --> 00:57:22,680
Speaker 1: proof or even necessarily strong evidence that there are multiple

1067
00:57:22,760 --> 00:57:26,160
Speaker 1: consciousness is within the same brain, because again, you can't

1068
00:57:26,240 --> 00:57:29,520
Speaker 1: know for sure that there's consciousness anywhere unless somebody tells

1069
00:57:29,560 --> 00:57:31,960
Speaker 1: you that they have consciousness. Right. I mean, that's the

1070
00:57:32,000 --> 00:57:34,600
Speaker 1: inherent problem leading back to the solve sism is you

1071
00:57:34,720 --> 00:57:36,760
Speaker 1: to begin with right. But but then again I also

1072
00:57:36,800 --> 00:57:38,560
Speaker 1: have to to throw in you know, we we have

1073
00:57:38,640 --> 00:57:41,480
Speaker 1: to be careful about the idea of thinking about like

1074
00:57:41,520 --> 00:57:45,400
Speaker 1: the unity of self conscious Yes, yes, is it? Is it?

1075
00:57:46,120 --> 00:57:47,720
Speaker 1: I think the more you look at it, this idea

1076
00:57:47,800 --> 00:57:52,480
Speaker 1: that there is one central unchanging you in there is

1077
00:57:52,480 --> 00:57:56,120
Speaker 1: a fallacy and one that we we still have a

1078
00:57:56,120 --> 00:57:58,600
Speaker 1: lot of trouble with when it seems like the more

1079
00:57:59,120 --> 00:58:03,200
Speaker 1: reasonable planation is that first of all, you're an entity

1080
00:58:03,240 --> 00:58:06,480
Speaker 1: of perpetual change, but also there's kind of a chorus

1081
00:58:06,560 --> 00:58:09,760
Speaker 1: of of of of yourself in there. Yeah. And one

1082
00:58:09,800 --> 00:58:13,040
Speaker 1: interpretation that that brings together a lot of the sceneoscience

1083
00:58:13,160 --> 00:58:17,080
Speaker 1: is the interpreter theory and interpretation is the interpreter theory.

1084
00:58:17,480 --> 00:58:21,240
Speaker 1: The interpreter theory of Michael Kasanaga, one of the researchers

1085
00:58:21,400 --> 00:58:24,560
Speaker 1: involved in in these split brain experiments, where he's got

1086
00:58:24,600 --> 00:58:26,320
Speaker 1: this idea that there's sort of a region of your

1087
00:58:26,360 --> 00:58:29,600
Speaker 1: brain that's associated with the speech production parts of your

1088
00:58:29,600 --> 00:58:34,800
Speaker 1: brain that is there to unify brain phenomena you know

1089
00:58:34,840 --> 00:58:37,160
Speaker 1: that are disparate in the beginning, and it's sort of

1090
00:58:37,560 --> 00:58:41,440
Speaker 1: its job is to tell one unified, coherent story to

1091
00:58:41,640 --> 00:58:45,000
Speaker 1: you about what's happening throughout your brain. So it takes

1092
00:58:45,000 --> 00:58:47,880
Speaker 1: all these disparate plot threads and says, here's how I'll

1093
00:58:47,880 --> 00:58:50,840
Speaker 1: finish up the story. Uh, and then and that creates

1094
00:58:50,920 --> 00:58:53,120
Speaker 1: the sense of you. Your sense of self is generated

1095
00:58:53,160 --> 00:58:56,000
Speaker 1: by this sort of like a concatenation process in the

1096
00:58:56,000 --> 00:58:58,800
Speaker 1: interpreter part of the brain. But to come back to

1097
00:58:58,800 --> 00:59:01,640
Speaker 1: the idea of multible consciousness is in the same head

1098
00:59:01,680 --> 00:59:04,040
Speaker 1: and maybe the idea of being someone else's dream. I've

1099
00:59:04,080 --> 00:59:06,600
Speaker 1: had this idea before. Again, this is not something that

1100
00:59:06,640 --> 00:59:09,480
Speaker 1: I would argue is strongly indicated by evidence, just a

1101
00:59:09,560 --> 00:59:12,640
Speaker 1: very strange possibility that seems hard to rule out on

1102
00:59:12,720 --> 00:59:16,000
Speaker 1: the basis of any evidence I'm aware of. What if

1103
00:59:16,040 --> 00:59:21,440
Speaker 1: the process of imagining the workings of other minds involves

1104
00:59:21,480 --> 00:59:27,240
Speaker 1: the low resolution simulation of separate conscious minds. What if

1105
00:59:27,440 --> 00:59:30,360
Speaker 1: when you're trying to understand somebody else's behavior, you trying

1106
00:59:30,360 --> 00:59:32,800
Speaker 1: to understand, you know, why did Jeff say what he said,

1107
00:59:33,320 --> 00:59:36,160
Speaker 1: and so you imagine his thought processes, Or when you're

1108
00:59:36,160 --> 00:59:39,280
Speaker 1: trying to write dialogue for a fictional character. What if,

1109
00:59:39,320 --> 00:59:42,440
Speaker 1: in cases like this you're practicing theory of mind, the

1110
00:59:42,600 --> 00:59:47,240
Speaker 1: brain temporarily carves out a bit of its consciousness potential

1111
00:59:47,720 --> 00:59:51,360
Speaker 1: to devote to this imagined person in order to better

1112
00:59:51,400 --> 00:59:55,560
Speaker 1: simulate their behavior. Interesting. Yeah, yeah, I mean in many

1113
00:59:55,600 --> 00:59:58,960
Speaker 1: cases it would, especially if it's a perceived enemy. Right,

1114
00:59:59,560 --> 01:00:01,760
Speaker 1: It's probably gonna be a rather simple model. You know,

1115
01:00:01,840 --> 01:00:06,320
Speaker 1: it's you're you're reducing them to like, you know, cartoon

1116
01:00:06,440 --> 01:00:10,760
Speaker 1: villain levels of impulse and desire. But I mean there's

1117
01:00:10,800 --> 01:00:14,320
Speaker 1: no limiting it. Just two enemies. I mean, in any case,

1118
01:00:14,360 --> 01:00:17,680
Speaker 1: whenever you try to imagine somebody you don't know exactly

1119
01:00:17,720 --> 01:00:21,880
Speaker 1: everything your brain is doing to create that simulation of

1120
01:00:21,960 --> 01:00:25,120
Speaker 1: them within you. Right, Like, even the people we know

1121
01:00:25,280 --> 01:00:27,680
Speaker 1: they the best in our lives, say, for instance, for instance,

1122
01:00:27,680 --> 01:00:30,600
Speaker 1: our you know, our our you know, uh, you know,

1123
01:00:31,080 --> 01:00:34,400
Speaker 1: life partners, you know, or you know, loved ones, family members,

1124
01:00:34,560 --> 01:00:38,720
Speaker 1: really close friends. We might have a more robust simulation

1125
01:00:38,760 --> 01:00:41,280
Speaker 1: of them in our theory vr theory of mind, but

1126
01:00:41,360 --> 01:00:44,840
Speaker 1: it is still just a model of how their mind

1127
01:00:44,920 --> 01:00:47,680
Speaker 1: works and what they want and how they think. Yeah,

1128
01:00:47,680 --> 01:00:50,040
Speaker 1: it's our best, guess, it's our I mean, it's not

1129
01:00:50,120 --> 01:00:52,600
Speaker 1: their brain. It's our brain trying to do it. And

1130
01:00:52,680 --> 01:00:55,320
Speaker 1: if this were the case, you could be, in some

1131
01:00:55,400 --> 01:01:01,080
Speaker 1: sense creating separate conscious people in your head whenever you

1132
01:01:01,160 --> 01:01:04,040
Speaker 1: try to analyze a friend's behavior, or write a scene

1133
01:01:04,080 --> 01:01:06,960
Speaker 1: for a character in a story, or dream about a

1134
01:01:07,040 --> 01:01:09,920
Speaker 1: district attorney sitting across from you in a prison cell.

1135
01:01:10,320 --> 01:01:13,160
Speaker 1: Now you might say, well, if they're all generated by

1136
01:01:13,280 --> 01:01:16,280
Speaker 1: your brain, they're all you. I mean, anatomically, they are

1137
01:01:16,320 --> 01:01:19,840
Speaker 1: all you. They're all made by your body. The other

1138
01:01:20,240 --> 01:01:22,120
Speaker 1: side of this, too, is like when you read a novel,

1139
01:01:22,280 --> 01:01:24,880
Speaker 1: Yeah exactly, I mean, in any time you imagine a person.

1140
01:01:24,960 --> 01:01:28,440
Speaker 1: I wonder if this is possible, if there's any validity

1141
01:01:28,480 --> 01:01:32,160
Speaker 1: to some of these alternative theories of dual consciousness. For example,

1142
01:01:32,240 --> 01:01:36,240
Speaker 1: you know, uh, Michael Gazania's left brain interpreter theory. Perhaps

1143
01:01:36,320 --> 01:01:39,160
Speaker 1: the part of your brain that talks and interprets and

1144
01:01:39,200 --> 01:01:41,920
Speaker 1: seems to be in charge makes meaning of the self

1145
01:01:42,440 --> 01:01:46,440
Speaker 1: is not aware that the same brain is also generating

1146
01:01:46,600 --> 01:01:52,200
Speaker 1: little conscious simulations of people partitioned from the interpreter and

1147
01:01:52,240 --> 01:01:55,720
Speaker 1: the rest of the self. Yeah, yeah, I mean it

1148
01:01:55,720 --> 01:01:58,160
Speaker 1: makes me think. For instance, I've read a fair amount

1149
01:01:58,160 --> 01:01:59,920
Speaker 1: of Karl Sagan I love picking up a Carl say

1150
01:02:00,040 --> 01:02:02,800
Speaker 1: In book and reading it. Uh you know, it gives

1151
01:02:02,800 --> 01:02:05,520
Speaker 1: me comfort. And as as such, I do kind of

1152
01:02:05,560 --> 01:02:08,360
Speaker 1: have like a tiny Carl Sagan in my brain, like

1153
01:02:08,400 --> 01:02:12,120
Speaker 1: an idea of Sagan that is kind of walking around

1154
01:02:12,160 --> 01:02:15,480
Speaker 1: in there or maybe summoned. But the really mind blowing ideas,

1155
01:02:15,560 --> 01:02:18,840
Speaker 1: what if that little Carl Sagan has an experience? What

1156
01:02:18,920 --> 01:02:21,880
Speaker 1: if there's something that it's like to be that simulated

1157
01:02:21,920 --> 01:02:24,640
Speaker 1: Carl Sagan. What if he gets into an argument with

1158
01:02:24,680 --> 01:02:27,200
Speaker 1: the little Terence McKenna in my head? Right, I mean,

1159
01:02:27,240 --> 01:02:29,680
Speaker 1: it's still your brain, it's still all the tissue in

1160
01:02:29,800 --> 01:02:32,520
Speaker 1: your head. But what if there's something in there that's

1161
01:02:32,560 --> 01:02:35,880
Speaker 1: a little Carl Sagan simulated by your mind sometimes that

1162
01:02:36,000 --> 01:02:40,120
Speaker 1: has its own wants, the desires, experiences. Now, again, I

1163
01:02:40,440 --> 01:02:43,440
Speaker 1: recognize that this is way out there in speculative territory,

1164
01:02:43,480 --> 01:02:46,000
Speaker 1: and I do not claim that there is strong evidence

1165
01:02:46,040 --> 01:02:48,720
Speaker 1: for this, but it is one of those strange things

1166
01:02:48,720 --> 01:02:51,200
Speaker 1: that I'm trying to think of reasons to rule it out,

1167
01:02:51,400 --> 01:02:55,320
Speaker 1: and I can't. Uh So, if this seemingly weird scenario

1168
01:02:55,400 --> 01:02:57,720
Speaker 1: were the case, would there be any way to know

1169
01:02:57,840 --> 01:03:02,640
Speaker 1: for sure that you weren't a conscious low resolution simulation

1170
01:03:02,720 --> 01:03:06,360
Speaker 1: of a mind inside a brain ruled by the tyrannical

1171
01:03:06,400 --> 01:03:08,600
Speaker 1: dictator mind that could blink you in and out of

1172
01:03:08,640 --> 01:03:11,960
Speaker 1: existence by the whims of a dream or imagination. Well,

1173
01:03:11,960 --> 01:03:15,479
Speaker 1: that sounds like a theological model there. Yeah. Fortunately again,

1174
01:03:15,560 --> 01:03:17,360
Speaker 1: I don't think there's any strong evidence this is the

1175
01:03:17,400 --> 01:03:21,800
Speaker 1: case sleep tight. All right, Well, there you have it.

1176
01:03:21,880 --> 01:03:25,520
Speaker 1: That is uh Anthology of Horror volume two. And if

1177
01:03:25,560 --> 01:03:27,600
Speaker 1: you loved it, you don't have to wait an entire year.

1178
01:03:27,640 --> 01:03:30,000
Speaker 1: You just have to wait a couple of days for

1179
01:03:30,080 --> 01:03:33,280
Speaker 1: the next installment, because we're gonna be back with Anthology

1180
01:03:33,320 --> 01:03:36,680
Speaker 1: of Horror Volume three, in which show will look at

1181
01:03:36,720 --> 01:03:39,600
Speaker 1: an episode of The Outer Limits and an episode of

1182
01:03:39,640 --> 01:03:43,440
Speaker 1: The Simpsons Treehouse of Horror. I can't wait. In the meantime,

1183
01:03:43,480 --> 01:03:45,040
Speaker 1: if you want to check out other episodes of Stuff

1184
01:03:45,040 --> 01:03:46,440
Speaker 1: to Blow your Mind, heading over to Stuff to Blow

1185
01:03:46,480 --> 01:03:49,000
Speaker 1: your Mind dot com. That's where you will find them

1186
01:03:49,200 --> 01:03:51,560
Speaker 1: and see what else can you do? You can find

1187
01:03:51,560 --> 01:03:55,320
Speaker 1: the show wherever you find podcast, rate, interview, subscribe. That's

1188
01:03:55,320 --> 01:03:58,240
Speaker 1: a great way to help check out our other show, Invention. Uh.

1189
01:03:58,240 --> 01:04:00,200
Speaker 1: It's an Invention pod dot com and an is that

1190
01:04:00,280 --> 01:04:02,960
Speaker 1: it is available everywhere as well and If you want

1191
01:04:02,960 --> 01:04:05,000
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1192
01:04:05,040 --> 01:04:07,560
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1193
01:04:07,560 --> 01:04:10,200
Speaker 1: Blow Your Mind discussion to watch a huge things As

1194
01:04:10,200 --> 01:04:14,360
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1195
01:04:14,400 --> 01:04:16,120
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1196
01:04:16,240 --> 01:04:18,920
Speaker 1: feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest a

1197
01:04:18,960 --> 01:04:20,960
Speaker 1: topic for the future, or just to say hello, you

1198
01:04:20,960 --> 01:04:23,960
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1199
01:04:24,000 --> 01:04:33,360
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01:04:33,360 --> 01:04:36,160
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1201
01:04:36,160 --> 01:04:38,080
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