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