WEBVTT - Part One: The Judge Rotenberg Center 0:00:04.640 --> 0:00:08.799 It's behind the Bastards. The podcast that yet again opened 0:00:08.840 --> 0:00:13.680 with a tonal noises because I couldn't I couldn't think 0:00:13.680 --> 0:00:17.680 of an introduction. Uh. This is partly the fault of Sophie, 0:00:17.840 --> 0:00:22.000 who is not here today, um for reasons of of 0:00:22.000 --> 0:00:25.400 of pure selfishness. Um. No, she hasn't a bunch of 0:00:26.560 --> 0:00:31.640 unbelievable number of meetings. My guest today is Aiden Aidan 0:00:31.680 --> 0:00:36.000 Bonacci Banacci Bacci, Aidan Bonacci. Aiden, you want to tell 0:00:36.040 --> 0:00:39.360 the audience a little bit about yourself. My name is 0:00:39.600 --> 0:00:43.640 Aidan Bonacci Um as of today, twenty eight year old. 0:00:44.640 --> 0:00:49.199 Uh autistaic theater major. I tweet a lot, I do 0:00:49.400 --> 0:00:52.839 a lot of like freelance work. It's nice to be here. 0:00:53.880 --> 0:00:57.120 Nice to have you on, Aiden, and you are it's 0:00:57.160 --> 0:01:00.240 your birthday, so happy birthday. Thank you, Thank you for 0:01:00.480 --> 0:01:02.480 for making the time to show up. In the episode today, 0:01:03.160 --> 0:01:06.160 we're we're going to talk about something all fun is 0:01:06.200 --> 0:01:09.960 the wrong word. Have you heard of the Judge Rotenberg Center. 0:01:10.840 --> 0:01:19.000 I'm that sounds familiar, but yeah, it's um it's not 0:01:19.080 --> 0:01:22.360 a good place, obviously, this is the show that this 0:01:22.600 --> 0:01:26.520 is um so one of the reasons you're obviously you're 0:01:26.720 --> 0:01:29.880 you're an actor, you do theater stuff, but you're also, 0:01:30.360 --> 0:01:32.560 as you said, autistic. And I wanted to bring in 0:01:32.720 --> 0:01:35.440 somebody who was for this episode because we're gonna be 0:01:35.480 --> 0:01:38.440 talking a lot about kind of well, I would say, 0:01:38.480 --> 0:01:40.800 the dark ages of autism treatment. But this is still 0:01:40.840 --> 0:01:47.680 going on although it's bad, Um, it's really bad, UM. 0:01:48.520 --> 0:01:52.680 And this is I think when I reached out online looking, uh, 0:01:53.120 --> 0:01:54.520 you know, I want you to do an episode that 0:01:54.600 --> 0:01:56.160 was going to touch on a lot of issues of 0:01:56.240 --> 0:01:59.960 like autistic, like health care for autistic people. Folks expect 0:02:00.000 --> 0:02:01.960 that I was either gonna do Hans Asberger, who is 0:02:02.080 --> 0:02:06.600 absolutely a bastard um, or talk about there's a number 0:02:06.600 --> 0:02:08.440 of things that this could have been. But we're talking 0:02:08.480 --> 0:02:12.280 about the Judge Rodenberg Center, and specifically we're talking about Um, 0:02:12.639 --> 0:02:15.959 the guy who who started it. So I want to 0:02:16.000 --> 0:02:18.560 start by noting that autism didn't enter the d s 0:02:18.760 --> 0:02:22.160 M as like a diagnosis until nineteen eighty. Obviously, people 0:02:22.200 --> 0:02:24.280 were using the term before then. It was a thing 0:02:24.360 --> 0:02:27.920 that a lot of medical professionals recognized existed. But there's 0:02:27.919 --> 0:02:30.200 often a gap between when something is sort of like 0:02:30.360 --> 0:02:32.560 recognized and when it actually enters the d s M, 0:02:32.919 --> 0:02:34.320 and even when it entered the d s M and 0:02:34.440 --> 0:02:38.639 nineteen eighty, the diagnostic criteria for being declared autistic were, 0:02:38.960 --> 0:02:42.280 to put it bluntly, more or less bullshit. Um, somebody 0:02:42.360 --> 0:02:45.400 couldn't be autistic if their symptoms weren't a parent before 0:02:45.440 --> 0:02:48.000 they were thirty months old, which we now know a 0:02:48.160 --> 0:02:49.960 lot for a lot of people. It's like not until 0:02:49.960 --> 0:02:52.000 you're your three or four that like stuff become that 0:02:52.040 --> 0:02:55.880 symptoms become a parent. Um. And a bunch of things 0:02:55.919 --> 0:02:59.080 we now recognize the signs of autism weren't recognized back then. 0:02:59.160 --> 0:03:01.160 It was it was at like it just in terms 0:03:01.200 --> 0:03:03.800 of like from a from a clinical standpoint, they didn't 0:03:03.840 --> 0:03:06.000 have a good handle on like how to know if 0:03:06.040 --> 0:03:10.079 somebody was autistic or not yet. Um. And kind of 0:03:10.160 --> 0:03:12.959 making matters more complicated was the fact that many of 0:03:13.040 --> 0:03:15.680 the doctors who were kind of pioneers and autism research 0:03:15.800 --> 0:03:18.880 where ship shows as well. Um again, Hans Asberger, the 0:03:18.919 --> 0:03:24.680 guy whose name gave us yeah, worked with the Nazis 0:03:24.720 --> 0:03:29.000 to euthanize disabled people. Uh not a well we got 0:03:29.040 --> 0:03:32.120 a little fat Yeah. Well we'll talk about him at 0:03:32.160 --> 0:03:34.600 some point. I bring all this up to to acknowledge 0:03:34.639 --> 0:03:38.160 that the history even like recognizing autism is fraught, UM, 0:03:38.360 --> 0:03:41.720 and the history of educating autistic people through like the 0:03:42.400 --> 0:03:46.080 school system is equally problematic because obviously, like once you 0:03:46.200 --> 0:03:48.520 know that this is a thing, schools are going to, 0:03:49.040 --> 0:03:51.160 you know, try to develop standards for how to how 0:03:51.200 --> 0:03:54.839 to teach people who have autism, and UM, generally they're 0:03:54.840 --> 0:03:56.960 going to do a bad job of this. UM. That's 0:03:57.000 --> 0:03:59.640 been most of the history of the education system and 0:03:59.720 --> 0:04:01.360 auto is UM. And I have a little bit of 0:04:01.400 --> 0:04:03.680 personal knowledge here. I was a para professional for a 0:04:03.720 --> 0:04:06.120 special ed classroom for about eighteen months. The kids I 0:04:06.240 --> 0:04:10.040 worked with, Yeah, and it was not UM that we had. 0:04:10.320 --> 0:04:12.520 There were kids with a variety of of of of 0:04:12.880 --> 0:04:16.480 different kind of things. A lot of them were autistic. UM. 0:04:16.600 --> 0:04:18.240 We had a kid who had a severe who had 0:04:18.240 --> 0:04:20.240 had a head injury and like had had literally had 0:04:20.279 --> 0:04:21.880 like a chunk of her brain scooped out in a 0:04:21.960 --> 0:04:25.560 car accident. UM. We had kids with with Down syndrome. 0:04:25.640 --> 0:04:28.840 We had you know, in my classroom, they were mostly UM. 0:04:29.520 --> 0:04:30.920 I think the term we, the term used at the 0:04:31.000 --> 0:04:34.400 time was nonverbal, which meant they couldn't communicate well or 0:04:34.520 --> 0:04:36.720 at all. In a lot of cases via language, and 0:04:36.920 --> 0:04:38.680 you know, we would develop we would use sign language, 0:04:38.680 --> 0:04:40.720 we would use like cards, We had a bunch of 0:04:40.760 --> 0:04:42.640 different kind of systems we would try to use to 0:04:42.680 --> 0:04:46.800 help the kids communicate. And all of my my coworkers 0:04:47.080 --> 0:04:50.599 cared a lot, but we also had effectively zero academic training. 0:04:50.640 --> 0:04:52.880 They were like, out of I don't know twenty or 0:04:52.920 --> 0:04:55.360 so people in the unit that I was in, there 0:04:55.400 --> 0:04:58.120 were like two people who had gone to school to 0:04:58.240 --> 0:05:00.400 any extent for what we were doing, and the rest 0:05:00.440 --> 0:05:01.960 of us were just kind of yeah, we didn't know 0:05:02.000 --> 0:05:05.800 what the funk we were doing. Yeah, um, And I 0:05:05.880 --> 0:05:09.000 would say, you know, from the I've mentioned being a 0:05:09.040 --> 0:05:11.080 special at a couple of times, and some people I 0:05:11.200 --> 0:05:14.560 think make assumptions about the kind of the worst case 0:05:14.560 --> 0:05:17.440 scenario for that. I don't believe we did anything that 0:05:17.640 --> 0:05:21.120 was like harmful in terms of our our our teaching techniques. 0:05:21.160 --> 0:05:22.840 We weren't using any of the stuff that we'll be 0:05:22.920 --> 0:05:26.080 talking about today, any of like the really brutal methods 0:05:26.120 --> 0:05:27.880 that have been used. But I don't think anything we did. 0:05:28.000 --> 0:05:29.960 Most of what we did was very useful either because 0:05:29.960 --> 0:05:31.600 we didn't really know what we were doing, like we 0:05:33.360 --> 0:05:36.840 That's part of The problem with I don't know the 0:05:36.920 --> 0:05:39.920 whole when when kind of the education system intersects with 0:05:40.000 --> 0:05:43.360 healthcare in any way, is um, most don't really get 0:05:43.480 --> 0:05:48.560 good results exactly don't. And as somebody who was in 0:05:48.800 --> 0:05:53.320 Special Edge from like first grade through fifth grade that 0:05:54.160 --> 0:05:56.880 you definitely got a lot more of they really wanted 0:05:56.920 --> 0:05:59.280 to try, but there really wasn't much they could do 0:05:59.560 --> 0:06:03.240 in terms like helping out and one that they really cared. 0:06:04.080 --> 0:06:07.040 But you can definitely tell compared to like other classes 0:06:07.160 --> 0:06:11.920 that they're kind of shorthanded, yeah, shorthanded and not. You know, 0:06:11.960 --> 0:06:15.640 there's a lot of specialized knowledge that is required, both 0:06:15.680 --> 0:06:17.680 in terms of like how to educate kids who may 0:06:18.000 --> 0:06:20.760 you know, interpret kind of verbal command or verbal stimuli 0:06:20.839 --> 0:06:22.800 or whatever in a different way, who maybe who may 0:06:22.839 --> 0:06:26.840 have kind of sensory um like would be fundamentally like 0:06:27.000 --> 0:06:30.760 kind of see and hear differently than everybody else. Like 0:06:30.880 --> 0:06:33.320 that requires a lot of specialized knowledge to work with. 0:06:34.000 --> 0:06:37.240 Outside of that, there's also like medical stuff like again, 0:06:37.279 --> 0:06:38.960 I was going to this job with no training and 0:06:39.000 --> 0:06:40.680 when I started was dealing with like a grand mall 0:06:40.760 --> 0:06:45.040 seizure every day. Um, and it is I didn't like 0:06:45.160 --> 0:06:48.000 we didn't we didn't like get good information on what 0:06:48.160 --> 0:06:49.760 to do with that stuff. It was kind of like 0:06:49.960 --> 0:06:52.680 learn on the job, which is not not a good 0:06:53.200 --> 0:06:55.119 You shouldn't be learning on the job if you're treating 0:06:55.200 --> 0:06:58.480 children having Yeah, no, not something you really want to 0:06:58.560 --> 0:07:03.800 leave a few weeks, if not a lot more training officire. Yeah. Um. Now, 0:07:03.960 --> 0:07:05.680 some of the students that I worked with had really 0:07:05.760 --> 0:07:08.880 serious issues with violence. And again I've mentioned this before. Um, 0:07:09.200 --> 0:07:11.160 from most of them, this was an occasional thing. It 0:07:11.200 --> 0:07:14.080 would be maybe once a year, and it wasn't you know, 0:07:14.680 --> 0:07:17.679 it wasn't their fault. It was something kind of flipped 0:07:17.720 --> 0:07:20.040 in their head and they would they would get aggressive 0:07:20.080 --> 0:07:23.960 generally because they were frightened. Um. But there were some kids, 0:07:24.080 --> 0:07:26.560 one particular kid that was my major have to deal with, 0:07:26.640 --> 0:07:28.560 for whom violence was a really daily issue and the 0:07:28.640 --> 0:07:31.080 problem was severe in this kid's case. When you're talking 0:07:31.120 --> 0:07:33.440 about kids with problems like that where they are either 0:07:33.680 --> 0:07:36.240 very self injurious and this this kid I'm talking about, 0:07:36.280 --> 0:07:38.640 was injured himself more than he injured other people. That's 0:07:38.680 --> 0:07:40.800 a serious issue because he's not only a danger, he 0:07:40.840 --> 0:07:43.800 could he could seriously injure other people. Um, he could 0:07:43.960 --> 0:07:48.120 seriously injured, kill himself. Um that's a real issue, and 0:07:48.200 --> 0:07:50.680 it's a real issue that our school, which was a 0:07:50.720 --> 0:07:52.960 normal high school, was not at all equipped to handle. 0:07:53.320 --> 0:07:56.080 And I feel very comfortable saying I had no business 0:07:56.120 --> 0:08:00.200 working with a kid whose needs were so specialized. UM So, 0:08:00.360 --> 0:08:04.200 I understand the need for residential facilities that can take 0:08:04.280 --> 0:08:07.240 care of some of kids with issues this severe and 0:08:07.280 --> 0:08:10.640 an ongoing basis. There's just cases like that where you 0:08:10.800 --> 0:08:13.480 run to need people who are specialized in that type 0:08:13.520 --> 0:08:16.240 of work and can be responsible and not have to 0:08:16.360 --> 0:08:19.760 be like, oh, ship, what I do? Yeah, And there 0:08:19.800 --> 0:08:21.800 are for some of these kids you need two seven 0:08:21.920 --> 0:08:26.040 care because again you can't necessarily predict their self injurious 0:08:26.080 --> 0:08:28.600 behavior or they need a tremendous amount of consistency in 0:08:28.720 --> 0:08:31.080 order to make progress, and you just can't do that 0:08:31.680 --> 0:08:34.400 in eight hours a day at a public school. Um 0:08:35.480 --> 0:08:38.240 So the problem. So again I'm starting this by saying, 0:08:38.280 --> 0:08:41.640 I get that there is potentially a need for residential facilities, 0:08:42.200 --> 0:08:45.360 but as we've discussed on the show before, many residential 0:08:45.440 --> 0:08:48.319 schools with kids for behavioral issues are fucking nightmares. And 0:08:48.320 --> 0:08:50.480 I'm talking about the Allan School here, I'm talking about 0:08:50.520 --> 0:08:56.760 like troubled kids schools. Um. And those places are nightmares 0:08:57.280 --> 0:09:00.360 in catering to kids who are if not neuro typical, 0:09:00.480 --> 0:09:03.160 than at least not you know, generally not dealing with 0:09:03.320 --> 0:09:06.640 autism or a particularly specialist diagnosis, their kids with like 0:09:06.720 --> 0:09:09.560 a behavioral issue, their kids who got into drugs or something. 0:09:09.720 --> 0:09:12.319 Right at a place like the law school. When you 0:09:12.920 --> 0:09:15.559 take it to a further step of specialization, where you're 0:09:15.600 --> 0:09:18.400 dealing with with children with autism or children with other 0:09:18.840 --> 0:09:22.679 very specific diagnoses, that's a whole another ball game. Um. 0:09:22.920 --> 0:09:25.880 And it gets a lot sketchier because there's a lot 0:09:26.000 --> 0:09:28.480 less specialization to deal with these places. So if you 0:09:28.600 --> 0:09:31.000 kind of can bill yourself as an expert in whatever 0:09:31.600 --> 0:09:34.240 these kids have, you can get away with a lot 0:09:34.280 --> 0:09:37.240 of really terrible treatments, and people looking at in from 0:09:37.280 --> 0:09:38.719 the outside will be like, well, I guess that's just 0:09:38.800 --> 0:09:41.400 what you do with those kids, you know. Um, yeah, 0:09:41.480 --> 0:09:44.679 that's not surprising. Yeah, And that's the subject of today 0:09:44.800 --> 0:09:48.760 the Judge Rotenberg Center. So our story starts with a 0:09:48.840 --> 0:09:51.840 man named Matthew Israel. He was born at some point 0:09:51.880 --> 0:09:54.679 in the nineteen thirties. I have not found an exact year. 0:09:54.760 --> 0:09:57.440 He was a contemporary of Michael Ducocus. They were friends 0:09:57.640 --> 0:10:01.079 so around when Ducacus was artinism and I guess when, 0:10:01.160 --> 0:10:04.079 uh when? Um, matt Israel was born. He was born 0:10:04.120 --> 0:10:07.599 in Brookline, Massachusetts. His dad was a lawyer. He was 0:10:07.679 --> 0:10:09.719 the youngest of two brothers. And to the extent that 0:10:09.880 --> 0:10:13.319 Matthew has told interviewers about his family, he claims that 0:10:13.440 --> 0:10:17.760 his parents were loving and seldom spank him. Um. So 0:10:17.920 --> 0:10:20.800 that's good, and that's gonna be relevant here in a 0:10:20.880 --> 0:10:23.000 little bit. But punishment was not a central focus of 0:10:23.080 --> 0:10:27.120 his parents parenting strategies. Um. He went to Brookline High 0:10:27.120 --> 0:10:29.320 School and he was good friends again with Michael Ducaucus, 0:10:29.320 --> 0:10:31.840 who would later be governor of Massachusetts and would also 0:10:31.920 --> 0:10:36.240 fail to become the president. Um, Matthew and Michael ran 0:10:36.360 --> 0:10:39.520 across country track together and we're good friends. This will 0:10:39.520 --> 0:10:43.080 become relevant later. Now we know a lot less about 0:10:43.200 --> 0:10:45.719 Israel's early life than I would prefer, but we do 0:10:45.920 --> 0:10:47.920 know that in high school he was kicked out of 0:10:47.960 --> 0:10:50.840 an honor society after he spoke out against the school's 0:10:50.880 --> 0:10:53.880 plan to allow athletes and people who pursued non academic 0:10:54.000 --> 0:10:57.800 extracurricular activities into the club. He told one interviewer that 0:10:58.160 --> 0:11:00.800 it was too much of an artificial reward system. So 0:11:00.880 --> 0:11:03.840 he didn't like that the Gifted program was being extended 0:11:03.880 --> 0:11:05.160 to people who were good at I don't know, like 0:11:05.320 --> 0:11:09.520 music and theater. He oh, yeah, okay, one of those Yeah, 0:11:09.559 --> 0:11:12.560 one of those guys like it's not math. It's like, yeah, 0:11:12.640 --> 0:11:17.240 it's not football. I mean, yeah, he's he's just he's 0:11:17.280 --> 0:11:19.600 a little bit of an elitist, maybe, like an academic 0:11:19.640 --> 0:11:23.400 elitist and specifics. So in nineteen fifty is Reel started 0:11:23.440 --> 0:11:26.640 at Harvard. He was fascinated with behavioral psychology, and he 0:11:26.679 --> 0:11:28.360 had the good fortune to be taught by one of 0:11:28.400 --> 0:11:31.679 the single most influential psychologists in the history of the discipline, 0:11:31.960 --> 0:11:35.719 a guy named B. F. Skinner. Skinner was probably the 0:11:35.880 --> 0:11:39.200 dominant psychologist of the mid twentieth century, and he specialized 0:11:39.200 --> 0:11:42.760 in what's called behaviorism. Skinner believed that all human behavior 0:11:42.840 --> 0:11:46.079 could be boiled down to environmental operant conditioning and the 0:11:46.160 --> 0:11:50.840 reinforcement of selected responses with rewards or punishment. Skinner essentially 0:11:50.960 --> 0:11:54.160 rejected the idea of free will, which he acknowledged quote 0:11:54.240 --> 0:11:57.320 seems to question dignity or worth as and if people 0:11:57.360 --> 0:11:59.959 don't have free will. If we're just robots responding to stimuli, 0:12:00.040 --> 0:12:02.920 maybe we don't have any dignity yourself worth. But as 0:12:02.960 --> 0:12:06.400 he pointed out, this also meant that under his analysis 0:12:06.480 --> 0:12:09.959 of behavior, blame for bad behavior and credit for good 0:12:10.040 --> 0:12:13.600 behavior we're both shifted to the environment. So you're never 0:12:13.720 --> 0:12:15.920 responsible if you do bad or good things. It's the 0:12:15.960 --> 0:12:20.839 result of the stimuli that has been fed into your brain. Um, 0:12:21.559 --> 0:12:24.560 which is, you know, not my view of reality. It's 0:12:24.559 --> 0:12:31.560 a pretty bleak y yeah. I mean it's it's bleak 0:12:31.600 --> 0:12:34.600 in some ways because it kind of reduces, it flattens 0:12:34.679 --> 0:12:39.040 the moral universe. Um. But it also means that like, potentially, 0:12:39.160 --> 0:12:40.839 if you can figure out how to feed in the 0:12:40.920 --> 0:12:43.880 good stimuli to people's brains, you can stop you know, 0:12:44.679 --> 0:12:46.960 genocide and whatnot. You could you could deal with all 0:12:47.000 --> 0:12:50.559 of that just by feeding people different different input um. 0:12:51.480 --> 0:12:55.120 His hope was that accepting this, like accepting this reality 0:12:55.160 --> 0:12:58.000 about how people worked, would lead to a new organization 0:12:58.040 --> 0:13:00.880 of society based around social trolls that would be more 0:13:00.920 --> 0:13:04.400 purposeful than the random positive and negative reinforcements in society. 0:13:04.440 --> 0:13:07.439 In other words, like we're just the result of the 0:13:07.520 --> 0:13:10.560 stimuli that's been fed into us. Um, but because it's 0:13:10.600 --> 0:13:13.480 being kind of fed in randomly, and nobody's nobody's making 0:13:13.520 --> 0:13:16.920 a concerted effort to make sure that like specific goods, 0:13:16.960 --> 0:13:19.839 stimuli you know, kind of are are are put into 0:13:19.880 --> 0:13:23.760 people's heads. Um, that's why all this messed up. That's 0:13:23.760 --> 0:13:25.520 why society is so messed up. And if you could 0:13:25.559 --> 0:13:28.600 just be consistent and whatnot, you could fix all these problems. 0:13:28.720 --> 0:13:32.720 That's that's Skinner's kind of roughly Skinner's idea, I am again, 0:13:32.840 --> 0:13:37.839 I'm flattening a decades long career and psychology. This is 0:13:37.920 --> 0:13:42.040 the gist of it. Um Skinner wrote, quote, man struggle 0:13:42.120 --> 0:13:44.840 for freedom is not due to a will to be free, 0:13:44.960 --> 0:13:48.560 but to certain behavioral processes characteristic of the human organism, 0:13:48.760 --> 0:13:51.000 the chief effect of which is the avoidance of, or 0:13:51.200 --> 0:13:54.880 escape from, so called aversive features of the environment. Physical 0:13:54.960 --> 0:13:59.840 and biological technologies have been mainly concerned with natural aversive stimuli. 0:14:00.200 --> 0:14:03.440 The struggle for freedom is concerned with stimuli intentionally arranged 0:14:03.480 --> 0:14:06.480 by other people. The literature of freedom has identified the 0:14:06.559 --> 0:14:08.960 other people and has proposed ways of escaping from them 0:14:09.080 --> 0:14:12.120 or weakening or destroying their power. It has been successful 0:14:12.160 --> 0:14:15.480 in reducing the aversive stimuli used in intentional control, but 0:14:15.600 --> 0:14:18.120 it has made the mistake of defining freedom in terms 0:14:18.160 --> 0:14:20.720 of state of mind or feelings, and it has therefore 0:14:20.880 --> 0:14:23.800 not been able to effectively deal with techniques of control 0:14:23.840 --> 0:14:26.640 which do not breed escape or revolt, but nevertheless have 0:14:26.720 --> 0:14:30.080 aversive consequences. It has been forced to brand all control 0:14:30.200 --> 0:14:32.760 is wrong and to misrepresent many of the advantages to 0:14:32.840 --> 0:14:35.640 be gained from a social environment. It is unprepared for 0:14:35.720 --> 0:14:38.480 the next step, which is not to freemen from control, 0:14:38.560 --> 0:14:40.720 but to analyze and change the kinds of control to 0:14:40.800 --> 0:14:45.320 which they are exposed. See you see what he's saying there. Yeah, 0:14:45.360 --> 0:14:51.520 I'm I'm seeing what he's saying. But there's a lot 0:14:51.560 --> 0:14:57.880 of ways you can definitely miss interpreter and construe it. Yeah, absolutely, 0:14:58.280 --> 0:15:00.560 And it's you can see both sides of this to 0:15:00.600 --> 0:15:04.000 where like, right now in the US, the ideology of 0:15:04.120 --> 0:15:07.720 freedom as it's often interpreted by particularly folks on the right, 0:15:08.080 --> 0:15:10.040 has lit in the situation where like people are showing 0:15:10.120 --> 0:15:12.720 up armed outside of schools because they don't think kids 0:15:12.720 --> 0:15:16.000 should be made to wear masks during a pandemic. Um, 0:15:17.000 --> 0:15:19.320 and that is a problem. And he's kind of pointing 0:15:19.360 --> 0:15:22.240 out that, like, Um, but the kind of the the 0:15:22.520 --> 0:15:24.760 tech the angle he's looking at this from is that 0:15:24.840 --> 0:15:29.680 like the ideology of freedom, Um has has made it. 0:15:30.120 --> 0:15:32.040 His has kind of made it seem like a bad 0:15:32.120 --> 0:15:35.080 guys sort of thing to try and analyze the stimuli 0:15:35.160 --> 0:15:37.920 people are exposed to and alter them in order to 0:15:38.080 --> 0:15:41.520 change their behavior. Um and Skinner thinks that that's what 0:15:41.640 --> 0:15:44.560 we ought to be doing. Right. So Skinner was interested 0:15:44.600 --> 0:15:47.600 and nothing less than the controlled future evolution of human 0:15:47.680 --> 0:15:52.680 beings with proper conditioning techniques. He believed all conflict, responsible behavior, 0:15:52.720 --> 0:15:56.080 and the calamitous consequences of freedom could be erased. As 0:15:56.120 --> 0:15:59.600 Skinner wrote, quote, a scientific view of man offers exciting 0:15:59.640 --> 0:16:02.560 post abilities. We have not yet seen what man can 0:16:02.680 --> 0:16:10.080 make of man. And I mean I can see he's 0:16:10.120 --> 0:16:13.200 definitely looking at it from a positive angle. It's just 0:16:14.960 --> 0:16:18.240 there's a lot to work around with that, at least 0:16:18.240 --> 0:16:21.720 in my opinion, there is. And I think Skinner a 0:16:21.760 --> 0:16:23.240 big chunk of what he's doing is kind of a 0:16:23.320 --> 0:16:25.280 response to everything that happened in the first part of 0:16:25.320 --> 0:16:29.360 the twentieth century. The disasters under state communism, the gin 0:16:29.520 --> 0:16:32.560 sides of the Nazis, the horrors of the world wars, 0:16:33.080 --> 0:16:35.520 and this idea that like, well, this is clearly terrible, 0:16:36.040 --> 0:16:38.080 we could if we can make people better, if we 0:16:38.120 --> 0:16:40.400 can like, if we can feed them better stimuli, we 0:16:40.480 --> 0:16:43.520 can stop all this. At the same time he's kind 0:16:43.600 --> 0:16:48.400 of doing He's what he's saying, you can find not 0:16:48.640 --> 0:16:51.400 dissimilar things that the Nazis were saying, Man, can we 0:16:51.480 --> 0:16:56.320 can make the human race better by kind right away? 0:16:56.480 --> 0:16:59.040 But I was leaning towards yet And Skinner is not 0:16:59.160 --> 0:17:02.400 a eugenicist. But anytime you're saying we can improve the 0:17:02.600 --> 0:17:06.600 human race through like selective decisions and whatnot that may 0:17:06.680 --> 0:17:10.280 limit people's freedom, you're not on a totally different wavelength. 0:17:10.320 --> 0:17:12.159 Then you can also but draw some comparisons to like 0:17:12.280 --> 0:17:16.240 the idea of the new Soviet man, and these these 0:17:16.320 --> 0:17:18.879 strains of thought, these I and they're all cutting from 0:17:18.880 --> 0:17:20.560 a similar place, which is that like in the early 0:17:20.640 --> 0:17:24.640 half of the twentieth century, you're seeing all these horrible calamities, um, 0:17:25.160 --> 0:17:29.320 human caused calamities, these terrifying wars and famines and genocide, 0:17:29.600 --> 0:17:31.320 and you've got a lot of people being like, well 0:17:31.359 --> 0:17:33.439 maybe we maybe we could do better than that. Um. 0:17:33.760 --> 0:17:35.680 The problem is that it can lead you in some 0:17:36.200 --> 0:17:38.240 and again I really want to easy. Skinner is not 0:17:38.320 --> 0:17:41.359 a Nazi. He's not talking about eugenics. But you can see, 0:17:42.280 --> 0:17:44.119 you can see how people could take some of the 0:17:44.240 --> 0:17:47.200 things he's saying and turn them in unsettling directions. To 0:17:47.720 --> 0:17:49.680 the road can be to how can be paved with 0:17:49.760 --> 0:17:52.879 good intentions? Yes, yeah, and I that's that's not so 0:17:53.040 --> 0:17:55.440 much Skinner because he's certainly not the bad guy here, 0:17:56.480 --> 0:17:59.600 But that's kind of where his ideology leads. Matt is real. 0:18:00.280 --> 0:18:03.479 Um So Matt fell in love with Skinners theories. At 0:18:03.520 --> 0:18:05.800 the library one day he found a book his professor 0:18:05.840 --> 0:18:08.080 had written but not assigned to the class, a book 0:18:08.119 --> 0:18:10.800 called Walden two. And I'm gonna quote from a write 0:18:10.840 --> 0:18:14.200 up in Boston Magazine quote. The controversial book is about 0:18:14.200 --> 0:18:16.960 a utopian society where behaviors can be modified for the 0:18:17.000 --> 0:18:19.880 benefit of all inhabitants. It is based on Skinner's theory 0:18:19.920 --> 0:18:23.120 of operant conditioning. If an action is rewarded, it increases 0:18:23.160 --> 0:18:25.560 the likelihood that the person will perform the action again. 0:18:25.960 --> 0:18:28.200 This is, after all, how Skinner had taught pigeons to 0:18:28.240 --> 0:18:30.760 play table tennis by rewarding the behaviors that led to 0:18:30.840 --> 0:18:34.200 their game. Israel Lasers said of the book. It was 0:18:34.280 --> 0:18:36.800 a real inspiration. I knew what I wanted to do 0:18:37.000 --> 0:18:39.320 with my life. It was a feeling similar to those 0:18:39.359 --> 0:18:42.240 claiming to have religious conversions. I wanted to start a 0:18:42.320 --> 0:18:47.119 real utopian behavioral community. And this is um He's not 0:18:47.200 --> 0:18:50.120 the only one who gets impacted this way by Walden two. 0:18:50.240 --> 0:18:53.080 There's actually a whole subculture that forms around trying to 0:18:53.240 --> 0:18:59.440 build utopian communities based around Skinner's ideas of operant conditioning. Obviously, 0:18:59.520 --> 0:19:02.199 I'm also interested in utopian communities. I planned one day 0:19:02.240 --> 0:19:04.040 to start one that will build a paradise on Earth 0:19:04.080 --> 0:19:05.920 before it's torn us under in a hail of fire 0:19:06.000 --> 0:19:08.000 and bullets from the f d A. And Matt had 0:19:08.080 --> 0:19:11.719 the same ambition, m Oh yeah, I mean, who wouldn't 0:19:11.760 --> 0:19:15.879 Who wouldn't want to build a paradise based around the 0:19:16.800 --> 0:19:20.359 fundamental moral precept that you shouldn't be told by the 0:19:20.440 --> 0:19:23.359 government what pills are and aren't healthy, or what pills 0:19:23.400 --> 0:19:25.800 do and don't contain lead. I think we have the 0:19:25.920 --> 0:19:28.320 freedom to ingest all sorts of brain pills and to 0:19:28.400 --> 0:19:30.359 claim that they care all sorts of diseases. And I 0:19:30.760 --> 0:19:35.560 I challenged the f d A to increase their munitions 0:19:35.600 --> 0:19:41.480 budget enough to stop me. So Matt had a similar ambition, 0:19:41.920 --> 0:19:44.520 without desiring an armed conflict with the f d A. 0:19:44.880 --> 0:19:47.680 But being a young PhD candidate just getting started in 0:19:47.720 --> 0:19:49.240 the world, he didn't really have a way to achieve 0:19:49.320 --> 0:19:52.240 this dream, and sort of his his desire to start 0:19:52.280 --> 0:19:55.320 a utopian community and his lack of resources led to 0:19:55.400 --> 0:19:57.800 a period of depression for him. He later said, it 0:19:57.920 --> 0:20:00.639 was a very difficult period. I thought about committing suicide. 0:20:00.760 --> 0:20:03.879 If I couldn't bring a community into existence, what since 0:20:04.000 --> 0:20:07.480 was life worth living? So he worked on his doctor 0:20:07.560 --> 0:20:10.040 and he helped b. F. Skinner teach pigeons to play 0:20:10.080 --> 0:20:13.000 ping pong. In nineteen sixty he received his doctorate, and 0:20:13.080 --> 0:20:15.040 he used his formidable skill as a hype man to 0:20:15.119 --> 0:20:17.720 try and raise capital to start a firm teach selling 0:20:17.800 --> 0:20:20.840 teaching machines. His goal was to spend the profits from 0:20:20.920 --> 0:20:24.119 this business into a utopian social project, but the business 0:20:24.160 --> 0:20:26.920 didn't do well, and in nineteen sixty six, Israel was 0:20:27.040 --> 0:20:30.280 not particularly close to achieving his dream. That year, though, 0:20:30.359 --> 0:20:33.480 he attended a walden To conference where other weird b F. 0:20:33.600 --> 0:20:37.080 Skinner nerds talked about how to start their own utopian societies. 0:20:37.600 --> 0:20:40.800 Eighty three people attended, and he met a couple of 0:20:40.840 --> 0:20:43.200 folks who were willing to get involved in such a 0:20:43.280 --> 0:20:47.040 project with him. And it was a very minor scale 0:20:47.080 --> 0:20:49.200 at this point. So in nineteen sixty seven, he and 0:20:49.240 --> 0:20:52.960 a couple of these folks start a communal home in Arlington, Virginia. 0:20:53.359 --> 0:20:56.720 Um and it's as utopian communities go, very small. It's 0:20:56.760 --> 0:21:00.679 basically Matt Israel, a guy and his girlfriend, a teacher, 0:21:00.800 --> 0:21:04.280 and her young daughter named Andrea. UM. So not a 0:21:04.320 --> 0:21:07.240 big community. And this little girl, Andrea was, according to 0:21:07.320 --> 0:21:10.119 Matt Israel, a real problem. He later said quote she 0:21:10.200 --> 0:21:12.720 walked around the living room with a toy broom, hitting people. 0:21:13.119 --> 0:21:16.040 She also screamed and threw tantrums often enough that Israel 0:21:16.119 --> 0:21:20.280 claims I was forced to do behavior modification. So this 0:21:20.400 --> 0:21:22.399 is the first time that he tries to alter a 0:21:22.520 --> 0:21:26.520 human being through operat conditioning, right, um or at least 0:21:26.640 --> 0:21:31.080 his first recorded times. I don't know that's a weird 0:21:32.080 --> 0:21:34.800 I guess you could see. It's not any different than 0:21:34.880 --> 0:21:36.840