Open Mic： Parasitic Postmodernism, Cognitive Overload, Unquantifiable Bananas, Downward Disney (s1CUj3hUp8s)

https://youtubetranscript.com/?v=s1CUj3hUp8s

Good evening and happy Sunday everybody. I’m here to inform you that postmodernism is parasitic, not really expecting to be called brave. I don’t expect this to be a particularly original or daring take for people in the Peterson sphere. I don’t think most of the people who would bother to listen to this are going to be surprised by this conclusion. But it was prompted by a little conversation on the Bridges of Meaning Discord server where somebody came in and just started asking about, hey, what’s this postmodernism business? Why, what do I need to know about it? And I told them it was basically gobbledygook. But listen, I’m not speaking out of ignorance. I want to go back to a little bit of history here. I want you to imagine the far distant land of about 2014, 2015. In those days, I had hair on the top of my head and I was studying at Sacred Heart Seminary in Detroit. I don’t know what you all think about Catholic seminaries. Perhaps you think that we have a forbidden section in our library, but we don’t. We do not. You may think that we are given a rigid and non-exploratory theological system. And as it turns out, exploration was at least somewhat encouraged. And I had a philosophy professor who, a very, very brilliant man, very, very intelligent, very quick on his feet, absolutely hilarious. But he had this interesting idea about postmodernism. This was something that came up in our natural theology classes. Basically, philosophically, what can we know about God? Now, the first part of the class was basically going over Thomas Aquinas natural theology, stuff that you’d find at the very beginning of the first part of the summa. He knew that stuff, you know, backwards, forwards. He knew it very well. If you asked him what his school of thought would be, he would tell you straightforwardly that he’s a Thomas. This guy wasn’t way off on some other planet from the rest of us. He belonged teaching at a Catholic seminary. But as it wore on, we went to kind of the modern period and then kind of the postmodern period. Looking at the modern period, this idea that we are logical, reasonable, rational, and that with our intellect, we can access objective material reality perfectly and come to perfect truth by the power of our own intellects. This being a very typically modern way of thinking. Now, you know, very conveniently, people who think in this manner with human beings being logical, rational, and reasonable, able to access objective material reality with their mind, they conveniently always exclude God from the equation because once you do that, you get to be in charge instead. You get to be your own pope instead of having to listen to some other guy. This, of course, is a problem for our natural theology project. Because if there’s only objective material reality, which could be comprehended by the human mind, then we have nothing to say about God, about anything higher. So this professor of mine had this idea that postmodernism could actually be an ally against that attitude as some kind of a humbler of reason, saying, well, actually, there’s no such thing as human mind’s access to objective material reality via pure logic, reason, and rationality, and using the, what we’ll call it, the solvent of postmodernism to dissolve these modern critiques against belief in God. And not saying that, you know, if we all adapted this postmodern thought process, that I’ll become Christians, but hey, maybe Christians could have a place at the table. So all of that, all of that is to say that it’s not like in my education, postmodernism wasn’t explained at all, that we never talked about it, that we only ever studied medieval texts. We were at least given a good understanding of what was going on. Now, I wrote an undergraduate thesis, about 20 pages long, and even back in about 2014, 2015, when I was working on this, I had this sense that this transgenderism and this confusion about man and woman was going to be a problem. And so I decided to look at that question. And anytime you’re studying that, everybody says, well, you know, the person who’s studied this the most is Judith Butler, you know, wrote Gender Trouble in 1990 or so. And basically, all of the people who are attempting to seriously do academics about all of this gender fluidity, smashing the patriarchy, smashing the gender binary business, they all reference that book, Gender Trouble by Judith Butler from about 1990. So it’s a very slim volume, not some big honking text. And I figured for my thesis, I need to take a look at this, to take a look at this Gender Trouble book. I just was frustrated endlessly by this book. It was just, I mean, it’s not like this was a bad translation from another language. This was just, it’s like she didn’t want to be understood. So she was just using all of this gobbledygook language, you know, and I’m like, I can’t get to the bottom of this, you know. Yeah, like, am I dumb? Is that what’s going on? Am I actually dumb? Where I can’t figure this out, but I could read, you know, Thomas Aquinas and understand him. I just kind of came to the conclusion that this is just garbage. These are just garbage words there. And it’s intentionally written in a way that you can’t understand it. But here’s the thing. There’s like, there’s more than one way to not understand something, more than one way to not understand something, because the first time that somebody tried to explain to me Aristotle’s theory of change, I didn’t get it, because it’s a difficult thing, especially if you’re habituated to materialist ways of thinking, as I was when I had first entered the seminary. But I, you know, I trusted the professor, knew what he was talking about. I learned how to repeat back the words in the right order in order to pass the test. And that’s, you know, that’s about as much as testing can grade. And so I eventually came to a deeper understanding of what is going on with that, you know. At first, at first, the challenge of these ideas meant that I didn’t understand it. The language was difficult, the concepts were difficult, and I had to have faith that there was something worth understanding there. On the other end of this, you know, Aristotle’s lecture notes, which are very difficult to comprehend, it was an act of faith that there would be something worth understanding on the other end of that. And so, thanks God, I got to go to a Catholic seminary where we were teaching according to the mind of the church and those sorts of things that they were teaching me that I didn’t understand immediately at the age of 19 ended up being reliable way to think. And so it’s all poorly written gobbledygook. Like, maybe very short, simple arguments that really won’t hold up, and they fill volumes and volumes and volumes with all sorts of references in there, precisely to trap the academic mind that likes reading, that likes getting to the bottom of things. And when that academic mind finds something it does not understand, it wants to dig into it. And so, I finally get to the bottom of it, you know, because it’s actually really satisfying to struggle with a difficult idea and then come to an understanding of it. Oh my gosh, MKZ anticipated my next point. Let’s take a look at Lindsay here. Now, Lindsay is a monster. We have to understand that about him. He is not an ordinary human being faced with this postmodernism, would not like they’ll read two pages of it and say this is nonsense. I’m just going to throw it away. But this guy, this guy, Mr. Mathematician James Lindsay, he wants to get to the bottom of it so he will torture himself reading this postmodern gobbledygook until he understands it. That’s why he’s kind of losing his mind, you know, he’s going kind of nuts there. He, and it makes him crazy and angry and lashing out at people who would generally want to cooperate with him, generally would want to say, hey, we don’t like this postmodernism either here. So I think it’s precisely that he’s engaging with all these postmodern gobbledygook, especially without being grounded in Christ, or even if it wasn’t Christ being grounded in an ancient wisdom tradition, something other than attempting objective material reality by his own logic, reason and rationality would have done him a lot better. All of this postmodernism is parasitic. It takes this desire for understanding. It is typical of the intellectual, it is typical of the academic mind and like turns it against itself and it is destroying our universities from the inside out. I don’t think they’d be able to take down the universities entirely because there’s still Catholic seminaries and it’ll just strip away everything that’s unworthy of the future, but it is going to do some serious damage as all parasites do to their hosts. So postmodernism, we can’t ignore it, we can’t pretend that it doesn’t exist, but just go ahead and take my advice. Don’t bother reading it, don’t bother diving into it yourself. Read something that’s a little older than 40 or 50 years and you’ll find yourself a much happier person. The link has been posted. Some of you can come on in and tell me how wrong I am about Judith Butler. It’s a solvent, right? Postmodernism is a solvent. What you’re doing is critiquing things and so it’ll actually reduce your worldview to garbage there. Being a nothingness by Sartre was mostly nothing. Good to hear, another one I can just not worry about. I do think if we could hold on to printing on paper, that would be a good thing. Turning into Colonel Kurtz from Apocalypse Now. Yeah, we should definitely be praying for him. Good knowledge is real, yeah, and fake knowledge is worse. Absolutely. All righty, well, that’s what I have to say about postmodernism. It’s the first Sunday of Advent. So that’s, oh, happy New Year. I should have said happy New Year to all of my Catholic listeners. Not sure about the Orthodox, but happy New Year to my Catholic listeners because it is the liturgical New Year. We’ve ended the last liturgical year and it’s become the liturgical New Year. Looking forward to the coming of Christ. Yeah. There we go. My Catholic boys represent happy New Year. That’s right. We get to have multiple New Year’s parties. Like I said on my pre-Thanksgiving stream, just a reminder that this is a penitential season. We’ve switched out the beer for water in order to engage in that. Oh, I would look forward to the coming of Christ, would you? Yes, yes, I would. Actually, that should be the attitude of every Christian, right? You have nothing to fear from the end times if your lamp is full of oil and burning, if you stay alert because you do not know the hour when your Lord is returning. So if you’re doing the basics, going to church on Sunday, you’re confessing your sins, you’re saying your prayers, trying to treat neighbor as love of God and love of neighbor, all of that business, then when Jesus shows up again, you’ll be happy to see him. You’ll be happy to see him when he comes back because all of this nonsense is going to be done. It will be done with all of the worldly trials and tribulations and Jesus will be reigning eternally as our King and High Priest, the King and the Kingdom of God, in perfect harmony forever. So yes, some of us, some of us get to look forward to that because of our faith in Christ. Yes, John Wick has oil. That’s exactly what I meant, Mr. William Branch. When Smart comes in three minutes, I will join you. Yeah, being smart is overrated, but I appreciate the offer, Philip. I’ve never managed to go two hours without a guest. I don’t have quite that much to say, I don’t think. Yeah, we got the shortest possible Advent this year, Christmas on a Monday. So that’s always a bit of a pain because you’ve got to do all your Sunday Masses and then you’ve got to run straight into Christmas Eve Masses, followed by Christmas Day Masses. So the fourth Sunday of Advent lasts for about 16 to 20 hours. The fourth week of Advent lasts for about 16 to 20 hours. You know, Mark, there are ways that you could prepare yourself so that you would look forward to the coming of Christ. Why would I do that? It sounds like work. It is work. That sounds awful. That’s a four-letter word. Are you allowed to use such four-letter words as a priest? I am. My name’s actually a four-letter word. So is yours. You’re blowing my mind. I loved your speech. I think it made a new slogan, make forbidden knowledge great again. I mean, it’s really stunning to me, all the rebellion and the people trying to figure out. And I’m like, are you sure you’re smart enough to figure that out? Because maybe no one is. Hey, Bill. Hey, Mark, how are you? Anxious and worried, but you know, I’m here. So I’m trying to be positive. It’s good to meet you. Mark’s got some stuff going on tomorrow. So all of you guys are going to pray for him. Please. Big decision. Big day. We’ll see. We’ll see. Do you feel adequately prepared? I got a text. Well, no text. I got a call. And the person calling me said, basically said, you know, oh, I’m sorry. Holy bleep. This guy actually did all this. I’m like, it’s been four years. I’ve been saying very clearly for four years to you that this is what happened. And, you know, I mean, it’s related, right? Because I think that let’s suppose that we’ve been fooled by some force that maybe doesn’t have our best interest in mind, but maybe we would prefer chaos. I’m actually going to work on an animation about this, by the way. And into believing that we can, when something presents itself honestly, with no veil, that we will perfectly understand it immediately. And that might include good and evil. In other words, we’ve been told, oh, look, you’ll, Hitler will resurrect and he’ll be in front of you and that will be evil. Right. And it’s like, well, sure. Of course. Right. If I was living in Germany in those days, I wouldn’t be a Nazi. Of course I was going to go there. Right. Peterson talks about this. Right. He says, you were living in Germany during that time. Right. He actually doesn’t make a very strong case. He makes a very weak case, actually. I think that even Peterson has fallen prey to not doing your research, buddy. Read everything that happened before that, that got the guy on the cover of Time magazine. Read the… I did. I did. This is a puzzle. I did this. It was a lot of work and I had to read it on microfiche. It’s pictures of old magazines and articles and newspaper. I read newspaper. I know what microfilm is. I had a summer archiving job that sometimes involved microfilm. Yeah, as you can see, I’m still messed up by it. Some of that stuff has not been digitized yet. People don’t understand. Digitization takes time and I know Google did a lot of it, but they didn’t do all of it. It’s still not done. The project is still ongoing. When you read about it, you’re like, everyone’s going like, Germany’s dead. Germany’s dead. The Weimar Republic is a failed republic. Will not survive in two years, in three years. I think the longest I ever saw anybody say five years. Germany won’t exist. Will not exist as a country. Will fail. It doesn’t physically have enough food. Did not physically have enough food. No, really. They couldn’t feed their people because France, the Treaty of Versailles, just took too much stuff. They wanted more. They’re bloodthirsty little bastards, actually. Who were the bad guys? I ain’t sure you know. Sorry. I have French lineage and we left for a reason. I don’t want to tell you. The Parisians are bastards. And here comes this guy out of nowhere. And he’s short, whatever, kind of weird, right? But single-handedly, seemingly single-handedly. And the thing is, you know, I mean, even I don’t do it justice. Saves Germany. Turns Germany into the largest industrial powerhouse in the world. The most powerful and capable country ever. And I need ever. Well, the thing is, and here’s the thing I’ve come to sort of realize literally in the past two, three weeks that I’ve been thinking about this because it just comes up seemingly repeatedly for me because no one will, unless Hitler resurrects, no one’s going to believe there’s evil out there among us. We are still today standing on the legacy of Hitler’s Germany. We didn’t make past any of that technology except maybe the transistor. And I say maybe because I actually, even though I know a lot about that history, I’d actually have to go back and look because that might have been German scientists from Nazi era too. Because everything else is nuclear power. Yeah, that’s all Germany, guys. All the technology we use to go to the moon. Rockets. All jet planes. All Germany. All of it. Completely, entirely German. Like 100%. We have not moved past. We have not. That’s how big that whole thing is. SpaceX has finally managed to outdo the Saturn V rocket. Okay. There we go. This year. We’re still working on the foundation they laid. In the past month. As far as I know, he’s still using the Saturn V booster technology. The Bell Booster, whatever it’s called. As far as I know, and I might have changed, but I’m pretty sure he’s still using one of Ambron’s original design modified. Yeah, that’s all, you know. Yeah. It’s just, and we don’t have an appreciation for that. But we think we know things. We think we know evil. We think we, you know, I mean, I don’t know why people don’t make this argument. You made it brilliantly for Judith Butler. It’s gobbly good. She’s not making any sense. She uses lesser references to confuse you. That was something I forgot to mention is there’s just so many references there. Like how could there be that many footnotes and nothing there? It’s like, oh boy. Have you ever written the paper before? Well, what’s the trick? It’s cognitive overload. See, I suspect, I’m not going to lay my life down on this one, although probably could, that there’s a limit to your cognition. And that the limit to my cognition, limit to your cognition, rather than the limit to your cognition, Philip, no offense, is probably not the same. I don’t know whose is higher or lower. I don’t really care. That’s not the point. The point is it’s probably not the same. But also there’s a limit. I bet any amount of money that that limit for any human being is hittable in a book. Easily. Easily. You could write a book of 100 pages, maybe 200 pages, and blow out any human limit on cognition. Now, not entirely. There’s good books and bad books. Right. Right. So, and Peterson makes this point about Lacan. He says, oh, I read Lacan. I couldn’t make any sense out of it. I’m a pretty smart guy. So, you know, and I’m like, did you read Derrida and Foucault? Because I’m sure I’m positive. Never read a line of I don’t know. I’m positive. It’s the same. I’m positive they don’t make any sense. I was trying to read, at about the same time, I was trying to read a secondary source on Foucault. Just like, hey, here’s the basics of Foucault. I couldn’t get that either. It was just, it was just awful. You know? And I think we’re being told that we’re educatable. And I already have questions about that because I would say, have you done training? Have you worked with people? Because I’ve done a lot of corporate training. I’ve worked with a lot of people. And I think Peterson makes this point in the extreme case, but there’s a lot of people in the middle that just can’t learn certain things. It’s not the denigration of them. They have talents that I’ll never have. I can learn anything. Like, I can learn fricking anything. I learn easily. I’m just marvel at people that don’t learn things. I’m like, wow, that’s so fast. I don’t denigrate them. They can do so many things I can’t do. But learning, to me, is like nothing. It’s like breathing. It’s just not going to be any effort at all. I just see things and learn them and absorb them. And I go, oh, that’s going to do this. That’s going to do this. Right? And you know, lucky me. I’m grateful that I have that skill. It also hasn’t served me well, by the way. So if somebody offers you that, refuse immediately. There’s way better things you could have. Just be dumb and happy. Learn things, actually. But we’ve been told that we can learn things, that you can educate yourself into something. And then you can be, quote, good at it or good enough at it. And first of all, that’s just not true. That’s not true at all. Like, there are some things I can’t learn. I can’t learn to play guitar. I’ve been trying my whole freaking life. I’m like, you know, I just want to know enough to do, da, da, da, da, you know, and maybe a few of the easy Zeppelin riffs. That’s really all I want. Like, I can’t do it. I can’t do it. I can’t play piano. I can play the scales on piano. Do, di, re, fema. I’ve retained that, but I can’t get past that. You know, so there’s lots of stuff that I absolutely can’t learn. But we’ve been told that, like, oh, you can be good enough. And then, right, and then the world kind of opens up. And, you know, we’ve been told we can do anything. And it’s like, well, probably not. But even if that’s true, we haven’t been told about the cost. Yeah, maybe you can do anything, but at what cost? And then I was thinking recently, well, the past few days, actually, you know, the devil came down to Georgia. It’s like, oh, that story’s wrong. Like, basically, that’s the story of individualism, triumphing over evil. Because he wins. Like, the devil doesn’t get to take his soul because he plays the fiddle better. And it’s like, what? Wait a minute. You have a supernatural force of whatever type, irrelevant. You play the fiddle better than supernatural unspecified force? I don’t think so. I’m not sceptic on that one. Normally I’m not that sceptic. This time I’m a little skeptical, right? Because all the fairy tales, all the fairy tales, pretty much, with very few exceptions, are about selling your soul and how that’s really not a good plan. Like, this is it. It’s a good short-term plan. It’s a bad long-term plan. And just the tradeoff between short-term and long-term, that’s one thing that Peterson does well. He says, you’ve got to account for future you. All right? You know, you’re always in this tradeoff relationship with the future. And sometimes the sacrifice has to come now. And sometimes the sacrifice has to come later. And like, I can’t help you with that. There’s no formula there. You have to kind of figure that out. And nobody likes that answer. But that’s the thing. We’re not told the other side. Maybe you can do, it would be anything you want or do anything you want, whatever. I don’t care if that’s true or not. What I care about is no one told you there’s going to be a cost to that. And maybe that cost is something, it’s a bad deal for you. Like, maybe I could sell my soul and become a reasonable guitarist, which would be sufficient for me. Because I’m a contentedness guy, not a happiness guy. If I know what my contentedness level is, I’m good. If anything better happens, I’m happy. I’m thrilled. That’s great. But contentedness is, that’s it. That’s the goal. It’s a very stoic mindset. And that’s the problem. Like, I would not sell my soul to a guitar. I’d rather say, you know what? It’s okay. I’ll just accept, I’ll take the L. I’ll take the L. And we’re not told any of this. We don’t have that adage. We don’t have that. And it’s, again, it’s back to we don’t see evil. We don’t see the possibility of evil. We don’t understand that there’s downsides to things. Or, I mean, you can not see something if you’re not looking at the right place for it. And it’s like, you know where the really useful place to look for evil or the potential of evil is? In yourself. Right here. Oh. Well, let’s see, Father, you’re taking this all the wrong way. The good news is, because evil doesn’t exist out there, it doesn’t exist in here either. Problem solved. That’s the sneaky part. You solved one problem. So how much of this comes from the whole blank slate thing? That I’m a blank slate. I can take on Foucault’s idea. I don’t have to understand it because I just put it on myself. I feel or think what I’m thinking. I get to be brilliant. I can erase a little stuff off of his, bring in somebody else’s. I can just, I can be a blank slate at any time. That’s how I thought when I was 18 and 19 and 20. And really, beyond, I still kind of think that way now. It’s still like still getting rid of all that crap. You know? I think that’s a good question, Philip. I like that you brought that up. That’s really good. I think that, you know, Father Eric here brought up this absolutely brilliant concept. Father Eric, absolutely brilliant. We talked about this thing, what would you call it? Objective material reality. Yeah, that was stuff. Yeah. I’d heard it from somewhere else. Who told me about that? I’m sure it’s your original. But yeah, I mean, that’s an objective material reality tale right there. Blank slate. Really? I mean, you’re just describing objective material reality. You’re saying there’s an objective material blank world. You know, existed. And what’s a blank world? A blank world, definitionally, necessarily. And you’ll know this subconsciously, even if you don’t know this consciously. You will know it subconsciously, which is one of the deep things people don’t understand. That is against the idea of creation. It’s against the idea that things existed before you that you were born into. Right? Because even if you were a blank slate, the minute the blank slate comes into existence, or being is probably a better word, the minute the blank slate comes into being, it gets written on, right? It gets constrained within whatever, however it’s been instantiated. Right? And it’s a trick to tell people that because we don’t think of it that way. Even if that were a state, even if there is this blank whiteboard that is me, the fact that it has to hang on my wall for you to see it for the camera is important. Because it’s not really blank at that point. Sorry, go ahead, Father. I mean, there’s like two things going on here. One is that people seem to be intuitively thinking that we work like computers when we most decidedly do not. Right? So it’s like, okay, you do have a blank drive, even though what’s the first thing you have to do with that drive, Mark? What’s the first thing you have to do with you have to format the drive? Set the boundaries and then format within the boundaries. But like the only thing that could be actually 100% blank slate would be infinite potential. Right. And nobody has infinite potential. But that would deny creation. Right. That’s what I’m saying. Yes, yes. And so when God is creating, one of the things that he does is he marks the boundaries of the ocean. He sets the world on its pedestals. He puts the citizens of each realm into their place. He sets the world on its pedestals. He puts the citizens of each realm into their place. He sets the sun in the sky to govern the day, the moon and the stars to govern the night, to mark the seasons. He puts the birds in the air, the fish in the waters. He makes every herb that grows to grow up from the earth and puts the animals and all the crawling things on the planet. That’s all limitations right there. You can have birds. Birds don’t live in the water. You can have fish. Fish don’t live on land. You can have human beings. Human beings can’t fly. Yeah, they can’t fly. Can’t live underwater. Yeah. Well, the other thing you said is really good, right? A hard drive that’s blank. It’s not partitioned or formatted. You need to do both. It’s useless. It’s worthless. It’s just a boat anchor or a doorstop. It’s completely pointless. So to say you were or are a blank slate is to say that you’re useless and you’re not an agent in the world. No wonder why people like determinism. I like that, by the way. I hadn’t really thought of it that way before. It was really, really good. Thanks. It was when I had an argument with materialist over Thanksgiving and he said, now, just listen. If we had a big enough computer, we could simulate the entire universe. It’s just like you said that with a straight face. OK, I’m going to maximally practice charity here and not want anyone on the internet. You couldn’t simulate a relationship with your cat. Like an actual relationship you have with a cat you’ve had a long time. Well, it’s you know, actually, it was a weird week. It was a few months ago, a weird week where I had three different people, two of whom were we’re talking at the same time. So they either they knew each other or they were making the argument in the same room. But the argument was, no, no, no, no, no. If you simulate the game of life, which is a simulation, because you can simulate the game of life from within the game of life. Somehow that means something significant. First of all, it doesn’t. It can break out and that simulation can be bigger than what it’s running on. And I was like, OK, but let’s let’s step through this. So you have a computer, you allocate some amount of resources, CPU memory, et cetera, to the program. That program has to use those resources to run the simulation. And so the simulation of life that’s running within the game of life. Cannot use more resources that were initially available, but also can’t use the resources that are in use by the game of life, simulating the game of life. And therefore it has less access. And then if you run a simulator within that, which was their argument, this crazy argument, I said, now you’ve constrained it further. And then at some point, and I had to go quite a ways with this. And this what I’m telling you was actually the argument I made. I think at some point it stops. And that’s when you went, oh, you’re right. I was like, I was right. Like the first time I said, what do you mean now? It’s 20 minutes later. Like how did it take you? Listen, Mark, he could be taught. He could be taught. It took 20 minutes to say when you’re in a bag, the thing in the bag can’t be bigger than the bag. Really? The thing that fits in the bag can’t be bigger than the bag. No, because it fits in the bag. We’ve already predefined its size to be less than. It’s just like, wow, 20 minutes to explain that to somebody. And that’s, you know, like you learned that when you’re three. I’m sorry. You know, if you watch, this is amazing. I’m like, you guys just need to get out and like watch three year olds because they discover this. Like you can watch them. I watched all my cousins discover these things. Like I just watched them do it. Like, oh, yeah, I’m trying to. Well, that’s not going to work. You know, you can’t tell them. They don’t know. They barely understand language. They’re going to try and try and try until it fails. But then hopefully you carry that forward with you and you don’t. And I think this is back to cognitive capacity. I think we’ve literally overloaded kids with, quote, education, whatever you think of. I have a video on that. It’s more like training. I think we overload them and then they kick knowledge like that out of their head. I don’t know. Are they knowledge? Are they looking for comfort? Because it seems like the same people get caught up in these things or also the same type of people that would go and get rolled in a blanket and talk to baby talk to. Like, well, I think it’s regression, though. Like, I don’t think the other problem is we don’t go for regression. Like, if you don’t use a mental skill, you’ll lose it. And if you and I think this is why when Peterson and Vervecki talk about play, it’s really important. Right. Because what if play was a training for a certain specific set of skills that are either underpin logic, reason and rationality, which I think I could actually make a case for if I tried, although I can’t do it on the fly, or we’re a completely different set of skills. Right. And then the fact that you’re not playing anymore, like you’re not utilizing that those play circuits in your brain anymore means they atrophy. And then you fill it with more and more, quote, propositional knowledge if you want to use Vervecki’s language. And suddenly you lose the ability to understand the balance of reality because play, like I said, three-year-olds and four-year-olds, you watch them. Just go find one. Just watch them for a while. Give them some toys. See what they do. Take them outside. See what they do. Right. They try to do things and it fails. And there are simple things that you and I would be like, well, that ain’t going to work. You know. But I think that a lot of these kids in particular, they’ve lost that skill and they’re playing these video games. And lots of things work in video games that don’t work in the real world. I don’t know if you noticed that. But actually it just turns out that if you’re training on an unreal arena, back to Vervecki language, maybe you don’t know how to work in the real arena anymore because you’ve overloaded yourself cognitively and those skills of atrophy. Like, I don’t know. Awesome. Seems like the proponents of objective material reality are trying to reduce all of everything to quantity, everything that’s measurable. And we’ve talked about this a fair bit. I’m wondering, I’ve been playing around with this argument, trying to enter into a materialist frame and find something that doesn’t cannot be quantified. And if you if you could just if you could just get that row bar in there and pull on it, we might be able to get a little fresh air in. And so this is and I’ve been wanting to talk about this. And so let’s just try it out. And, you know, if I’m wrong, Mark will let me know. So everything that exists on a spectrum as irreducible, irreducible infinity of potentially quantifiable points. So so we take visible lights, visible light is just a frequency. I don’t think it would ever be possible to divide up the entire visible light spectrum such that you could assign a unique number to everything. I think you would always be able to split the wave in half again to sample even more accurately. That’s me, those paradox. Yeah. What I’m worried about is there being some physics thing that I don’t understand that proves me wrong there, something with plank length or something. I don’t know. That’s why I wanted to talk to you. That’s how they solve it. They solve it with plank length. They have an arbitrary number, which actually just changed, by the way, in the past three months. Yeah, they have an arbitrary number called plank length. And that’s how they resolve Mena’s paradox, because the ancient Greeks were right. You can’t resolve it. It actually is a paradox. It’s one of the very few that actually all the other paradoxes people talk about are not. But that one is. But the purpose of that paradox is to show you that the world can’t be quantified. That’s actually what it’s for. It’s to show you it’s to show the Pythagoreans, particularly and those that came after them, that pure math doesn’t solve this and cannot solve this ever. We’ve lost that lesson for some reason. The ancient Greeks knew it, but we’re done. Yeah. And so you’re saying that if I was to try and deploy this argument in the real world with a knowledgeable person who had the certain knowledge of physics about what happens at plank length that would… Hi. Hey, Chad. Hey, Chad. Hey, Chad. I was so like, yeah, I like the idea of like, I don’t know if it’s possible to quantify the flavor of a banana. It’s not. Yeah. It’s not. It’s not. That’s what I’m saying. Yeah, that’s probably the better way to go is tell me what the flavor of a banana is or how red that light is. There’s all kinds of cute tricks like that you can use to get into volume. I was thinking about it because like the only way you can describe what a banana tastes like is to say banana. It’s to call it a banana. And maybe so that had me thinking about the importance of naming, which I never really cared about until this banana question came up. I’m like, oh, oh, that’s why you have names because like it’s actually inseparable from the thing. So, so yeah, I mean, it’s or like you’ve heard about this, you know, the scent of a rose. Can you tell me what a rose smells like? It’s like it smells like a rose. I know it sounds ridiculous that we’re saying this, but there’s a lot of there. I think there’s a lot of very important things at the bottom of these two statements. It’s the smell of banana taste and how a rose smells. I mean, I don’t know what else to say about it. No, that’s that’s that’s right. A rose by any other any other name would smell as sweet, which is just more ironic. Naming came up today on my Discord server. Emmanuel brought it up. Yeah, it’s really important. The problem is, is that we are in a time where we need to have these conversations. What you know, you’ll you’ll find a huge number of people trying to navigate the world as if it’s all reducible to quantity. And it’s just not. It’s like, no, the flavor of a banana and the smell of a rose cannot be. Aptured entirely by a mathematical scientific graspable model. We could get a useful model there. You know, we could, you know, figure out what shape molecules that you late your your your factory senses. We could get a decent model that might help us with a few things. But I think Chad just drove between towers there. And we’ve got Ted. Hello. With a useful model. A useful model. You know, there you go. Here we go. Banana. We’re talking about the flavor of bananas and how that’s going to solve the world. Well, I think I think the end. The problem is that when you make the rose by any other name would smell a sweet argument, the science people say, oh, that’s a philosophical question. And assume the philosophers haven’t worked out. And the and if you start from a philosophical thing and you bump up against that, they go, oh, that’s that’s the for the physicists. And they have that figure. That’s what I found when I was in Boston, each side, why there are different sides, I don’t know, but each side would sit there and go, the physicists know that. I’d be like, I just talked literally the actual top physicists in the world about this. And he said, yeah, we have no idea. No clue. We’re never going to know. That’s actually what they would tell me. And I was like a good physicist to me. Well, yes. So like the idea of because I was thinking about the flavor of banana and how it relates to reality. And let’s say, how do I know God? Well, it’s kind of a similar thing. It’s it’s that’s why it’s so difficult to lay this out. It’s like, well, because like I know God because I’ve had this experience of God. I don’t know how to tell you any other way. Damn it. And so like it’s actually not the physicist or the scientists or the maybe the poets have some of it. But, you know, I would say it’s it’s those of us who are trying to love. I don’t know. Or maybe the priest, maybe Father Eric’s Father Eric is probably the wisest one out of all of them. I’ll try and hear what we’re talking about because we’re going back and forth between bananas and physics and love. And I mean, I could string those things together, but it’d be kind of hideous if I tried to fit them all into one thing. Well, they’re not one thing. That’s the thing is that your physics, your physics can’t capture a banana. That’s the point. Yeah, it’s not quite. Well, and this goes back to to poetics, which was my last stream topic on Friday. So I haven’t seen it. You should watch it. Right. Which is I mean, that’s what connects the things together. Right. That’s what connects the physical and or the material in the ethereal. Right. Stop the physical stuff and the quality stuff is is poetics. Can you be poetic by yourself? You can be you have to be poetic with something else. It’s all about connections. It’s about relationships. When people say when people are by themselves, they never actually mean by themselves. It’s like no one’s actually by themselves. It’s just like you’re temporarily away from other people. I mean, this is Eugene Rosenstock. Hesse is one of his points in his cross of reality that that like we come into existence as a vow, not as an eye. Like people don’t. There we go. The baby’s asleep. We can turn the lights on. We don’t come into existence as a like this like autonomous person that then like goes out and like comes up with art or poetry or whatever. It’s like our children are only aware of themselves because like we acknowledge them as persons like that’s how they’re aware of anything. And then it’s like and you you come to know yourself through other people. So you’re never actually alone like you can’t be alone. Wait, so I’m the only one here who gave birth to myself. You should go to a doctor about that, Chad. Well, the interesting thing is, too, that, you know, it’s not really funny. But the funny part about that is we know this experimentally. If you don’t if you don’t touch children when they’re young, if you don’t have physical contact with they die, like for real. They stop being being without other reading on that. You want to do more reading on that? The psychologist Dr. Bruce Perry wrote an incredible book called The Boy Who Was Raised as a Dog and has all these different case studies of children who just haven’t had that correct parental nurturing relationships. It’s really challenging for sure. Like like like they can’t like they can’t walk like they don’t know how to walk and bizarre. Yeah, yeah, really weird stuff. You wouldn’t think you’d be like, oh, yeah, they don’t know how to talk. They don’t know how to move their body like they don’t know how to pick things like weird stuff like that. It goes it goes really deep. I’ve seen every single parent with an appropriately aged child, pick them up, hold their hands with their fingers and like force them to start walking. Crawling is just I think too convenient unless you’re forced into walking. I was trying to do that with their child today. You know exactly. Yeah, yeah, I don’t want to hold you anymore. You got to walk now. It’ll be better for everyone. Yeah. What is what were you going on about that with a banana? I’m still really curious because so I think it goes far field saving the appearances and I’m curious if that’s true. This this all goes back to a conversation I had over Thanksgiving with somebody who got noise coming in through somebody who said that, you know, if we had a powerful enough computer, we could simulate the entire universe perfectly. And I was just trying to brainstorm arguments. Look, look, if you met this guy at a grocery store, you would think he was a perfectly rational human being. You’d be able to cooperate with him in certain tasks. But then he says stuff like that, right? So, which is trying to figure out things that cannot be reduced to quantity because that’s all computers can handle is, you know, it’s like I say, oh, I can see Mark, I can see Ted, but actually, I just see an image of you guys, which is it nearly as cool as the real thing. So, you know, hopefully we can all go to Florida to see Peugeot. Well, and you can’t and how would you how would you prove that Ted is inestimably more awesome in person than he is on the screen? Like, how would you prove that? I have him fly in front of a helicopter and shoot you with paintballs. Shoot him with paintballs. Okay, better. That’s that was way better than getting shot with paintballs. I’m sad you missed it. Yeah. No, so this is really interesting. Have any of you guys read Owen Barfield saving the appearances by any chance? I want to. It’s a weird book. I have a hard time figuring out if his solution is like worth much of anything. But the way that his kind of first point is a really great one, which is essentially this that like there’s nothing embedded in this sense perception that you have that lets you know like that’s a tree. That’s a person. That’s a painting. But there’s a separate process between receiving like biological sense that he doesn’t really use this language because he’s in the pre computer era. But this is how we would talk about it. That like lead you to the conclusion that it’s a tree or a candle or a person or a dog. And so this like he actually calls the idea that the idea that those things are really embedded in reality in that way. Idolatry, which is interesting because I’m trying to move that into an Aristotelian frame and it it almost fits. It’s almost like saying that the efficient if the idolatry is like saying that the efficient and material cause contain the formal cause. Yeah. Well, but that statement is the same thing that Plato saw with the forms like Plato just resolves that with forms. Right. He played on Plato. The ancient Greeks understood this. Yeah, of course, there’s nothing inherent about the experiences that we have that, you know, apart from us has any part of the form that we have that we have to be able to use. You know, apart from us has any comfort in the world that doesn’t have any impact in the world. And therefore, the realm of forms must exist. And then and then and then Plato, Plato hits the limit. Right. Which to be fair, I don’t think anyone’s even come close to since. Right. Which is, you know, we must we must have been exposed to the forms like before we were people or something. And that’s how we know them. And then problem solved. And by the way, it’s tea time. And so let’s go do that. And he never touches it again. Right. And Aristotle and the quote difference, they don’t fight like one’s the student of the other. Jack, Jack, Lantern Jack talks about this. This is really not a war between Plato and Aristotle. There is some minor differences, stresses. But Aristotle just resolves how you know the forms differently. There’s a couple of other differences. That’s the primary sort of thing. Because the way the way Aristotle does it is he puts potential inside of you as well that could actually receive the forms the same way that the matter outside of you receives that forms. Yes, receive it after after coming into being. Whereas Plato just basically says, like, oh, you you you were in the realm of the forms before you were a being. And by the way, time for lunch. That’s the end of my argument, folks. We’re out of time and see you later. It’s fair. I get you. But I don’t think anyone’s gotten past that. And I think you’re right about Aristotle. I’m really right up on it. But yeah, and that’s the only difference is is the knowledge received after the fact or is it all granted or the potential to the knowledge granted to you ahead of time. And that’s really the only difference on that front. There’s other minor differences. This is really great because this is making me. Okay, yeah, all right. I’ll go. I’ll go. It’s my head here. So whenever you have an active knowledge, there’s a relationship set up between you and what is known and you have a real relationship to what’s what’s known to you. So it changes you when you come into knowledge, when you see that tree, there’s a change inside of you, which is you receiving intelligible content of the tree. And, you know, the change inside of you and all relations have to go both ways. And so the tree has a merely mental relationship with you, because by looking into it, you don’t change the tree. The tree changes you. And then we can also push that up into how we relate to God. But that’ll get a little, a little bit complicated. So yeah, yeah, in the world. So we change the tree on the tree changes us. And that’s a terrible message, but it’s also seems to actually work. How do we change the tree? See, Aristotle said we don’t. First of all, we give it tree-ness. But second of all, we affect everything around us, just as everything around us affects us. See, that’s the that’s the part Aristotle missed. It’s not a symmetrical relationship, but it is a reciprocal relationship. And that’s the like this is the problem, because this gets back to what Peterson says. Everything you do matters. The only way, the only possible way that everything, everything that you do matters is if you’re connected to everything. But also all the evidence that we have even from science, actually from physics, the actual drug, real business, they’ll tell you this. It certainly seems that way. Like we’re connected to everything because the entire basis of physics says the observer affects the outcome. Physics can’t get around that. They haven’t been able to for I think it’s been 120 years now. Right. So I mean, a way we could make this a little more practical is this is kind of the bedrocks of even physics is that right now I’m gravitationally pulling on Mark. Yes, now, it’s an inverse square relationship. So I don’t think we could measure it. But every physicist would say, I’m pulling on Mark right now. Yeah, that’s the part of it. And Philip, I’m pulling your leg right now. So in that case, yeah, it would be impossible to actually look at a tree without even having an infinitesimal effect on it. So in that case, yeah, it would be impossible to actually look at a tree without even having an infinitesimal effect on it. Can I ask another question? So where does memory, how is memory connected with change? Do I need to remember every like, almost everything I’ve ever seen somehow for it to change me and for me to change something else? I think I’m asking this Mark because you talked about the difference between learning something and memorizing something and that if you read a good book, it’s not so important to remember the name for the characters or whatever it will change you and that change kind of builds, change builds on to other change, builds on to other change. Is that what you’re talking about? I feel like you said that much more eloquently than I ever could have, Philip. Yeah, that’s true. Right. It’s the pattern that you care about. Right. It’s the pattern that helps you. The difference between a good story and a bad story, because I think the idea of fiction and nonfiction is actually completely crazy. It is whether or not it has a pattern that you can relate to either your personal self in the world. Like, in other words, if I tell you a story about how I, you know, I went to the grocery store and then I held up the grocery store, took all the money out of the cash register and left, there’s a number of problems with that. Right. You’re probably like, I don’t believe you, Mark. This doesn’t sound like a real story. First of all, grocery stores don’t have cash anymore. I don’t know if you’ve noticed, everyone’s paying with their stupid cards. Even out here in the in the woods where I live, I mean, all the grocery stores take cards and no one’s paying with cash. No one holds up a grocery store. That hasn’t happened in decades. Grocery stores don’t have enough money. You wouldn’t waste your time. So like, it’s not a believable thing. And so it’s not a true story. Right. But if I tell you a story about a guy that I knew who worked at a company that I worked at who robbed a bank, you can, you know, I mean, you weren’t there. You don’t know him. You really don’t know me. Right. You can relate to that and you can relate that to the world. And so that’s a true story. And it’s a true, true story because I actually worked with somebody who allegedly didn’t even go to jail for knowingly robbing a bank. It’s a company I worked for. It’s like what? Yeah, I worked for a bank robber too. Well, and that’s the thing. Like, yeah, you know, you can watch a movie like The Town or something. There’s a bunch of movies about Boston, the Irish mob in Boston. And they’re all true. And so I knew some people like that that were involved, at least partially. And that’s certainly no, no, no, no, no. That’s that’s that’s a slight dramatization. It’s not a it’s not much of a dramatization at all, actually. Right. And so it’s but it’s the pattern. It’s not that we were the only renamed this character when they retold that who cares. Right. And so we’re not the only ones who care about the sort of memorable the training data is what it would be called in a computer system. We call the training data right. Whether it’s a or not, because all machine learning is training data, not just a. Yeah, it’s a subclass. So it’s not so important, which is good because our memories are terrible. I’m talking to Sally Joe about this today. She’s like, you know, I never realized how much my memory sucks. I thought I remembered all these things. And then I came home to move back home a few years ago. And she said, now I realize, like all these events that I thought I knew what happened during them, I’ve got like five, six witnesses. This happened. And they all say the same thing. And my version is totally different. And it has occurred to me that maybe my version is wrong and their version is correct because your memory is terrible at that. But it’s probably not terrible at patterns. That’s what it seems like to me. I have no experimental data for this, but I certainly looks that way to me. Yeah. Yeah, it seems obvious. Tell you the truth. I have to agree with you there. Yes, it seems obvious. I mean, Mark, to your point, it’s a question of like, what are you remembering? Right. Because you’re, you know, what are you measuring? I think one of the things that kind of clicked with me just now, Father, Eric talk was I’ve been trying to understand what Barfield is saying, especially in the North Sicilian frame. And Aristotle and then Aquinas after him makes the distinction between what animal soul does and what the rational intellect does. The intellect does embedded in the rational soul and or as an aspect of a power of. I want to use the right words there. But what modernism did was it said that the action of the animal soul that is sensing the world around you is the same action as the act of the intellect, which is united, uniting to the it’s creating that mental connection to things. And when you don’t separate them out, then you can pretend that well, it’s just obvious that all these things are what they are. And that’s where you get into this bind of right early computer vision guys being like, oh yeah, like robots will just we can just tell it what a light is a light bulb is and then I’ll just know what light bulbs are because it’s obvious because we all know what light bulbs are. And like, in a sense, the computer is doing something much more like what the animal soul is doing. The sort of like sense perception and processing that is not at all the same thing as what the intellect is doing. It’s actually united to the object that it perceives. Father, does that sound like I’m kind of I’m kind of hitting it what Aristotle was getting after? Yeah, yeah, this this kind of ties back into something Mark was talking about a while ago. A uniting heaven and earth, the material and the ethereal. And that was poetry. Poetics. And I’ve yet to hear the poetry. I’ve yet to hear the song of the cow. Yes. Well, and I think and I think this is what I was saying earlier, too, about we’ve been we’ve been told, you know, this, you know, you can do anything. You can know anything. The other thing we’ve been told that is like so clearly a wicked lie and it is a wicked lie is that we know ourselves. What? No, you don’t. And that’s the hubris that you’re talking about, Ted, with these guys. You could show a computer a light bulb and I will know what light bulbs are because light bulbs are obvious. That’s because you think that you know what a light bulb is in an obvious way that is transferable to a computer. And I spent 15 years doing not that something way easier, which is trying to relate what’s called time series data. I’m not trying to relate time series data to prediction using math, using computers because I can’t do math, but computers can and they’re great at it. Right. And it just turns out that even that even if you digitize everything and bring it into the math realm, it’s nearly impossible. Actually. And that’s why when people are talking about AI, I’m like, guys, guys, guys, you can’t even do this with digitized data. And you want to do this with language? It’s never going to happen. It’s never going to happen. You’re not even close. You’re not even close to knowing how far away you are. Like, it’s ridiculous. But we’ve been told that we understand ourselves. And if that were true, we understood how easy it was for me to explain to you what a light bulb is. Right. And then all that changes. And you could argue when you consider an incandescent light versus a fluorescent light, you could argue that you’re not going to understand what a light bulb is. Right. And you could argue about a light bulb versus a fluorescent light versus a compact fluorescent light. And you can say, oh, well, they’re close enough. Maybe. But they’re not close enough to an LED. Those look completely different. Right. And then it’s like, but we all know that they’re light because of the quality of the visual experience. It has nothing to do with the physical property of the object. It’s obvious to us that we know what a light, well, of course, it’s a light. It’s like that’s an LED light to a computer. It’s so different. It’s so remarkably, amazingly, ridiculously different when you try to translate the physicality of an LED into math from the physicality of an incandescent or even a fluorescent or even a combined model of both that it’s pointless to even try it. Like, if you measured the mathematical difference, and you can do this, actually, it’s done all the time in computer modeling. It’s astronomically high. And I’m not saying that you can’t then train an AI to do it. You certainly can. But they’re doing a trick. They’re not actually doing that anymore. And, oh, by the way, AIs are just ridiculously broken. And you wouldn’t believe the number of problems you run into when you do that. Like, colored LEDs on your Raspberry Pi on your desk would not be recognized as lights if you trained with a white LED light like the one that I use here that is a light that’s not a light. That is much larger. Right. That training set wouldn’t work. And I know this because I’ve actually done the work. So don’t let’s not let’s not get silly about someone somewhere. Nobody’s going to argue computers here with you, Mark. But I know for a fact, it shouldn’t be done because I’ve actually done it. I’ve been doing AI type work for like 15 years. Like some of these people to talk about this stuff. I’m like, you clearly have not tried to do this. You clearly have not talked to anybody who’s tried to do this once because they were not easy. Like you go out there, you give that pitch, you know, how are you going to get venture capital for your new AI company talking like that? I know. But evil doesn’t exist. Exactly. Well, that’s the good news. Evil doesn’t exist. It doesn’t exist out there because Hitler isn’t resurrected. And so it doesn’t exist in you. And so you have nothing to fix. You’re good, man. And then why do you need to go to church? What do you need this religion stuff for anyway? See, Father, it’s all unnecessary work. Another four-letter word. Remember? We’re right back to the beginning. Beginning. We’re going to, I’m going to piece out. Internet is just going crazy tonight. You’ll have a lot. You’ll have a good time. Peace, Ted. You take care. Happy Advent. I have a question that might be off topic. But why do people always talk about Hitler and not Pol Pot? Because. Yeah. But OK. I’ll reframe the question. Why do smart people always bring up Adolf Hitler when Pol Pot was killing all the smart people, including anybody that wore glasses because it might be smart? Because Hitler’s white. You can’t say bad things about non-white people, Phillip. What are you, racist? But even Stalin. And it was funny because I forget who I was talking to in the past couple of weeks. And I mentioned Stalin and he said, well, Stalin killed way more people than Hitler did. And I said, well, yeah, but actually, they killed about the same number of people per year. He was like, well, I’m not going to kill anyone. I’m going to kill them. I’m going to kill them. I’m going to kill them. I’m going to kill them. I’m going to kill them. He was like, did the math, OK, yeah, you’re right. Yeah, they did. Just Stalin happened to be in power longer. That’s actually the only difference in their numbers. Which I just, you know, nobody realizes that. Right. Nobody realizes that. I hate that fact. It’s horrible. It’s awful. It’s awful. But it feels important to know. Yeah. It’s a complicated thing, right? There was somebody in the 1950s who said that when fascism comes to the United States, it will come under the umbrella of anti-fascism. I can’t remember who it was, but I want to go back in time and give him a Snickers bar because that’s exactly what’s happening. Well, and Mao. Mao kills more people than all of them. Like, and nobody talks about Mao. No one. And there’s people who just want to cover for communism. Like, that’s got to be part of it. Right. Oh, yeah. No, no, that is. Oh, yeah. I think that’s a big part of it. Well, communism won over fascism. And so they’re pointing at the fascists who killed all the people instead of all the communists who killed way more people. I don’t think that’s a coincidence, Philip. I mean, it might be. My spidey senses are tingling here. Because even the light. Also, all the smart people are convinced that communism will work out in their favor. Yeah. Well, and then when it comes time to actually, it’s actually really funny. I don’t think they believe it. Oh, sorry for interrupting. There were, it’s too long a story to share, actually. But basically, like, surprise, surprise academics who theoretically support communism and call themselves Marxist will not do anything to level the playing field when it comes to giving up some of their power to other people. Yeah, they won’t do it. Right. Right. Oh, yeah. They’re the least right. Well, it’s the renfair problem. You know, people do the renfair and they’re like, oh, yeah, this is living a better life. And, you know, most of them are dirty, smelly hippies. And it turns out that they cast themselves in the in the Middle Ages as the as the aristocratic class. They’re the nobles. It’s like you wouldn’t have been the nobles, guys. I don’t know what to do. You would have been the starving. This, this to me is like, OK, when they put a new development, a wealthy development in around here, they will put in as part of the covenant, no clothes lines. Drives me friggin nuts. You can’t have a clothesline in your backyard if you want to because it looks bad. And these are the same people that will go on and on and on about the environment and how horrible use wind and solar to clean their clothes. No, no, no, no, because you’re a redneck if you have a truck and, you know, like you’re the horrible, evil, dirty person. They don’t believe their own crap. No, they don’t. They don’t see it. Even I’m going to start ranting. No, Philip, you’re wrong. Evil doesn’t exist. We went over this in the beginning, Philip. You forgot already. You have a terrible memory. But I just want to say they’re silly, not necessarily evil. No, I mean, I’m not going to say that’s the worst evil, but being blind is not a good thing. And if it’s not good, it’s probably evil. Yeah. But then I’m the blind guy poking out the other blind guy saying, don’t you see this clothesline? It’s funny clothesline. That’s OK. At least you’re willing to poke. And I like what you said, Philip. I never thought of it that way. Yeah. The best, the best, most efficient use for solar and wind is a clothesline and they won’t use it. Like it’s way more efficient than trying to make electricity from either of those things. And they can afford to go to Italy and pose on the street with clotheslines everywhere. Isn’t this great? Look at these Italian clotheslines. Well, it’s funny, right? So it’s the difference between me living up in the Northeast and living down here. So up in the Northeast, a lot of the towns and cities in Eastern Massachusetts in particular, there’s an income level and there’s one primary income level and then maybe two secondary income levels. But there are towns in Massachusetts that have no poor people, like actually have no not even close. They’re all upper middle class or wealthy. There are towns like that. Yeah. My house on my 12 acres was less than $100,000.Thehousebehindme,whichisasubdividefromtheoriginallotthatmyhouseisoriginallylike40acres,theyownthewholething.Sothatthehousebehindme,whichissixacres,i{t}^{\prime }sIthinki{t}^{\prime }s5200squarefeetandh{e}^{\prime }sgottwootherbuildingsonit.I{t}^{\prime }sabeautifullot.I{t}^{\prime }sonlysixacres.I{t}^{\prime }slike$400,000. Okay, the guy next to the house next to his, the lot next to his is three and a half, maybe four acres. $60,000withadoublewithadoublewideonit.Thehouseinfrontofthat.Sonexttome,maybe,maybe110maybe,maybe.ThisisdowninSouthCarolina.ThisisdowninSouthCarolina.Yeah,inSouthCarolina.Yeah.Andthen,youknow,furtherupthestreet,ther{e}^{\prime }saguywh{o}^{\prime }sgot,youknow,alittlehouse,alittlegarageandthenabiggaragebiggerthanhishouse,whichisweird.Right.Likeyourgarageismoresquarefootagethanyourhouse.Yes,itdoes.Yes,itdoes.Priorities.Right.Buttha{t}^{\prime }savery,veryneighborhood.Imean,ther{e}^{\prime }speoplethatIknowther{e}^{\prime }speoplethatlivewithinwalkingdistanceofmyhousethatdo{n}^{\prime }towncars,probablybecausetheyca{n}^{\prime }taffordto.Iknowthisforafact.Right.Andthe{y}^{\prime }relivingrightnexttopeoplewhohaveplenty.Yes.Imean,andtha{t}^{\prime }snormaldownhere.Anditisnotnormalwhere{I}^{\prime }mfrom.Letmetellyou,theywouldbeterrified.Andi{t}^{\prime }snotlikeupinNewEngland,thereare{n}^{\prime }tstreetswherether{e}^{\prime }sthepoorstreetandthewealthystreet.Theydo{n}^{\prime }tmix.Right.Soliketheydo{n}^{\prime }tknoweachother.Theydo{n}^{\prime }ttalktoyou.Downhereeverybodytalkstoeverybodyelseandtheyallgotoroughlythesamechurchesandstufflikethat.Sother{e}^{\prime }salotofintermixingofsocioeconomicclassdownherecomparedtoupnorth.Iwouldarguenotenoughbecausecaniteverbeenough?Butatleastther{e}^{\prime }swaymore.Alongwiththat,dopeopletalkaboutmoneyinSouthCarolina?I^{\prime }veneverheardanybodytalkaboutmoneymuch.No.Imean,everyon{e}^{\prime }salot.Theydo{n}^{\prime }tflauntiteither?No.Well,NewEnglan{d}^{\prime }sactuallybetterforthat.Sothe{y}^{\prime }rereally,ifyoumeetsomebodyreallywealthyfromlikeawealth,likedowninNewEngland,ther{e}^{\prime }stheMayflowercrew.Ther{e}^{\prime }speoplewhotracetheirlineagedirectlyfromtheMayflower.Ofcourse,ther{e}^{\prime }stwotypesofpeoplewhocameovertotheMayflower.Theydidengenderedservantsandtheoneswhohadthem.Whocouldaffordtohaveengenderedservants.I^{\prime }mprettysureItechnicallycandothat.Yeah.Well,butther{e}^{\prime }salotofpeoplewholikeStateStreetBank.The{y}^{\prime }reallMayflower.Ther{e}^{\prime }salotofpeoplewhocare.Right.Butlikether{e}^{\prime }salotofgenerational,Europeangenerationalmoney,whichisunusualintheU.S.I{t}^{\prime }sbasicallydifferentbetweenBostonandNewYork.Right.ThenewgenerationalmoneycameoutofNewYork.Allthealltheoriginalgenerationalmoney,atleastintheNorth,cameoutofBoston.Butifyoumetthosepeople,youwould{n}^{\prime }tknowthem.Theydresslikenormalpeopleandyouwouldhaveandliketheymighthaveasetofskis,buti{t}^{\prime }dbeveryold.I{t}^{\prime }dbeverywelltakencareof.Youknow,sotheydo{n}^{\prime }tflaunttheirwealthupnorthatall.Forthemostpart,probablychangenow.No,Iwenttoschoolwithsomeonelikethat.Yeah.Iwenttohighschoolwithagirlfromoneofthosefamilies.Yeah.Andyo{u}^{\prime }reactually.AndIhadnoideauntilmymomtoldme.Well,yo{u}^{\prime }relesslikely.TheylikeownedtheRedSoxorsomething.Yeah.Downhere,the{y}^{\prime }remorelikelytoflauntthefactthat,youknow,Papiownedaplantationsortofathingforreal.Liketha{t}^{\prime }sarealthing.OrIownhorses.OrIownhorsesorsomething.Right.Sobutthe{y}^{\prime }renotmostmostofthemarenotsnootyaboutiteither.Right.So,yeah,ther{e}^{\prime }sdifferencesinhowi{t}^{\prime }shandled.ButmostofthewealthypeopleIknowwhohavemoney,especiallytheonesthatmadeitthemselves,the{y}^{\prime }reverygenerous.Youknow,andso,youknow,i{t}^{\prime }snotabigdealtothem.Butyeah,i{t}^{\prime }sthemiddleclassthattendstobelike,youknow,andthisisthisissortoflikethereagain,theydo{n}^{\prime }twantevilintheworldandtheyequatepovertywithevilforsomereason.Andtha{t}^{\prime }sthesamething,right.The{y}^{\prime }retryingtoexpungethatfromtheirlivessothattheydo{n}^{\prime }tseeitwithinthemselves.Yeah,tha{t}^{\prime }sthewholedisgustthing,right?Yeah.Youmakemewanttoputaclotheslineup,Phillip.Imissmyclotheslinerightnow.I{t}^{\prime }snotenoughdaylighthourstomakeitworthit.Yeah.BythetimeIgethomefromwork,i{t}^{\prime }salreadydarkandthe{y}^{\prime }redamp.Yeah,Ilovehavingaclothesline.Ohman,whenlike,youknow,midFebruarywhenthesuncomesback.Yes.Wegetsunallthetime.I{t}^{\prime }snotaproblem.Ilikeseasons.Ilikeseasons.No,wehavethreeseasons.I{t}^{\prime }sfantastic.Theonebadseasononlyeverlastslikeaweekortwo.I{t}^{\prime }sfantastic.Youdo{n}^{\prime }thavesummer?No,wehavesummer.Toomuchsummer.Tha{t}^{\prime }sthebadseason.Ido{n}^{\prime }tlikesummer.Ido{n}^{\prime }tlikeheat.Yeah,yo{u}^{\prime }rethesun.Yeah,yo{u}^{\prime }rethesun.I^{\prime }mnotlikeapopsicle.Yeah,Ica{n}^{\prime }t.Ica{n}^{\prime }tdoanything.Ica{n}^{\prime }tfunction.I{t}^{\prime }stoohot.Ithappenstopeople,Mark.Youjusthavetoacceptthat.Ipreferthewinter.Ipreferthegold.Ica{n}^{\prime }t.Ica{n}^{\prime }t.Ica{n}^{\prime }tconsiderlivinginaworldwithsuchcreatures.Sorry.I^{\prime }mdenyingittotally.Whatdoyoumeanfoundit?Goodness.No,becauseoncei{t}^{\prime }swinter,Icanworkontheblanket{I}^{\prime }vebeenworkingonforthreeyears.I{t}^{\prime }stooheavytoworkonduringthesummer,because{I}^{\prime }malmostdonenow.SoIhavelikeafullblanketonmylap.Tha{t}^{\prime }sgreat.Yeah.Tha{t}^{\prime }s,Ipulleditbackoutagain.Ido{n}^{\prime }tknowifyoucanseethepattern.W{e}^{\prime }llmakeyoubig.W{e}^{\prime }llmakeitbig.Oh,no,tha{t}^{\prime }snotit.Notthatway.Yougottoputherinthecornerfirst.Therewego.Therewego.Yeah.Yeah,i{t}^{\prime }sagoodlookingblanketrightthere.IstarteditwiththegoaloffinishingitbythetimeIgotmarried.Youknow,actually,itcouldbeworse.I^{\prime }macoupleyearslateonthatone,buttha{t}^{\prime }sokay.I^{\prime }malmostdone.Yeah,youcouldhavefinishedtheblanketandbeenlonely.So,Well,IstartedafterIwasengaged.Oh,Isee.Youjusthadhighexpectations.Ijusthadhighexpectations.Itwas2020.Iwaslike,Icangetsomuchworkdoneonthis.AndthenIdid{n}^{\prime }t.I{t}^{\prime }slikeIalwayssay,Emma,aimhigh,fallfar.Tha{t}^{\prime }sallright.ImademymomaChristmaspresentinstead.Itooklikethreemonthstodothat.Andthatwasagoodchunkofknittingtimethatwouldhaveotherwisegonetotheblanket.Mysistercrochetedmeafourthdoctorstylescarf.Thereallylongones.I{t}^{\prime }snotactually20feetlonglikeIthinkTomBake{r}^{\prime }swas,buti{t}^{\prime }stherightcolors.Shenailedthecolors,but{I}^{\prime }mnotgoingtocosplay.Tha{t}^{\prime }sgreat.No,thatyoushouldcauseit.Therewasather{e}^{\prime }saguythatcomestotheentrepreneurshipmeetingsonWednesdays.AndonWednesday,hewasliterallydressedlikeDoctorWhoandhehadthisbiglongscarf.AndIwaslike,dude,youlooklikeDoctorWho.AndhehadnoideawhatIwastalkingabout.Oh,mygosh.No,Idid{n}^{\prime }t.Accidentalcosplay.IhadtopullupTomBakeronmyphoneandshowhim.Itdoeskindoflooklikeme.I^{\prime }mlike,tha{t}^{\prime }swhatImean.Like,howdoyounotknow,Doctor?Tome,i{t}^{\prime }slike,howdoyounotknow,Doctor?ButthenIknowallkindsofBritishTVthatmostpeople.Yeah,Imean,thatone,Iwillgoaheadandexcusesomebodyforfornotreallyknowingthat.I{t}^{\prime }slikethemostsecondmostpopularfreakingBritishTVshowofalltime,especially.I{t}^{\prime }slikeyouwere{n}^{\prime }tevenonTumblrin2014.Iwas{n}^{\prime }tonTumblr.ThelongestTVserialintheworld,Ibelieve,too.Like,byfar.Justnotlikea20yearhiatusbetween.Right.Itwasonlyabout10years.Yeah,Ithinkitwaslike94to.2005.Yeah,itwas{n}^{\prime }tthatlong.Butitwaslongenough.Iheari{t}^{\prime }shot,flaminggarbagenowadays.Soitis.Yeah,I^{\prime }veheardsomethingonthoselinesaswell.Yeah,everythin{g}^{\prime }sbeeninfectedbythesame.Parasite.Ther{e}^{\prime }sthisdustupwithElonandDisneynowandpeopleareinTwitter.And{I}^{\prime }mlike,thisis{n}^{\prime }tconfusing.WhatElonsaysistechnicallycorrect.Thisishardforyoutounderstand.H{e}^{\prime }snotlike,arepeoplesurprisedthatElonpickedafightwithDisney?Hedid{n}^{\prime }tevenpickup.Ihadheardthatbefore,butIwas{n}^{\prime }tsurprised.Did{n}^{\prime }tpickafightwithDisney.Heactuallypickedafightwithalladvertising,likethewholeindustry.Itwaslike,yougo,boy.OK,I^{\prime }msurprised.Well,well,peopleweretryingtoeitherpeopleweretryingtounderstandit.Andifyouhaveaneconomicframe,thenyouca{n}^{\prime }tbecauseitdoes{n}^{\prime }tmakeanyeconomicsensethatfortheadvertiserstodowhatthe{y}^{\prime }redoingorforElontodowhath{e}^{\prime }sdoing.Although,yeah,h{e}^{\prime }sgotmoremoneythanDisney.Peopleareconfused.I^{\prime }mlike,no,heactuallyhasmorecashthanDisneydoes.Disneyislosingmoneyrightnowataremarkablerate.$750 million this year. That’s what they lost in cash? That’s what they lost. Oh, there’s no way it’s that small. There’s no way. Maybe they’re reporting they lost 150 in the movie division, but there’s no way. Sorry, I thought I said 750. You did say 750. 750? There’s no way it’s that low. They might have lost 750 just on movies. These are fake numbers. The park’s empty. These numbers are too big to be real. The park was their mainstay because they could have lost the movie. Because they could borrow money off it because it made money all the time. My understanding is their park attendance is garbage now. People have options like Dollywood, which I’ve been to twice, but it’s a wonderful place. And Harry Potter Studios in Orlando. There’s all kinds of competing experiences. Six Flags, there’s Carowinds here in South and North Carolina. There’s a bunch of stuff. And people aren’t happy with Disney and the people that actually spend money aren’t happy with Disney in general, partially because of the movies. And so they’ve actually lost park attendance. And then they had a fight with Florida. And now their park cost them more to exist. And some people were like, oh, they’re going to move to Georgia. And I’m like, do you have any idea how much money it would cost them to move? Yeah, they’ve got a ton of sun costs in Florida. They’ve been building that for years. Right. Oh, that’s right. And everybody’s mad at Florida, too. I forgot. Well, they pissed off. They pissed off Florida. Florida took away their tax exemptions. So now that park is costing them way more money than it ever did before. And their attendance is down. So I’m sure Disney is losing a lot more money than you realize. And I’m sure their numbers are going to get adjusted at some point. Someone’s going to realize how much money they’ve been losing. But yeah, especially with Marvel 3 being the like, what did it make? Did it make 250 million at the box office and they shut it down and it costs them way more than that just to make it? That’s not the total cost of the film. Because people always put in marketing. Right. It’s the marketing dollars. There’s other hidden costs they don’t talk about because everyone’s inflating numbers on everything. But yeah, people people have these very well, that’s the thing. Like they think you think you can understand Elon Musk’s rationale behind attacking all the advertisers that supposedly support Twitter. Do you think you can understand Disney’s rationale on ditching out of Twitter and demonizing Elon Musk? It doesn’t make any sense economically for them to do that because they would not win that fight. I don’t even understand why this is an issue. Disney doesn’t have a chance of winning that fight in the economic forum. They’ll get destroyed. So why do you have this question about it? It’s strange. So when you say Disney, who are you talking about when you say Disney? Like what do you like? Is it the head of the company? Is it the history of Disney? Like what is Disney? You bring in the easy questions, Philip. Yeah, I mean, right now it’s Bob Iger. I mean, everybody seems to think that if Bob Iger hadn’t ruined the company, put the other guy in charge as the fall guy and then come back, that somebody else could come in and fix it. But a lot of people are realizing, like you listen to critical drinker and some of his streams, you know, not as short videos, but the streams. And I don’t listen to most of them, but there’s some good clips, there’s some 15, 20 minute portions where there that a lot of the analysts are now going, yeah, but if you replace Bob Iger, you still have to fire a bunch of people. You fire a bunch of people who have been making, you know, been doing these bad things, right? Parasitic. Parasites. Parasites. You still have to get rid of the parasites. And you can’t just get rid of them, you have to replace them. And I think actually that’s the fundamental problem with the problem of today. This is the thing I was talking about earlier. I want to do an animation about. Everyone seems to think the solution to a corrupt structure is to destroy the structure. But like the evil of the world doesn’t care if it rules the structure and you’re subservient to it or you destroy the structure and fall into chaos. Because either way, the evil of the world wins. You know what I mean? And if you want to cast that as Satan, that’s fine. Right. So or Lucifer, however you want to say it. Lucifer doesn’t care if you’re under his dominion or if you’re in chaos, because either way he wins. And so the solution is, no, you actually have to revitalize or revive the structure. Right. And push out the parasites or the badness or the evil and replace it with goodness. Like it’s a lot of steps. It’s very hard. I’m not trying to minimize it. It’s sort of impossible not to minimize it in this setting. But that’s the answer no one wants to hear. Everyone’s like, you know, oh, and the Fed, you know, get rid of the government, right. The anarchists, right. Destroy the universities. Destroy the universities. Yes. Another good one. Although I never liked the universities. So I’m more on the destroy the university side. I’m sorry. But actually, it’s the wrong answer. I know it’s the wrong answer, but it’s still so tempting. Did you use, Mark, sorry, did you use Loki to explain this? Did I read that from you or hear that from you? No, Loki’s Loki’s a good Loki’s a better archetype for that, though, now that now that you say it. Because he’s he kept the structure, if I’m thinking of it right, and it took it on himself to save it. In some cases, I mean, he’s mischievous. Right. It’s just the way he’s described, which I think is probably an injustice in translation. But but but not too bad. Right. But but. Yeah, if he’s not at the top, when he’s not at the top, he’s just causing trouble that benefits him. And so in some ways, he doesn’t have a vested interest in being at the top the way a normal tyrant would. And actually, I think that’s that’s like the important missing archetype. Like the evil you’re fighting is more like Loki than it is like a typical Lucifer, Luciferian character that we would think of in the United States or in North America or something. Right. Because chaos benefits them just as much as corrupt structures or corrupt order. They don’t it doesn’t matter. It makes no difference as long as it’s corrupt. Right. Order or corrupt chaos. We’re good. They’re OK with it. Right. It’s like, ah, but I’m not like I’m still a no on all that. Oh, like, let’s have good structures run by good people. Right. And so that we don’t have this problem and we don’t have to worry about chaos. That would be great. And that’s why my mom and I should found a Catholic liberal arts college in Michigan. And that’s just the way of. Thank you. That was good. Oh, goodness. Yeah. Yeah, I’m thinking of take it back to the stream from a couple of months ago where we talked about the seminaries and how those were taken back. And. Part of what actually made that possible is the monarchical structure of the Catholic Church and Catholic institutions. And so I think of St. Paul’s seminary and the archbishop sends in Monsignor Callahan and he just kind of lands like a hurricane. And like within two years, there’s like 90 percent faculty change over just because he was there now. And I’m so glad I wasn’t in those meetings because they must have just been thoroughly unpleasant. But that’s that’s the guy that they needed. And, you know, St. Paul’s seminary is a much, much smaller, much easier to grasp institution than Disney. It might be at a certain point that there’s. I mean, what do parasites do? Parasites kill their hosts. That’s the difference between a parasitical relationship and a symbiotic relationship. And it might be the case that we’ll just take Disney that there’s enough postmodern nonsense. Parasitic on the Disney Corporation that it’s actually not recoverable at this point without going through a bankruptcy or something. Yeah, I don’t know if the culture would let it bankrupt. That’s what I mean. Who is Disney? Because Disney is not itself anymore. Disney is not their own. Disney is part of the culture war now. I don’t think I don’t think they would let it go. I don’t think I don’t think they would let Disney vanish. They would. Entirely, though. Yeah. Well, yeah, because you I mean, the problem is history here. So Disney in the 80s, maybe even in the 70s, but definitely that I know of in the 80s from from actual research. Disney in the 80s already convinced the federal government in the US that it needed protection and started that cycle of getting help from the feds because it was a big employer. And maybe there’s a better reason, but whatever from an economic perspective, that’s what it looks like. And that’s actually what actually Disney wanting protection is what led to the DMCA, the dreaded DMCA law, which is if you want an evil law like that’s a good kid. That’s probably the best candidate we have. Yeah, that and the other thing they did it around the same time. This is all I believe Bill Clinton, there is stuff just being an evil. They change the time frame for copyright law at this, you know, as part of this move. That’s all Disney. Actually, Disney is the big lobbyist. They’re not the only lobbyist, but they’re the big 600 pound gorilla in the room for the lobbying for that. That’s also evil. By the way, I can prove that can prove that it’s bad economic. I can prove that it’s bad culturally. I can prove that it’s bad politically. Like it’s just that’s another one that’s clearly there’s no frame you can take. We’re extending copyright law past where it was. It should be zero or anything crazy past where it was a patent law passed where it was is a good idea. Like we probably had it dialed in pretty well. You can argue about it a little bit, but they blew the they blew the bell curve on that. And it’s way out of whack. So that was all Disney. That was all Disney. But it turns out that Disney didn’t work. Right. And one of the one of the ways you know Disney failed is because of Seth MacFarlane. Seth MacFarlane is the most successful executive producer of all time or something. He used to work at Disney. So they had the most talented guy in media, actually, by any measure, by any measure under in their organization. And they couldn’t capitalize on it at all. And it wasn’t until he left and probably to some extent, you know, was one of the three factors in Fox becoming a juggernaut network. Right. Boy, did they take advantage of it. And so, you know, Disney failed and I think everybody knows that. So we gave you all this stuff, Disney, and it didn’t work. And there are enough people that know that story that understand that. And they’ve seen the knock on negative effects of bowing to Disney with DMCA and copyright changes that I don’t think anyone’s going to help Disney in the future. And I think the reason why they did it was guilt over breaking up AT&T to be quite honest with you. And there’s a lot of debate of that was a good idea. But it might have been necessary. And so breaking up Disney might also be necessary. And if they continue unprofitable as they are, it’s going to be a it’s going to be a problem because I like the federal government, they’re not going to bail out a single corporation with cash. They’re going to have a hard time doing the second bank bailout they’ve been trying for years. So I don’t know. We’ll see. And especially with Buffett opening his big mouth and saying that the federal government hadn’t bailed them bailed out the banks in 2000, he’d be bankrupt. It’s like, oh, well, maybe that’s a that’s a good hint that we shouldn’t have done it. Huh? Buffett? Maybe. Maybe. Yeah, I think I think what I’m trying to say, I think Disney will stay on as an icon, no matter if it’s successful or not successful. It’s the same way. It’s the same way people my age and older think, you know, like Jimmy Fallon is way more popular and gets way more viewers than Joe Rogan. Yeah, he’s talked about on local radio and CBC. And they quote him all the time and play his stuff and isn’t this great because he hates Trump or whatever. They’ll save the icon, but they won’t save the company. And I thought before they were saving both and now they realize that A, they’re not and B, they don’t have to. But what’s more powerful, though, the icon or the company itself? Definitely the icon. Yeah, companies are worthless. I think the icon. I think the icon. This container. The icon is way, companies have very little power. Very, very little. Companies go out of business all the time. All the most companies fail. Most most attempted companies failed in the first five years. Ninety five percent. Companies are a dime a dozen, basically, is what I’m saying. They really are. But good ideas live on. So like serial entrepreneurs, good serial entrepreneurs make money, make money, make money, make money. When they leave their companies, they tend to fail because that because they were the company. So there’s your icon. And so the icons, the person, not not the company companies that are worthless shell that companies are worthless shells. They can’t survive without animating and animating agents. Yes. Well, here’s an icon for you. And you have the Patriots right now that suck. And people are still paying like twelve hundred dollars for seats 10 years ago. He used to pay two fifty four. Philip, no one’s there. I saw the game today. So they’re there. You’re looking at the rich seats. No, no, no, no, no, no. I saw I saw a picture from the game today. No one was there from the first quarter because they’re all drinking. You know, you’ve been to know if you’ve ever been to a New England game, they’re in the concourse is drinking. No, no, no, no, no one showed up. Believe me. I know. I know somebody who sees and tickets. Really? No one showed up. People will keep their season tickets so that they have them later. They’ll spend the money to not go. Well, they sell them on the secondary market. And that’s the only way I can get tickets. And they’re just absolutely ridiculous for some for some games. For other games, they lose money selling them, but they’d rather sell them and somebody else enjoy them. But like no one was there a lot. But also people have season tickets. They aren’t poor. So if they don’t go to a game, they’ve already spent the money. They actually don’t care because to them, they’re just saving either 20 bucks for parking, 10 bucks in gas, maybe more in Massachusetts. For parking was last time you were there. No, no. Yeah. I mean, if you want, if you want in stadium parking, it’s more. If you want close to stadium parking, it’s only 20. Like I said, I know somebody I know somebody who’s here to get serious. He was up there this year. So it they but they don’t care to them. They’re they’re they’re not losing any more money by not going to the game. Yeah. And so and they’re not losing their time. And oh, by the way, we can check in on the TV. And yeah, I mean, if they if they hire the world’s worst quarterback and and and and the and the world’s worst backup quarterback, like apparently they they did, according according to the stats of today’s game, they somehow managed to hire like a useless backup quarterback, even though they apparently had an excellent defense. Like, my goodness, how the hell do you lose a game like that? You know, then no one’s going to show up. And yeah, I mean, those those people are wealthy, so they just won’t show up. And it was a lot of the sections of season ticket holders were empty today. So it happens. People don’t really show up anyway. They’re just so drunk. They don’t even know what’s going on. So annoying. Well, that’s the problem with those types of sports is that so you come down south, the national teams are they get no attendance. So the Patriot Stadium is like what? Sixty two thousand people, I think. Okay. It lowered since they put in the sixty two. I think it’s sixty two or sixty four thousand. Okay. It used to be sixty eight and went way down in Columbia, South Carolina, where I live. They have, you know, a college team. It’s William Bryce Stadium. Okay. The team in Columbia and University of South Carolina doesn’t ever win. I’m sorry. They just they don’t win. It’s terrible. They’re awful. Right. And college football is big in the South. It’s so big. Like I said, the national teams are hardly attended. That stadium seats eighty five thousand people. It’s not the largest stadium for college football down here by any means in the South. And so it’s like you look at some of the numbers like I was watching games on Thanksgiving with my uncle and I was like looking up the stadium size is no Michael. I like the other stadiums twice as many as the Gillette Stadium or whatever they’re calling it. How much is the big house? Is the big house twice as much? Give them. I think it’s a hundred and ten. Yeah, they’re probably close. Yeah. A lot of them are one hundred plus a couple of her one twenty four and I was like, oh, it’s like twice the size of the team. Yeah, it’s insane. It’s sorry. I was going to say I like the Boston College size like the Eagles Boston College Eagles football team. That’s a good stadium right there. Yeah. Well, and they’ve got a cool feature there too, because and my uncle told me this. I learned this over Thanksgiving. In fact, the hockey rink is adjacent to the stadium. Yeah. And then when they do a video for the games, they just literally turn around and so the media center that does all the recording is for both the hockey rink and the football stadium. And all they have to do is literally turn around and I was like, what? That’s not true. And I’m looking at the map and I’m it’s funny. I worked for Boston College for two and a half years. I wasn’t near the stadium, but I was like, I didn’t know that. That’s kind of a cool design. But yeah, they designed all that. That’s the crazy Jesuits stuff. Yeah. Oh, man. The best hockey game ever saw in my life just from the fans was at Boston College. Oh, man. They’re they’re awesome. Anyway, he’s a good game. Not as good as football, American football, but yeah, it’s all right. I’d rather watch hockey. Well, now with the Patriots destroyed, all football is his penultimate. They had something going for years there where they were just playing weird football that was really interesting. And now, yeah, I’d rather go to a hockey game. Thank you very much. If you’re going to spend the money. Well, because even even not because because my friend had tickets to the hockey team up in Manchester, New Hampshire, which is obviously not a big national team. Right. We’re down a grade. But those games are great. You get box seats for short money and really enjoy the quality of the experience. I can’t quantify it for you, of course. But yeah, a good hockey game, even even at the lower levels of play is actually a lot more fun. Yeah, that’s good stuff. Now we have video games. Well, and that’s the thing. Like we can participate in video games and learn the video game in this way. And that’s actually worse for us. We’re kind of subservient to watching the game or going to the game and watching other people play because then we get a sense of how much better people are at stuff. We are like I could not play hockey. You know, I don’t know, man. Have you watched speed runners? I couldn’t do that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah. Well, but but you can play the video game and be reasonably good at it. Whereas, again, like, you know, I’m never going to be reasonably good hockey player. I can be an adequate speed hockey player because I’m fast. But that’s about it. I can play risk really well, though. Like I win the computer risk all the time. I’ve been doing that for two and a half weeks now and playing a risk on my phone and just been trouncing the damn computer. I think I lost two games out of like seven seventy something like that. Seventy or so. Yeah, I lost a couple. It’s very sad. You need to you need to program a AI that can actually give you a challenge. Yeah. The moves they make are really dumb. I was like, yeah, I could probably out program this AI pretty easily. There’s a there’s a formula to be held there. But but but you know, and this is sort of like, should you engage in learning postmodernism? Right. Should you even engage in something like that? And I think that’s kind of based on there’s a game out there that I can play. I have a video on this, but you shouldn’t play every game like you shouldn’t. You shouldn’t play every video game even. You shouldn’t. You know, you shouldn’t play every musical instrument. You should, you know, and maybe somebody should fair, but you’re not that person. Probably. Right. And you need to have the humility to recognize. Maybe I’m not the person that can do anything, but maybe I’m not the person that can know all the musical instruments or or or understand postmodernism or even Karl Marx. You read Karl Marx and you made sense of them. I’ve got news for you. It’s OK. That didn’t happen. No, that doesn’t make any sense. And so, you know, when you’re oh, I wrote a book. It must make sense because why else would you read a book? Well, that’s a bad assumption. I think it’s more why else would someone else publish the book? And the answer is there’s a lot of reasons, actually. Why would all of these academics talk about this book as if it were important if it wasn’t important, Mark? Well, it is important, but they’ll admit they don’t understand. Well, and that’s the worst part. Right. It’s important, but we don’t understand. If you didn’t understand it, it actually probably isn’t important or at least. And the mistake is in assuming, Emma, I think, to your point. Well, obviously, I know why a publisher would publish a book because it’s good enough to be published. So obviously, it’s good enough to be read. And even if you reduce that down and you say, well, there’s an economic incentive, people wouldn’t read the book if it weren’t good. And it’s like, oh, people don’t read good books all the time and we garbage books all the time. Like, I don’t even like that. That’s just wrong. But everybody makes that assumption. I’ve heard people make that make that statement many, many times. And I’m like, do you have you do you think the world is perfect and publishers are perfect and they know what they’re doing? Because most people are. Yeah. I don’t know if I’m quite as pessimistic as you about the state of the world, but. Well, but we assume we know, like we assume we understand things that we like. You don’t understand how the publishing industry works. I’m sorry. Especially now, the publishing industry has changed so much in the past 10 years because of Amazon alone. There’s other factors. Yeah. It made publishing so much easier, which just increases the volume of stuff out there that looks formal and isn’t. Well, and I don’t know if you know this, but one guy and I don’t remember who it was. I used to follow this guy, too, but he started a service where basically you give them your book idea and they write your book for you. And you’re the author. And it’s like, wait, what? So it’s not even a ghost writer. Not even. Yeah. Because it’s not a single person. You’re using a formula. It’s I think it was 20 grand when I looked because I was like, oh, wait a minute. Twenty grand. I get somebody else to write my book. Oh, and then I realized there’s a billion. They’re not even. No one would even find my. Yeah. So, Emma, I think a positive span on what Mark said about most people are incompetent. I think a lot of people don’t know what they’re competent at. And they’re discouraged from knowing what they’re competent at. And they’re discouraged from having a job they can take pride in if that job is looked down upon by society. That is true. Yeah. Well, and also the other positive spin is, well, and it’s a tough pill to swallow. But despite our incompetence, things are working. There’s a mystery there that we can be grateful for. Like, why are things working so well? If like when I look at men, there are a company like I worked to Polaroid for years and on and off. And every day I go in there and sometimes within the same day, I’d be like, how does this company not have like 10 billion dollars? And then the next hour I’d be like, how is this company making any money at all? Because depending upon where you were in the company, because I was doing IT, so I got to see pretty much all the parts of the company. Like some of the divisions of that company were doing the dumbest things, wasting so much vast amounts of money. You know, and some of the divisions were just doing the easiest thing in the world. And they were just printing dollars. And, you know, it was just one of these things. And like I just fascinated on it all the time. Like, I don’t understand how they don’t have a lot more money. I don’t understand how they’re not bankrupt. You know, it really just never fit in my head. It never fit in my head. And the funny part was the smartest people weren’t necessarily the ones in the money making divisions. I mean, the money making division for Polaroid would be the place that made the most film that was selling, right? No, just so the way the company was built was they had two profitable divisions. Well, maybe three, depending on how you counted it. No, they had three profitable divisions, film, battery, because those two went together, although they had amazing battery technology. I don’t remember what the third one was, but like they made cameras and never made any money in the camera division. I mean, not they might have in the 70s, but like from the 80s on, I think somebody told me that they met the camera division, never made any money because they were there. It was a loss leader to sell films. So they didn’t have to make any money. And I can tell you the smart people by the time I was there were not in the camera division. And in fact, one of the people I know well worked there. She went into one of the imaging divisions because there was an imaging sectors cameras and imaging were separate, whatever. They made most of their. Oh, it was ID systems, right? It was identification systems. That was profitable. So the identification systems was this whole thing, but it actually encompassed a bunch of things, right? Because some of them sold films, some of them, right? Because it was it was a bigger, broader product product line. They couldn’t do proper pictures in Africa, in Asia, because of the way light worked on the camera systems. And she went in as somebody who knew nothing about the division, but she was actually very smart. I think two or three degrees. Very, very bright girl. Also gorgeous, stunningly gorgeous. Should have been a model. Engineering stuff was a waste. She went in and like asked a very simple question and they were like, no, no, that won’t work. You can’t fix the it’s a tone problem with differentiating tone when you’re not bouncing light off of off of off of. I forget the technical term, but basically it if it’s not neutral or sending out light, but it actually absorbs light, then there’s a problem differentiating tone with a certain tactic of film that they were using, including the digital stuff. But she didn’t know any better. So she started doing these experiments based on a hunch after everybody told her it wouldn’t work. And it actually worked. They adopted that. And it was none of the smart people that were working. It was none of the people at the labs at MIT that I service to actually knew stuff. They all said it couldn’t be done, but she was basically didn’t know any better and and fix the problem for them. So they were able to sell ID systems in Africa and China all of a sudden. It was a problem they had been trying to crack for 10 years before that. They couldn’t crack it. And so that actually made that it was a hunch. It was a hunch. And actually, instead of sitting down theoretically, tried to work it out, just going and making different kinds of film and lenses and taking a picture and seeing if that worked. Pretty much. It seems like participation is better than knowledge again. Well, and and and I know I know you probably pumped in time for you. But just before just before we go, the thing that I learned at Polaroid, but from the manager that I was a brilliant manager and a generally smart guy, very humble to. He actually told me something very interesting. He said. We at Polaroid regularly rewrite physics, especially at the battery division said they’re amazing battery technology. And I was like, you know, what the hell are you talking about? Like, does this sound real? Right now? Polaroid and MIT were like this like this. Polaroid had buildings on MIT’s campus. All right. And what he meant was the battery guys and the film guys in the labs were discovering things, were witnessing things in the chemistry that physics didn’t have an explanation for, physics said wouldn’t happen. And they bring those observations because science is supposed to work on observation and be judging differently. He’s lying, by the way. They bring those observations back to the MIT physicists and they would actually rewrite the physics to match the observation, because that’s the proper way to do science. And he tells you differences lying. They’re liars. Einstein’s the one that broke that, by the way, different stream. So so basically that that’s when I was like, wait a minute. You know what? And of course, I had access to all these people. I had access to the people in the labs. I had access to scientists who were who were coming up with the ideas. And I had access to the physicists at MIT. So that actually happened. That’s when I was like, wait a minute, this science stuff, it’s not all it’s cracked up to be. And I was young when that happened. I was very young when I worked there. So I was fortunate enough to learn that early on that. Oh, wait a minute, that the physics isn’t driving the world. The world is driving the physics and observation is driving the bus here, not the other way around. And so some of these inferences, while they may coincidentally be correct, that’s backwards from what science is supposed to do. And and you’re getting lucky. But most of the inferences from, say, current day physics just turn out are going to turn out to be wrong. And they have classically like classically scientific predictions have been wrong. Almost all of them and the ones that are right. Maybe, you know, you hear about them, but you don’t hear about all the mistakes. And what you won’t hear about is me mistakenly continuing this stream much past its its deadline. So thanks for tuning in. We had nice participation tonight. William Branch and Christ Brings a Sword were having their own conversation in the comments. And that’s just fine. It boosts my metrics here. So no problem whatsoever with that. So good night and God bless you all. Good night. See you.