AS235: Do We Live In A Simulation?

Transcript

This transcript was generated automatically and may contain errors — the audio is the record.

0:00:30 Thomas: Hello, and welcome to Atheistically Speaking. This is episode 235, and I'm your host, Thomas Smith. Alright, I'm coming off a nice week-long trip. I don't know if I could call it a vacation.

0:00:44 Thomas: Vacations are stressful for me. I don't know about you guys, but worrying about my podcast and about work and everything, pretty tough. Not to mention all the traveling and the making the flights and the different time zone and the what are we doing here and where are we going every day and what, yeah, it ends up being more stress than just staying home, but it was still worth it. I went to New York, we went to New York, it was mine and my wife's first year anniversary, as you might remember, and that was the trip we took on such trip, on said trip, I met up with first Eli, you know, Eli Bosnick on the show lots of times. Eli from GAM and from Scathing Atheist, I met up with him. He gave us a tour. It was pretty fun. And then it just so happened that also Cog Dis, Tom and Cecil, happened to be coming out and we all met up.

0:01:36 Thomas: So the reason I'm telling you this is I made some videos of Eli's terrible driving. And it was, it was about the funniest thing I've ever seen. I can't, he is the worst driver I've ever witnessed. He could not park his car. He apparently got his license in September and taught himself how to drive, so he's quite bad. But anyway, I made those available for patrons, so if you want to pledge a dollar or show, you can watch those videos on there. So that was my little bonus content. I hope you guys, there was a lot of comments saying they found it pretty hilarious, so I hope that you enjoyed that. The only other thing to note about the trip was we did some of the usual stuff, but we spent hours, just hours, in the 9-11 memorial, and I personally was blown away by it.

0:02:23 Thomas: I just think it's so well done. There's so much put into it. It's incredible. I've never—I mean, I think I'm the age—a lot of people, of course, were very affected by that. I'm in the age where I was in high school when it happened, so it was really formative for me. I don't know why. I mean, it was, I wasn't there, you know, I was nowhere near it, but just that being in the news for, you know, a month and then all the foreign policy created based on that and all the, it just, just, that was such a huge part of my upbringing and my developing, I guess, that being in the atmosphere. So it was really cool to go see where it actually happened and, and go through the memorial, which I think was so well done because it's very easy for those things to be bad.

0:03:12 Thomas: It's incredibly easy for tributes to be bad, for funerals, for any little mistake you make or any corniness or anything like that. I mean, it just feels so rotten. It just feels like... I'll give you an example. When I went to a funeral once, In addition to the giant, ridiculous Jesus statue that was, it was a Catholic funeral, and there was a, it wasn't just a normal Jesus statue. It was a giant, cartoonish Jesus statue, that I can't believe anyone could take seriously. There was also some really bad off-key singing of Danny Boy, and that, that'll ruin a funeral for me. I don't know about you guys, but that was, it It was like, ah, just, can we just be here quietly?

0:03:59 Thomas: Do we have to have this happen? So it's very easy to ruin those kinds of things to make them corny or bad or, you know, whatever. But I personally, I just felt like this tribute was so cool and it goes through all the timeline of everything and has a bunch of documents, a bunch of, and has, you know, fire truck ambulance that were damaged by the, by the buildings and everything. It's, it's incredible. So I recommend it to anyone who's traveling to New York in the near future, but enough up about my little trip. It was so fun meeting Tom and Cecil. They are great guys. So many people have said they look the opposite. Like Tom, Tom looks like how Cecil's voice should be or vice versa. And I have to say, I agree. I actually had the hardest time before I knew him of remembering like, okay, who, which one's which here for some reason, like they look like Cecil, but they look the opposite of their voices.

0:04:48 Thomas: But in any case, they're both very cool guys. I like them a lot. We spent a lot of time together and I got far too drunk. So there, there you go, there's my vacation in a nutshell. Now let's get on to some Tom and Terry, huh?

0:05:07 Thomas: All right, why don't I just start with a confess your unpopular opinion, just for fun, just quick, 30 seconds. I never understood Prince. I don't get it. I'm sorry. I'm not saying anyone can't be missing Prince, and I'm criticizing anyone for their love of Prince. I'm, not at all. That's fine. More power to you. I've never been more confused, though. I have never been been more confused. Prince died, and I can't think of a single Prince song. I think I've heard like three, and they were incredibly boring to me, but everybody worshipped this guy. It is really confusing, and to the point where they did a whole Saturday Night Live where they just like talked about him. They don't do that for anybody.

0:05:54 Thomas: That was crazy, and so color me confused. Just, just wanted to put that out there in case anyone was as confused as I was. It's been a disorienting three days of nonstop Prince. Very weird. I guess it just goes to show when it comes to music, I am 100% out of touch with virtually every other human on earth. So that's, uh, there you go. Just, just moving on. Just wanted to mention that in case anyone felt the same way or, or if you want to yell at me for missing something when it comes to Prince, that's okay too. All right, moving on to more serious topics, I wanted to talk about something I've been seeing everywhere lately. It's kind of weird how these things come in waves. One thing I've seen is an article shared that the title of which is "Neil deGrasse Tyson Says It's Very Likely the Universe Is a Simulation."

0:06:45 Thomas: I can't tell how much tongue-in-cheek that is, but I think he did present the argument, and the conclusion of the argument is that it's more likely than not. But simultaneously, and seemingly completely disconnected from this, Sam Harris had a guy on his podcast by the name of David Chalmers, and though the focus was on consciousness, they also talked about the idea of the world being a simulation, the universe being a simulation, and I just thought it was odd, so I've been hearing it everywhere. And I just wanted to give my counter-argument to this. I have no idea if it's original. I doubt it. Nothing's original, but I keep hearing this. Well, here's the argument. Let me lay it out for you guys. I keep hearing it over and over.

0:07:31 Thomas: If one day, it's likely that we will be able to create simulations of universes. So, that seems pretty non-controversial. It does seem like one day we will be able just do that. We can simulate a great many things right now. Video games are practically simulations. And if there's no magic to consciousness, if consciousness isn't some magic God-given thing and just arises given a certain amount of information processing or it's an emergent property of minds and all that. If that's true, which a lot of naturalists think it is, then there could be consciousness in these simulations.

0:08:17 Thomas: And since these simulations will be a dime a dozen one day, we'll be able to just do this with given our infinite computing power and all this stuff. The number of simulations, therefore, will vastly outnumber real universes. And the conclusion is, therefore it's more likely than not that we are in a simulated universe. Now, I don't know if I just blew your mind. I don't know if you want to take a hit off a bong first and then think about that and just go, whoa. But I mean, I think what my problem with this has has been that I've heard so many people talk about it just uncontroversially, like, yeah, we can't poke a hole in that argument, and it seems to me to be a terrible argument.

0:09:03 Thomas: I don't understand, and here's why. We're using the universe we're in to draw conclusions and then apply those conclusions to the real world. It's kind of a bait and switch, I think, because we say, okay, based on the universe we're in, the following things are true. We make simulations, we can make simulations. One day we'll be able to, whatever. And even if you agree with all that, I do agree with those conclusions. I think we will be able do something like simulate a universe in some way someday. I mean, it could take a hundred years and could take vastly more computing power than we even think is possible now, but I'd buy that and maybe it takes a thousand years. Years. But then you can't use contingent facts about our universe and then apply those and say, well, therefore, we could already be in a simulated universe because then you're bait and switching.

0:09:55 Thomas: Because, think about it, let's take like a video game as the closest analog we have right now to a universe simulation, which it's not terrible. I mean, something like, I don't know, The Sims or something like just one of those, I'm not a big gamer to be honest with you, but one of giant games that just you could play for a billion years and never stop playing. It's getting, it's inching closer to a simulation. Let's assume one day those NPCs in that game, pretty much have full consciousness, like we're able to actually create beings along with the universe. And then imagine those beings reflecting on their surroundings. It would be entirely contingent upon what we decided to do with that simulation.

0:10:41 Thomas: I mean, it could be a simulation where we made Harry Potter real and like all the magic that's in Harry Potter would be real, or it could be Lord of the Rings or something. And they would come to the conclusion that no, there's... there's no such thing as a universe simulation where there's orcs and stuff. There's not computers here. It's completely dependent on the model that we already made, so I can't use my surroundings now to say, oh, in the real world, they can also do these things and then therefore conclude I'm in a simulation. It seems to me to be obviously fallacious. Let me know if I'm missing something, but what is really bothering me about this is I don't hear anyone talking about the downsides of this argument that I've heard. I mean, every time I hear it, it's like, well, you don't have to believe it, but it's really hard to disprove.

0:11:31 Thomas: And it strikes me as not very hard to disprove. Because it's just, what if I said, oh, I believe that the real world has magic, and they used magic to create simulated universes. But in the simulated universes, they didn't want to have magic. They wanted to see what a universe would be like without magic. And therefore, in that universe, there were beings which invented computers. And then we use that. So, let's say that's our universe. Then we use those facts about the universe to say, well, we can create a bunch of simulated universes on computers. That wouldn't mean anything. It wouldn't have any relevance to the actual real world. We can only reason about the real world if we are in the real world.

0:12:18 Thomas: And there's some complicated philosophical possibilities there. Like there may be... Necessary truths. There may be necessary logical truths that go between universes or that would be true in any universe. I'm actually, I'm personally unsure about that. Could we not simulate a universe in which logic didn't work the way it works in our universe? I mean, wouldn't we be able to? But anyway, that's a separate debate. But what I'm very sure of is we can't just take our current surroundings, reason based on that, on what the real world is like, and then say, therefore, this could be a simulation because we've baited and switched, I think. So, I just wanted to put that out there because I don't hear anyone making a similar argument.

0:13:05 Thomas: Now, maybe it's because there's something wrong with my argument. I'm happy if you want to point that out, but I can't think of anything. But just quickly to finish this up, I would also recommend checking out that podcast because that is my favorite kind of podcast. Just talking about philosophy of mind and like, what is consciousness? There's nothing more mind blowing to me than the hard problem of consciousness. I'm not, I just, it's one of those things where I really have no idea what I think. Like, I can't even, I could listen because I've read Dan Dennett's books. I've read some other books. I've listened to this podcast where they, Sam and his guests come from a different point of view. They think that Dennett, because Dennett's belief is that the hard problem of consciousness is not really a hard problem.

0:13:54 Thomas: We've shown that these, the quality of consciousness, that that property emerges from when you have the following things in the brain, et cetera, et cetera. It's a very, very complicated view. I'm not going to be able to summarize it. And actually, neither did they. They didn't do a great job of it either. But let it suffice to say, Dennett believes there isn't really a hard problem of consciousness. Well, just in case people aren't familiar, maybe I'll try to summarize it briefly. Technically, the hard problem of consciousness is why it is like something to be me or to have an experience. You know what? It's not like something to be a rock, we don't think. I mean, no one that I know of and certainly no one with a major following believes that it's like something to be rock.

0:14:40 Thomas: There's no inner experience of a rock or an object or anything like that. But for some reason, when, the way our brains are, whatever, or certain animals too, it is like something to be us. And it gets so difficult because when you think, you know, why is it like something to be a computer?

0:15:02 Thomas: I mean, computers do a lot of the things that we do and it's getting even more so. Computers are processing information, they have multiple processes going, like sensory information. They can detect things. I mean, you could make a solid argument that a computer with a certain level of complexity would have some sort of experience, but then the question, what is so mind-blowing to me, is that like, well, how would you possibly draw that line? How would you say, okay, you know, a fax machine, that's got no consciousness, but maybe once we build some super complex Android that can do all these things. And then it would seem like, oh yeah, maybe it does have consciousness, but where, when would that happen? Like what is the requisite number of processes or information capability or whatever it is?

0:15:50 Thomas: It is so cool to me to think about that stuff. And another thing I really enjoyed about that show was thought experiments like, okay, if I'm comfortable with the idea that someday we'll be able to map everything in the brain and therefore we'll be able to, like, make a copy of our brains and put it in a robot. Let's say we take that as a given, which I think could happen. I mean, it seems to me we could eventually mirror all those processes. And furthermore, we can make them better with better technology. That seems to be pretty reasonable to me. But anyway, assuming that's true, what happens when you put a copy of your brain in a Robot? Is that you? I mean, do you perceive those things?

0:16:36 Thomas: Now, the easy answer, I think the intuitive answer is no. I mean that would be like a copy of you. It would be, like, if you had a twin, it would be that. If all of a sudden you had twin, you know it's not you, like you're a different person or whatever. And then the thing that blew my mind about that podcast was Chalmers said, well, okay, what if we, instead of that, we take bits of your brain, so let's say like, I don't know, a lobe or a cortex, but I don't know much about the brain, but let's say we take a little part of it, like a little process, and we replace that with a computer chip or whatever it would be, whatever the equivalent amazing Android technology would be. And we slowly do that over a period of time. And eventually, and throughout the whole time, you're saying, yep, no, that's me. I'm, I'm me still.

0:17:22 Thomas: I'm still experiencing this. And then eventually you get to where you're a full fledged Android. There would be no difference, no material difference that you could possibly identify between the first android we talked about where you just put your brain in there and you still existed. And now this one, eventually, if you replaced all the parts, yet in the second example I gave, it seems like that that would be you. Like, I could imagine, I mean, there are examples of people who lose half their brain, they still seem to be them. It's hard to tell, you can't really prove it, I I guess, but you can imagine losing a tiny part of your brain, and maybe someday, like a limb, when you lose a limb we can replace it with a prosthetic, maybe someday you lose a part of your brain we can replace it with a little bit of a robot brain.

0:18:09 Thomas: That seems easy to grasp. It seems like, oh yeah, okay, or maybe we can give ourselves more memory or something, you know, we can install some more RAM in our brains. It doesn't seem, intuitively you don't think, well, that would make me not the same person. I would no longer be me. I wouldn't be conscious. It would be a different being.

But like I said, once you do that in full, slowly, but surely, you're completely an android and you'd be mechanically indistinguishable from the android of the first example. So that blows my mind. I really don't even know what to think. I love thinking about it. I can't even come to a conclusion. I might have to go back and read Dennett's books again. It's been a few years, but really cool stuff. So I recommend listening to that. I just wanted to talk about the simulation argument because I find that one so weak, but there you have it Alright, well, I want to talk about both comments and address some stuff from last week's show on the gender pay gap. As usual, that's quite a contentious issue and got a lot of comments on it, but I want to commend people for being pretty peaceful with their comments, or being pretty calm and rational with their comment. I didn't see any harassment or fighting or anything, which is what I like. I don't care what side you're on.

If you can present your evidence and do it in a way that's not threatening or harassing or overly hostile, then I'm happy to hear you out. And I have. I mean, I've gotten several comments on it. And it appears as though one thing I want to talk about is the soccer team issue is quite a bit more convoluted than, maybe I made it out to be, um, so it was a little misleading of the source I used,

0:20:09 Thomas: And actually a lot of them, because I always check more than one source, but several sources had the same thing, so sorry for that. But they just tended to capture one year of the female soccer team versus the male soccer team in terms of revenue. The only problem is that they play the World Cup in different years, and that's what generates most of their revenue. But it is true that the female team did generate slightly more revenue in the last year. And I mean, that still is, even if it's just one year out of four that they do that, I mean, it still shows that the discrepancy shouldn't be absolutely huge. But so I've read a billion sources now trying to get these facts straight because I wanted to make sure I get everything right and I appreciate comments when I miss things.

0:20:58 Thomas: I really do. I want to make sure I get things accurately to you guys. So the most recent Women's World Cup Final, USA vs. Japan, got more viewers in English, which is important, it got more viewers than the previous men's World Cup final, which I guess is in 2014. So I think it was 2015 for women's, 2014 for men's. I don't follow soccer. Sorry. So I don't know. When you factor in Spanish language viewing, I think the men's was close or maybe right about there, right about the same. So viewership is very close. Now there's different factors in there. The women's, the US team was in the finals, whereas the US team and the men's was nowhere near the finals.

0:21:46 Thomas: So they, or yeah, I don't think they got very close or there might've been quarterfinals or something. But anyway, that makes some sort of difference. Certainly when we're measuring English viewers, that'll make quite a big difference, but it does go to show that viewership is not that much different for these specific events.

Now, obviously, if you factor in non-World Cup teams, so just soccer playing your everyday or your seasonal leagues that, again, I don't follow soccer, I don't know much about, but, of course, men's are far more popular and they make gajillions of dollars doing that. But setting that aside, because we're just talking about World Cup and Olympic team salaries.

One thing that is interesting, I found a good article that brought up a point I hadn't really seen before, which is, yes, even though viewership is like higher for women and the revenue lately, the revenue from the recent World Cup is comparable, Men to women, so those are two things that would indicate, oh, sure, then the salaries ought to be equal-ish. Um, where the big difference comes in is sponsorship. So the men's team in the Men's World Cup just gets vastly more sponsorship than the women's. And that's where a lot of that extra money comes in. And I don't know what to say about that because I don′t think it's quite as easy a case of, oh, well, that's, you know, surely that's discrimination.

We're not paying the women a certain... Well, if the men are getting these sponsorships and the men's tournament is getting all that extra money, it's it's kind of hard to say that the women should get more paid more when the money isn't there. Someone might argue, well, they should do some, like, revenue sharing to make it equal, but that's, that's kind of a tough angle, I think.

0:23:34 Thomas: It would be really hard, I mean, the men would obviously lose their cool over that, over the fact that, you know, their tournament brings in all this money and then they have to split it with a tournament that doesn't bring in as much. And then it might get difficult to get the men on the team. I don't know. It's very complicated. One thing I found kind of funny in a, not a hilarious way, but funny in an odd, coincidental, maybe a bit of irony way. One place they really complained about was this per diem. So there was like a per diem amount. And then I think there was another rate that involved that, like for food, lodging, that kind of thing. And the men were getting more at that. And some of the women were complaining, well, what, do we not eat as much? Or something? Like, how can you just say that our per diem is less?

0:24:21 Thomas: Well, it turned out that the men had negotiated for their per diems. The per diems used to be equal a few years ago, but the men negotiated for theirs to bump up, and the women apparently didn't. And so I thought it was funny in a coincidental, maybe sad, maybe weird way that the very thing they always talk about, oh, men, men, you know, men bargain and they negotiate their salaries and women don't. That very thing was responsible for this discrepancy in the per diem. And then I started thinking, well, how interesting is it if you're going to keep those equal, which actually people speculate they will just raise the women's because it's actually not very much of a cost. So I'm sure now that it looks terrible, they'll probably just say, oh, yeah, increase it by the 50 bucks or whatever it is.

0:25:10 Thomas: It's a pretty minor cost. But then I thought, how funny is it then that the women, if you're going to keep things equal, the women sort of benefit from the men negotiating theirs higher because then the discrepancy gets higher. And then you start thinking like, well, why is that how it works? Why wouldn't the women be able to negotiate higher and then the men would benefit from that? It's kind of a bizarre thing to think about. To that article that talked about the sponsorships, it is really interesting that the sponsors are so much higher for men, because on one hand, I get it, I think most men's sports are accepted as being more exciting, but this article was pointing out that no, the women's was really exciting, and it had the higher viewership for that year versus the men's World Cup.

0:26:03 Thomas: Up. And even if you take all that into account and say, well, they're roughly equal, why would the sponsorship be so different? Because it's vastly higher. And I don't know what we can do about this. You know, can we force sponsorship upon, because that sort of sponsorship is sort of a free market thing. It would be, I don't know how we would do that. I guess we can hopefully change the culture and change the feeling and the zeitgeist so that more companies want to sponsor women's sports at a higher rate. That would be something we could try to do, but it just brings up interesting questions about women's sports in general. My feeling on it is, and I've said this before a little bit, I do, for whatever reason, I have a limited amount of energy to put towards sports.

0:26:49 Thomas: Now I do watch hockey. There is no women's NHL that I know of. There's women's Olympic hockey, which I kind of watched a little bit of, but I have a very limited attention span for sports. And just to give you my data point, I don't know what yours will be because women's sports are vastly less popular than men's. For me, my personal anecdotal data point on this is I just have a limited time. I just want to see who the physically most gifted is. Like I want to say, I mean, that's why I watch the men's hockey. I want see who's the best. I'm I'm not really interested in a comparable, which might be just as exciting, by the way. The women's hockey, I'm totally granting it's probably just as excited. It's probably really cool.

0:27:36 Thomas: Their level of competition is, of course, going to be relative to them. But I just, I think the tiebreaker in most viewers' minds is, well, the men are, you know, bigger, they're stronger, they're faster, whatever. That's the tiebreaker. If I have the time to pay attention to one, it's going to BE them. And I think that even though it might not be that big of a discrepancy there, that causes all the difference, you know, because it's everybody, I think, saying something like that, or I shouldn't say that speaks for everybody, but it could be a lot of that going on, and that's why the sponsorship dollars are just vastly, vastly bigger on the men's side. So I hope that clears it up a bit.

0:28:21 Thomas: I do think the women's salaries still need to be negotiated higher in order to be a closer percentage of the revenue and all that. So that's interesting. I think the case will be interesting. They're negotiating right now. Definitely the per diem should go up. Of course, it doesn't make any sense for it to be lower for women than it is for men and all that kind of stuff. But I do think that the article I was referencing on that last episode misrepresented it a little bit. I think there's a New York Times article I will post that goes into it in a far more unbiased way. And you guys can kind of make the decision for yourself. But all this is to say, like to get back to the gender wage gap thing. I have always said, and I said on last Monday, I have a problem with the 78 cents to the dollar figure because it doesn't really make sense and I thought Miss B did a good job of sort of picking that apart and saying, well, here's what it means.

0:29:19 Thomas: It still means something and it does. It still means that women, their median salary is less that percent of men's, but my problem is always when you just say like, oh, for like two people, a man and a woman in the the same exact job, a man will make a dollar and a woman, a woman will make 78 cents. I mean, that's just not really what that means. But there is still a pay gap when you adjust for everything. I think it's somewhere from four to 8% still significant when you just for job type and all that. And there's, there's all kinds of evidence that I could have gotten into that I will reference now, which is like resumes. When you just do blind resume tests and you send in the same resume with a man's name and a woman's name, the results are shocking.

0:30:08 Thomas: The men get far more calls than the women do. And it's stuff like that where it's like, well, I mean, that's discrimination. I mean there's no other way to paint it. So that happens. It happens a lot. I think it's wise to maybe not try to use the 78 cents thing to like overstate what might be happening because so much of that is due to job choice. It's not equal pay for equal work per se. So that's where I land on that. I hope I cleared that up a bit. And now I want to get to some of your comments on it. First, I want to address a comment that I think is a pretty big misconception here, and I just want to address it just in case anyone else thought the same thing. So, Phil commented, "The median income of women working full-time is 77 cents to the dollar of a man working full time, and the premise of the podcast is that this is a bad thing."

0:30:59 Thomas: So far so good, but what is the cause of the gender pay gap? From your podcast, this is the part I don't understand, so maybe we'll go over it. From your podcast, the premise seems to be that women are treated unfairly in the workplace. And that's the like, but I don't think that's what we said at all. I mean, what we said was women prioritize jobs where they need more flexible time because of having children, starting families. Maternity leave complicates that. It sets them back in their careers. I just wanted to clear this up. I think that, Phil, was a bit of an unfair representation of what we discussed on this show. There's a lot more in Phil's comment. I think one thing to maybe look at is he argues that FMLA being paid, like for a baby caring, when you have a baby, maternity leave, that sort of thing, that being paid is actually unequal.

0:31:56 Thomas: So he's saying equal pay for equal work is one thing, but getting paid to not work because you're caring for a child or a spouse or whatever, that would be unequal, that That would be unfair because you're not working. My problem with that now, I don't know about caring for a spouse or a parent per se. I'm not going to give an opinion on that. I haven't really thought about that too much, except to say that that would fall equally on men and women, I would think, barring the differences in tendency. That would Be a benefit that would be available equally to men and woman. In. So if we made it paid versus unpaid, that's not going to create an unfairness. So I'll just focus in on maternity leave because that's, I think, what the point of your thing is where you're saying, how could a woman get like 12 weeks off or maybe even more?

0:32:49 Thomas: In some countries, actually, I got some email, by the way, of people in different countries saying, whoa, in our country, you get like a whole year and it's paid. So, I don't know what you're even been talking about. And there you go. I think that's been a big Bernie Sanders point in this election is why don't we have paid maternity leave? That's something everyone else has. And apparently he's right because I got those emails. So my feelings on this, and I don't know if I stated this all in the podcast. I actually don't think I did. My feeling is I've noticed that women are the ones who have to give birth to the child. So I've just figured this out recently. And no, no, and I think that's, I mean, that's just an accident of biology. That's a, maybe accident isn't the best word for it, but that's just how things are.

0:33:37 Thomas: And I think it's, we're at a place in our society where we don't have to just put up with that. We don't have to say, well, because we evolved so that women are the ones who give birth, Then, therefore, women have to stay home. They have to not care as much about their careers. They have to be able to take jobs where they can be flexible and go home and do the job. I don't think that's... I think we can shoot for better. That's my personal philosophy. I think if we were a country on the brink of starvation, if we had hard times like that, if it was just devastating economic circumstances, sure. Then maybe it would be a different story where, okay, we don't have the money to pay for this benefit.

0:34:23 Thomas: And that's possible. I mean, if you're in dire straits as a country, you may not have the money to pay for something, even though it would be really good idea. I think because the US has such a high GDP, we, I mean there's different measures of economic success, but we do have a lot of money. We have a tremendous amount of GDP and tax revenue and all that. I think we could put some of that money toward balancing the unfairness that nature has handed to us in that women have to go through all these things. I think women's health care as regards, you know, tampons and pregnancy tests and pads, anything else that involves something that women have to do that men don't just because of biology, that should all be free. That should all be covered.

0:35:08 Thomas: We should pool our money. And it's not free. I mean, somebody pays for it, but we pool our money. Men and women together, we pool our tax revenue. And that one is 50-50. I mean, seriously, I mean I don't know why we would not want to do that. I mean especially when stuff like birth control, that's such a big impact on someone's life when they can't get birth control or they can get a good form of birth control. That is such a negative impact and if they have an unwanted child that's a negative impact on society. So stuff like that, that is my philosophy on this. I just want to say, I believe we, since we are a country that is successful, has all this money. I mean, I wouldn't say extra money, I guess, but we kind of do. We put tons of money toward crap that I would never care about and that most of us wouldn't care about, military contracts that are inflated and just terrible and wasteful.

0:36:04 Thomas: Since we have all the money for that, maybe we can afford something noble and good like this. And then, what would a comment show be without a brief Mike Papps comment? So, Mike Paps says, as far as maternity paternity leave, I oppose the enforcement of such things by the government full stop. We have no shortage of people and shouldn't be encouraging people to have babies, particularly people who can't afford to take time off from work to have them. Having a baby is a luxury. If you can't it, don't do it. No, no, I don't think that's a good argument at all. So, So here's the thing that that's an easy argument for a man to say, because having a baby doesn't affect a man. You can just, you can just have a baby and then the women, the women do it.

0:36:50 Thomas: They do all the, they do all this staying home and the being, you know, caring for the sick child and do it like, that's just an easy thing for a man to say. I personally agree that we're doing fine on population, but that's not the case. That's just not our society. We don't live in a society where we're discouraging people from having kids and all that. We already live in the society where having kids is somewhat encouraged by the society. There are certain benefits. And I would say that having kids is just something that most people want to do. That's fine if you don't. I'm not saying you're weird or anything. I think it's really cool when people don't want to add to the overpopulation of the planet. But most people, that is a pretty fundamental building block of the United States.

0:37:39 Thomas: We're all free to have kids and reproduce and do whatever we want as regards to that. So to say like, no, we need to not provide this benefit to women who are bearing the brunt of this, something that pretty much everyone does, because I don't, you know, I, Mike Paps, don't think we should encourage having kids. That's just a cop-out argument. I really am not convinced by that at all. So there's my usual taking on my peps for the, well, I've gone a long time without a commentary show. So I wanted to sneak one in. And then Thursday, guys, we, I have back. Andrew Torrez, you'll recall he was the lawyer who came on and talked about Scalia. That was an immensely popular episode. A lot of people really loved him talking about Scalia and his originalism and all that stuff.

0:38:29 Thomas: It was great. And I've got him back on an action-packed episode. Thursday, we talk about, actually, a lot of stuff. We do talk about Scalia again, but we also talk about some different legal issues. Is, he is really good at talking about the law in a way that makes sense for someone who's not a lawyer like me. And it's really cool to have that really expert knowledge on the show, something I enjoyed with Krakus last week. I'm loving it. So I hope you enjoy that. I hope You enjoy sort of mixing it up, an expert and then me who gets to ask some questions and follow along and hopefully make it easier to digest the information. And I really like that format. Matt. So that's, that's Thursday. And then hopefully next week, hopefully is the debate between James and Eli, which will be huge.

0:39:15 Thomas: That will be an enormous thing. So I'm really hoping that's next week. But I can't say for sure. It's still scheduled. But I know it's been a little difficult, one of those things. It's just hard to schedule. No one's fault. Just a tough thing to schedule, it's not pinned down. But I'm so excited that I just wanted to tell you that edits coming up. So that'll be really cool. Thank you so much for listening as usual, and I will see you Thursday.