SIO11: Do We Have Free Will? with Aaron

Transcript

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

0:00:28 Thomas: HELLO AND WELCOME TO SERIOUS INQUIRIES ONLY I'M YOUR HOST THOMAS SMITH AND THIS IS EPISODE NUMBER 11. Guess what guys? Exciting news! I got my first ever sponsor! Today's episode is brought to you by HelloFresh. Visit HelloFresh.com and use the promo code SERIOUSPOD to save $35 off your first week of deliveries. That's hellofresh.com, promo code SERIOUSPOD. Alright, well, you know there's a ton in the news, there's Trump, there is the immigration thing, there are all kinds of stuff going on, here's what I would suggest, hang on for opening arguments, the episode tomorrow, because we discuss a little bit of that in the main segment, we've talked about before, Andrew believes, and has good reason to believe, that the immigration religious test, whatever it is, the Muslim ban, is actually legal, and that's kinda controversial among liberals, but it seems to be true, And it seems to be valuable information for proceeding and fighting everything the right way. So wait for tomorrow's opening arguments for that. And then, you know, on Thursday's episode of this podcast, you're going to hear a lot of a lot about the Muslim ban because it's very important what's going on.

It's frankly, a lot of this is despicable. A lot of the reaction is despicable. You know I'll have all kinds of things to say about it, but for now, since this is Monday, this is Interview Monday, I've got an interview about free will with a philosopher, and this is a topic that I know a lot my listeners are interested in. I did quite a bit about it way back in the day when Sam Harris and Dan Dennett were arguing about it.

0:02:04 Thomas: And I covered that extensively, I think, in a couple episodes. So check out those if you want, but also... So, today's guest Aaron is here to take sort of the anti-free will, or I guess the anti compatibilist view, and is here too contend that free will doesn't in fact exist. So, with that said, let's throw it over to that interview.

0:02:33 Thomas: Joining me right now is Aaron, who is a lecturer at Rutgers. [0:02:37] How are you doing today, Aaron? Doing all right. How're you, Thomas? Doing great.

0:02:40 Thomas: As we speak, women are marching around the country, so it's an inspiring day. But we're going to talk about something a little different today. I've been wanting to do a show on free will for a while. I did, way back in the day when Sam Harris and Daniel Dennett were arguing about it, I did sort of like one or two episodes that covered that entire thing in detail, but it's been a long time. [0:03:02] It's been a couple years, I think.

0:03:04 Thomas: So I'm really happy to have you on here today. I think you're taking the sort of against free will side. [0:03:11] Is that correct? Yeah. Strongly against. Okay. Well, so let's do that.

0:03:16 Thomas: And then my plan is maybe we can find someone else later on who wants to argue with you.

0:03:21 Thomas: Another somebody else with a philosophy degree who wants to present the other side. But for now, I think it's fine to tackle your perspective, perspective, and, you know, I can't wait to hear the comments and [0:03:31] to get into it. So let's do it. What is free will?

0:03:35 Thomas: I don't know how basic we need to go, but I guess I'll just let you run with it. [0:03:39] That's great.

0:03:40 Aaron: The first thing we got to do is define what we're going to say doesn't exist, right? So we gotto define what free will is. And that's definitely a tricky question because it's hard to give a positive account of free will. The people who support it often have trouble giving their account effectively. So I think I have a way that that we can walk into a useful definition of free will without worrying too much about it, which [0:04:02] is to talk about the stakes that are usually at play when people think about free will, like what people get worried about when you start saying that free will doesn't exist. [0:04:11] Okay.

0:04:12 Aaron: And that'll give us an idea of what the essential feature is of free will that we want to see in a definition, [0:04:18] if that definition is going to do the heavy lifting that we need it to. All right.

0:04:22 Thomas: Interesting thing, because I've normally just heard it as, you know, the ability to have done otherwise, like that's a definition you hear a lot, but it sounds like you want to go a bit a bit of a different route.

0:04:33 Aaron: Yeah, I want to do a different routes. [0:04:34] I think the ability otherwise gets into a confusing, like, what do you mean by the ability do otherwise, possible worlds, and spirals.

0:04:42 Aaron: Okay, um, so instead, what I think we should do is say that the two, I think two of the most important things, not the the only important things, but two of the most important things that people depend on free will to support, is the idea of moral responsibility and the idea of our sense of self.

0:04:59 Aaron: We hold people morally responsible if they had control of their actions. And the idea people have of themselves as, like, independent entities who make choices and, like, [0:05:10] are good or bad people is all tied up with the idea that they, in some sense, have free will. Right.

0:05:16 Aaron: So I want to put aside the self stuff because that gets into its own separate problems. And I think just primarily right now focus on moral responsibility, because that'll give us a real clear idea of [0:05:27] what we need out of free will. Yeah, yeah.

0:05:29 Thomas: Now that's interesting, because you're about to take, you know, we've already spoiled the ending, but you're taking the against [0:05:36] view.

0:05:36 Thomas: And right off the bat, what's interesting to me is that oftentimes I've heard, like in the Dan Dennett debate, for example, example, and he's a compatibilist, he's in favor of [0:05:48] free will, or that's a weird way to put it, but he believes free will exists in some capacity or whatever.

0:05:55 Thomas: And he's the one who usually has pushed for that definition. So I'm curious to hear, it's going to be interesting that you're taking the against argument, but that seems like a good sign to me that you'RE taking on the definition that I think is probably strongest for compatibilists.

0:06:10 Aaron: Yeah, I'm going to give them a super generous read of free will. And then I'm gonna explain why we don't need it. And it's okay to not have it is my goal. [0:06:17] Okay, cool.

0:06:19 Aaron: So what we see, and probably knowing having listened to Dennett, what you're going to hear is the issue of control, [0:06:25] right?

0:06:26 Aaron: That's what we mean when we talk about moral responsibility and free will, we mean, you had the ability to control your actions in some reasonable, substantial way. And to give a sort of good clear-cut example right we can imagine a situation where [0:06:40] I the evil Genius, create a mind control device that takes over Thomas Smith and go on a killing spree. And because of me taking you over, you wouldn't be held morally responsible for that killing spree, because you didn't have control of your actions, right? [0:06:55] The difference between coerced action and just everyday action by me or whoever.

0:07:02 Thomas: Yeah, that's something that I think everybody pretty much understands, regardless of determinism [0:07:09] or not, right? Yeah, and having spent an entire day in a philosophy class once trying to define the word coercion, I don't think there's

0:07:16 Aaron: A good definition, and I think the reason is because, partly because, free will doesn't exist. [0:07:19] Really? Yeah. Interesting.

0:07:22 Aaron: So, yeah, so we all understand the difference between that situation and the situation where where we do want to hold you morally responsible, where we think you had some sort of control because you weren't being mind controlled. [0:07:34] Right.

0:07:34 Aaron: So once we have that sense of control, that gives us a good sense of what we need for free will. [0:07:40] Right?

0:07:41 Aaron: We need something that gives us a sufficiently robust sense of patrol and then it can ground moral responsibility [0:07:47] and our sense of self. Okay. So this is where the problem of moral luck comes in.

0:07:53 Aaron: And, um, just a quick sort idea. Moral luck is an idea that was made, I think, very popular by Nagel. Other people have talked about it, Thomas Nagel, and it's the idea that sometimes luck plays a role in events that people are then held morally responsible for, and its a problem because moral responsibility needs to depend on what's under your control. [0:08:14] It can't depend on luck.

0:08:17 Aaron: So, for example, right, an easy example, you and I both run a stop sign, but I'm unlucky enough to have a small child I'll run the street at the same time as I run it, and you aren't.

0:08:28 Aaron: I'm responsible for manslaughter, and you're not. And the only difference is bad luck.

0:08:33 Thomas: Yeah, I just go about my day and say, whoops, oh, darn. [0:08:37] Forgot about that. Right. And if we were following along with the strict idea that you should only be held morally responsible for what's under your control,

0:08:44 Aaron: Then bare minimum, you should be at least as morally reprehensible as I am, since the parts of the action that were under our control were identical. And the parts that were different were just luck. [0:08:56] Okay, I don't know if I should jump in with a question, but could that merely be a question of us not

0:09:02 Thomas: Holding people responsible enough for the possible consequences of their action? Like that could just be the problem. Like maybe everyone who runs a stop sign, we should be like, oh my God, you could have killed somebody and hold them to that level of [0:09:16] responsibility.

0:09:16 Aaron: Sure, and we could revise our standards on that direction. This is sort of the easy example of moral luck that the free will people can bat down before you move on to the [0:09:25] hard problem. Okay, okay.

0:09:27 Aaron: Though it is technically, according to our own ideas, absurd, that since it would be absurd for you to be as morally responsible as me, even though you didn't kill a child and I did. Like, we're just never going to hold those two people identically morally responsible because of the consequences.

0:09:42 Thomas: But I wonder if we were perfect robot people who just were logical about it, we'd have some calculus of the overall, like, combined aggregate danger of that action, and then we'd hold both of us responsible to that amount, you know? It'd be something on the average between there's a child or a whole family that you run over and nothing. [0:10:02] Yeah.

0:10:03 Aaron: And maybe one day we'll have machines that'll fix that problem on that direction for us. But sort of the solution that people want to do when they deal with moral luck at this point is they say, okay, well, that's sort of a circumstantial problem, but I can still hold you morally responsible for your intent [0:10:21] and the act itself. Self.

0:10:23 Aaron: So it's sort of, Nagel's reference is he pairs down each act to its morally essential core, an inner pure act of will assessed by motive and intention. So maybe your actions didn't work out well, or maybe they worked out really well, but as long as you tried to do the right thing, and you freely tried to do the right things, that's how we can assess [0:10:48] you as morally responsible. [0:10:50] Sure. Yeah.

0:10:51 Thomas: Like, if, if differentiating between a total accident and intentionally running someone down too, I mean, that would be like, if we're looking at, so you're talking about looking at the intention, no matter what the outcome, which may have been determined [0:11:04] by luck or whatever. Okay. Okay. Right.

0:11:07 Aaron: And this is what drives us from circumstantial luck to the problem of what they call constitutional luck, the kind of luck that determines your behavior, that determines who [0:11:19] you are as a person.

0:11:21 Aaron: The more science has learned about the features that go into you as a person, right, the harder and harder it has been to be able to say that you really have any control control over who you are as a person. [0:11:33] Right.

0:11:33 Thomas: Just because, you know, like, I mean, I always do a quick 10-second version of it when I reference it, which is [0:11:39] just, you know, obviously, you were born with a set of genes, and you're born in certain circumstances, and none of those were under your control.

0:11:48 Thomas: And they determine, given determinism. Now, it's curious that you haven't yet used the language of determinism or not, or indeterminism. I don't know if that's something you're saving for later, or it just doesn't even concern you. [0:12:01] Yeah, okay, interesting. Okay, go ahead.

0:12:03 Aaron: Because as anyone will point out in the free will debate, whether it's determined or indetermined, whether it doesn't help or necessary, [0:12:09] it doesn't help this problem. Yeah, OK.

0:12:11 Aaron: So this problem glides right through discussing quantum mechanics.

0:12:14 Thomas: Actually, and maybe just for anyone who's not familiar with why that is, I think what you're referring to, which I remember learning in philosophy class as well, is some people have tried to make grounds for like, well, if there's some quantum indeterminism or something, like maybe that could get us around the problem of everything being caused, you know, everything being perfectly caused by [0:12:34] other factors.

0:12:35 Thomas: And someone along the line, I don't know how long it took, maybe right away, but someone along line pointed out, well, if your decisions are somehow produced by just luck, like a random occurrence, like an indeterminacy in your brain, how are you responsible for that? How could you feel responsible for this outcome versus that outcome? So that's why I think that's what you were referring to when you're saying determinism, indeterminism doesn't really matter. [0:12:59] Okay.

0:12:59 Aaron: Yeah, the first time I saw that argument was in Waking Life, that great movie that did a bunch of good philosophy and some cool art.

0:13:05 Thomas: I don't think I've seen that. [0:13:06] Maybe I need to watch that.

0:13:07 Aaron: Oh, that's a fun link letter movie where he does the rotoscope that he uses in Scanner Darkly, and it's a really cool [0:13:14] talky piece. It's a lot of philosophy. All right, I'll have to check it out.

0:13:17 Aaron: You know, it's got some crazy stuff in it, but it's got some great stuff in it, too. [0:13:20] Um, yeah.

0:13:21 Aaron: So the quantum stuff is like, in my opinion, sort of the free will version of quantum woo, like they're trying to quantum mechanics their way into something that they can't really sustain. [0:13:33] So, okay.

0:13:34 Aaron: So we get the idea that that we're, we're pairing it down to this self. And then we have problems like, like for anyone who believes in the idea of privilege, privilege is a very clear example of constitutive luck, right? It's the sort of luck you have of not being a person in a situation that is more likely to land you in jail or in a less good school or this or that or whatever, right? [0:13:56] So we have all these problems, and it just, so it leads to, uh, what Nagel says is that all of this sort of, uh, shrinks and shrinks the world of what we want to talk about, right? The area of genuine agency, he says, uh, shranks under all of the scrutiny to, like, an extensionless [0:14:14] point. There's less and less space in which to talk about a thing that we're actually in control of.

0:14:20 Aaron: And I actually have my own little sort of fun regress argument that I like to use against the people who believe in free will to sort of prove to them that they don't have free will, if you're down for that. [0:14:32] Sure, we could give that a try. Great.

0:14:35 Aaron: So, I mean, do you believe that you have free will? [0:14:37] I'm curious, actually.

0:14:38 Thomas: I think that I've actually gone back and forth. [0:14:43] I really have.

0:14:43 Thomas: When I read at Dennett and I read Sam Harris, I can't help but think ultimately, even with all of Dennett's compatibilism, which is brilliant, he's got, you know, experiments with chess playing computers, he talks about, and there's interesting insight in there. And it's very, it's complicated. I gave it a lot of time to try to give it a fair shake. And I ultimately think that even despite all that, you still have the problem of, yeah, but all of your decision making, you know, was determined from the beginning.

0:15:15 Thomas: So I'm kind of like, yeah. Not really a believer in free will. So I won't be the best at it. But I will say though, that I'm very close to convinced by Dennett's compatibilist arguments. [0:15:27] Like I'm partially there.

0:15:29 Thomas: Like if I watch a bunch of his lectures in a row, I can start to think like, well, maybe, you now. [0:15:34] So, I'm in the middle there. Let's see if I can make you feel more uncomfortable about it again, then. Sure. I'm starting to feel comfortable about it a little bit. So the way that I like to phrase this is I like to be, again, as generous as possible and let you, or I can suggest, an example of what

0:15:54 Aaron: Appears to be a clear-cut case of free will. [0:15:57] Okay. Right.

0:15:59 Aaron: So I think in your case, a great example would be a recent shift to full-time podcasting. [0:16:04] Okay. If that's okay, yeah, yeah, sure, great.

0:16:07 Aaron: So it's a good case because uh the free will self people really want to say that kind of choice is what makes Thomas Smith Thomas Smith, right? [0:16:15] That's what makes you you, right?

0:16:17 Thomas: Because sometimes when you pick like an arbitrary thing, like, oh, am I going to go left or right here or something, some some little thing, people say like, well, that's just not an important choice and whatever, your brain just kind of figured it out. [0:16:28] No, I want to go for something big, overarching, something that's a part of my core, like it's been a belief or like a... Yeah, okay. I like it.

0:16:37 Thomas: You're trying to build the biggest argument for the other side. [0:16:40] Sure. Yeah.

0:16:41 Aaron: So the question I then want to ask is, why did you, Thomas Smith, act in the way that you [0:16:47] did?

0:16:48 Aaron: Did you have a reason for that action? And did you choose that reason?

0:16:52 Thomas: So are you specifically talking about when I quit my job? [0:16:56] Is that what you mean? Yeah.

0:16:56 Aaron: Yeah, I mean, I talked to you a little bit, I think, a little before you did it, and you were still deciding that you decided and you did [0:17:03] it. And then like, would you say that you, what would you save that caused you to make that decision?

0:17:09 Thomas: Well, I would say it's always been a goal of mine to do something like this full time, to free myself up for creative projects, to be able to, you know, offer that to the world [0:17:21] rather than a desk job.

0:17:22 Thomas: You know, it's also been a big part of my life and it's been a, a goal in my life. As if you're trying to determine like the specific timing, I don't know. [0:17:30] That's a little different.

0:17:31 Thomas: Like I was going to work longer. [0:17:32] Okay. Yeah.

0:17:33 Aaron: So what I would say is, right, you've got two competing forces, at least two competing forces in you, right?

0:17:38 Aaron: You've got the desire to do the thing that you feel more passionate about, which is podcasting instead of being [0:17:44] a business person. Right.

0:17:46 Aaron: And then you had all of the reasonable concerns about stability and such, right. [0:17:50] Sure. Yeah.

0:17:51 Aaron: And at some point you made a choice between them, you would say. [0:17:55] Yeah, I made a choice.

0:17:56 Thomas: I was, that one was pretty, pretty determined because I just had, you know, could not handle the workload anymore.

0:18:02 Aaron: And that's great, like what you're saying there when you say like it's pretty determined is like where I want to say yes, exactly, it's very determined, like you didn't, you didn't choose this, this was just the next step of who, who [0:18:14] you happened to be.

0:18:15 Thomas: That, what I would say, the timing of it ended up being predetermined, where I just couldn't, I couldn't do it anymore, I couldn't do both [0:18:21] anymore, but in terms of, no, I would say yes, I agree, and also the other thing is determined too.

0:18:26 Thomas: I know we'll get to that, but I assume you have more prodding you are going to do for that. [0:18:32] Right. Because we can, if you're saying, you know, I chose to focus on this instead of focus on business, right?

0:18:39 Aaron: That's the choice you've made in your life. And we can ask why you made that choice. [0:18:44] Okay.

0:18:46 Thomas: That comes from wanting to, I don't know, No, I suppose it comes from [0:18:52] wanting to leave more of a lasting impact, wanting to be able to create work that people would, you know, benefit from and take note of versus working at a desk job where I kind of, you know, I was doing good work, but I mean, nobody notices, you know? [0:19:08] Yeah.

0:19:09 Aaron: So you, you value leaving a lasting impact and you value contributing to the [0:19:15] dialogue, which is all great.

0:19:17 Aaron: And like, I think we all benefit from the fact that you made that jump. Like, I think it's a great choice that you made, even though I don't think it was a choice, but like, I want to, you know, praise you and reward you for the fact that you've made that choice. [0:19:28] Appreciate it very much. And we'll get to how I continue to get along with the fact that I continue praise people for things even though I don't think they had a choice, if we get that far, if we have time. But we can now ask again, the regress represents itself, this regress of reasons, is how I call it, where we can ask, [0:19:44] did you choose to value those lasting legacy kind of things and creating a dialogue over business? Could you have chosen to value business more, do you think?

0:19:57 Thomas: Yeah, well, in a way, I feel like I could have. Like, I've often, and maybe this will, not that I'm trying to beat you at your little game, but I would say that it was a hard choice because I was having a lot of success at my job [0:20:12] at the state. [0:20:13] And it is something I did enjoy.

0:20:14 Thomas: And I've often said, if I didn't have this opportunity, you know, this just crazy opportunity to do podcasting full time, I would have been pretty happy, you know, with the work I was doing, like, it was fun. [0:20:25] It was interesting. I like the people I work with.

0:20:27 Thomas: So I mean, it was a difficult choice. [0:20:29] And I would say, so I'm trying to figure out where, where that came from.

0:20:34 Thomas: And I ultimately, I don't know, I think it was valuing being able to work for myself independently. And, and, you You know, like that's what pushes the balance, you know, over to working for myself full [0:20:46] time, I would say. Yeah, and that's great. And in these sort of regresses, what you're going to see is someone's going to eventually make a value judgment like that. They value X more than Y. Sure. And that's why they made the choice.

0:20:58 Aaron: And you can then represent the question. [0:21:00] The problem is, did you choose to value this more than that? Yeah, I don't know.

0:21:06 Thomas: No, I suppose that would come down to like a psychology thing of I [0:21:12] am happier when I'm more in control of what I'm doing versus having less control over certain aspects of work, I guess. [0:21:24] Right.

0:21:24 Aaron: And all of these regresses eventually terminate in something approaching the idea of I enjoy things more when I am doing this and I enjoy things less when I not doing this. Progress and the problem of free will is that when we ask the question, did you choose what you enjoy, and could you really have fundamentally chosen otherwise in a way that is independent of this regress [0:21:45] problem?

0:21:46 Aaron: There's just no way to see it that I understand. [0:21:49] Yeah.

0:21:50 Thomas: That's the thing that's always killed me with determinism is there's, there's this desire to be [0:21:56] able to choose. And, And I would put it a little differently.

0:21:59 Thomas: I've thought of things a little different, and I don't know how effective it is, but one thing I thought of is that if we all had perfect information, we would all make the right choices. You know, it's almost like this free will thing. And I think about it a lot with the debate over whether God exists. One thing that has never made sense to me with the whole punishing people for being bad or doing whatever is, there's only like two reasons why someone did something wrong, really. I mean, if you distill it down, either they had something in them that, you know, some sort of psychopathy or some sort of disorder, whatever it is, something in them that didn't make them value other people's lives enough, in which case that would have been determined by their circumstances and their genes or whatever.

0:22:46 Thomas: Or sometimes people have mistaken information. You know, they just didn't know the right thing to do, they didn't—there was a misunderstanding, there's a this or that, and that led to violence or that—whatever it is. And neither of those things—I mean, in a perfect world where we all had the right information, and we all were in a state of being where we wanted to do the right things, which I would think if there were a God to bring that back in, you know, God would try to— You should. [0:23:13] Yeah, yeah. Yeah.

0:23:14 Aaron: Because, I mean, the argument you're making is the reason that Spinoza says that God has no free will and is not a [0:23:20] self in the way that we think of him.

0:23:22 Aaron: So I actually link up with this with the idea that there is no God because God is a self, and there are no selves because there's no such thing as free will. [0:23:31] That's interesting. Yeah, that's my argument. Okay, coming at it the other way. Yeah.

0:23:36 Aaron: I mean, the problem of evil is good, but I think the problem of God being a self that has free will that is both omnipotent and omnibenevolent is a more damning problem and can nail them down harder, whether or not they will ever agree to that. [0:23:51] Yeah.

0:23:52 Thomas: Well, I mean, religious people just always do the fuzzy thing of like, well, he is good, so he just embodies good, [0:23:59] and then that gets you out of everything or something.

0:24:00 Aaron: Yeah, and this this regress problem that I'm presenting, I thought I mentioned to you before, I haven't brought it in. It's a variation on sort sort of the problem that is presented by Socrates to Euthyphro when he's trying to define piety. And it works the same against divine command theory and the idea that God can be both omnibenevolent and the source of morality.

0:24:22 Aaron: And you can present this same question of reasons for why God would choose to do what [0:24:28] he did.

0:24:29 Aaron: And it has the advantage of, you can accept the idea that God's reasons are mysterious, but he still [0:24:35] has to have reasons.

0:24:36 Aaron: And so the reasons are still susceptible to the regress problem. And So either he is still inferior to the moral truth and is choosing what is good because it is good, or he's an arbitrary tyrant who chooses what is good of his own free will in a radically uncaused [0:24:52] kind of way.

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0:27:27 Thomas: That is so much off. So I really hope you'll give it a try, because I absolutely do recommend it. It's delicious, it's easy, it's fresh, it's great. HelloFresh.com promo code SERIOUSPOD.

0:27:48 Thomas: Branching off a little bit, but it does actually touch on the question of free will a lot. But how do you respond, because I've said that same thing in a debate. [0:27:56] I was amazed.

0:27:57 Thomas: I read the Euthyphro Dilemma, I don't know, like five or six years ago, and I just was doing, taking a little like philosophy class online, and I was blown away by how amazing it was that, how long ago. I was like, how did this not just kill religion? [0:28:15] I don't understand. It's incredible.

0:28:17 Aaron: And it completely defines the, in my opinion, it completely defines meta-ethics. It completely determines sort of the field of meta-etrics by dividing everything into subjectivism and objectivism. It's such an incisive dilemma. [0:28:30] It is. It's incredibly powerful.

0:28:32 Thomas: But I was going to ask you, how have you, if you've ever gotten in this argument, because I know I have, how Have you dealt with it when the, you know, the Christian or whoever you're arguing with, whoever it happens to be, is like, well, God is good. [0:28:44] He is the good.

0:28:45 Thomas: And And therefore, yes, he chooses the good and that's what determines it. But because he is one, he is the essence of good. [0:28:52] Right.

0:28:53 Thomas: And they do that kind of word salad thing. I never have that satisfying.

0:28:57 Aaron: There's a response for that with the euthyphro. So they're trying to run through between the horns of the dilemma there and say that God's nature defines what is good. But you can restate the problem by saying, well, what is it that defines God's natural? Is it his arbitrary will, or is there a moral law that determines that God would only allow, you know, not murder to be moral because that's what the moral truth is, and his nature is to grasp the [0:29:21] moral truths?

0:29:22 Aaron: And so the problem just restates itself again in terms of God's nature and what is the source of God's nature. [0:29:28] Sure.

0:29:28 Thomas: Yeah, I think it's excellent. My personal feelings on whether there isn't, it doesn't make sense to say there is something [0:29:37] that is the good.

0:29:38 Thomas: So oftentimes you're trying to argue in terms that really don't make any sense, because I think it's all determined by a function of the system of the beings that you're talking about. I mean, if we were different, if we were lizards, you know, who like ate their young and did all that, like murder or different things, neglecting your children, like all these things, we would feel differently [0:30:01] about them.

0:30:01 Thomas: It's completely determined on how we are as a species. But anyway, let's get back to our, to what we were talking about. [0:30:06] Yeah, where do we leave off?

0:30:08 Aaron: Well, well, that's good, because it's like, now we can talk about, well, how do we maintain our morality if we don't have free will? [0:30:14] Okay, saying, like, I agree with you that morality would be different if human beings were different, because in my perspective, morality is, it's just the facts about what it is to produce a life of flourishing or a life of suffering, or not suffering and happiness, for conscious beings, whatever those conscious beings happen to be. [0:30:32] Right, right.

0:30:33 Aaron: And that idea of morality actually survives the death of free will. [0:30:37] Moral responsibility doesn't, but morality does. Oh, interesting.

0:30:42 Thomas: How are you making that distinction, if you could spell it out a little more? [0:30:45] Sure.

0:30:45 Aaron: And I think, you know, your friend Andrew Torrez would like this distinction, because moral responsibility is the idea of, are you, can I hold you, Thomas, personally sort of guilty and cast dispersions on you, whereas morality is just the idea, did what you just did cause suffering or not? [0:31:02] Okay, so it could be true that you going on that killing spree, murdering a bunch of people, was immoral, but you're not morally responsible for it. [0:31:11] It's still a tragedy, right? It was still a horror.

0:31:12 Aaron: Like, if you had been morally responsible, you'd go to jail. Yeah, because it was, was immoral what you did, but you're not.

0:31:19 Thomas: Okay, so yeah, yeah, I get that distinction.

0:31:21 Aaron: And while moral responsibility dies, I think, when you take away free will, you can still distinguish between the behaviors that are good for a society, for example, and behaviors that are harmful [0:31:34] to a society. And then you can Still engage in activities and like laws and things that promote behavior, because look, people don't have a choice, but we know that they're determined by certain factors. So if you create laws that make it illegal to do such and such things, and you put in a certain amount of punishment, you know that people's behavior will change as a result. All of that is consistent with having free will. [0:31:59] Sorry, not having free will. You just blew it. No, I'm just kidding.

0:32:03 Thomas: You brought back free will, we now all have free will. [0:32:06] Thank you. I know.

0:32:08 Thomas: If I'm going to try to put on my best Dan Dennett, which is hard to do, He's a brilliant man. I'm not, I may not do a great job of this, but if I'm, if I're trying to do that, I would say in response to this, because his, his definition of free will, his whole thing is that yes, free will has not been defined properly. And the thing that we all think we have where it's like, yeah, we're free to choose. [0:32:30] We could have done otherwise all that stuff.

0:32:32 Thomas: The utilitarian or no, not utilitarian, the, sorry, libertarian free will that doesn't exist. But there is something, if we define it a certain way, that functions as free will and [0:32:44] is close enough, essentially.

0:32:45 Thomas: And he usually talks about that being moral responsibility, I think. He might use a different term than that, but that's how I remember it.

0:32:54 Thomas: And so he might say, I'm guessing to what you've said here, that there's still a [0:33:01] difference.

0:33:01 Thomas: And we talk about these chess programs where he has these two chess programs and they can battle it out, they can play a billion different games, and somewhere in their decision-making process, there has to be a random number generator. And there's a difference, this is a pretty tough thing to explain and to understand, but if I have it right, there's the difference between if you look at certain games where one computer that's a little better than the other has won, you can find where they made the same decision, but it went a different way. And you can say, say, now, was this because of the random number generator that it happened to spit out a number that, well, okay, nothing you could do? Or was it because if it had a little bit more RAM, or if it Had a little Bit more time in its programming, would it have come to the to the right conclusion?

0:33:50 Thomas: Like if it if in its loops, or whatever, if it said, consider a few more moves deep here or [0:33:56] whatever.

0:33:57 Thomas: And I think the distinction he tries to make with all that is there's a difference between someone who can, has made a moral decision, but could have modified their behavior in a way that would have allowed them to make a different decision. So they can learn and respond to punishment. And he draws a distinction between that and someone who, who, I don't know, is a psychopath or something, where they're never going to learn. They just need to be put away, versus someone who would be able to respond to punishment. [0:34:32] Does that make sense?

0:34:33 Thomas: So where does that distinction go? And how does that sit with you as a criticism of, I guess, or not a criticism, but as a counterpoint to what you're saying?

0:34:42 Aaron: Yeah, I think it doesn't handle, it doesn't effectively handle the problem that I'm raising. It would handle sort of the attack that you were talking about with like, like if we had perfect knowledge, this wouldn't be a problem kind of attack. But my argument doesn't alter it all at all. If the amount of knowledge the person has increases, we can still ask the question, what was it that caused them? And it's sort of like, if I can give a comparison again to morality, right? When people, when often people will talk about doing the right thing. One of my favorite examples, you ever watch Firefly? [0:35:15] Yeah, I love Firefly. Right.

0:35:17 Aaron: So Malcolm Reynolds bringing those drugs back after he stole them, and the guy says, you know, a person finds out what's going on, and they feel like they have a choice, and he says the way I see it, you don't. [0:35:27] Great line. [0:35:27] I love that. Right?

0:35:29 Aaron: That's my view of morality, right? If you truly understand morality, you do not have free will and morality. You are driven by what is morally true to you. It compels you, and it would not make sense to say I made a choice to do the right thing [0:35:44] freely and undriven. Or would it be if you still do the wrong thing, you were driven by some

0:35:53 Thomas: Sort of psychology, like your urge to do whatever happens to be the wrong things that you wanted to do anyway because it benefited you or something? [0:36:01] something. Yeah.

0:36:02 Aaron: And almost, I mean, the reality is almost no one thinks that way, right? Everyone thinks they're doing the right thing for some reason. Everyone rational, everyone, but even including a sociopath rationalized, you know, sociopaths won't work as hard because they don't care as much, but like everyone sees themselves as the hero of their story.

0:36:19 Aaron: There are no snidely whip nashes out there doing evil just for the sake of being evil. Like even people who harm someone think that they're the good guys harming the bad guys.

0:36:27 Thomas: Yeah, I, well that, that would be be interesting. I feel like that might be an empirical question that you could study. Because there's got to be some people who are like, ah, I knew it was wrong. [0:36:36] I did it anyway. [0:36:39] Sometimes. Because like, that happens.

0:36:40 Thomas: Like if I ever, I don't know, if someone charges me the wrong thing at a store or something, and I go home and whatever, I, I do not say, well, this is fine because I, you know, they have more money and whatever. Usually I am like, I am just not, I'm too lazy. I can't go fix this for $5. But I still did something wrong. What I did was I benefited when I shouldn't have. I recognize it's wrong, but I'm just not going to fix it. [0:37:06] Yeah. And sometimes you should.

0:37:08 Aaron: Sometimes there's a cost-benefit analysis. It's worth to fix the wrongdoing, and sometimes there isn't. But if we can go back to Dennett and his response, Sure.

0:37:46 Aaron: And I think that we can't find it. So, like, Hume, and Hume sort of talked about the compatibilist, but I'm not quite sure. I think that's not always the first best interpretation. Like, I think Hume talks about how when he looks inside himself and looks for anything beyond the forces, right, the different pleasures and pains and preferences, he doesn't find anything. [0:38:05] There's nothing else there.

0:38:06 Aaron: There's no self there, sort of, at the switch, pulling things around, you know, deciding this versus [0:38:12] that.

0:38:13 Aaron: There's just forces pulling on other forces. And this is the same reason that the Buddhists will claim that you don't have a self. You keep looking within yourself for a thing and you don't find it. [0:38:22] You just find more forces. Yeah.

0:38:24 Aaron: And so even if we had perfect knowledge, that perfect knowledge would just be another force pushing on us. [0:38:30] It wouldn't be us. There's still [0:38:32] no us there.

0:38:32 Aaron: There's just a more dominant force now in the form of that perfect knowledge. [0:38:38] Okay, interesting.

0:38:39 Thomas: So if I were to try to, again, fight back, and maybe I should just stop invoking the name of Dennett in case I'm mistaking what he might say. [0:38:49] He can hear you. But yeah, but no, I don't want to, you know, maybe I make a terrible argument and blame it on him. But based on my reading of it, I would wonder if what you're actually doing is still keeping the wrong definition of free will.

0:39:09 Thomas: And so, I think what he would say is the free will and the moral responsibility that's important to people is merely the ability for us to respond to punishment or to any sort of influence to modify [0:39:28] our behavior.

0:39:29 Thomas: And it's that ability where someone might say, where that computer might be able to, you know, whoever's programming that that computer or whatever, could say, "Had I done this, things would have worked out differently." In the future, in circumstances not exactly like this, but in circumstances similar to this, I'm going to behave differently. [0:39:48] And merely that in itself should be what we define as free will.

0:39:53 Thomas: And that therefore exists. [0:39:56] What would you say to that?

0:39:57 Aaron: So one common response, two common responses you get to this argument is people get angry because you're threatening moral responsibility. [0:40:03] I'm pretty angry. I'm pretty mad at you.

0:40:05 Aaron: You don't seem angry, but some people get angry. Yeah, and like I'm sympathetic to them. They're engaging in motivated reasoning because they're believing in free will the same reason some people believe in God, because they think you need God to have a moral responsibility. But I'm also sympathetic, and I want to tell them that they can still be good people and have a good life without free [0:40:22] will or moral responsibility or selfhood. But that's a whole nother thing.

0:40:26 Aaron: For people like Dennett, they want to give a deflated definition of free will, in my opinion, a deflated definition that avoids the problem of control. And the problem there, it seems to me, is their their definition isn't then going to be able to do that heavy lifting we talked about at the beginning, where it's going to distinguish between Thomas and the mind control scenario and [0:40:48] Thomas in the real life scenario. Really, what do you mean? How do you figure? What I mean is that with their definition, they're saying it's something about how Thomas could have have acted differently in one situation versus the other, if he had had different sorts of knowledge, right? [0:41:05] Yeah, okay, sure. But your ability to act differently under different sorts of knowledge is not at all in in relevance when it comes to the fundamental problem of control that we see when you're being taken over by a mind [0:41:20] control device. So, if privilege and and And moral luck of the constitutive kind is a fundamentally equivalent to a bunch of different versions of you being taken over by a [0:41:33] mind control device, right?

0:41:35 Aaron: If all of those other forces amount to you not having any control, some differing amount of knowledge is not what's going to distinguish between you being a [0:41:47] good person or not being a good person.

0:41:49 Thomas: I don't know, that's interesting. Maybe I'm not grasping what you're saying.

0:41:54 Aaron: Then it is certainly far more credentialed than me and could certainly probably tell me why I'm wrong about this.

0:42:00 Thomas: Well, I just want to get to the bottom of that comparison you just said, where mind control could be the equivalent of, you the different luck and influence and privilege and all that of your circumstances. I'm wondering how you're making that connection there. [0:42:15] there.

0:42:16 Aaron: So it's sort of the way that I was, uh, quoting Nagel, is where he was saying that when you, when you add up all of the factors [0:42:22] that go into who you are as a person that are beyond your control, the things that made you prefer a life of serious inquiry versus a life and business, enough to make this switch, for example, all of those factors shrink, you shrink down the space in which there might be an an actual free Thomas Smith to the point where you're no different than 100% fully mind-controlled Thomas Smith.

0:42:48 Aaron: They all add together to basically be equivalent to that situation. And we can know that because any time the compatibilist tries to pry open a space in which to say, [0:42:58] no, no.

0:42:59 Aaron: There's the self that has free will. We can reassert these problems of, well, does that free will make choices based on reasons? Or is it completely arbitrary? And arbitrary doesn't have a real will. [0:43:10] So it has to really be reasons.

0:43:12 Aaron: And then are those reasons that are based on the things inside of that tiny little circle? Or are they based on all of the things outside of that circle that are beyond your control? [0:43:21] And it seems far more...

0:43:22 Thomas: Well, I would differentiate, okay, with the mind control thing. First off, I think the way you're defining things makes it difficult to believe, like, what would mind control even be? Like, there's no self that's determining the mind controls since no selves exist, I wonder. [0:43:37] Yeah.

0:43:37 Thomas: So maybe we got a computer program mind controlling me or something. [0:43:41] But anyway. Physically moving you, right? Yeah, yeah.

0:43:43 Thomas: But I would make the distinction that, okay, let's approach, if I'm trying to make, I'll try this one more time to try to see, and there's a reason it's called compatibilism because I think it will, it's never going to be the satisfying, aha, that makes perfect sense. [0:43:58] It is free will. I get it. It's going to be, if Dennett is right, I think, in my opinion, my interpretation of him, it will be a different thing from what we thought free will was or feel like it is, but it'll be something. [0:44:11] So let's come up with a scenario.

0:44:15 Thomas: Let's say if I, let's say I, well, let's bring stop signs back into it. Let's say I'm about to, I'm coming up to a stop sign and I don't see anyone around. [0:44:26] And one version of me would be able to either, for some reason, I see it or I hear about it in the news or it happens to me, there's an accident, I hit somebody because I don't slow down at the stop sign. There's a difference between a version of me that's able to take that information, whether it's I hear about an incident like it or whether it's me, myself, whatever it is, and say, wow, you know, next time I better be [0:44:50] more careful. I'd better stop.

0:44:52 Thomas: Even if it doesn't, if I can't see anybody, just in case, maybe I'd rather stop at every stop sign, no matter what, like just even if it seems like it's wide open, I'm going to do that. There's a difference between that and if I was just being mind-controlled by something that's telling me, no, don't stop at stop signs, or even just, yes, stop at every stop [0:45:10] sign.

0:45:10 Thomas: There is a difference there in the ability to respond to that new information and [0:45:17] modify behavior.

0:45:18 Thomas: And I think the argument is that that's where the free will and the moral responsibility can be. If it's determined that I, or if we I shouldn't use that word if we discover, we believe that my Thomas in that car at that time is able to respond to that information and is able, nobody's, nobody's like making my foot go down on the gas pedal or not, like I'm [0:45:42] able to do it.

0:45:43 Thomas: And I'm able to see this new information and say, in the future, I'm going to do something [0:45:49] different.

0:45:50 Thomas: That's what, what the moral responsibility and the, the, the modified version of free will is that I think people, some people believe exists. [0:45:58] Right, so that example to me reinforces my argument of moral luck.

0:46:04 Aaron: Okay, because to me, when you talk about the thing you heard on the radio that made you suddenly start thinking about how to drive better instead of being the Thomas Smith who might be texting while he's driving. [0:46:16] That was luck. You were lucky enough to hear that.

0:46:19 Aaron: And if suddenly you drove better and didn't hit a kid because of it, you were lucky that you heard that radio announcement, [0:46:26] right?

0:46:26 Aaron: You are also lucky to be the sort of Thomas Smith who hears that radio announcement and goes, "Oh, I should drive more carefully," instead of not ignoring it because you're pro at driving and not worried about it. [0:46:38] And then you hit a kid, right.

0:46:39 Aaron: You're lucky enough to be a thoughtful, considerate individual who's not trying to kill people with your car. [0:46:45] Right, all of these are yeah, and that kid is lucky that I'm that way too, and I'm just right, and I mean, like, hopefully he appreciates it, right.

0:46:51 Aaron: We can have some lack of knowledge about what exactly it was in your upbringing that made you the sort of person who drives carefully rather than not carefully, but at the end of the day, it's going to be things you didn't control that are resulting in the fact that you hear that radio announcement and respond to it by driving more carefully. There's still no you anywhere in there that we cannot hang moral responsibility on as the one [0:47:14] that did something that distinguishes you from someone who didn't, right? [0:47:20] It's just luck. Yeah, and I'm not entirely sure it being just luck totally

0:47:27 Thomas: Counters what I'm saying, because I still think there's a difference in in being able to respond [0:47:33] to things or not. It might be luck that got you, yeah, and that's and that, but yeah, you're totally right, there's a salient difference there, but

0:47:41 Aaron: The the thing that got you there, that very difference itself of being able to distinguish versus not distinguish between additional knowledge, is a part of your constitution, and so a part of the luck that went into that. And so that's why I feel like the problem just represents itself. And a lot of the people that I read on this basically, at the end of the day, say we don't have a solution to constitutive luck, but because the lack of constitutive luck brings down all of moral responsibility or all of free will [0:48:08] or all of these issues, we have to in some way just get by with the fact that we can pretend that we have it if we don't.

0:48:17 Thomas: Well, where does that leave us if I stop trying to cross-examine you? In your arguments, did you get through all the points of it that you wanted to, or did I interrupt you?

0:48:28 Aaron: No, that pretty much sort of sums it up, and it's a practice that I think if people really are interested in seeing if they have free will, they can do for themselves by sort of sitting there and asking, well, why did I do that thing? [0:48:39] And did I choose to do that?

0:48:40 Aaron: And if I made that choice, what was the reason? And did I choose that reason and try to do the regress a little bit themselves?

0:48:47 Aaron: And then also, I think, you know, I want to say that I live, I, I think that there's an advantage to believing that [0:48:53] there is no free will. I think that, yeah, I was going to actually ask you, like, the next step would be what, how

0:49:00 Thomas: Do you, I'm just curious, maybe it's more of a personal thing, but how does this affect your life and what, how does it affect how you think about life? [0:49:08] Sure.

0:49:09 Aaron: So there's a lot of changes that I feel like come about when you really start to seriously consider this position. So the first one is you get a lot what I tell my students, epistemic humility and humility in general, because you realize that the difference between you and everyone else is luck and not, you know, like when you realize you have privilege, it should bring about a sense of humility about your accomplishments, it's like that on a full scale, [0:49:33] like fully, right?

0:49:35 Aaron: And so it makes things like forgiveness a lot more functional because you realize that other people don't have control over their actions in a way that it makes sense to be angry at them on top of the fact that they're doing something horrible. You should still stop them from doing something horrible. So, like, Donald Trump's a great example, right? It can make people miserable because not only do they hate the things he's doing, they hate him personally and want him, you know, have animus towards him personally because they think that he's choosing to hurt all these people and benefiting [0:50:04] from it. You know what I mean?

0:50:05 Aaron: Yeah, I think that he's just a thoroughgoing narcissist with no free will to who is trapped in his own, you know, pleasure, pain, hedonic treadmill kind of thing. And he has no more control over his actions than anyone else does.

0:50:20 Aaron: His actions are still terrible and we should still stop them. But I can let go of the part where I'm angry at him all the time.

0:50:28 Thomas: Yeah, that's certainly something I think a lot about. [0:50:31] Um, any sort of punishment over and above quarantine or whatever is usually what you try to get, or or at least something that will dissuade certain actions in the future. [0:50:42] I think there's a lot of maybe open questions about what that appropriate level would be, because certainly I think it will affect the world if all of a sudden there's no punishment for stuff because we're like, well, we didn't have a choice. [0:50:57] Right, and this disposition doesn't support that at all. Of course, yeah, yeah.

0:50:59 Thomas: But there may be, I think, a little bit of room in there for, like, well, what's an appropriate amount of punishment based on trying to minimize just retribution because of this argument, versus you need a certain amount that's going to have an effect on people and be a disincentive [0:51:18] for, for certain action.

0:51:19 Thomas: So, but that's a different story, I suppose. But yeah, I, that's something I do try to think about a lot. I think it's so hard, as the animals that we are, to try to completely get rid of the part where [0:51:31] you're mad at somebody.

0:51:32 Thomas: I mean, it's just, it's impossible, especially if, if, if your kid is, you know, murdered or harmed or something. It's, even if the person who did it is, is a psychopathic, deterministic, free-will-lacking robot like we all are, it's so hard to not just have that anger. And that's something that I think about a lot. [0:51:53] And this is what got me, I mean, if I can say this is what got me on to wanting to be on your show, is that listening to you talk to Roy Wood Jr. a while ago, where he was saying, I don't want to punish people anymore.

0:52:03 Aaron: And you sort of weren't quite getting what he was say.

0:52:06 Aaron: I think what he's saying is very sympathetic to what I'm getting at, that the more you realize that people don't have free will, you don't wanna punish them anymore, or you want to help them have better forces that are driving them to do better things, or you wanna put them away if they can't be made to have better behaviors, but you lose the need to, you know, see [0:52:25] them suffer. Oh, yeah.

0:52:27 Thomas: Well, certainly, I think that that goes to what I just said, that room in between figuring out what the right amount is, because I think he was maybe just going a little too far the other way, unless I [0:52:39] misinterpreted him.

0:52:40 Aaron: No, and it's possible that he, you may go to, I think you're right, he does go to a point where he wants to say he envisions a world where there isn't, I think

0:52:46 Thomas: There'd be no jails or whatever. [0:52:48] It's like there's still going to be a need to be much more, for example, humane model, because we're not trying to torture them. [0:52:55] Right.

0:52:56 Aaron: Yeah, it would be a more medicalized model for people.

0:52:58 Thomas: Like, absolutely, I mean, I do think our prison system is horrible. Like, I think the thing that we do and the, where we, where we decide it's okay for, like, everyone, people are kind of happy with, like, prison justice, like, oh, they got what they did. [0:53:11] I think that's disgusting. Yeah, it's, it's no good.

0:53:15 Thomas: Yeah, and, and, and I, I didn't at all mean in that interview to suggest that I'm cool with that. I just thought that he was maybe going a little too far the other way, where you still do need to have reasons for people not to want to do stuff, to a certain extent, I think. Yeah.

0:53:30 Aaron: Yeah, and my view totally makes room for that, because we can now actually more, and this is where I say it's better to hold this view, like when we stop worrying about a person inside of the person who's making the choice and start just looking at the forces themselves that are pushing the person around, we can more effectively say, oh, it's poverty and, you know, lack of options, not him being a bad apple that's leading [0:53:54] to crime.

0:53:55 Aaron: And then we can actually deal with those forces. And then you create people who have, you know, better forces, and then they become better people, and then everyone's more moral. [0:54:03] Absolutely.

0:54:04 Thomas: Yeah, well, I think that's a good place to leave it. [0:54:07] I agree with you.

0:54:09 Thomas: I still, I think the part of me that still debates it is whether or not I think the [0:54:15] redefinition of free will means we have free will, or, because I don't actually think that I would, that we really, that anyone really disagrees on the facts.

0:54:25 Thomas: I mean, maybe some people who are misinformed about the arguments do, but the facts seem pretty consistent. And I almost wonder if the compatibilist versus non-compatibilist position is like just a matter of not accepting the redefining of free will. [0:54:38] I'm not sure. That's something I think about a lot.

0:54:40 Thomas: But I think your arguments make a lot of sense. And I definitely want to thank you a lot for coming on the show. [0:54:45] Absolutely. Thanks for having me. It was really fun. So that's Aaron. And was there anything you wanted to plug?

0:54:49 Thomas: I know you mentioned you had a book coming out in the future. [0:54:52] Yeah, I've got a pop culture series, a Hamilton and philosophy book that'll be hopefully, I think it's up on Amazon for preorder now. Now it's going to be hopefully out in June or July. Oh, excellent.

0:55:02 Thomas: If you want to send me a link, I will put that in the show notes.

0:55:05 Aaron: Yeah, let me check into that and it shouldn't be a problem. [0:55:08] Awesome.

0:55:08 Thomas: So I would love to hear people's feedback, comments on this, whether they agree, disagree with either of us. And if there's another philosopher out there who would like to take the opposing view and take us through that on the show, I, for one, would really enjoy that. And then maybe after that, who knows if we could get a little cross debate going and and see what we can do, because I think that would be a ton of fun. But Aaron, thank you so much for coming on. [0:55:32] Thanks for having me, man. Great show.

0:55:54 Thomas: All right. Thank you again to Aaron for coming on. Really cool stuff. Lots to think about. And again, if you're a philosopher out there who takes the opposite position, let me know. I want to get another show and maybe we can get some back and forth even out of that. So that would be really cool. Also, don't forget to visit HelloFresh.com. Use the promo code SeriousPod. It's a great deal. Seriously, give it a try. I really hope you will. At least give it try. No risk there. You can just try it. And if you don't like it, you don't like it but I think you will. Also, if you are a patron over at patreon.com slash seriouspod, you actually get ad-free content so that's just something to think about. If you' d like the show without ads ever, there' s no exact telling how many I' ll have in the future or how long it' ll continue.

0:56:41 Thomas: It's kind of a buy when they want to thing, but if you' re like an ad- free show, you can always donate a buck or two at patreon dot com slash serious pod. Alright, with that said, look for a lot, a lot, a lot of Trump breakdown on Thursday. There's just too much to talk about. I, I, it really, the, I just don't think that we can avoid discussing the recent events and especially some of the fallout over the coming week and how that turns out. So that, that's likely going to be Thursday's show. But, of course, I'm also gonna have voicemails, other comments. It's been really fun. I'm really enjoying the new format, and I've heard from a lot of people who are too, so I'm glad about that. Alright, that being said, that's it for me today. I'll see you on Thursday's show.