SIO120: Philosophers In Space with Aaron Rabi

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, this is episode 120, I'm your host Thomas Smith, alright, at long last, the thing I've vague-booked about, I am very excited to finally bring you today. So you guys will probably know that I've always been a big fan of philosophy, I took a lot of it in college, but ended up going a more practical route in terms of what I majored in, but I did study it, I love it, I love talking about it, previously I've had Aaron Rabi on quite a few times to talk they're really fun, they've always gone over well, and I think you already know what I'm going to say, but we had the idea for a new show, and it's a show that I actually think I think.

0:01:12 Thomas: It actually came about because Black Mirror Season 4 was so damn good, and Aaron and I like to talk about our favorite shows and movies and all that, and we realized how fun it is to break down like our favorite sci-fi shows. And Aaron always has the and, uh... ability to just dig down to the philosophical underpinnings and get at things that I wouldn't have thought of, and I think a lot of people wouldn't of thought of.

Aaron has an incredible skill for breaking down art thematically and get at the underlying structure and what's going on in ways that I don't normally perceive, and it's really been fun to talk to him about this kind of stuff. So that's the premise of the show, I think it's so cool, so we take our favorite sci-fi episodes and movies and that kind of thing, we talk briefly about why we love it so much, we break it down, and then we turn over to the a philosophical topic that is either directly involved in it, or maybe is an offshoot of what happened in the piece of sci-fi. Bye-bye. We take actual text, actual reading, we're learning about actual philosophy in a really fun way and discussing it as it relates to the media and the art that we're consuming. Enough of me describing it, so here's the plan. I'm bringing you today Episode 1 from our podcast, which is called Philosophers in Space Peace.

And I want you guys to try it out, see how you like it, and, uh, if it's something that enough people support, we'll launch it independently, for now, we keep it as maybe a monthly episode on Serious Inquiries Only, but I really do think… I don't, it deserves to be its own show. It's really cool. We've got a number of them recorded ahead of time.

0:02:49 Thomas: And we've got SO many ideas for great episodes to come. We're we're having a really fun time doing this SHOW. And with that said, I'm just going to throw it over to Episode 1 of Philosophers in Space. We're talking about the USS Callister, the first episode of Season 4 of Black Mirror. And Aaron's going to use that to teach us about the Experience Machine, some thought experiments by Robert Nozick. This is so fun. I really hope you enjoy it as much as I enjoyed making it. Stick around AFTER the episode as well, I will be back with some details. I hope you enjoy it, here you go! Go.

0:03:31 Clip: Philosophers in space, space, space, space, space. That is the sound of inevitability. Logic clearly dictates that the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few. What have we left behind? What about the reality where Hitler cured cancer, Morty? The answer is don't think about it. Wait, what do you want, gigawatts?

0:04:18 Thomas: Hello and welcome to Philosophers in Space. Oh, Aaron, it is nice to be up here floating around with you. How you doing?

0:04:25 Aaron: I'm so excited. I didn't even take my soma today. I'm, I'm real happy. Oh,

0:04:30 Thomas: I am really excited too, in no small part because I am just pumped because of our swashbuckling intro. I mean, we really are going to have to do a lot of exploration and breaking new ground in this show, because we're set up as such with the theme music. So we have to do it.

0:04:49 Aaron: It's, it's really, it is choice-themed music. I just keep listening to it over and over, and especially the quotes, uh, the Rick and Morty kills me every single time. Oh can, oh cancer Hitler.

0:05:02 Thomas: Looking forward to developing that more as we go on. Of course, we can swap in and out those quotes. It's going to be fun. But we've got to get to our show. I'm so excited to break down some of our favorite philosophy and some of our favorite sci-fi. And who knows, maybe sometimes it'll be really bad sci-fi, like, you know, Mystery Science Theater, and we'll be talking about why it sucks. But for now, we can fanboy out about some of our favorite shows, movies, books, whatever it is, and then talk about the philosophical underpinnings and additional ideas. Is. I think it's such a good idea. Let's get into it. It's our first episode.

0:05:37 Aaron: Yeah, take us to the exposition zone.

0:05:39 Clip: You're traveling through another dimension beyond that which is known to podcasters. It is the middle ground between fair use and copyright infringement, between ordinary fanboying and meaningful analysis. It is the exposition zone.

0:05:59 Thomas: So this episode, we are talking about what I hope everyone listening has already watched, which is season four, episode one of The Black Mirror. And it is called The Callister. And it It is just a phenomenal, phenomenal episode. I thoroughly enjoyed this one. So good. I love this. It's my favorite Black Mirror episode. What do you think?

0:06:18 Aaron: Yeah it Is, it, it definitely one of the best ones, and, and we should be clear because we're going to immediately start getting corrections, uh, the USS Callister, I believe is the full name of the episode, um, but yes, I love this episode. Uh, I love it for so many reasons. First of all, I love it because it maximizes the horror, like it's such a disturbing episode to watch and you're just, you're really compelled and gripped by the concerns of the main characters as they're dealing with it, and then there's just so much meta commentary that's going into it. It's great, yeah.

0:06:29 Thomas: Ah, yeah. Yeah, there's a ton in it. And should be clear that this isn't going to be spoilers. There will be spoilers on this show.

0:07:01 Aaron: We can't do the philosophy without the spoilers, yeah.

0:07:01 Thomas: Exactly. But you have no excuses for not watching this episode. It's on Netflix. You need to check it out, so assuming you have or you don't care about spoilers, uh, so it starts off with the main character who is, well, and actually it starts right off thinking you're in the the show, which is what I love so much about it. It's like you're watching an old Star Trek episode. They even have the uh the like the filters on so it looks a little bit old-timey, and it was such a cool intro, but we find out that, uh, that that's not the show, we're not actually just watching an episode of Star Trek. It turns out that the main character, Jesse Plemons, uh,

0:07:38 Aaron: Is it is, it wrong, are we gonna get in trouble for this, right? He's discount rack Matt Damon. Right. Okay. On

0:07:41 Thomas: Right. Exactly. He's the, the, the one I saw a long time ago was Jesse Plemons was Matt Damon after he ate too many potatoes on the, on Mars, but I don't know if that's, uh, Well, he's also great. I, I really like him. He's been good in everything I've seen as an actor, in my opinion. So he's the main character, and we come to find out that he works as a chief technical officer of a company that's called Callister Incorporated, which is the same name as the ship, of course, USS Callister. But it was founded by him and his associate, who we've also seen in the ship. So as we step out of the fake sci-fi show, we just thought we were watching with Jesse Plemons as the captain, we come to find out that he works at this company and people that you see working were people that were on the ship a minute ago.

0:07:49 Aaron: Mars. Yeah. No, that's good, but Right. So That's the first twist.

0:08:34 Thomas: And right, right. So, and it turns out that, uh, I love, this is what I love about this episode. One, one thing I love is it starts off as a typical, like, oh, here's this nerdy guy, guy that no one appreciates, you know, except for one cute girl who is the new employee at the company. And she's very interested in in Jesse Plemons' work in the company because we come to find out that even though he co-founded it, he doesn't really get the credit for it. And his partner is like the CEO and is getting all the glory. So it starts off, you think it's, again, yet another twist. There's so many twists in this one. It sort of starts off as, oh, the nerd that nobody understands, but this cute girl, she understands his genius and, you know, knows how he really is the brains behind the company and that sort of thing.

0:09:08 Aaron: Yeah.

0:09:22 Aaron: It's a really great setup because they cultivate a bunch of sympathy for him and they make it seem like the fictional world that you saw at the beginning is maybe some sort of wonderful idealized fantasy, and then, uh, what you, you discover is he overhears this new girl chatting with one of the people around the office and hears that person suggest he's a bit of a creeper. So, you know, kind of bullying, and you feel uncomfortable for him. And then he steals a coffee cup that this girl was drinking in a really creepy little scene, you knows, grabs it, sticks it in a plastic bag, takes it home, scans it, it, and what you discover is he's been taking, uh, all of the people that he doesn't like from his office and scanning them into a private version of this video game that he created into this world where he can torture them forever, basically, right?

0:09:49 Thomas: Yeah.

0:10:14 Thomas: Well, I mean, it's it's unclear, like, it's it's, because the first scene we saw of the game was all positive, I mean, it was just him, you know, they were on some adventure and it was just like a good Star Trek episode where everybody's happy and he's the hero kind of thing, but it quickly takes a dark turn because he's he, he is angry, he was, he had a bad day at work, and so he takes it out on the fictionalized, uh, but conscious versions of these people in the game.

0:10:42 Aaron: Well, Yeah, and there's that horrifying scene, well, he first comes in after he has scanned the new girl, she's been uploaded, the the AIs that are already in this world explain to her the horrifying situation, and then he shows up, she refuses to play along, and he tortures her by taking away her face and, like, forcing her to, like, feel suffocation endlessly, basically, until she submits. It's this, it's a really, really wonderful, uh, version of the classic Star Trek episode of a super powerful but emotionally immature entity torturing people, starship, you know what I mean, like, it's a great twist to have the human being be the torturing super being and have the AIs be the plucky crew that is trying to escape and survive.

0:11:01 Thomas: Right.

0:11:30 Thomas: And Where, where it really just gets good in this episode for me is when he leaves we, it's not as though, you know, the game's gone and and then we're just following him, like, he leaves at a certain point and we're seeing these people in the video game who are essentially like actors just hanging it around a set now, you know, like, they're this is their lives, these entities, these conscious beings, their lives is this game, and you, they, you start to see why they're going along with it, because they, they, what we've seen so far is they're always going along with it, they're going with his whims, they're acting, they're making the show a good experience for him, and you wonder why, and as you alluded to, it's because he holds all the power, and eventually actually you get a real inside picture into what their lives are like.

And it's, it's very believable to me. Like, well, you know, if you're in that situation, you have no options. Your options are, you know, suffering at the hand of this guy or doing what he wants and, you know, making him happy. And then you kind of get to at least not suffer. It's depressing. But I also, what I like about this episode is how believable a lot of it

0:11:36 Aaron: Yeah. Yeah.

0:12:37 Thomas: Is, like, the reality of what it would, would be like for those, uh, conscious creatures in that game, in that software, it was very believable to me, right?

0:12:37 Aaron: And You can also imagine that an individual who feels, feels powerless in in one world, uh, could create a situation like that where they feel extremely powerful, and how that would drive them to, uh, increasingly potentially immoral behavior.

0:12:59 Thomas: And as he's introduced a new character, this new cute girl programmer that he took from work, essentially we get to see the process of, you know, a new initiate into this situation, and the, uh, they they explain her situation, but she's, he's in disbelief for a while, and we're kind of led to believe, and it makes sense that, you know, this is, this is what happens every time he introduces a new being into this thing. There's sort of a, a breaking in and, um, and an initiation, but, uh, in what turns out to be the very clear hero of this, uh, the, the character, and this is Nanette Cole is the character name. Cristin Milioti is the actress.

0:13:36 Thomas: Uh, yeah, so good. And she, she ends up being the protagonist because she, you for what we see her new character, her, her new iteration of her, uh, the copy of her in the game that is, are, she's not going to put up with it and she's trying everything she can with her resourcefulness and with her, uh, ingenuity to see if she can find a way out of this and find a way to stop it.

0:13:36 Aaron: She's Great too, yeah.

0:13:58 Aaron: Yeah, unfortunately we're not gonna have time to talk about it too much, but I love the critique of, like, uh, the female gamer programmer coming into a world being dominated by a man, refusing to accept that dominance, and finding some way to to trick him and take and get her freedom, basically. It's a great social justice kind of commentary there. I So, like, what's great is she has all of this, um, autonomy, and she, what's what's hilarious is that they they do a great little side bit about, um, revenge porn, where she effectively uses revenge porn against herself to blackmail herself into helping them.

0:14:18 Thomas: Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. But what's so fantastic about this, another thing to mention is that this becomes the Star Trek episode. Like the episode at first, you know, when it started off, it's the they're on the bridge and Jesse Plemons gets whatever he wants and he's the hero, whatever. And then as the episode unfolds, it's like, no, the the good story here, like the conflict, the drama, the fun is can this entity in the game figure out a way to escape? And it's like, that's what's, what I love so much about this episode is that becomes the start. That's the real hero. Like that's the Star Trek. That's the captain, you know, it's so great.

0:14:39 Aaron: Um, And It's Why I love the ending so much, so right, super spoiler alert, they successfully, um, trap the bad guy in his own universe as the universe is getting shut down, and they escape as artificial intelligences out into the cloud and appear to be free to explore the universe in a complex multi-dimensional, you know, video game basically, um, and it's amongst the, uh, Black Mirror endings it is one of the most upbeat upbeat endings.

0:15:35 Thomas: Yeah. It's one of the happiest. Yeah.

0:15:37 Aaron: And I want to debate with you some in a second about whether or not it actually is an upbeat ending, but I think certainly is portrayed as such. It's like a success over the, you know, controlling power of essentially a dominant white male.

0:15:41 Thomas: Hmm.

0:15:51 Thomas: Yeah. And there, so transitioning kind of out of the exposition, there are a lot of themes to hit on this. This episode probably touches on themes we'll be discussing for the entire life of this show, so it's hard to pick just one. And I do love, there's been great articles written on it about what this says about kind of toxic fandom. I think that's a big thing. Lots to analyze here, but what we're going to talk about in particular, why don't you take that away?

0:16:12 Aaron: Yeah, we're gonna focus in on a very specific thought experiment. So we're going to head over to our proper thought experiment machine.

0:16:26 Thomas: Yes.

0:16:27 Clip: Initiating thought experiment.

0:16:35 Thomas: Do you want to talk about who the author is of this?

0:16:38 Aaron: Yeah so this is Robert Nozick's um experience machine question sure the thought experiment that I wanted to address here, right, is going to come in the form of an offer. So let me put it to you this way. Mr. Smith, can I call you Thomas?

0:16:52 Thomas: No. I mean, yes. Sorry. I always say in improv, you always want to agree. So yes.

0:16:53 Aaron: Oh, we go. Yes, and, thank you very much.

0:16:59 Thomas: Yes, I do.

0:16:59 Aaron: Have the offer of a lifetime for you. And I don't mean that metaphorically, I mean that literally. Yeah, no. No.

0:17:04 Thomas: Yes, and... Oh, no, go ahead.

0:17:07 Aaron: I want to offer you a machine that will provide you the perfect life, okay? We're calling this Infinity 2.0. It's got all the corrections from the previous system. And

0:17:19 Thomas: Okay, so this isn't just a fleshlight. This is... Sorry.

0:17:20 Aaron: No, no, sir. This is a fully immersive experience where you and all of your loved ones can live in essentially perfect harmony. So this is a machine. Machine that we will plug you into after you consult with our experts to devise the perfect life for yourself. We will maximize whatever features you are interested in, success, challenges, happiness, love, whatever it is that will tailor the perfect experience for you. And once you've decided what that is, we're going to put you into the machine and you're going to live out that experience not knowing that it's fake. It's going to feel fully real to you. It's going to be exactly like you're living your real life. Are you interested, sir?

0:17:23 Thomas: Okay. Oh, okay.

0:18:05 Thomas: Well, I think the key to this is that we are social beings. And I want to know what my friends and family are going to be doing. Because I think it's a very different question. If I'm just dunking into this myself, and yes, I can trick myself into thinking that it's real life and it'll be a great life. True, and I think there's very real considerations there for my, uh, I guess, peace of mind. I would be very concerned in what the rest of the world is doing. Are they in the machine? Are they what?

0:18:35 Aaron: Great, yeah. No.

0:18:36 Thomas: Are they doing?

0:18:36 Aaron: You're a good person, Mr. Smith, and a family man, and I respect that, and, uh, you have a wonderful child, and I wouldn't want you to be at all concerned about that wonderful child. So what we're going to do is we're gonna work with you to devise the perfect life for your child as well, and your wife, and anyone else you care about, and we're going to put them into experience machines too, so they're all going to get to live their own perfect life where they're going have a version of you that is the perfect version of that, has all the right amount of time for them, and, and doesn't die suddenly at some point, doesn't have terrible taste in musicals, and understands the value of Hamilton, like all the things that you could really want for your child.

0:19:12 Thomas: I'm out, good day Sir, ding ding, the bell of the door as I leave you just lost yourself a customer.

0:19:22 Aaron: It was worth a shot. It was a worth a shout. So what I'm saying is, yeah, you're going to be in your own machine. They're going be in their own machine, everyone's going to have a perfectly happy life.

0:19:24 Thomas: Yeah. Who Why aren't you in one of these machines, and who's paying the bills on this? That's my next question.

0:19:37 Aaron: Ah, well, yeah. I'm a robot, right? Let's say I'm an AI salesman. I am going around selling this to flesh bags.

0:19:42 Thomas: Okay. Wow. Okay. And so, and so also robots are just managing the world for us essentially, so it's like the Matrix in a way, except we're you know, we can, we can stipulate that we're still in control. Well,

0:19:51 Aaron: Yeah. It's the version of the Matrix where you voluntarily consent to be, be in the Matrix, and you get a perfect experience out of it.

0:20:00 Thomas: I, I gotta say, I might be, uh, maybe I'm an easy mark, mark for this, uh, con man, uh, droid that's selling this, this overpriced experience machine. Wow. We haven't talked price yet. Uh, is there financing? That's another, no, sorry. We're getting off topic. Uh, exactly.

0:20:06 Aaron: Is it gonna matter once you're floating in a ooze

0:20:15 Thomas: Yeah. Just take all my money. Really? That's just, I don't need it.

0:20:16 Aaron: Right what is money to you at this point you're

0:20:19 Thomas: Yeah. Well, I would say if everybody's doing it and, uh, we're all taken care of and robots are managing the planet and all that. Uh, sure. All right. I'm in. Just do it.

0:20:29 Aaron: Okay with it you you accept that the, the version of your child that you will be experiencing isn't necessarily the real version of your childhood. They will be in a separate reality experiencing a virtual version of you, okay?

0:20:29 Thomas: Yeah, sure. Yeah Well, what if my child sucks? Like, maybe I'm getting a better version of my child. Maybe I'm getting like my child is gonna just be a nightmare. Like, maybe, probably, you know, maybe, maybe my child snuffs me out in my sleep for all I know in the real world.

0:20:47 Aaron: Oh god your Your child is gonna send me their therapy bills. They're gonna grow up and be so angry at me about all

0:20:58 Thomas: But this child is loving. We've got a good relationship because it's a good experience machine. And no, I think I'm an easy sell on this. I. Now, okay. Does that surprise you? Cause I think with everything you've laid out, I think, I think it's, it's might be something that makes sense.

0:21:03 Aaron: Right. Yeah. I I, I respect your commitment to consequentialism. I thought you would be an, an easier mark to break than this, and so I'm clearly gonna have to work harder in future episodes to get you to commit to some serious deontological beliefs. But But I do think the majority, not the majority, but I think a large number of human beings would say they're not okay with living a life that is separate from their loved, their real loved ones even if they get perfect facsimiles.

0:21:28 Thomas: Ooh. Yeah. Right. Yeah. That's what I think the central question and, and you let me know if I'm wrong in this, cause you're, you're the teacher here, but in, in the reading and doing the reading, which of course people will always be able to find in the show notes, right? They'll be able to find the, uh, what we're working with so they can read the text if they want to.

0:21:57 Aaron: Right.

0:21:57 Thomas: If it, from this reading, it seems like the central question and almost the, maybe the theory that Robert Nozick is trying to get at is that there's something about the real world that we will always want, you know, like we'll always want to, to, we'll always value being in the real world more than even the best experience machine. Does that seem like what he's trying to get at?

0:22:12 Aaron: Yep. Pretty much he thinks that there's ineffable, there's some irreducible value in knowing that our experiences are represented by, representational of what's going on in the real world. So, like, in The Matrix, when they say, you know, Cypher, you know it won't be real, like that's a quality that he thinks that all of us would find intuitively grotesque. And it's not necessarily clear that he's right. And I think as we've moved into increasing understandings of virtual reality, people might be a little more comfortable with this idea.

0:22:30 Thomas: Yeah. Well, yeah.

0:22:53 Thomas: Yeah, this is what's so interesting because this is originally, the early one I have is 1974, and I think this has changed so much because this might not be popular with the philosophers, but I think this is really a psychology question. Like, I think that, and maybe that's one of the advantages of philosophy is kind of posing questions that that other sciences eventually can take a stab at answering. But I think, here's what I think, and you can tell me where I'm, where you think I'm wrong on this, but I really think it's tied to a couple of things, like this intuition that we want to be in the real world. I think it's tied to, first and foremost, I think we're social beings. And I really do think what matters is what everybody else is doing.

0:23:06 Aaron: Mm-hmm.

0:23:34 Aaron: Mm-mm.

0:23:34 Thomas: And I think also being tied to the real world does involve being able to react to facts as we see them. So I think we're all like, like I anticipate, okay, what's going on in the real world that I'm missing that's going to harm me in some way. I think we're all feeling like we need to be able to respond to facts in that way, to changes in our environment in a way that's going to preserve us. But I think – here's a couple more things I think. I think you could solve all those with enough hypotheticals and you could hypothetically postulate that we're certain everything's going to be fine and you will never have – it's not a meteor that's headed for Earth that we're all missing because we're all in our machines or something like that.

That and but I also think, and this is where the psychology kicks in, I also think we might be wrong about ourselves when we imagine it, like I and this is a problem I have sometimes with with some of these thought experiments, I'm curious what you think like it might be that really that would be better for us, but we're just wrong about it.

0:23:49 Aaron: Mm-hm. Hmm.

0:24:31 Aaron: We're wrong that it would be better for us or wrong that we would push back against it.

0:24:35 Thomas: Like We, it might be that as humans when we are posed these hypotheticals that we aren't really able to fully put our minds into them. And we're not able to fully be right about ourselves and what would be best for us. And it might be that it would be better to just do this, given all the stipulations that you can hypothetically, you know, add onto it or

0:24:49 Aaron: Sure. Yeah, no, I think you've got a couple of good points there. I think, first of all, we have to always remember with a thought experiment that what we say we would do is not necessarily what we would doing. It highlights some of our, Or what's best for us, right? The second point is that we might say that we could do something, but it might not actually be the thing that is best for us.

0:25:05 Thomas: What's, or what's best for us. Yeah.

0:25:14 Aaron: We could be totally wrong about that, absolutely.

0:25:15 Thomas: So he has a, he has a couple of points here that I think are great to talk about where he talks about, like, we don't just want to experience things. We want to actually do them. Because in his mind, I think if I'm understanding the reading correctly, like we want to be a certain type of person. So it's like, if I do some virtual reality and I climb Mount Everest, I think this once again goes back to the social aspect of it though. If I brag to my friends, yeah, I climbed Mount Everest. Whoa, that's amazing. Oh, in a video game. Oh, that's not amazing. You know, like I think that's a big part of it. But here's where I have for you. Uh-oh, we might have to hit the music again or something. I've got another hypothetical for you.

0:25:32 Aaron: Yep. Uh-oh.

0:25:55 Aaron: Within a hypothetical within a hypothetical.

0:25:57 Thomas: Hypothetical.

0:25:57 Aaron: Like an episode within an episode. I'm in the machine.

0:25:57 Thomas: We're in inception of hypothetical. Here. Imagine imagine Aaron, can I call you Aaron? Mr.

0:26:07 Thomas: Rabi. Imagine you wake up in a tub of goo, like Neo or whatever, and you get up and you realize that every single person in the world is plugged into an experience machine. And the experience machine you were in is a coordinated reality where you're getting your social systems, your social status, what you accomplished, it's all in there. It's all in the computer. So, you know, your friends, your stories you tell, the things you do, the games you win, all that stuff, that's all on the computer. You come out into the real world and everybody's just sitting in goo. What are you going to do? I mean, let's say, and by the way, I also want to stipulate, because we're allowed to do this with these thought experiments.

0:26:12 Aaron: You can. Right. Sure. This

0:26:43 Thomas: You're not able to get anyone else out because that's their decision. They've locked it in. They've made their decision. You somehow, there's a malfunction. You woke up or something.

0:26:53 Aaron: Is the plot of Passengers. By the way, yeah.

0:26:53 Thomas: Oh, really? Well, What I, I haven't seen it, but what I'm trying to get at here is I actually think it's not so much that we care about reality, is that we care about our socially constructed reality. I think in that scenario, you wake up, you walk around, what are you going to do? There's nothing to do. Like, oh, I'll go farm till the land by myself because it's the real world and I prefer the real world. It's like, I don't think you would do that. I think you'd be like, oh, get me back in the goo. I guess that's where everybody is.

0:26:56 Aaron: Right. Right.

0:27:20 Aaron: Your first instinct, think, would immediately be to get back into the AI back into the virtual world.

0:27:24 Thomas: Jump me into this goo. Yeah, because I think psychologically, that's more of what's happening. Like, we want to be where everybody is. I think that's sort of an inescapable part, in my opinion, of our psychology.

0:27:26 Aaron: Yeah. For sure. Uh-huh. So Let me ask you a question. Now that you've bought my new machine, what do you want to program into it? What kind of life do you want if you have absolute control? Sure.

0:27:43 Thomas: Yes. That's a tough question, because once again, I think that's something that we are profoundly bad at. I think that what my opinion would be wouldn't even be the right thing, probably. Probably. I if we all knew what the best life for us was, we would be a lot happier. But

0:28:04 Aaron: Well, This is an interesting additional question, right? Would you turn over your programming opportunity in the situation to an algorithm that we claim, name, it has a higher likelihood of programming a life that you will enjoy?

0:28:12 Thomas: Yeah, I think if you can get my, you know, assumptions high enough, hypothetically, like if I really trust that, then yeah, I think I would. And you know, this brings us to one of the other points in the reading, which is, and I think this is so dated and I love it because again, what was it, 1974? He's like, another thing that we don't like like about this hypothetical is it, it limits us to a manmade world, which is really, you know, like, it's just not as good. And I'm thinking really like nowadays, I think the real world is, is badly overshadowed by the, by the manmade world.

0:28:41 Aaron: Oh. Yeah.

0:28:47 Thomas: I think human made worlds are vastly better than the natural world.

0:28:53 Aaron: I don't think Robert Nozick ever got to play World of Warcraft. And I don't think he understands that, like, when we have optimal control over every part of our experiences, like, things will get crazy. Oh,

0:28:55 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah. And, and they'll get crazy and so, and often really good ways and like adventurous ways and, you know, that we can make everything a lot better. I think already the, the, the human made world is better than the real world. So that's the part that I just loved. It was, it was so dated. So there's another part of the reading that is an excerpt from the examined life, which is another Nozick work that's from 1989. So I don't, maybe video game technology was a little higher. Maybe, I don't know if he's, he's He's like, Tetris is pretty damn good. Nevermind. I've changed all my assumptions. Assumption.

0:29:08 Aaron: Yeah, for sure.

0:29:17 Aaron: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. This is this is reformulation of the theory who says

0:29:39 Thomas: So this one talks more about, like, is happiness all we should care about? It actually asked some really interesting questions that I think you were getting at a moment ago as well, which is, like, if happiness, if we were able to pick the graph of our life, you know, is the integration, is the area under the curve of happiness what we want? So, like, the most happiness over time, or is it, we want to progress, we accept less overall, like, total happiness units as long as it's a progression, like a steady upward progression, versus things

0:29:39 Aaron: That philosophy can't be empirical?

0:30:15 Aaron: Right.

0:30:15 Thomas: Get worse and worse in our life, but our baseline started high enough that it was a total, a higher total, which I think a very interesting question. Oh,

0:30:22 Aaron: Do you, by any chance, remember the second Matrix movie, when the architect explains the history of the matrices that died before the origin, before the current one, they're in

0:30:32 Thomas: My god. Uh, no, but now that you say it, I do, because that's, that's always the best part of any, of any movie, is explaining something like that for an hour. That's a great thing to put in a movie, but go, yeah,

0:30:32 Aaron: Oh. Right. But where he talks about Um, actually, where it's, where Agent Smith in the, the first one talks about how the first Matrix was like a paradise, but humans kept trying to wake up. And so they had to create one that was more challenging. I do think There's a really interesting discussion to be had about how the best of all possible lives is not one of pure, constant bliss, because the best of all Pissible lives involves growth, and growth involves challenges. Andso the perfect life that you would want the algorithm to program would be one that challenges you just enough that you are always like succeeding, but in a way that is satisfying, like a video game. Right, a good video game is one that is not so easy that you get bored with succeeding, but not so hard that you can't succeed. There's a little sweet spot in there. Oh,

0:30:50 Thomas: Yeah, right, right, true.

0:31:30 Thomas: This will be topic for another show, but I also think there's an alternative, which is what if we could alter the way that we are so that we are susceptible to just enjoying static pleasure forever? Like that would be the, yeah, definitely. There's a quote that I just have to point out. He references it. I'm not sure if he's endorsing it exactly, but he's talking about it in the context of these arguments. And he says, it's like the old quote, it's better to be Socrates dissatisfied than a fool satisfied. And I was like, well, that's certainly false. I don't know.

0:31:32 Aaron: Yeah, There's going to be some human augmentation in this show, I think, He's yeah, he's quoting um, John Stuart Mill there, who is the your boy utilitarian who wants to say that like we would prefer the higher pleasures of a life of the mind over the lower pleasures of physical satisfaction of being a pig that's always happy. Basically, yeah, you don't you don's buy into that elitism.

0:32:04 Thomas: Oh, yeah, okay.

0:32:17 Thomas: And I just think that that is BS. Like, I don't think we, A, no, no, I think we were, if anything, it's like, to reference another great work of science fiction, The Simpsons, where Homer has the crayon in his brain removed, and he's like a genius. And he ends up putting it back in because but it's like that if you if you don't know any better, and in many ways, you know, humans already don't, you know, relative to some some greater intelligence, but if you don't know any better I think you are happy, and I think that's a, that's it's at the very least a question you could attempt to answer empirically. And I think it's funny that it's offered in the, in a like off-handed, like, "Yeah, of course it's better to be like smarter and unhappy than than not smart aren't."

0:32:31 Aaron: Yeah, yep, yeah, in the original Mill, he offers it in an unsatisfying way too, in my opinion. He says we know better because we know what it would be like to be the a pig and what it's like to be us, and we know that our version is better, but I think you're right, you can 100% say we don't know if it's really like the pig could be ecstatically happy. All the time.

0:33:11 Thomas: Nah. Here's, here's my counter argument to that. I kind of remember what it was like to be a little kid and God, was I way more happy. It was just like way more happiness, like all the time.

0:33:19 Aaron: Uh, a friend, a friend of mine once said that he was on mescaline with his friends, and he looked over and they saw a small child wandering around and looking at a butterfly, and they're like, no matter how much mescalin we do, we're never gonna be as happy as that child. The

0:33:36 Thomas: Yeah. Uh, I think of that all the time.

0:33:40 Aaron: Mescal in how much have you done?

0:33:42 Thomas: None, but now I might. Don't take drug advice, Drug use advice for a podcast.

0:33:43 Aaron: No, no, no. No, especially because your child is going to grow up listening to this and hate you and want to do drugs. You've put her in a box, Thomas. You immediately were like, I put my child in a Box and she never sees me again. And you didn't even question it.

0:34:02 Thomas: She's happy. She's seeing a better version of me. She's seeing a better version of her dad, too. Why would I want her to see a shitty version of me?

0:34:05 Aaron: She is, she is. No I know. In that experience machine, her Father is bringing her to New York and taking her to Hamilton the musical, and she's happy and it's wonderful. Wonderful oh.

0:34:16 Thomas: You've lost yourself another customer. You have me and then you lose me. But one more point I wanted to hit kind of related almost to what you just said is he hits on, there's kind of a beefed up experience machine in this, you know, again, because Tetris came out and Pong. So he's got some more data to work with, but he talks about it and he talks about what we would consider for our children. And you just accused me of being totally heartless when it comes to my kid. But I also think, again, it comes back to social elements because I think we can't help but keep in our instincts, even if we're not conscious of it, we're thinking, well, I don't want to just have my kid plugged into a machine because then I can't like, you know, brag about what my kid did in school today. And, you know, like my kid's accomplishments and social things that I get to to kind of, you know, like experience secondhand through that person.

0:34:19 Aaron: I know, I think

0:35:11 Thomas: And I think that we might just be wrong about what the better thing is. Like we might all have an instinct of like, yeah, no, they need to have real experiences when really maybe they're happier being the the fool satisfied.

0:35:22 Aaron: You, you take the evil demon, you take the Matrix, you, uh, you're, you're fine with a fictional version of your child.

0:35:26 Thomas: Well, is The matrix, well, okay. The Matrix, let's see, the way, you know, the way the Matrix lays it out is almost like, we do get to live out as long as we want. And it's not even like we're all getting the best possible pleasure life. We're just like, that's reality. Like, right now, you and I are in the Matrix. It's just whatever it is. So it's a little different. Matrix could, but you argue that, you know, if you get unplugged from that goo, you would realize, like, well, the best possible good would be if we could be in control of our own bodies and and situation, and not just be because, like, tomorrow the machines could realize that the whole premise behind how they're generating power actually isn't scientifically sound. And then just flush us down the toilet, so you could argue like the maximum good is, well, let's let's get control of ourselves and then put ourselves in the Matrix.

0:36:06 Aaron: Well, well, yes, there's No, there's no upshot to like putting people in this thing other than like it reduces suffering, so, you know, I think we look for an advanced version here where we download all of our consciousness into a arc of some sort and then just shoot it into space and live in a virtual world where we're all blissfully happy together, right? That's an effective compromise.

0:36:35 Thomas: That sounds fun. Let's do it. I'm in. Sold. How much?

0:36:39 Aaron: Okay. Oh, wait. Wait a minute. Our show is called Philosophers in Space. I think we just described what's already happened to us. I Think We've Actually Shot Ourselves into Space.

0:36:45 Thomas: Wow. Origin story. Origin story. And our idea of happiness is we're just doing the philosophy and trying to enjoy good shows and spread the stuff we enjoy and the philosophy we enjoy. Wow. We've done it. We've come full circle.

0:36:53 Aaron: Oh, yep. The worst they can find. La la la. This

0:37:04 Thomas: And oh, as will be true with every episode of Philosophers in Space, you will get an extra segment if you go and support us over on patreon.com/zerog, that's the number zero, zero g, that's all it is.

0:37:17 Aaron: One's a good bonus segment because Thomas Smith is going to be a wet blanket like usual.

0:37:21 Thomas: And then maybe you're gonna try to try to talk me down about it, we'll see, but but we are going to talk about whether or not this is plausible, this Callister episode. And I think there's a pretty fundamental flaw in it. And we'll see if I'm right or wrong on that. All right, thanks so much for listening to Philosophers in Space, we'll be floating out here dishing more philosophy to you guys and our experience machines in the sky, and uh, definitely check out that extra extended edition, it's gonna be a lot of fun. All

0:37:24 Aaron: Yeah, sweet.

0:37:54 Clip: That's all for the main show, but if you'd like to go to patreon.com/zerog, you can enjoy Philosophers in Space after dark. Here's a little sneak peek for you.

0:38:08 Thomas: So I think this means, unless I'm mistaken, that Thomas is a wet blanket is, is one and O here. Like, I think I'm yeah.

0:38:15 Aaron: This, this is a case in which your wet blanketness is accurate, it tracks with reality. And I respect that.

0:38:19 Thomas: Yeah. Hey, I'm technically correct, which is the best kind of correct.

0:38:23 Aaron: That's right, you, you are not wrong in this situation, you are just an asshole. Whole one point, one point for you, sir.

0:38:30 Clip: This has been a burst transmission of Philosophers in Space, all music written and performed by Thomas Smith. If you've enjoyed your infotainment upload, please locate the nearest podcast interface device and fill it with five-star ratings and glowing reviews. If you think Ground Control should spring forth on new goodies and content, consider supporting us at patreon.com/zerog. You can find us on Twitter at Zero G Philosophy, where Aaron will instantly and compulsively respond. Or you can email us at philosophersinspace@gmail.com. Finally, if you're sad that it takes so long for our signals to reach Earth, you can always find Thomas over at Serious Inquiries Only and Opening Arguments, and Aaron over at Embrace the Void. Until next time, live long and philosopher.

0:39:27 Thomas: Ah, so good. So fun. Thank you so much for sampling that new show. I really hope it takes off because it's so fun, it has so much promise. So, if you go to patreon.com/zerog, that's just the number zero and g, you will find the extended first episode as well as the extended second episode where we break down Rixty Minutes. We are big Rick and Morty fans, and there's so much good philosophy in Rick and Morty. It won't be the last episode of that show that we break down, but in episode two of Philosophers in Space, Aaron uses Rixty Minutes to talk about possible worlds, and it gets really fun. I think the phrase he uses is intuitively grotesque, but it gets really fun, so I hope you'll check it out.

0:40:13 Thomas: Seriously, it's great stuff, and I'm incredibly proud of it, and I really hope it can be its own thing here. The only thing left for me to do is to thank my new member for this week over at SeriousPod.com/support, and that is Zika Baby. Thank you so much, Zika baby, for working through some technical difficulties, but still getting it done, I appreciate the support, and I am looking forward to Monday, I've got a great interview coming your way. And members at SeriousPod.com/support will get Monday's episode a little early. I have to have it done anyway because I will be gone, so I'll get that out early. And finally, Eli Bosnick and I are going to get around to doing our episode. His schedule has been pretty rough, so that's something that members can look forward to as well. Thank you so much. I really hope you like the new show. So, Have a great rest of your week, and see you on Monday.