SIO290: Patreon QnA 1!

Transcript

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

0:00:29 Thomas: Hello and welcome to the first ever Lindsay and Thomas Patreon Q&A. How's it going? Oh, Lindsay. Oh, you're here. Okay, good. That's a crucial ingredient. That would have been awkward. I'd have to do a voice and stuff. Wouldn't have worked.

0:00:33 Lindsey: Yay. Yeah. No, I wouldn't miss this. I'd

0:00:42 Thomas: Yeah, I can't wait. It's gonna be a lot of fun.

0:00:44 Lindsey: Like to hear your me impression. That sounds, that sounds pretty fun.

0:00:46 Thomas: Ooh, That would be, that'd be funny. It'd basically be like, "I apologize for being so angry right now. I can't believe I'm shouting." Shouting, uh, you're gonna have to edit this down I apologize, I, I'm about to break something, I am so angry, I'm, I know you all can hear how angry I am right now, that's my okay but that's why we love you, you're, you're so even keeled, and when you think you sound mad you don't at all. I mean, I love it when I think I'm, like, happy people, like, "God, why are you so mad?" "I'm okay, how's it going?" Oh, oh, you're yelling at me.

0:00:58 Lindsey: That's, that's pretty spot on actually. Yeah, okay. I feel pretty attacked right now. Yeah see that's why this works so well, right? It's good, good compliment. Yeah yeah

0:01:28 Thomas: Exactly. Oh, yeah. Together, we're perfect. Perfect balance. Oh, I love it.

0:01:34 Lindsey: Yeah together we're a normal person. Yeah on

0:01:35 Thomas: Okay. We're one normal person. What a great start. Here we go. We could get through all these. I don't know. It depends on how Andrew Torres we are with our answers. I feel like you're going to have some deep dives on a few things, but we'll see how far we get. Well, here's one that's tough to get a hypothetical general contacting a problem child. Would you ever support the executive branch just ignoring the Supreme Court? Well, we'll do this hypothetical, I guess. Suppose 2027, there's some kind of disaster and President Harris wants to use the National Guard to do something. They'll save millions of lives. I don't think I don'T believe the National National Guard could save millions of lives, but that's okay. But SCOTUS says she can't because their plan offends Christian conservatives in some way. Yeah. So I think we could construct maybe a better hypothetical. Like I genuinely worry about this with abortion.

0:01:53 Lindsey: A couple of things yeah yeah yeah, yeah,

0:02:31 Thomas: It's one thing to be like the, well, a couple of thoughts. This is a very actually in-depth political question that I'll try to answer. But like there's, the problem is there's more to it than just one, I guess maybe the benefit of the hypothetical that Problem Child has come up with is it is more direct. It's like, no, the president's going to ignore it and give orders to the National Guard.

And that's like two different entities, opportunities, but in reality, if it's something like Obamacare where they struck down parts of it that you're like, that is the most fucking bullshit decision, like we shouldn't listen to this, but the problem is there's so many moving parts involved in that process that it's like it's hard for everybody together to all defy the law and not to have certain elements be like, no, we're, I mean, the court said this, we're not doing that, you know, vendors or people will make websites, sites for you, or what, you know, all these different cogs in the process to be like, the court said you can't, I'm not, sorry, we're not doing this, you know?

So the more complex it is, I think the more opportunity there is for people to, you know, they're not gonna all break the law perfectly in the same way, but something I do really worry about is, let's say in a few years here, whenever, could be any time, I guess, um, but let's say they, they decide a fetus has a, I think it's what, an eighth amendment right, I can always mix up numbers, but whatever, like they say, they declare a fetus a person and say that no state can have abortion.

What, I, I genuinely wonder, like, like, should California and whatever, say, I was talking about my state, but like, is California going to be like, sorry, no, and then we'll just have battles kind of between federal agents and you know,

0:04:16 Thomas: It'll be like, like this weird situation where like there could be federal raids, but maybe there'll be clashes between like local authorities and federal authorities trying to arrest abortion providers. I really don't know what would happen in that case.

0:04:26 Lindsey: I don't, I I don't either. Yeah, I think I was thinking about this question a little bit simplistically. I don know. I thought that Problem Child was setting up like a utilitarian dilemma, like which is worse, blowing up the system or killing a million people. A trolley problem, if you will.

0:04:45 Thomas: Yeah. You didn't realize that this is actually a question we're going to face in a few years.

0:04:51 Lindsey: Oh, no, I'm certain that it is. But yeah,

0:04:55 Thomas: No, but in thatcase, I would want whoever the governor is to be like, sorry, no can do. We're not doing that. Like We just want, you can send your army, I guess we're not doing that, and then see what happens. Like, honestly, that's why I think that would be the morally correct thing, even though it would be like catastrophic to our country, and would, I'm sure there would be a lot of awful stuff to come of it. But like, I, there's... there's a non-zero chance of something like this happening. It's not, you know, know, it's not like 50-50, but yeah.

0:05:01 Lindsey: No.

0:05:27 Lindsey: But no, I'm worried about it too. I just started watching The Handmaid's Tale, the new season and so yeah, all this stuff is pretty primed, um,

0:05:30 Thomas: There you go, let us know how it turned out.

0:05:36 Lindsey: Uh, but yeah, I mean, I mean, do you think that there's something to the idea though that like, if you, if you blow up the the the system, right? If you violate the law in some way, that then like the long-term consequence of that is that conservatives are going to do the same thing, I don't know, right?

0:05:45 Thomas: Yeah. Oh, I do, I mean, this would be them already doing that, like that's the thing. That they would have drawn first, uh, blood here, because the ruling itself would be such an insult to law that that's, that's using the institution to blow up the law, you know, but like, because it because it has the the like appearance of being, you know, from the Supreme Court, that makes it okay. Yeah, I don't know. No, I, I do genuinely think that is a problem. Like that's a, and maybe a bigger problem than sometimes kind of revolutionary types think it is, you Know, like you do have to have some semblance of some sort of system to be left over when all is said and done.

0:05:56 Lindsey: Yeah.

0:06:09 Lindsey: No, I agree yeah I don' know yeah I think that, I think you do, because, because I think otherwise, that's how they make Gilead. I do. I don't know.

0:06:39 Thomas: Yeah, well here, let's, let's tackle this one. Slardabarfast, I don't know, it's probably pronounced way differently, asks, I still wonder how Sam Harris ended up so wrong. I know we talk about this from time to time.

0:06:52 Lindsey: Yeah, me too. Yeah. We've talked about this on the stream quite a bit, actually.

0:06:55 Thomas: Yeah. What are your thoughts?

0:07:00 Lindsey: Yeah, I, so I'm a little bit on the fence at this point about whether some of Harris's positions aren't actually more cynical than I once thought they were, but let's say for the sake of argument that they aren't. Let's say that he's completely, you know, sincere in all the things that he says. I think that he has ended up so wrong because of a combination of two things, potentially. I think it's because he started listening to some, some really talented, convincing grifters under this sort of justification of, you know, not avoiding difficult conversations or not, you know, ruling out conversation partners on the basis of guilt by association or whatever, so I think that's one, and then two, he seems to subscribe to this idea, idea that you can arrive at a rational position without knowing the historical and social context of a problem, and yeah, and I, and I think that that's a huge problem for, for most of the issues that we get mad at him about, about race and gender and all these kinds of things.

You just, you have to understand the historical and social context of these groups in order to really have an informed position about these issues. And it's not just that Harris is ignorant of those contexts, I, I think he seems to be actively hostile to those sources of information when he's forming these ideas. He seems to prefer, like, you know, going through this purely rational, rational, decontextualized process. And I think he does that because he sees it as less prone to bias than, you know, looking at it through this historical

0:07:27 Thomas: Yeah. Hmm.

0:07:50 Thomas: Interesting.

0:08:29 Thomas: Yeah,

0:08:29 Lindsey: Or social lens. And I think that's nonsense.

0:08:30 Thomas: Totally Agree. I think the key was like, if you want to try to look at it as though, and we don't, of course we don't know this, we don't know exactly what's been in his heart of hearts this whole time, but if you want to go under the theory that, like, he used to genuinely be like a liberal Democrat kind of person, and I think, you know, I think he was, I say this all the time, the four horsemen were crucial in me turning into a lefty Democrat.

Like, they would reference it, they would talk about it in a no-nonsense way, they'd just be like, well, obviously, you know, we vote liberal on such and such thing, and and it really had an impact on me, so I don't really, if people want to say these have always been right wingers the whole time, I think you're wrong. I don't really think that's the case. Um, now I know people like to play word games with, like, well, it was, it was right wing, but blah, blah, but whatever. Um. You know, relative to the, uh, Clinton is still, Bill Clinton was right-wing. So by that definition, that's fine, whatever. But, like, descriptively they were, um, for me anyway, like, they were, they would, they voted Democrat.

And then I think what happened is because of 9/11, obviously, you've got the Christopher Hitchens, you know, supporting the Iraq war for, like, some good and a lot of bad reasons. And also the fixation on Islam, which in some ways I see why it happened, you know, like I get it.

0:09:05 Lindsey: Yep. Me too. Yep,

0:09:57 Thomas: But then I think that's where that allowed that foothold in the door, or whatever, the foot in the door, to be like, oh, yeah, for a bunch of, you know, cynical actors to be, like, yeah. You know how Muslims are coming for our Western values? You know, and, like. Just a little. Like. Start with these arguments that sound like, yeah. Yeah. You. Know. And appeal in a way that don't sound like they're racist and bad to certain people, like to Sam Harris.

And then, like, all of a sudden, it's Douglas Murray or whatever, and it's like a couple people like that where they seem really smart, they sound like they're talking about something cool and scholarly, and Western values and enlightenment values and all that, and then, like, before you know it, he's listening to those people a little too much, and their, their sources of information are not good, you know, and they're not vetting each other because they trust each other. And then all of a sudden they have a super, super skewed version of what's going on in universities because of that enormous culture battle that, like, very, very well waged by the right, always of, like, look at the, look at the kids, look, they're screaming. The kids in the colleges are screaming. Everybody

0:11:05 Thomas: Has been going on for 60 years that we've been doing this, probably at least where it just, it instills fear and older people who aren't there anymore, and they think something new and terrible is happening. And I just think that added up over the years to where his sources of information that he trusts are not good in major ways.

0:11:05 Lindsey: Yep, yep. Yeah.

0:11:26 Thomas: And there's not much you can do about that if you don't try to fix it yourself.

0:11:30 Lindsey: Yeah, exactly. And then you you combine that with the fact that he, you know, so I think, you know, I remember the point at which he was just complaining constantly, and this never stopped, about people accusing him of being racist because of the arguments that he was making about Islam. And, you know, I think that at least at the time, and I think I stand by this, I really, I don't think that that's why he was making those arguments, even though they do have those effects, right? There's a reason that They appeal to the people that they do. But when that started happening, I think and more resistant to talking to anybody on the left and that I think is was, you know, sort of the the linchpin in sort of securing this this spot, yeah, right, and I remember him talking about that and being like, you know, I just I don't have the bandwidth to to deal with with all of these bad faith actors and all this stuff, and so yeah, he stopped listening to people other than Douglas Murray. So yeah,

0:11:54 Thomas: Right. Yeah, I agree. Oh, yeah. Yeah. The tune out factor.

0:12:24 Thomas: Yeah. And several others. Yeah. No, I

0:12:27 Lindsey: Right.

0:12:27 Thomas: Totally think we've cracked it. That's my theory. Anyway, I really do think that's a big problem. And like, honestly, I'm sure he or somebody equivalent who gives a shit about me would say the same thing about me. They'd be like, ah, Thomas, I started listening to these groups of people and that's where his information comes from. And like that is kind of where we are, you know, in society. Like if you are in a bubble of some kind, well, there's no such thing as not being in a Bubble pretty much. I mean, I try to get a diverse diet of news, you don't, like, I do my best. But like, we're in, we're in social media bubbles to some extent and we're at least, we at least have networks of people we trust and

0:12:30 Lindsey: That's true. Yeah,

0:13:06 Thomas: You know, like I think the network of people I trust is correct, and I'm sure everybody thinks that about the network of people they trust, and then there's not really a, there isn't a good way to argue between those, like, I, you know, give another example, I have this problem when I argue with anybody on the, like, far left, where it's like, like, they have a network of sort of a, I don't know, I'm using good terminology here, but they have like a ecosystem of information that goes back decades, you know, that we all do. That'll go back decades, like, of the Intercept and, you know, Current Affairs and other, like, super lefty sources that, in my opinion, uh, and again, this is coming from me and you can say that I'm in my bubble or whatever, and that's fine. But like, in my opinion, those, those types of sources always assume the worst possible motivations about Democrats in government and anyone in government. And they're right, you know, some percentage of the time. Like, don't get me wrong.

0:13:21 Lindsey: I

0:14:07 Thomas: There are good sources of information on some things, but I think they go way too far the other way. And then over time, that all again, you spend a lot of time, you marinate with those sources of información. Those are the people you talk to. And then you come to vastly different conclusions about what's happening in the Joe Biden presidency, for example. And it's just like we're seeing two different things. Like there's no nothing he does that's perfect. Progressive counts. That's all nothing. It doesn't exist. And anything that you can interpret badly or things that he genuinely messes up on, like he has a lot of views that I don't agree with. We need to do better on refugees, that kind of stuff. That all means he's Nixon or something like like Ronald Reagan, you know, and it's like it's it's this game like it really is a problem. And I think it's a problem no matter where you are. You know, it's I don't know how we solve it.

0:15:00 Lindsey: Think that's true, but I think that there's another important aspect to bubbling, which is like, do you listen to the other side in their own words? And it is clear from a lot of the things that Sam Harris says that he doesn't. He gets his information about the left from people in his bubble, and I, I personally, I think that, I think that that's, uh, a big differentiation in terms of, of how, you know, you and I, for instance, approach these kinds of issues, because I generally try to go back to, like, primary sources of these arguments I want to hear how people are talking about these things in their own words, that makes a difference I think burger

0:15:09 Thomas: Interesting. Yeah, yeah, good point. And you're totally you're totalmente right. That's a great point. And what's funny now is I just had that thought the other day. I was like, oh, yeah. Yeah, I need to you know, it's it's weird that I'll tell you why it was because of the stupid burger argument. Have you heard that? You know, the like Joe Biden's going to says no more burgers for anybody or whatever. And that was like this claim on the right. And then.

0:15:51 Lindsey: Oh, oh, yeah, I did see that? Where did that come from?

0:15:58 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah, from nothing. It's total fucking nothing. It's it'S not anything. And I think it was a red meat. The red meat thing was a nothing burger, basically.

0:16:03 Lindsey: It's a nothing burger, okay. Yeah, yeah.

0:16:13 Thomas: That would be a good episode title if this were about that. And I had that thought and I do this every time where I'm like, damn, am I doing that but with them? Is there something about that? And then I go to their primary sources and try to listen to what the right is saying. And all they're saying is that Joe Biden wants to get rid of your hamburgers. I'm like, there is no there is No argument like there's all the whole the whole right for the most part. Now, this wasn't always the case. And I know you can find certain areas of the right that are still not lost completely. But like most of the Right, if you go to Their Words, it's just the trolling of our words. So now there's nothing to respond to. Like there's, you know, it's like, oh, OK, that you in your own words is just complete conspiracy theory nonsense about what we think. It's weird.

0:16:34 Lindsey: Exactly. Yeah. Exactly. Right. I mean, that's what made, that was one of the things that made that response to to Deborah So's book so difficult because like, before we could get into any of the substantive claims, we had to get past all of this, this bullshit that she was claiming about the left and that does seem to be like a lot of, a lot of the arguments essentially I, it's, yeah, mm-hmm.

0:17:10 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah, I hear we'll get a palate cleanser question. What are your top three fiction books by? Oh, this was Eli Young's, by the way. You can do top one if you want.

0:17:29 Lindsey: Oh man, I mean, yeah, yeah, Eli, that's a hell of a lotta fictional apples and oranges that you're asking me to compare No, I've got, is I've three that I really like, I can just say those, so Do you know Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency? This come up before in the stream or something? Okay.

0:17:40 Thomas: Oh, OK. Sure. Sure. This has come up, but I don't know it still.

0:17:53 Lindsey: Uh, so it's a Douglas Adams book, and as much as I love Hitchhiker's Guide, I think I like this one even more, um, it's, yeah, it's, it's really good, but it's, you know, it's Douglos Adams books, yeah, that's a good one, I recommend that. Um, a few years ago I read one called Americana, uh, by uh Chimamanda Adichie, and it's an novel exploring the black experience in America from the perspective of a woman who immigrates to the US from Nigeria as a young adult.

0:18:03 Thomas: Nice. Hmm.

0:18:24 Thomas: Interesting.

0:18:24 Lindsey: And it is, yeah. And I think the way that she explores the experience of blackness in America through that contrast of her experiences in Nigeria to come into the US is really well done. And the writing is exceptional. So yeah, that's one I recommend. Yeah. And then last one, this is, this is a YA sci-fi series, so it's kind of, it's light reading, but I, I think it's actually kind of, kind of interesting, um, it's the, the Uglies series, uh, Scott Westerfeld.

0:18:41 Thomas: Nice, I don t know any of these things. Well, this is great.

0:18:55 Lindsey: Yeah. Um, so it's really good, and it's, it explores, like, a lot of interesting themes about, like, biology and the desirability of trying to engineer human perfection, so it's kind of, you know, a Gattaca type theme, um. And also, like, reputation economies. So I think it's like the fourth book in the series, called Extras, that it's got a similar premise to that Black Mirror episode, Nosedive, where the entire economy is reputation based, and everybody rates their own interactions. Yeah, so it's kind of similar to that. But it's I think he explores it in really interesting way. So yeah, I would recommend that series.

0:19:23 Thomas: Oh, yeah. I m trying to look through my Audible history. Hmm, there s a lot here. There s one that I really loved. Oh! Washington Black. So, what I do is I tend to just, like, go to the New York Times top ten best books of the year each year and try to read those. And, uh, yeah, cause I just, I'm not, I haven't, you know, I did nothing but read nonfiction for a very long time, except for like, you Know, in high school, I read Lord of the Rings and really love those books and Harry Potter and that kind of thing. And then I just like never read fiction ever.

0:19:50 Lindsey: That's good strategy.

0:20:06 Thomas: Um, And so in like 2015 or 16, I was like, "You know, I gotta get back into reading some novels or something." 'Cause it's just a really cool, I think writing a novel is got to be one of the hardest, like a good novel has got to be one the hardest things in the world, it's got to be like, in terms of your craft, the most work for the per goodness unit of anything, like it just, it's amazing when I read these books, I'm like, I don't know how these people do it, like I would love to try it someday just for fun to

0:19:58 Lindsey: Yeah. Yeah same.

0:20:38 Lindsey: Yeah

0:20:38 Thomas: See how truly terrible I'd be at it, because you have to come up with just these worlds of internal monologues and ways to to differentiate the characters and, and things, you know, it's just, and presenting the information in a compelling way. And it's, there's so much to it. Um, but I read, so

0:20:38 Lindsey: Mm-hmm. Yeah I don't I don't think anybody does that. I think it's impossible.

0:20:55 Thomas: No, it'S not real. I actually think it's not real, uh, Oh, but you know what? I guess I skipped over the game of Thrones books. The, uh I guess that song of ice and fire, fire and ice. I can't remember. Um which I did read like after I watched the first season, I was like, Oh my God, this is so good. And then then I read the first book, and then I watched the first season again. I was like, ah, this is so good. That first season was amazing, because they actually, you know, stuck to the book, or more or less.

0:21:00 Lindsey: It's fiction. Oh, yeah. Mm-hmm. Mm. Yeah. Mm hmm.

0:21:24 Thomas: And I read those books. I do really love those ones, but those are almost too grim for me now. Like, I don't know that I can read them in the current mentality that I'm in. They're a little gruesome and not pleasant. So, one of those books that I came across was is called Washington Black. And it's like an old, it's almost like an old timey, um, adventure story kind of thing, but, um but written now and written well. I really enjoyed it. It was just an interesting book. It was like, uh, um it was about somebody who was enslaved and then the kind of the owner, uh the the like the slave owner dies and then there's somebody else. But anyway, he he's able this slave is able to form a relationship with and and his name is Washington Black, is able to form a relationship with like this kind of inventor that's there. And he's able to use that to, it's just really cool. I don't want to spoil any of what happens, but it's juste one of those like adventure type tales set in around, you know, whenever it would have been 1800s.

0:21:36 Lindsey: Yeah. Yeah,

0:22:26 Thomas: And it's, it was really, it Was really fun. It's really interesting. And then let's see, there's a book called The Great Believers that I just absolutely loved. And it's hard to even describe, but it's just about some men, gay men during the AIDS crisis, essentially. And that's all that needs to be said about it. Let's see. What else was there that I really loved in terms of these books? Oh, well, I love The Power. That was a great book.

0:22:29 Lindsey: Yeah, it sounds interesting. Oh

0:22:55 Thomas: I'm just going back in my thing now. Well, I've gotten to three. I will say, because I'm, I'm, you know, mentally, I need a break. I've been reading, I read The Hobbit and then Lord of the Rings on Audible, as I talked about, because you can have Andy Serkis read The Hogbit to you, which I strongly encourage anyone to do who needs a mental break. It's delightful. But I'm reading, so I started The Fellowship of the Ring, and all I can think about is just how fucking great an actor Ian Holm is. Like, anytime the guy reads any of Bilbo's lines from Fellowship to the Ring. I'm like the stuff that, that Ian Holm did with that role is just so, it's so great. Like, ah, I love good actors. The way, the, the kind of the thoughts and the, I don't know how to describe it, but just the,the, the little beats, the Little Points he put into each of his lines.

0:22:55 Lindsey: Yeah, that was good. I read that one. Yeah

0:23:47 Thomas: It's just, it shows you how much a good actor can create out of words that you might not otherwise think have that much in them. You know, like, you take the same line that's like, you know, and give it to a bad actor, and you're like, "Oh, okay, I guess there's not that much in that line." And then you give it Ian Holm, you're like, "Oh my god, that was all in that one line." Like, it's amazing, that's great acting, that's why I love it so much. Not

0:24:11 Lindsey: So this is not an indictment of the voice actor that reads the the Fellowship of the Rings.

0:24:15 Thomas: At all. I mean, he, it's, I think the one on Audible is a guy who did it for, like, a, you know, an audiobook in the 90s or something. He's fine, but, like, there's a big difference between an Oscar-winning actor, you know, reading lines for, doing his lines for one role, that, and then also, with obviously the direction and the editing and the selecting it all, and a guy having to read the entire book. Like, there's a big difference there between what you should expect. It's not that he does a bad job, it's just that you're like, oh my god, yeah, Ian Home just finds all these little quirks to all these everything going on.

And, and of course, the other Ian as well, in McKellen. But anyway, that, that's more of a just a thing I've been been doing as a mental break, and it's fun. All right, uh, let's see, I don't think we want to do that one for now, too big a topic, um, Do you have, oh, do we have, did you check on this? Okay, Swarthy Synth Studio asks for Dr. Osterman, "What data do we having case studies in the effectiveness of the use of tasers in law enforcement?" Hmm.

0:24:16 Lindsey: Okay. Mm yeah. Yeah absolutely. Mm mm.

0:25:19 Lindsey: Yeah! So I looked up a few papers on this, and from my, from my cursory examination of them, they all seem to tell a very consistent story, which is that tasers are generally very effective at subduing non-compliant suspects, um, yeah.

0:25:27 Thomas: Oh. My God, well, maybe we should just all do, tape, every cop, cop should have a taser instead of a gun, why not, how

0:25:33 Lindsey: Yeah. Seems like, I mean, you know, it's, I think we've talked about and before, or you have, or something, like, it's, it is a different situation in the U.S. since guns are everywhere, but, but yeah, right, like, like, it kind of seems like if these are as effective as these, you know, descriptive studies suggest they are, you know, and it's like, so specifically, it tends to be, like, in the two studies that I found, one of them was from the LAPD, and one of those was from, I think, a different police department that they didn't identify what city it was in. They found like almost identical rates of taser effectiveness, it was like 86 and 85 percent, um, and like

0:26:19 Thomas: Are they measuring that effectiveness, do you remember? Well,

0:26:22 Lindsey: It was, uh, well, so they were, they were evaluating, um, the likelihood of being injured on the part of both the officer and the suspect, um, and also, like, you know, them, the suspect being, being successfully detained, essentially. Yeah.

0:26:37 Thomas: Given that every time the cops right now perceive a threat to their danger, I think they're right about 0.04 percent of the time, um, that would mean their safety is gonna end up okay even if you replace their gun with a squirt gun. I think you'd say, "Wow, this is remarkably effective at protecting the officer's life," is what I would say, because, 'cause they're not actually in danger from the cell phone that the guy is holding, or the, you know, like the Skittles or the soda.

0:27:04 Lindsey: Yeah. But yeah, when you, when you've got effectiveness rates

0:27:09 Thomas: We could replace their guns with a banana. And I think if you ran the studies, you'd be like, wow, this is, these are like as effective as guns. This is crazy. The banana wielding officers, they don't, they almost are never killed because there's never actually a fucking danger. It's always a fucking can of soda or nothing that's in the person's hand.

0:27:10 Lindsey: Yeah I mean, in in fairness, right, they were specifically looking at this, like, in samples of cases where there was, at least on, you know, this is all officer reports, we've talked about the problems with that in the past, but these were all cases in which, you know, there was some need for use of force. And, yeah, so that

0:27:45 Thomas: Run it with the banana study. I want to see it. Put the bananas in the holsters, it might also just, like, kind of chill everybody out too, if you're like, "Freeze, criminals," like, that's a good guy, you know, "What, I've given up my life of crime," that's hilarious.

0:27:49 Lindsey: Would be a good control group. Yeah.

0:28:00 Lindsey: Yeah, you know, the element of surprise, I think, is underrated in these incidents.

0:28:01 Thomas: Yeah. I feel like that, would, you know, de-escalation, like, I'm joking, but also, the that's part of, like, the mentality of de- escalation like, if, if officers came into to situations with a mindset of, like, not trying to just kill somebody and dominate the situation in a disgusting way, like, you know, it might, might help, banana on the holster, so But the long story short about the reading you did, it does seem like they're pretty solidly effective, so at least fucking highway patrol should just not have guns, or, you know, like, couldn't it be a situational thing, like, you keep the guns, you got the guns in a, you know, in a locker at the precinct, and then if Lex Luthor does something where there's a hostage situation and whatever, which never happens, fine, you get out the guns and you go, you can roll over, skate over the hood on your butt, and no time for backup, and you run out there with the guns, fine, in that one situation, do that thing. But But every other situation, like, you just don't, you don't need to have it.

0:28:26 Lindsey: Yeah? Yeah. Agreed? Yeah? Seems like they're effective, yeah.

0:29:14 Lindsey: I agree, yeah.

0:29:19 Thomas: Um, well, actually this is a related one, I guess. I don't know.

0:29:22 Lindsey: No.

0:29:22 Thomas: We'll see if there's anything more here. Slard of bar fast, slard of a first. Um, why don't we have any more effective and less lethal anti-personnel weapons for cops to carry? Why does the standard sidearm still fire bullets? What about assault weapons? Is there any technical solution to get a world where law enforcement personnel doesn't have, have, choose between safety and stopping power when you support situations. Totally agree. I don't know why we can't just, let, like, a tranquilizer dart, you know, like they do that, you know? Okay. A tiger escapes from a zoo and they go the tranquilizer gun.

You know, they're not, that's a pretty, a tiger is more dangerous than a person with a gun. Like, I would, if someone's like, "You can either try to take on this person with a gun or a tiger," I'd be like, "I will take my chances with a person with a gun. Maybe I can do some cartwheels, you know, and like, maybe they won't be able to hit me or something." If I do some cartwheeles, I would just gently amuse the tiger before it eats me easily. That's what will happen. I'll just be like, "Thanks for the pre-show entertainment, the pre dinner entertainment.

I'm not going to eat you," is what would happen with a tiger. And, like, they come at the tiger with a tranquilizer dart, you don't they? I guess maybe I'll also shoot him sometimes, but, like, that's at, at least in the conversation, I don't

0:29:52 Lindsey: Kidding. Absolutely. I think

0:30:38 Thomas: Know, yeah.

0:30:39 Lindsey: So I thought that that was like standard, I mean, unless we're talking about, like, the Joe Exotic type, I think that he had real guns, but, um, yeah, I don't think that his representative of, you know, actual zoos and stuff, so no.

0:30:51 Thomas: Well, it's Hausdorf points out that there, you know, there is a consideration here that, like, when you replace lethal weapons with non-lethal weapons, they'll use the non-lethal weapons more than they would have otherwise, and that can be a danger to people with heart conditions or something. Yeah, it's not as though tasers are like a walk in the, the park, they're really not.

0:31:11 Lindsey: They're not, but you know what stops a hundred percent of people's hearts all the time? It's when they're shot. So I I mean, I'm not, I'm not dismissing the, the concern, it is a concern, so yeah.

0:31:12 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah. Right. No.

0:31:23 Lindsey: Maybe we should be investigating other, other ways, um, other types of, of non-lethal weapons that can be used, that seems like a good place to put resources, I don't know, uh-huh.

0:31:33 Thomas: Kidding, but also, I, I don't want to do the thing we do, this with everything, with gun reform, with any gun control whatever, where we take, we nitpick on the solution, like, well, you know, some people might die, it's like, yeah, okay, but also right now is really bad, so can we compare the two situations and say, and This isn't, uh, I don't mean to bash Hausdorf, I think they bring up a good point, but like, I think we need to recognize the situation we're in now and then see, like, compare apples to apples and not, you know, I think that's a, you can tell me what cognitive bias this is, but we tend to like the costs that we're already seeing. We tend to be like, well, that's fine. That's what, whatever's already happening is just the norm. And then when a new thing, like we have to decide on a new things, we kind of get hyper vigilant on what the potential dangers of the new thing is. And it's like, well, but we, there are already plenty of dangers now that you've internalized.

0:31:43 Lindsey: Yeah. No.

0:32:30 Thomas: Is that a thing? Is there a word for that? I

0:32:30 Lindsey: I I agree Uh Uh, we can make one up. Um, status quo bias.

0:32:36 Thomas: Thought there, there's some sort of bias where, yes.

0:32:39 Lindsey: I don't t know, know. Oh, is that real I thought it

0:32:39 Thomas: Oh, that might be it. Status quo bias. That could be something like that. Maybe. I don't know. Um, oh, do we got another one? Well, let's see.

0:32:49 Thomas: Hmm. Interesting. Slider Bear Fast asks, one more question about law enforcement. Don't conservatives always mention that most cops never need to draw their gun in the line of duty? If that's true, then could we make it a rule that a cop is only allowed so many offer, officer-involved shootings before they have to retire, at least get off the street, just as a precaution for the sake of public trust, to keep the work culture from enabling serial killers. Yeah, a lot of things we could do. I, I agree, yeah.

0:33:17 Lindsey: Seems like that would be a good policy. Also, on, on, uh, that, that first claim about how most cops never need to draw their gun line of duty, reminded me, um, I was listening to an episode of the New York Times podcast, The Argument, the other day, and they were talking about police reform, and I thought that it was, it was a really, really informative episode, they had like three people on to discuss it, um, and you know, I haven't looked into the claims that they were making or anything, but they were, they were suggesting that, you know, the idea that patrol officers really need to be armed for the things that they're doing day to day is just, it's, it's a complete distortion from, from the reality of you know, the situation. And they also talked a little bit about like, you know how things like having quotas for tickets and arrests are contributing to the situation where these vulnerable populations are being targeted.

0:33:48 Thomas: Yeah. They don't need to be, yeah,

0:34:10 Lindsey: And, um, cases end up escalating, so anyway, I just, I recommend that, that conversation, because they, they covered a lot of issues that, that seemed to come up in a number of these questions. Oh, yeah

0:34:15 Thomas: It was a pretty short podcast, I listened to that one, it's pretty short episode weirdly, it's like you could have gone on about that for a while, I think, so

0:34:23 Lindsey: Yeah it's like, yeah it was like 40 minutes or something

0:34:30 Thomas: I totally agree, and, uh, also, yeah, cops don't need guns for 99 of the situations all right, different topic. I can't wait for, I, uh, if you've done, if you have any uh research to back this one up. Let's see, General Contacting a Problem Child asks, is there any data to suggest having parasocial relationships with people in minorities, I think, I think that that means like people of, of minority, whatever, can reduce unconscious bias one might have against those minorities. I never had moral problems with them existing, but I used to feel like trans people were kind of weird. But now, let's see, I think watching trans content creators on YouTube and Twitch made that feeling go away over time. That's one of the reasons I'm strongly in favor of representation in media. All right, cool.

0:34:35 Lindsey: Yeah no The answer is yes, uh, parasocial contact. There's... there's, uh, there's some rich evidence around, um, this thing called the parasocial contact hypothesis, um, and it's based on this older hypothesis from social, site called the contact hypothesis, which just suggests that interpersonal contacts between groups can reduce prejudice under some circumstances. We have to qualify that a little bit because there's some circumstances in which it can create more hostility, but under some circumstances, contact can help to reduce prejudice. And so anyway, um, many researchers are of the mind that parasocial relationships look like interpersonal relationships in a variety of ways.

And we talked about that in the episode that we did about parasocial, parasocial relationships. And so anyway, the parasoial contact hypothesis suggests that like this might be one of the domains in which they're similar to interpersonal relationships. So exposure to marginalized groups through media could work very much the same way the interpersonal contact does to reduce prejudice. Andso I found like a couple of studies, there seems to be like a pretty sizable literature at this point. But one that was interesting showed that being exposed to media like Queer Eye can reduce prejudice against LGBTQ folks. They also mentioned Eddie Izzard's standout, which

0:35:23 Thomas: Yeah nice yeah

0:36:38 Lindsey: I thought was fun. And there have been other studies that have shown similar effects for people of color and Muslims. So yeah, no, this seems to be a good mechanism for reducing prejudice if you can, can get, yeah yeah

0:36:49 Thomas: So once again, representation very much matters, it's not, um, it, you know, and it's funny because both that argument is an argument I feel like you have to have with a the right and other cultural conservatives who are like, why does this character have to be gay, what was it, why does that make any sense, it's like, why does it not have to, to be, why does it have to be a straight character, why does that make any sense, um, but then also there's kind of the like anti-identity identity politics left that's always insulting the idea that like representation in government is any real progress, you know, as a way to attack like, oh, the Democrats are still gonna bomb you but their jets will have the pride flag, and it's like a really dismissive way of saying like they're essentially the parties are the same, which I, I already don't agree with, but also that the representation part is kind of a fake, like ploy or something or like a nut.

0:36:53 Lindsey: Yeah performative or that's

0:37:41 Thomas: Yeah. And it's like, no, it actually really makes a difference. If your jet has a pride flag. No, I'm just kidding. It actually really, because that's the exaggerated insult version of it, but like, it really makes the difference. The people you see in leadership, like it really Makes a difference if you see white men in leadership forever, then you just think like, well, I guess why as we covered in those bias episodes that contributes. Attributes yeah, to those, to those little biases that are even like before your active mind, your conscious mind is even, you know, perceiving it, you're like, yeah, I wonder why I associate old white man with like power and competence and whatever, you know, and so yeah it does make a huge difference

0:38:03 Lindsey: Right yeah so, what a mystery it must just be that men are better at those things, that's my inference that's why there's not enough representation of women and, you know, politics and stamina, all those stuff, it's just, it's juste interest, you know, it's jus biological differences in interest well

0:38:21 Thomas: Yeah definitely yeah yeah and by the way, I do also want to call out the another one of my many privileges, which is I never have to be a person that people need to get used to, you know, like, ah, I thought white dudes with podcasts were so weird until I started listening to Thomas, you know, I had, I never have to like go through that, because that's uncomfortable, it sucks that we have to be like, hey, you know, obviously, because like the trans people listening, you know, it's probably like, oh great, so people think I'm weird until they get to know me, which sucks, you know, that's a sucky thing, that, and it's privilege that we, which is why I always love, love those like posts you see where people kind of flip that on its head where they're like, uh, I like, there's a great tweet I saw the other day that was like, oh, I just had to explain heterosexuality to my kid, you know, because like I saw it was like, you know, I saw essentially a man and a woman making out, the whole point of the tweet was like the kid asks, hey, why is that bisexual male podcaster and his lesbian co-host making out or something like that, it's like, look, it's so funny.

0:39:34 Thomas: And, uh, I thought that was nice that it flipped it on its head and something to be aware of, you know, but, um, but yeah. All right. So, oh, back. Are we back to police? Let's see. Well, language guy asked, there are lots of stories. Most of this is just requests for Lindsey to do homework for, for people, which, you Know, I get it.

0:39:34 Lindsey: No that's good mm-hmm yeah No, I love to do homework that's why I'm an academic, so ask away

0:39:56 Thomas: That's uh that's what I yeah, it's what the show has hired Lindsey to do, um Language Guy asks, there are lots of stories about police officers who are fired for saying racist things on social media or on camera, are there any studies that quantify the percentage of police officers who hold such views, uh, yeah.

0:39:58 Lindsey: Yeah yeah So interestingly, I turned up very little when I was looking for research that evaluated the prevalence of like explicit racism among police officers, um, I found like one doctoral dissertation that, that said that they looked at this explicitly as one of their, their questions, but I couldn't get access to the full text, um, and but yeah, so Because if you came into a police department and you were like, "Hey, I want to evaluate how many of your officers are racist," like it's possible that you're not going to get a lot of compliance and doing that kind of research, um, but yeah, so, I didn't, I didn't find a lot, but it does come up peripherally in some studies.

Um, so there was one that we talked about when we did the shooter bias stuff that looked at, uh, responses to a scale that measured like endorsement of, of like, racist stereotype beliefs, that kind of stuff. Um, and it's, I, I saw it come up like sort of peripherally in a couple of other studies too, but not anywhere where I could like come back to you with a percentage of police officers that hold these kinds of beliefs. They're usually looking at like correlations with other things, and so, yeah, so I'm not, I'm sure, um,

0:41:28 Lindsey: I, and I don't know that I have a strong a priori hypothesis about whether police officers would look um super different than the general population, except for one thing, actually. So, there, there does seem to be quite a bit of literature indicating that, um, because of like some of the the structural problems with how policing works, police are likely to encounter like minority citizens under different circumstances than white citizens, and that that can give rise to sort of like an illusory correlation of minorities, minorities with criminality compared to white citizens. And so I have seen some, some research indicating that like over time officers who are in areas where they have a lot of contact with, um, with minority citizens, that they seem to have like stronger forms of bias that you can detect through like behavioral proxies and things like that.

0:42:03 Thomas: Oh.

0:42:18 Thomas: Plus I Think it's also true that the percentage of, for example, like you always talk about Chicago, you know, Chicago violence, that's the right wing talking point. And like, obviously it comes from truth, like Chicago, uh, you know, gun violence is a huge, huge, big problem. Uh, and then I think they've looked at it in like, if you look at the percentage of black people who are actually responsible for any shooting crimes, it's like a tiny group of people, um, that are, you know, Involved in whatever drugs or gang related activity, whatever it is. But then people use that to say yeah the black community has a disproportionate amount of crime when really like it's a small group of specific like black people that are criminals in a place and Then the entire like community gets judged based on that. It's not as though that group of people means that like, you know, a black 45 year old dad is like more likely to be a criminal just because they, this like other group of people is responsible for crime, you know, but like

0:42:46 Lindsey: That's interesting.

0:43:03 Lindsey: Yeah.

0:43:21 Thomas: The whole The Bias gets kind of smeared all over all of them, I think.

0:43:21 Lindsey: That's a good point. Yeah, no, that's great point. Right. Yeah.

0:43:28 Thomas: Depressing, but Well But On the topic of what percentage of police officers or whatever racists or whatever, I will remind everybody of the border patrol Facebook group that got busted a few years back that was like, you know, had 9,500 members inside a secret border patrol Facebook group, which I don't know what percentage of border patrol that is, but I think it's very high. And I know this is, it's not, it's not exactly like the same as the police officers that I imagine we're talking, we have in mind here, but like that gives you an indication, the, you know, a very, very high percentage of border patrol was involved in this disgustingly racist secret Facebook group, and I think it maybe tells you that percentage-wise, there are a whole lot of bad apples.

0:43:30 Lindsey: Yeah, I know. I know that.

0:44:19 Lindsey: Yeah there might be some self-selection. Yeah that's depressing.

0:44:20 Thomas: Yeah. All right. Any more on that one or shall we move on?

0:44:28 Lindsey: Nope that's that's about all I had. I was surprised that there wasn't more sort of easily accessible information on that but yeah.

0:44:35 Thomas: Yeah. So, Lady Kiva Lagos is my spirit guide says, On the subject of recovered memory, have you ever caught yourself regurgitating a false memory? I had started to repeat something to my sister recently and had to stop mid-sentence and say, I don't think this actually happened how I'm remembering it now I don'T even recall the subject I just knew that it wasn't factual man

0:45:01 Lindsey: Yeah, God, I feel like I've done this, but I was really trying to to recall a specific example and I can't. But I feel there's a number of childhood memories where like, yeah, midstream I'm like, wait a second, like I got all the cues here that this isn't really a real memory, like you know, third person perspective, right, is one cue that you might be remembering something because somebody told it to you, things like that, but I can't remember a specific one. Do you have any?

0:45:26 Thomas: I DON'T KNOW I JUST DON'T I DONT TRUST ANYTHING ANYMORE ANY MEMORIES ANYMORES AND THEN I I TEND TO ASK MY LITTLE SISTER SHE'S LIKE THE BANK VAULT OF THE FAMILY UM SHE JUST HAD SHE'S THE YOUNGEST SO I THINK SHE LIKE WAS PAYING MORE ATTENTION TO to everybody or something, you know what I mean? And so, and also she just has a great memory. And so like, she's my go-to. And, but the funny thing is when she's wrong about something, I'm like, wait a minute, what? No, I know you're wrong about that. That can't be right. Like I trust her for, you Know, 95% of the time I just, whatever she says, I'm Like, Oh yeah, that's must be how it happened. Even if I don't remember.

0:45:30 Lindsey: Yeah. Yeah, memory is Um, Yeah.

0:46:03 Lindsey: Yeah.

0:46:03 Thomas: And then the couple of times where it's like, no, that can't, I remember that differently. It's funny. Cause then I'm Damn is that my whole system broken? I don't know. I don need to trust. The only thing that kind of reminds me me of this, that the idea of memories getting written over is depressing in some ways, you know, because this is a very, very stupid example.

But I have a really good memory, like vivid memory of certain like movies and stuff and random stuff that I saw when I was super little and I did not watch since, you Know, and I remember, like, for example, I think it was the Charlotte's Web cartoon or whatever that is. I think that's what it was.

And I remember and particularly I have good like audio memory, like that's that's what I tend to remember is like the very specifically how the character sounded when they said what they sent, like I could just hear it, you know, and I'm Sure a lot of people that way, but like from like second grade I remember we watched this movie in class and I remembered some of these lines and then Lydia put it on for the kids and I was like, oh yeah, this is where he says like this part, in this exact voice, you know, when I did it, like, like before it happened.

And the, the thing is now that's funny about that is not that that's a terribly amazing thing or anything, but like now that memory isn't exactly the same. Like, because I heard it again, when we were watching it with the kids, now that whole thing is different. Now I'm like, well, and I don't, I don'T feel the same like time and place of the original memory, you know, it's hard to describe, but it's also like kind of sad. It's kind of like, I wish there, There's some memories where you're like, I hope I don't ever, you know, I should keep it locked away.

0:46:52 Lindsey: Man.

0:47:40 Thomas: You know, there's got to be some, too bad humans don't work that way. Like, so let's do read only on this memory, you Know, make sure we don't change it.

0:47:49 Lindsey: I've never thought about it that way, but I, I know what you mean, yeah. Like there are certain things that that, yeah, revisiting them does take some of the magic out of them. I don't know.

0:47:52 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah, it kind Of like updated the context around the memory. So now when I used to think of that specific kind of audio memory, I would feel like I was more in that classroom. And now I don'T have that same feeling. It's like I think of it and it's like kind of there's nothing that specific. It's really weird. Yeah. It's too bad. Oh, well. Okay, this one's interesting, I don't know anything about this. Let's see, another Slardaburfast, Slarduburfast, someday you'll tell me what that is and how it's supposed to be pronounced. It

0:47:57 Lindsey: Yeah. Oh, Yeah. It's sad. I could be wrong about this, I meant to look it up. Actually, isn't it a Hitchhiker's Guide thing?

0:48:38 Thomas: Could be, I don't, I've read, I think the first one, and I enjoyed it, but I just don't, yeah. I'm not right. I haven't been as into those as other people are, but then every time there's a quote from it, I'm like, well, that's brilliant, so like I should, I should go back and read those. I just like, yeah, did you know half of Iranians in a massive online survey recently reported having lost their religion in their lifetimes? What Can we do at the level of civil society to amplify their voices and otherwise, otherwise support feminism and secularism there. And then they link something. What is that? Is that the link isn't working for me? Did you check that out?

0:48:44 Lindsey: Yeah. It's been Forever since I've read them, but yeah that is amazing. Uh, No, I did.

0:49:22 Thomas: Okay. I don't know. Patreon does a weird thing with links. It's like not sometimes they don't have to like copy it. That's interesting.

0:49:22 Lindsey: Not. I Meant to. Um,

0:49:31 Thomas: I didn't know this. That seems high. Half of them lost their religion in their lifetimes. Hmm. Interesting. Yeah. I Don't Know What The Answer To Stuff Like This Is.

0:49:42 Lindsey: Podcasting.

0:49:43 Thomas: I recently, Oh, go ahead. Yeah.

0:49:44 Lindsey: I think, yeah, oh.

0:49:47 Thomas: Well, God, I almost posted this and I, but I, I just, I'm very hesitant to, but there's a video that just came on my random, you know, Facebook for some reason is fucking assaulting us with all these different categories of crap. Now, like there's like the main thing and there's pages and then there's, like, a watch tab and a groups tab and a news tab. I hate it.

0:50:12 Lindsey: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

0:50:13 Thomas: But the thing is they get me because they put fucking red numbers on those tabs. And they know probably by now that I cannot live with a red notification number. I have to get rid of it. So I frequently will just click the thing, even though there's, there's absolutely, I want to take them to fucking trial because there's no reason there should be a red notification number there. There's the, what is there?

Three videos that I need to watch on like, what the fuck does that even mean, there's a million zillion videos and why, you know, like that's, it's stupid, but anyway, I click over to that one and there's this video with like 10.5 million views, so like a, you know, a very watched video, and it was like a Muslim couple and they were explaining all the restrictions on the, obviously just the woman in the couple, but it was, was cast in like this, hey, we're gonna educate everybody about that, like there's a bunch of like comments of like, thanks for educating people, educating, and I was like, you're, edge you're educating us about the horrible patriarchy you inflict on the women in this religion, like I really rubbed me the wrong way, but I didn't want to turn into Sam Harris, but also it's the idea and the, you know, the, the woman was in a full burka and it was about all the rules of, like, like who can see her?

Can the doctor see her now? Can her dad see her, like all these things? I'm like, this sucks. Like we're getting to the phase now where it's like cutesy video because it was a cutesy tick tock about like this. And I'm just like, OK,

0:51:46 Thomas: I don't know where in the you know, I Don't know where all the right answers are in terms of whatever, you know? Like, we, I'm not, I don't, don't want to go so far as to be the Sam Harris always focused on Muslims and and you know the race, racist, uh, uh, connotations there and what happens there, but like at the same time, I don't want to be sharing cutesy videos where the man, who is totally, somehow he's able to show his face, I don't know why he doesn't have to wear burka or whatever, gets to like do this cutesy video about all the rules on the, the woman who is entirely covered, and it's, it's just gross, like that can't be right. Could that be the right answer? I don't think so.

0:51:53 Lindsey: I don't Know, yeah, that makes me uncomfortable too, and I mean, yeah, on the, well, never mind, I was gonna Say something on the, on the same lines of like, yeah, and so to continue not be Sam Harris, there's lot of like Christian patriarchy we could talk about, but that is exactly what Sam Harris does, so we're just getting closer to

0:52:43 Thomas: Well, There is. And that's, I think if there's one thing that I think, maybe I shouldn't say it that way. I listened to the interview with Ezra Klein recently with, what's his name, Noam Chomsky, who is not someone I've been a huge fan of.

But I do think where he has some strong arguments are the idea that I still, I still, still disagree to the extent that he does, like he's very hostile whenever somebody asks about the Uyghur, you know, situation, like the Uighur Muslims and the absolute atrocious genocide that's going on there in the re-education camps, he gets really combative about it and is like, okay, but what about, uh, you know, Gaza or something, and he's, and, and it's not, he's not exactly wrong, I think he has a good point because there's One situation, is it Gaza or is it, I can't remember if he brought up Gaza or if he bought up the, you know, the, like the war in Yemen and one of those examples, I'm actually mixing up. I can't remember which, but anyway, the point was as Americans, we are actually doing what like we're contributing financially to one of them. And we have control over one of the, and he says that like, we could end this thing tomorrow if we wanted to.

Whereas with the Uyghurs, I don't know what we can do about it right now. And like, he's not wrong. He's not wrong. But it's like, it's something about the hostility toward the, of the whataboutism where you're like, okay, but it's also not wrong for me. I'm a citizen so I can't do either of these things really. Like, fixing the Yemen situation or whatever it might be and the Uyghur situation for me is like very similar.

0:54:24 Thomas: Sure, you could argue that I can write a letter about one that may, you know, may have some effect on my member of Congress or something. But like, I'm just a person. And so if I'm sitting here like, yeah, I have no power to help either of these, it's not inappropriate to be like, hey, look at this fucking genocide that's happening. So in that way, I push back a little. But there is something to be said about we ought not to spend a bunch of time focusing on the things that we can't control in the world necessarily versus the patriarchy at home, as you say.

0:54:58 Thomas: But I don't know. I still don't think we need to share cutesy TikTok videos about, hey, let's educate you about the cultures of this awful repressive, you know, the customs of this awful repressive ideology that all the rules fall on the woman in the situation is sickening to me.

0:54:59 Lindsey: Agreed. Yeah, I No.

0:55:13 Lindsey: I, I agree, yeah, um, yeah, I only brought that up because like that is the aspect of it that is that is gross, it's right, it's uh, yeah, yeah.

0:55:18 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah. Let's see. We could almost get through all of them. We are low on time, but we could do it. Let's just do it. Lost Dune, fourth episode. Philosophers in Space reference, I think. As it seems, I keep following Thomas around podcast to podcast. The questions about parasocial relationships arise when Thomas spends hours a week talking in my ear and that so many of my personal views mirror his. One can't help but feel a kinship. So is there anyone out there studying these types of things? Also, how does it feel from the other side of the mic?

0:55:56 Lindsey: So I, I wasn't sure what you mean by these types of things, if you mean like parasocial relationships, then yeah, like I study those types of things, um, I don't know, I'm trying to figure out if there's uh, um, what, what do you think the the question is here exactly, like, is it about like the attitude similarity, I don't

0:56:14 Thomas: Help but feel kinsship. I'm not sure. Yeah, I'm Not sure if they're asking, like, is anyone studied if your views start to converge? You know, or if you feel more, yeah, I'm not sure. If you feel more of a kinship with people whose views you share that you listen to, maybe.

0:56:18 Lindsey: Yeah, yeah.

0:56:36 Lindsey: No, actually that, that is uh, that has definitely been pretty well studied, um, in the communications literature, um, and it's like, it kind of, the causality seems to go both ways, so like attitude similarity drives attraction to certain people in a parasocial way, but also I think that the parasoical relationship also, I think, has has reciprocal effects there, um, it almost sounded like the person was saying like, uh, that you get sort of an illusory sense that like your opinions are actually their opinions, like just by virtue of, I, I wish, which would be an interesting, like not that you're persuading them, but just like hearing you say that was almost the same thing as like hearing an internal monologue or something, which is that, that was an interesting idea, like, and I don't think that research on that exists, um, but yeah, that's an interesting question. Yeah. Yeah, how does it feel from the other side of the mic?

0:56:40 Thomas: Cool. Ah, interesting. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's interesting.

0:57:27 Thomas: You don't want to know. Let's lightning round it. We can do it. Here we go. General contact, problem child. Child. In a Westminster-style parliamentary system, the head of the government and the majority of representatives almost always come from the same party. As a result of that, every time there's a new prime minister, they actually have the political ability to do what they want to do, good or bad.

Would you prefer something like that to the American system where almost nothing can be done unless one party wins the Senate, House, and presidency? Basically, would you want a system of government that gives both parties more ability to implement the platform if they win? Absolutely, yes. And I, you know, basically defer to the uh, um, Ezra Klein stuff on this. I think he's right on in in his book, Why We're Polarized, that this is a huge problem and that we would be better off if we had a government more like this where if a side wins they get to do whatever they want and then the voters can be like oh we don't like that or oh we like that whereas now that we just don't have that, it's worse. And I, the counter argument is like, oh but then the right would would be able to blah blah blah, and that's true, but I think that's just what you have to do.

Like, it just would be better if we got to live in a world where we could convince 52% of the people maybe to do a thing and get it done when it comes to something like climate change or all these things where we just cannot get what we need to get done, or raising taxes on the wealthy, which enjoys, you know, enormous support, we just can't get it down because of our shitty system.

Versus, versus, you know, we could take on the risk that like, if, you know, a Republican president gets in that they, they will be able to enact a agenda that we don't like.

0:57:31 Lindsey: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

0:59:15 Lindsey: Yeah, no, I kind of ended up there, too. I mean, this is not something that I've thought a ton about. So, you know, I had kind of a no reaction at first, and then I started thinking through exactly this kind of issue and was like, yeah, that actually does sound like it'd be better. Because the other problem with not being able to get anything done is that then Democrats get blamed for all the shit that they were obstructed from doing. Doing so, so yeah.

0:59:34 Thomas: Yeah. Yep.

0:59:36 Lindsey: No, it's uh, this seems appealing to me.

0:59:38 Thomas: And when we get most of the way there, you know, to like winning elections, but not close enough to where we, so, so like now where we have exactly 50 votes, we get blamed for all this stuff we can't do. And I, you know, in my opinion, inappropriately, because really you ought to blame exactly the people who are responsible Or by the way, the places where we lost elections, we should have won like in Maine or other places like that's really where the blame should go. And not on every single Democrat and Joe Biden and all these other people inappropriately.

0:59:39 Lindsey: Yes. Yep. Yep.

1:00:07 Thomas: It's weird. So the answer is yes. General contact you. All right. Last one. And I've got an answer ready for this one. 69 US USC 420. I haven't actually checked. Is that a real US code? That'd be awesome. What's a good way to convince people that the trans sports bills are harmful? I know some people who I think would be open to being convinced, but they've heard the right-wing talking points about sex at birth, and I'm looking for a good way to rebut that. Are there studies that show trans women do not hold a competitive advantage over cis women? And for this, because I don't, well, first answer if you've got any studies or anything handy, Lindsay.

1:00:08 Lindsey: Look.

1:00:21 Lindsey: I I just, I think that, I think that focusing on that detail is the wrong issue and I think that there's a reason that the right keeps focusing on that one issue and I don't think that the the thing that's going to be persuasive is trying to push back on that point, um, I think the thing that's going to be persuasive is to react to this idea that these policies that they want to enact are actually going to protect cis women, which is not true. And I think that you can be persuasive to people who are on the fence about the fact that that's not true and that these polices are actually gonna be harmful to all women in sports. So that would be my answer.

1:01:10 Thomas: Yeah, And it's so true that like, you know, they do not give a shit about women's sports at all until it becomes this wedge issue that they get to, you know, use against trans people like they're underfunded, you know, at every level, all this stuff, you know, it's it's nuts but One thing I did want to bring up is this Twitter thread that I now have now saved so that I can always find it when I need to, uh, that I found really good. I'm just gonna read it to you, this is by at Bryn Tannehill, uh, with two N's there, and I gotta follow this, but I can't, I'm now following them, I just realized I wasn't. The transgender athlete won't seem to die. This is so frustrating because, because from a logical standpoint, the answer is so freaking obvious.

The current system is not broken. It does not need fixing. Quick test: name a transgender Olympian off the top of your head. You can't, because since the IOC started allowing transgender people to compete in 2004, there hasn't been one. The NCAA has allowed transgender people to compete without surgery since 2011, and there has not been a single dominant transgender athlete anywhere in college sports.

1:01:30 Lindsey: Exactly. Yeah. But now they care. Yeah, yes.

1:02:24 Thomas: These constitute large-scale longitudinal tests of the system with millions of athletes as a sample, and the IOC and NCAA rules for transgender athletes are clearly sufficient to preserve the integrity of sports at this time. 15 plus years and millions of test subjects is bigger and longer than any clinical trial of a drug that I can think of. The development and deployment of the F-22A, the world's most advanced stealth fighter, lasted roughly as long. The clinical evidence and subject matter opinion aligns with the observed results. Removal of testosterone for a year is sufficient to remove competitive advantage. In terms of testing this hypothesis, there is literally no disagreement between various results. The arguments from the other side are either anecdotes, what about so-and-so who won some mid-level event, or a form of fear-mongering, transgender women will start dominating women's sports in the future that ignores the large scale real world testing of policies. It goes on and on and I that's about half of it. Go check it out if you want to.

1:03:15 Lindsey: Yeah

1:03:26 Thomas: Yeah, it's essentially, you know, it is fine. The system, the system works. All right, we basically did it. We lightning rounded. No, we didn't really lightning round. We got through it all. That was great. You know what I think I'm going to do, everybody? Maybe I think we're going go ahead thread like early in the month. And then as the episodes come out, you know, if they inspire questions, you could go to the thread on Patreon for that for that month and then, you know, put in the question and it'll keep and I'll look at it at the end of month. That seems like a good way to do it. What

1:03:25 Lindsey: That's great yep yeah

1:03:59 Thomas: Do you think?

1:04:00 Lindsey: That's a good idea I like that thank

1:04:00 Thomas: OK, we'll Do we'll do that. So I will look for that for another one for. So this was what the hell month, April. Look for May's because it's going to be May. Look for your May's question thread in like a day or two. And then as episodes come out, fire up these questions and this will be a lot of fun, so thanks so much, Lindsey, thanks so many patrons.

1:04:22 Thomas: We love our patrons, they're the best, and we'll see you next time, we've got some good stuff planned.

1:04:21 Lindsey: You yeah oh yeah

1:04:38 Clip: Thank you so much for listening to Serious Inquiries Only. If you like the show, the absolute best thing you can do is support us at patreon.com/seriouspod. The second best thing you can do, is please share it on social media or by word of mouth. Speaking of social media, follow me on Twitter at Serious Pod. If would like to be Facebook friends, send me a request at facebook.com Thomas podcast. If not up for that level of intimacy, that's fine. Maybe you want to join the discussion at facebook.com/groups/SIO members. Thank you again for listening. We'll see you next time.