Episode 144: Borges' Babylon

[00:00:00] [SPEAKER_01]: Very Bad Wizards is a podcast with a philosopher, my dad and psychologist, David Pizarro having an informal discussion about issues and science and ethics.

[00:00:09] [SPEAKER_01]: Please note that the discussion contains bad words that I'm not allowed to say, and knowing my dad, some very inappropriate jokes.

[00:00:17] [SPEAKER_00]: When justice is done, it is a joy to the righteous, but terror to evildoers.

[00:00:26] [SPEAKER_00]: You quote the Bible like you actually believe in God.

[00:00:32] [SPEAKER_02]: The Queen and I pay no attention to that man behind the curtain.

[00:00:40] [SPEAKER_03]: Very good man, good brains than you have.

[00:01:06] [SPEAKER_04]: Anybody can have a brain.

[00:01:10] [SPEAKER_03]: Very bad man.

[00:01:12] [SPEAKER_03]: I'm a very good man, just a very bad wizard.

[00:01:17] [SPEAKER_08]: Welcome to Very Bad Wizards, I'm Tamler Sommers from the University of Houston.

[00:01:21] [SPEAKER_08]: Dave, Scarlett Johansson had been cast to play Dante Tex Gill, a trans man in the new movie Rubbin' Tug.

[00:01:33] [SPEAKER_08]: Do you find the casting of Scarlett Johansson a straight woman as a trans man to be problematic?

[00:01:41] [SPEAKER_09]: I'm David Pizarro from Cornell University.

[00:01:44] [SPEAKER_09]: You know, it's a really good question.

[00:01:48] [SPEAKER_09]: Is it?

[00:01:48] [SPEAKER_09]: Yeah, you know, this maybe started recently as a conversation piece when my daughter accused me that doing a certain kind of accent was in and of itself racist.

[00:02:02] [SPEAKER_09]: So if I did a foreign accent in that foreign person, it happened to be a different race.

[00:02:07] [SPEAKER_09]: And so I was pushing her on this, asking her whether, you know, a French accent was being in some way prejudice.

[00:02:15] [SPEAKER_09]: And her intuition was that it has to be sort of a different race.

[00:02:21] [SPEAKER_09]: So in order for it to be racist, but you know, she's really like a black guy kind of thing.

[00:02:26] [SPEAKER_09]: It's like that's to her racist. I don't understand what.

[00:02:29] [SPEAKER_09]: But when I do a Jewish mom is that racist?

[00:02:31] [SPEAKER_09]: Like what if she's Ashkenazi?

[00:02:33] [SPEAKER_09]: What is that?

[00:02:34] [SPEAKER_08]: What is you doing a French accent has to do with Scarlett Johansson?

[00:02:39] [SPEAKER_09]: Okay, so here is where I'm making the connection.

[00:02:43] [SPEAKER_09]: So what point is are you allowed to as an actor, professional actor, allowed to portray something you're not.

[00:02:51] [SPEAKER_09]: And so presumably it is, it is not right for a white actor anymore to use black face to portray a black character.

[00:03:01] [SPEAKER_09]: Part of that is the history of this all.

[00:03:03] [SPEAKER_09]: But part of it is certainly the fact that there are plenty of black actors who are available, right, to do this.

[00:03:10] [SPEAKER_09]: And that's why I think that part of the question in the Scarlett Johansson casting is whether or not there was a trans man who was available to portray it.

[00:03:24] [SPEAKER_09]: And whether or not they were being sort of slighted in the casting in favor of the big box office draw.

[00:03:31] [SPEAKER_09]: But I'm of the opinion that anybody should be allowed to play anybody as long as they're good actors.

[00:03:36] [SPEAKER_09]: So there's my answer.

[00:03:37] [SPEAKER_09]: There's a long answer to very short couple things.

[00:03:39] [SPEAKER_08]: I have a couple of reactions to your take, to your hot take.

[00:03:44] [SPEAKER_08]: To my hot take?

[00:03:45] [SPEAKER_08]: I don't know if it was a hot take.

[00:03:46] [SPEAKER_08]: It sort of, Peter, it started out like it was going to be hot and then just like...

[00:03:51] [SPEAKER_09]: Well, I could tell you were impatient so I didn't continue my tirade.

[00:03:53] [SPEAKER_08]: Well, I got thrown off when you said Scarlett Johansson.

[00:03:57] [SPEAKER_08]: Oh, is that wrong?

[00:03:59] [SPEAKER_08]: Well, I've just never heard her referred to like that.

[00:04:01] [SPEAKER_08]: Is it racist?

[00:04:03] [SPEAKER_08]: It's a little racist, frankly.

[00:04:05] [SPEAKER_08]: It's funny that you had the reaction, that's an interesting question.

[00:04:10] [SPEAKER_08]: Because my reaction when I saw that there was a debate about this on Twitter was to quit Twitter for three days.

[00:04:18] [SPEAKER_08]: Like, I couldn't take the fact that this debate...

[00:04:20] [SPEAKER_09]: Because you thought it was so obvious that it would be wrong?

[00:04:22] [SPEAKER_08]: No, I just couldn't believe like how much, how people were worked up about it and, you know...

[00:04:28] [SPEAKER_08]: So first there are the people who are slamming her being cast.

[00:04:32] [SPEAKER_08]: And then there are the people who are upset that she's being slammed for the casting.

[00:04:38] [SPEAKER_08]: Like Barry Weiss weighed in, you know, and...

[00:04:42] [SPEAKER_08]: And it just seemed like, okay, this is why you can't be on the internet.

[00:04:46] [SPEAKER_08]: Like this is... You can't...

[00:04:49] [SPEAKER_08]: Like just... And the fact that I'm talking to you about it right now...

[00:04:52] [SPEAKER_08]: Yeah, I was going to say, and yet here we are.

[00:04:54] [SPEAKER_08]: I can't shed it. I can't disconnect myself from it.

[00:04:59] [SPEAKER_08]: So, but I guess if I had gone to my head as there clearly is right now...

[00:05:05] [SPEAKER_08]: If I had to give an opinion about it, like Scarlett Johansson is a huge movie star.

[00:05:11] [SPEAKER_08]: And there's no trans actor that's a huge movie star right now.

[00:05:18] [SPEAKER_08]: So...

[00:05:18] [SPEAKER_09]: Whose fault is that, Tamler?

[00:05:20] [SPEAKER_08]: Well, right. I anticipate that being the response to that point.

[00:05:25] [SPEAKER_08]: But I mean, that's just the fact. Like if you're trying to sell a movie...

[00:05:29] [SPEAKER_08]: Like this movie had a budget and it has people that are trying to make money on it.

[00:05:37] [SPEAKER_08]: And by the way, she's now no longer doing it because of the backlash.

[00:05:42] [SPEAKER_08]: But I think something that you can't not take into account...

[00:05:45] [SPEAKER_08]: No, but she doesn't have to be cast in that role.

[00:05:48] [SPEAKER_08]: I don't know.

[00:05:48] [SPEAKER_08]: That's probably the role that would draw her to it.

[00:05:51] [SPEAKER_08]: But she probably thought it could be like a Dustin Hoffman and Rain Man kind of deal.

[00:05:55] [SPEAKER_08]: Where she could get an Oscar, you know, instead.

[00:05:59] [SPEAKER_08]: You may all tamper about his comparison.

[00:06:02] [SPEAKER_08]: Wait, is that okay for someone to play an autistic man?

[00:06:06] [SPEAKER_09]: Yeah, so this is one of the things I was talking to somebody about whether or not this is...

[00:06:12] [SPEAKER_09]: Like when people play mentally disabled people.

[00:06:16] [SPEAKER_09]: Like presumably it's because the mentally disabled people wouldn't be capable of playing those roles.

[00:06:20] [SPEAKER_09]: I think.

[00:06:21] [SPEAKER_08]: Yeah, I don't know. They're actors.

[00:06:24] [SPEAKER_08]: That's what actors do. They play other people.

[00:06:27] [SPEAKER_09]: Yeah, but what about like...

[00:06:28] [SPEAKER_09]: Maybe you don't agree with this either.

[00:06:30] [SPEAKER_09]: But we no longer hire just white people in blackface or in Asian face.

[00:06:37] [SPEAKER_09]: Like breakfast at Tiffany's with...

[00:06:41] [SPEAKER_09]: What's his name?

[00:06:42] [SPEAKER_09]: Mickey Rooney.

[00:06:43] [SPEAKER_09]: Mickey Rooney playing a Chinese man.

[00:06:45] [SPEAKER_09]: You know, I'd never seen that movie.

[00:06:47] [SPEAKER_09]: When I first saw it, I was like in my 30s and I was like, whoa, what the fuck?

[00:06:53] [SPEAKER_09]: How is this...

[00:06:54] [SPEAKER_08]: I actually so...

[00:06:58] [SPEAKER_08]: While I'm morally opposed to that performance.

[00:07:03] [SPEAKER_08]: I strongly urge our listeners to, if they can, watch it.

[00:07:08] [SPEAKER_08]: Because it is one of the funniest things you'll ever see in your entire life.

[00:07:12] [SPEAKER_08]: Oh, man. It's cringe-worthy for sure.

[00:07:15] [SPEAKER_08]: It's just the idea that that was thought to be okay.

[00:07:20] [SPEAKER_08]: In a movie, it's one thing if it's South Park or something like that,

[00:07:23] [SPEAKER_08]: where everybody is kind of caricatured in this way.

[00:07:26] [SPEAKER_08]: But the movie otherwise is just a normal movie.

[00:07:29] [SPEAKER_08]: Like it's just a straightforward film about a woman.

[00:07:32] [SPEAKER_09]: Yeah, I didn't know that this was a thing and I'm like, oh, this is a nice movie.

[00:07:37] [SPEAKER_09]: And then all of a sudden Mickey Rooney shows up and I'm like, what the fuck?

[00:07:40] [SPEAKER_08]: It's like you're in a South Park episode all of a sudden.

[00:07:43] [SPEAKER_08]: And then, yeah, it's...

[00:07:45] [SPEAKER_09]: You know, there is some...

[00:07:47] [SPEAKER_09]: Like there's a question maybe about the authenticity.

[00:07:50] [SPEAKER_09]: But this is... I disagree with this claim, but I'll make it.

[00:07:55] [SPEAKER_09]: Which is that part of what being an actor might require is some empathy with the role

[00:08:03] [SPEAKER_09]: and that somebody who is actually the thing that they are portraying

[00:08:07] [SPEAKER_09]: might have more empathy with the role.

[00:08:08] [SPEAKER_09]: I don't think that's the case, but let me give you an example of how it was hilariously not the case.

[00:08:14] [SPEAKER_09]: When I was a kid, I used to watch those Johnny Weissmueller Tarzan movies,

[00:08:18] [SPEAKER_09]: like the black and white ones.

[00:08:20] [SPEAKER_09]: And I have a very clear memory of being a seven-year-old

[00:08:23] [SPEAKER_09]: and seeing the natives in that movie speaking to each other in Spanish.

[00:08:30] [SPEAKER_09]: They had just hired a bunch of Mexicans to portray my natives in Africa.

[00:08:35] [SPEAKER_09]: I was like, why are they speaking what I speak?

[00:08:40] [SPEAKER_08]: I didn't know I could speak African.

[00:08:42] [SPEAKER_09]: I know!

[00:08:45] [SPEAKER_09]: You're right.

[00:08:47] [SPEAKER_08]: You go up to some Nigerian guy and you start speaking Spanish to him,

[00:08:53] [SPEAKER_08]: just expecting him to...

[00:08:54] [SPEAKER_09]: How dare you not speak African back to me?

[00:08:56] [SPEAKER_09]: But I think good acting is good acting.

[00:08:58] [SPEAKER_09]: I mean, I can see why trans actors would get pissed at being, you know...

[00:09:02] [SPEAKER_09]: Yeah.

[00:09:02] [SPEAKER_09]: Maybe this could have been my break.

[00:09:04] [SPEAKER_09]: Totally.

[00:09:06] [SPEAKER_08]: Now it still can.

[00:09:07] [SPEAKER_08]: Yeah.

[00:09:08] [SPEAKER_08]: I just found it at...

[00:09:11] [SPEAKER_08]: It's fine that the controversy was happening.

[00:09:15] [SPEAKER_08]: What I didn't like was that I knew about it.

[00:09:20] [SPEAKER_09]: I totally agree with you on this one.

[00:09:22] [SPEAKER_09]: I will reserve the right for black male comedians to portray old white Jews,

[00:09:29] [SPEAKER_09]: old black women.

[00:09:31] [SPEAKER_09]: I feel like a black male comedian is the most versatile acting role.

[00:09:37] [SPEAKER_08]: Well, I mean, Eddie Murphy as the old Jewish guy,

[00:09:41] [SPEAKER_08]: that's about as good as anybody can do it.

[00:09:43] [SPEAKER_09]: As good as it gets.

[00:09:45] [SPEAKER_09]: Eddie Murphy in the old Soviet life skit as a white man

[00:09:47] [SPEAKER_09]: who puts on white face to live in the world and doesn't realize how easy it is.

[00:09:54] [SPEAKER_08]: Alright.

[00:09:55] [SPEAKER_08]: Today, a couple of things.

[00:09:57] [SPEAKER_08]: In the second segment, the main segment,

[00:10:00] [SPEAKER_08]: we're going to begin what is at least a two-episode series

[00:10:04] [SPEAKER_08]: on short stories of Jorge Luis Borges.

[00:10:10] [SPEAKER_08]: Did I say that right?

[00:10:11] [SPEAKER_09]: You did as well as you could.

[00:10:13] [SPEAKER_08]: As well as a man of my skin color can say it.

[00:10:17] [SPEAKER_08]: We'll be talking about his story, a tower of...

[00:10:20] [SPEAKER_08]: It's not the Tower of Babel.

[00:10:22] [SPEAKER_08]: The Library of Babel will be talking about that incredible story,

[00:10:26] [SPEAKER_08]: which I reread a couple of days ago

[00:10:29] [SPEAKER_08]: and have pretty much thought about nothing else since.

[00:10:32] [SPEAKER_08]: Then the following episode, or at least in an upcoming episode,

[00:10:35] [SPEAKER_08]: we'll talk about the story of the Garden of Forking Paths.

[00:10:39] [SPEAKER_08]: And then who knows?

[00:10:40] [SPEAKER_08]: This could be like a rich mine that we can...

[00:10:43] [SPEAKER_09]: We could nagle him.

[00:10:45] [SPEAKER_08]: Yeah, we could nagle him.

[00:10:47] [SPEAKER_08]: First though, you brought my attention to a new study?

[00:10:54] [SPEAKER_09]: Was it?

[00:10:54] [SPEAKER_09]: Yeah, it was an actual study, which was brought to my attention

[00:11:00] [SPEAKER_09]: by Neuroskeptic once again.

[00:11:03] [SPEAKER_09]: Another well.

[00:11:04] [SPEAKER_09]: I wanted your hot take on this.

[00:11:06] [SPEAKER_09]: The title of the paper is American Political Party Affiliation

[00:11:11] [SPEAKER_09]: as a Predictor of Usage of an Adultary Website.

[00:11:14] [SPEAKER_09]: This was published in the Archives of Sexual Behavior

[00:11:17] [SPEAKER_09]: this month, July 2018.

[00:11:20] [SPEAKER_09]: And the gist of it is that...

[00:11:22] [SPEAKER_09]: So you remember, I guess, the...

[00:11:25] [SPEAKER_09]: I think we might have talked about it.

[00:11:26] [SPEAKER_09]: The Ashley Madison, which is a website where people could go

[00:11:30] [SPEAKER_09]: sign up to have an affair.

[00:11:33] [SPEAKER_09]: Presumably you had to be married,

[00:11:36] [SPEAKER_09]: then be connected to other married people.

[00:11:39] [SPEAKER_09]: How does that work?

[00:11:40] [SPEAKER_08]: Do you have to be married?

[00:11:41] [SPEAKER_08]: Like how do they check?

[00:11:45] [SPEAKER_09]: It's the honoursest.

[00:11:46] [SPEAKER_08]: You have to like...

[00:11:49] [SPEAKER_08]: Like you don't have...

[00:11:51] [SPEAKER_08]: Do you have to send a copy of your marriage certificate?

[00:11:55] [SPEAKER_09]: I believe that it was purely on the honour system.

[00:12:00] [SPEAKER_09]: And I think that there was social pressure

[00:12:04] [SPEAKER_09]: for both parties to be married

[00:12:06] [SPEAKER_09]: because then it was mutually assured destruction.

[00:12:09] [SPEAKER_09]: Exactly.

[00:12:12] [SPEAKER_09]: And so a while ago,

[00:12:16] [SPEAKER_09]: the Ashley Madison database leaked

[00:12:19] [SPEAKER_09]: and was released to everybody.

[00:12:22] [SPEAKER_09]: So now even you, dear listener,

[00:12:24] [SPEAKER_09]: if you wanted to, could go and actually search the database.

[00:12:29] [SPEAKER_09]: I think it's fairly easy to find

[00:12:30] [SPEAKER_09]: and probably fairly easy to search at this point.

[00:12:34] [SPEAKER_08]: There was a couple of politicians that went down because of...

[00:12:37] [SPEAKER_09]: Yeah, there's actually some academics who...

[00:12:41] [SPEAKER_09]: They did not do this.

[00:12:42] [SPEAKER_09]: Whose names shall not be mentioned here.

[00:12:45] [SPEAKER_09]: Present company excluded.

[00:12:47] [SPEAKER_09]: Present company excluded because I'm not married,

[00:12:49] [SPEAKER_09]: so why would I go?

[00:12:51] [SPEAKER_09]: You couldn't.

[00:12:52] [SPEAKER_09]: Exactly.

[00:12:54] [SPEAKER_09]: So what they did was...

[00:12:56] [SPEAKER_09]: So taking registration on the Ashley Madison website

[00:13:00] [SPEAKER_09]: is some sort of proxy for adultery.

[00:13:03] [SPEAKER_09]: But actually, when we talk about this,

[00:13:04] [SPEAKER_09]: I don't even think you need to take it as a proxy

[00:13:06] [SPEAKER_09]: of anything other than signing up for Ashley Madison.

[00:13:10] [SPEAKER_09]: They wanted to look at whether or not

[00:13:13] [SPEAKER_09]: there was a difference in the registered political party in the U.S.

[00:13:20] [SPEAKER_09]: and your likelihood to use Ashley Madison.

[00:13:24] [SPEAKER_09]: So they just took a look at voting records

[00:13:28] [SPEAKER_09]: given the publicly available voting records

[00:13:31] [SPEAKER_09]: and the now publicly available Ashley Madison database

[00:13:33] [SPEAKER_09]: and they found that libertarians and Republicans were most likely

[00:13:37] [SPEAKER_09]: to have registered for Ashley Madison.

[00:13:41] [SPEAKER_09]: And Green Party...

[00:13:44] [SPEAKER_09]: Democrats were least likely.

[00:13:47] [SPEAKER_09]: Greens and unaffiliated voters were in between.

[00:13:49] [SPEAKER_08]: I like that the Green Party will go on there.

[00:13:53] [SPEAKER_08]: That's...

[00:13:56] [SPEAKER_08]: Yeah, we got George Bush Jr. elected.

[00:14:00] [SPEAKER_08]: Now let's go have an affair, fuck it.

[00:14:03] [SPEAKER_08]: We started two wars.

[00:14:05] [SPEAKER_08]: Why not have an affair on our wives?

[00:14:10] [SPEAKER_08]: Yeah.

[00:14:11] [SPEAKER_08]: So what do I think of this?

[00:14:13] [SPEAKER_09]: Yeah, there's two things.

[00:14:15] [SPEAKER_09]: There's the data in and of themselves

[00:14:18] [SPEAKER_09]: and whether you think it says anything interesting or unexpected.

[00:14:23] [SPEAKER_09]: And then there is the meta-take,

[00:14:25] [SPEAKER_09]: which the reason for Neurosceptics tweet,

[00:14:28] [SPEAKER_09]: which was whether or not it is ethical

[00:14:32] [SPEAKER_09]: to use the database in actual research.

[00:14:35] [SPEAKER_09]: Now that it's leaked, you know, the cat's out of the bag,

[00:14:40] [SPEAKER_09]: was it okay for Arfa and Jones,

[00:14:41] [SPEAKER_09]: were the authors to have actually used it?

[00:14:45] [SPEAKER_08]: Okay, so let me take the first part first.

[00:14:48] [SPEAKER_08]: So one of the things they write,

[00:14:50] [SPEAKER_08]: and I'm now quoting Neurosceptic, quoting them,

[00:14:53] [SPEAKER_08]: are results are perhaps the strongest evidence yet

[00:14:56] [SPEAKER_08]: that people with more sexually conservative values,

[00:15:00] [SPEAKER_08]: although they claim to act accordingly,

[00:15:02] [SPEAKER_08]: are more sexually deviant in practice

[00:15:04] [SPEAKER_08]: than their more sexually liberal peers.

[00:15:08] [SPEAKER_08]: So I think that that's like a ridiculous claim

[00:15:13] [SPEAKER_08]: to make based on these data about Ashley Madison.

[00:15:18] [SPEAKER_08]: I also...I really don't think like Republicans

[00:15:20] [SPEAKER_08]: have more sexually conservative values

[00:15:23] [SPEAKER_08]: when it comes to adultery than liberals.

[00:15:27] [SPEAKER_08]: There's no pro-adultery platform within the Democratic Party.

[00:15:31] [SPEAKER_08]: There's no like...so...

[00:15:32] [SPEAKER_08]: You haven't been invited to that party?

[00:15:34] [SPEAKER_08]: It's true.

[00:15:36] [SPEAKER_08]: Like, why would I...

[00:15:37] [SPEAKER_08]: Can you get me in?

[00:15:40] [SPEAKER_08]: I'll see what I can do.

[00:15:42] [SPEAKER_08]: So the least surprising thing is

[00:15:44] [SPEAKER_08]: that libertarians are by far the most likely to do this.

[00:15:49] [SPEAKER_08]: Like, this...Ashley Madison just seems like

[00:15:52] [SPEAKER_08]: a libertarian fantasy come to life.

[00:15:55] [SPEAKER_08]: It is.

[00:15:57] [SPEAKER_09]: Don't tread on me.

[00:15:58] [SPEAKER_08]: Is their dream realized?

[00:16:01] [SPEAKER_09]: Libertarians are just like Satanists maybe.

[00:16:05] [SPEAKER_09]: Do what thou wilt, that's the extent of the law.

[00:16:08] [SPEAKER_08]: I think, like you say,

[00:16:10] [SPEAKER_08]: the more interesting question is the ethics of doing this at all.

[00:16:14] [SPEAKER_09]: Yeah.

[00:16:14] [SPEAKER_09]: So I agree with you that this statement that

[00:16:19] [SPEAKER_09]: people with more sexually conservative values

[00:16:21] [SPEAKER_09]: or more sexually deviant is...

[00:16:24] [SPEAKER_09]: cannot be...you can't conclude that from these results.

[00:16:27] [SPEAKER_09]: What can you conclude?

[00:16:29] [SPEAKER_09]: And this is what Neuroskeptic, I think, doesn't focus on

[00:16:31] [SPEAKER_09]: and too much is...

[00:16:33] [SPEAKER_09]: What you can conclude is that

[00:16:38] [SPEAKER_09]: Republicans go on Ashley Madison more.

[00:16:40] [SPEAKER_08]: I'm impressed that they're old.

[00:16:42] [SPEAKER_08]: I'm impressed that they know about it

[00:16:44] [SPEAKER_08]: and they can use the internet effectively.

[00:16:46] [SPEAKER_09]: So yeah, I think it's a proxy for something

[00:16:49] [SPEAKER_09]: in that proxy of going on to...

[00:16:54] [SPEAKER_09]: I mean this is consistent with the...

[00:16:56] [SPEAKER_09]: I guess the data that religious states

[00:16:58] [SPEAKER_09]: look at porn more often.

[00:17:01] [SPEAKER_09]: So I don't think it needs to be a proxy

[00:17:03] [SPEAKER_09]: for actual adultery to be a sign of something.

[00:17:07] [SPEAKER_09]: Your willingness or your motivation to go to your way

[00:17:09] [SPEAKER_09]: to try to get some strange if you're married.

[00:17:12] [SPEAKER_08]: I mean that's the thing about Ashley Madison.

[00:17:15] [SPEAKER_08]: It's one thing to have an affair

[00:17:16] [SPEAKER_08]: to sort of stumble into an affair.

[00:17:19] [SPEAKER_08]: It's another thing to go onto a website

[00:17:22] [SPEAKER_08]: where the tagline is life is short, have an affair.

[00:17:27] [SPEAKER_08]: You don't know who it's going to be

[00:17:29] [SPEAKER_08]: but you're just certain that's your goal.

[00:17:33] [SPEAKER_09]: So I had dinner with the founder of Ashley Madison once.

[00:17:35] [SPEAKER_09]: I may have talked about that.

[00:17:37] [SPEAKER_09]: I think you've told me.

[00:17:38] [SPEAKER_09]: Yeah, and he was saying that this was with Dan Ariely

[00:17:42] [SPEAKER_09]: and Nina Mazar.

[00:17:43] [SPEAKER_09]: He was saying that they sort of like

[00:17:48] [SPEAKER_09]: market tested a bunch of different slogans

[00:17:52] [SPEAKER_09]: of varying complexity

[00:17:53] [SPEAKER_09]: and the one that just won out the most

[00:17:56] [SPEAKER_09]: was that life is short, have an affair.

[00:17:57] [SPEAKER_08]: It's effective.

[00:17:59] [SPEAKER_08]: I saw that and I was like, yeah, life is short.

[00:18:03] [SPEAKER_08]: That's a good point.

[00:18:05] [SPEAKER_09]: Okay, but the ethics of actually using this.

[00:18:10] [SPEAKER_08]: So here's what the authors say.

[00:18:13] [SPEAKER_08]: We believe that using data that were originally collected

[00:18:17] [SPEAKER_08]: unethically is itself ethically permissible.

[00:18:20] [SPEAKER_08]: To forbid such use would be closing the stable door

[00:18:23] [SPEAKER_08]: after the horse has bolted.

[00:18:27] [SPEAKER_08]: I'm not sure about that.

[00:18:28] [SPEAKER_09]: I don't know what work that metaphor is doing here.

[00:18:31] [SPEAKER_09]: It's not that I didn't understand what it meant

[00:18:34] [SPEAKER_09]: to use data that was already leaked.

[00:18:36] [SPEAKER_08]: Right, and also like,

[00:18:39] [SPEAKER_08]: is the idea that you should leave the door open?

[00:18:43] [SPEAKER_08]: So the horse, like I don't get the metaphor.

[00:18:46] [SPEAKER_09]: The horse will eventually come back.

[00:18:48] [SPEAKER_08]: But that's not what's happening here.

[00:18:51] [SPEAKER_08]: Data is not going to un-leak itself.

[00:18:55] [SPEAKER_08]: In the case of Ashley Madison in particular,

[00:18:59] [SPEAKER_08]: not only have data been publicly available since 2015

[00:19:02] [SPEAKER_08]: and has been widely discussed in the news with some reports,

[00:19:05] [SPEAKER_08]: even describing how to obtain and use the data.

[00:19:09] [SPEAKER_09]: Irrelevant.

[00:19:10] [SPEAKER_08]: Yeah, we cannot undo the past,

[00:19:13] [SPEAKER_08]: but we can make the most of the present

[00:19:16] [SPEAKER_08]: by getting what social and scientific value

[00:19:19] [SPEAKER_08]: we can out of undesirable events,

[00:19:22] [SPEAKER_08]: whether those events are natural disasters,

[00:19:24] [SPEAKER_08]: disease epidemics or human hunger.

[00:19:26] [SPEAKER_08]: If I were the editor, I would just say,

[00:19:28] [SPEAKER_08]: don't cut those two paragraphs.

[00:19:31] [SPEAKER_08]: All it does is make me question more the ethics.

[00:19:37] [SPEAKER_09]: Absolutely, that's exactly what I was going to say,

[00:19:39] [SPEAKER_09]: which is I actually was all for it.

[00:19:40] [SPEAKER_09]: And then like I read these and I was like,

[00:19:43] [SPEAKER_09]: oh, these arguments are so bad

[00:19:45] [SPEAKER_09]: that maybe it is in fact unethical.

[00:19:47] [SPEAKER_08]: Exactly, that's right.

[00:19:49] [SPEAKER_08]: It had the opposite effect that I assume it was supposed to have.

[00:19:53] [SPEAKER_08]: I mean, you could make the same comparison

[00:19:58] [SPEAKER_08]: with the Nazi doctors or whatever

[00:20:01] [SPEAKER_08]: and that research and stuff.

[00:20:04] [SPEAKER_08]: And that is a really tough question.

[00:20:06] [SPEAKER_09]: Except for the potential value of using something

[00:20:09] [SPEAKER_09]: that might really save a life

[00:20:13] [SPEAKER_09]: versus knowing that libertarians were more likely to try to...

[00:20:17] [SPEAKER_08]: But at the same time,

[00:20:18] [SPEAKER_08]: but the costs or the quesiness of it

[00:20:22] [SPEAKER_08]: is also much lower.

[00:20:25] [SPEAKER_08]: So what?

[00:20:26] [SPEAKER_08]: If people know this study, so what?

[00:20:30] [SPEAKER_08]: Is the idea that you just shouldn't use the data at all?

[00:20:34] [SPEAKER_08]: Because nobody knew is getting exposed because of this.

[00:20:38] [SPEAKER_09]: I mean, so it might be that you're contributing to the exposure.

[00:20:43] [SPEAKER_09]: Right, so like people who...

[00:20:45] [SPEAKER_09]: That's true actually.

[00:20:46] [SPEAKER_09]: The fact that I flippantly said some academics were in the dataset

[00:20:50] [SPEAKER_09]: might lead some people to go search through it

[00:20:52] [SPEAKER_09]: and find those people and then...

[00:20:55] [SPEAKER_09]: What are the ethics of you saying that?

[00:20:58] [SPEAKER_09]: That's a better question.

[00:20:59] [SPEAKER_09]: What is it?

[00:21:01] [SPEAKER_09]: Horses out of the bag.

[00:21:03] [SPEAKER_09]: The cats out of the stable.

[00:21:05] [SPEAKER_09]: Stable door has been unrung.

[00:21:10] [SPEAKER_08]: I'm going to just use that as anytime somebody questions like,

[00:21:13] [SPEAKER_08]: my ethics, I'll be like,

[00:21:14] [SPEAKER_08]: that's like closing the stable door when the horses are out of the bag.

[00:21:20] [SPEAKER_09]: That's why I was inclined to say,

[00:21:22] [SPEAKER_09]: well yeah, as long as it's anonymized,

[00:21:25] [SPEAKER_09]: I do think it's mildly unethical to even...

[00:21:30] [SPEAKER_09]: You know, search through the data that's been illegally leaked.

[00:21:35] [SPEAKER_09]: But no more...

[00:21:36] [SPEAKER_09]: I mean, I also think it's unethical to look at leaked nude pictures of celebrities.

[00:21:43] [SPEAKER_09]: But not all that unethical.

[00:21:45] [SPEAKER_09]: It's mildly unethical.

[00:21:47] [SPEAKER_09]: I do not know whether as an institution,

[00:21:49] [SPEAKER_09]: I would say go ahead and use these data and publish.

[00:21:55] [SPEAKER_09]: I don't think I have a big problem with it, to be honest.

[00:21:58] [SPEAKER_09]: All the damage that you can imagine that is being done

[00:22:00] [SPEAKER_09]: is not damage that I think is that much more than what has already been done.

[00:22:06] [SPEAKER_08]: Certainly any of the problems with them doing it

[00:22:10] [SPEAKER_08]: would also apply to us talking about it.

[00:22:12] [SPEAKER_09]: Yeah, yeah.

[00:22:14] [SPEAKER_09]: But I only arrived at that conclusion after we talked about it.

[00:22:19] [SPEAKER_08]: We just shouldn't release the episode then.

[00:22:23] [SPEAKER_09]: Exactly.

[00:22:24] [SPEAKER_09]: I suppose that some people could be really upset by this if they went on Ashley Medicine.

[00:22:29] [SPEAKER_09]: I think I just assume that when I put my name and email into a database

[00:22:34] [SPEAKER_09]: and it has a pretty good chance of making its way into somebody's hands.

[00:22:39] [SPEAKER_08]: If it gets leaked, yeah.

[00:22:41] [SPEAKER_08]: I kind of feel like it's on you to some extent.

[00:22:45] [SPEAKER_09]: Would you want to know...

[00:22:46] [SPEAKER_09]: Like if I said here is a list,

[00:22:48] [SPEAKER_09]: it's very easy to look at houston.edu as a search term in the Excel spreadsheet.

[00:22:54] [SPEAKER_09]: Do you think it would be unethical for you to look

[00:22:57] [SPEAKER_09]: and see if anybody in your department is in it?

[00:22:59] [SPEAKER_08]: Is in it?

[00:23:03] [SPEAKER_08]: That's a great question.

[00:23:05] [SPEAKER_08]: Because I was just thinking like, I'd be interested.

[00:23:09] [SPEAKER_09]: You just want to know who is down.

[00:23:14] [SPEAKER_08]: Yeah, I mean it's not...

[00:23:15] [SPEAKER_08]: I don't know, it's non-virtuous, I would say that.

[00:23:20] [SPEAKER_08]: I shouldn't be doing that.

[00:23:22] [SPEAKER_08]: That's right.

[00:23:25] [SPEAKER_09]: I believe in privacy.

[00:23:27] [SPEAKER_09]: I believe that I wouldn't want to pour through this dataset

[00:23:30] [SPEAKER_09]: in order to test hypotheses.

[00:23:31] [SPEAKER_09]: I don't think that the value of it is worth my staining myself

[00:23:35] [SPEAKER_09]: and being tempted to look at my friends.

[00:23:38] [SPEAKER_09]: I never looked at the dataset.

[00:23:40] [SPEAKER_09]: I know that I could.

[00:23:41] [SPEAKER_09]: I wouldn't want to know if you, Tamler, were on it.

[00:23:44] [SPEAKER_09]: Like I don't think I would want to know.

[00:23:46] [SPEAKER_08]: Well good, so just make sure you just keep off it then.

[00:23:49] [SPEAKER_08]: Just stay away.

[00:23:50] [SPEAKER_08]: Just don't check.

[00:23:51] [SPEAKER_08]: No, like I didn't even really know about it

[00:23:55] [SPEAKER_08]: other than it was like a pop-up.

[00:23:57] [SPEAKER_08]: But I didn't know that's what it was.

[00:23:59] [SPEAKER_08]: It was like a pop-up on porn.

[00:24:01] [SPEAKER_09]: You didn't know what Ashley Madison itself was.

[00:24:04] [SPEAKER_08]: Yeah, before that big leak,

[00:24:06] [SPEAKER_08]: like I knew it was this annoying pop-up

[00:24:09] [SPEAKER_08]: but I didn't know exactly what it was.

[00:24:13] [SPEAKER_08]: Like I thought it was kind of a version of Tinder

[00:24:15] [SPEAKER_08]: or something like that.

[00:24:17] [SPEAKER_09]: I remember actually when I went to dinner

[00:24:20] [SPEAKER_09]: and the guy at the very beginning,

[00:24:22] [SPEAKER_09]: we were talking about that slogan

[00:24:24] [SPEAKER_09]: and Dan Ariely goes to me,

[00:24:27] [SPEAKER_09]: have you heard the slogan?

[00:24:29] [SPEAKER_09]: I said yeah.

[00:24:29] [SPEAKER_09]: And he goes, how do you know David?

[00:24:32] [SPEAKER_09]: Like as if he were tricking me into admitting something

[00:24:35] [SPEAKER_09]: and I was like because I watch porn

[00:24:36] [SPEAKER_09]: and they pre-roll their ads.

[00:24:40] [SPEAKER_09]: I was like you're not going to make me feel shame

[00:24:42] [SPEAKER_09]: in admitting it.

[00:24:42] [SPEAKER_08]: I also think the value of this study is virtually nil.

[00:24:47] [SPEAKER_09]: Yeah, no, you know what it is.

[00:24:49] [SPEAKER_09]: It's a, um, it's a ha-ha, Republicans.

[00:24:52] [SPEAKER_09]: It is.

[00:24:55] [SPEAKER_08]: It's a clickbait for the principles.

[00:24:56] [SPEAKER_09]: I wonder if it had been,

[00:24:58] [SPEAKER_09]: I don't know the authors and I assume

[00:25:02] [SPEAKER_09]: that the answer would be yes,

[00:25:04] [SPEAKER_09]: but I do wonder a little bit

[00:25:06] [SPEAKER_09]: if the answer had been that Democrats were the most likely.

[00:25:10] [SPEAKER_09]: They probably would have published it

[00:25:11] [SPEAKER_09]: but I wonder if it would have gotten published

[00:25:12] [SPEAKER_09]: or gotten the attention.

[00:25:14] [SPEAKER_08]: Alright, when we come back

[00:25:15] [SPEAKER_08]: we will talk about the Library of Babel

[00:25:19] [SPEAKER_08]: by Borges.

[00:25:53] [SPEAKER_07]: Yeah.

[00:26:19] [SPEAKER_07]: Welcome back to Very Bad Wizards.

[00:26:48] [SPEAKER_09]: At this time we'd like to set aside

[00:26:51] [SPEAKER_09]: a couple of minutes to thank all of our supporters,

[00:26:56] [SPEAKER_09]: all of you people who contact us,

[00:26:59] [SPEAKER_09]: talk to us, write to us

[00:27:02] [SPEAKER_09]: and support us in other ways.

[00:27:04] [SPEAKER_09]: We really, really appreciate it.

[00:27:06] [SPEAKER_09]: Yeah, I mean I've been traveling.

[00:27:08] [SPEAKER_09]: I haven't been able to keep up with all the emails lately.

[00:27:12] [SPEAKER_09]: We do try to read them all, right?

[00:27:14] [SPEAKER_09]: I read them all.

[00:27:16] [SPEAKER_09]: You read them all.

[00:27:16] [SPEAKER_09]: I try to read them all.

[00:27:18] [SPEAKER_09]: I do read them all eventually.

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[00:28:06] [SPEAKER_09]: Oh I miss something, Instagram.

[00:28:07] [SPEAKER_09]: We always miss Instagram.

[00:28:11] [SPEAKER_08]: As does Eliza sometimes in posting about Instagram.

[00:28:16] [SPEAKER_09]: Well it's child labor.

[00:28:19] [SPEAKER_08]: The old days kids worked, earned their keep in the house.

[00:28:24] [SPEAKER_09]: They were grateful and they earned it.

[00:28:26] [SPEAKER_09]: You can support us in more tangible ways

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[00:28:38] [SPEAKER_09]: because soon I will be recording again in person

[00:28:42] [SPEAKER_09]: with Tamler in El Paso.

[00:28:45] [SPEAKER_09]: We're both going to be there for conference

[00:28:47] [SPEAKER_09]: and so we'll have to look at each other in the eye.

[00:28:51] [SPEAKER_08]: El Paso in late July.

[00:28:53] [SPEAKER_09]: We're living the dream.

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[00:29:33] [SPEAKER_09]: In fact, our last episode was a result

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[00:29:41] [SPEAKER_09]: Which people seem to like as usual.

[00:29:45] [SPEAKER_08]: They know better than we do.

[00:29:47] [SPEAKER_08]: They know what's best for us.

[00:29:49] [SPEAKER_09]: We can never guess by the way

[00:29:51] [SPEAKER_09]: which of our episodes are going to be well liked.

[00:29:54] [SPEAKER_09]: And yeah, so...

[00:29:58] [SPEAKER_09]: Did I miss anything?

[00:30:00] [SPEAKER_08]: The ways to support us, you can rate us on iTunes.

[00:30:03] [SPEAKER_08]: Oh yeah, I read it.

[00:30:04] [SPEAKER_08]: That helps people find us on iTunes

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[00:30:10] [SPEAKER_08]: You know, spread the word.

[00:30:11] [SPEAKER_08]: We love interacting with you.

[00:30:15] [SPEAKER_08]: This summer I think has been fairly busy

[00:30:17] [SPEAKER_08]: and crazy for both of us.

[00:30:18] [SPEAKER_08]: So we haven't been as responsive

[00:30:22] [SPEAKER_08]: as we sometimes are.

[00:30:24] [SPEAKER_08]: But I at least read all the emails that you send us

[00:30:29] [SPEAKER_08]: and I really appreciate that.

[00:30:34] [SPEAKER_08]: Okay, so...

[00:30:35] [SPEAKER_08]: Thank you.

[00:30:39] [SPEAKER_08]: This episode and the subsequent ones

[00:30:42] [SPEAKER_08]: that we do on Bohus

[00:30:43] [SPEAKER_08]: was actually a result of one of the interactions

[00:30:47] [SPEAKER_08]: and me seeking out these interactions

[00:30:51] [SPEAKER_08]: because someone on Reddit suggested

[00:30:53] [SPEAKER_08]: that the user you slash would be something

[00:30:58] [SPEAKER_08]: mentioned that we should do an episode

[00:31:01] [SPEAKER_08]: on some stories by Jorge Luis Borges.

[00:31:05] [SPEAKER_08]: And as soon as I read that

[00:31:06] [SPEAKER_08]: I thought that was a great idea.

[00:31:08] [SPEAKER_08]: Pitched it to Dave.

[00:31:09] [SPEAKER_08]: So Borges is an Argentinian

[00:31:12] [SPEAKER_08]: where I knew I wouldn't have trouble persuading you.

[00:31:17] [SPEAKER_09]: And just like one of my favorites.

[00:31:22] [SPEAKER_08]: He's like the Messi,

[00:31:23] [SPEAKER_08]: he's like the Lionel Messi of Argentinian writers.

[00:31:27] [SPEAKER_08]: He's definitely our biggest export.

[00:31:29] [SPEAKER_08]: I don't know if I know the names of any others.

[00:31:33] [SPEAKER_09]: I don't even.

[00:31:35] [SPEAKER_09]: Yeah, I discovered Borges when I was...

[00:31:38] [SPEAKER_09]: I think it wasn't until I was in early college

[00:31:41] [SPEAKER_09]: or maybe mid-college somewhere.

[00:31:43] [SPEAKER_09]: And I was so angry that I hadn't heard of him.

[00:31:47] [SPEAKER_09]: Here's an Argentinian author

[00:31:50] [SPEAKER_09]: and he talks about shit that just fascinates me

[00:31:52] [SPEAKER_09]: that I love.

[00:31:55] [SPEAKER_09]: And there are reasons.

[00:31:58] [SPEAKER_09]: My mom was raised in Argentina

[00:32:00] [SPEAKER_09]: and she was raised in a very religious upbringing.

[00:32:03] [SPEAKER_09]: They didn't read a lot of fiction.

[00:32:06] [SPEAKER_09]: But I said,

[00:32:06] [SPEAKER_09]: Mom, do you know this guy?

[00:32:08] [SPEAKER_09]: This guy born kid.

[00:32:10] [SPEAKER_09]: And she says, yeah, I met him once

[00:32:12] [SPEAKER_09]: and I was like, oh, fuck you.

[00:32:14] [SPEAKER_09]: Why haven't you told me this before?

[00:32:16] [SPEAKER_09]: When she was in her first year in university,

[00:32:21] [SPEAKER_09]: as they say.

[00:32:22] [SPEAKER_09]: What year was this?

[00:32:23] [SPEAKER_09]: This must have been in the early 60s

[00:32:26] [SPEAKER_09]: when my mom was just starting college.

[00:32:29] [SPEAKER_09]: Yeah, so mid-60s, I guess.

[00:32:31] [SPEAKER_09]: My mom was born in 43.

[00:32:35] [SPEAKER_09]: So all of this I discovered

[00:32:37] [SPEAKER_09]: as I was becoming a huge fan.

[00:32:39] [SPEAKER_09]: But that's certainly not necessary

[00:32:41] [SPEAKER_09]: to be able to appreciate...

[00:32:44] [SPEAKER_08]: That's the sign of a great writer

[00:32:47] [SPEAKER_08]: that your mom doesn't have to have met him.

[00:32:49] [SPEAKER_09]: Well, honestly, for a second I was like,

[00:32:53] [SPEAKER_09]: is there any chance that he's my real father?

[00:32:56] [SPEAKER_09]: Please God.

[00:32:58] [SPEAKER_09]: Turns out what timing is about 20 years old.

[00:33:02] [SPEAKER_08]: Yeah, that's right.

[00:33:04] [SPEAKER_09]: Wow.

[00:33:06] [SPEAKER_09]: I love my father for the record.

[00:33:08] [SPEAKER_08]: That's a really good poll question.

[00:33:11] [SPEAKER_08]: Who would you want to be your real father?

[00:33:15] [SPEAKER_08]: Is there someone out there that you...

[00:33:18] [SPEAKER_09]: I wouldn't be me.

[00:33:19] [SPEAKER_09]: If Borges was my real father,

[00:33:22] [SPEAKER_09]: maybe I wouldn't love Borges.

[00:33:24] [SPEAKER_09]: You never know.

[00:33:25] [SPEAKER_08]: Right, because you're disconnected with him.

[00:33:28] [SPEAKER_09]: That would be a very pyrrhic victory.

[00:33:31] [SPEAKER_08]: But you would be like one of those rappers

[00:33:33] [SPEAKER_08]: that can't believe that their dads

[00:33:35] [SPEAKER_08]: don't reach out to them.

[00:33:38] [SPEAKER_08]: Until they get money.

[00:33:41] [SPEAKER_08]: Yeah, so let me set up the stories.

[00:33:44] [SPEAKER_08]: Let me just read the opening

[00:33:46] [SPEAKER_08]: and then just set up what it is,

[00:33:49] [SPEAKER_08]: the library of Babel.

[00:33:51] [SPEAKER_08]: And then we can talk about it.

[00:33:53] [SPEAKER_08]: I would say though you have to read it.

[00:33:56] [SPEAKER_08]: Yeah, and it's very short.

[00:33:58] [SPEAKER_09]: I mean it's dense but it's very short.

[00:34:00] [SPEAKER_08]: Yeah, a lot of...

[00:34:01] [SPEAKER_08]: And that's true of pretty much all of his stories.

[00:34:03] [SPEAKER_08]: So here's how it starts.

[00:34:06] [SPEAKER_08]: The universe which others call the library,

[00:34:08] [SPEAKER_08]: is composed of an indefinite, perhaps infinite number of hexagonal...

[00:34:13] [SPEAKER_09]: Is it hexagonal or hexagonal?

[00:34:16] [SPEAKER_09]: I actually don't know.

[00:34:17] [SPEAKER_08]: An infinite number of hexag...

[00:34:18] [SPEAKER_08]: That sounds better.

[00:34:20] [SPEAKER_08]: An infinite number of hexagonal galleries.

[00:34:23] [SPEAKER_08]: In the center of each gallery

[00:34:24] [SPEAKER_08]: is a ventilation shaft bounded by a low railing.

[00:34:28] [SPEAKER_08]: From any hexagon one can see the floors above

[00:34:30] [SPEAKER_08]: and below one after another endlessly.

[00:34:34] [SPEAKER_08]: The arrangement of the galleries is always the same.

[00:34:36] [SPEAKER_08]: Twenty bookshelves, five to each side.

[00:34:39] [SPEAKER_08]: Line four of the hexagon six sides.

[00:34:42] [SPEAKER_08]: The height of the bookshelves floor to ceiling

[00:34:44] [SPEAKER_08]: is hardly greater than the height of a normal librarian.

[00:34:48] [SPEAKER_08]: One of the hexagon's free sides open into a narrow sort of vestibule

[00:34:53] [SPEAKER_08]: which in turn opens into another gallery

[00:34:55] [SPEAKER_08]: identical to the first, identical in fact to all.

[00:34:59] [SPEAKER_08]: To the left and right of the vestibule

[00:35:01] [SPEAKER_08]: are two tiny compartments.

[00:35:02] [SPEAKER_08]: One is for sleeping upright.

[00:35:04] [SPEAKER_08]: The other for satisfying one's physical necessities.

[00:35:08] [SPEAKER_08]: Through this space too there passes a spiral staircase

[00:35:11] [SPEAKER_08]: which winds upward and downward into the remotest distance.

[00:35:15] [SPEAKER_08]: And so that's the setup of like the architecture of this library

[00:35:21] [SPEAKER_08]: which is doing a little research surprisingly hard to visualize.

[00:35:26] [SPEAKER_08]: To visualize, yeah.

[00:35:28] [SPEAKER_08]: And a lot of artists have tried

[00:35:30] [SPEAKER_08]: and I think there's some controversy as to whether it's even possible

[00:35:34] [SPEAKER_08]: or not to represent this, fitting all the pieces together.

[00:35:38] [SPEAKER_08]: So then you find out what the library is.

[00:35:43] [SPEAKER_08]: He says for a long time nobody knew what it was

[00:35:45] [SPEAKER_08]: but then they figured it out by deducing from three axioms

[00:35:52] [SPEAKER_08]: the truth about the library.

[00:35:55] [SPEAKER_08]: So all the books have 410 pages

[00:35:58] [SPEAKER_08]: and there are no two identical books.

[00:36:02] [SPEAKER_08]: From these incontrovertible premises

[00:36:05] [SPEAKER_08]: the librarian deduced that the library is total,

[00:36:09] [SPEAKER_08]: perfect, complete and whole

[00:36:11] [SPEAKER_08]: and that its bookshelves contain all possible combinations

[00:36:15] [SPEAKER_08]: of the 22 orthographic symbols

[00:36:18] [SPEAKER_08]: a number which though unimaginably vast is not infinite

[00:36:23] [SPEAKER_08]: that is all that is able to be expressed in every language.

[00:36:29] [SPEAKER_08]: All the detailed history of the future,

[00:36:31] [SPEAKER_08]: the autobiographies of the archangels,

[00:36:34] [SPEAKER_08]: the faithful catalog of the library,

[00:36:36] [SPEAKER_08]: thousands and thousands of false catalogs,

[00:36:38] [SPEAKER_08]: the proof of the falsity of these false catalogs,

[00:36:41] [SPEAKER_08]: a proof of the falsity of the true catalog.

[00:36:44] [SPEAKER_08]: So it is essentially every possible combination

[00:36:47] [SPEAKER_08]: of those characters as we now call them

[00:36:49] [SPEAKER_08]: is in one of these,

[00:36:53] [SPEAKER_08]: is in the total of all of these books

[00:36:56] [SPEAKER_08]: and none of the books are identical to each other.

[00:37:00] [SPEAKER_08]: So what that means you can actually compute

[00:37:03] [SPEAKER_08]: the number of books that this library has

[00:37:09] [SPEAKER_08]: and it's from my research I didn't do this

[00:37:15] [SPEAKER_08]: 25 to the 1,312,000th power

[00:37:21] [SPEAKER_08]: that number of books

[00:37:23] [SPEAKER_08]: which couldn't fit, couldn't even come close

[00:37:26] [SPEAKER_08]: to fitting in our universe right now.

[00:37:28] [SPEAKER_08]: It's way, way, way more than the number of atoms

[00:37:31] [SPEAKER_08]: in our universe but...

[00:37:34] [SPEAKER_09]: So I have a book that I had just had in my library

[00:37:38] [SPEAKER_09]: called The Unimaginable Mathematics of Voorhez's Library of Babel

[00:37:42] [SPEAKER_09]: and if you took a standard size of a book

[00:37:46] [SPEAKER_09]: 10 to the 84 would fit in our known universe.

[00:37:50] [SPEAKER_09]: It's basically just the mind fucking blowing number.

[00:37:54] [SPEAKER_08]: It's literally unimaginable,

[00:37:56] [SPEAKER_08]: we just don't have a sense of what that could possibly mean.

[00:38:00] [SPEAKER_08]: I was trying to explain this to my family yesterday

[00:38:03] [SPEAKER_08]: and they're like that's infinite, it's not infinite

[00:38:05] [SPEAKER_08]: but in some ways it might as well be

[00:38:08] [SPEAKER_08]: because we can't conceive of that number.

[00:38:12] [SPEAKER_08]: Just saying it's 25 to the 1,300,000th power

[00:38:16] [SPEAKER_08]: is kind of like, it's no different than saying 25 to the 200,000th power.

[00:38:22] [SPEAKER_09]: Right, right, right.

[00:38:23] [SPEAKER_09]: It is for the purposes of a person living in this thing.

[00:38:30] [SPEAKER_08]: So that's the setup

[00:38:32] [SPEAKER_08]: and one of the implications of it is

[00:38:36] [SPEAKER_08]: there's every possible book

[00:38:39] [SPEAKER_08]: so there's like books, all the existing books

[00:38:43] [SPEAKER_08]: plus better versions of all existing books

[00:38:47] [SPEAKER_08]: like all of those books but substituting penis for the word the

[00:38:54] [SPEAKER_08]: and then mostly though it's all complete gibberish

[00:38:59] [SPEAKER_08]: because it's completely random how the characters have come together

[00:39:03] [SPEAKER_08]: but there's like a book that you could have written.

[00:39:07] [SPEAKER_08]: A book that describes your entire life.

[00:39:09] [SPEAKER_08]: Right, including from now on.

[00:39:13] [SPEAKER_08]: Yeah.

[00:39:14] [SPEAKER_08]: So you would find out everything that

[00:39:16] [SPEAKER_08]: well if you found this book and you knew that you found it

[00:39:21] [SPEAKER_08]: it could tell you everything that was going to happen to you until you die

[00:39:24] [SPEAKER_08]: but of course there's also a book that perfectly describes your life up till now

[00:39:30] [SPEAKER_08]: and then just falsely describes from now until you die

[00:39:34] [SPEAKER_08]: in fact there's a million of those books for every book that truly describes

[00:39:38] [SPEAKER_08]: you know, a zillion or whatever how it again.

[00:39:42] [SPEAKER_09]: It's hard to really say that a story blows your mind

[00:39:49] [SPEAKER_09]: and I remember when I first read this

[00:39:52] [SPEAKER_09]: it really blew my mind and it still blows my mind.

[00:39:55] [SPEAKER_08]: Let me just one last thing to set up the discussion

[00:39:57] [SPEAKER_08]: and then it can go in all sorts of different directions

[00:40:00] [SPEAKER_08]: but I think that there are multiple ways to approach this mind-blowing story.

[00:40:10] [SPEAKER_08]: Some people approach it just as this kind of philosophical thought experiment

[00:40:15] [SPEAKER_08]: that we just described

[00:40:18] [SPEAKER_08]: and thinking of all the ways it's analogous

[00:40:23] [SPEAKER_08]: or a metaphor for the universe or for genetics

[00:40:26] [SPEAKER_08]: so that's one way of doing it which would really barely require you to even read the story

[00:40:33] [SPEAKER_08]: you just have to have a sense of what the library of Babel is.

[00:40:37] [SPEAKER_08]: The other way which I think I would like to at least pay a good amount of attention to

[00:40:42] [SPEAKER_08]: is as a story with this character who's describing these other characters

[00:40:49] [SPEAKER_08]: and how they're sort of reacting to living in this library

[00:40:55] [SPEAKER_08]: being these librarians and the sort of mood of the story

[00:40:59] [SPEAKER_08]: which is I think pretty somber and melancholic

[00:41:07] [SPEAKER_08]: and it's another sort of dimension to the story

[00:41:11] [SPEAKER_08]: that I think is really important for understanding what Borges was up to.

[00:41:18] [SPEAKER_08]: Just the little ways in which the character describes his own state of mind

[00:41:23] [SPEAKER_08]: throughout the course of his life

[00:41:25] [SPEAKER_08]: and then all the various other groups that he talks about

[00:41:28] [SPEAKER_08]: is also a really fascinating part of the story.

[00:41:32] [SPEAKER_09]: Absolutely, right?

[00:41:34] [SPEAKER_09]: So when you think about it

[00:41:35] [SPEAKER_09]: I think this is a library like this that contains every conceivable ordering of these letters

[00:41:41] [SPEAKER_09]: is identical in informational value to one that contains zero books.

[00:41:47] [SPEAKER_09]: It is literally becomes meaningless to try to find any informational value in these books

[00:41:58] [SPEAKER_09]: given that each and every one of them and every permutate, right?

[00:42:02] [SPEAKER_08]: Well, you could spend your whole life

[00:42:06] [SPEAKER_08]: and this would almost certainly be the case, probabilistically

[00:42:11] [SPEAKER_08]: it would be rare that you came across a book that had like a grammatical sentence.

[00:42:18] [SPEAKER_08]: It would be never mind like one that was meaningful to you.

[00:42:22] [SPEAKER_09]: No, but this is the more sort of mathematical information science point

[00:42:27] [SPEAKER_09]: which is that in a library that has been described this way

[00:42:32] [SPEAKER_09]: there is no information in it.

[00:42:34] [SPEAKER_09]: There is just because you're completely unable to distinguish something truthful

[00:42:38] [SPEAKER_09]: for something non-truthful. Every single thing is there.

[00:42:41] [SPEAKER_08]: Well, I mean we should talk about that

[00:42:43] [SPEAKER_08]: because I think there is an argument that you could make against that

[00:42:48] [SPEAKER_08]: but one thing I thought was interesting is once they figured out what the library was

[00:42:54] [SPEAKER_08]: so here's what it says.

[00:42:55] [SPEAKER_08]: When it was announced the first reaction was unbounded joy.

[00:43:00] [SPEAKER_08]: All men felt themselves the possessors of an intact and secret treasure.

[00:43:06] [SPEAKER_08]: There was no personal problem, no world problem

[00:43:09] [SPEAKER_08]: whose eloquent solution did not exist somewhere in some hexagon.

[00:43:15] [SPEAKER_08]: The universe was justified.

[00:43:17] [SPEAKER_08]: The universe suddenly became congruent with the unlimited width and breadth of humankind's hope.

[00:43:24] [SPEAKER_08]: And then it says at that period there was much talk of the vindications,

[00:43:28] [SPEAKER_08]: these books that would vindicate for all time the actions of every person in the universe.

[00:43:33] [SPEAKER_08]: So after the discovery, and I don't know maybe this is analogous in some way to Newton's laws

[00:43:40] [SPEAKER_08]: or something when Newton's laws were discovered, it's like oh my god

[00:43:44] [SPEAKER_08]: we have the way of understanding now everything that there is to understand

[00:43:50] [SPEAKER_08]: and because these are books it's true in one sense

[00:43:55] [SPEAKER_08]: that every personal problem that you have

[00:43:58] [SPEAKER_08]: there's a book that would tell you the best way of addressing it.

[00:44:03] [SPEAKER_08]: Of course the issue is not just that the vanishingly small possibility that you would find that book

[00:44:13] [SPEAKER_08]: but how you would know even if you did find it that that was the one

[00:44:19] [SPEAKER_08]: because there's always ones that are deliberately misleading,

[00:44:23] [SPEAKER_08]: not deliberately, but just misleading like oh

[00:44:26] [SPEAKER_08]: and might be misleading in a way that is exactly designed to get us to believe

[00:44:32] [SPEAKER_08]: oh this is the one, this is the solution, this is the thing.

[00:44:36] [SPEAKER_08]: So how would you know?

[00:44:38] [SPEAKER_08]: And I think that's sort of why you say that it's like the existence of no information at that point.

[00:44:46] [SPEAKER_09]: Right, right because for every claim there is an opposite claim

[00:44:50] [SPEAKER_09]: and there is no external way to determine the truth of the claim.

[00:44:54] [SPEAKER_08]: Because we are part of the universe, we're part of the library.

[00:44:58] [SPEAKER_08]: You know there's also a book that decodes the library.

[00:45:02] [SPEAKER_09]: That's the hope right?

[00:45:04] [SPEAKER_09]: There's a sect of people who believe that there is a decoding book

[00:45:08] [SPEAKER_09]: but again you wouldn't just know, you just would not know even if you stumbled upon it

[00:45:11] [SPEAKER_09]: there might be one that perfectly decodes fake language.

[00:45:15] [SPEAKER_08]: No in fact for every of the one that truly decodes the library

[00:45:19] [SPEAKER_08]: there would be countless numbers of fake decodings.

[00:45:25] [SPEAKER_08]: I think it's really interesting that you get this unbridled enthusiasm

[00:45:32] [SPEAKER_08]: that then turns to what he calls similarly disproportionate depression.

[00:45:38] [SPEAKER_08]: It's like the thought that there are these solutions out there

[00:45:47] [SPEAKER_08]: that there are books out there that could answer all your deepest questions

[00:45:50] [SPEAKER_08]: maybe even we can talk about what this would mean but justifies your life to you

[00:45:57] [SPEAKER_08]: in a way that would satisfy you but that it's inaccessible

[00:46:01] [SPEAKER_08]: is worse than they're just not being the book out there.

[00:46:05] [SPEAKER_08]: That's the thing that you get that's kind of pervasive through the whole thing

[00:46:09] [SPEAKER_08]: is it's worse to know that it's out there and you can't get it

[00:46:14] [SPEAKER_08]: than to think that it's just not out there at all.

[00:46:18] [SPEAKER_09]: Right so he describes these people who would talk about what he calls the vindications

[00:46:27] [SPEAKER_09]: presumably these are books of prophecies that would vindicate for all time

[00:46:32] [SPEAKER_09]: the actions of every person in the universe and that held wondrous arcana

[00:46:35] [SPEAKER_09]: and that hope that you will find your people would travel around with the hope

[00:46:40] [SPEAKER_09]: that they would find the vindication for their own life

[00:46:42] [SPEAKER_09]: but again it seems to be a mistake that you will never know

[00:46:46] [SPEAKER_09]: like you wouldn't know if that was the correct version.

[00:46:49] [SPEAKER_08]: What does that mean like that a book would vindicate your existence?

[00:46:55] [SPEAKER_09]: I wondered if this was an illusion to some sort of religious idea that I wasn't sure of

[00:47:03] [SPEAKER_09]: I wonder if it is something like justifying the rightness of your life

[00:47:10] [SPEAKER_09]: in some way like making it clear that the way that you lived was the right way to live.

[00:47:16] [SPEAKER_08]: It's a funny this is sort of one of these is-ought things

[00:47:21] [SPEAKER_08]: but it's certainly an open question whether such a book is even possible.

[00:47:27] [SPEAKER_08]: There's a book that might make you- I'm sure there's a book that will make you feel better about your life

[00:47:32] [SPEAKER_08]: Well that's the thing.

[00:47:32] [SPEAKER_08]: There's a book but a book that would justify your life or that would justify the universe

[00:47:39] [SPEAKER_08]: it's not totally clear what that even means

[00:47:42] [SPEAKER_08]: or whether that book is one of the possible books that could exist right

[00:47:49] [SPEAKER_08]: and that's something Borges this is what I love about this story

[00:47:53] [SPEAKER_08]: he doesn't really he kind of drops it in there because this is clearly something the librarian hasn't thought of that question

[00:48:02] [SPEAKER_08]: he hasn't asked what that would mean this question of justification

[00:48:08] [SPEAKER_08]: I think he takes it for granted that it exists but that we just can't get it

[00:48:12] [SPEAKER_08]: You might- there might be a hope that you will know it when you see it

[00:48:15] [SPEAKER_09]: Yeah

[00:48:15] [SPEAKER_09]: Like oh this is my life this is-

[00:48:18] [SPEAKER_08]: I mean that's that's the one way that there would be information

[00:48:22] [SPEAKER_08]: in this universe is that like there's some sort of like you'd have to be like some kind of intuitionist where you would think that

[00:48:30] [SPEAKER_08]: we can recognize amidst all the false books like the true one you know

[00:48:38] [SPEAKER_09]: So okay so let's talk a little bit more about the people's reactions

[00:48:41] [SPEAKER_09]: he's talking a lot a lot of this is just in almost religious zeal religious fanaticism one way or the other right

[00:48:48] [SPEAKER_09]: some people I believe he says some people just committed suicide immediately

[00:48:53] [SPEAKER_08]: Yeah

[00:48:53] [SPEAKER_08]: and he also says at the end that suicides are way up

[00:48:56] [SPEAKER_09]: then there's the there's the people who go around it'll trying to eliminate all worthless books which is a hilarious idea

[00:49:03] [SPEAKER_09]: because it's like you know these people they're still caught up in this notion that there are books that are worthless and books that are not

[00:49:11] [SPEAKER_08]: Yeah so that no their idea is to make the problem more manageable by just getting rid of all the books that are nonsense and they just don't have value

[00:49:21] [SPEAKER_08]: but then those those people are now looked upon with extreme disfavor and their name is cursed because they've destroyed millions of books

[00:49:33] [SPEAKER_08]: and maybe amongst those books was something that if you just had the proper coding book it would tell you deep things about about the universe

[00:49:43] [SPEAKER_08]: but I love the like undercutting of that so the librarian says I think this this worry is overblown because even if they did destroy one of those books

[00:49:56] [SPEAKER_08]: there's just another one another book that is exactly that except like one or two characters are different

[00:50:04] [SPEAKER_09]: and yet the majority of books that you would ever encounter in your whole life would be full of gibberish because

[00:50:08] [SPEAKER_09]: and that is a particular kind of hopelessness where you where you even say like

[00:50:15] [SPEAKER_09]: because my initial thought too when I read that it was no don't throw away any book because that might be the one but he's like but come on

[00:50:21] [SPEAKER_09]: like literally there's gonna be another one but that's the one but with a comma at a place like a war and then so there are these people

[00:50:30] [SPEAKER_08]: a blasphemous sect he says that proposed that all searches for meaningful books be discontinued and that all men shuffle letters and symbols

[00:50:40] [SPEAKER_08]: until those canonical books through some improbable stroke of chance had been constructed

[00:50:45] [SPEAKER_08]: the authorities were forced to issue strict orders the sect disappears but in my childhood I've seen old men who for long periods would hide in the latrines

[00:50:55] [SPEAKER_08]: with metal discs and a forbidden dice cup feebly mimicking the divine disorder

[00:51:03] [SPEAKER_08]: so this is kind of interesting it's like okay we are going to try to recreate this library at least will be the ones we decide we're the ones that are in charge of the disorder

[00:51:19] [SPEAKER_08]: not this bewildering universe that we find ourselves in and like that's some sort of comfort to this blasphemous sects

[00:51:29] [SPEAKER_08]: right right and why is it blasphemous like why do they get forbidden

[00:51:36] [SPEAKER_09]: there's this interesting right like Borges could have made this about scientists who try to find the order in the chaos or something like that

[00:51:47] [SPEAKER_09]: he doesn't this is very much in whatever allegory he's trying to tell it's important that this be a mystical thing

[00:51:53] [SPEAKER_09]: and that the things that's that emerged around this knowledge that the universe was was all these books made of the same twenty five

[00:52:03] [SPEAKER_09]: that this is a religious reaction he doesn't aside from the math that he starts out with it is about about the human

[00:52:14] [SPEAKER_09]: if these are humans their response to finding themselves in this universe in a in a very cosmic religious wrestling with the gods kind of way

[00:52:29] [SPEAKER_09]: and I have a feeling that it has to be that way you know he doesn't mention anybody trying to do the math to figure these things out

[00:52:38] [SPEAKER_09]: I mean he just sort of puts it out there that the guy figured out the one librarian figured out the true nature of who's a philosopher

[00:52:43] [SPEAKER_08]: yeah who's a philosopher as if not a social psychologist running like trolley studies

[00:52:51] [SPEAKER_09]: he's a philosopher social psychologists who are in that library would totally be doing worthless research on books

[00:52:58] [SPEAKER_09]: what if I prime you with twenty two

[00:53:02] [SPEAKER_08]: I mean I actually disagree though that there isn't a subtext of scientists trying to make order of a chaotic universe

[00:53:11] [SPEAKER_08]: I think there is I think that especially those first people who are trying to gather all the books and trying to figure out like what makes sense

[00:53:21] [SPEAKER_08]: and how to figure out some sort of order and is there some sort of code or some sort of these are kind of like the laws of nature

[00:53:27] [SPEAKER_08]: some book that can explain the other books and all these seemingly chaotic books but this one book can kind of unify them and bring them together

[00:53:37] [SPEAKER_08]: like that seems to me to be analogous to science but I agree that the tone of it almost suggests that Borges thinks that that's just another form of religion

[00:53:51] [SPEAKER_08]: given the way the universe is it's another you know not necessarily more feeble but another feeble attempt to try to bring order to something that

[00:54:02] [SPEAKER_08]: where order cannot be brought to it because we just not capable of understanding it

[00:54:07] [SPEAKER_08]: I think the sense of hopelessness that is pervasive even when he's describing the people who had hope

[00:54:15] [SPEAKER_08]: there is a sense of hopelessness that pervades the story

[00:54:19] [SPEAKER_08]: he does seem to both want the library to be infinite and like sort of yearn for it to be infinite yet is aware that there are a finite number of books

[00:54:32] [SPEAKER_08]: right

[00:54:33] [SPEAKER_08]: and so he wants the library itself to go on forever but there to be a finite number of books

[00:54:38] [SPEAKER_08]: why do you think that

[00:54:41] [SPEAKER_09]: I don't know I mean so he's clearly I was actually thinking about why Borges made this such a bounded

[00:54:49] [SPEAKER_09]: like he could have said I'm describing a library where the books vary in length you know and like make it truly like some version of infinity but he didn't

[00:55:00] [SPEAKER_09]: the number of books is not infinite but then he says I will be bold enough to suggest this solution to the ancient problem the library is unlimited but periodic

[00:55:08] [SPEAKER_09]: if an eternal traveler should journey in any direction he would find after untold centuries that the same volumes are repeated in the same disorder which repeated becomes order the order

[00:55:18] [SPEAKER_09]: my solitude is cheered by that elegant hope and I can't find the hope in that I don't understand what he's saying to be honest like I don't know if it's a cynical take

[00:55:28] [SPEAKER_09]: that Borges is saying of this author that he is almost sort of in a in a classical existentialist turn there is no meaning therefore let me create my meaning and the way that I'm creating my meaning is the hope that

[00:55:42] [SPEAKER_09]: that order will come from my boundless from the boundless travels of humanity

[00:55:47] [SPEAKER_09]: that elegant hope I just don't get

[00:55:50] [SPEAKER_08]: it doesn't seem to be that because he also says when he's talking about there's this sort of legend of this man who has happened to be in the library where there was the book that explains everything like and that is the

[00:56:05] [SPEAKER_08]: decoder for all the other books and that person now wanders the library like knowing what he's looking for and being able to put all the pieces together and he says

[00:56:17] [SPEAKER_08]: the author I don't have the passage here but something like I know that I will never like it's impossible that I'll ever meet this person but I want him to exist like I would love for him to

[00:56:31] [SPEAKER_08]: and I don't think he's thinking that that guy is creating his own meaning he has stumbled upon the meaning and his and this man's hope is that some other human if it can't be him will have it

[00:56:44] [SPEAKER_08]: maybe because that would mean that the life wasn't purposeless life wasn't just a meaningless void

[00:56:55] [SPEAKER_09]: yeah yeah there's still vestiges of the sect that worshiped that distant library and many have gone in search of him for 100 years men beat every possible path in every path in vain how was one to locate the idolized secret hexagon that sheltered him

[00:57:08] [SPEAKER_09]: let heaven exist though my own place be in hell let me be tortured and battered and annihilated but let there be one instant one creature where in the enormous library may find its justification

[00:57:19] [SPEAKER_09]: I mean I think that he's set it up to know within this text that it is a meaningless library that is a library with no internal answers to it's to the questions that are being asked

[00:57:31] [SPEAKER_09]: and his desire that this librarian exists the one that's analogous to a God it's funny because the book man or you know this this person looking is not

[00:57:48] [SPEAKER_08]: there's nothing special about him other than he had the luck to be born in a library that had this book that he was able to then recognize

[00:57:58] [SPEAKER_08]: but there's nothing otherwise special about him but I still don't know again going back to our earlier question is that even possible that such a book exists and if there's not then there's no book man if there's no book that can

[00:58:12] [SPEAKER_09]: and there's a book and there is no way that that book man there there are probably at you know some very large number of people who think that they saw that book

[00:58:24] [SPEAKER_08]: right and there's no good way to distinguish that but yeah in the same way that there are a lot of people who think they've discerned the true meaning of the universe the true religion the true you know

[00:58:35] [SPEAKER_09]: right and this is why I say that like within the text board has set it up knowingly to be a universe in which the understanding of the truth is impossible at least the truth as as written about within the books

[00:58:51] [SPEAKER_09]: yet he is embracing this desire to believe that somebody has seen that one true book like I don't believe that he missed his misunderstanding that the narrator I believe that Borges believes that the narrator is either wrong to believe this or yeah

[00:59:09] [SPEAKER_09]: I mean who he I believe Borges must believe the narrator is wrong to believe this and what he's saying about his belief is unclear to me whether he's saying look how this guy is the desire to find meaning and to find patterns is so strong that even this very smart librarian who

[00:59:27] [SPEAKER_08]: knows the futility of all of these people's actions continues to believe that there is some hope that there's something essentially human about that right and is capable about that right I think that's that is like because there's

[00:59:57] [SPEAKER_08]: a lot of people who are thinking about his natural life but the thing that allows him to do that is this hope it seems like so and and what's interesting throughout the book you get the sense I mean throughout the story you get the sense that these people start out full of optimism

[01:00:17] [SPEAKER_08]: and then at a certain point realize the futility of their quest and then kill themselves or sink into deep depression and I and and I don't know like I was trying to think what what what is this saying about that you this is written at like

[01:00:36] [SPEAKER_08]: like 1940 41 or at least that's when it was first published this is the you know the time the Camus absurd and the existentialist although I don't think that this is the I don't see that many parallels with existentialism but I do see parallels with Camus and the absurd

[01:00:56] [SPEAKER_08]: and I think that it is that there's something about the vastness of the universe and the chaos the sort of disorder of it that makes people feel alone like you get the sense of isolation even though you could just walk next you don't get the sense that people are like hanging out like having a beer together

[01:01:20] [SPEAKER_08]: there. Oh let's look at this gibberish book let's you know or having like you don't get the sense that there are any women actually I would just be wandering the infinite library to find some dirty like you know some dirty shit.

[01:01:34] [SPEAKER_09]: This one said vagina there's did you know that about 20 weeks from here is a book that says vagina.

[01:01:41] [SPEAKER_08]: Then there's one that starts out tired of reading porn you could be out there like fucking a library.

[01:01:48] [SPEAKER_08]: Life is short fuck a library.

[01:01:54] [SPEAKER_08]: That's a good motto life is short fuck a library.

[01:01:58] [SPEAKER_08]: Just to finish that thought so I think like sometimes when your world is too small like you're living the state of agitation like this or perpetual out like if your world is Twitter you're in the state of agitation and outrage and just constant like but if your world is too big as their world is in this and then it's it the human sort of state now is a kind of loneliness.

[01:02:27] [SPEAKER_08]: And a kind of despair or depression it seems like like just the contemplation of the vastness and the meaninglessness or the most likely meaninglessness of where we find ourselves makes us isolate us in a way that when most of the time we're not thinking of that.

[01:02:53] [SPEAKER_08]: And so you know we are then connected with people and our little worlds.

[01:02:58] [SPEAKER_08]: But when that stripped away from us as it seems to be for these people you're just left with the contemplation of the meaninglessness is the impossibility of finding what you're looking for.

[01:03:15] [SPEAKER_09]: Yeah I almost read this as you know Boris is creating a universe that is very constrained.

[01:03:23] [SPEAKER_09]: So he's saying this is the entirety of the universe is in these very identically shaped things rooms and you know there's no real fleshing out of where people born do they have families or anything like this.

[01:03:45] [SPEAKER_09]: It is a super abstract idea that you're you're born you become a librarian you wander the universe.

[01:03:51] [SPEAKER_09]: You can or you stay in your little or you stay in your own but but it seems as if the the the the entirety of human activity is to ponder the library and there and the library is the only thing to ponder.

[01:04:10] [SPEAKER_09]: And it's it seems as if Boris might be saying in this universe where that is all that is left to do that is the only thing that one has to do you can either travel and look at all the books or you can stay and look at these books or whatever.

[01:04:26] [SPEAKER_09]: That when when the universe found out that this was probably meaningless.

[01:04:34] [SPEAKER_09]: This is how some people reacted but the right thing maybe for him to do is just to continue keeping hope and continue looking through books.

[01:04:45] [SPEAKER_09]: That's that that is because that's the only thing to do so you could despair and you could throw yourself off of one of the staircases but just just continue if if you need hope to continue looking through your books because that is what humans do in this universe.

[01:05:01] [SPEAKER_09]: Then hold on to that hope but.

[01:05:05] [SPEAKER_09]: So in this constrained universe that's the only activity that you can do when it's you know this is a cruel or universe than ours because as we discussed at length in our in our podcast on meaning on the Nagel essay.

[01:05:19] [SPEAKER_09]: We can find meaning in local local achieving of goals right I want to do this and I do it I you know I find my interaction with my friends and my family members to be filling my heart with love and.

[01:05:34] [SPEAKER_09]: I don't that doesn't need an external justification.

[01:05:36] [SPEAKER_08]: The whole point of this universe is that they're lost in this you know all they have is those books and why is that so this is good like this is sort of what I wanted to like why that it's it's totally true what you say that.

[01:05:52] [SPEAKER_08]: There just isn't anything besides pondering the implications of the library trying to address the vastness of it like it's never described that people like eat or what they just like.

[01:06:10] [SPEAKER_08]: Yeah there's a big mention of like having to you know having to take care of your physical needs take a dump take a like jerk off whatever like there's there's just no sense that that's even.

[01:06:21] [SPEAKER_08]: A possibility and why is that because in life that is a possibility in fact it's how we live 99.9% of our lives right so.

[01:06:32] [SPEAKER_08]: I here is one hypothesis about what the differences between them and us.

[01:06:41] [SPEAKER_08]: They know that there are books out there that could.

[01:06:47] [SPEAKER_08]: Tell them whatever they're doing they could do it better in this specific way or you know like.

[01:06:55] [SPEAKER_08]: There's a relationship that they might be in there's a book out there somewhere that could tell them like.

[01:07:01] [SPEAKER_09]: You shouldn't be with this person you should be with that person or that or here's what I will say you were right that one time and I like I find it I can finally go and show Tamler.

[01:07:10] [SPEAKER_08]: That was right that one time well that was my first thought there's a book that can convince you that straw dogs was a great movie there's a book like.

[01:07:18] [SPEAKER_08]: And just the knowledge that they're out there makes you not be able to think about anything else right like it whereas you know it's a little in fact by the way that Jordan Peterson's book is a bestseller over there to.

[01:07:32] [SPEAKER_08]: In there yeah no I don't it's a bestseller everywhere.

[01:07:36] [SPEAKER_08]: Eddie Namias discovered him he emailed me a program of SPP in 2005.

[01:07:45] [SPEAKER_08]: He had Jordan Peterson on the program.

[01:07:48] [SPEAKER_08]: Oh he was organizing a session like he discovered him like like he's like like someone who's like discovered Jay Z when he was just selling crack and rapping on street corners.

[01:08:01] [SPEAKER_08]: Nice.

[01:08:03] [SPEAKER_09]: Jay Z is more eloquent.

[01:08:08] [SPEAKER_08]: Direct your emails to Pizarro.

[01:08:15] [SPEAKER_09]: Yeah I was wondering if because on the one hand you can say this is an allegory for our world our universe.

[01:08:24] [SPEAKER_09]: On the other hand.

[01:08:27] [SPEAKER_09]: Okay here's the three possibilities that I that I can think of one this is an allegory for our universe or search for meaning this is in some way meant to describe the way that our universe is and that our existence is.

[01:08:44] [SPEAKER_09]: Here's possibility to bore his loves games of math and infinity he loves games of religion he loves games of mysticism.

[01:08:53] [SPEAKER_09]: This is a fucking cool story right and and I don't think that would take away from it.

[01:08:58] [SPEAKER_09]: It's just like a mind blowing story and he said mind fuck.

[01:09:02] [SPEAKER_09]: It's a mind fuck right or how I imagine what.

[01:09:08] [SPEAKER_09]: This season was like the mind fuck but it's a little boring one.

[01:09:13] [SPEAKER_09]: And the third is that this is a description of an aspect of people in our world that this is that it might be that these people are meant to describe the way in which some people become obsessed with with certain aspects of existence.

[01:09:36] [SPEAKER_09]: And so even though in the story these people have it's not as if they're not going to parties or ignoring their family.

[01:09:43] [SPEAKER_09]: They nonetheless describe a certain set of people who get so lost in trying to find truth wherever whether it be in the cabala or you know the cobblestone methods or or in science or or in an obscure reading of you know 18th century French feminists or whatever the case may be that.

[01:10:05] [SPEAKER_09]: We all are trying to find patterns where it's really hard to figure out if patterns exist.

[01:10:11] [SPEAKER_08]: And maybe and probably impossible because we have no way of identifying whether we found a pattern or whether we found one of the billions of false patterns that are misleading patterns.

[01:10:26] [SPEAKER_09]: Yeah.

[01:10:27] [SPEAKER_08]: I think that's a great way of putting it that this is and how this is a description of how certain people react to the fundamental facts of human experience living in this universe that we don't understand.

[01:10:42] [SPEAKER_08]: We can sometimes trick ourselves into thinking that we understand it.

[01:10:45] [SPEAKER_08]: We can spend our entire lives searching.

[01:10:49] [SPEAKER_08]: I mean Borges himself I was doing a little reading into his biography.

[01:10:53] [SPEAKER_08]: He didn't marry until very late in life and there's a suggestion.

[01:10:58] [SPEAKER_08]: I think this is Wikipedia so don't quote me on this that he married because he was going blind and his mother wanted somebody to take care of him.

[01:11:08] [SPEAKER_08]: You know it doesn't seem like you know the his stories don't aren't really about love affairs and families and various things like that.

[01:11:20] [SPEAKER_08]: They're just not like this.

[01:11:21] [SPEAKER_08]: I can't think of a single story that where that is a big part of them they are more these existential or whatever kinds of puzzles about existence and our place in the world.

[01:11:37] [SPEAKER_08]: And I think that's why he's doing it.

[01:11:38] [SPEAKER_08]: You know so maybe Borges himself is can identify with this librarian.

[01:11:42] [SPEAKER_09]: Well you know he became the National Librarian of Argentina toward the end of his life with the ultimate irony being that he had already gone blind.

[01:11:52] [SPEAKER_09]: So he was the blind.

[01:11:53] [SPEAKER_09]: He was himself a blind librarian.

[01:11:55] [SPEAKER_08]: And he was a librarian.

[01:11:56] [SPEAKER_08]: I read this before he wrote this and probably where he got this idea.

[01:12:03] [SPEAKER_08]: And then when the Perones came to power because he had been against them they fired him from they took him out of that position and made him be a poultry inspector.

[01:12:19] [SPEAKER_08]: And he never in Switzerland.

[01:12:22] [SPEAKER_08]: I think that's right.

[01:12:24] [SPEAKER_08]: Like I think this that's a that's a really good way of understanding this that it's a description of some people's reaction.

[01:12:32] [SPEAKER_08]: And I don't know many people like this but I wouldn't know them because they're solitary and you know.

[01:12:39] [SPEAKER_09]: Yeah.

[01:12:39] [SPEAKER_09]: You know I mean he did seem obsessed with people who were obsessed.

[01:12:45] [SPEAKER_09]: And and his his sort of discussion of the mystics and their you know and their their desire to figure out the ultimate truth of the universe in these dice games or whatever really does it does seem to be thematic in him.

[01:13:02] [SPEAKER_08]: And Borges himself like he's not he's not discovering it now.

[01:13:07] [SPEAKER_08]: He's creating it you know like he's not searching for it.

[01:13:10] [SPEAKER_08]: He's just at least he's he's playing a role.

[01:13:13] [SPEAKER_08]: He has some agency in I mean even in the way we're talking about it right.

[01:13:18] [SPEAKER_08]: We are searching for patterns trying to.

[01:13:21] [SPEAKER_08]: The meaning and his biography trying to like these memories of stories that that you know of people who may have met him like that is that is definitely a human.

[01:13:32] [SPEAKER_08]: And he's trying to find something to try to search for these patterns and meanings in.

[01:13:37] [SPEAKER_08]: And that's what it's so good that he does is he encourages that he inspires it his books are just an invitation to just think about all these things.

[01:13:48] [SPEAKER_09]: Yeah. Yeah.

[01:13:50] [SPEAKER_08]: You know in really interesting ways and I really love like I'm really into that kind of art like where it's very open ended how you understand it.

[01:14:00] [SPEAKER_09]: Yeah. And you know what I also love and I should say I mean this is what I love about short stories in general but Borges being the sort of to me the ultimate in this is sometimes an idea only requires four pages.

[01:14:12] [SPEAKER_09]: And it is still a book's worth of idea.

[01:14:16] [SPEAKER_09]: And you know Borges has these these short stories where all he does is describe books.

[01:14:23] [SPEAKER_09]: Yeah. But they're just complete bullshit books.

[01:14:26] [SPEAKER_09]: And I think at some point I read an interview I don't know where I read it but that he was like you know sometimes I'm like yeah I could write a whole novel but why when I can describe the novel that someone else wrote in one paragraph and get you all of the things that I think would be interesting about it.

[01:14:42] [SPEAKER_08]: Have you read the book of sand recently.

[01:14:45] [SPEAKER_08]: No.

[01:14:46] [SPEAKER_08]: That is a four page story that's and it has a similar idea in fact so it's about this guy who gets some religious person comes to the door selling Bibles but it turns out to be this book of sand which is this infinite book that has no beginning and no end.

[01:15:03] [SPEAKER_08]: And so like every time you try to get to the first page you find that there's like three or four more pages there and every time you try to get to the end you find that there's three or four more pages and there's no like as soon as you get what you think the last page all of a sudden there are four more pages.

[01:15:20] [SPEAKER_08]: So it's sort of like a book version of the library of Babel.

[01:15:24] [SPEAKER_08]: But what's interesting is the again like the way he describes what it was like to possess it so the person who possesses it.

[01:15:36] [SPEAKER_08]: He says I showed no one my treasure to the joy of possession was added the fear that it would be stolen from me and to that the suspicion that it might not be truly infinite.

[01:15:47] [SPEAKER_08]: Those two points of anxiety aggravated my already habitual misanthropy.

[01:15:54] [SPEAKER_08]: I had but few friends left and those I stopped seeing a prisoner of the book.

[01:15:59] [SPEAKER_08]: I hardly left my house and then he just ends up like putting it in a library ironically and just like so that he never can find it again.

[01:16:09] [SPEAKER_08]: But I thought that was really interesting that having the book knowing of its existence it poses these questions that again disconnects him from human contact right like disconnects him from his relationships.

[01:16:29] [SPEAKER_08]: He says he's already started out fairly misanthropic and now like he's just you just cut off all his relationships altogether.

[01:16:36] [SPEAKER_08]: And one of the fears that he has about it that gnaws at him is the fear that it might not be infinite.

[01:16:43] [SPEAKER_08]: So again there's this idea that the thing we can cling to the hope is that it that there's this infinity but our fear is that it's not right.

[01:16:55] [SPEAKER_09]: Right. Yeah it's really interesting that's that that I think lens lens some some credence to the that this is speaking this might be speaking of a certain kind of person.

[01:17:08] [SPEAKER_09]: And the way in which they their attitude toward finding themselves in this world right and that they might be just yeah they're literally lost in this infinite library.

[01:17:21] [SPEAKER_09]: Not realizing not realizing that that's not the point of living in that library.

[01:17:28] [SPEAKER_08]: The more pessimistic reading though is that once you find this knowledge you're you're done like the people who are living these lives of like where they're connecting and they think they're creating meaning if they just knew the truth that that would be over that that life would be over.

[01:17:51] [SPEAKER_09]: Well you know I mean it's similar to the maybe we'll discuss this the the fun is the memorials story where the guy has absolute perfect memory of every moment in his life and that just makes it that just makes him miserable right that's just like a horrible existence.

[01:18:09] [SPEAKER_09]: To relive every minute detail of one's existence in a way that I think is an idea that that makes sense when you ponder it.

[01:18:20] [SPEAKER_09]: That this would be a miserable existence and that's because you're not living.

[01:18:25] [SPEAKER_09]: Yeah you're not you're never living you're never really living you're always reliving.

[01:18:31] [SPEAKER_08]: And you know the way memory works is a creative thing.

[01:18:34] [SPEAKER_08]: And if you have perfect memory you're not doing that anymore.

[01:18:40] [SPEAKER_09]: Yeah yeah yeah.

[01:18:41] [SPEAKER_08]: No that would be horrible.

[01:18:45] [SPEAKER_09]: There is so much more than I would rather forget than that I would rather remember.

[01:18:52] [SPEAKER_08]: Well for our Patreon listeners we talked about that Black Mirror episode where you can just kind of rewind that would be even worse I guess.

[01:19:01] [SPEAKER_08]: Except that at least you have to make the choice to go to it.

[01:19:05] [SPEAKER_08]: That's right.

[01:19:06] [SPEAKER_08]: It's not just present in your mind if you don't go to it.

[01:19:11] [SPEAKER_08]: Any other thoughts about this.

[01:19:14] [SPEAKER_09]: No except for that I'm excited to talk about some some of his other work because you know like you I'm a fan but it's been a while since I read seriously and it's been never since I read with any goal in mind of discussion so I wonder if themes will emerge in these other stories.

[01:19:31] [SPEAKER_09]: And I don't know I should say to listeners if you love this stuff and you have and you think that we're right or wrong or that there's stories that we should read that we that that might shed light on something that we talked about feel free to please suggest a way.

[01:19:47] [SPEAKER_08]: Yeah a story if there's a story you think we should talk about if there is another poem.

[01:19:53] [SPEAKER_09]: I don't really read his poetry just because I don't read poetry.

[01:19:57] [SPEAKER_08]: I wanted to close with one just brief thing that I may cut out of the episode but there's this in the Norm McDonald's special the most recent special which you can find on Netflix.

[01:20:12] [SPEAKER_08]: There's this really funny bit about Lee Majors who was the six million dollar man.

[01:20:20] [SPEAKER_08]: And now he's kind of an old man and so Norm McDonald says I saw him on this commercial you know for ear like a hearing aid kind of playing on the fact that he had a bionic ear and he said and I just thought you know as imagining Lee Majors getting the call from his agent you know he hasn't heard from his agent in 30 years.

[01:20:41] [SPEAKER_08]: And you know all the things he's thinking they're doing a reboot of the six million dollar man they're going to finally do his screenplay and and then the agent says no it's this commercial for and the guy's like what for what for hearing aids.

[01:21:01] [SPEAKER_08]: And he's like and how much is it.

[01:21:04] [SPEAKER_08]: And then he gets the answer and then and then so he thinks he's like they have to know right now.

[01:21:12] [SPEAKER_08]: All right I'll do it.

[01:21:14] [SPEAKER_08]: Then he says so he's talking to his agent he says I got to ask you something.

[01:21:19] [SPEAKER_08]: Is there any way we can put in the contract that I'm sad.

[01:21:30] [SPEAKER_09]: I love it.

[01:21:32] [SPEAKER_08]: There's something about that sort of that that reminds like that that mood right there like reminds me of this story or that I thought of that bit after I read the story because it's this idea that you had this thing out there that you thought was going to happen and then it's this.

[01:21:52] [SPEAKER_08]: You're going to do it.

[01:21:54] [SPEAKER_08]: But you want it like recorded better than sad.

[01:22:01] [SPEAKER_09]: You can't not do it like he needs the two thousand bucks or whatever you know.

[01:22:04] [SPEAKER_08]: Yeah it's better like it's better for him in that sense that it exists that it doesn't but in another way it's worse.

[01:22:12] [SPEAKER_09]: Oh my God.

[01:22:14] [SPEAKER_08]: Yeah I just think that's so funny.

[01:22:18] [SPEAKER_09]: What a norm thing to say.

[01:22:20] [SPEAKER_08]: And that was the end of the joke like he then just moves on to a new.

[01:22:28] [SPEAKER_08]: All right well we've been talking for a long time not surprising but and I don't think we've done it justice but no you know eventually it will be the case that whatever can be said into ours we will have said there is a book that has a transcript of this episode if it had been gut.

[01:22:52] [SPEAKER_09]: If anybody finds it please let us know and we'll rerecord.

[01:22:56] [SPEAKER_08]: All right well next time we'll talk about Garden of the Forking Paths make sure you read that.

[01:23:03] [SPEAKER_08]: And because that's a very different kind of story so we'll have a lot of different ways of approaching that.

[01:23:08] [SPEAKER_08]: Join us next time in Very Bad Wizards.

[01:23:54] [SPEAKER_03]: .