Episode 173: Talking to Your (Alternate) Self [Ted Chiang's "Anxiety is the Dizziness of Freedom"]

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

[00:00:16] This is a newspaper, right? It's 90% bullshit. But it's entertaining. That's why I read it because it entertains me. You won't let me read it. So you entertain me with your bullshit. Tell me a story right now. Go. The Great End of the Spoken

[00:00:38] Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain I'm a very good man, thought and with no more brains than you have Anybody can have a brain Very bad man I'm a very good man Just a very bad wizard Welcome to Very Bad Wizards.

[00:01:21] I'm Tamler Sommers from the University of Houston. Dave, I'm on my prism right now and I'm talking to an alternate version of you who decided not to do this podcast seven years ago. Anything you want me to ask him? Can I borrow some money?

[00:01:36] The alternate version of David, yeah. Ask him what he's doing with all the bountiful free time that he spent with his daughter. Yeah, he's very close with his daughter. He saw her raised. Like saw her. He also has an endowed chair and Stanford.

[00:01:58] Yeah, ask him what his age index is. I told him yours and he feels bad. He doesn't want to. He doesn't want to talk about you. So I'm David Pizarro from Cornell University. I assume he would also be David Pizarro from Cornell University, but he might.

[00:02:16] No, he's now David Pizarro from Stanford University. From Harvard University. He's now the HWL Llewellyn chair of social psychology. So okay, today we're going to do in the second breakdown of the short story, Anxiety of the Dizziness. Anxiety is the dizziness of freedom by Ted Chang.

[00:02:43] You know, Ted Chang has the best titles. He's so freaking brilliant. If any of our listeners knows Ted Chang, please tell them that we want him on the show.

[00:02:54] Yeah, maybe it's not obvious that he'd be there, but from everything I read, like I feel like he would have so much fun. He has been on a podcast before, I think. Like I honestly, I will always associate this summer with him.

[00:03:11] I read both his books of short stories over the summer and I love both of them. And they're just, it's just amazing. Once we get to that discussion, you'll understand the opening question if you haven't read it yet.

[00:03:23] Before that, we are going to, in the opening segment, select our five or six finalists for our Patreon listener selected episode. We got a ton of great suggestions, including from a number of people, this Ted Chang story. Yeah, I feel like we've already knocked one off the list.

[00:03:43] Yeah. All right, we have a ton of great suggestions. I saw these as they were coming in, you know, because we get alerts on email or whatever. And I still was not prepared for the just sheer amount of people who gave us suggestions. We got over 100.

[00:03:59] We got like 114 or something, 115 suggestions. And the quality of that, like so we're going to do, we have to pick out of these five or six finalists. And then our $5 and up Patreon supporters get to vote on which topic that we do for that episode.

[00:04:19] And we have to do it. We are bound by honor to do it. And the honor that you speak of is to when asked to come up with five, you came up with 11. That's this. I can barely down for it. But there's just so good.

[00:04:35] I want to do all of these. I saved the file of my, the ones that I particularly liked so that when we're struggling to do an episode, I can. We can have it. Okay. So let's just dive right into it. Why don't you start?

[00:04:50] These are in no particular order. Yeah, maybe in mine. So Tomas suggested, I don't know why I like this. I wonder if this is on your list, an episode where you read and reply to a random sample of listen to emails.

[00:05:07] And I don't know how random would be determined exactly because we'd probably want to narrow them down or whatever. But I kind of like the idea that we have to respond to emails that we didn't specifically choose to respond to.

[00:05:23] Yeah, I didn't put this on my list because of the fear of the word random meaning like it would actually. My honor is a method of the mathematical sort. Yeah, I don't know how you the mechanics of it are tough. So maybe we'll keep that on the back.

[00:05:38] Okay. So Rick, we're going to say their first names like you did because I don't know if they want their last names. But Rick, are you sure you're not saying his last name just because you're worried about coming? Rick Hyman. Rick Hyman is his last name.

[00:05:52] Antisemitic or something like doesn't Jackson. Hyman. His suggestion was about fairness.

[00:06:01] So he started off with is fair real but then went on to some I think interesting questions about what his fairness and I think there's actually a lot of even developmental and comparative psychology on fairness, some good and some not so good.

[00:06:14] And I don't think we've really covered that. Yeah, I had this one too. So there's a really short book called the Ajax Dilemma by Paul Woodruff called Justice Fairness and Rewards.

[00:06:27] And the argument in the book is that fairness and the exclusive focus on fairness is actually a problem. And we should focus more on justice and you know he makes a distinction between them using the story of Ajax. And it's really an excellent book.

[00:06:48] So if we could pair that with some psychology research that could be really good. All right, I'm going to start with these ones that tickled me. I think they would be fun. So the first one was the random emails. The second one is from Sarah Price.

[00:07:07] She says, I love you guys. Would you be willing to do a revisit of raising kids and gender norms? I thought your initial discussion was so fascinating, but I can never go back and re-listen to it because it's like listening to my parents fight. I read that one.

[00:07:26] I think I love this idea. I think it would be fun for us. I don't know if you've gone back and listened to it. I have not. No, I cannot. I think it would just be fun to see if we've changed our minds.

[00:07:39] Are we still disagree as much as we did then? Am I still right? It's a real question. Probably not, right? I think I've been vindicated. But honestly, I don't even totally remember why we were fighting so much. And so I would do this. You're not as enthusiastic.

[00:08:02] I'm less enthusiastic because I very vividly remember why we fought. But it would have to be sort of like we'd have to treat it. Part of the problem with that episode is that we went in on it kind of not prepared.

[00:08:18] We just discussed this one play diet article, and I think to do it justice, we'd have to actually look at some real research. And you believe me, in the last six years or whatever, people have sent us plenty of articles.

[00:08:31] So we probably just do a quick search in our Gmail again. So I'd like to keep that in mind. So my next one is Rex Teen, who broadly suggested we talk about culture and cognition and the work on cross-cultural differences in cognition,

[00:08:51] which I don't think we've really talked about either. Like the work on holistic versus whatever the opposite of holisticism. The language, the role of different languages on cognition and the role of different cultural environments. Yeah, exactly.

[00:09:13] There's all this work on, say, East Asians using context more in their judgments versus Westerners. Yeah. I mean, this is my book Relative Justice goes into that research a fair amount, as I'm sure you remember.

[00:09:29] This is the second book plug during this episode. So just get them all out of the way. You know, I've written many articles myself. You can find them. I feel like you've plugged the superhero villain article probably 15 times on this podcast.

[00:09:46] I wrote an article on superhero comics as moral pre-narc. Put a link in the description. We're going to get into another fight now. We can revisit that for a future. We'll revisit this episode for a future. Was this one on yours at all?

[00:10:03] Yeah, it was in my slightly longer list. It's such a big topic that I'm not sure what we would exactly focus on. I think that was my worry.

[00:10:14] There are cool things like certain cultures are not as vulnerable to the Mueller liar illusion because they don't live in a world of such... I find that stuff fascinating, but I don't know what our target thing would be.

[00:10:32] It could be the collectivistic versus individualistic stuff on just basic perception and stuff like that. That's actually something that excites me about narrowing down. Even if we don't do it as one of our top, it's a good topic for picking out some articles.

[00:10:49] I agree. I think it's definitely something I want to do at some point. Let's keep that one on the back burner then. Alright. This is Brian Burke. Would be interested in the ethics of loyalty, possibly using Rorty's justice as a larger loyalty as a jumping off point.

[00:11:07] Loyalty seems like a problematic quote good in either utilitarian or deontological frameworks in the sense that everyone seems to value it, but it ultimately functions like a finger on the scale for the group or person to whom the loyalty is owed

[00:11:21] with no clear way to calibrate how much additional weight should be balanced against other groups' good or harms or rights. So I think this one I really like because I think we haven't done anything on loyalty

[00:11:33] and we haven't done anything on Rorty which a lot of people have asked us to do. So I think this would be a way of combining both. Is there an article that he discusses it? Yeah, Rorty's justice as larger loyalty.

[00:11:49] Yeah, it's not a long article and it's good. I looked through it. I didn't read it before but I looked through it. Yeah, I liked it. This was on my longer, not short list. And I knew that you would pick it.

[00:12:02] There is a little game theory to this. That's why I just decided to broaden the list is because I did not pick something because I thought you would pick it and then you didn't end up picking it.

[00:12:17] So my next one is, this actually might be on yours, Mark Kerr and Apologies historically, but Apologies just more generally I think. But he opened it up with saying Apologies for historical ills, which could easily get to a discussion of reparations.

[00:12:37] But I think there is an interesting thing just in general not just historically but about Apologies and the function and what's a good one and what's a bad one. And there's some work that I haven't read on that.

[00:12:48] We had a great discussion with your friend, Devani, about reparations that unfortunately was lost. We then did a different, another recording but I don't know if we focused as much. We talked about reparations. We did? Okay. Yeah.

[00:13:04] In fact, Devani recently texted me and he said that his friend had listened to the conversation and decided that I was racist for all the reasons that I was against reparations in that episode.

[00:13:18] And I said, was your friend black because then I would take it actually very seriously and he said he's half black. So now it's like a coin flip. I don't know if I'm racist. Like I don't know if I'm being accused by a white liberal or like.

[00:13:32] You're half racist if a half black person accuses you of racism. Speaking of that, Alexander Zany, I think he's suggested this. I think we've actually chosen a topic that he's chosen but he says, I still want to hear you guys talk about feminist epistemology.

[00:13:55] I'm part way through Epistemic Injustice by Miranda Fricker and I think it's fascinating. The marriage of epistemology and ethics seems like a match made in heaven which Tamler at least would love. I think that's right. I would love to do this.

[00:14:09] I worry that our patrons won't pick it because we've put it on there before and it hasn't done that well. So why don't we just put it in our list of things that we'll get to? Because I think you're right.

[00:14:24] Like we've had enough so I think we owe. I think we both. We're just going to do it. Get a kid. Just like we're going to do the denial of death. It's been on our list every single year. We never do.

[00:14:42] I didn't even put that on because we didn't do it by now. We're probably just never going to.

[00:14:48] So my next one, the first one that I saw but then it ended up being echoed and brought up by a bunch of people is Josh Graham who just said anything David Foster Wallace. Which I'm totally down to do.

[00:15:03] I've read none of his books but a bunch of his essays. I bought Infinite Jest this summer. Of course it. That's about as much as I can say and I really intended to read it. I bought it on my Kindle and it actually made my Kindle heavier.

[00:15:24] And then JD Tamucci, I think we should definitely do this one because I had it too. He actually suggested an essay authority and American usage. Maybe we could get Paul Bloom for this. And then he has a section on teaching and writing essays. There's an infamous speech.

[00:15:43] He talks about giving to students whose dialect does not follow rules of Stanford written English in there. So he gives a link. So maybe we could look at that. I also think, I watched his Kenyon College speech over the summer. That famous commencement address. The water one?

[00:16:02] Yeah, this is water. And I thought that itself could be. But maybe we could just do a couple, you know, that plus, you know, we'll pick an essay. I think that's a great idea and I think. I love his essay on being on cruise ships.

[00:16:18] I don't know that would make a good episode. It's so good. Yeah, definitely. Let's put that on. Speaking of Paul Bloom, I don't think this will make it on yours and I don't even know if it should be a full episode. But Paul and the prestige.

[00:16:30] I just really want to talk more about the movie that. And I've been on a Christopher Nolan kick, which is not weird for me. I think I've seen most of his movies, but many times.

[00:16:42] But but I just would happily talk about the prestige any day of the week. I would do that. I don't think it should be on this list, though. And I'm a little more ambivalent about Christopher. Yeah, yeah.

[00:16:57] About him, although I really love a few of his movies and I'll always be grateful for him for doing that 2001, A Space Odyssey, the original 70 millimeter thing that he did last summer.

[00:17:10] By the way, I was I was watching Memento with Nikki and and I was talking to her about the interpretation. And and then I was like, wait, I think I might have done a whole episode and I had completely forgotten that we did a whole episode on Memento.

[00:17:28] Wait, we definitely did. We did. Yeah, we did. I looked it up and and I was like, well, who was on it? Paul. Paul. Yeah. And I was like, I was feeling shitty. But then I was like, well, I mean, if you've given 173 lectures,

[00:17:46] like what are the chances that you're going to remember them all? You know, but yeah, I now I kind of remember that we did it. But it's funny when you said Memento, I said, we could do that one.

[00:17:57] But yes, you know, I made up a joke and I told my daughter to know it wasn't very it didn't meet with the laughter that I thought. It should, but it was what kind of mints help your memory? Mementos. I respect your daughter for not giving you any.

[00:18:18] Don't cut this one out. Don't cut it out. I want to hear feedback about that joke. Yeah. Yeah. Okay, you're up. All right. I don't know, like we're doing a Chang story today, but we got a bunch of other suggestions and I've read all his stories.

[00:18:34] He doesn't have that many, but there's a couple other stories like merchant alchemist gate, hell is the absence of God? So like, I don't know, we could put, but I think it's a given that we're going to do another story. Yeah, we're going to do it. Yeah.

[00:18:50] So I won't do that one. I will say Hector Mata suggested Herman Hesse's novel, short novel, Stappin' Wolf. I think that would be a kind of offbeat, pretty fun one to do. I don't know if you know anything about it. I've never read it.

[00:19:06] I read it in my 20s and it's a fun book. It's like one of those books that you think might change your life and it doesn't end up quite doing that or at least it didn't for me,

[00:19:17] but it definitely seemed like it might as I was reading it. My only reluctance is to read an entire book, but if you want to fight for it, I'll happily. Yeah, I don't know if I can fight for it because I don't remember enough about it.

[00:19:33] All right, I have two more that I really want to at least float. Yeah, I have two. One, I'm not sure about, but it would give us an opportunity to talk about and learn about something that I don't know that much about.

[00:19:47] And that is Christine Caroline suggested talking about the greater male variability hypothesis, which is this view that men more so than women have variability in across numerous traits. So, you know, I think it's often talked about in terms of intelligence.

[00:20:09] So they're supposedly there's again, I don't know anything about this. There's supposedly greater variability and IQ scores with like more dumb men and more very smart men and the range is restricted or the average is restricted in women.

[00:20:22] And I know that it's a super obviously controversial hypothesis, but I don't actually know what the state of evidence is for it at all. And so this would just be an excuse to read it.

[00:20:33] Yeah, it would be interesting. I mean, I would before putting it on the list, I would want to know what the state of evidence is for it. Because it would be interesting were it true to talk about the implications of it.

[00:20:45] But if it's not true or if the jury is still very much out, then it's not. Well, we could pair it with a discussion of measurement because it hinges on whether or not we're measuring things. Speaking of measurement. Nobody, nobody brought up measurement.

[00:21:07] Nobody. Did you just suggest your own? Patreon, did you come up with a fake? No, somebody did actually. And Jessica Flake, if you're listening, which I know you aren't, you've made it very clear you aren't.

[00:21:24] I am going to do my best to get him to talk about measurement at some point. All right, so this is from Farid. So I'm going to piggyback on this because it is part of this. So Dvidge Mankhad suggested just an episode on philosophy of science.

[00:22:07] And I think that that specific aspect of philosophy of science, which we obviously both have expressed interest in me. It would be hard but worth the effort.

[00:22:17] But as I told you before when we were discussing it, you have to read just as much as me in this case. I totally agree and I do. And I totally agree that it's a philosophy of science issue. Like it's not a question just about social psychology.

[00:22:30] It's a question about the social psychology. It's a question about the social psychology. It's a question about the social psychology. I totally agree that it's a philosophy of science issue.

[00:22:41] Like it's not a question just about social psychology or I think this is a general question about when is a thing in nature amenable to empirical investigation of the kind that we do and when isn't it? And I think that's a really interesting quality of writing quality of.

[00:23:06] All sorts of interesting ways that could go. And you know this piggybacks a little bit onto the short story, a little bit, which we're going to discuss in the second segment that talks about the causal relationship of things that influence the state of the world.

[00:23:28] So our second segment is going to piggyback on your piggybacking of the pigs and a lot of back. I'm sorry dear kosher friends. This is all non kosher. So should we go over what we have? Oh, I have one more.

[00:23:46] Steven want how about an episode on the original gazanaga studies of split brain patients and the implications for consciousness and the self. In addition to the original work, Nagel wrote about the studies and mortal questions callback.

[00:23:59] And there's a recent replication that complicates the picture which I looked at. Yeah, I actually read that one based on his I hadn't seen it. So so yeah, that's super interesting. Like I'm worried now after the memento thing that we have already talked about but I don't know.

[00:24:17] We never talk about. Yeah. Yeah, but we've never actually discussed discussed it. All right, I gotta do it. So what are the ones we definitely said we were going to do? We I think we had agreement on fairness. We had agreement on David Foster Wallace.

[00:24:37] We had agreement on measurement slash philosophy of science. Awesome. Rorty and loyalty. Yeah. That we both agree. Okay, that's four. And then the question is of the ones. Gazanaga. The split. Oh, the split brain. Yeah. That's five. That's five right there.

[00:25:01] Do you have any of that that leaves out that you want to fight for? I don't think so. I don't think so because the culture and cognition I want to do but we but we agreed to back burner that for.

[00:25:12] And then you know what let's put you on a toss in random sample of listener emails. I'm curious as to how interesting that would be to people. All right.

[00:25:20] They just going to have to trust that we'll come up with some definition of random that is in the spirit. I know I'm not I am not at all going to go into pseudo random generation of numbers. I gotta go full full random. Never go full.

[00:25:33] Never go full random. That was your problem. You went full. No gender norms. I'll work on it. Sarah Price, I will work on them for this. Yeah. All right. Thank you guys. This is great.

[00:25:55] I can almost promise you that we'll do more than one more than two of these. That's certainly how it's been in the past.

[00:26:03] And this is why we love our Patreon supporters so much not only do they support us financially but they give us good ideas for future episodes. They feed us. We'll be right back to talk about Ted Chang's story. Anxiety is the dizziness of freedom.

[00:27:16] This week's episode of Very Bad Wizards is brought to you in part by Outlier.org. Tamler, you know how you're always spouting off ignorant things about psychology as a field? I have exposed certain fatal weaknesses in the foundation, yes.

[00:27:44] Well, because of that I was thinking about maybe getting you for this Christmas gift or Hanukkah or whatever it is you celebrate. A class on Outlier.org on Introduction to Psychology in part taught by me, Paul Bloom, Jay Van Bevel and others. What do you think?

[00:28:04] Would you take it? I might. Yeah. I mean it seems like there's a lot of you in it judging by the previews of it. I kind of get enough of you already. This is a very good point. I would not blame you at all.

[00:28:19] But for those of you interested, we're kind of excited actually to talk about this. Outlier.org is a brand new company.

[00:28:25] It's from the co-founder of masterclass.com and the idea is to bring education online in a way that I think actually is more effective than it has been traditionally. So they've developed online university level courses taught by some of the most celebrated educators in the world.

[00:28:44] There are four credit courses which I think is the key part here. You can take these courses. Right now they have Intro Psych, which I said I'm part of but so is Paul along with I think 10 other professors.

[00:28:56] And there's a calculus, an intro to calculus which I never take and I would really love to take. They're engaging. They're beautifully filmed. I really go to the website and see the preview, ignore me but just the lighting alone. I think, Tamler, you'd really appreciate the look.

[00:29:14] The lighting, the cinematography. The lighting. It looks like a film as you say. So you're calling yourself one of the most celebrated professors in the world? Aaron Rasmussen is the guy who started this. And I feel like I am sort of the Leo DiCaprio to his Martin Scorsese.

[00:29:34] I see. Right. But anyway, take it if you're interested at all. Even if you don't want to take it for credit and you just want to learn Intro Psych, I think it's a great class but it's transferable credits from a top university,

[00:29:47] meaning that if you take this, you can actually take it to any real university and they'll give you credit including if you came to Cornell. It's only $400 per course which compared to most brick and mortar universities is quite the steal.

[00:30:00] It gives you flexibility to learn at your own pace and schedule. It gives you an online interactive textbook. It's as they say nowadays, active learning. You get free tutoring, study groups.

[00:30:10] And as they point out, one of the best things is you get to hear us say fuck a lot in the lectures. I believe that in the very first lecture, I say fuck a lot. You say that Freud was pretty fucking wrong. It's important to use. That's right.

[00:30:26] According to the notes. So spring enrollment just opened. There are limited spots. Register now to start the course for January 2020, either psych or calculus. And when you sign up, if you can do us a favor and in the spot that asks how you heard about Lyre,

[00:30:41] if you can put very bad wizards to let them know that you came from us, we'd really appreciate it. We really like to keep them as a sponsor. Welcome back to Very Bad Wizards.

[00:30:52] At this time, we like to take a moment to thank our listeners for all the different ways that you get in touch with us. That you support us. That you criticize us and thank us. We're just really grateful for all the contact that we get.

[00:31:11] And there's a lot of different ways you can do it. You can email us verybadwizards at gmail.com. We read all emails, but we don't have time to respond to that many of them. And we're sorry about that, but we do read them. I read them anyway.

[00:31:28] So you say. You can tweet us at tamler at peas at verybadwizards. You can join the lively discussion on Reddit. You can follow us on Instagram like us on Facebook, although. The Facebook thing is so annoying. I'm thinking of shutting that down. Annoying in what way?

[00:31:55] It's like it just takes forever. I'm the person who does the social media stuff is in charge of it. And it's just so freaking annoying to post something. It just takes a long time. It seems like fewer and fewer people are using it.

[00:32:10] I don't even know if I've posted the Chappelle. Yeah, Facebook sucks. I fully support the move away. So for right now, you can follow us on Facebook. I don't know how much longer that'll be the case. Rate us on iTunes. We've gotten some great reviews.

[00:32:28] I think we should do like a segment at some point or at least a short little thing where we read our favorite reviews. Because I think that's that really helps our podcast that helps people find it. And yeah, so thank you for getting in touch with us.

[00:32:45] And we look forward to more lively discussion. And if you want to support us in more tangible ways, here's yet another thank you to everybody who has done. So we've just devoted the first segment to our Patreon listeners.

[00:33:00] So I won't extend the thank you too much other than to say we really appreciate it. And if you want to donate and support us in that way, you can go to our Very Bad Wizards support page. It's just on our podcast page. There's a link to support.

[00:33:15] You can also give us a one-time donation on PayPal. And we very much appreciate that. Now I was going to mention some one quick thing because I wanted to get your thought that has to do with listeners.

[00:33:27] So I was just giving a talk and we had a listener come up and talk to me quite a bit. He's a fan of our podcast and he said, you guys really seem to disagree less than you used to. We get a lot of that. Yeah.

[00:33:43] And I was thinking about this and I don't think that that's true. I think that what is being captured by our fewer fights is that we... A lot of those earlier fights were caused by actual misunderstandings of what we were saying. Like just a failures of communication.

[00:34:04] And I think that to the extent that we disagree now, it's like clear what we disagree about and we just say it. We don't have to fight about it. Right. I definitely think we fight less in the sense of on the podcast, we fight less.

[00:34:20] Like we don't get into these big blow-up arguments. I can't remember the last one, but we used to have them every so often. But do we disagree less?

[00:34:29] We might even disagree more because I've sort of evolved into a slightly more extreme version of what I believed earlier when it comes to like empirical investigation and the value of it in certain cases. And you're saying that I haven't evolved at all? Is that what you're saying?

[00:34:49] The evolution was all on your end? Exactly. I've been progressively moving towards the truth and you're just stuck. Anyway, so thank you all. That was an aside but I felt like talking about it. Thank you all for all your support and we really, really appreciate it.

[00:35:05] So let's talk about this story. This is called Anxiety Is the Dizziness of Freedom. It's in Ted Chang's Exhalation which I can't recommend enough to our listeners. I guarantee that you will love.

[00:35:21] I'm not going to promise to pay you back if you don't love this book, but if you love this podcast, you will love this book. If you like this podcast, you will love this book. It is just a brilliant collection of short stories.

[00:35:34] This story actually, you could have read a slightly abbreviated version of it in the New York Times if you got the print edition which we do on Sundays. It was just in the, I think it was the Weekend Review, Sunday Review.

[00:35:51] And I remember, I just absolutely loved it then. I thought it was fascinating just the world that it builds and yeah, and then it's the last story in this new collection. So my thought was we're going to set up this world.

[00:36:09] I strongly recommend obviously, as we always do, reading the story before listening to this discussion. But if you haven't and you still want to listen, I do think there's just a lot of just interesting ways of approaching this story as a thought experiment.

[00:36:24] Normally I don't like doing that with art, but I think this is such a fascinating thought experiment that I think at least for the beginning of our discussion, maybe we could just talk about what if the world were like the world that is described in this story.

[00:36:41] So here's the way, just and fill in anything that I'm missing here, but there are these prisms which is a acronym, quasi acronym for Plaga Interworld Signaling Mechanism. And what they do is, so you buy a prism and then you enable it.

[00:37:10] Either a red light or a blue light will pop up. And if a red light pops up, then you now are able to communicate with a world because this is a quantum event where the blue light popped up.

[00:37:29] And in doing so, you are able to speak with alternate versions of yourself and or text alternate versions of yourself or even see alternate versions of yourself. Can I fill in some of the interesting? So it's like a quantum coin flip.

[00:37:51] So the idea being that when this prism via this quantum mechanism, which it actually causes a split in universes. So if you're familiar with it all, the multi multiple universes theory that at every potential point in which different outcomes are possible, the universe is split here.

[00:38:14] The description is that it has to be a particular kind of outcome that is built on this quantum mechanism that will actually cause it to split. And so when you do, you're essentially creating these two, they're both you.

[00:38:28] Yeah. And you are able to communicate only for a short period of time, but for a period of time with yourself or with whoever is holding that prism in the alternate world. And I guess one question I had was how do you find the alternate version of you?

[00:38:51] But I guess up till that point, the alternate version of you is the same you. And so they have the prism and they're doing the same thing as you did, right? That's exactly right.

[00:39:05] And so because you are still one universe, both of those copies, both of the parallel universes that end up being split, you are actually holding that prism and then it gets split.

[00:39:18] And I think super interestingly, which you only have that limited in the mechanism itself, it allows communication through the transfer of information. But there is a limited amount of transmission that is in this mechanism. So it has a finite life.

[00:39:36] And there are companies that try to make money off this technology. One of them is called Self Talk and it is where one of the central characters, Nat, works and also another character named Murrow works.

[00:39:55] And that's a company where it's doing poorly now because more people can afford their own prisms. But this is one where you can use their prisms to talk to an alternate version of yourself.

[00:40:11] And I guess here was where my question, if you go to one of these companies, since it's not your prism, how are you going to be talking to the version of you?

[00:40:22] But I guess there is also another version of Self Talk that company and they will track you down and tell you. Right, exactly. In some of the universes, the same exact company exists often with the same exact employees. So then there's another company called Crystal Ball.

[00:40:42] And this one is an interesting one because let's say you want to find out what would have happened if you had made a different decision.

[00:40:51] What Crystal Ball does is they will, using all the prisms that they've accumulated, search for a world, contact all the other alternate Crystal Balls and search for a world where it seems like you have made this decision.

[00:41:08] So one of the characters named Teresa turned down a marriage proposal from I think a guy named Andrew, right? And so she was considering going to Crystal Ball to see if they could find, they can't promise they'll find it, but maybe they'll find it,

[00:41:28] a version of the world where she had decided to marry Andrew. And then she can talk and see how that version of Teresa is doing. Is she happy? Is she already divorced?

[00:41:40] So there's all sorts of ways in which you can examine what would have happened had you made a different choice. Now it could be that there's no world in which this is one of the interesting kind of free will related issues.

[00:41:55] It could be there's no world where she accepted this proposal. The only way there would be, according to I think the way this is set up, is that if it was kind of a close call,

[00:42:07] if you were really thinking about it and something very insignificant could have pushed you one way rather than another, a weather change or something along those lines. Right.

[00:42:21] And I think it's important, I think to get, if this wasn't clear, the prism mechanism that is causing the split with this quantum decision, this quantum coin flip that it's doing, is also the only means of communication between the parallel universes that it creates.

[00:42:41] And your choices in this story don't split the universe because a lot of times when people talk about multiple universes, they think that, well, the universe in which I chose this way. That's not the case.

[00:42:52] So what they have to do is find, since the prisms are the only vessel to communicate to these various parallel universes, they have to go through all of the prisms, which remember have finite use and find which of the prisms,

[00:43:07] you know, they'll go and ask, hey, look up this Teresa and see if she married Andrew or whatever. Yeah. Yeah. I thought I said that, but maybe I didn't. I don't think it was clear that the choices aren't causing any splits. Well, right. Really?

[00:43:21] No, what's causing the split in all cases is the activation of the prism. The only way a decision can cause or at least can be associated with the split is if you use the prism to make a decision.

[00:43:34] So let's say you're kind of deciding whether to accept a job offer and you take a prism and you say, all right, if it goes up red, then I'll accept it. If I don't, if it turns up blue, then I'll turn it down.

[00:43:47] That would allow you then, I don't know if you would want this. This is an interesting case, right? It would allow you then to communicate with a version of yourself that accepted the job if you didn't and vice versa. Right.

[00:44:01] So like Chang is so great at, he kind of gives, he builds this world where there are support groups, where people have kind of a destructive relationship with the prisms.

[00:44:15] And one of the questions that I thought might be interesting to discuss is it seems like a lot of people struggle with jealousy or envy of their paraselves. That's what your alternate self is called.

[00:44:30] If they are in touch with their paraself and their paraself is doing better, then they are in some sort of way are, does that drive them crazy? Does that, do they want their paraself to be unhappy so they can feel better about their own life?

[00:44:49] Their own life even though it's, that's a real version of you that's out there and that exists metaphysically in some world. And so like when Teresa, this character is deciding whether she wants to talk to if this prism exists, a version of herself that married Andrew,

[00:45:09] she expressed some sort of fear that what if you know there's this version of her who married him and is blissfully happy. She's just like doing great. She's found her soulmate and how could, how would she feel about that?

[00:45:26] But then if you think about it, if that's what she's worried about, then what she really wants is for her paraself to be unhappy, which is a strange kind of thing to want yourself to be unhappy. Right.

[00:45:39] And so Teresa, you know, I mean this is, I think this is probably a theme that we'll come back to you,

[00:45:43] but this is just like the other Ted Chang stories we've read, is a such a wonderful joining of both the sci-fi tech angle and the actual human consequences. Like what actually would people, like how would their relationship be?

[00:46:00] And so Teresa in the story is actually in therapy because she's trying to decide and she says she's afraid of finding out that he would be, that her counterpart would be happy and she's worried that that might be petty of her.

[00:46:14] But these are like regret machines, you know? Like there's only a few parallel universes where you would be super satisfied that you had made all the good decisions. I think that strikes me as psychologically plausible.

[00:46:29] I wonder like would you want to be tracking down alternate versions of you, maybe versions that made a different decision? I, so if you're asking me personally, I was thinking about this throughout reading this story.

[00:46:48] And you know, Chang goes through a variety of reasons why somebody might want to do this. I could not, I could not for the life of me think of a situation in which this would make me happy in any way.

[00:47:02] Like I think I would avoid it. I'd like to think at least that I would avoid it because I don't, I really think nothing good can come of it. Yeah, it's like social media. Yeah exactly.

[00:47:14] It's like all it will do is probably outrage you or piss you off or frustrate you in some way. And if I came up with, if I came across a version of me who is miserable, I think I would feel really bad, you know?

[00:47:30] Talk about like the Pobloom's general point about empathy being parochial. Like this is the ultimate. Like I would actually be like super worried about myself and the other universe. But at the same time, you'd be like, well, I'm glad that's not me.

[00:47:41] You know, even though it is you, which is one of the... So here's another thing that I think is interesting. So speaking with Teresa, she's not sure. Crystal Ball can't promise her that there is a version of her that made the decision to marry him.

[00:48:00] And so she says... This is on page 276. I don't know, I hadn't considered the possibility that they might not be able to find a branch where I said yes to Andrew. Why wouldn't they be able to find a branch like that?

[00:48:16] And Dana, who is the support group leader, answers... It could mean that your decision to reject him wasn't a close call. It may have felt like you were on the fence, but in fact you weren't.

[00:48:29] Your decision to turn him down was based on a deep feeling, not a whim. I want to just ask you what you think about that idea. What justifies Dana saying that? That they would only be able to find a prism if it was a close call,

[00:48:46] if she was really on the fence rather than this decision being based on some sort of deep feeling that she isn't aware of. Yeah, it's an interesting... It's interesting that it's a deep feeling, like that he specifies. I think, well, here's part of it that resonated with me.

[00:49:06] And that is when I've talked to some people... I remember we had a graduate student not too long ago here in our program who had the choice between two job offers, which is a big blessing if you're an academic. They were very different.

[00:49:23] One was at a business school, one was at a more traditional psych department. And she was, in her mind, seriously deliberating over this. She was having a lot of trouble trying to figure out which one she's going to take.

[00:49:35] And I remember telling her specifically, it's completely obvious to me which one you're going to take. There is knowing you, I know that that's going to be the one...

[00:49:48] It's cute that you feel like you're deliberating, but I really had this deep sense that the deliberation wasn't doing any work. And I think that there are many times in life where we go through the motions in a self-deceptive way of deliberating.

[00:50:05] And what Dana, the therapist in this case is trying to tell Theresa is, there are a lot of instances where you've done that. Right. But that presupposes then that the way this works,

[00:50:21] you are only going to find versions of yourself, alternate versions of yourself that have made the opposite decision when you were genuinely on the fence. Not just when you thought you were, but when you were genuinely on the fence, which...

[00:50:39] And I guess the mechanism behind that is the differences in the worlds aren't that great. Right. And so it really has to take some small variation is the only way that they're going to find a different version of you.

[00:50:56] And if it was based on deep feeling, or as we'll talk about later, some deep part of your character, then they're just not going to find it because a small variation in the weather or whatever wouldn't make you make a different decision.

[00:51:12] And I just want to highlight Eddie Namias, who really wanted to be on this episode. And I apologize we made this decision at the last second. Well when you call me, you said whatever happens, let's pretend as if we deliberated about having Eddie Namias on.

[00:51:27] No, that's not true Eddie. But he has a paper called Close Calls in the Confident Agent where he relates this exact idea. It's almost as if Ted Chang read that paper and also Bob Kane's work on Free Will.

[00:51:41] But that the idea that alternate possibilities makes a difference for responsibility kind of implies that when you make a confident choice, you're not free and you're not responsible. But that doesn't seem right.

[00:51:57] It seems like if Teresa had a deep feeling, like she still freely chose not to marry Andrew and she still is responsible for that decision.

[00:52:09] The fact that she might have been on the fence doesn't make her any more free if that means that there is a metaphysical alternate world where she accepted it. That doesn't make it more free given how random the... That's right.

[00:52:26] So did you happen to read the commentaries on the stories, the notes on the stories? Yes. He has this great thing called story notes where he just gives little notes about why he wrote the story or what interested him about it.

[00:52:42] Right, and here's where he just lays out explicitly like if the idea is that freedom requires the ability to have done otherwise or the possibility of having done otherwise then exactly what you said seems to be a contradiction

[00:52:57] because he gives the example of Martin Luther opposing the Catholic Church and saying, I could not have done anything else. Here I stand, I could do no other... I can do no other or whatever that is in German.

[00:53:12] Nobody's intuition is that Martin Luther doesn't deserve praise for that even if he felt like it was not a choice at all. Well, I suppose the Pope doesn't think it deserves praise. Right. But the Pope has problems of his own. Glass houses, you know. But that's exactly right.

[00:53:28] So like if it emanates deeply from your character and is therefore really resistant to an alternative possibility, it seems like that's not really constraining. No, not at all. However, there is this other element which comes later in the story, again in one of the support group meetings where...

[00:53:52] So the idea is for that category of choices where you really could make a different choice depending on all these various kind of random or contingent factors, it's really important this character, Dana says, that you make the right choice because that will then subsequently influence your future character.

[00:54:18] And so in some sense, when it is a choice that could lead to different alternate universes, the stakes are even higher because not only will it subtly change your character in this world,

[00:54:32] or it could subtly change your character in this world, that will then have implications for not just your choices in the future, but like the choices of many different... Do you see what I'm saying? Yeah. And this is...

[00:54:48] It was a little unclear to me at first, and maybe in the discussion when we talk about the sort of arguments against nihilism,

[00:54:58] because people in this world who have this opportunity to see their parallel selves, some of them report that what does it matter if I made this choice? Because there is a universe where somebody made the exact opposite choice.

[00:55:11] And so what does it matter which one you do in this world? So first of all, yeah, that's ambiguous because according to what at least Dana says, and according to how I understand, that's just not true. She says, right?

[00:55:24] Like this is on page 327 for people who have the print versions. This is the character Dana again. In general, I think your actions are consistent with your character.

[00:55:34] There might be more than one thing that would be in character for you to do because your behavior is going to vary depending on your mood, but there are a lot more things that would be utterly out of character.

[00:55:45] If you're someone who always loved animals, there isn't a branch where you kick a puppy just because it barked at you. If you're someone who always obeyed the law, there's no branch where you suddenly rob a convenience store instead of going into work in the morning.

[00:56:00] But this is why I think crimes of passion are the ones that are on the rise is because crimes of passion really could go either way a lot of the time and aren't necessarily in character in the sense of loving animals or being law abiding.

[00:56:17] And so those are the ones that people do. Just to specify, crimes of passion in this story is explicitly stated as being the one kind of thing that's changed. Yes, right.

[00:56:28] But then she says the branch where you're having a bad day and keep the extra change is the one that's split off in the past.

[00:56:34] Your actions can't affect it anymore, but if you act compassionately in this branch, that's still meaningful because it has an effect on the branches that will split off in the future.

[00:56:43] The more often you make compassionate choices, the less likely it is that you'll make selfish choices in the future, even in branches where you're having a bad day.

[00:56:52] So it's like your bad choices when it's a legitimately a choice that is within the realm of your character and feelings can have these reverberations, not just for your life but for future lives. I thought that was really interesting. Yeah, you're like populating the multiverse with goodness.

[00:57:12] Or badness. Or badness. Yeah. It's super interesting the way he deals with this. I know this is sort of back to the description of the world in the sci-fi sense because when you have these many worlds descriptions, as for instance, Rick and Morty fans know,

[00:57:30] you have this seemingly infinite escape of possible universes. And he deals with, Ted Chang deals with this problem very nicely where it's like, the only universes that we have contact with are by necessity, nearby universes.

[00:57:47] Because only in those universes would somebody else that is exactly you are very close to you would take a prism, go to a shop and try to talk to each other. So he's in this move made it so there's only parallel universes that are so close to ours

[00:58:06] that you could run these counterfactual exercises of what if I chose this way or not. Except in the case of a freak accident, as we get into the story, one of the plot points is like a drunk driver and who dies in the accident, that can be different.

[00:58:25] You could talk to a paraplegic version of yourself which is very different. But it's because of just a freak accident that where you happen to survive instead of die or you happen to die or happen to get paralyzed instead of not get paralyzed.

[00:58:44] Yeah, I meant nearby really in even those senses as opposed to like the near infinite number of universes where humans never evolved. Because there is like just so it has to be something. So last question that I have abstractly.

[00:59:02] Did you answer by the way what you whether you would you asked me but I don't think you said whether you would talk to yourself? I'm pretty, I feel you know like I'm happy with how the choices I've made have led to where I am

[00:59:23] in a way that I feel secure enough that I might want to talk to the version of me that didn't go to graduate school.

[00:59:31] Decided because I was a fairly close decision decided not to go to graduate school in philosophy like and would I be upset if it turned out he stuck with filmmaking or you know now is like in Hollywood making like awesome revered independent movies you know.

[00:59:51] Yeah, but you know I had the hard one to find amongst all the ones who are making shitty movies.

[00:59:56] Exactly right like so like it would be I feel like there's it was way more likely that I the thing I would worry about more was just feeling bad for a versions of myself that didn't

[01:00:07] catch the break that I that I caught or I didn't you know like. That was exactly my intuition like I'd be I feel like I can I can I worry this guy some money.

[01:00:16] I guess it just depends you know like I think it's so fascinating to think about like yeah I mean in some ways I agreed with you what good can come of it

[01:00:25] but I it would be super fascinating to talk to a version of yourself that you know in my like late 20s just took a completely different course than the one I've taken.

[01:00:39] And there's an interesting question because the the crystal ball company that actually is tracking down the various prisms with different versions of you right so they're systematically trying this is their business.

[01:00:51] And they gave you the option to talk about somebody who's to talk to a version of yourself that substantially better offer substantially worse off than you and whatever important ways and gave you that choice like which one would you choose to talk to.

[01:01:06] I would definitely choose the better off one. Yeah because but again I think that's because I don't have any big regrets you know like of choices I've made and where that put me but but you know I could I could I could come back to haunt me

[01:01:25] I could see that choice could come back to haunt me. I thought it was very nice by the way that it's included in this is in the description of this technology is as we mentioned that it wears out but like it's important that it wears out because once that that prism actually wears out there

[01:01:44] is will never be any communication between those two universes again like not with another person like there's just that's it that's just it.

[01:01:52] And where like a person talks one man talks with his husband who died in a car crash that means that now they have this prisms life to talk to each other and then they will and then they'll never they will never be able to contact each other.

[01:02:12] And more bandwidth takes up more of the prisms whatever energy whatever you want to call it and so if they choose to do video chat like they actually run it's like they're running out of minutes you know on a cell phone plan.

[01:02:23] Yeah that's so like so do you go for video knowing that it's I would definitely go for one Skype sex session you know one prism sex with yourself splurge.

[01:02:37] Lurch to splurge the story that I thought was most gringy poignant was the story of Lyle who found out for whatever reason that his paraself was going out with this girl and he was pretty happy.

[01:02:53] And so he tracked down the version of that girl or that woman in this world and told her what happened and they had a date and you know like clearly they're compatible if his paraself and her paraself are having this good relationship and it just goes just badly.

[01:03:15] And like you said cringe cringeworthy badly because he starts talking yeah he starts talking about like how clearly they're meant to be. Would you do that or would you have done that in your single days?

[01:03:30] No not at all man not at all like that seems I just ask my I just ask my paraself like you know just hey give me some some war stories. Yeah for your spank bank. Exactly.

[01:03:49] Oh man it's so like I'm sure listeners can come up with their own variations on just like all the very like that's what like this is world building and it's very best.

[01:04:00] One thing that I as a little bit I don't know if this is philosophically confused or what but my sense is when you make a decision.

[01:04:13] That is one that could be different in an alternate universe usually that's because of something that you aren't responsible for right like in the sense of you didn't cause it's a change in the weather they define.

[01:04:29] It affected your mood that it then so even though that will have a reverberating effect on your character in this life and also in alternate lives.

[01:04:40] It's not something that you would be responsible for in the in that sense that's that's in the sense that it's because of something you did it's just because of something or originally because of something you did it's because of something that doesn't involve you that's purely.

[01:04:58] And yet there is what Dana said that I read earlier which is it's important to make the right choice because of the effects that that can have on future so on the one hand she seems to be saying that this is something you're responsible for.

[01:05:19] At least within these close call kinds of situations but on the other hand you get this sense that the things that influence you in those close calls aren't things that ultimately originated in you and in that sense I don't think it's philosophically confused.

[01:05:33] It just gets to the heart of the free will.

[01:05:36] I was going to I was going to say that that is exactly the free will debate and it's specifically it's exactly the part that a few people emailed us about our discussion last time about the free will stuff because it's exactly kind of saying in a very

[01:05:53] in almost in the in the way that we were saying without flushing out too much that of course determinism is true but also of course you're morally responsible for some of the things that you do right.

[01:06:03] And in this case determinism just isn't true right in this in this case I well we could talk about that because the very last story is just one big like very strict causal story like no matter what you did the things all happened but I think that

[01:06:23] that's a kind of fatalism but I mean like determinism isn't true in the sense that you there are times where two different path metaphysical possibilities are open that are determined by a quantum event.

[01:06:39] You know what we had this discussion what what were we talking about when we talked about parallel universes. I think that the existence of parallel universes where where there are slight variations like you turned left instead of turning right that it is agnostic as to whether freedom exists.

[01:06:57] That is their pure quantum events that can and in fact Chang goes out of his way to say like atmospheric conditions like the guy who invented this this technology was an atmospheric scientist and he was just studying how very very small

[01:07:12] variations in a in local conditions can have these very big effects.

[01:07:16] I think that that you could have universes that are entirely deterministic that split due to probabilistic events that take place or you could have entire universes where there is free will and and and that's what accounts for the difference.

[01:07:32] So I'm not saying I wasn't saying anything about free will. I was saying that that this isn't a deterministic universe because that you know just by the once you activate the device two different things can happen at that. Yeah, it caused by anything before that.

[01:07:53] Well, I mean that the notion of causality is hard in quantum physics but I think that it is deterministic and in any sense of like previous states having something to do with future states. Right, but it has to do with future states. I don't know.

[01:08:11] It's definitely not linear and that's what we're alluding to in the in you know in the patreon section where we're talking about this and I said like there's something in the story that's going to be a little bit more interesting. That's relevant to this.

[01:08:24] What's certainly clear at least in the explanation that Chang gives is that there is no straightforward account of like how one thing could affect like there's no there's no good science of what is going on when one thing when when the universe is diverge like have even with the access to these other

[01:08:42] universes it's really really hard to tell why these changes occurred. Historians were super excited like because they might be able to tell but like even they gave up pretty quickly because it's such a complex system. Yeah, right.

[01:08:56] Unless again there's this loophole where you use the prism to make the choice for you and I'm somebody that does things like that like I'll flip a coin five times and part of it is that I want I want to see a future state.

[01:09:12] If I'm subtly rooting for one outcome and so if I'm like no don't be another tales like that well that tells me that some part of me that I wasn't aware of but sometimes I really just don't want to like I'm completely 5050 and I'm letting the coin decide.

[01:09:30] Are these like a should I like should I steal money kinds of decisions or do I want Chinese or Chinese or Thai food tonight. They're they're not moral.

[01:09:43] I don't think I've used it for ever for moral decisions but they're often a lot more momentous than where to go for take like like it could be where to go for a vacation or you know something like that.

[01:09:55] And again a lot of it is just trying to see if there's some part of like which one I'm sort of subtly rooting for in a way that's not I'm not it's not available to me right. It's an epistemic exercise.

[01:10:07] But but a lot of the time I realize I'm not really rooting for anyone and then I just let it decide because it just take like I don't want to just think about it for two more hours and be in the same position.

[01:10:19] But in this case if you do that with the quantum world you can then be in contact with the version of you that you know took the different vacation or that took you know you I even did this with my job.

[01:10:35] In retrospect I do think taking my job at University of Houston was probably something that there's no version of me that wouldn't do that. I think but at the time I remember doing it.

[01:10:48] But you know what I mean like I could talk with a version of me who didn't take this job like if I let that thing make the decision for me because I was that's right.

[01:11:00] It's like the the the randomized controlled trial of parallel universes like it is it is narrowing down causality in the only way that's possible. That's possible exactly. Right. All right should we take a quick break and then talk about the plot the actual plot of the story.

[01:11:15] Yeah let's do that.

[01:11:18] This episode is also brought to you by one of our favorite sponsors give well dot org give well searches for the charities that can save or improve lives the most per dollar donated give well conducts in depth evaluations shares the most effective charities they've found.

[01:11:38] And there are eight top charities do just an incredible amount of good they fight infectious diseases and improve the lives of some of the world's poorest populations as we start getting into holiday season.

[01:11:55] Dave I strongly recommend that our listeners go to give well dot org and try to get the most bang for their buck in helping other people.

[01:12:06] You know what just like they keep trying to extend holiday purchasing season like to like the day after Thanksgiving like whatever Black Friday and Cyber Tuesday. Let's extend the charitable spirit at least into October and just do a little bit for for somebody else.

[01:12:22] And I think give well is the perfect place to do that. Give well operations are independently supported by donors and give well takes no cut of donations at processes which is pretty impressive.

[01:12:34] They do all this work because they want to help the world as much as as much as they can.

[01:12:41] It's a trustworthy organization more than 50,000 donors have trusted give well to direct their donations together they've given over $500 million to the organizations give well recommends these donations will save over 75,000 lives and provide cash grants of over $90 million to the global poor.

[01:13:01] Give well spends over 20,000 hours annually researching charity and they have a rigorous and transparent process to make sure that these charities will use your donations as effectively as possible. So if you're so inclined please go to give well.org and donate.

[01:13:20] You can at some point say that you got there through very bad wizards and I you know I want to say that we talked to the people that give well this time around and they said something very nice about our listeners they said that they had really seen a difference so it means a lot to us that you guys went out and let them know that that you came from us but even if you don't just just it will make us happy if you do a little bit of good this holiday season.

[01:13:45] Thanks to give well.org for supporting this episode.

[01:13:49] All right welcome back we're going to start digging into the plot but but Tamla and I were talking about this story part of the reason that we've been able to talk this long without getting into the nitty gritty of the plot is that this really is a lot of plots it's more like an anthology so like it's a fairly long short story but it's an anthology with in this world there's a bunch of characters and sub plots and I think that the best way to proceed is just to talk about some of these

[01:14:15] stories I mean there's one central one but there's just a bunch of different characters who are dealing with this universe in in different ways. And their stories intersect. Yeah, in interesting ways too.

[01:14:28] So the story that we were talking about earlier Dana is a therapist within one of these support groups right.

[01:14:35] Yeah she is the like group leader support group leader and you want to talk about Jorge first because he has a small self contained story he meets with Dana the therapist for a few sessions.

[01:14:49] He's he's not relevant to the rest of the plot but he is a it's like a perfect little arc that yeah that illustrates some of the philosophical ideas to. Yeah so so Jorge is in private therapy with Dana right.

[01:15:07] Yeah he works at this job where he has a just a. A jobs worth as the British say for a boss just a total fucking prick who throws his weight around who is mean and belittling and so this Jorge got really mad one day and slashed his way.

[01:15:31] He got his tires and. Got away with it. He did not get caught for doing that.

[01:15:40] And so he's not trying to decide whether to confess to the crime but he's trying to decide whether to talk to his wife about it and to confess at least to her what he did and maybe because of that to seek some sort of anger management or something.

[01:15:57] And so he gets on he goes to crystal ball I think or one of these data collection companies and he finds out that the only other versions that they could find of him did not slash the tires. Right. So he concludes from that.

[01:16:17] This is the first part of his story that well it's not a real big part of his character he doesn't have to worry about it he's not even going to bother telling his wife because that could make her fear something about him that just isn't true and the way the evidence that it's not true is the fact that most versions of him didn't commit that act.

[01:16:40] And Dana it's a little sort of you know disapproving of this decision at first but she wants him she's not going to tell him that. Can I quote can I quote this part of the conversation so so Jorge says so as a recent they track down six versions.

[01:16:59] Since I asked him to send questions of six versions of me since it's such a recent departure point it was cheap so I asked for a video this morning they sent me a bunch of video files recordings of what my paraselves said.

[01:17:10] And then he says none of my paraselves have punctured them their managers tires and she goes what do you think that means and he goes it means that that my puncturing his tires was a freak accident the fact that I did it doesn't say anything important about me as a person which threw me for a loop actually.

[01:17:26] Like what that kind of a backward reason I would say I would think that it says something central about the you in this world. You're the only one but you can see the reasoning behind it yeah I totally can. It was it.

[01:17:44] It's sort of like he's saying like you know you can imagine a stand that like a prison guard in the Stanford prison experiment if that was real saying well I know now that that wasn't really a result of me that was a result of the situation and so although in this case I don't know exactly what made me do it.

[01:18:02] I can feel confident that it's not something essential to who I am as a person but you're right that there's something weird about that because he did do it. Yeah. This for a. Somebody held a gun is it.

[01:18:20] Yeah and he concludes he concludes that therefore he's he shouldn't really have to tell his wife because it's not something that's deeply part of him.

[01:18:28] And this echoes something I think this is why you were saying the story is such a good little microcosm it echoes some point that that that is made in other parts of the story which is that.

[01:18:39] I think at some point Dana uses the metaphor of deep grooves in the brain that that if if your action is caused by by this sort of like over and over again building a habit building a character that causes you to act in this way then he would have seen it.

[01:18:57] Across all of the six people like it would be deeply part of his his behavior.

[01:19:04] But in this case he thinks non-diagnostic probably though what it does show I think going by the premises of the story is that maybe it was unlikely that he would do it like it took a it took some sort of weird change in the atmosphere or something to.

[01:19:26] But he does have it in him in a way that some people would not have it in them to do. Right animal lovers would never kick a puppy right.

[01:19:35] Right exactly so but he's not seeing that he is seeing just well look initially then there's we go back to Jorge and but at least initially he's saying well this isn't me this is a quantum weird event.

[01:19:51] Yeah and the metaphor that he uses is such a you know I love this story because of it's just such a deep reflection on what character is but he uses the metaphor of.

[01:20:03] Of getting back medical tests so like he was like no what it meant that all those other six guys those other six or he didn't do it is that I got a medical test back and I'm in the clear like it's it was non diagnosed like it's or at least it was diagnostic that I'm not deeply sick.

[01:20:19] Right I got a second opinion and a third opinion and those opinions said that I don't have this disease right.

[01:20:28] Yeah and then she says so Dana says so let's think of it as a medical test you had some symptoms that might have indicated something serious but it turns out you don't have cancer.

[01:20:40] Of course it's great but you still have those symptoms what does it mean and then he thinks well if it's not a disease what does it matter. Which is again like something that that chan comes back to it matters because like the guy's tires got slashed.

[01:20:55] Like it matters well there's two ways so let's talk about then his change of heart which comes towards the end of the story and I think that's the only time we see him right. Yeah.

[01:21:07] These two episodes a few weeks later he comes back and he says I've been wondering if I should go back to Lytoscope and ask them to contact my parasols again and then she says why I want to know if they've acted out since the last time I checked.

[01:21:22] And then he describes a more recent interaction with his manager where he felt so angry that he wanted to smash things.

[01:21:32] He talks about that medical test and he said it felt like I had gotten the results of the medical test and maybe that the test wasn't sensitive enough.

[01:21:41] And so now he's worried that well maybe he does have this anger problem and she says I want to suggest something even if your parasols haven't acted on their anger recently maybe it's worth thinking about what happened here. In this branch.

[01:22:02] And he's like how can I know if it was a freak accident or not unless I check my parasols.

[01:22:08] And she admits it's obviously out of character for you there's no question about that but it was still something you did you not your parasols so I don't know let's let's let's. Yeah that for a second.

[01:22:23] Like I you know I think that that in this world the introduction of these parallel selves have have thrown people for a loop because it seems at least this is my interpretation it seems if it's saying something deep about you but in fact it's giving you no more information than you would have normally like you your character is what you do.

[01:22:46] Right assuming that you know that often the things that we do are influenced by weird contingent freak things right assuming that you recognize that about just agency then in some sense this isn't telling you something that you don't already know.

[01:23:07] Right and the part that I think is I think Dana's being a little charitable to him or being like a sort of on purpose nice because.

[01:23:18] Clearly he has anger issues so he's consistently getting angry it's just that in these six other worlds he didn't act out in that that one time but like I think that it's really relevant to his character that he that he struggles with anger.

[01:23:32] And that you know like to go back to the diagnosis thing well maybe he didn't have that particular disease but he still has those symptoms.

[01:23:41] Right and so you should kind of explore well what's the deal with those symptoms even if you can be somewhat calm but this is where it gets a little confused so then she says.

[01:23:54] So Jorge is kind of reflecting on this and he says isn't it important that it was out of character for me instead of being something typical for me.

[01:24:03] And Dana says of course it is but even if you are acting out of character you have to take responsibility for your actions.

[01:24:10] And what she means by that is not that she should tell the manager and confess to the police but that he should really accept that this happened and at least tell his wife even if it turns out that his paraselves haven't acted on their anger.

[01:24:28] And so that's a I take it a subtly different question.

[01:24:34] So the first question is whether it really is out of character for him right given that he did it the second and what we mean when we say out of character the second question is even if it was out of character you did it and so you should take responsibility for it in some sense.

[01:24:53] And I think that is what Dana is pressing although sometimes it seems like she's pressing the idea well clearly it was in character in some sense it was in the realm of what your character is capable of doing.

[01:25:08] I think it connects to what Chang is saying in other parts of the story where I think one reason to consider this an important thing to take responsibility for is at least within the story the possibility that you having done this is actually going to be integral to the development of your future character.

[01:25:30] And if you don't take responsibility in this case you're basically opening your setting down a new little groove in your brain. Right I'm just going to say you created a little groove. You know exactly you don't want to keep have that groove keep getting what do grooves do.

[01:25:49] Yeah you know the water like the water will be more likely to flow that there that time and it'll get deeper. You don't want to do that and I think this is a compliment to the story of what's your name not Moro but. Nat. Nat. Yeah.

[01:26:08] But before we leave this just to just to make sure I understand what you're saying there so taking responsibility in this sense is kind of stopping.

[01:26:18] Taking the groove from developing in such a way that it really does become in character in the sense that Jorge means it right so taking responsibility keeps actions like that out of character and it's kind of ironic if not almost paradoxical

[01:26:39] that you are taking responsibility for something that is out of character so it doesn't subsequently become in character.

[01:26:47] Right it's a kind of forward looking responsibility and I feel it really feels like Chang is outlining some sort of virtue theory view of you know which is a reason that I love it.

[01:27:03] So it's not as you said it's not responsibility in like that you should get punished or you should go confess but rather take responsibility for your future self. Yes. Don't let this become a habit. So let's talk you want to talk about Nat and.

[01:27:18] Yeah so right yeah so Nat is the is the central character at least that's the one we're first introduced to and Nat works at one of these. It seems like a joint that's on the way down right it's like a it's a franchise of these prisms and.

[01:27:40] It's it's franchise in the sense that they don't seem to be very controlled by the external company or the big company these two people more and and Nat kind of run run this shop where they sell people time on these prisms and they buy old prisms.

[01:27:59] That that people can use to talk to other people to talk to their parasols and they end up being involved in a potential scam. Two scams.

[01:28:10] Two yeah two different scams one where they trick an old lady out of giving all of her money to them before she dies and another one that is less scammy and more just.

[01:28:25] Fucking disgustingly like like taking advantage of other people and that is a tragedy yeah of a tragedy right and that is this one case that they happen to be able to see with the crystals that they have that.

[01:28:41] The famous couple these two men who were married to each other get in a nasty car accident and one of them dies it's just that they find a crystal where.

[01:28:51] It's the other one who died in the other world and this is a boon for them because what they can do is go to the famous survivor in their own world.

[01:29:00] And say hey you know in this parallel world your husband exists it's you who are the one who died so they plan to just essentially for as much money as they can get bank on this tragedy bank on the on the grief the grieving survivor husbands in order to get a big paycheck.

[01:29:20] So just to be clear they don't own this prison that's part of the game so so Murrow who is kind of like an ambulance chaser he is an ambulance chaser for prisms he scans for all these tragedies hoping that something like this will come up.

[01:29:38] And he happened to overhear in a support group that one man the man Lyle the one who tracked down the girl his paraself was it was going out with.

[01:29:51] And Lyle said that his paraself in that world the other person survived in that accident and so what Murrow who's kind of the ringleader does is he he enlists Nat to go to the support group and to try to convince Lyle to sell his prism to their company.

[01:30:16] That's the same part right she pretends to be a fellow whatever. Yes member of this group yeah.

[01:30:23] Yeah and so she has to go to this group and sort of slowly ingratiate herself to this guy Lyle and and do somewhat shady things to convince Lyle to sell the prism to them without revealing that she works for that company so she would sell it to Murrow.

[01:30:43] So now a couple things about Nat she is a former addict who has is now in recovery and she's successfully staying away from drugs but she still does these kind of shitty things to get money so even though she's kicked the drug habit and she's no longer doing doing the things that are associated with that.

[01:31:11] Her character hasn't transformed in a big way when it comes to these kinds of moral questions she's not an ultimate just totally unredeemable scammer like Murrow. She is but she is someone that is willing to play along for some additional cash.

[01:31:31] Right so she is just reflective enough to realize that she doesn't care very much about the kinds of actions she engages in so they give little hints throughout the story like she's like.

[01:31:43] You know when people say would you give back the change if some if a cashier gave you too much change back and she was like I would never even think about giving back the change that would make my day just so much better right like it just unconditionally happy.

[01:31:55] And but but she is reflective enough to see that she is this kind of a person who's who's going pretty far in in in this scam like completely lying to this man for a month you know yeah in order to yeah.

[01:32:10] And she's not a part of this other kind of also sick scam which is to convince this old dying lady that she can transfer money to the version of herself who isn't dying from this disease which actually is impossible.

[01:32:28] That will have consequences for Murrow but that's Murrow's side scam the scam that they're in on together is not going undercover to the support group to try to convince Lyle to sell her the prism and the way she has to do that she's smart.

[01:32:44] So she has to psychologically kind of manipulate and she does this in ways that aren't necessarily unhealthy for Lyle right because it's probably good for Lyle to sell his prism given that it's causing him this much anxiety and suffering but obviously it's deceitful and and wrong.

[01:33:05] This is all building up to this moment where she finds the grieving husband gets in contact through with his assistant they set it up so that the paraself on the other side of Murrow is is also setting it up with a survivor on that side and.

[01:33:23] And Murrow has been killed in her Murrow has been shot by the son of the woman that he cheated out in his side scam so in her world but not in the other world because in the other world this was a crime of passion.

[01:33:38] That the guy decided not to shoot Murrow but in her world it's just her now right she is in contact with the other Murrow right and she's clearly not.

[01:33:52] Doesn't have a lot of money and she sees you know dollar signs in her eyes with this decision to sell to sell this prism to the surviving husband.

[01:34:02] But something happens in her where she really seems to start reflecting on what she's doing to this grieving husband who is the only chance that he has of talking to his deceased husband.

[01:34:18] And at one point she says to the assistant who she's been negotiating with about the price and she's he's offered her a lot a lot of money she goes.

[01:34:28] He probably has a lot of fans because he's a pop star in this universe and his husband was an actor. She says he probably has a lot of fans who would have given him this for free doesn't he.

[01:34:40] She says yeah he does and she says but even a lot of people even without being his fan might have given him this for free.

[01:34:49] And it's a weird realization to think like it hadn't even really popped into her head that most that many people wouldn't be doing this but it does in that moment. And in that moment she does something.

[01:35:04] She makes the decision which is not obvious at first what she decides but as the money has already been transferred she has to just click the accept button and she'll have a whole bunch of money.

[01:35:13] And she hasn't really heard anybody who actually brought the opportunity to this rich pop star. And the guy has the money.

[01:35:20] And the guy has the money he didn't even blink at the price tag but there is something about the way in which she's doing it that bothers her for a second.

[01:35:27] And I think that part what he's trying to say here is just like these small decisions sometimes really really matter. And this is I think optimistically a move in the right direction for now. Well now wait a minute though she accepts the money. Oh yeah okay.

[01:35:48] She does accept the money but she it's we later find the right choice. For her to accept the money based on what she does with the money.

[01:36:02] So she doesn't and this is so this is such a beautiful little twist at the end of the story but it requires that we talk about Dana and her arc. So let's just say she accepts the money.

[01:36:14] It sets you up to think not accepting the money is the right choice. That's right. And accepting the money will show it's still same old net. She hasn't changed but in fact and you don't know what she's doing.

[01:36:27] Whether she's accepted it or not until the very last kind of paragraph of the story pretty much. But but but it involves Dana because Dana was running the support group. And so we have to talk about her arc now I kind of wonder where we are now at.

[01:36:44] Yeah. 204. So I wonder if we could leave a cliffhanger and do because I think there's so much more to discuss as we talk about Dana and her arc.

[01:36:55] And then I think just a general discussion once we have the plot do you want to do this in a part two given that we're over two hours recording right now.

[01:37:04] If you think about the Dana story so in that story it is kind of the opposite of what has been going on where different choices were made but the same thing ends up happening.

[01:37:17] And so it shows that in that sense character as destiny in ways that have arc or at least seemingly intention with other parts of the story. Yeah.

[01:37:30] And then we can we can talk about what you know what is he's trying to say like what are the implications here like is if anything is he saying yeah. Okay let's do that.

[01:37:39] All right we may add something on in case that's not enough for a second segment next time but I think there's a lot more to talk about with this story and what what's beneath it what it's trying to say about life and people and character and freedom and responsibility so yeah.

[01:37:56] And it gives two other opportunities one for anybody who hasn't read it or read it quickly and wants to read it again to do so and it gives me I think a little bit more time to let it settle and try to figure out actually what Chang is trying to say if anything with this story.

[01:38:14] Yeah. Still unclear to me like yeah. I'm actually excited to think on it for another. Yeah me too. I've been doing this for a little while so for those smartasses on Reddit this is a decision we are making at the time not that we shoehorn in later.

[01:38:32] I mean they are smart. They are smart they do know. I remember there's one thing on Reddit where a guy knew and I never do this I've done this maybe twice in seven years but I messed up the Frankfurt like a description of the Frankfurt case.

[01:38:48] And I just I couldn't live with the fact that I had messed up the Frankfurt case. It's like my fucking field. So I just and I was like 10 seconds of just correcting something that I had said and this this I like this guy.

[01:39:05] Jadoc sing or whatever but he just picked it up right away like he could tell something about like you know the the ambient noise in the background or whatever. Anyway. All right till next time. Join us on very bad.