Episode 174: More Chiang for Your Buck ("Anxiety is the Dizziness of Freedom" Pt. 2)

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

[00:00:17] Why would I continue, you know, walking on water for tips when I've got an entire generation to teach a whole new world? Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain! Who are you? Who are you? A very bad man. I'm a very good man. Good.

[00:00:49] They think deep thoughts and we're no more brains than you have. Anybody can have a brain? You're a very bad man. I'm a very good man. Just a very bad wizard. Welcome to Very Bad Wizards. I'm Tamler Sommers from the University of Houston.

[00:01:18] Dave, it's been a week since the movie Joker came out. How many people have you killed since you saw it? Well, I'm not an incel, so this wasn't a rally cry for me. But I was a little nervous in the theater, gotta tell ya.

[00:01:32] There's a lot of weird Cornell kids. Yeah. I wasn't quite sure what they were hiding in their dirty sweatpants. So you saw it, right? I did, I saw it and I, you know, I loved it. It was fucking great.

[00:01:47] That was one of the best movies I've seen in a long, long time. I haven't seen it. I'm afraid it'll trigger empathy in me for Trump voters. For Joaquin Phoenix. Well that's the reviews are like, I felt uncomfortable sense of empathy for this guy. Oh my God!

[00:02:08] You know, I was reading those reviews too and I am just like, look, if I could be pushed to the right, they would be pushing me. There's nowhere to push me. But they're pushing me, man.

[00:02:21] This is a fucking movie based on a notorious villain in the comic books who is by all measures one of the worst people ever depicted in the history of comic books. So in an indirect way, the movie Joker has radicalized you. Yeah, it's via these reviews.

[00:02:41] It's the reviews that are pushing me, man. I just can't, like that New Yorker review. It was like the conceptual penis for movie reviews. Like I can actually tell if that New Yorker article was written tongue in cheek.

[00:02:55] It was like some, I don't know, it was like some mist was released and everyone felt like they had to prove to the world that they were exactly like the caricature of Ben Shapiro and Dave Rubin and my stepmother. I think they are, you know?

[00:03:13] Like it was, I don't know. I don't know what happened. It's weird. It is like, I think this was true with the Chappelle special too. Like they've just lost their ability to evaluate art and I'd like, it's like, they forget that the thing is a work of art

[00:03:27] that's depicting something and not endorsing it or condemning it. It's just, this is... I mean, and there are so many movies that are more distressing in say a political way. This one, you know, the, you know, I don't even know what to say.

[00:03:48] Did you ever watch the movie Falling Down? Yeah. Yeah. If that movie came out nowadays, there would be just riots. The Liberals would throw riots. You know, it was, it got some blowback then. I was thinking about the backlash against that movie

[00:04:08] and it almost was encouraging because maybe this stuff has been happening before and it's not some new trend in a bad direction. You know, I mean Clockwork Orange, if you look at the Fight Club,

[00:04:24] some of the, a lot of the Fight Club reviews were a little like this. And, you know, those are much better movies, I'm assuming, than Joker is, although you've maybe... I don't know, man. I mean, I think it's an open question.

[00:04:38] I won't say yes or no, but those are obviously two amazing movies. But Joaquin Phoenix's performance alone in this movie. You know, I'm tainted because I am a big fan of the DC Comics. I've read all the Batman's. This is heavily true to one particular comic book

[00:04:58] that's a classic called The Killing Joke by Alan Moore. But it also is, as you've probably read, heavily pays homage to some 70s cinema. Taxi driver and also King of Comedy. And King of Comedy, yeah. It's like just very clearly that.

[00:05:17] So there's a way in which the movie doesn't have to at all be about a comic book character. But it is, and I think it's given that context. It's very, very clear. Like, no, there's nobody who comes out of this with sympathy for the Joker.

[00:05:33] You have sympathy for the plight of the mentally ill, if anything. And if anything, when you see this movie, it is more like a rally for class warfare. It seems like it's more of that than anything else if there is a political message at all.

[00:05:51] But I don't think there is. I think it's just the fucking Joker. Well, this is the... I mean, that class, if it is class warfare, is a class that doesn't get sympathy from a certain group of critics. Like working class, mentally ill or drug addicted white men

[00:06:14] is not someone that inspires sympathy these days. I'm going by my daughter's description of it. I shouldn't even... Like, I tweeted an article about it without having seen it. So this is almost like a guilty confession. But my daughter saw it and just talked about it to me

[00:06:29] and said, you know, like the first hour of it, you do feel bad for him. Like, that's okay. It's okay. Like, perfectly okay. Not everybody... It's not like they're evil babies, you know? Like, they just... Like, it's okay to feel bad for somebody that then, you know,

[00:06:47] turns out to be a really bad person. But like... You've thought about this a lot, I assume. So I don't know if we've ever talked about this deep contradiction on the part of our, you know, I say our, because I align myself mostly with liberals about this stuff.

[00:07:07] But the deep contradiction in being very, very pro-prison reform and opposed to the bad conditions in which prisoners are kept and the bad reasons for which we incarcerate, yet unwilling to have sympathy for any given criminal. It's a very weird stand today.

[00:07:28] And in fact, the same ones who are worried about that twinge of empathy that they were manipulated into feeling for whatever his name... What's Joker's name in it? Arthur Fleck. Arthur Fleck. They're usually trumpeting feeling empathy for prisoners in general.

[00:07:47] And I bet you could find individual prisoners that... It has to be the right one. The right kind of prison. Yeah. I mean, look, I think everyone's also... The good news is I think everyone's a little embarrassed about what happened critically, the critical reaction to the movie.

[00:08:06] Like, I know a lot more critics who are just embarrassed in their profession than I do critics who are standing firm behind like, this is a dangerous... And this movie is meant to rally the white resentment

[00:08:22] in this country at a time where we can not afford to have that. If anything, there's a ton of... It's really about class and like... I'd say most of the people of color on screen are in the same class as Arthur Fleck and they like him.

[00:08:43] But I will perhaps end this segment with one of my favorite tweets about this was, I forget who's it was so I can't give them credit, but it was just finished my 8000 word review of The Joker. Can't wait to see the film. I saw that. Yeah.

[00:09:01] That's like me talking about it right now. Yeah. Normally I would get... This is pure hypocrisy. Like, I would get mad at somebody probably. How has he been talking about it if he hasn't seen it? Maybe it's not hypocrisy if you admit it. That's the loophole.

[00:09:21] Do you think that maybe the left isn't laughing because they're so moral? Yeah, that is an interesting question. What would lead you to ask that question? Well, before we get to the Ted Chang story... Two Ted Chang stories.

[00:09:41] Two Ted Chang stories, part two of Anxiety's The Dizziness of Freedom and the other one, What's Expected of Us. You pointed me to... I don't remember who somebody tweeted this to us. Yeah, a horizontal read it. A new paper. We found it through the headline on the independent.

[00:09:58] People with high moral standards are less likely to be funny. So this is a paper that they did in the journal of... forthcoming in Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. And the basic finding is, and I actually really thought

[00:10:12] they did a decent job of this, the basic finding is that people who have a strong moral identity and we'll talk about what that means, for whom morality, their morality is central to their sense of who they are, to sense of identity,

[00:10:29] are both less likely to find things funny and less funny themselves. And the idea is that they draw on this benign violation theory. This is a theory first proposed by philosopher Thomas Beach, but most recently by psychologist Pete McGraw,

[00:10:48] that says that like a lot of humor is some combination of a moral violation that's benign. So it can't be too mean, can't be too fucked up, right? It's not funny when lots of people die for real. But maybe a year after lots of people die for real,

[00:11:05] it's kind of funny. I remember I gave a talk where I talked about this theory at Duke when you, I think you invited me for that. That's right. In Walter's Senate Armstrong's... Moral Psychology Research Group, yeah. Yeah, so it's an interesting theory

[00:11:23] and it makes a lot of intuitive sense. It has this weird sort of ad hoc quality because benign, how do they determine what's benign and what's not? Like if a tragedy is funny a year afterwards, but it's not like a priori that a year would make it benign.

[00:11:43] Right? That's sort of a post-hoc way of explaining. You see what I mean? So like the predictive power of it depends on us having an agreed upon sense of what's benign and what isn't. But there is no sort of independent way of drawing that distinction. I totally agree.

[00:12:04] I lecture on humor in my intro psych course because it's a fun thing to talk about and I talk about these other theories like incongruity theory and why they're not satisfying. And I honestly think that benign violation theory

[00:12:18] is more just a descriptor of a wider set of jokes. Right? Like you say it makes good sense, but I don't think it can predict well what we will find funny. It's not a theory in that sense. It reminds me of a Mel Brooks quote where he says,

[00:12:35] tragedy is when I cut my finger, comedy is when you fall into an open sewer and die. Right? Well, it's not benign for the person. Yeah. Yeah, so but whatever they use that theory to... To set this up.

[00:12:55] So I guess the idea is people who have a higher sense of themselves as moral will find more moral violations or norm violations to be not benign and therefore they will find them to be less funny. Right. Yeah, in some sense all you need from benign violation theory

[00:13:17] is to say that the descriptive part that says a lot of jokes contain this component of being kind of crossing the line about moral violations. That's all you really need. And so people who are serious about morality are less likely to do that.

[00:13:31] Given that those things tend to be funny then they're gonna be less funny. I wanted to just explicitly state how moral identity is measured. Yes. So there is a scale of moral identity developed by a guy named Carl. I believe he pronounces it Aquino but Aquino,

[00:13:53] A-Q-U-I-N-O that's been used a lot. It's been especially used like in business schools and stuff. And the idea is that you can use this as an individual difference measure and put where somebody is on the centrality of these moral concepts to their identity.

[00:14:12] And so what you do is you give a set of moral traits and they have a paper that validates all these scales in the way that you might expect. But you give people a bunch of traits that have been judged to be moral, caring, compassionate, fair, friendly, generous,

[00:14:27] hardworking, helpful, honest, kind, ruthless, obviously reverse scored as are selfish and distant. And you give people the instructions that go like this. Listed below are some characteristics that may describe a person. You list the nine traits. The person with these characteristics could be you

[00:14:51] or it could be someone else for a moment visualizing your mind, the kind of person who has these characteristics. Imagine how the person would think, feel and act when you have a clear image of what this person would be like answer the following questions.

[00:15:02] And then they're asked questions like this. It would make me feel good to be a person who has these characteristics. This is on a seven point scale. Being someone who has these characteristics is an important part of who I am. Reverse scored, I would be ashamed to have

[00:15:20] to be a person who has these characteristics. Having these characteristics is not really important to me. I often buy products that communicate the fact that I have these characteristics. I often wear clothes that identify me as having these characteristics. The fact that I have these characteristics

[00:15:34] is communicated to others by my membership in certain organizations. All right, so things like that. So the higher you score on this and the items that I read are this internalization factor. There's two different factors, but for this paper they only looked at this internalization factor.

[00:15:50] Like how much an internal part of your identity is this morality? So can I just ask a question about this? So this is what psychologists would call a construct, high moral identity. And the way it's operationalized is through this scale. Yeah, it's a score on this scale.

[00:16:12] There is a tacit assumption that this is something that people can be high or low in, that it sticks together. That these are all tapping into the same underlying construct even though you can't measure it directly. These are ways of tapping into this latent construct.

[00:16:31] They create a bunch of these items and they see how well they stick together in the sense that they correlate with each other. If you answered high to the first thing that I said, did you tend to answer high to the second thing that I said? Okay.

[00:16:46] I feel like we should play some curb music. Okay. I won't comment for now. I mean, this is how you measure things, right? I know that it is how you measure things. Wow, you don't measure things. You're a philosopher. You just eyeball everything. Measure one big thing.

[00:17:23] You just eyeball it. So that way you have a lot of flexibility in your answer. Yeah. So measurement aside, Tamler is itching to do a episode on measurement. Unfortunately, he did not win our poll, but we'll talk about that after.

[00:17:41] What they end up looking at is score on this internalization scale and they do what... This is the part that I was interested in what you thought about. They selected a joke, a set of jokes. So this guy, Wiseman, I think his name is Richard Wiseman,

[00:18:01] in 02 he put up like thousands and thousands of jokes on the internet and had like millions and millions of people rate them. And to find out what the funniest, what people thought was the funniest joke. So he has this archive of jokes that have been rated

[00:18:17] by people like all over the world. So they picked nine of those jokes and they just ask people... It turns out people high in moral identity were not very good at determining which ones were funny. Not very good at determining which ones...

[00:18:36] I mean, we're assuming that the ones... I mean, fine. So this result shows that they find a narrower class of things to be funny because they involve moral violations, presumably. But how did they determine that these people who scale high in moral identity

[00:19:00] because that's a real psychological attribute, how did they find that they were less funny? That they were less funny as people? So in a separate study now, like as you point out in the first study they were manipulated into having a high moral identity.

[00:19:20] In this next study they were measured simply on how high, sort of as a trait, as a personality trait, how high they were in moral identity. And they had everybody generate humorous captions like a caption contest. And it's a task apparently that's been used before

[00:19:36] specifically to capture spontaneous humor in the absence of a human interaction. So they then... So everybody in the study generated captions and they had 286 coders that they recruited through prolific rates. They were blind to the experimental condition in the high policies

[00:19:57] and they rated how funny each caption was from one, not funny at all, to five, very funny. Turns out there's high agreement about what's funny. But if you care about the numbers, the alphas are 0.85 and 0.91. Which is very, very good for a scale. So they had ratings of...

[00:20:18] So these were across two captions each. The rate is rated humor in the moral violations. So they found that participants who are high in moral identity were less likely to create captions that involve moral violations and they just generated less funny captions.

[00:20:38] So if you are high in moral identity you are not likely to win the New Yorker caption contest? Or at least you have to temporarily set aside your desire to think of yourself as a good person? Well they have some recommendations for people

[00:20:54] who are high in moral identity that I will read at the end. Oh, I didn't actually get to the discussion. Yeah, okay. So they write less funny captions and let's just say that's an indication of how funny they are. I mean it's at least a decent,

[00:21:13] it's a face valid indication of funniness in some sense, right? I guess. I mean I think funniness takes a lot of forms. Like I think... I don't know if you would and I be good at that? I'm amazing at that. Like I don't know.

[00:21:29] I feel like to the extent that I'm a funny person that would not be the way in which I was necessarily funny but I haven't tried it. There's probably a low bar. There's a lot of moral identity people out there. It is an interesting question, right?

[00:21:44] People often say that stand-up comedians aren't funny in real life and you could mean a number of things by that but one of the things you could mean is that there are just different kinds of humor

[00:21:54] and this I would think is tapping into one specific kind of humor. Whether or not these people have like a humorous demeanor about them who knows maybe they're just really clever, you know? Right, that seems to tap into cleverness more than funny in a sense.

[00:22:09] I mean this is part of the problem. Like there's so many of these kinds of... Alright, we use this scale to measure, you know, funniness and how funny you find things and how popular you are at work and in your profession

[00:22:25] and how like there's just so many of these things that maybe capture part of something but don't capture all of them that it's interesting to think to what extent you can make the kinds of general claims given that they are going after just a sliver

[00:22:42] of what it really means to be funny or to be a likable colleague. So one can say, I think, what I'm comfortable saying is that they found reliably a relationship between these measures and that is a relationship that I may not have expected

[00:22:58] or not have predicted in one that makes sense. Is that true? You would not have predicted that? I would have sort of reserved my judgment because I feel like it's kind of a stereotype, you know? I view myself as I try to be funny

[00:23:17] and I think of myself as pretty moral. So maybe it's just the salience of that. Well knowing you, that makes me doubt the connection between thinking yourself moral and being moral. Well that much, which I'm under no guys. Is there a Dunning Kruger for morality?

[00:23:39] Actually, you know, and sometimes the way this is presented is moral people are less funny in the popular press and sometimes they kind of slip into that language even in the paper but really it's not. It could be somebody who's sort of sanctimonious and not moral which is...

[00:23:59] Are you saying they over claim in their discussion? I'm not. Yes, I think obviously they are but I'm not saying. We're trained by the way, psychologists are trained to over claim in our discussion which is one reason I didn't even read the discussion.

[00:24:13] We just sort of read the results and the methods and the intro and... Well there is a golden little Pete nugget in the discussion. Right, and we talked enough about the study. I mean there were five studies. The last two were like actually in the workplace

[00:24:30] that you know, I don't know. It showed that people who are funny or were more liked in the workplace totally... Yeah exactly, it's likeability right? Yeah. So here's the quote because you know this has deep implications for people who are high in moral identity.

[00:24:47] They will be less funny, less likely to find things funny and so colleagues will likely find them less likable. Like Angela from the office? I just... this is the most pretentious thing to say but I've only watched the British office.

[00:25:06] But is that a big surprise for me really? My daughter has watched all of the America. Because every 15 year old girl has. I'm surprised because the US office is also mostly white people. I thought that would be something you're really into. I don't... only like it's not...

[00:25:28] It's a... it's not a sufficient condition. It's just necessary you know. So recognizing the implications, they write, our findings call attention to potential risks that individuals with strong moral identities should be aware of. To be clear we're not suggesting they should compromise

[00:25:51] their values or violate moral standards to be funny and gain likability in the workplace. Rather, we encourage employees to strive to embody the values they possess while simultaneously cultivating social exchanges that are pleasant and enjoyable. Because the activation of a moral identity appears to suppress humor production,

[00:26:17] individuals with strong moral identities should seek to deliberately offset this suppression during critical interactions. Although they do not appear to make such an effort spontaneously, study three, managers with strong moral identities can make a deliberate effort to tell a few inoffensive linguistic puns

[00:26:41] while discussing business ethics with subordinates. I'm so glad they put that in. Otherwise, I think there would be dispro... I mean that'll fix it right? If these managers who nobody finds funny just make a little extra effort to make some non-offensive linguistic puns and they'll be fine.

[00:27:04] I give this paragraph a 4.5 out of 5 on my humor scale. Yeah, I think that's low. I like how the advice is like I know that we said that moral people are less funny, but here's our advice. Try to be both moral and funny.

[00:27:23] No, seriously. Try to be both moral and funny. And if you're not sure how, linguistic pun here and there. This should be like the new way how they rate the funniness of this paragraph should determine their sense of humor, essentially, like how good their sense of humor is.

[00:27:41] And you know, I read something about how there's a lot of nominalization in psychology. Just the idea of construct is a nominalization because it's not an actual word until psychologists made it a word from construct. So by this, you mean that we are putting labels

[00:28:05] on a group of phenomenon and giving them power to be things just by dint of the label. Reifying them through the label. Yes, in addition, I mean, I just love the idea that this is like good advice for not funny people

[00:28:19] to just try to sprinkle in a few inoffensive linguistic puns with your subordinates. Can I tell my mementos, Joe? Yeah, that's a perfect example. But you know, like to gain the likability in the work place is sort of an example of that, right? Like gain likability.

[00:28:44] Nobody talks like that. Nobody says I just need to gain likability or I think that person has low likability. And the suppress humor production like humor production is like a thing now. Like it's like some sort of like the factory is producing humor.

[00:29:05] But this, okay, this is a quirk of the attempted scientific language. But you know, it's not like you don't think that people like people more or less in the workplace. Or you're just making fun of the language, not the underlying construct itself that like some people are likable.

[00:29:21] This might not be a great example of the reifying of... Some people just are likable. You know, it's very loose and messy but it is a property. I would agree with that, yeah. But I think that's the thing is that you guys do this.

[00:29:35] It's infected your writing everywhere even when you're not just trying to convince us that something exists just by dint of like your change of the language. But by dint of, I used your... By dint, you used my... I'm learning. Maybe I should do this. Yeah.

[00:29:57] You're saying as opposed to the clarity and clear access to underlying natural phenomenon that philosophers have, their use of languages. I mean, I think like we... Mutatis mutandis. I'm saying mutatis mutandis. Right, exactly. Like I always knew that we did this

[00:30:19] and obviously if you do it, we do it worse. But yeah, it's becoming clear to me that we're not the only ones. Well, I am going directly against the advice of this and I am suggesting that you should compromise your values

[00:30:35] and violate your moral standards to be funny and gain likeability in the workplace. I think the workplaces would be a lot better if people compromise their values for the sake of funniness, not for profit, just for likeability. I'm just... So how many linguistic puns do I need

[00:30:51] inoffensive linguistic puns to gain a 9% increase in likeability? That's what I'm looking for, 9% increase. Not like I'm not trying to be too ambitious. I'm not going crazy. The mistake was to think that a linguistic pun ever is ever funny. Right.

[00:31:09] My guess is that that will decrease their likeability maybe by as much as a percent for each inoffensive linguistic pun. The only time I find linguistic puns hilarious is when they're in rap songs and therefore not called puns

[00:31:25] and I will end with the best little way in line I've ever heard. He said, real G's move in silence like lasagna. This is pretty good. I'm just trying to get it. Silent G. Real G's. Oh, for that one. God. I might have a high moral identity.

[00:31:48] Do you like me more? I do. You've increased 4% in likeability if this is a workplace of sorts. Your mock precision is insulting to me. I'm not a subordinate. I don't consider myself. Only sexually. All right. That's a malign, violent. Not benign, not funny.

[00:32:17] All right. We'll be right back. All right. We have a new sponsor. Today's episode is brought to you in part by Hello Fresh. Hello Fresh, America's number one meal kit. Get easy seasonal recipes and pre-measured ingredients delivered right to your door.

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[00:39:35] And we have a winner. I haven't... I don't know this. This is actually news to me. I haven't looked. All right, so in Tide for Last Place, fairness, and what he gives a shit about fairness. So unfair. They're probably low in moral identity.

[00:39:55] Random selection of email also Tide for Last. You know, decent numbers though. This was all... Like everyone got a good number of votes. Tragically, and I mean that's like... This is a tragedy. Measurement in psychology, philosophy of science was just two votes more than those.

[00:40:18] Then loyalty, just a few votes higher than that. And Richard Rorty's essay. But really it was a two topic race from the beginning. I should have asked you to predict which one. I would not have predicted this. So David Foster Wallace came in second.

[00:40:35] That's the one I thought would win. And the winner was the Gazanaga Split Brain Experiments including the recent replication. Oh wow. One by six votes over David Foster Wallace. You know what? If you can try to get Gazanaga on. Like that would be interesting. Yeah. Well...

[00:40:58] Yeah, no I mean I've seen him give a couple talks. Where's the split brains? I think so. I think so, I don't know. Anyway, that's so we'll do a topic on that. I'm psyched for that. I didn't think it would win but I'm excited. Yeah, me too.

[00:41:20] It's a thing that I never get bored of lecturing about because it's sort of mind blowing but like I'd like to dig a little bit deeper into it. Find out that everything I've been telling my students is bullshit. It's very related actually to the stories

[00:41:34] that we're about to cover in some ways. It is one of those things that makes you feel like your will isn't what you thought it was. Alright. Gazanaga's at Santa Barbara by the way. Oh, that's smart. Oh, you can also give us a one time donation

[00:41:49] on PayPal on our website and rate us on iTunes. We always love that. So thank you everybody. Thank you. Alright. Should we just do a quick recap of where we are in anxiety and dizziness of freedom? Just all the characters and the world. Yeah, yeah.

[00:42:10] How the world works especially. Obviously listen to the first steps. Yeah, listen to episode 173 that we had two weeks ago and read the story because now we're going to spoil something. Like I actually don't think like we spoiled anything that like didn't was bad to spoil

[00:42:29] but this last little twist is really nice and it's nice to find it out for yourself. So read the story if you haven't yet. But there are these prisms. Once they're activated splits the universe and allows you to contact your split self in that universe

[00:42:49] and this has become kind of a commodity and people are using it for all sorts of things sometimes to interrogate their choices if they had made different ones. Right, each prism is a portal into a different universe that universe might have created

[00:43:08] have been created by someone entirely different but it nonetheless exists now and there are companies that do their research to find out what's going on with a bunch of other people in those parallel universes and so long as those prisms haven't run out of energy

[00:43:22] to communicate with each other they can go up to like Tamler and say hey, you want to talk to Tamler in this universe? This is the one who decided not to get married and Tamler might give him a lot of money. Then we talked about these characters.

[00:43:39] There's Dana who is the leader of a support group of people trying, who are just struggling with this technology trying it's like a kind of an alcoholics anonymous for people who are having, they have unhealthy relationships with their prisms. And so she's kind of a psychologist.

[00:44:00] She's a therapist of a sort and of this specialized sort. We have Nan who works at one of these places and is a former drug user who was engaged in the scam to make someone in Dana's support group sell his prism so that they could make money

[00:44:25] by selling it to this celebrity whose husband died in a car crash in one universe but it was him that died in the other universe and so in each universe the surviving member of that marriage is different and so they can talk to each other.

[00:44:48] And that's rare and hard to find because the worlds are often so similar that those kinds of big things don't differ that much so maybe in one universe the person wouldn't have died but they would have been really fucked up

[00:45:03] and in this case it was a boon for the people with the crystal because they could have the two survivors talk to each other. And this guy Moro as we said is kind of an ambulance chaser he looks for these kinds of things to exploit

[00:45:16] and so when he happened over here that someone had a prism where the other person died in a car crash he knew that was a business opportunity. So Moro has been shot by somebody we didn't talk about this but when Moro is shot

[00:45:34] for something he had done in a previous scam the guy, he has this little face off this showdown with the guy and the gun and he says I don't believe you'll shoot me and the guy leaves, Nan is watching this am I right that it's Nan?

[00:45:53] No I don't think so. Yeah fuck. Why didn't you correct me? Because you gas lit me and I was like wait a sec it is... Nat. Nat. Fuck. I said Nan before but it's actually fucking Nat. And I didn't correct you. Anyway so Moro says to the guy

[00:46:15] you don't have the balls to shoot me and the guy puts his gun down and walks out and Nat says what are you doing that was crazy and he said I knew he didn't have it in him then the guy walks back he says what does it matter

[00:46:27] and he shoots him and what does it matter comes because he knew that in some universe he probably did shoot him so he might as well shoot him in this one. Right. Right right which is I think something central to the interesting part of the discussion

[00:46:44] that we alluded to before about the meaninglessness whether multiple universes gives meaninglessness. Because a certain core of people have taken this to be the ultimate kind of nihilist statement that nothing you do matters and so they engage in all sorts of self-destructive behavior because what does it matter

[00:47:02] in some universe they're probably doing something like this anyway. Right. And not to bring it up again but this is the well I am going to bring it up again. Rick and Rick and Morty has exactly this kind of despair because he's keenly aware

[00:47:17] that there are these multiple universes where every iteration of him exists in fact at one point he just transplants himself into a different universe. He knows that none of those people are special in his world there's just a nearby parallel universe where there are almost

[00:47:33] identical copies and he's entered into this sort of alcoholic despair. Because of this. And what's interesting about the part of the story that we didn't get to last time is it sort of undermines that idea at least in this universe this isn't

[00:47:49] a full on kind of infinite multi-verse kind of theory. Right. So what happens at the end is we've had a little back story. Dana had had this high school friendship with kind of a bad girl named Vanessa. Dana was sort of the good smart student

[00:48:11] who worked hard and Vanessa brought out a wilder side in her and as they were on a trip in Washington DC I think they were gathering Vicodin and they were going to take a bunch of Vicodin in this hotel room that was part of the student trip.

[00:48:30] I like to think that if you and I had gone to high school we would have done that. No I wouldn't have given it away for other members of the party it would have just been us splitting. That's true. Yeah they were going to give it away. Yeah.

[00:48:43] Just that like shows. But anyway a teacher burst in with this like surprise check on the hotel rooms and Dana, this is when she was in high school blurted out that they were all Vanessa's pills not hers. So you kind of threw Vanessa under the bus

[00:49:03] and that has haunted her because Vanessa then her life takes a bad turn after that she gets suspended from school and then she just she quit school she starts using drugs she starts committing small crimes and she comes back to Dana and Dana's been giving her money

[00:49:24] because she feels guilty for this. The previous time that she's given Vanessa money Vanessa has just wasted it probably on drugs or on whatever new thing she's into and so she comes back and so this is just this constant kind of albatross hanging over Dana

[00:49:43] but she thinks she deserves it because of what she did on that day in the hotel room. Yeah I mean because she what she did was something I feel really Yeah. It was shitty it was shitty. It was. So it's easy to see that this was

[00:49:58] the sort of the causal nexus of Vanessa's decline having been in that room and so of course she spends a story about how that was the moment. And you can also see how you know the way this universe works it takes it's a very small

[00:50:14] thing that will make you do something else. You know maybe if she had had one less beer she wouldn't have or if she had gotten a little more sleep the night before she wouldn't have done it but she did it in this world

[00:50:27] and it has it's haunted her as you're right it should have that she threw her friend under the bus like that and she's trying to atone that she's this Vanessa earlier in the story when she's trying to get Lyle to sell his prism and that can just tell

[00:50:48] that Vanessa is just someone who's always going to blame somebody else for their problems and someone who just refuses to take responsibility for their own troubles. Right. That's because Nat used to be that way too. And so she just knows that this that poor Dana is getting exploited

[00:51:08] here but her goal isn't at that point in any way to help Dana. So what happens at the end is Nat goes and offers to sell the prism this was the plan all along but Morrow is going to do it now she has

[00:51:24] to do it at least in her universe and she has she's starting to have second thoughts the support group's actually been good for her and she's starting to have second thoughts and she starts to wonder whether she should really charge this guy to be able to talk

[00:51:39] to his dead husband. Maybe she should give it for free maybe that would be good for her character he had this conversation with she had this conversation with Dana where Dana's was saying that just these little choices that you make can have reverberating effects

[00:51:55] on your character just make you into slightly better person so you'd be slightly more likely to make the choice next time and where we left it her hand was hovering over the button whether to charge the money or not charge the money. Yeah and she

[00:52:13] had said explicitly like he probably has fans who would never have charged him in fact there are probably lots of people who aren't even his fans who would never charge him right and the other woman was like yeah that's right so she's hovering and it just ends in

[00:52:27] like a cliffhanger of her finger sort of hovering over the button of whether to charge him or not and then we cut to Dana comes home and there is this package of all these prisms on each of the prisms there is some other version of Dana that is

[00:52:47] describing what happened with Vanessa and in each of these prisms Dana had made a different choice in one of them she had said the Vicodin pills were all hers in another one she had said that they both did it but in all the cases Vanessa

[00:53:05] life takes that same turn and Dana blames herself for it like in the case where she said the Vicodin pills were all hers she was like I shouldn't have done that because that was like a burden on Vanessa to know that I had sacrificed myself

[00:53:21] like that. Right, right like of course it fucked her up you know and made her feel guilty for the rest of her life. Exactly and then there are other so here's to quote from the book the other videos made no mention about being caught

[00:53:35] with the pills but they still followed a recognizable pattern in one Dana felt guilty about introducing Vanessa to a boy who got addicted to drugs in another it was a successful shoplifting incident that emboldened Vanessa to attempt more dramatic thefts all these Vanessa

[00:53:49] is getting stuck in patterns of self-destructive behavior all these blaming themselves for it no matter what actions they took if the same thing happens in branches where you acted differently then you aren't the cause. Yeah what Dana realizes is that fluke decision that I made

[00:54:09] or that key decision that I made didn't end up mattering this was how this was this was how it was going to go then she kind of realized as well maybe I don't have to keep funding this woman's destructive tendencies and it ends where

[00:54:27] Dana is kind of wondering how she got these prisms and she says Yeah and it's important to note that the very opening part of this story is there's a guy trying to sell his prism because it's older than a few days net gives

[00:54:43] this guy quote and he says oh I thought it would be more and she says no it'd have to be a lot older like if it were five years old then we'd be having a completely different conversation but when Dana is looking at these

[00:54:55] they're not just five years old some of them are 15 years old so we know immediately that these are worth a lot a lot of money Yeah she says these were the most valuable prisms that Dana data brokers owned and transmitting these videos had probably exhausted their paths

[00:55:11] who would have paid for this it must have cost a fortune so the implication is that Nat did accept the money and she used it for this to free Dana from this this burden that was it turned out not a justified burden. A couple of things

[00:55:31] that well there's a few things that I definitely want to talk to you about one is I get why Nat might think that it's not a good thing to sell for all this money to the grieving widowers but I don't get it that much like I don't think

[00:55:55] these are rich pop stars like this amount of money is nothing to them like is it really so shady that she's Yeah I agree. I mean if you want to justify it she had just had that conversation with Dana about like little choices that you know can

[00:56:15] Yeah and I think the right way to look at it as I was thinking about it now is not that she avoided the temptation of doing an ugly thing I think that it might be perfectly acceptable for her to do it but rather that she went out

[00:56:27] of her way to do an above and beyond thing and that's something that she's not known for and that was clearly I mean I think like she made the best choice that was a really generous thing to do with that money and she felt like Dana helped her

[00:56:43] understand her character and maybe get out of her own destructive spirals cycles this was her way of expressing gratitude and paying her back Yeah so somebody emailed us and said well I don't think she took the money what she probably did was talk to the pop star

[00:57:01] and say hey instead of me taking the money could you pay for this thing did you see that email? Yeah I was like why is that more plausible than like I would think that the pop star would just say no you take the money and you do

[00:57:17] Dana for love I don't know Dana for love I don't even know this woman just take the money and use it for that and also how would that guy know how to do that Nat is in this business she knows the data brokers to track down

[00:57:31] for this I mean I like the ending because it was very unexpected to show that Nat has learned something about how to start becoming a better person and also like it's a really interesting in some ways counterpoint the whole story has been about how these choices that people

[00:57:53] make have these massive implications on their lives or potential and in this case that's what I wanted to talk about it reverses that right it's like no actually a lot of these choices don't matter because your character this is more of a character as destiny kind of

[00:58:11] where it's your character that matters not these fluke decisions that you make or don't make right and character is something that is just far more deep into the grooves like this something that is it is more inherently you not something that is is a result of

[00:58:31] the fluttering in the wind like whatever or you know the presence of one more molecule of oxygen in the room that won't affect your character it is on the face of it inconsistent with at least some of the other examples in the book where there were singular decisions

[00:58:51] that seemed to lead to divergent lives like deciding whether or not to marry somebody but I think that after reading the whole story what you realize is that no it only appears as if that was the singular cause that changed the rest of somebody's life but it was

[00:59:11] probably something much deeper that you this person in world a like what was the name of the woman who was looking to see if she had gotten married Teresa Teresa thinks that it was only a matter of having made that decision or not

[00:59:27] but it was probably a matter of making many many decisions to be the kind of person who would be happily married not just the one so it's very tempting to use the counter factual like oh if only this had happened yeah well maybe the truth is

[00:59:43] I also think it's fine to be it doesn't have to be the same for everybody right it could be that in some cases a fluky atmosphere influence decision did have a big impact on somebody's life because it determined whether they got a job

[00:59:59] offer or where they went to school well and obviously a car who died in a car accident yeah I guess the car accident is the extreme example of that is you don't even you don't have a happy life you don't even have a life

[01:00:11] but I think the what the last story does is show that often your character really is going to be the thing that determines the pattern of your life even if the details are a little different there's a nice analogy that I'm struggling a little bit to make

[01:00:31] but there is a lot as we mentioned before there's a lot of discussion of weather and there is also I think something interesting to be said about the science of psychology and predicting because Cheng is pointing out that at first when this technology

[01:00:47] was first discovered there was a lot of attempt to try to figure out causally like this is now a natural experiment we can see universes in which this small thing diverges and so there were like historians who were trying to figure out

[01:01:01] what would make the causal difference between whatever you know in our world Donald Trump getting elected in another world something somebody else getting elected and so they were looking for this actual moment what was the phrase used the for want of a nail kingdom was lost moment

[01:01:23] historians but the truth was that things were so complex that these systems were so highly complex that there was no real way to determine what it was that had actually caused anything so they kind of gave up on this prediction right they couldn't the science was not down

[01:01:43] whether it's because of fundamental indeterminacy or because we just didn't have the computational ability to be able to predict these things it just wasn't as obvious as you might think cause and effect didn't follow in the same way that's interesting and a lot of philosophy of history struggles

[01:02:01] with this are there laws of history or are I do things happen in a more contingent haphazard fashion I mean I think that the best my favorite way of reading this is that character will determine certain patterns of behavior it almost gives a kind of fixed character

[01:02:23] view of you know like a the anti-situationist kind of understanding of character especially with that Dana story because Vanessa is going to be Vanessa none of the stories showed like deep character changes between people and other like the more in the other world is still

[01:02:45] like a scam artist the nat in the other world seems kind of like the nat in this world the whore hay has just probably still angry but just didn't slash the tires and so like there we don't get a real sense that these

[01:03:01] prisms have like you don't even recognize who you're talking to in another world I mean part of it is there's a sampling there's a heavy sampling bias because you only get a prism when there is a universe where somebody who is very very

[01:03:19] identical to you also gets a prism on the other side right one way to think of it is it's creating the split and so the person that splits is so already so close to being who you are that the things that happen within the

[01:03:33] next few months aren't going to differ widely but there are some prisms from 10 years ago like the Vanessa one the Dana ones probably at least 10 or 15 years ago so you might think that there might be people who in those prisms talk to a version of themselves that they

[01:03:49] barely recognize. That's right yeah that's right if you take a 16 year old and then the universe splits there and then the 30 year old is talking in one universe that has split off 14 years ago to another version of themself you know you might think

[01:04:11] that might be somebody who has a very different kind of character but at least in the case that we saw they're very similar characters even though their universe split off a long time ago Dana is still someone who blames herself when she shouldn't blame herself

[01:04:29] and Vanessa is still someone who won't take responsibility and will look for other people and say it's their fault I agree I agree that's why the Dana and Vanessa being 15 years ago that's the best example of this it's just that the other

[01:04:45] ones like with Jorge that you were saying those aren't really good evidence those are people who just split a month ago or whatever so we might still have an open there might be an open question as to whether they would defer and I think Chang says this

[01:04:59] in the story notes too I get the sense that the message to the extent that there's a message in the story that your character is more fixed than you might think given this technology and this reality and that it's not going to be that that changes that much

[01:05:19] it's just the details of your life that might change because of that and like the Jorge story it's not that he had great character in all these other existences and bad and bad character in this one it's just something in all of them

[01:05:33] he was pissed off enough to hit to slash tires and in some like it just whatever the smallest little thing he might have gotten a cell phone call at the moment of the decision like could have changed it right or whatever

[01:05:47] pushed him over the edge the straw that broke his back wasn't present in the other universe but he is still the same Jorge this episode is also brought to you by one of our favorite sponsors givewell at givewell.org Tamler did you know that it was Canadian Thanksgiving

[01:06:05] or as we record it's going to be Canadian Thanksgiving No I didn't I'm not sure I knew that they had a Canadian Thanksgiving How very parochial of you Givewell cares about the entire world and since I have Canadians in my family I know

[01:06:21] that Monday is Thanksgiving and that means that it is the beginning of the holiday season and this holiday season what we're asking and what givewell is asking is for you to think a little bit about others Givewell conducts in depth evaluations and shares the most effective charities

[01:06:37] they've found more than 50,000 donors have trusted Givewell including me I don't know about you Tamler Me too yeah I'm a good human being have trusted Givewell to direct their donations and together they've given over 500 million dollars to the organizations that Givewell recommends Givewell spends over 20,000 hours

[01:06:59] annually researching charity I don't spend 20,000 hours doing anything Doesn't that mean they're experts? I think they are experts I like to call them the spreadsheet nerds of charity and there are just some things that you want to trust to other people to do

[01:07:15] Get your bang for your charity buck that's what Givewell is all about That's right get that little shot of good feeling that you get when you know that you're helping others and when you go to Givewell you know that the money that you give really is helping others

[01:07:33] Givewell has a rigorous and transparent process to make sure that these charities will use your donations as effectively as possible So this holiday season think a little bit about people outside your scope of concern and consider giving to Givewell Now there's no URL or special code

[01:07:51] when you give to Givewell just let them know that you came from very bad wizards that way they can know that you came from us because we really like them as a sponsor And we'll get a little runoff of warm fuzzy feeling

[01:08:05] That's kind of why I like doing Givewell at Take It I feel good about it So thank you very much Always about you always comes down to you I am the only person that truly exists in this universe So an extra special thanks on this holiday season to

[01:08:23] Givewell for sponsoring very bad wizards Thanks to Givewell Should we talk about the other story and then bring it back to a general discussion because both of them are very free will focus. The other story is very short You can get online from Nature.com

[01:08:39] Yeah, it's very short I do want to ask you before we wrap up that other story Do you think that Jorge across all six worlds would score the same on the moral identity scale? Yeah, the constant There's a new kind of reliability, Parallel Universe

[01:08:55] reliability. That's the holy grail now for psychology is finding that kind of reliability You still have the validity problem but Look at you all sciency I know you guys, you don't like to think about that I'm so glad you didn't become this like well actually kind of nerd

[01:09:15] 10, 5 years ago because I don't know all these papers we wouldn't have talked about Social psychology just wouldn't exist right now if I had I would have taken it down already You would have bodied it Oh Look how good I've done with philosophy So this other story

[01:09:39] is just very simple that there's this box that lights up one second before you press a button and it just always does that It's the simplest It's the most simple over and over again I've said and probably you've said there is no empirical demonstration that free will

[01:09:57] doesn't exist or that does exist like that is a metaphysically that is impossible It's just a metaphysical question not a physical question. Ted Chang came up with one Did he though? I don't know Yes and it What we'll talk about is whether he did Yeah So this box

[01:10:21] lights up He gives a nice description of how people react initially to it where they're like I'm going to beat it and they immediately reach to press it but as soon as they even have that thought the light comes on and they spend like three days

[01:10:37] just trying to rubik's cube or something trying to figure it out like how to beat it and they can't It's called a predictor by the way Yeah it's called a predictor and it doesn't predict anything except it's an interesting kind of like lib ad experiment

[01:10:55] analog in some ways and there's just no way to fool it it says and this guy is writing this from the future we don't know exactly how but he's writing this from the future Did you say by the way how the predictor works? No but that's important

[01:11:13] Yeah you want to read that Yeah so the predictor works by actually it says the heart of each predictor is a circuit with a negative time delay it sends a signal back in time the full implications of the technology will become apparent later

[01:11:29] when negative delays are greater than a second to achieve but that's not what this warning is about he frames this as a warning to the reader the immediate problem is that the predictor demonstrates that there's no such thing as free will so the light is telling you

[01:11:41] that you're going to press the button and it knows that because it has a little mini time machine that goes a second ahead and it knows to send it back, that information back in time so that it will light up if and only if

[01:11:55] you press the button in a second So people are just sitting there trying to defeat the predictor by psyching it out like I'm about to... No I didn't turn on That's such a plausible description of how people would react to this if it was out there

[01:12:13] It's sort of like the gold dress, blue dress kind of thing where you're trying to Have you seen these robots that play rock paper scissors? Yeah I actually get very well against it Oh there's one that beats you every single time It does it by having a camera

[01:12:33] that can read what shape you're forming your hand into so quickly that it actually comes up with a sign That's good But that's another... That's a good example, we talked about it with like poker when we... It might seem like it's undermining your free will

[01:12:51] but it's really just like a really advanced computer that can detect quickly what you're going to throw And there's not... It's not clear to me based on just what you read that this isn't a little like that too it just uses time travel rather than some fancy

[01:13:09] way of looking at your hand shape Right? Yeah I mean I think that's my intuition too that look you're going to make a decision Whether you make it freely this doesn't show Let's say that free will exists and you have to choose between pressing the button or not

[01:13:27] some crazy libertarian fucking ghost in the machine free will exists and you choose with that free will whether to press the button or not That predictor box is going to light up only when you press the button It doesn't... It can't speak to whether or not

[01:13:45] you chose to press that button freely Like I almost feel like I must be missing something Obviously if somebody can come from the future they will know what I've done if they've been watching me Right? Like... What kind of free will would be possible

[01:14:01] that a time traveler from the future wouldn't be able to come back and then predict what you are going to do I think that's right The sneaking in of the questioning of the free will has nothing to do with the box The box is only a handy demonstration

[01:14:17] The sneaky part of determinism is that there is a future Right? The future exists that somebody can see that it is your future That alone is the thing that would unsettle people Because you could have a metaphysical view that the future just simply

[01:14:41] is not a thing to be known The future just hasn't happened Right, but let's say you had this view that your choice determines what the future will be So your choice means that the present branches off in a certain way and there will still be a future though

[01:15:01] It's not like time stops once you make a choice There is still going to be a future And the question, as I understand this kind of free will that they are talking about is whether your choice is the thing that branches it

[01:15:19] or determines that it would branch that way This gets to the heart of these two stories juxtaposed because We haven't finished just saying what happened So this guy who is writing this he takes exactly the opposite view of what this box shows There have always been arguments showing

[01:15:41] that free will is an illusion Some based on hard physics others based on pure logic that is not a free will but it's a free will that is not a free will that is not a free will but no one ever really accepts the conclusion

[01:15:57] The experience of having free will is too powerful for an argument to overrule What it takes is a demonstration and that is what a predictor provides So he takes it that this irrefutably shows there is no free will in a way that convinces

[01:16:15] like you can't have this naive of you about free will and be a reliable narrator and I would, again I feel like I'm missing something but my experience of free will doesn't preclude even my naive experience of free will doesn't preclude that I will have a choice

[01:16:35] and that there will be a 5 minutes from now and if somebody you know exists then they could come back and see what I'm going to do before I do it This is why I think that people who talk about free will want so badly to

[01:16:55] refer to operational life free will as the ability to have done otherwise and I think that Chang I don't think Chang is being an unreliable narrator here because he goes and lays out like the consequences that people just lose their lives like a girdle sentence

[01:17:13] that crashes the logical system Wait, but this doesn't show that you can't do otherwise? No, no but they, well what it shows is that you never did other than what the thing told, said that you were going to do right so it doesn't, I agree

[01:17:29] it doesn't but I think that the subjective experience is that because this machine knows exactly what you're going to do it tells the subjective ability to have done what the computer says you're going to do and therein lies the trick because the computer is only cataloging

[01:17:51] and this I think is what you're getting at the computer is only cataloging your choice the computer isn't predicting from first principles what you're going to do the computer is simply cataloging what you chose to do Right, so it's really just because they have time travel

[01:18:07] they don't really know what you're going to choose but it doesn't mean that your choice didn't determine the future and there is no way to show whether or not you could have chosen the other thing like there just simply isn't a way because

[01:18:21] you have closed off and in essence you've closed off a bunch of branches by making the choice that you did to press the button if they could do this without time travel I would get it right, if they could just do it just by scanning like your body

[01:18:35] and then in the state of the universe or something then that would make sense to me but the fact that they use time travel just makes it seem like I don't get why anyone thinks that this is a demonstration of no free will I mean look imagine the

[01:18:51] freest existence where you are a person faced with any number of choices like a choose your own adventure book but let's make it like a branching tree right, like a circulatory system of like branches within branches within branches at the end of your life

[01:19:09] there will only have been one trail that is your life only one set of decisions that is your life that presumably if you believe in free will you chose freely, the fact that all of those other branches are unpopulated cannot show that you did not make them freely

[01:19:27] right because you can still only make one choice at any given time and so yeah and so if someone is at the end of that branch can travel back to the beginning of the branch then they are going to know what you're going to do

[01:19:43] there are two different, really different views of the universe in these two stories one is the one that I described where there is maybe a whole set of decisions that you make but there is one route right that everybody navigates these tree branches

[01:19:59] are up in one place and only has one yeah one pattern the anxiety that is the freedom story is let's imagine that all of those branches are populated with versions of you and now the question is does that say anything about free will

[01:20:17] so you have one in which there is like a strict only one possible pattern, only one universe and the other one where every universe is possible and everyone has made every decision does that go any my sense is that that doesn't cut either way either yeah

[01:20:35] that's the big question, just to finish up this story people don't handle this world with the maturity I think that they handled the previous world, you know the anxieties of Disney and freedom at least some of them just become completely paralyzed

[01:20:51] this is like a Borges story a little bit it reminded me of like a library of Babbo where some people just couldn't handle just the concept of the library and the formed cults or but then what he says is some people realizing that their choices

[01:21:07] don't matter refuse to make any choices at all like a legion of Bartleby the Scriveners they no longer engage in spontaneous action eventually a third of those who play with the predictor must be hospitalized because they won't feed themselves the end state is a kinetic

[01:21:23] mutism a kind of waking coma and I like this part doctors try arguing with the patients while they still respond to the conversation we had all been living happy active lives before they reason and we hadn't had free will then either why should anything

[01:21:41] change no action you took last month was anymore for freely chosen the one you take today a doctor might say you can still behave that way now this is partly our point right the patients invariably respond but now I know and some of them never say anything again

[01:21:59] it's kind of a funny story actually that's the last thing they ever say because now they don't just engage in conversations anymore you know if you've ever taught undergrads to if you're threatened the free will of undergrads with a compelling account of determinism

[01:22:15] which I think we all do at some point even if what we want even if we then go on to give them some sort of compatibilism or whatever we gotta get them to feel this it's so reliable that one of them

[01:22:27] will say well why don't I just sit at home all day yeah or why don't I just go out and start and just massacre 50 people after seeing Joker you know yeah I mean like the way that it's written the perspective of the person is

[01:22:41] these are the rational people but you know like pretend you have free will he says my message to you pretend you have free will it's essential that you behave as if your decisions matter even though you know that they don't which is an interesting

[01:22:57] yeah and this is sort of like the part of the essay where it's like you know make a few non-offensive linguistic puns this is the advice part like suggestions in light of the implications of the study it's essential that you behave as if your decisions matter

[01:23:15] even though you know they don't it's such an extrapolation there's this time traveling box that knows when I'm going to do one totally insignificant thing my decisions don't matter how did people make that leap this is why I I'm not this story is is a notch

[01:23:39] what's the saying too clever too clever by by half too clever by half by half just by half this is what happens when you're raised with immigrants I he ends and he ends with so why did I do it he's talking about how he's from the future

[01:24:03] because I had no choice so I mean I understand that but don't you think this is an unreliable narrator I was did not like not take his philosophy seriously I would like to think that but there's nothing in the story like a Borgesian hint of unreliability here

[01:24:25] you know I wish that he had given us more of a hint because it's also completely consistent with Chang actually believing that this is the ultimate threat for you well not if you know that he's a smart guy and that these are I meant the text itself

[01:24:41] there's nothing in the text itself so I'm giving him the benefit of doubt because of anxieties the dizziness of freedom and yeah I mean all his stories but it is you're right you could read it straightforwardly but the way it's described

[01:25:01] and the people's reaction to it just doesn't seem plausible to me and whether Ted Chang is aware of this or not maybe that's a flaw in the story too I just don't buy that people would react like this like this seems like a fidget spinner

[01:25:17] it'll be something that'll be it'll be trendy for like two months and then people will just get over it right and I think that this is exactly like in my experience I'm convinced that some form of determinism is true but I don't think it has anything to do

[01:25:35] with my daily life and I certainly haven't stopped believing in agency like my day to day agency if I did maybe I would be like these people in a you know catatonic state but I agree with you our belief in freedom of some sort is too stubborn

[01:25:57] it's not going we cannot this doesn't this is my I don't feel like I've expressed this strongly enough this doesn't go against anything about like you said earlier you could be a radical libertarian and still this wouldn't trouble you the fact that this box could exist

[01:26:17] here's the metatrol then that Chang is doing you know all of the talk about how neuroscience has demonstrated that free will doesn't exist and you know we have Green Cohen who argue that neuroscience at least can convince people and people really are convinced I think that

[01:26:35] Chang is not wrong that people would be like tossed into despair at least temporarily if they had evidence that they thought was a conclusive defeater of the notion of freedom and he's saying this is kind of like MRI charts for these people right they are tricked

[01:26:55] into thinking that free will doesn't exist yeah they're wrong they're wrong like I think they're wrong this is like the lebedic experiment of it's time like it just gets people who aren't thinking clearly to think that free will doesn't exist maybe I just

[01:27:11] wish he had given us a little bit more a little bit more of a wink wink it's like a hoax article kind of you know and he got it published in nature I god damn I know but I like it but I wanted

[01:27:27] to ask you about then like the difference between this universe with only one branch and the in the multiverse in the other story with multiple multiple branches do we know that this universe only has one branch because well all we know is that there's no access

[01:27:43] there's no mention and no access to the other branches right but there could be other branches there could be other branches but it's certainly not in the way that the crystal works where pressing the button versus not pressing the button lets you up into two different universes

[01:27:57] and there's no mention of it so like let's for the sake of my question assume that this is a one but a fully deterministic universe where where it's sort of no access to anything like a parallel universe versus this one where you know

[01:28:11] that every at some point every wait time out yeah one branch and deterministic aren't the same right like it could be that everyone has free choice and yeah when they exercise it right yeah that's the point I made at the very beginning but if determinism is true

[01:28:31] then right I'm only trying to juxtapose it with this view because I'm curious what you think about what the multiverse view offers because I can imagine an argument that says okay if I David choose to press button a or button B I have

[01:28:51] the full ability to press either of those when I press button a it will branch into this universe and when I press button B it will branch into this universe so the presence of universe A and B are themselves evidence that I could have done otherwise

[01:29:07] well so that's not the anxiety as the dizziness of freedom world right because it's not your decision that branches the universe it's just no I know I know I'm yeah I'm but you get what I'm saying right yeah I guess and maybe your decision

[01:29:23] to just activate it is the thing mm-hmm just activated at all is the decision you mean imagine that every decision yeah you made was tied to the prison yeah so what does that say about your free will yeah does it say anything so so

[01:29:41] on the one hand I think that the presence of a universe A and B that split from David prime yeah splits into a and B it seems as if person in universe B can say I could have done otherwise because

[01:29:57] the end the way that you know is that there's a universe over there where I did right does that provide if the multiverse is true and our decisions split the universe does that provide evidence that we are free I don't think so because because the

[01:30:13] you know let's say that the multiverse theory is true that wouldn't that wouldn't say anything about why we make the decisions that we make and so even if it's like some quantum random quantum event that causes me to make decision that branches off the universe one

[01:30:29] way and or another way if that's something that I'm not this is I am a source in compatibility maybe here or the fact that it was random and could have been otherwise doesn't say that I could have done otherwise it just says that I could have been otherwise

[01:30:45] I agree it says nothing at all about the what's special to a libertarian notion of free will is the cause of those splits not at all the presence of them or the lack of them it is simply the cause of the decisions

[01:31:01] that are being made whether the universe splits or not doesn't matter so are these stories then less about the philosophy of freedom and responsibility and more about how people react to certain technologies that seem to bear on them and maybe

[01:31:15] seem to bear on them more than they actually do yeah anxiety is the dizziness of freedom to me is a really interesting study into the way in which we use counterfactual thinking to both determine what causes are and emotionally right like so there's a lot of research

[01:31:33] in social psychology about counterfactual thinking and regret and how the feeling of regret comes from this comparison of a world in which I chose something else and to have evidence that that world in fact exists is just a really really cool way of showing you what

[01:31:53] you might regret and what you might not regret and so it is like we've said about Chang before it is really just technology in the service of making an interesting point about what human beings are like and how we can be completely filled with regret and guilt over

[01:32:11] something that we may not we shouldn't be filled over with regret and guilt just like the technology in the memory story we read is just simply pointing out something about memory and how we deal with it it's not really about the technology right but that reveals something about

[01:32:29] our character the way we might represent what we've done in a much better light than what like it revealed something deep about character that I think would be surprising to people because we really are subject to that bias of remembering ourselves as better people than we were

[01:32:51] in this case it's interesting the stuff that strikes me as most plausible has nothing to do with freedom and responsibility it's more like well what if what if Esquire had published that short story like what would my life be like then it's not that I think

[01:33:09] it's not related to any choice that I made or any decision it's more some choice that somebody else made or you know some event that happened that I had no control over but still could have made a big difference in my life you know

[01:33:25] you could have been a contender I could have been somebody instead of this philosopher which is what I am yeah no I think that that's I mean I think that's right I think that some of them would be centered like if you could

[01:33:39] peer into the prisms would you choose prisms where it was something that you chose that differed or would it be something that happened to you that differed and that might say something interesting about the kind of person that you are I suspect that some people would really want

[01:33:55] to know like what if I had won the lottery and other people might want to know like what if I had chosen to go to college right what if I had not like the grad school offer that came as a big surprise

[01:34:05] to me what if I had said no like what would my life be like that was a decision but it's even that decision I think it's not that different than you know well what if they had an I hadn't like gotten accepted off the deep

[01:34:19] off the wait list you know like is another interesting question I think so like in other words if you have one prism where I chose not to do it and another prism where the applicant above me on the waiting list decided to accept instead of

[01:34:33] turn it down like those prisms to me are the same kind of really what I want to know is what would my life be like if for whatever reason I hadn't gone to Duke University yeah so is it I mean maybe it's saying something

[01:34:49] just interesting about the way in which we view looking at decisions retrospectively like this is informing how we go about making decisions for our future because I think we're doing something like simulating a world in which we chose this versus that

[01:35:09] when we're making the decision right so I am currently as I told you before recording deciding I think deciding to get a dog yes great and great I'll run a poll for what's name it and I could you know in pondering

[01:35:25] this is I've been pondering for a while I tend to think like okay what's my life like without the dog future future future without the dog and what's my life with the dog future future with the dog and I'm using this sort of counterfactual yeah well

[01:35:39] and turns out less likely to die of a heart attack as that would convince you you know what not I don't think explicitly but I think that it had a huge influence on me maybe it pushed me over the edge

[01:35:55] I mean I have been trying to be more healthy and I don't want to die maybe it's my fear of death that is pushing me to get a dog well whatever you know it's like the senator who's now pro gay rights it doesn't matter what the reason

[01:36:09] is but you know because it's gay like as long as you're doing the right thing you know I don't care it doesn't say something about my character if I only get a dog to get attention from the ladies well no it does but

[01:36:23] at least you'll have a dog so I think we do like I guess what I'm saying is I think we do think in counterfactuals it's interesting to think about whether you would get caught up in looking at your retrospective counterfactuals I think that I wouldn't

[01:36:41] like I don't think that I would want to I think that I would definitely prefer a machine that gave me future counterfactuals but would you right well right and then I could just then you could make choices based on that but here's the question

[01:36:57] let's say you were going to look at some past counterfactual would it matter to you whether it was a counterfactual that was a result of a decision you made or a counterfactual that was just the result of some lucky break or a not break

[01:37:15] or a decision that somebody else made that's a really interesting question and before I answer I just want to say that like whatever anybody asks me so how did you get into psychology it always feels like there's two different ways of telling the story one

[01:37:31] that's a set of decisions that I made and the other one is just like you know and I had this mentor who pointed me in this red direction I think that I find those stories more entertaining and I kind of would rather look at the events

[01:37:43] around me changing like not my own decisions that's more boring to me yeah I mean like or to me it's like it's just not that big a difference but maybe it's because I don't feel like there's a lot of decisions that were so close and were so

[01:38:01] agonizing for me that I made in my life that it's like tormenting me what if I had made the different decisions like the decision to get opposed to my wife was kind of fluky but it would have probably happened if it didn't happen then it would probably

[01:38:17] have happened sooner or later you know right well maybe calling a decision is sort of framing it wrong in terms of what I'm trying to communicate about like the how it's a more fun story to think about the things that weren't under control

[01:38:35] like you know so I think we want to hear more about say you and Jen there's two stories one is that like you both happen to be rushing in to look at the same painting because the museum was about to close and were it not

[01:38:49] for that you wouldn't have met that's so much more interesting than you put in all your information on match.com and she popped out cause the counter fact you're like oh man your life could have been super different like had you guys not been both there

[01:39:03] at the same time like that's interesting it's so funny you know we met before all of that but we have one of those stories that I won't bore listeners with that was very lucky and probably led to us getting together and it is a fun story to tell

[01:39:21] way more fun than anything that would trace back to like a decision of. And so in some ways I think that this anxiety is the dizziness of freedom and what's the name of the memory story? Truth of fact truth of fiction

[01:39:35] truth of fact truth of fiction. No truth of fact truth of feeling. Truth of feeling. Yeah. They're both story they're both about the stories we tell about our own lives they're both fundamentally about how we go about constructing this sense of who we are whether it is by

[01:39:55] the memories that we choose to distort or keep or by the decisions that we focus on is you know like the counterfactuals that haunt us. Yeah. They are you know determining I mean telling the story of my life

[01:40:11] by telling a series of decisions that could have gone one way or the other is one way you know like. But telling the story of your life by a series of other just factors that I had no control over is a different way of telling it. Yeah.

[01:40:25] That would be interesting you could use this as like I'm sure like develop a construct for this but how people may be part of the reason that we like those kinds of stories better is we don't put we don't have this narrative of ourselves that we've made

[01:40:41] these choices that have made us who we are and that those choices that led me to you know reach the position that I'm in and that's just not how that's not like important to us but I bet it is some people. Oh for sure yeah I think that

[01:40:57] yeah I think that is a big individual difference the way that people tell stories I've actually was trying to convince a student wants to code for Oscar acceptance speeches or any Academy Award acceptance speeches to see what people say because a lot of people will

[01:41:11] give spend all their time up there giving credit to others if they had never done this and some people don't some people really do focus on on their hard work you know and I find that to be just a bit annoying but it might reduce their likeability but

[01:41:29] yeah no there is a pull yourself up by your bootstraps narrative that is appealing and I think for the people it's just that way more people believe it about themselves than it's actually true of I mean it's not true of nobody that they literally pulled themselves

[01:41:47] up by their bootstraps everybody had something but there are people who really yeah it's funny that we so why do I like I like the stories where somebody was you know say an actor was discovered and we're not for the kindness of this person or the this

[01:42:03] chance meeting with this person they wouldn't have succeeded I like that but it should threaten me a little bit to think that success is is due to luck but it doesn't really and maybe that's because I believe like Vanessa they would have ended up there anyway yeah

[01:42:21] right you know yeah I mean I kind of feel if you feel lucky already then it's not a threat that luck has brought you where you are because you already thought that to begin with I think it's those people who are very much opposed

[01:42:39] to that idea that it's luck and fluke and you know this is the people that Bob Frank writes about right they they don't seem to understand that the break that there were a lot of breaks that they had in order to make the decisions that

[01:42:53] they made that were successful and that's right you know the locus of their lives is the like little circles around their decision points and they're ignoring the huge circles around everything else that like allowed them to get those points that's interesting and so when I get

[01:43:09] a crit in anxieties that is dizziness of freedom and I get a crystal that is that somebody else created right where there is a person there is my twin on that universe it's funny that they go looking for the decisions that were made

[01:43:27] rather than all of the other things that might have like happened like chance meeting a chance encounter or you know being particularly late to an appointment or something um you don't hear any of that and it wasn't until now

[01:43:43] that I even thought that that's what you would look for but if that truly is how life narratives makes sense then well no there was one story we didn't talk about it but there was one story about a woman who had like a craft shop and in one

[01:44:01] of the universes just she made the craft the same little necklace or whatever in both in both universes but in one somebody like made like found it and made her a star you know so it was like the actor and the other one and that

[01:44:19] was kind of tormenting to her uh that's not fair like this person yeah that was a great one that was a great one because why is it not fair because I made the same decision in both universes right exactly how are you gonna tell me

[01:44:35] that in that universe like I'm successful in this universe I'm a no-man and that's just better off you're not knowing that like right like that's where the prism you know is definitely something that you're not there's no is there no upside to having a prism

[01:44:49] where you just got a lucky break that you didn't get in this world you know I don't know at the end of these two episodes hopefully you've gotten something out of it but if there's one thing that you should have

[01:44:59] gone out of it is by exhalation by Ted Chang yes I'd love to have Ted Chang on and again if anybody knows him I assume that he's been too busy to respond to the many many people who have personally reached out to him he must be very busy

[01:45:15] because you know he produces like one story every four years hear that you've been called out Ted Chang I do support him for president though oh wait can I keep that in is that a benign violation you can keep that in I know the difference alright

[01:45:41] join us next time on Very Bad Wizard