Episode 236: Your Outie Is Skilled at Lovemaking (With Paul Bloom)

[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] What kind of a show are you guys putting on here today? Welcome to Very Bad Wizards, I'm Tamler Sommers from the University of Houston. Dave, the Decoding the Gurus guys finally released their episode with us and now I'm getting

[00:01:18] hassled by people mad at me for questioning mask policies and not pleasuring myself to Anthony Fauci briefings. Is it finally time for me to start my own sub-stack? I feel like you could. You could start a sub-stack devoted to what I'm guessing based on your performance on Decoding

[00:01:40] the Gurus would be Joe Rogan fan fiction. Like Joe Rogan Scooby-Doo. Yeah, exactly. Joe Rogan Scooby-Doo with no masks because even wearing a mask for a disguise would clearly be against your libertarian policies because it might prevent COVID by mistake. I don't know what dedicated to...

[00:02:04] How easily you give up the freedoms of American citizens. The Rogan thing is funny because I'm the only one of all of you guys who actually doesn't listen and never has a tattoo of Rogan. It was amazing that you were defending him.

[00:02:19] And I was like, wait, of all of the four of us, clearly I actually watch Rogan way more than they did. They watch it for work, but it was a fun episode even though you clearly couldn't stop fawning over Kirsten Dunst and... Wait, what? Fawning over Kirsten Dunst.

[00:02:35] In the Decoding the Gurus episode? She's not even the master. No, yeah, no. Who were they saying that you were making jokes about hand jobs? Amy Adams. That wasn't me, though. Who was making jokes? Was it me? I think it was you. Yeah. I have no memory.

[00:02:54] We'll see. There you go. This is how professionals do it. We record and we forget. And then we only learn what we said when the Twitter backlash happens. Exactly. Well, we have a very special guest for the second segment to talk about the

[00:03:09] first season of Severance, Paul Bloom. It's almost like he's not a special guest. He's just a regular guest. But Paul is not joining us for this segment. Oh, man. I don't know why. I really don't know why. Because as someone who fancies himself an evolutionary psychologist,

[00:03:24] I would have thought that he would want to jump in to discuss this article. The paper in the top evolutionary psychology journal, right? I actually don't know what the top. I googled like top evolutionary psychology journal and it appears to be this one,

[00:03:40] at least according to some metrics. But yeah, this is a paper called the effect of female orgasm frequency on female mate selection, a test of two hypotheses. See, science falsifying hypotheses. Daniel Lakin's approved. I can't wait to talk about this.

[00:03:59] But at first I thought this was I think I texted you maybe the quintessential evolutionary psychology study, like the platonic form of right in the cave. It's in the cave. No, it's like a shadow. It's casting its big shadow.

[00:04:14] I emerged from the cave and saw like the true form of an evil psych study. Just by true. It's like an algorithm that generated an ebopsych topic. But it's but then I thought like it's actually maybe not because it's it's more

[00:04:29] like what if we combined all the problems and obsessions of evolutionary psychology research with all the problems of social psychology experiments. Exactly. I must admit that I thought something very similar. So yes, this is an article attempting to test some theories about the evolution of female orgasm.

[00:04:52] And so the background really is that people have talked about female orgasm and whether or not it might have an evolutionary function because since the dawn of time, people have been wondering because, you know, you could say very

[00:05:06] clearly that the male orgasm in as much as it's tied to ejaculation plays a role in promoting reproduction. Because big role. Big role. Like probably the most important thing, you know, getting. But the function of the female orgasm, the mythical female orgasm is. Yeah, supposedly exists. Right.

[00:05:31] Is so this is actually you. You shared with me this write up in Psypost. Well, because I was read it. This this came to us from read this author main Cara Yakubian says, while the male orgasm is necessary for sexual reproduction, the female orgasm is not.

[00:05:46] Thus, some scholars have argued that the female orgasm is unlikely to be an adaptation, but rather the evolutionary byproduct of the male orgasm. Others have emphasized the adaptive benefits of the female orgasm. Why would it be the evolutionary byproduct of the male orgasm?

[00:06:00] Well, so that the idea is that because we have just we share physiology in as much as, you know, the in utero, for instance, the fetus develops, what is the clitoris turns into the tip of the penis and all of the wiring is sort of there.

[00:06:17] So to the extent that you wired that evolution wired orgasm into males, it would just come along for females. They just got it for free. Exactly. Right. They didn't have to do all the work of. So so these authors, the one step they take is let's just say

[00:06:35] that it's an adaptation. Let's discard the byproduct and let's see. If it serves a function to the extent that it does, which function would it serve? And so they pit two hypotheses about the function against each other.

[00:06:48] So the Mr. Right Hypothesis, which I'll just read from their paper, from the article, according to the Mr. Right Hypothesis, females use a male's ability to bring her to orgasm as a piece of information that helps her decide his value as a long term

[00:07:04] mate, a male's ability to bring a female to orgasm may function as a signal of his care and concern for the females needs and desires. Thus, by caring enough to address a female's emotional and sexual needs, a male may also be demonstrating his more general willingness

[00:07:21] to stay with her and invest in her and invest her offspring. So that's a kind of standard kind of evolutionary psychology hypothesis. It's like, oh, well, that's just about the investment, the parental investment. But then I love this next little bit, the main evidence

[00:07:37] in support of the Mr. Right Hypothesis for female orgasm comes from Gallup et al 2014, who found that partner family income predicted female orgasm frequency, which was still true after controlling for the partner attractiveness. So like what? How would that be evidence for what they said?

[00:07:59] Like, what does the income have to do with it? There's a piece missing in that being evidence for the Mr. Right Hypothesis. Right. The leap, I guess, is that so as you say, male parental investment

[00:08:12] in all of these sexual selections sort of studies is thought to play a big role. And so the female has to choose between. So in short term mating, you could go for like the good looks and the good

[00:08:24] genetics, but in long term mating, what you really want is the male to stick around to provide for resources and time and protection for the offspring. Because that way your offspring has a greater chance of surviving and reproducing themselves.

[00:08:39] And so I think the link is just being a good provider. So so to the extent that the man has more money, the woman is secure that her offspring will have a shot at success. And I'm just trying to describe. Without endorsement.

[00:08:55] And somehow the the orgasm is a signal. I guess because there's no income in the environment of evolutionary adaptiveness, as they like to say, right? Like not in that sense. So it's yeah, I still not totally getting it.

[00:09:12] Like no, it's because it's because it feels very like a very hand wavy, tenuous relationships. I guess the idea is that there would be a correlation between males who are good at providing resources and males who are good at giving your orgasms.

[00:09:31] So to the extent that the ability to give you an orgasm, as to the extent that it signals your underlying parental investment, then I guess good, good parental investment males would also be good at orgasms.

[00:09:48] It's still not clear to me that that would at all be a mechanism by which you get to learn about their parental investment. But Gordon Gallup, the guy who wrote that article, I guess, is the guy who famously

[00:10:02] famously did these studies where he created dildos of different shapes to see what kind of penis shape would be most efficient at scooping out rival male semen. We've talked about that, right? Or you've mentioned it before. Yeah. Yeah. All right.

[00:10:21] So then so that's one hypothesis and you might think that's so plausible you don't even need to consider another one. But there is another one, the long term pair bonding hypothesis. Yeah. So the long term pair bonding hypothesis would predict according to them

[00:10:35] that orgasm functions to promote a female's commitment to a relationship partner by promoting emotional bonding with an attachment to him. So while according to the Mr. Right hypothesis, the relationship between female orgasm and mate selection is the males demonstrating care and commitment. So like that is a signal.

[00:10:51] According to the long term pair bonding hypothesis, this relationship is mediated by the females feelings of attachment and closeness to her mate. So it's a way to get her to commit more to somebody. Yeah, I guess. So they build on this work on oxytocin,

[00:11:09] the hormone that is that is among other things plays a role in an attachment and bonding and because oxytocin is released during all kinds of touch, but especially during sex and orgasm, that it would help solidify the relationship with a long term partner.

[00:11:28] So it's still it's still, I think that the sexual selection that's happening is the the female trying to secure a partner who is good at long term investment. It's just that in the first case, the Mr. Right hypothesis, they're trying to suss out who would be a good

[00:11:45] long term partner. And in the long term pair bonding hypothesis, it's that they are they are trying to convince themselves. Yeah, or like manipulating the relationship into staying like manipulating the partner through the release of oxytocin into being a long term partner by sticking around.

[00:12:01] So it's like like a Black widow kind of is like a shooting poison into the man, which is like what it means when you're essentially dying. So the idea I think this is all just not very fleshed out.

[00:12:18] But the idea I think is that when you have an orgasm as a female, the male gives you an orgasm, you release oxytocin, which leads him to want to stick around more. So to the extent that a female can have orgasms,

[00:12:35] she is more likely to have the male stick around. That seems like an inefficient way to release a little oxytocin. Well, but I mean, are you with the science because talk about how they tested it? Well, before we get there, just like the oxy on the oxytocin thing,

[00:12:52] they say animal research, both with prairie voles and non-human primates suggests that oxytocin is involved in mating and mate bonding. Is that what this is dependent on some like prairie voles study? Well, do they not have an ability to test that with humans?

[00:13:09] There is a huge literature on oxytocin in all kinds of animals. The reason that prairie voles are kind of like one of the central models for oxytocin is that these prairie voles, this particular species, they have long term bonding.

[00:13:29] And so we could look at their brains and how oxytocin is being used. And it's not easy to find long term pair bonding mammals that you can easily crack into their brains without any real. On behalf of Homo sapiens, I'd like to apologize to the prairie voles species

[00:13:47] for they're just fucking minding their own business. And now all of a sudden they're just captured and bred to like see what like their oxytocin release is during. And what is it? Yeah, I honestly like that the fact that that's a hypothesis

[00:14:02] and both of those are hypotheses that have that evidence and supportive them is just kind of mind boggling. But OK, yeah, let's talk about the studies that they. Right. So so the broad methodology here was to get a bunch of undergraduate women,

[00:14:20] 175 heterosexual female undergrad students at Bowling Green State University with an average age of 19. By the way, the way that they test this was to create a series of vignettes describing a relationship like really brief and ask the women to pretend that this was their relationship. Right.

[00:14:42] So what they manipulated was how that relationship was described. Was it a shorter or long term relationship? And then how frequent orgasms happened in this relationship? So participants read a hypothetical scenario describing the relationship with a man named Michael, the short term condition outlined

[00:14:58] a one month relationship while the long term condition referred to a one year relationship following some general details about the relationships such as where they met. Participants then read about the sexual nature of the relationship. For instance, in your relationship with Michael,

[00:15:12] you either never occasionally or almost always experience an orgasm, which is just a weird piece of information to include. Pretend you're in a relationship with Michael. You guys had a romantic evening at a spaghetti factory and watched romcom and now you've been fucking him for a month

[00:15:31] that you always have orgasms. Right. That's it. And also assuming that a lot of these girls have never been in a one year relationship, right? Wait, why? Because they're 19. But but you're you're somehow not you're failing to take into account the power, the power of the imagination.

[00:15:54] Sure. Just to just pretend you've been in a one year relationship. Right. Of course you're going to know what that's like. So then OK, so then they included questions about a male partner's commitment and relationship satisfaction. So things like how much do you think Michael cares about you?

[00:16:13] How passionate is your relationship with Michael? And then they also took one of these assessments of whether they were more oriented towards short term mating or long term mating and whether or not they had had a lot of orgasms in their life. Yeah. How easy it was.

[00:16:31] And so what they found was that female orgasm, the way they even talk about this, they found that female orgasm was associated with greater relationship satisfaction and a longer expected relationship duration in both a short and long term relationships context when they actually found was just

[00:16:49] that if you ask women to think about being in a one month or one year relationship and you've told them that you had either a lot of orgasms or very few that they're inferring that their relationship might be good.

[00:17:03] What you're inferring, they might want to say with the guy that like always gives them orgasms over the one that like when like that's almost all you've told them about them. Like that's almost the only piece of information they have.

[00:17:14] Would you like who in their right mind would be like, no, no, no. I prefer much like I prefer Michael when he doesn't give me any or like it's so weird. OK, so female orgasm women's perception of their partner's commitment

[00:17:26] did not explain the association between orgasm frequency and relationship satisfaction or that's bad news for one of the hypotheses. The Mr. Right hypothesis has been discarded. So think they believe that this is evidence for the long term made made choice hypothesis female orgasm that what orgasms do

[00:17:45] is they promote long term pair bonds. Right. They don't just signal that a guy might stay with you for a long time. Right. It's like this little like mist like mind control gas that just goes into the to try to convince him to stay. It's a magical power.

[00:18:02] Yeah. Yeah, right. And because they because these 19 year olds didn't predict that that necessarily the guy would want to stay with them. Maybe because like this guy knows how to fuck, right? Like so. It's but you know, somehow intuitively perceive that there are so

[00:18:23] there are so many leaps that have to be made to consider this evidence for anything that like once again, it just perplexes me that this kind of stuff is being published and it can only happen in a community

[00:18:37] that it's so insular that they've all agreed that none of these are problems and and they like fail to see the issue here. And it's I mean, like what that's that's true in a lot of fields though.

[00:18:47] Right. Like we have we have this in our own fields too. But it's just maybe not quite as glaring feels like just perplexing and obvious that this would be I guess I guess it happens everywhere. But let me ask a naive question and you be the evolutionary psychologist

[00:19:06] answering this question. So in my understanding of evolutionary psychology and they're just general kind of foundation of what they believe is a lot of this stuff is adaptive in the evolutionary environment and we did which we did most of our evolving in which was two to 300,000 years ago

[00:19:27] in the African Savannah place to see. Right. That's what they say. So that allows them to sort of explain certain discrepancies between like how we act right now versus how we act there. And like now like why do we love cake?

[00:19:43] Why do we love ice cream when it's actually bad for us? But in the evolutionary of environmental adaptiveness or whatever in the place to seem like there was no ice cream, but there were berries which had good nutrients. Right. Right. Exactly.

[00:19:58] So then do they think that a lot of this stuff for this something as physiological as an orgasm would would carry over to the point where like 19 year old bowling greens students are going to be able to give you a sense of what our hunter gatherer ancestors.

[00:20:21] Yeah, there may be an answer to this, but it's just like normally I'm used to them talking about how our environment today is so not like the environment then that like we can't map it in the way

[00:20:34] that they seem to want to map it here where it's like, oh, this guy is going to stick around. This guy is going to like it wouldn't be like that anymore. So that's a it's a good question.

[00:20:44] And I think the answer that they would try to give is something like there's a couple of questions that I heard in there. But but one would be that the first thing that you described like liking berries because they're sweet and have nutritional value.

[00:20:58] And now we could just go to 7-Eleven and get Twinkies. Our environment really has changed a great deal. So we can look at our perplexing current behavior. And if we can understand it based on the EA, then

[00:21:15] then that can help explain why we have this current perplexing behavior. Now that's now that has. Yeah. I think that what they want to argue here because this this whole sort of like subfield of this kind of evolutionary psychology

[00:21:33] that's focused on sexual selection wants to argue that that has been a stable evolutionary pressure for this whole time. So while our our environments have changed quite a bit in terms of things like nutrition and survival, like whatever, you know, predation.

[00:21:50] We've always been faced with the problem of having to choose which mate would be the better mate, especially the females. Sure. But there's no way that I think this is the second thing that OK, because this might be what you're getting

[00:22:08] at the second thing that I thought you might be asking is why young women would have any insight into this in their in their work. It wouldn't be transparent to them, especially when we're talking about orgasms like they wouldn't know that that's what's going on. Right. Right.

[00:22:23] And I think that's right. And what was the last crazy Evo site thing that we discussed? Do you remember? I don't remember. But I remember having this discussion, which is what is the

[00:22:36] what is that the theory of what's going on in the mind of the person making this judgment? I think that here they would like to say, oh, the way that this is that this works is it's. Engrained itself into female selection behavior

[00:22:54] and and what we're doing is assessing intuitions much might like you might assess whatever he or six and biases. And so without even knowing explicitly what's going on, the young women have this sense having orgasms can lead to better

[00:23:09] long term partners like we're like in a in a cool, surreptitious way, assessing like the that the evolved mental mechanism. I guess it's because they are just intuitively recognizing that. OK, well, that's good. You steel man, did I?

[00:23:29] I do think, though, that it's weird that that it would map on so well, like to something so modern, like dating habits of college kids. I mean, there's so yeah, I totally. So many. Like this is the tip of the iceberg.

[00:23:44] This is just the tip of the iceberg. Just. The what really bugs me about this is among other things is also this huge assumption that this could in any way provide evidence for natural selection to have given physiologically to have given females orgasms.

[00:24:09] Right. Like it's one thing to say. Right. I this right. It's like how does that work? Like, how exactly did it? It's true. Why? Why isn't the more parsimonious? OK, let me give an example. Imagine that I said for men who open the car door for women.

[00:24:23] Yeah, they do so because women are looking for signals that this guy is going to take care of them in the long term. And opening the car door shows that you're the kind of guy who really will look out for them.

[00:24:37] Now imagine I said that's why we evolved the car opening. That's why men evolve the car door opening behavior. You'd be like, well, how does that work exactly? Like, how did that get in there into our brains? No, like exactly.

[00:24:48] Like how like so in the case of applying what you just said to like the orgasm is the idea that, you know, because like you don't just mutate from no orgasm to complete orgasm. Right. So it would have to be this very gradual

[00:25:03] but still very effective, you know, directional thing where the women who are just like giving off like just a little closer to an orgasm or something like that. I guess maybe the oxytocin, you know, just giving off a little bit,

[00:25:18] you know, they just do a little better, a little better, a little better until finally you just have orgasm. You would just want though, you know, like there's all kinds of questions physiologically, like we know that just any contact, any physical contact will release oxytocin.

[00:25:32] So you would want to say that like orgasm gives such a boost that that this is doing some good work explaining why people bond with each other and that it would that the women who were doing this just a little more than the other women

[00:25:49] would have more offspring, I guess because because the men stuck around longer. Men stuck around, yeah. But as you said early on, like if the guy is really good at giving orgasms, he's just going to go around to doing that to a lot of people.

[00:26:01] So why it counts in any way as evidence that women think that a guy who gives you orgasms is a good thing? Like why that would count as evidence for the evolve the evolution of the female orgasm? Never mind like a specific hypothesis about the evolution.

[00:26:20] And in the, you know, in the in the very like the penultimate paragraph or like the third last paragraph, they have a section called evolved function versus benefit. And so they say, however, this study simply shows

[00:26:32] that female orgasm may provide a benefit to women by promoting long term relationships if it does even that. It does not necessarily mean that this is the evolved function of the female orgasm. For instance, it is for example, it is possible that the female orgasm

[00:26:44] exists as a byproduct, as discussed previously, but as a byproduct happens to benefit women by promoting feelings of love and affection. Well, yeah. How is like a hypothetical orgasm study? Just not completely just that.

[00:26:57] Like I've told you nothing other than that this guy gives you a lot of orgasms. Do you think you want to be in a long term relationship with? Do you think it'll be good? Do you think it'll be like right?

[00:27:07] Seems like the only information you've given me is that this guy is paying enough attention to me that he's going to give me regular orgasms. And now I'm asking you, do you think this guy wants to pay a lot of attention

[00:27:16] to you? But they say differentiating between female orgasm as an adaptation or a byproduct of male orgasm would require future research. Yeah. No, the main thing I think with this study is to just see if it

[00:27:29] replicates for like 19 year olds at Ohio State, maybe, or at like Miami of Ohio. Like, you know, I just want to like highlight again what this finding was because it's ludicrous. Yeah. The only thing that they found was that if you tell women,

[00:27:49] college girls that a relationship, this hypothetical relationship involves more orgasms, they say that they would be more satisfied than one that involves fewer orgasms. Yeah. That's it. It's absolutely it. And now I just don't like highlight that like, I don't know. Have you been to Bowling Green? No.

[00:28:09] Like it's not a nice part of the country. Why are you being so mean to Bowling Green? Well, I just want like this is like that's about as good as you're going to get. That's another way of saying it.

[00:28:19] Insert anything positive about a man's behavior in a relationship and ask the same exact questions and tell me you're not going to find the same fucking thing like he cleans the kitchen once a week or he never cleans the kitchen or he cleans the kitchen every time

[00:28:36] that you cook. I don't know. I guess I'd be happier with a guy who's always cleaning. Boom, evolutionary evidence. Boom. I don't know. They might think he was kind of a bitch. Yeah. That guy is definitely a cuck.

[00:28:51] Like I think I say this all the time, but I do like this is a particular kind of evolutionary psychology that is unfortunately. This is a way to meet 19 year old girls. It's not enough to be just a professor.

[00:29:07] Like there's a lot of people who would consider themselves evolutionary psychologists who don't do this weird sexual selection, like weak ass, like serious weak sauce methodology stuff. Like, you know, do they reckon with this stuff in evolutionary psychology?

[00:29:24] Like or has just all the people who would be inclined to try to reckon with this just left and now you have only the true believers remain. That's a good question. I don't know the right answer to that, but we get a bit of a hint.

[00:29:38] I think when we talk to people like Paul Bloom, who really are sold on the idea that understanding evolution can explain large swaths of the human mind and including social stuff, they feel like there is a little bit

[00:29:53] of tribalism going on where they don't want to just throw these people under the bus because they have an understanding that, well, we're all kind of trying to sell the same story about the importance of evolution

[00:30:03] on the mind. But the people like, for instance, in my department who do evolutionary biology and they say study the neural mechanisms of social behavior in birds or in voles, these people couldn't be farther away from the article that we just read.

[00:30:20] Like they wouldn't even this wouldn't even cross their mind as a plausible way to study the evolution of the mind like that. So this is more like a social cycle. Like you said, it's like taking a little bit of column A, which is bad

[00:30:35] social cycle and a little bit of column B, which is an evolutionary understanding. But it seems like, you know, like so what he says is the proximate mechanisms like that is something famously that they don't really tackle. Yeah. It's hard to emphasize enough how there is absolutely no

[00:30:54] explanation as to how this would work, that you would evolve gradually or suddenly the trait of having more frequent orgasms and how that would have evolutionary benefits. It is purely just like this is our theory, this is you know, but there's no there's

[00:31:12] absolutely nothing that shows how that would work. There's no sense of at the just the base phylogical genetic level how that how that would happen. Well, and I read I read this paper, I didn't read it closely.

[00:31:27] But, you know, one thing you could ask is what is the the prevalence of orgasm in non human females across right? You could really do comparative work trying to understand like to the extent that orgasm is adaptive for for any female of the

[00:31:48] stages mammals. Then do you see it in other animals? Are these prairie voles just getting like made to like fuck each other until they like scientists can determine whether they're having orgasms or not. The next step is to give them little cars and stuff and see if

[00:32:05] they open doors. Leave the prairie voles alone. Like don't drag them into whatever like kind of bankrupt. To be fair, we don't always kill them. Yeah, but they're like, they're like minding their own business on the prairie. I also think like, you know,

[00:32:25] like what you would really want if this was a, I don't know, intellectually serious kind of hypothesis is if it's going to be the oxytocin explanation, then you would also want to know whether like the orgasm is the most efficient way of emitting

[00:32:42] oxytocin under those kinds of circumstances versus some other way some other kind of because it sounds like at least the research that they're quoting. It's just other animals release oxytocin when they have sex. But like, they're all everybody's having sex. The question is whether the orgasm

[00:33:00] makes a difference when it comes and if it does, is there like why that way instead of another way? Right. Absolutely. You would want and it's hard to do in humans because if you really want to see, I mean, so you could try

[00:33:15] to measure blood levels of oxytocin but brain levels of oxytocin, my understanding is aren't necessarily one to one mapped with with blood levels of oxytocin. And so so it's kind of hard to get good data on the neuropeptides action in the

[00:33:34] brain. But by the way, I found an answer to their organ or yeah, all themes. So this is all put a link to this like Q&A. All female mammals have eclateris this whole purpose of which is to react to sexual

[00:33:47] stimulation. And presumably this stimulation has evolved to be pleasurable for most species. But establishing whether sexual pleasure ever actually tips over into orgasm is hard. Female chimps, macaque monkeys and cows have all been stimulated in the lab to the point of experiencing vaginal and uterine

[00:34:02] contractions, which does suggest that other female animals are at least capable of orgasm. Whether they regularly have them during normal copulation is much less certain. Most animal sex is very brief and often quite violent. This makes me sad. Maybe sad for the cows.

[00:34:21] Brief and I feel bad for the cows in the lab getting stimulated by a fucking like, why? If they never postdoc if they never had an orgasm in real life, man, and you bring them into lab and you have a student just like rub one out

[00:34:34] for them like how are we sure that they're like not just shuddering in like disgust? No, but I'm willing to take their risk. Beyond mammals, the case for a female orgasm is more tenuous. Reptiles have penetrative sex and presumably would benefit from

[00:34:52] orgasms just as much as mammals. But I don't think anyone has ever tried to detect the female orgasm in a crocodile or snake. I mean, I think that it's just like, it's not like offensive to say it's a byproduct. Look,

[00:35:04] if it's made of the same stuff as what turns into a penis in utero, then it just seems like to the extent that orgasms exist in women is just the same mechanism. I don't understand why that's like not just the default hypothesis.

[00:35:19] It's like, why do men have nipples? Because women have nipples. Like that's it. Yeah, not to get piercings. Because piercings show that you're super down. Yeah, I like this though, like to try to promote like a moral purpose for this

[00:35:38] research. Nebel says in the interview, orgasm is highly variable between females and many females struggle with the difficulty of or inability to achieve orgasm. It's like trying to be sensitive but at the same time just like you're just females struggling with sexual satisfaction effects

[00:35:57] relationship satisfaction and overall satisfaction and can be distressing even lead to self blame. Neby told Psypost the exact adaptive function of female orgasm might not be that important to people outside the field but I do do think that knowledge that variability in female orgasms maybe by

[00:36:16] evolutionary design rather than being evidence of dysfunction may provide some solace to women struggling with their sexual satisfaction. What I don't hold on. Let me say it was dysfunction in the first place like what knowledge of variability. First of all, this doesn't make any sense. Oh my

[00:36:34] God. Okay. So they're they're saying like, look, the reason that some chicks don't have orgasms. Sorry, some women don't have orgasms is females don't have orgasm is because the variability understand the variability is what makes this so like evolutionarily powerful, right? So

[00:36:58] it's like somehow being deployed selectively to keep the right long term mates. Except that what if like you were with a like a long, you know, you've been married for like 12 years happily and like your never you never had an

[00:37:12] orgasm and then it's like but oh no, that's okay because you're very like women were meant to have orgasms so they could be with the right person was like, well, why am I not having orgasms? I'm with the right person is like do

[00:37:24] they say like really you're just an evolutionary accident because because if that how would this be consolation? How like rather than evidence of dysfunction it's it's by design but it's not working as by evolutionary design like it's fucked up the design. So it is dysfunction then

[00:37:42] well but you're totally right in that like this is like a actually such a hand wavy like trying to tie this back to some sort of like social good words like actually what you're saying is that those women must not really be

[00:37:56] trying to keep their mates sticking around exactly. So like how does that feel any better? Or they're just not with the right guy. They're not with the right break up with them like and literally all of this all of this just

[00:38:10] boils down to this question like if I tell you that you had more orgasms in a relationship do you think that relationship is better? That's it because 190 female 19 year olds in Bowing Green said that they thought that you know like Michael who gives more orgasms you

[00:38:27] probably want to stay with him. We really need to know if there's any other name for which this works. Because there's the biblical kind of connotations like the night writer has warmed the seat for you Michael. Oh man, it's good stuff. Alright, we'll be right back to

[00:38:54] talk with Paul Bloom about severance. Today's episode is brought to you by give well.org give well one of our absolute favorite sponsors and this is a different kind of spot today. They're looking to fill a position of content editor finding the most evidence

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[00:42:18] Welcome back to very bad wizards. This is the time during the episode that we always take a moment to thank the people who get in touch with us who interact with us and with the rest of the very bad wizards community. I think we can say that there

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[00:47:10] You can you could get all those other support page. So thank you to everybody for all your support. We really appreciate it. Thank you. All right. Let's welcome in Paul Bloom VBW favorite. Nice to be back. What do you think like if you had

[00:47:23] to guess right now how many times have you been on very bad wizards. Wow. Let me go for let me go for eight. Eight times. I would say over. There there is an answer. I will look it up right now. There was an episode like you had a

[00:47:42] anniversary episode where I just dropped into congratulate. OK. We don't count that. It's 10. It's 11 with that. Very exciting. Wow. Yeah. Very exciting. That is very first episode was episode 24 about empathy. Wow. I know we you guys have legs. You guys have been going for

[00:47:59] a while. We don't quit. This is all we're known for. So if we stop now that's going to be like speak. All I'm known for is this honorary very bad wizards person. Like most possibly most valued guest tied with you. You you've surpassed you.

[00:48:18] In terms of appearances because he's he got his own podcast. He has a spin up. You know I was thinking the other day I would like to categorize certain podcasts as spin offs very bad wizards. And I want I want to put Laurie Santos and Sam Harris and

[00:48:31] Yolian Barr in the spin off category. And it's different levels of spin offs. I think like Sam Harris that's the Jefferson's like that's it. Nobody remembers anymore. I feel like Yol it's like Joni loves Chachi. Rota. Laurie Santos I don't know. Like is there any evil spin off.

[00:48:55] Laurie Santos well. I don't know she could be angel to your Buffy. Well all we have to do is mention on Twitter that Paul you're going to be on in our in our listeners go crazy. Well I appreciate it. Any chance it can get.

[00:49:12] And today we're going to talk about the TV show this I'm really excited about the TV show Severance which we didn't talk about this beforehand but we all agree that people should watch this show. Yes before probably before listening to the rest of this episode.

[00:49:25] We're not going to hide anything that happens. So watch it all or you have to be in that weird camp that David is in where you think it's OK to have your stuff. I don't mind getting spoiled. But in this case it is true that what

[00:49:39] what is deeply interesting to me is something that is pretty much revealed almost in the promos. And and that is the central premise that there's this divided self. So Paul you actually got me to watch it and so you want to say something about just the general

[00:49:56] philosophy that's being done. So I was at a philosophy conference a long time ago and I actually looked it up to try to remember the speaker because I'm going to take this idea but I forget his name unfortunately and I can't find it. But he was talking about

[00:50:07] Christopher Nolan films like Memento and Inception and The Prestige which you know there's a lot to be talked about there. And what he said is they're they're not you can imagine a film doing philosophy in that it illustrates a philosophical point. You know you'd have to

[00:50:20] trolley problem could show up in a good place or you have you have a case. In fact I think Batman films when in all his Batman films that's some philosophical moral dilemmas. But he said the Nolan films are more than that. They're actually doing philosophy.

[00:50:33] They're trying to express certain philosophical ideas about memory and persistence and identity and so in themselves I think there's sort of contributions to how to think about these things and that's what I feel about Severance which is I never Severance really got me to take

[00:50:47] seriously certain ideas about identity that before I didn't quite buy an important memory and I think that it really is sort of it deserves some credit as an intellectual contribution on its own besides you know being enjoyable to watch and fun and all that.

[00:51:02] So I taught a philosophy of film class during the spring semester of last year we read up a couple of those articles and one in particular that made the same point that they're not illustrating philosophy they can do philosophy and they talked about modern times in that

[00:51:19] context and I think you can see the key Rue and and what I really like about that because I totally buy that and often you know my my feelings are it often does philosophy better than philosophy does at least a lot of contemporary philosophy.

[00:51:36] But but what matters isn't just the idea and this is where I might think Nolan is maybe not the best example of it although I think Memento of those I think Memento like counts more than maybe inception or something like that but yeah but prestige

[00:51:51] really counts. Oh yeah. Prestige. Yeah absolutely. But like it's not just the idea for me it's the thing that that movies can do that analytic philosophers don't want to do and and aren't capable of doing is flesh it out so that you actually see

[00:52:05] that this is real people and not just a stick figure drawing of a guy at a trolley switch or something like that you know. And so not so you can flesh out the examples in the idea but you also flesh out the fact that

[00:52:17] there are real people involved in this stuff and I think that's important if you know the goal is to sort of make us think about these questions and you know and even come to some sort of tentative position on what the answers to those questions are.

[00:52:33] I mean in some ways this is the central notion that drives our podcast because over time I think we've come to it we were saying this explicitly in the Ted Chang release I remember I was saying something like Ted Chang's essays do a much better job.

[00:52:49] Stories. I mean his short stories do a much better job at communicating some of these philosophical ideas exactly for what you were just saying Tamal right which is is not just memory and what if you could remember every detail it is actual people dealing with

[00:53:05] this philosophical idea and all the implications that might come along with that interpersonal emotional implications. And yeah this one is I mean this is certainly sci-fi in the central premise is such a big one that it does carry the show but

[00:53:22] I'm so glad they made it into a TV show where we can see these characters actually develop. Yeah I don't know either of you see devs. I didn't I've heard about it people recommended it. That was a show by Alex Garland also high kind of sci-fi

[00:53:36] concept but like just the characters were so wooden they were just stripped of anything kind of fun or interesting about them and I love that Severance doesn't do that like there's fun in these characters there's a lot of poignancy it's very moving it's not just

[00:53:53] hardcore focused on like free will determinism which is kind of what and devs was focused on and. Yeah no absolutely and and I always want to say Scott Adams. Adam Scott brings like this this just real tender kind of performance in a way

[00:54:11] that you know I never even watched Parks and Rec so I only know him from me neither from stuff that's like where he's just kind of a sarcastic sort of straight man. He was in Big Little Lies small character he's been a

[00:54:23] lot of things and then his best role in my view is Step Brothers like just iconic like comedic role like just perfect. But the acting is so the key idea which we'll talk about is they have this operation called Severance which makes them

[00:54:39] amnesiac when they go to work so that they lose all memory of their their outer lives and then they sort of start a new and then when they leave work they lose all memory of what they did at work. And so the notion here which I

[00:54:50] think I find very persuasive is that you end up with in some sense two people an Indian and Audi. The Audi's in this circumstance a kind of dominant personality is a personality who has a life and a house and family and so on.

[00:55:03] The in me made the choice and made the choice and has control over any and so I'm going to talk a lot about that. But but Adam Scott acts the hell out of it because God his his life outside has a tragedy at its core.

[00:55:17] And when he's in when when elevator opens and he resumes as his in himself his face loosens and he becomes a little bit like a child the child likes of course in some way he is you know zero years old just when he started the

[00:55:29] company and and and he has very is as he remembers reading notebooks because only the company man that's all they read down there. And he does he probably is right has never had sex. He has never he's in some way like a child.

[00:55:41] Yeah no that's a good point. And I agree like that elevator trip up you see his face just transform as it's going and then you know like he becomes a little more confident in the first time this happens you don't know what's going on.

[00:55:53] So it's like is he just like one of these people who's a dick at work or something like that or he gets like you know he has to psych himself up. But yeah no he plays that very well. And then when you find out

[00:56:04] what the reason is which is that his wife died or did she yeah that's the central tragedy. And he's really the only person we kind of get a we get an idea why he decided to sever himself. And for him it's like he just

[00:56:21] wanted time away I guess from thinking about his wife. It's interesting because it's given what we know about the procedure really you're you're constantly existing as an Audi or you're constantly existing as an any. So wouldn't help. Yeah well that's what I you know. Yeah I guess

[00:56:40] that if if the denominator is 24 hours and you just you think it would help to like be able to spend you know I guess it's some form of escapism in the same way that maybe drinking would help you forget for a bit but you don't even remember that

[00:56:52] you forget. It was short. It was short in his waking hours that Audi and the inni is always awake. I mean in some way my son's scary. My son's my son Zach enjoys the show too suggested that he would do a severance for going to the bathroom

[00:57:07] that whenever he goes to the bathroom he's severed. So he never lives a life that I haven't even been in the bathroom and then I said but you can damn another person to live his entire life on the toilet. He said I don't care. It's not me.

[00:57:18] It's not him. It would just be me doing like wordle and quartle and octurtle and stuff like that. That would just be my whole life. I'll do that. I'll consign my price. I know because honestly I don't even it's not like I jerk off in the bathroom.

[00:57:31] Yeah. So it's not I don't even get that. I love silencing Paul with this comment. You don't see my disapproving. You know Paul you said something about the the character the Ines being zero years old and that's something that I love about the way that

[00:57:46] they deal with this which is they really are infantilized the employees as Ines. They're treated in this really weird condescending way like they're you know they're given like these dumb rewards like if you get your work done you get to play with a Chinese finger

[00:57:59] trap or you know you get something like melon balls or a dance party and it took me a second to realize that's because those people really are in some sense newborns. So I have a question then like if we're just going to talk about that aspect of it

[00:58:15] it's not totally clear to me like what they know and what they don't know what they're born with at the beginning with Helly in just a great scene where she just wakes up on that table and you have Adam Scott's voice and she doesn't know where she came

[00:58:29] from she doesn't know what her name is but she knows us state at least she knows Delaware she clearly knows how to read she has semantic memory. Yeah, they have to know enough to be functional and they're in the workplace. So it's just not totally clear

[00:58:43] to me what the dividing line is is just anything specific to them. So the one on one thing is yeah they lose all autobiographical memory all episodic memory preseverance. They know how to do things how to walk how to use the toilet they know language

[00:59:00] but they're facts about the worlds that are just semantic facts not autobiographical ones. So the scene is Helly starts on the table and I was reading a discussion of it's sort of like birth you're there and then she's born and she's freaking out and then you know

[00:59:15] Mark relaxes her and explains to her what she's up to. What a great way though of trying to answer that question because it's true like you I think you do have to know about what happens to people who experience this real retrograde amnesia and then

[00:59:32] this real retrograde amnesia to understand what they're trying to say but the way that they use that opening scene with those five questions to just let the viewer know like at least get you can get a sense of like they're supposed to know

[00:59:45] facts about the world but nothing about themselves is really well done. So the way we're putting it is there's an asymmetry without ease the person the any is the newborn the any is the newborn that's right that's right and so there's no sort of substantial

[01:00:00] difference except this just the any is is a newborn and if you started off as a newborn and severed a baby and then half the time there and half the time there any and now he would grow there'll be no there'd be no difference.

[01:00:13] You know what's unclear Bella ask this the other day we were and I don't know what the answer is for these amnesic few patients is their personality largely the same because that it seems as if there are aspects of your personality that might really just be sort of

[01:00:28] const your constitutional makeup perhaps your biological makeup but there are some aspects that might require explicit autobiographical memory you know the time that you were embarrassed in front of others and has led you to be more quiet. That's a good question. Yeah, so like so it would address

[01:00:44] the question of sexual orientation. So Burt finds himself very attracted to it to and falls in love with basically a man in another department and John Trituro Christopher Walken. Yes. Like you know I'm normally against same sex male couple Christopher Walken Burt and Irving.

[01:01:04] Like that is it's so like I love those scenes with them together so much who are friends in real life and they actually you know date date date. Wait do we know their friends in real according to oh oh oh sorry.

[01:01:16] No sorry no no this is not an easy outie thing. This is there's any there's outing in this real world. Right. Burt was gay. That's clear. His Audi person is also gay but Irving we don't know for sure. He we know he was like a Navy hero

[01:01:31] but Irving Irving drove over to his house and yeah as in his any state in his any state oh that's right is in his state. That's right. That's right. Right to find I got to final scene is there any see their Audi world. All right.

[01:01:45] I feel like we're jumping ahead here like because we haven't even given all of our general impressions. Yeah, I will say that I loved the show. I totally and I binged it also watch with my daughter and we were like at just one Sunday we were just like

[01:01:59] all right we're just plowing through the last five like we're not like this is our day and totally fun. I'm glad we're talking about it. I was struggling to figure out like is this deep like what is this saying about the self or what is this saying

[01:02:14] about I don't know workplace culture or the work life balance or you know like alienation you know that I think it could be saying a lot of these things but I wasn't those things didn't pop out of while I was watching it which is good.

[01:02:29] Like I don't think that stuff should be in your face. I think it should be something you have to like work through a little bit. But I think the answer to that is yes but I'm not 100% sure. I don't know that's so that's my feeling totally loved it.

[01:02:44] I am still wondering what I think of it philosophically. I'm sure there's stuff about corporations and work and balance and so on. I didn't get much of that. I mean it there's one way of looking at it could be very heavy handed which is oh

[01:02:59] the corporation is you know pulls away your soul and your identity and it's terrible but if that's it it just wasn't that interesting but identity stuff to me this basically persuaded me that memory is identity and that the Indian area you have a situation of two people

[01:03:15] sharing the same body and and it is in pause this is why sort of a philosophical argument which is it's impossible to see to show any other way as as each of the characters is now two different people and I never took that view that seriously before.

[01:03:30] I am similar to Paul you know I I saw people talking about this right away in terms of corporate critique of corporate culture or work life balance and it may be that and it probably is but I find that to be a boring and dreary sort of

[01:03:46] central central message. I mean I think it's it could very well be and I was talking a little bit to you all about this it could very it could easily just be a cult a religion of some sort it could be a government I don't think

[01:03:58] there's anything about it that's really specific to corporations but fair enough if people want to read it is that the identity stuff kind of like what you're saying Tamler is I like that it wasn't so obvious to me that it was making any

[01:04:11] argument but Paul you saying that it convinced you of this thing I didn't I don't think I wasn't convinced of it but it very viscerally does show the battle between selves yes to some extent is probably going on with us all the time

[01:04:29] and key to this is that the two selves are forbidden from any real communication and and so any self could be viewed as self at time one and Audi self could be viewed as of the time to it's just that for us we're constantly we have

[01:04:48] contiguity we have constant overlapping memories from the last instant we have ways of essentially communicating with our future selves by leaving a trail of our own behavior and our own communication to people in the outside world planning all that there's a constant communicating

[01:05:05] of our many selves and this true severance procedure is artificially collecting those into you know pooling two different identities and keeping them separated and that's and it's like what people many people think about the severing of the corpus callosum where you're preventing the two loaves from

[01:05:25] communicating but there really are two people residing in this brain the longer they're prevented from communicating with each other the more distant in terms of identity that they get much in the way that Parfit says in the transporter Parfit really believes that you're the

[01:05:38] two copies are the same exact person it's just that the minute they start living different lives that's when they diverge and it's interesting for me in terms of character development to see these two personalities really developing as two completely different characters so

[01:05:54] wait so just to be clear the only real sense of an Audi that we get is Adam Scott's character yeah yeah the other ones we only get the glimpses and most of them at the end although although we do see the confrontation

[01:06:08] with Helli or in hell yeah and which is quite chilling where her at one point or Audi she wants just a reminder she wants to leave and so she puts in a request or Audi let me go and it says no and then she holds her

[01:06:24] body hostage like she has sliced off her fingers and and and then the Audi just says you're stuck in there you not even a person yeah and this is why I completely disagree with both of you that I think a lot of the corporate

[01:06:37] stuff is the most interesting part more than the identity part because I think that the dystopian element of this which is played up in lots of different ways right just the office space and like the hallways and the endless desks but then also this idea

[01:06:56] of like what's like we want to create slaves essentially like we're trying to create slaves and this is our way of doing it and in fact we're going to create slaves that are us and like the the the the the the whole reveal about Ellie being actually like

[01:07:15] the the CEO of this company that's doing it and still willing to submit her own half a self for to work like that but that's what they are their slaves they go with the scariest thing is they're done with work they go down in the elevator they

[01:07:31] come back up and they don't think any time is passed like having anesthesia it's like whatever has happened they might feel it physically what Adam Scott says your shoulders might be a little looser you might feel less tired or something like that

[01:07:43] but so all they do is work I don't know like I got a lot of marks you know like we've run out of workers to exploit so now we're going to exploit like half of you so the way to create this product so the way to bring

[01:07:59] that together what David was saying is that you know if identity is memory then it's sort of like then it's not all or nothing and you could see this building from your critique as what we see in this in the show is an extreme

[01:08:10] version of corporate life I go to my job I have different friends different experiences I do different things and we alienated from it and you know I think we all live lives which aren't like that you know whatever you think of our lives if they're the work

[01:08:25] it's very blurred but I have I have a friend of mine who works in a bank and he goes nine to five in a bank and then it is enough otherwise it's I don't doesn't think about his work doesn't doesn't taught that

[01:08:35] doesn't get his work friends as a whole different friends and it's leading sort of two different lives yeah yeah I think it is commenting on that kind of life as well you know the person who their job is their job and maybe it's

[01:08:46] something that they're a little like iffy about they're not the proudest of what they do necessarily or they work in corporate law firms or something like that but it's their job and that's why they can like report their families and that's why

[01:08:58] they can but they don't talk about it they don't yeah and I you know it's not that I disagree Tamela I'm a consensus builder I choose not to frame it as a disagreement yes but rather as a matter of like more what I was saying is like

[01:09:11] that stuff is clearly there right like gentle way of when I turned the other week when when you say for instance about the alienation stuff this is a clear case in which even their innies are alienated because they are performing a task that they have zero

[01:09:30] idea what they're doing and I'm not sure whether their tasks so they're basically they watch these like retro computer screens and this is this is cool stuff I love they have to sort these there's just a bunch of digits floating around and they have to do

[01:09:45] some tasks where they collect some group of those digits that are floating around and put them in one bin and they separate these into buckets and the way that they do it is they're just told just stare at these numbers and after a while you'll

[01:09:58] get a feel for which ones are the bad ones and then you'll put those into a bin and I was really and I was also talking to you all about this really curious as to whether you to think that this is something important that

[01:10:11] will be revealed or whether it's a MacGuffin that is only intended to demonstrate that what they're doing isn't important and they don't even know so a formative experience my life was watching lost it's the ultimate great TV betrayal where they have all these complicated and really

[01:10:29] weird things and then they didn't explain half of them in and so I I maybe this is reductive I want explanations of all of the shit I want I want to baby goats I want I want the waffle part I want I want

[01:10:42] her to be a logic behind this they they can't do something like this and then just not explain it because it also makes them feel like the way they put them in the number is it gives them this feeling of like I don't know some like unnameable

[01:10:54] negative emotion like anxiety and fear and some something that just like we got angry numbers like the angry yeah and it's funny because Helli is at first making fun of it she's like ooh a four and then she sees it and you know it doesn't

[01:11:10] seem traumatizing it just seems mildly unpleasant but in this case I feel like they would be in a danger of over explaining in a way that that though not the numbers and yeah I love their theories one of the funniest scenes is where

[01:11:26] Dylan offers his theory of what they're doing yeah they're shooting the heels heels yeah like killing eels in the ocean he's very funny this podcast is sponsored by better help online therapy you know life can be overwhelming and many people are burned out without even knowing

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[01:13:03] b e t t e r h e l p dot com slash vbw thanks to better help for sponsoring this episode that's so it's also just like a workplace comedy at times now like you know it is just these four guys this you know shitty boss this weirder

[01:13:22] like higher up shitty boss played by patricia arquette both of them are great and you know that also brings in the cult aspect at least you get the sense with patricia arquette actually both of them that they really believe that what they're doing is like

[01:13:37] important and they don't seem to have severed like the other ways and you know they can be cruel and they can be cold blooded but they also seem to really buy into what they're doing and I saw an interview with the writer and

[01:13:50] he was saying we definitely did a lot of research into this cult and it's the specific one he mentioned was the nxivm but then his point was it's a spectrum between that and like starbucks you know like you hear about the founder you hear about their kind

[01:14:05] of vision of the company it's obviously there's one extreme and then there's a you know a lower part of that spectrum but it's all kind of the same thing and I remember I sold for the Institute of Reading Development and I had

[01:14:18] to like try to get people to buy to sign up to be taught how to read more efficiently and I remember like there was a period like from four to five where we if this is like the tour they get where we had to like watch a

[01:14:32] video on the history of how the founder started the Institute of Reading Development and like the woman who is like above us was like she was like it brings a tear to my eye I was like are you fucking kidding me like are you like it was the

[01:14:46] cheesiest most ridiculous thing but but but you were supposed to buy in and the people who were in charge of us we were just like the salespeople the people who were in charge of us they either bought it or they were really good actors about like how

[01:15:01] because like they were moved like they were emotional after this just preposterous video Yeah, you know there's also the cult vibes they are really creepy and of course there's so much of corporate America I already know the emails we're going to get we've never worked in

[01:15:16] corporation and you never experienced this kind it's uncanny no I know like true I do am aware that it's also very multi-level marketing kind of like multi-level market culty feeling where they're all a family and you're expected to devote your life and convert your friends and

[01:15:31] all they have a full on replica of the founder's house you know from like whatever the 1800s inside the building and have you guys ever been to the Scientology headquarters in Hollywood by any chance? No, no. They have like L Ron Hubbard's office as he left it.

[01:15:48] Yeah, like but you know if corporations are robbing us like this of our identity of our time making slaves out of us I'm tempted to say better it be in his than me better that it that there be a clear division. Yeah, one of us buying Twitter

[01:16:11] and now you being like yeah let's do it. One important thing about us people choose they make a big point of Mark he chose and everybody everybody chooses to do it for different reasons. But the new one doesn't choose the the innings don't choose the outies choose

[01:16:29] to create innings. Yeah. Yeah. What do you guys make of the break room? Yeah, where they have to aposto here in the break room whenever they violate a rule that presumably serious enough they go into this room and they're made to read an apology over and over again

[01:16:46] until until until the interrogator believes that it was sincere. Yeah. But the break room reminds me of telling your kid to apologize and yes mean it. Yeah. Right. It's a very difficult task so there's one grueling scene where hell he has to do it.

[01:17:02] You know, thousand three hundred times because she doesn't mean it. Do you think that that's possible even to what to repeat it until you mean it? Like when the I think so like I think that's like a I don't know like a torture technique

[01:17:18] or something where you make somebody do something repeatedly until they start to believe what it is that they're doing like brainwashing. It's like breaking somebody kind of. Yeah. Yeah. They clearly have all these, you know, rituals for dealing with people acting out because they can't have that.

[01:17:40] They can and they especially can't have that when they're dependent on this person not doing something violent that would affect their Audi because then the Audi is just not going to go back in and they don't seem to have any way of forcing

[01:17:52] the Audi's to go back in. Right. That's the brilliance of it is it relies on a truly free choice on the part of the Audi's every time. Right. And they don't know. They don't know that it's so interesting to see them have to you know, as the tension

[01:18:06] builds, they are in a battle with their with their the Audi's and the Innis. Yeah. The episode where Ellie tries to kill herself tries to end her life and she's kind of hanging and she goes back up because she wants her Audi to know that she's doing this.

[01:18:24] I just love that because it's like this little mini internal rebellion that is squat like for now, at least, you know, the end of the episode, we should talk about the end of the season and all that and all that stuff. But like this was just a little

[01:18:40] mini revolution, a little mini protest revolt that was in the end just put down and it's just all in like this Ellie's elevator ride. It's just very like that stuff was very cool. I thought is it I got into discussion with somebody about this. Is it wrong?

[01:18:59] What is doing to create an inny to go work and I mean, it's not sadistic. The idea would be that he makes the money and the Audi spends it. I guess. Yeah, but the inny is the slave. It's definitely wrong. To me, this is the central

[01:19:13] ethical question being asked so far. I'm not convinced that it's wrong. I'm convinced that the inny is being harmed, but I'm not convinced that it's wrong to harm yourself. Is it is a different in kind from saying, well, I need some money.

[01:19:32] I'm going to work in this very miserable boring nine to five job. Well, I'm there. I'm not going to be very happy. But then when I leave, that's the price I pay. It's funny. My intuitions are like, are you guys are fucking psychos right now?

[01:19:45] And like, of course, it's wrong, right? Like they're just any of what like think of the there's this other kind of thread where it seems like people like will develop an inny just to have childbirth. Yeah, you know. So now you have this inny

[01:19:59] that's being born and all she'll experience is the pain of childbirth and then immediately as soon as like the pain stops, she'll be dead. I'm actually surprised at how how much you're buying into the different person. Yeah, right. I thought you would be more

[01:20:18] of a monist about this stuff. Well, I guess it's because I agree with Paul that like I think the memory like this really does and I'm teaching like a seminar in the self right now. And so we've looked at some of the stuff on memory and especially narrative

[01:20:30] and it seems like these people who are innies have no narrative conception of who they are and like, you know, the narrative view is that you need to have a narrative to have a self, you know, the stronger versions of it is like that tells you

[01:20:46] what you're about, like what your values are where like what your trajectory is and when you don't have that, you're not a self. Now, the innies don't have it at first, then they have it but it's a totally different narrative than the Audi's narrative.

[01:21:00] So to me, they seem like completely different people and so that's why it seems like because it seems like you're doing something wrong to another person. Well, that's what explains my intuition. One way to test the intuitions is I don't know if you guys talked about this

[01:21:14] but there's that a famous philosophical example to say an example, maybe it's true about anesthesia where one story about anesthesia is that it actually does not affect all your pain. It paralyzes you. You feel every moment of the pain but then you lose your memory of it

[01:21:28] and I was telling this to somebody because I actually was going for surgery and I realized this and I started talking with this anesthesiologist who I would expect that she would just say as we dig this yeah, some people believe that and I know like, whoa! Comforting words.

[01:21:44] Holy shit, that blows my mind. I'm lying. We might have already done this. We might have had the most horrible torture in the world having people cut into our bodies while we're paralyzed. Can't scream. And then we wiped memory. But the thing is I told somebody

[01:21:55] about this and he said, eh, who cares? It doesn't bother me. Right, that's this is like when I think about about, you know, getting circumcised. Like I can't I can't muster the outrage because I don't remember the pain at all. But it did happen to you.

[01:22:10] It did happen to me and I guess my intuition I keep pulling my intuition back to instances well, two things. The second one I want to get into about personal identity what you said time. The first one though is that I keep thinking

[01:22:25] how is this any different from you know, not eating healthy in your 20s and paying the price when you're in your 30s. Like I guess person in your 20s has made a damaging decision that person in your 30s has no control over. But they're both us.

[01:22:43] Like there is something to me real about the boundaries of my physical body and it being my brain that is making the decisions. So that's the young e fucking over the oldie. Yeah. And I think to some degree most of our decisions are like that because I

[01:22:55] I think that that's just what identity but you feel as a 30 37 year old do you feel like well, that was me making the decisions and now here up here am I playing paying the price but you don't feel that when you're in any

[01:23:10] and you didn't make the choice and so the question is whether no now that second thing is not you is not necessarily true that it could be that you don't feel a connection. That's totally true but that to me the ethical question is not whether

[01:23:25] or not you feel the connection is whether or not that other self truly has the right to do what they do. Well, right. I like I don't know if I would put this in terms of rights. I would frame it more in terms of it's wrong to create

[01:23:38] a different self that only does the things that you don't want to do. So there's a there's a supposition we're all making here including me which is that suppose I have a very painful thing coming like childbirth or whatever and I sever myself. The idea is

[01:23:55] I don't feel it then there's there's you know part a it's walking. I said oh great I'll sever myself I'll cut it Part B will be an amnesiac but there's another way of looking at it where where that's me somebody's getting the pain and that somebody is me

[01:24:10] and just because I don't remember later doesn't mean it's not me. Yeah, but think that's so fascinating that you said that Bob because you know as someone like who had Achilles tendon surgery which if you're right and if that person is right I created a small little self

[01:24:25] like that only existed for the duration of that surgery that was just like only lived for experiencing excruciating pain and then immediately yeah and that would like Jesus it's like you like exactly you created a saving for you small tiny Tamler Jesus and he died for your sins

[01:24:49] my sins that's horrible but then if like so someone says like let's say that gets vindicated and then someone and then like I tear my other Achilles which I'm probably like bound to happen and they're like okay now that you know do you want to like

[01:25:05] do you want to like have the anesthesia or not because all it's doing is actually creating this separate self and then you know like you come out of it you won't even know that it happened which is totally true when you do anesthesia you it's like

[01:25:17] no time has passed at all once you get up so maybe like as much as I think like it's psychotic to do this to like maybe like I would still do it like all it takes is I have to undergo another surgery or something like that

[01:25:30] given that we know what they're doing here's let me try to pull your intuition in this direction he is essentially taking on a corporate job he has decided to accept the job he is doing this work imagine a version of him that just goes in every morning voluntarily

[01:25:46] works that job and comes back home that he has chosen to like essentially take a drug to forget what he did during the day but nonetheless get the work done seems kind of appealing to me and it reminds me of a few times in which

[01:26:01] remember I used to take Ambien and I remember taking Ambien and actually writing emails they were just like work emails and they weren't crazy because I like I wasn't like drunk or anything unlike me on the very bad wizards Facebook page I was like what did you do?

[01:26:16] that was your true self it was a Jason Stanley kind of deal so I wrote work emails and I remember waking up the next day or edited a paper or something and I woke up the next day and I didn't remember that I had done the work

[01:26:28] but I was like wow I left like this gift yeah it's like I've left this gift to myself maybe they're like hey Inni is taking one for the team like Inni is doing all the work and I get the paycheck like it's just voluntarily switch it off

[01:26:42] every morning right different right that yeah but that would be different yeah but that would be a different thing really nothing you don't get to like in this case you just start doing the work like you have no other life you don't have like a

[01:26:56] sex life at best you'll meet like you're you're an older man and you're gay and you'll meet like another older gay man and you can like have conversations in the hallway which is awesome but some chance of having sex with Christopher walk-in at work is enough

[01:27:11] to persuade me somebody may passing reference in one of the episodes in the Audi world to oh they they read a case where this woman got pregnant where Inni got pregnant yeah that's right and it is in a class you know okay so suppose there's a chip

[01:27:24] that is in you that lets you switch on what we can call an amnesia device so so let's say you have a full day of spring cleaning you don't really want to do it but you know you have to you switch it on so that the next thing

[01:27:39] you remember is it's nighttime your house is completely clean so the question is is there a consciousness in between there's no problem if it's like a robot an unconscious robot doing it yeah there is it's just you I don't know like I have such a strong you're right

[01:27:54] actually Paul that this is like making me by the narrative view but it's like you've created somebody completely new yeah and and all and they live their whole life cleaning your house like according to your weird standards because you're kind of germaphobe like that's not a good life

[01:28:12] it's not a you diamond neoc life although to some extent we in this world we employ people to use their full selves to do ugly jobs of society totally this is to pay cleaners an ethical I mean I think these are the kinds of questions

[01:28:28] that it's also interesting no it's fair enough I'm getting so here's a question it came as we're talking which is I had this weird intuition where if I had an any and somebody told me somebody at lumens is going to get tortured I actually don't worry so much

[01:28:44] whether it's me or somebody else like I wouldn't say oh my God I hope it's not my any I just feel it's totally separate and as long as my body isn't damaged I'm don't care particularly who it is this is one of the things that I find like

[01:28:58] I don't totally get physiologically because if you're having a bad day at work and you are so pissed and maybe even like you're running you're running away from that like security guard that like you know and then you go down the elevator like there's no way

[01:29:16] that's not going to physically manifest itself in some way for the Audi and they talk about that they mentioned I think Adam Scott mentions it for the any that you feel less rested or more rested and maybe your shoulders aren't hurting as much but but for the Audi

[01:29:30] that's got to also be true right and I guess it would but there but for the Audi probably feels like yeah, that's how I would have felt anyway but I would have hypertension at the end of the day either either way either way

[01:29:42] that's a great question about the emotions suppose I'm absolutely furious and I lose my memory boom well my heart might still be pounding but does my anger just fade away like it seems like a demasio kind of view would be more like you're still pissed you're still angry

[01:29:58] you may not know why anymore but you're like worked up that's how I think it would be right you could you could have the sort of the two factor theory of emotion

[01:30:06] view that like is so long as the person coming down the elevator is told that the reason their heart is beating is because they just have like a party then then perhaps take it to be a praise I've had times

[01:30:17] like some bad combination of adabos and alcohol or something like that and I'll get really mad and I'll be like yelling about something and then I'll completely forget what it is that I'm yelling about but I still feel angry

[01:30:29] and but like I have to get asked the person I'm yelling at like what I'm that's very creepy down you're screaming at somebody like wait why am I killing you why am I why am I mad at you totally that's totally why am I punching you

[01:30:47] this is why I feel like this is just sort of a a writ large what we do to ourselves like we escape by taking drugs and alcohol all the time yeah you know right I never have blackout drunkenness but

[01:31:03] you know there are people who experience this sort of thing all the time their drunk self comes out they're they're Mr. Hyde yeah I mean the blackout drunk is actually maybe the best analogy to this kind of person

[01:31:14] except that the blackout drunk person has some knowledge of who they are and what their name is and some and something like that and they have you know it's almost like that any is more of the priv

[01:31:27] or the Audi is more of the prisoner of the any for the for the blackout drunk kind of thing that's such a great question I I long time ago took Ambien and and alcohol and then it was very frightening experience I basically the next day

[01:31:42] I'm thinking and it's in the evening and I'm thinking back and I have no memory of my morning where I know I have given a guest lecture in somebody's class and I email him say hey how did that guest lecture go and I remember the day

[01:31:55] and she said I wouldn't find it was great lecture you heard and I had it was deeply frightening but now I'm asking the question which I never asked before which was what was what was a very brief any me like presumably I was conscious I was fully conscious

[01:32:09] I was me I was just your best self maybe maybe so to the issue of personal identity and autobiographical memory I share your intuitions that it seems as if we just are our memories but I don't think that can be totally right because there are things

[01:32:33] isn't that like an old philosophical problem like the young man remembers that the the old man remembers the middle Asian man in the middle Asian man yeah Thomas Reid yeah but there are cases like HM of severe and Terrigate amnesia where they can't remember

[01:32:50] that they just met somebody a minute ago it's like a new experience and that's usually combined with some sort of retrograde amnesia where they can't they can you know remember who they are but pretty much it right they've lost much of their autobiographical memory

[01:33:05] and so you have people who are living moment to moment with no memory of why they are where they are they seem to still feel as if they have a they self they seem to like actually talk about themselves as being like there's this

[01:33:22] I forget the name of the guy but I showed every year to my intro site cloud life very severe Clyde wearing and he says he at one point gets angry he says I've never seen a doctor they're incompetent here nobody's been able to take care of me

[01:33:34] and you know he saw one like the minute ago yeah but it's still him I think he would still feel right he's still someone that would tend to bitch about like exactly like how he's being treated at all right like me I think it is though

[01:33:49] it's not we're not questioning whether they have a self we're just saying it is not necessarily the same self but that does raise the question of how much of your personality depends on your memories and yeah we have two cases

[01:34:04] the biggest case being Adam Scott where we have a sense of their personalities on both side and we mentioned that Adam Scott seems like he's a little looser and lighter at work but but they seem like the same person

[01:34:18] overall just like a different stages in their life with different breaks cutting their way like to to kind of alternate versions on a timeline where the wife doesn't die or the wife dies or something like that

[01:34:30] the other one that we get at any kind of real sense of is Ellie and it's not anywhere near as detailed but we know any Ellie's any really well and she's like the she's the protester you know she's the Che Guevara you like the you know like she's

[01:34:49] she wants to like bring the place down but then she's also the person that is like running the operation or in line to run the up so on the one hand it seems like well that's totally different she's friend of the working

[01:35:03] man and and she's like the CEO or incoming CEO but on the other hand it's like they both have this kind of like I don't know like strong strong will clearly strong will yeah maybe almost kind of privileged attitude like I

[01:35:19] shouldn't be treated like this which in this case in the in these cases probably right but maybe you need like the confidence of being you know feeling like the world should cater to you to even think that when you're there so

[01:35:33] I don't know like I think you could make a case that they are kind of the similar personalities even if they're different selves. It reminds me of Dylan who in some way doesn't see things as we're talking about

[01:35:45] because when he when he sort of when his any wakes up in this house and he sees the as a son. He is it is deeply shocking to him and jarring and I think he would tell you that

[01:35:57] his Audi is him and it's very important and and there's there's a scene where you know his manager is like screaming at him and and when you get open the door and he says if you open it up you have two other sons I'll tell you their names

[01:36:10] and there is it's there it's like really the same guy as a very very moving scene actually. Yeah. He's a good character. I didn't totally buy his rivalry with the other department but he adds a kind of like lightness

[01:36:27] to the show that's like I think really good especially kind of early. There's something about one department's kill all the other department and cannibalize him or something. Some of the show is just nuts. We there's all sorts of things we're not talking about because I'm not sure

[01:36:41] anything that sounds like there's like a wonderful absurdity to the show. Yeah it doesn't it takes itself the right amount of seriously. I feel like it doesn't think it's more profound than it is. It is really like the tone of it is

[01:36:58] great. There's a there's Mark sisters husband who is played as this guy this jackass clown who writes this terrible self help book but also like like culture could start a revelation. Yes. Like it has both elements to it.

[01:37:13] They're going to publish yourself help book by the way the people who make the show the you within you or something. You the you you are you are at first you really don't buy that the sister who's a very kind of sensible. Yes I still

[01:37:26] find it out. Yeah I think you get the sense that the guy is he he's not a con man. He really believes that and he's like a good person deep down even if you know all this bullshit that he is peddling but like he buys it you

[01:37:42] know and that's also true of Patricia Arquette. Yes. And you know like there's a kind of sad arc with her character. She's like the leader of at least the branch of severance that we are in contact with and she also

[01:37:56] weirdly has a house that's next door to Adam Scott's character which we get the sense that there's something about Mark that's Adam Scott. There's something about Mark that is more important. Yes. It's a little bit of a promotion then of course we haven't even talked about

[01:38:14] the fact that there's this big reveal that his wife who we thought was dead is still alive although yeah I don't know. Yeah he thinks you died in a car accident but she turns out to be the wellness counselor. Yeah but but but

[01:38:30] someone who doesn't seem to have the same deal that everybody else has. She doesn't seem to have an Audi. She seems to only exist as an innie and not for many hours during the day. Do we know that she doesn't have

[01:38:43] an Audi? We don't know but she does say this thing about how she's only been alive for 107 hours and if she was so that means that you know she was working eight hour days that wouldn't be very long at all and we get the

[01:38:58] sense that his wife died much longer than that. That's true. So clearly there's something going on there. She is her job seems to be to be this very creepy wellness. The counselor. A therapy wellness counselor which involves her telling people nice things about their Audi's like you know

[01:39:19] your your your Audi is kind of animals. Your Audi's a compassionate lover. But you're not allowed to react like differently to each thing. Your Audi is strong and lift large. Your Audi attends many dances and is popular among the other attendees. Your Audi likes films and owns a

[01:39:45] machine that can play them. Your Audi is splendid and can swim gracefully and well. I'm sorry please try to enjoy each fact equally and not show preference for any over the others. That's 10 points off you have 90 points remaining.

[01:40:07] Boys please don't speak. Is this supposed to be maybe a takeoff on a performance review of some sort? I don't know. Yeah or like some HR just nightmare seminar or something like that. It's self affirmation but your other self is being a first. You're just being told. It's

[01:40:30] interesting though but they would be made to feel proud about their other selves. You know there is some sort of parent-child relationship between the Audi and the any seems to the extent that there's yeah any feelings either way. This episode of Very Bad Wizards is brought

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[01:42:54] Nord VPN dot com slash VBW our thanks to Nord VPN for sponsoring this episode of very bad wizards. I do love that Mach Adam Scott that he does such a good performance of being melancholic on the outside and shifting to sort of naive optimism on the inside

[01:43:19] kind of surface cheerfulness but it was a healthy cynicism. Yeah with healthy sense and he doesn't like to you know Dylan takes things seriously in their Irving takes things very seriously. He doesn't but at one point PD who is the friend who disappears from

[01:43:37] work it turns out he's been reintegrated something I didn't think was possible. He tells him even inside you carry it like I can tell you know. Yeah and I think that's right like he does have a little bit of something that's weighing him down

[01:43:52] even though he has. Yeah and that makes sense right it should be like that. That's what I was thinking when you were talking about whether you bring your emotions in and he references that he used to come in to work

[01:44:06] with his eyes red every day and we know from the very first scene that it's because he is crying in his car and he comes up and they used to joke that he had allergies or something rather. So is one of the questions that it's addressing is do

[01:44:23] you deal with your pain upfront or do you just repress it and not handle it you know like the I think that I think that's the sense I got from his character at least is that he is opting to

[01:44:37] not live with it. He can't address it even though it's not totally clear how that this helps other than just shortening the days but I guess at least it does that. There's one of the scene we didn't talk about but when Irving discovers that

[01:44:52] that Burt's retiring and he gets extremely upset and basically says that if you get exactly where it says you know he's done you're killing him. Yeah and that would be logic would be if you did wipe out an any it would extinguish a person

[01:45:06] with memories and experiences and relationships. This is also what's fascinating about PD and the difficulties he's having with reintegration. It does seem like it would be a really jarring experience to now have access to it's sort of like Tamro you were talking about

[01:45:26] like a parallel universe branched off and there's two lives and now it's like the two have been collapsed upon having somebody else's memories. Yeah but yours weirdly right yours in the same way that Clive wearing is Clive wearing like you know

[01:45:42] that they're yours because your self is still in there your any and your Audi are yeah very weird. Yeah I do think we're supposed to think that what Mark is doing is coping incorrectly with his emotion and that maybe what people are doing by like compartmentalizing

[01:46:02] their life like this is a way of evading or you know not dealing in an upfront way with what the real issues of society are what the real what your personal issues are. I think that's that's a part of it and and and what

[01:46:18] it does is create this kind of underclass and that's like the last episode which is just phenomenal of the innings kind of staging a like a little kind of heist almost like it's like it turns into a heist film. Yeah you're right. Ocean's 11 for a personal identity group.

[01:46:36] Getting their innings to be able to somehow I don't even remember the details but like go out into the outer world and interact with the outer world and let them know like how they're feeling and what's happening. Yeah the only way to communicate with your

[01:46:50] Audi is to tell someone else a message right because what they're getting their innings are getting switched on through this procedure that apparently just exists for emergencies. They switch on their innings they discover things about their Audi life and if their

[01:47:07] Audi gets switched back on they will have their innie will remember it but they'll have no way of letting the two. They'll just wake up in the elevator next day. Right which creates this amazing tension in the very last scene. Yeah and and the thing with Ellie first

[01:47:22] she finds out which is a big revelation but apparently people had figured out on red long before I didn't go to that but that she was like the incoming CEO and she was a real convert to this method and kind of offered herself as a sacrifice.

[01:47:38] So here's a club for men situation. Right now I'm a member and now I'm the owner right but like at any moment as she's about to give this speech which she does at least in part give the speech saying like we hate it

[01:47:54] in there you're torturing us yeah and we don't know the fallout from that but like I don't know the suspense of that whole moment and meanwhile there's Mark finding out at the end I still don't know what to make of the fact that it's his wife.

[01:48:05] Yeah yeah this is going to be one of those cases where the details about what happened do matter less we feel a bit betrayed because she died supposedly in a car accident you know she hit a tree and she has a tree in her

[01:48:18] office and she and he built a tree out of clay yeah and he built a tree out of clay but how how he would get fooled into thinking that his wife was dead unless there's some six million dollar man shit going on.

[01:48:31] I think it's like I feel like it's some like reanimation and they can get reanimation Rome was in there. I hope this is one this is when they can't duck they got a yeah they can't duck that yeah. You know Roy Baumeister had this great work

[01:48:50] on escape from the self and I can't help but think of this as just you know if this one of the reasons I like to share is because yet there's this the corporate angle there's this identity angle but there is really to me this escape from the self

[01:49:05] this is to is just another way of of doing what we do so often we find some way to deal with just the nature of existence by trying our best to blot out some of our experiences or change our consciousness in some way or

[01:49:26] another and this is like the ultimate escape yeah like the smallest example is when we look at our phone because we're feeling anxious and so like we were just trying to escape dealing with like even the littlest things like just deadlines or you know but I

[01:49:42] know some email but I know what you're saying but it seems different so point Baumeister docks of a BDSM or you're looking at your phone or getting whipped or intense exercise but you're not really escaping from yourself you're throwing away all this sort of shit that surrounds yourself

[01:49:55] that the self doubt the humiliation the feeling of whatever but the core of yourself sort of pearl remains and that's why you enjoy it but this obliterates the self so if you look at your phone you say I was kind of relieving but you

[01:50:10] don't lose consciousness I don't think no I mean I guess yeah that's a good right like I suppose that one could could view escapes from the self as small steps in their direction about obliterating the self I think that's this is the kind of like existential

[01:50:26] denial of death kind of thing where we really really do want to obliterate ourselves secretly but all of the methods that we have for everyday life are just ones in which we can temporarily forget all of things maybe this is just the extreme extreme version

[01:50:40] or maybe we're throwing out the baby it's we didn't talk about a missing baby so it's seen at the end but but but mark yeah but but mark in some way mark is committing suicide it's at 50% suicide you're you know you have

[01:50:54] your life and you for half of your life you're gone you've lost half of your life now you've given birth to somebody else who experiences this way yeah and that's why like I don't know like I'm amazed anti-natalism hasn't come up yet but it is kind of

[01:51:07] like that also thing you're bringing in if you buy that it's another self you're bringing another self into the world that might be suffering you don't know like maybe it's great at work there's some nice things you get the dragon the paper you know but you

[01:51:25] don't know you have no idea well full party seems pretty fucking you know like so like do you have a right to do that like are you doing something good are you sacrificing your life so another person could live you know we weren't

[01:51:37] talking about this in terms of rights tamler no no right yeah ought you to do that yeah remember that there's a bore his quote that I love where he says mirrors and copulation or multiplies selves severance also multiplies the number of selves in the

[01:51:57] world you know like my whole thing where like it's okay to eat cows if they have a good life until they die like that's definitely what's happening here in the sense of you're creating these selves they have their lives hopefully like you would want

[01:52:11] to ensure they're being humanely treated and maybe they are maybe they aren't but and then they're gonna die like because you're gonna retire and once you retire as you said Paul they're dead yeah or quit or whatever and you know interestingly

[01:52:23] what you said made me think there is just a profound weird lack of empathy for the innie that the out the Audi is callous and and see you know you could say well there are all these people working menial jobs that you don't care about well yeah they're

[01:52:39] not me you you think I mean I don't say that I care about the workers but people say that but it's odd even if you believe that it is a different person that you wouldn't kind of be curious to know whether you've created a happy one yeah you

[01:52:58] yeah you won't know and if you definitely know her hell he's Audi definitely knows that she's created a miserable one she's just sort of corporately motivated yeah but like you get the sense that that's what normally happens because they talk about like you can send a request

[01:53:16] but it doesn't usually work out that's right and since the that other people have tried it and this is kind of what normally happens yeah it's like the Audi is like telling the innie like stopping a little bitch we signed up for this like do your

[01:53:28] work exactly but that's just slavery it's a pure case of bringing somebody else into the world to do your bidding and then being indifferent to their fate to their suffering to their fate yeah now I don't know if we know for sure that

[01:53:45] other people have gotten the videos because there's definitely some corporate mouth he's unscaling on it lumen but but at least we and in hell he's case they probably felt like they could do it because she's totally on board it would surprise me

[01:54:00] if you know for her got a video saying please let me out that he wouldn't have but given that you're not even inquisitive about how you are in there it does kind of feel like you're doing a disservice and when you sign up they have this

[01:54:15] this wonderful science fiction device where you can't write down anything yeah and they take great steps to make sure you don't and and you know mark tells heli the story about it you know if you swallow something they'll take it out of you and yeah

[01:54:29] and knowing imagine knowing this and yet signing up this other identity to experience it to experience place where they can't cry for help do you think though that they tell the outies versions that because they might not know that's right you know they might think the audience

[01:54:45] might just think oh I have no complaints so it's probably good everything's going well in there I guess part of it has this wonderful example which is actually very any outie case where he says you know you you wake up from an operation and you're very

[01:54:59] groggy you wake up in hospital right and then the nurse comes by and says and you know he's supposed to have this operation but you're not sure whether you had it or you just slept because you're very great nurse as well we had somebody who had the operation

[01:55:10] was extremely painful and it lasted 10 hours normally it lasts five hours we're not sure whether you're the person who had this 10 hour extremely painful operation which you didn't forgot versus you have the five-hour operation coming up next and Parfas intuition and mine is you really want

[01:55:26] to be have it over with you rather have ten agonizing hours you can't remember behind you in five hours in front of you oh yeah that's just like for sure you're 100% that's like grading papers better whatever you want to tell me as long as the

[01:55:42] papers are done I don't care how long it took me all of a sudden you remember oh yeah I already did them and it was horrible but yeah that's fine temporarily create an innie to grade papers I would totally do it that's like absolutely the worst that's why

[01:55:59] you're doing it anyway psychotic thing that you ever said if the task is not unethical then you have two options one you do the work and remember it to you do the work and don't remember it but you're creating a self that's

[01:56:14] only the only thing they do is grade all these papers but then they stop existing like what do you care what if you what do you bring back because like that's wrong to do what if you bring them back every semester same

[01:56:26] self so they go to the elevator and then they come back and there's more papers like fuck you finish the last paper and they think sweet annihilation but then like the next second they're aware of they have to grade like 30 more paper phrase actually okay so does your

[01:56:40] question is right does you taking the pens and just jamming it into their wrist so Dave records are like video I will make sure you suffer not a person great every one of those papers I mean it's like it's it's sort of like a memento guy tattooing

[01:56:57] messages to himself yeah you know yes but there is you have pointed out that or in what you said I think that there is part of it is driving our tuition is that the innings have a continuous identity so if I'm creating the person to grade papers

[01:57:13] on one afternoon to me that's no different than popping and you know an ambient ambulance and doing the work and then and then that that if I did create a different person it's not really a person in the sense that there's no

[01:57:29] continuity to a sub routine is just exactly right it's like it's like forming a habit but that's not how it is for the innings and well that's why I'm saying that what seems to be important to the intuition that it's wrong is that you're creating a persistent

[01:57:43] identity that every time they walk out of they are walking right back in that seems that seems torture that's that does seem torture but if they were wiped and they woke up on a table every morning and you just could get them right

[01:57:58] up to speed that's less bad to me there if they're new if they're a new person every day because then that new person is only experienced an eight hour workday you know the other thing that I heard that this was inspired by is the back rooms

[01:58:13] do you know about the back rooms that sounds dirty it's no it's like this no sex in the champagne room kind of it's kind of an urban legend but it's more of like I don't know it's called a creepypasta I don't know what that is apparently

[01:58:31] yeah oh it's like a version of copy pasta but you know it's like it's like this kind of thing that develops on Reddit where they tell like it's an urban legend but then it gets really well developed the idea it is a

[01:58:43] version of copy pasta I don't know what copy pasta yeah I don't know what copy pasta I just wanted to let our nerd viewers know and apparently it was created the original post was on 4chan I'm just seeing right now in Wikipedia but it's this like

[01:58:56] you could take a wrong turn in your office and just get trapped in like this just long row of desks and hallways and you're just like lost then you're never come out and I guess the writer said he was inspired by that idea of

[01:59:13] like all of a sudden you do something and then you get lost in the office and then the office is the rest of your life that's how it is for them like just these maze of offices and nothing outside it no they don't see

[01:59:27] like we haven't said this but they don't see daylight you know they don't see like they're down in the basement so it's you know there's some hell imagery like they are you know seven floors down into the ground and their only life is the workplace and like

[01:59:44] that's like being a postdoc exactly it's like being a postdoc in Dave's lab you should put that in your next ad it's like being an innie no but that's like that's I think like what you're doing to this greater to your greater or to your innie in

[02:00:03] this show is you're putting them in this kind of nightmare scenario where like all they have is work and all the corporate bullshit that comes in like the you know oh we're going to do this ball trust ball that I now roll to you and stuff like that

[02:00:18] so great that's those scenes are so good they're so creepy in this way that just resonates every fucking ice warmer that you've ever been forced to sit through it's just like distills it down to them and just the way that the person in power can move

[02:00:35] from like really supportive and affirming to just threatening and you know like they can on a dime just switched like and you ought to be grateful I think gratitude is a good feeling to have about that is your outrage tamela and maybe Paul is it really about what

[02:00:55] they're doing like if they were just having playground time like and like had a happy yeah they could have like a happy life doing you know if they were doing work that that fulfilled them maybe or and having like relationships and I don't know

[02:01:11] and like they got to take time like they got to go on vacations sometimes you know you'd have to sacrifice some of your vacations but I would do that for me any that's right if you were severed into it's both the secrecy thing was true and and you

[02:01:25] really that was the reason but it was a challenging job where you're treated with respect and it's interesting work it doesn't pose the same moral puzzle in some way it would be like going to sleep and taking a pill to get certain sorts of dreams so it's not

[02:01:39] the coercion per se that that bothers it's the coercion has to the corporate dystopian nightmare. Well it's not I mean I think it's both but yeah it's not that it's there's coercion once you want the person wants to leave in an allowed to which is genuinely right.

[02:01:55] The we should probably wrap up but I do want to talk a little bit about the aesthetics of this show only just to register my appreciation for the design. It's just so well done and like the the one of you mentioned this before that there

[02:02:12] in this like forced little four person cubicle kind of thing even though there's all this room everywhere around them. I was reading that some of the stuff was made specifically for the show but some of the stuff they just like bought office furniture from like Eastern

[02:02:27] Europe and had it shipped over. It's also not particularly pleasant both the any scenes but also the Audi scenes are not portrayed as pleasant or enjoyable. Yeah I think and I think it very much plays into the theme because we haven't talked about the Audi world but clearly

[02:02:44] there's there's something going on in the Audi world but we get so little information about like we don't know what we know that there is sort of political maneuvering that has allowed Lumen to make as much of a stamp on this city. We don't get the sense of

[02:03:01] whether this city is special or whether this is going on in other cities. You also don't get the sense of the scope of Lumen like we know that there are at least a few departments but we don't know like is there stuff in the like fourth through 12 floors.

[02:03:17] We have no idea because we're so focused on this core group. The world building of it is dished out to you so sparingly that and we still after the whole first season we still don't totally have a sense of what's going on.

[02:03:32] Can I ask you guys what do you have any theories? And I'll just offer like a preliminary which is it seems to me that the work that is so they have another department called Optics and Design which just is in charge of like the various decorations for the

[02:03:47] drab basement office and whatever it is they're doing. It feels to me like Lumen is beta testing this severance chip, severance procedure and what they've created is just these like really they just want to observe the people who have undergone the procedure and they're giving them jobs

[02:04:07] but those jobs aren't real in any sense. Their job is to be guinea pigs for the new severance procedure that will be as I was saying earlier will be sold to other people like hey imagine you can give birth without ever having to remember.

[02:04:23] They feel like beta testers to me. I don't know. That's what I think maybe and this is really like a psychology experiment that they're doing to just to try to figure out like what is the any going to be willing to do without like killing themselves or without

[02:04:38] harming themselves or raising like how much can we exploit them. So that would explain the odd coincidence of Mark's boss living next to him. Yeah, well then there's something and then so then I think there's also something about Mark where they're testing something particular to

[02:04:53] him about his wife like this is while it's probably not right but the if they are kind of reviving or recreating his wife is this a way to keep them happy or do they retain enough personality where you know like they will start a relationship

[02:05:10] inside and they seem to be testing that you know in the office or something with the two of them I think makes him of a special interest. It's my guess but about Irving we didn't talk about that we do see his Audi painting these creepy

[02:05:28] exact same painting every time which is a very dark scene. Is it the entry into the break room? It's the entry isn't the break room. That's what I think it is the entry into the break room. So there does seem to be some sort of subconscious leakage

[02:05:43] from one to the other. I think that's what that we're being told because also during his you know that one of things they make fun of is an old man he's prone to falling asleep on the job and he starts having these dreams of

[02:05:57] the dripping the dripping black ink that he uses for those paintings. Oh I didn't make the connection. There seems to be some some sort of like it's not a perfect procedure I guess is what we're being being told. It's amazing how little the show gave yes you know

[02:06:15] this love a show that also just does it just things highly of the viewer it doesn't doesn't patronize us with too much explanation. Definitely I feel as this is kind of showed up a 600 people watch. It's happy you know the right 600 had a lot of prestige

[02:06:36] buzz people seem to like it I don't know maybe it's just the like places that I free are renewing it seemed to want it. I think it's just on it because it's on Apple TV I am sad that not more people probably have access to it

[02:06:49] but Ben Stiller deserves a fucking just get it for a month it's like five bucks and then you can just totally binge the show and then get off before you find yourself watching Ted Lasso season to I mean maybe season two as good as Ted Lasso season

[02:07:05] to only know I know I know I would just say I heard you guys I heard you guys I'm more sympathetic to the show. I always say it grows increasingly bad in my memory and every time someone brings up Ted Lasso season 2 I have

[02:07:20] like a like whatever you know Mark has the leftover heartbeat from his being inside. I've blocked I wish I could have created an in me. Imagine if you guys could have a podcast self which constantly this way I know I said yeah

[02:07:40] would I do that to my podcast self like their only existence is having to deal with you switch it off and air you longer and it's like wait I'm done with this episode finally he was being such a fucking pain in the ass and then it's like

[02:07:54] welcome to very bad wizards. So to wrap things up by the way the music is great. I actually have so good it's on Spotify and I listen to it as I work the instrument Oh I meant to do to try to make a beat out of the intro

[02:08:09] maybe I'll do that would be great so good so well done just TV is so good. Do you remember how bad TV was the quality of like the just the filmmaking and the sound and everything at totally yeah it's just it's it's it really is a golden

[02:08:27] age of from Magnum PI do well them Duke boys really got themselves into a pickle this time. Oh now I want to watch and go back and watch okay all right well thank you Paul no thank you this was great nice to have a show of love

[02:08:49] and listen they better not you better not fuck it up for season two. You're talking about very bad wizards right? Of course I am. We're now the second best thing on the internet after severance. All right thank you so much for doing this Paul.

[02:09:02] Join us next time on very bad wizards drunk it's drunk very drunk sex like very very very they don't address this and I like I should have said this on the episode but like if I was in there I would just jerk off like eight times a day

[02:09:17] and then so that the Audi like couldn't get it up like he was actually the wife that's the most sinister why is it sore? I was looking forward to tonight that's how to in you guys back no wonder his love life on the outside is so terrible.

[02:09:41] He just he has post not clarity for everybody he just doesn't know why.