Based Camp - The Lindy Illusion： Why Old Things Suck

00:00:00.000 so queen victoria imagine a weeb invented our modern perception of japanese culture even as

00:00:07.220 believed by the japanese that's what scottish culture as we so she then starts telling any of

00:00:14.340 the scottish nobles who visit her house that they have to come in their clan tartan and they're like

00:00:19.660 oh my what and so it's like it's like a weeb goes to japan and he says that everybody's daughters

00:00:28.060 have to come in their magic girl costume these come in your formal goku hairstyle and these japanese 0.54

00:00:33.420 people are like and they're like it's the it's the queen i'm gonna dress up my daughter like a

00:00:40.900 magic girl we're gone we're going all in on this and the funny thing is that scottish people today 1.00

00:00:47.040 the country has such a terrible education system many of them believe that all this stuff we saw

00:00:52.380 the loch ness monster when all of a sudden a huge creature this giant crustacean from the paleo

00:00:57.920 lithic air comes out of the water and i yelled i said what do you want from us monster and the

00:01:02.560 monster bent down and said i need about a tree fitting how much of a weeb of queen victoria was 0.98

00:01:10.680 she also allegedly would would while visiting balmoral slip into this fake scottish brogue so you can

00:01:18.260 imagine like a weeb going to like spend their summers in japan like speaking in a fake japanese accent 0.54

00:01:26.160 and you can imagine their entire culture off of her weeb fantasy would you like to know more

00:01:34.080 hello simone i'm excited to be here with you today today we are going to be talking about

00:01:38.100 one of the ideas that has become popular in pseudo-intellectual circles and i want to talk

00:01:43.560 about how wrong it is are we pseudo-intellectuals is this one of our circles well yeah it's it's called

00:01:49.940 the lindy effect and it often comes up in the concept of something being anti-lindy or a heuristic

00:01:56.360 where the longer a non-perishable thing like an idea technology cultural practice book or institution

00:02:01.980 has survived the longer it's expected remaining lifespan as it's proven robust against time and

00:02:08.160 disorder so this concept is really really really popular in the conservative space so they'll look at

00:02:13.700 something like techno puritanism right like our family's religious practices but they'll be like

00:02:19.120 oh well it's very anti-lindy right like it's very new and therefore it's unlikely to survive a long time

00:02:25.520 and i'm going to point out that this is both a misattribution of an idea it's a misattribution of a

00:02:33.620 bad idea that even in its very conception was taken to mean the exact opposite of what it originally meant

00:02:40.340 which is just like everything about this idea is bad one is that first of all the idea is just

00:02:47.260 wrong in a modern context it worked a lot when you were dealing with a static economy and society

00:02:52.820 because then that was like a evolutionary environment if something becomes evolutionarily

00:02:58.620 advantageous and outcompetes other things and the environment it has outcompeted them with has

00:03:03.640 stayed stable it is going to continue to be advantageous that just like an obvious truism right

00:03:09.500 and that is true for cultural environments right like if you're dealing with a long period of human

00:03:13.580 history where things were broadly the same from one generation to the next an idea or a book or a

00:03:19.880 technology is going to be much more robust if it has outcompeted other technologies within a similar

00:03:25.520 context however that is no longer the world we live in things change dramatically in terms of the

00:03:33.200 global economy in terms of the global culture in terms of how we communicate

00:03:36.720 and in terms of global memetic sets so rapidly now that you almost have an inversion of the very

00:03:45.180 concept of the lindy effect second what i'm going to be talking about is a lot of the things that lead to

00:03:52.400 the perception of the lindy effect and we're going to be going over these are illusions they are instances

00:03:58.640 in which an individual today believes something has antiquity because either of just a myth right or

00:04:09.100 they believe it has antiquity because something in antiquity had a similar name an example of this would

00:04:16.040 be something like well christmas or easter has been around a long time and we'll go into not in

00:04:22.900 anything that's meaningfully close to the way today these things are practiced if you said that

00:04:28.660 you know if you're applying the lindy effect to let's say something like christmas or you you would

00:04:37.080 apply it to techno puritanism e.g what i mean by that is in 100 or 200 years if techno puritanism

00:04:43.000 becomes widespread and is like a common belief system everyone would say well this just follows

00:04:48.080 the lindy effect because it's christianity and christianity has always been around but people

00:04:51.860 was in our generation would be mortified if somebody said that yeah the way that christmas is

00:04:57.140 practiced today or easter is practiced today is historic to somebody in the middle ages something

00:05:02.940 like that they'd look at you way crazier than saying technically you know it like you know the year

00:05:09.860 like for bc they'd be like what do you mean what do you talk this is an apocalyptic jew just like all 1.00

00:05:17.160 the other ones what do you she's talking here about what a lot of historical jesus researchers

00:05:23.880 think about jesus within that context but the the and the other reason why this is hidden from a lot

00:05:29.720 of people and we'll go into this is a lot of these traditions use their manufactured antiquity

00:05:37.440 to try to give themselves a veneer of authenticity whether it is the practices of the current catholic

00:05:45.700 church or modern judaism or modern orthodox judaism even and when individuals question these things

00:05:53.120 you are often literally questioning somebody's self-perception and worldview so it is incredibly

00:06:01.060 like the people want to fight against it as hard as they can because for some people if you could

00:06:06.240 show that their faith or belief system lacks a lot of the antiquity that they believe it has

00:06:13.260 then they would see that as invalidating it because they see that as its core like argument for

00:06:19.620 existence and so we'll go into that as well that's a really good point i want to say i can first i just

00:06:26.040 want to give credence or i don't think people are crazy to have an intuition in favor of this effect

00:06:33.400 because up until the scientific method or like empiricism became widespread and more systematic

00:06:39.580 and we had ways to very quickly validate whether something that was true that didn't involve

00:06:45.120 literally dying the only way you knew that something was a decent like health intervention

00:06:50.720 or safety intervention was because it was a tradition that was passed down from generation

00:06:56.220 to generation because all the the generations that tried something new and different that didn't

00:07:00.880 work died and all the surviving ones did the thing that did work and so it was really good to do the

00:07:06.220 thing that was old because that means that everyone who did it before well they they lived so it's

00:07:11.040 probably a good sign well it's not even that they lived it's actually and you bring up a really

00:07:15.160 fascinating point that god i could do a giant deep dive on like an episode in itself but there was a period

00:07:21.220 in european history that went from like the late roman period to the high medieval period and in this period

00:07:30.400 of history this is when the catholic church really dominated and they created a mindset around the

00:07:37.420 sciences and around things like medicine where you would always reflect on an older and provenly older

00:07:46.980 way of doing it or teaching and the antiquity of a thing was in this sort of early version of catholicism

00:07:54.320 proved that thing's authenticity and this existed outside of the church this was the period where you had

00:08:00.300 like galen medicine right and then like nobody developed on medicine after galen for a really long

00:08:06.300 time and when they would teach medicine at university if you had a a new way of doing a thing

00:08:12.300 literally the argument they would have is well this isn't the way galen did it and then people would be

00:08:18.100 like well you know maybe he was like like they'd be like but it seems to work better and they're like but

00:08:24.380 is it is it does it have the antiquity um very much like the dwarves from warhammer medieval period

00:08:32.900 version right like does it have antiquity if it doesn't have antiquity it's wrong how dare you with

00:08:38.900 these new flying contraptions i don't care that they work they don't have antiquity and what you

00:08:43.420 also thought this was philosophers of this period and books of this period well this is why we are so we

00:08:48.900 dunk on deontologists all the time because there's there's a difference between a heuristic that

00:08:54.240 works well which is oh this old thing probably is good because the people who used it survived and

00:08:59.780 probably all the new things that ended up killing people well that's why we don't know about them

00:09:04.280 that that makes sense as a heuristic until you build a better method like empiricism the scientific

00:09:10.180 method etc just better technology or something that just appears to work better to your point right but

00:09:15.220 then the deontologists are like i don't care we're gonna do it the way it's supposed to be done

00:09:20.300 and that's why we have such a big problem with this this latest episode and we hate deontology

00:09:26.040 yeah this this goes beyond just classic deontology though if you look at the way science and information

00:09:31.880 was treated during this period it had some positive effects civilizationally specifically the reason why

00:09:38.920 today we consider the quote-unquote classics the classics that you as of a you know if you're

00:09:46.060 watching this you probably are educated on ancient greek literature and ancient roman literature probably

00:09:51.320 not anymore sadly sadly but but we were in our generation this happened for a very long time

00:09:56.660 civilizationally but here you're you're actually proving that lindseyism is is is inverting now that

00:10:01.920 young people aren't learning this stuff anymore even though it had been learned for so long

00:10:04.840 but the reason why wasn't because this stuff was necessarily good or better or anything like that

00:10:11.260 it was because during this period of catholic church dominance of europe the educational institutions

00:10:18.120 operated on the belief that older was better with a few specific periods in history specifically

00:10:24.800 certain parts of the roman empire certain parts of the greek civilization having like real real level

00:10:30.120 of importance and it's it's ironic that it turns out that the church is the reason why we hold so

00:10:37.500 many pagan thinkers in such high esteem if if not for this period of catholic dominance you know

00:10:44.920 socrates and plato and all that you you likely oh you think like the catholic church was the original

00:10:52.120 hype machine for all of these greek and roman i don't think it's it's very well documented history

00:10:57.460 that's so i didn't i guess i just never put two and two together i love that that is delightful

00:11:02.960 yeah the the catholic church was actually really obsessed with this stuff i mean okay think about

00:11:07.320 it this way right simone you read something like dante's inferno right or dante's divine comedy is that

00:11:12.820 yeah dante's burn book okay think about all of the figures that appear on it they are either modern

00:11:20.080 political figures from like italian politics if his dante's burn book it's so he's such a like

00:11:26.220 13 year old girl yeah or yeah writing a fan fiction about all of his or or they are ancient greek thinkers

00:11:34.780 or ancient roman thinkers oh my god was dante the original online bully 0.66

00:11:39.220 fan fiction writer he's writing a mean fanfic about like making a furry and the trifecta is complete

00:11:46.860 he probably was one what am i saying no no but no you're making a really good point though yeah it's

00:11:52.300 like like their their fan fiction their their their cinematic universe of choice was these these

00:11:59.140 thinkers like if it wasn't a saint or you know a like a biblical figure it was roman or greek philosopher

00:12:09.440 right but but and you would know this if you went to you know a catholic monastery at this time period

00:12:14.860 they'd know all of their roman and greek thinkers right like they'd know and and and the not just

00:12:19.880 the thinkers but the fiction from that period that was the most popular fiction for a long time because

00:12:26.060 older was better uh you had that and then you had the the weird incel horny comic book literature of

00:12:32.420 the period which was the chivalric literature which a lot of people don't realize was written by

00:12:36.960 the horny troubadours and was sort of our version of comic books today and we have totally other episodes

00:12:43.060 i can get into about that but the point being is i think it created the illusion if you're looking

00:12:47.540 at history that this stuff actually had any sort of saying power and it didn't it was an artificial

00:12:52.980 staying power which has collapsed was in a lot of modern institutional environments but before we get

00:13:00.580 to that where did this idea come from where did it get popularized the guy who popularized it i'm

00:13:06.920 to see if you remember this guy's name for anything was nasim nicholas taleb in his 2012 book anti-fragile

00:13:13.500 oh yeah that rings a bell yeah and the 2017 essay called an expert called lindy so we actually have

00:13:21.280 another episode on this particular figure where i point out that he is an enormous con artist

00:13:26.980 super mad about him i yeah he's the guy who is the biggest known advocate that iq has literally no

00:13:34.300 meaning and that was no outcomes and i just go through his argument and be like this guy is just

00:13:39.920 lying with like it's it's a it's a i consider that episode a very good dissection of an argument so you

00:13:46.280 can quickly recognize when somebody is using supposed data to lie to you because it's it's very clear when

00:13:53.500 you read his argument that he knows he's deceiving his audience i was like it's really skeezy but basically

00:13:59.800 i put him on like a lower level than malcolm gladwell right like i think malcolm gladwell may

00:14:05.420 be evil malcolm yes well i'm gonna call him good malcolm because i'm evil malcolm which is being 0.56

00:14:11.660 good malcolm i'm joking but yeah he's evil malcolm so evil malcolm by the way for people who don't know

00:14:16.660 at sanford business school there was literally an entire class that we took that was a mandated class

00:14:23.160 that everyone had to take and there's only like three mandated classes in the entire like

00:14:26.480 so it's like a big deal class the entire i think first year it might have been like first semester

00:14:34.100 of this class was entirely just using malcolm gladwell's books to learn how to use statistics

00:14:41.900 to lie to people it was like this is the art from the masters gold standard of lying to people with

00:14:48.880 statistics let's go over these books i think it was the tipping point was the one that they were

00:14:53.620 really focused on but there were a few others uh 80 000 hours with another that they focus on

00:14:57.340 but i i just love that like people do not realize how bad some like modern pseudoscience authors are

00:15:03.720 who's the one that always pisses you off the guy who wrote sapiens what's his name i cannot remember

00:15:09.960 his name yeah but a lot a lot of people do cue into these like pseudoscience books that are like pop

00:15:14.900 science and they think that they're like valid but anyway so basically came from a famous pseudoscientist

00:15:21.460 okay and what's so hilarious is he named it after comedians who frequently gathered at lindy's

00:15:28.820 delicatessen a famous broadway area spot known for its cheesecake and a hangout for showbiz folks after

00:15:34.400 performances what's hilarious is they use the term to mean the exact antithesis of what he took it to

00:15:41.640 mean i just think it's bad reading comprehension on his point or something really sorry but let's go

00:15:46.580 into this because it's interesting okay so there the comedians would gossip and analyze recent shows

00:15:51.600 and speculate on career longevity particularly for comedian tv comedians the core observation slash

00:16:00.100 heuristic they developed was that a comedian's career our life expectancy was inversely proportional

00:16:06.800 to how frequently they were exposed on tv the more frequent appearances eg weekly show shows

00:16:14.580 the quicker they'd burn out material and fade sparse appearances guest spots and special allowed for

00:16:21.240 longer careers so it's not exactly inversely but it certainly doesn't mean anything like what lindy took

00:16:28.180 it to mean this was then updated by benoit mandelbart a 1982 and in the book the factual geometry of nature

00:16:36.520 where he referenced the same deli anecdote but mathematically reframed it trying to argue for the longer

00:16:43.400 something with around the the better it was right basically okay and it didn't gain main spread

00:16:50.060 popularity until the mid 2020s and the main reason it seemed to gain main spread popularity was because

00:16:57.780 of widespread or mainstream is that what you're trying to say it was because of bitcoin battles

00:17:03.100 basically bitcoin tried to use it to argue that bitcoin was the best cryptocurrency and then of course

00:17:10.180 immediately the gold people were like well then gold is better than bitcoin because bitcoin is anti-lindy

00:17:16.240 you know and uh gold's doing better than bitcoin right now though the point being but i'm not i mean

00:17:25.500 not over any sort of longer directionally below where we sold it i think so just saying the point

00:17:34.200 being is that how was i gonna say in in terms of anti-lindy and bitcoin yeah so basically the the

00:17:39.660 whole bitcoin bro versus gold bro debate and bitcoin bro versus eth bro debate is what popularized the

00:17:46.980 concept and got a lot of people to become aware of it okay but one of the arguments used against it

00:17:54.480 which i do not think is a good argument is they say a common charge is that the lindy effect is

00:17:58.740 essentially survivorship bias dressed up as wisdom critics point out that we only see things that

00:18:03.300 have lasted eg ancient texts gold bread etc while countless old things have vanished without a trace

00:18:08.620 the heuristic cherry-pick survivors and ignores the graveyard of once enduring ideas and technologies

00:18:14.500 that failed i'm going to point out that that's that's not even the case it's just not a very good

00:18:19.560 principle beyond the intuitive truth that you would see to it eg obviously you're going to have a bit

00:18:26.180 of a bias towards things that have been around a long time simply because they have been around a

00:18:30.340 long time but what we will see is one things just aren't around as long as you think they are so a

00:18:36.520 great example of this is fortune 500 companies and and the trend of things not being around as long as

00:18:42.460 you think they are is increasing over time so if you go to the 1950s to the 1960s the average tenure on

00:18:49.160 the fortune 500 list was 50 to 60 years oh my gosh wait that's insane yeah i can't even imagine that

00:18:57.260 if you go to the 1970s to 1980s it was 30 to 35 years if you go to a lifetime that's insane if you go

00:19:05.400 to the 1990s it was around 20 to 24 years if you go to the 2010s to 2020s it's now at around 15 years or

00:19:16.960 less that is that is how long so it went from 60 years to 15 years on the fortune 500 list companies

00:19:24.680 are churned through on this list these days um and i'd also point out here that a lot of the things

00:19:33.460 that you believe are historic are just not so let's let's go through a few of these right yeah and and by

00:19:39.460 the end of this you'll be thinking wait is literally anything i use in my life does anything have

00:19:45.120 historicity i'm like looking around my room for anything that is historic i can find one thing

00:19:50.220 well the whole room maybe a knife well yeah i mean the room was built in like 1790 that's

00:19:57.180 decent for america that's just living in an old place so you've got this knife here and this cup

00:20:03.880 here these are the only two things i can see anywhere around me that have any real degree of

00:20:09.100 historicity well how are we defining historicity that recurve bow over there was built in like

00:20:13.800 or made maybe maybe the time the sand the sand time thing here but like nobody actually uses

00:20:20.540 those anymore no no that was made in like 2000 well no i know but i'm talking about the technology

00:20:25.860 itself oh the technology no i recurve bow right there yeah your recurve bro and the mirror that

00:20:31.460 is it that is the only things in this room that have any historicity to them i have open baskets full

00:20:37.240 baby things books obviously i'm looking at books come on books are on their way out right now

00:20:43.380 if you look at watch our video why burn books when nobody reads anymore books are largely just

00:20:49.180 decorative at this point and almost nobody reads books even if you're talking about best-selling

00:20:53.280 books and we go over that like i think it's like your average like top end book gets like

00:20:57.540 5 000 to 8 000 reads or something when we were going for some examples of what i mean here the

00:21:01.580 average new york times bestseller is only selling between 10 000 copies to 100 000 copies and that

00:21:09.060 can mean for the author you're getting 18 000 to 180 000 per a new york times bestseller the win

00:21:17.820 of wins and even if you come into this successful suppose you're billy eilish right billy eilish sold

00:21:23.520 64 000 copies justin timberlake sold only a hundred thousand copies ilian omar

00:21:29.620 26 000 copies way less than an average episode of our shows piers morgan 5 650 copies in the u.s

00:21:40.520 basically nothing so people do not read books whenever somebody comes to me they're like i

00:21:46.500 have this great idea to write a book i'm like well that's pretty silly considering nobody reads books

00:21:51.820 anymore it's sad it's so sad it's bad if you contrast it with like an average youtube video or

00:21:58.240 something and and so i think a lot of the things in like the only thing that is actually still

00:22:02.360 regularly used are cups and knives baskets baskets man baskets right like not a lot like you have

00:22:10.440 candles behind you but they're entirely decorative so let's go over other things that people may

00:22:14.480 think they're also electric candles so i don't know oh oh glasses glasses have a degree of historicity

00:22:20.560 and i haven't changed that much yeah buckles you have buckles literally a historic recreation dress

00:22:27.560 so i don't think it's actually no that's the fasteners of that sort are actually quite

00:22:32.200 new but i am wearing stays right now oh actually you're right they're so new that the amish don't 1.00

00:22:38.220 use them because they see them as two new fangled yeah they're new fangled but my laced up stays

00:22:42.860 under this oh and i'm wearing a viking apron below this yeah but a lot of people just don't realize

00:22:48.440 that something like a buckle is actually a fairly new technology in terms of clothing

00:22:52.320 even hair ties i mean people used to literally use a needle and thread to tie up their braids

00:22:58.240 so so here's some fun ones here diamond engagement rings those are very engagement rings were popularized

00:23:05.600 in the 1930s to 40s by the de beers company their diamond is forever added in 1947 the white wedding

00:23:12.380 dress the white wedding dress was popular wow you know your stuff let's see if you can get more of

00:23:17.600 fashion history malcolm come on that's like my that's my thing the the happy birthday song

00:23:24.380 oh that was made that was the based on the good morning to you song made by two school teachers

00:23:30.080 um in the like 19 what 1910s to 1930s what is it 1930s you got it right wow my way trick or treating

00:23:39.500 trick or treating yeah that wasn't done until i want to say like the 1950s or 60s right now people

00:23:48.180 used to make little jack-o'-lanterns and stuff the really cute collectible stuff that are halloween

00:23:53.700 decorations are all lanterns they're not for dressing up in costumes we actually have an entire episode

00:23:58.620 where we go over how new like if you think like academia is as a historicity we put out the entire

00:24:03.200 citation system that academia invented is is based on was literally invented 1954 yeah and citation

00:24:09.800 system like i thought like there was like a peer review and everything too but that was a g index

00:24:14.740 and the h index which are used to rate professors today and academics today were literally invented

00:24:19.540 in like 2013 like this is like what our entire academic system is based on these days right

00:24:25.880 people are like as it always was as it always was here's a here's some fun ones later hosen and

00:24:31.540 drindle oktoberfest attire later hosen yeah and by the way i had a german friend who always got mad

00:24:37.720 because everyone in america pronounces it leader hosen which apparently means singing pants which is a

00:24:43.260 way better word i like singing pants okay did you have like torsten puts on his overalls and he calls

00:24:48.580 them marching pants because he doesn't know their overalls and i don't know why he thinks but anyway

00:24:53.340 letter hosen was what were they like invented in like the the 1910s or something what i don't know

00:25:00.480 the earliest 20th century wow okay so in the 1800s yeah or 1910s if early 20th century is 1910s i'm not

00:25:08.220 too bad okay the japanese tea ceremony oh that's interesting i want to say 1830s yeah that's about

00:25:17.500 right so so early 20th century it was done during the meijing era modernization yeah i think when you

00:25:23.500 go to the the golden did you go to the golden palace in kyoto i think they talk about it a lot

00:25:30.140 there they have like a dozen maybe i did i wouldn't have remembered something like that because i don't

00:25:34.320 it was white covered in the palace covered in gold which is all new almost everything in japan is new

00:25:40.620 by the way watch our episode the the the one true civilization theory our most offensive theory

00:25:46.120 if you want to be heavily offended it's a good it's a spicy one but english breakfast oh like

00:25:53.240 the beans and blood yeah a hearty plate of eggs bacon and beans gosh i don't know i'm gonna guess

00:25:59.920 that's an industrial revolution thing no it could be yeah it is it is the industrial revolution thing

00:26:05.440 that was promoted when hotels started to become popular as a middle-class symbol of prosperity well

00:26:10.440 don't forget scottish tartans being like a total invention yeah we're gonna go into that too right

00:26:17.560 tartan is an invention kilts are a modern invention makes me so sad like you want it to be real you

00:26:23.380 want it to be this historical thing the scottish thing is so and scott this is like you know like

00:26:28.220 i said that like jews get pissed off when you point out that like there's not actually that much

00:26:31.960 antiquity to a lot of judaism and catholics get pissed off when you say there's not that much 1.00

00:26:35.680 antiquity you want to really watch your people who get pissed off tell this to a scott tell them 0.69

00:26:41.460 you know that kilts don't actually have much historicity to because then they have to accept

00:26:46.740 that they were just hill people criminals all right no it gets it gets funnier yeah the actual

00:26:55.200 reason why all of this like the scottish image we have today was became popular victoria fetishizing

00:27:02.160 them yeah so the people who don't know what was the place called that she went to a moral

00:27:06.920 valmoral so queen victoria would go to this place called valmoral and she was really enamored with the

00:27:14.600 idea of scottish history yeah it was like imagine no this is perfect imagine a weeb invented our modern

00:27:23.360 perception of japanese culture even as believed by the japanese that's what scottish culture as we

00:27:30.060 that is yeah that is you are a hundred so to understand how much of a weeb she was for scottish 0.99

00:27:34.940 culture right like so she would go and there were some patterns that look something like a modern

00:27:41.440 tartan but there was nothing like a clan version like different clans didn't have different ones

00:27:46.560 it's an invention it's a fantasy no no no but so she she saw this somewhere right um just like in a

00:27:52.940 pattern shop basically somewhere and she hadn't seen it in the uk and so she decided personally and

00:27:59.980 because she's the queen everybody leans into this you know she's like oh i love this scottish

00:28:05.240 pattern and they're like oh yeah this is the most scottish you need to buy it all and so then she

00:28:12.680 literally wallpapers her entire house in tartan designs and then what she starts doing is because

00:28:20.800 she had this vague idea of like a kilt because something like a kilt had been banned i want to say

00:28:25.380 the jacobite revolution i don't remember this this was but but something like it was banned but it

00:28:30.200 actually wasn't like a formalized thing or anything like that it was like a more modernized symbol of

00:28:34.680 like it wasn't the painted skirt i mean they wore something more akin to togas or saris than

00:28:39.560 yeah yeah similar to toga or a sari which a lot of people medieval people wore like it wasn't unique

00:28:45.140 to scotland or anything like that it was just the basic medieval gown that like peasants in ireland or

00:28:50.660 england or anyone elsewhere but she saw this and she thought it was like a male skirt thing anyway 0.97

00:28:55.640 so she then starts telling any of the scottish nobles who visit her house that they have to

00:29:01.420 come in their clan tartan and they're like oh my what and so it's like it's like a weave goes to

00:29:09.480 japan and he says that everybody's daughters have to come in their magic girl costumes come in your

00:29:14.720 formal goku hairstyle yeah come in your formal goku hairstyle and your magic girl costumes 0.98

00:29:20.560 and these japanese people are like

00:29:23.600 and they're like it's the it's the queen i'm gonna dress up my daughter like a magic girl we're gone

00:29:31.340 we're going all in on this and the funny thing is that scottish people today the country gets such a 1.00

00:29:37.080 terrible education system many of them believe that all this stuff well it's a funny thing it's a

00:29:42.460 really really bad education system combined i say this is somebody who got his graduate degree i

00:29:48.300 mean my undergraduate degree at st andrews which is easily the top school in scotland often the top

00:29:52.920 college in the uk so i'm not saying this is somebody with no knowledge of scottish people being

00:29:58.020 dumb buns supposedly i was around the best of the best of scots and i was just not that impressed 0.81

00:30:02.920 and no actually it was a thing at st andrews the st andrews people who were from abroad because it

00:30:07.420 has like a huge i want to say like 25 foreign audience they were typically like they know stuff

00:30:13.260 i would expect a normal educated person to know the the scots they would not know like one but you

00:30:21.000 still to be the best of the best of the best to get into st andrews as someone in scotland yeah so

00:30:26.920 this is the best of the best of the best uh why exactly are we here sean we're here because you're

00:30:34.060 looking for the best of the best of the best sir what's so funny he's just really excited and he

00:30:45.040 has no clue why we're here and one of them was unaware that america used to be a british colony

00:30:51.320 for example i was like talking about independence because america is just that based how could it

00:30:56.100 well i mean come on that's scottish history it just everything begins in the year 1900 all right

00:31:01.680 america always was scotland always was like independence from what

00:31:05.800 the indians malcolm the indigenous americans americans independency no but like that is like

00:31:14.440 their knowledge of their own history side note here if you are scots irish which is what most

00:31:19.680 people in america who think they are either irish or scottish actually are in what we are which is the

00:31:24.820 greater appalachian cultural group in the united states this is actually an incredibly small population

00:31:29.740 that was hated by the irish hated by the scots hated by the english they they were not mainstream

00:31:35.780 scottish so while i do say i make fun of my own people the scottish people certainly wouldn't have

00:31:41.620 thought of the ulster scots as their own people they they hated them quite a lot and when they left

00:31:47.540 scotland it was a population of if you're talking fighting age men maybe only 3 500 people

00:31:53.800 and that that exploded into one of the dominant cultural groups in the united states but that is for

00:31:58.960 other episodes fun fact when this population that has become one of the dominant population groups

00:32:04.360 in america with lived in scotland they were called the reavers and this is where the concept of like

00:32:08.580 the reavers from firefly come from because they were just that violent and so pop culture hasn't

00:32:15.320 treated them kindly and so they have like this how much of a weeb of queen victoria was she also

00:32:21.840 allegedly would would while visiting balmoral slip into this fake scottish brogue so you can imagine

00:32:29.080 like a weeb going to like spend their summers in japan like speaking in a thick japanese accent

00:32:36.540 and you can imagine it would be so bad their entire culture off of her weeb fantasy 0.95

00:32:47.180 by the way another modern invention in scotland doesn't have historicity to it i think it's from

00:32:52.340 like the 1800s i love it i kind of i kind of love the idea though actually if we want to get like a

00:32:58.240 little bit more deep into it though like you have to you know let the cringe pass through you and only

00:33:03.620 remain of of just building a culture based on the fan fiction because who likes the the the nuance of

00:33:10.560 history i mean again like what do you have when you go to the reality it's just like warring clans

00:33:15.900 people just like crazy hill people i mean honestly american hillbillies are like more true to the

00:33:21.000 the real scottish person right you know this romanticized scotland i think it's being it has

00:33:26.380 been adopted because it is a more flattering version of the truth why not just reinvent history

00:33:33.220 then just run with that why not have the weeb version of your own country you know what i mean

00:33:39.480 yeah no you're not wrong to do it scottish people so scottish people i mean haggis was invented in

00:33:47.840 the 18th century but no the first mention we have of something called haggis that later the scottish

00:33:54.280 people copied we have this from two books right guess where they're both from god i don't know

00:34:01.860 england there's a 1930 or just like the scotch egg which is not at all scottish it's it's english

00:34:08.520 but i don't know why no one knows why there's in english records around 1430

00:34:14.080 oh my god you don't even see it in any scottish records until 1520 and at that point we don't know

00:34:20.840 that it's what today they called haggis so that's so that's so england like like just going and making

00:34:25.620 everywhere awesome and then just also allowing them to take credit for it yeah yeah and then

00:34:31.160 everyone else being so resentful oh my the imperial empire ruined everything when like really they just

00:34:37.500 fixed everything and allowed them to just reinvent their own history and be like oh yeah no it's that

00:34:42.820 is like what the true good leader does right they're like they they allow you to you know they give

00:34:47.960 credit to their underlings or whatever like oh you know no jimmy did it all i'm credit to jimmy

00:34:54.080 we're like you know he really did all the work that's a great leader i i love you we found a new

00:34:58.100 people to lay into in this episode we love scott we got married in edinburgh you and and and and

00:35:06.500 i'm scottish ancestry like that's where my family is from that's where a part of your family is from as

00:35:12.140 well you know we're both from the the backwoods tradition in the united states which is a scottish

00:35:17.280 population my ancestors mostly passed over on the you know their raping journey we're really proud 0.91

00:35:23.160 of your wife at least i mean freya dove into that pillaging 100 percent even took part in quite a lot 0.95

00:35:31.740 of the raping it's it's what you did as as a nordic viking but sure my ancestors banged your ancestors 1.00

00:35:40.200 non-consensually non-consensually actually there was very little genetic crossover from the vikings 0.52

00:35:45.360 yeah i know it's mostly england it's mostly a myth speaking of historic myths uh

00:35:50.440 that's honestly because they were just too gross we thought about it as to why so many myths because

00:35:57.680 i actually think that this interesting persists about scottish history yeah the reason is is

00:36:01.680 because scotland teaches its own history almost like native americans in the u.s might teach their

00:36:06.600 own history as a discriminated group so they sort of allow themselves these lies and if you challenge

00:36:13.040 them they're like oh you're exophobic or whatever right like they you know and you see this from

00:36:18.140 other groups we're gonna get jews who are like judaism isn't a watch our video the question that

00:36:22.540 breaks judaism if you want us to go in depth in this i do not want to delineate all of my arguments

00:36:25.920 here the two hour video four hour video i think or like a three hour it's really it's like we're

00:36:31.260 going into basically a week to film that well yeah because i want i was like if i'm gonna have a

00:36:35.980 bunch of things that i'm gonna be accused of as being anti-semitic because you know that's how things

00:36:39.180 are if you challenge your religion people are like oh it must be because you hate us and it's like no

00:36:42.080 i'm just going over freaking history here but i was like i'm gonna have that all in one episode

00:36:46.240 right so i don't have to like pepper it throughout episodes and then with let's keep going here here

00:36:51.620 here's the fun one by the way and and note here for anyone who wants to be like we clearly pissed

00:36:57.420 off a lot of scottish people in this episode what scottish viewers analytics only shows us uk so

00:37:03.480 yeah well you have real english you know that's a people need way more pride in english heritage i'm

00:37:09.220 going to tell you that but to continue here honestly i feel like scottish people are pretty

00:37:13.160 freaking offline yeah no wait no oh we want shout out to you we have one glasgow based

00:37:20.920 listener and props to you sir we love you screw everyone else this one's for you

00:37:29.460 yeah anyway so gender specific toys pink for girls blue for boys do you know when this started yeah

00:37:37.980 pink used to be for boys because pink was the pastel version of red which is the color of victory and

00:37:43.580 power and blood yeah yes obviously it's so weird that pink became a girl color when did pink become a

00:37:49.600 girl color oh god i want to say like 1940s but i don't know this one 1980s 1980s yeah via toy catalogs

00:37:59.780 and ads i'm gonna push back on that but sure the red suited santa claus oh that was coca-cola so that

00:38:10.660 must have been like yeah then what what did they when did they do that like the 1930s right

00:38:15.240 yeah 19 1930s and then 1960s trivia episodes are fun yeah i like this it shows how much my wife is

00:38:23.960 so to understand in part before i go into other traditions that people might be surprised about

00:38:29.140 just how i i also love that like when i make insults against populations they are insults that

00:38:36.280 like the general public like there's like general racist insults stuff like that you hear all the time

00:38:40.900 online yeah yeah that like people don't actually care about like if you're like oh asians are bad 0.91

00:38:45.760 at driving and stuff like that and like everyone's bad at driving but that's the easiest one it's not

00:38:51.160 even funny asians don't actually get mad about that right like like they're like fair if you look at the

00:38:58.340 type of like say racism that somebody like nick fuentes of it's often other than the the anti-semitic

00:39:05.440 the populations don't really care that much about if you look at me it's the type of racism

00:39:11.920 that like your average viewer doesn't realize is that offensive to populations but to the populations

00:39:18.420 it's like i have studied your history i know exactly where to place this knife to piss you off 0.87

00:39:24.520 but it's it's funny so i actually i i'm actually offensive here come on i tried for it but yeah so

00:39:32.000 smart why why is it that almost nothing actually has antiquity these days one is smartphones and

00:39:37.740 constant connectivity breaks a lot of the way that information used to be traveled then you have

00:39:42.260 ultra processed foods and daily snacks whether it's chips or energy bars or cereal or anything like that

00:39:47.820 has replaced a huge ton of what we consider food and i was actually on this episode but i decided not

00:39:53.760 to go into it because it's boring and everyone knows but the stuff that we call like in the original

00:39:58.840 explanation of this he would have used examples of things like bread and cheese and beer as being

00:40:04.400 examples of this phenomenon but the stuff that we call bread and cheese and beer today

00:40:09.880 is nothing like what historically we called bread and this is why i'm making our own bread again

00:40:17.860 even what you make and you call bread i'm not milling our own flour yet i know guys i'm gonna get

00:40:24.040 those mills you've been sending me guys are expensive you're showing a fundamental misunderstanding

00:40:30.800 of what i'm saying here yeah the stuff that you make when you think that you're making homemade

00:40:35.800 sourdough bread okay is as distant as from what a medieval person called bread as what you would

00:40:44.220 call a cake is because i'm not using heritage wheat why it has to i i don't want to go into the

00:40:50.180 detail on this because it's very detailed and it's not very interesting but it is if you're obsessed

00:40:54.760 with bread i hate you we'll talk about it over dinner if you're wondering what made historic bread

00:41:01.740 different it wasn't just that it was made up of whatever grains were local whether that be

00:41:08.420 wheat rye or barley you would also throw in things like peas beans and other vegetables depending on

00:41:16.200 what was available so you wouldn't have anything that looks like modern clean white bread you wouldn't

00:41:22.500 have butter in it you wouldn't have eggs in it and sometimes you wouldn't even have salt in it which

00:41:29.700 honestly doesn't sound that bad to me i kind of like the idea of a bread that's just a mix of whatever

00:41:34.840 vegetables are on hand because i i'm all about i want to get ancient grains i want to get a mill it's just

00:41:42.260 very expensive well i mean there's many types of ancient grains that are just like so different

00:41:47.880 like if you look at something like pumpernickel bread for example i don't even think they mill it

00:41:51.460 they use it's just like cooked directly with like whole rye i got this right and actually a i said as

00:41:58.820 an example if you want to taste bread that tastes more like what historic bread would have tasted like

00:42:03.040 pumpernickel is a good example and it can show you how different something like a modern even home

00:42:08.420 baked bread is from what we would have called historic bread and why those two things i say

00:42:13.720 are as different as what we consider bread today and cake i can look into the specifics of it but

00:42:18.620 a lot of ancient no that's you know the the bread that i like to buy that we get imported that's like

00:42:23.300 a brick that you could break a window with yeah that's that's a lot more similar to older types of

00:42:29.300 bread so good yes but the point i'm making is a lot of these these these things that we think of

00:42:35.440 as old he's not yeah and and and keep in mind even if you're like well the sourdough bread actually

00:42:42.500 has a lot in common with older types of bread i'm like yeah but the types of bread that everybody

00:42:46.460 eats every day certainly doesn't whatever we call it there's so much stuff in it well not even just

00:42:52.680 white bread any any bread that you're buying from a store that's like sliced even if it's like

00:42:57.360 whatever in fact there's just recently that like i think the florida department of health or something

00:43:03.740 tested eight different brands of bread ranging from different types of white to whole grain

00:43:09.560 breads including like dave's killer bread which i think a lot of people who like to see themselves

00:43:13.520 as health food buyers get contained some really common carcinogenic pesticide plus a bunch of you

00:43:21.480 know they'll have a bunch of other additives and stabilizers and stuff so 100 it's not it is not bread

00:43:27.240 it is it is highly processed food yeah well i mean it keeps this in mind this is like even as it like

00:43:35.480 okay suppose you're an average american family and you're starting your day right you go to your fridge

00:43:40.980 your fridge right yeah you grab your two percent milk which by the way is nothing like whatever we

00:43:51.560 historically called milk yeah it's in a big plastic jug that's that's given to you in a gallon you

00:43:57.620 know if you go back just two generations milk was dropped off by the milkman because you didn't have

00:44:01.700 easy refrigeration and stuff like that and so it was like a completely different part of your life cycle

00:44:06.500 right yeah you then go and you pour that on your cereal um another thing that is a new envision

00:44:13.240 developed by anti-sex health nut cultists in the united states in the 1930s yeah that's an interesting history by the way

00:44:21.560 you then you then put it in your mouth with your spoon one one thing that has a degree of historicity

00:44:26.700 to it yeah there we go it's just that we don't have our designated spoons that we walk around with

00:44:30.700 all the time anymore you then go take a shower oh daily showers that's a modern phenomenon it wasn't

00:44:38.340 popularized until post-1950s marketing by soap in indoor plumbing companies big soap huh okay yeah

00:44:45.580 before that they were they were weaklier potentially even less common and also give you a mind

00:44:50.440 plastics like your spoon well is your spoon a metal spoon or is it a tupperware spoon is it a is it

00:44:56.200 another type of oh come on base campers do not know base campers do not eat out of microwave in or

00:45:02.800 eat with plastic then you you sit down if you think you're being historic if you think you're being

00:45:08.680 all lindy with your newspaper by the way not even that modern of a phenomenon yeah but in reality what

00:45:16.040 you're probably doing is doom scrolling are watching youtube right even the feed even the feed

00:45:21.860 andrew bosworth invented the feed yeah who was an investor in our first company yeah cool guy he'd

00:45:30.080 probably be mortified by our politics now but i like him maybe i don't know he always seemed kind

00:45:34.640 of based he seemed more based than we were at the time he has kids right yeah absolutely good for him

00:45:40.140 we should reach back out to him sometime i mean anyway yeah air conditioning best invention ever

00:45:48.500 oh my god that is your house no the point being is is almost nothing i i thought about going into

00:45:55.320 medieval christmas here and medieval easter but oh yeah but we know we did an episode on that yeah we

00:46:00.600 did an episode on that and it pissed people off so much because we pointed out that like none of it's

00:46:04.520 pagan and the funny thing is so wanted to be pagan that's so funny isn't it no but the funny thing

00:46:10.120 is like it's all like invented in like the 1910s or 80s or like whatever i mean and everybody like

00:46:17.400 wants to believe that all of these traditions like the easter bunny that they can connect it with like

00:46:21.580 these pagan campaign it's like yes there there was within one region of like germany like a a bunny

00:46:33.660 that had some festival potentially tied to it but there is one uh that changed based on region so

00:46:41.200 every region was in germany had a different animal that was tied to that festival and two we don't have

00:46:46.440 any connections between that festival and modern easter you know so like a lot of this is actually

00:46:51.660 what probably the most historic of all of these traditions of the ones i could find is painting eggs

00:46:56.880 that that one actually appears to have a degree of historicity to it but it was treated as like a

00:47:00.860 religious thing delightful and i was also going to go into well here's some fun stuff we can do about

00:47:05.920 catholics because catholics are always like well our tradition is actually very his historic right

00:47:11.360 and i want to go into both the theology of catholicism and its practice has changed so dramatically over the

00:47:20.380 years that it's really difficult to call it a contiguous tradition i mean it's it's an iteratively

00:47:25.800 contiguous tradition i'll give it that but it's it's not as as much the same thing like like historic

00:47:32.160 if you took a medieval catholic well let's let's go into some of this right okay so did you know

00:47:37.880 that you had public confessions and physical punishments like lashes and flagellation

00:47:43.340 as being standards for confession in the medieval catholic church

00:47:48.000 do you want to go into this a bit because i actually didn't know about this until i was i didn't

00:47:54.140 know about this either do tell okay so you would have something called public penance rituals so

00:48:00.320 this is from the fourth of the 10th centuries public public yeah so for something like incest

00:48:06.240 saint basil publicly be like i am so sorry a 10 year process three years as a weeper where you would

00:48:15.160 beg at the church doors three years like how much like all day every day yeah no no during every

00:48:21.940 celebration yeah during the your church you wouldn't go in the church you would instead stand

00:48:26.760 outside the church while everyone else for three years oh oh oh oh so on sunday oh okay okay okay so

00:48:33.380 like and you would ask the people who went into the church to pray for you when they were in the church

00:48:37.840 okay but also keep in mind the people who went into the church also were getting a completely

00:48:42.240 different experience when they went into the church they would not like play any role in the

00:48:47.300 ceremony often the priest wouldn't even talk to them they would be speaking in a language that

00:48:51.820 they wouldn't understand so they would just by the way like grassroots level i am hearing more and

00:48:58.880 more of our catholic base camp listeners talking about latin mass going back in vogue everyone was

00:49:03.620 like bring back modern latin mass doesn't have a lot in common with historic latin mass

00:49:08.400 modern latin mass is still meant to be for the parishioners okay basically oh instead of like

00:49:15.260 listen this is for god you can watch if you want to you disgusting human no it wasn't for god it was 0.74

00:49:21.940 for the clergy so basically the clergy would go and do a little ceremony for themselves that other 0.91

00:49:29.280 this was so for the clergy that the average parishioner wasn't even allowed to drink the wine at

00:49:35.360 communion ouch you can watch so you can watch the fabulous clergy and their fabulous it was called

00:49:41.760 uh i think something like optical communion we're like communion because you saw the clergyman the

00:49:48.260 opticom but i mean think about how hierarchy and stratified that is that you're basically going to this

00:49:54.340 event and the real christians like the holy people they're up there doing all the ceremonies and you

00:50:01.100 just get to be sort of close to it meanwhile bob is not even allowed to do that he begs you to pray for

00:50:07.520 him as you walk past him into the church this just sounds like normal sports okay this is what people do

00:50:15.020 when they go to watch football on sundays i don't like there's no okay maybe maybe yeah a bit more sports

00:50:20.880 like or something yeah right yeah and so then then three years after being a weeper you are a hearer

00:50:27.100 which means you're allowed to go into the church but there's no praying you're not allowed to pray

00:50:31.500 while you're in the church and then three years in submission which is kneeling outside then two

00:50:37.560 years with the faithful but no communion but keep in mind you can only keep bread as communion during

00:50:42.340 this period and only after full restoration where penitents wore a sack cloak sorry a sack cloth and had

00:50:52.120 ashes strewn on their heads and they were expelled publicly well we'll get into what this being

00:50:57.000 expelled publicly looked like it was pretty cool they basically had them march out of the church

00:51:01.420 like in front of everyone with like this big ceremony where they're being expelled like adam was

00:51:06.560 nice you have your expulsion party yeah very exciting and keep in mind you had periods where you had

00:51:12.580 things like flagellation processions this is amid plagues well they still do that in some like

00:51:17.260 latin american countries right well this was this was done for a long time it's just not really done

00:51:22.780 anymore you you still have some groups of catholics who practice mortifications but you don't have 1.00

00:51:27.740 actually you do have a few groups i think in some european countries that still do public

00:51:32.640 flagellations like i mean dude there's some weird places where they like crucify people and march

00:51:39.520 them through the streets to show how badass they are yeah a funny one here for adultery penitents might 1.00

00:51:45.840 stand barefoot at the church doors and in penitent robes begging for prayers from people who are

00:51:51.680 entering so i wanted to go deeper into this guy's like wait wait what is this about a public confession

00:51:55.780 because i didn't know that this was ever a common thing that's fascinating so in the medieval catholic

00:51:59.700 church roughly the high middle ages 1000 to 1400s it wasn't exactly a confession in the modern sense

00:52:05.240 what you had was a ritual called the sublim public penance or public reconciliation slash exclusion

00:52:12.660 and it was reserved for bigger types of things like murder sacrilege heresy violence in the church

00:52:18.880 or fraud that everyone in the community knew about and the actual confession of the sins was held

00:52:24.440 privately but then the priest or bishop if they thought it was severe enough they would then have a more

00:52:29.520 public thing in front of everyone where the person was like humiliated i like that right

00:52:36.020 the people know to watch out for this person because they clearly are dangerous yeah so the

00:52:44.880 penitent sometimes multiple gathered in the church door the annex barefoot heads uncovered dressed in

00:52:49.880 rough sackcloth sometimes with ashes already on their heads and in penitent robes they prostrated

00:52:56.260 themselves and knelt before the bishop and clergy and then the bishop or delegate addressed them often

00:53:00.820 reading them a long lesson explaining why the church imposes this and how sin separates us from

00:53:05.800 gods and then prayers were recited over them um and then the bishop sprinkled holy water and placed

00:53:12.300 ashes on their head and then they faced a symbolic expulsion where they were marched out through the

00:53:17.240 southwest doors symbolizing the ejection for paradise of adam and eve saying words like on account of your

00:53:23.580 sins you must be expelled from the church as adam was driven from paradise during lent penitents were

00:53:29.660 barred from the main part of mass often leaving the the homily and excluded from communion

00:53:35.160 and what's what's interesting is why they stopped this which i also find it so stopped in the 12th and

00:53:42.420 13th centuries popularized by a separate practice the the totally private thing that was practiced more

00:53:47.780 in ireland and the reason that it was stopped

00:53:52.280 is because basically somewhere else but they they were afraid that some people were not

00:54:01.740 repenting all of their sins because they couldn't do full communion when they were expelled and people

00:54:07.720 were afraid they would die during that period um and so they needed like the the communion was better

00:54:13.720 for getting rid of their sins and the in like the lay person so they were like this is just bad because

00:54:18.040 it creates a bad incentive and then people would confess all of their sins on their deathbed but they

00:54:23.660 weren't sure when they were going to die and so it created all sorts of negative externalities

00:54:27.180 the the fully private thing wasn't like totally normalized until the vatican ii reforms in the 1960s

00:54:34.220 wow vatican too man that was it's a controversial time and you're talking about theological differences

00:54:43.200 and note the reason i'm i'm i'm talking about catholicism here is for two reasons one is we

00:54:47.840 already went really hard into all of this stuff in regards to judaism in that one tract so four

00:54:53.200 freaking hours yeah yeah for for hours so if you want to go into that go into that everybody knows

00:54:58.520 that protestantism changes constantly yeah what even is it you know yeah there's not even a

00:55:03.980 blockchain to look at yeah yeah if i wanted to go into the hindu or you know buddhism i think most

00:55:10.840 hindus and buddhists are aware of how frequently their religion changes so and they don't watch our 1.00

00:55:14.680 channel as much um and so i guess i could have gone into the eastern orthodox church but you know

00:55:20.060 whatever which which also has transformed pretty dramatically over time but another thing is how it's

00:55:25.540 changed theologically if you look at medieval theology shaped by people like thomas aquinas

00:55:29.240 it would come off as very salvation by works to modern catholics specifically because there was

00:55:36.200 so much of this treasure of merit where an excess of good works of of saints and christ could be drawn

00:55:43.760 upon via indulgences to reduce time in purgatory this system formalizing councils like trent but rooted in

00:55:49.420 medieval practice made faith feel like a cosmic leisure where sins are tallied up and merits are banked for

00:55:54.740 purgatory a fiery intermediate state of purification which by the way i don't even think it's catholic

00:56:00.640 canon anymore i remember one of them is like a vague canon now it's either purgatory or the other one

00:56:07.760 that's like purgatory do you remember what i'm thinking of here the one that i don't know about

00:56:11.960 purgatory oh wait there's that space that dante walks through first that's a little bit outside hell but

00:56:18.400 i can't remember what that's called it's where like everyone went before jesus existed yeah and i

00:56:25.080 think the vatican's iffy on this if this is even a thing anymore i was thinking of limbo sorry i get

00:56:30.180 the two mixed up all the time limbo and purgatory limbo is the afterlife for unbaptized babies and the 1.00

00:56:36.080 catholic church was very big on this for a very long time it was actually a big like stress thing for

00:56:42.140 catholics for a long time and now the official stance seems to be it doesn't exist which is i

00:56:48.400 mean they they haven't confirmed it doesn't exist it's just they don't teach it or talk about it

00:56:52.380 anymore and they seem to be moving in that direction and for me if your religion has a different afterlife

00:56:58.880 like suppose you had one religion that had heaven and hell and then one religion that had heaven hell and

00:57:05.520 some other thing you would call those two separate religions right and that's what i mean when i say

00:57:10.680 catholicism today is not the same religion it was even let's say 150 years ago and i think more than

00:57:18.180 that has even less internal continuity than protestantism because if you go to protestantism

00:57:22.780 150 years ago at least they still believed in the same set of afterlives but with with catholicism the

00:57:28.860 concept of like the metaphysical nature of reality has fundamentally changed recently like in the last

00:57:35.700 150 years pretty dramatically although i will note here when we're talking about all the cool stuff

00:57:40.460 catholics did in the medieval ages i'm not saying i don't like this stuff i think it's pretty cool

00:57:44.420 i think the you know the public penitence and the getting whipped in public for sinning that that

00:57:48.840 stuff is pretty dope that stuff is pretty dope if catholics went back to that i'd be pretty on board

00:57:53.960 and this would have been like a major part that like all catholics would have been very concerned

00:57:57.560 about their babies and stillborns and stuff like this yeah right and now it's like we're not even sure

00:58:03.680 that that's that's canon anymore it was like a huge part of the metaphysical framework of catholicism

00:58:09.340 was just like ah no we don't believe this anymore like everyone saved games in that zone just lost

00:58:16.080 a part of heaven was basically shut down everyone evicted like well not a part of heaven but a part of

00:58:21.920 the afterlife they're like this is this is maybe not a thing anymore but that's what i'm talking about

00:58:26.100 like theology changes it updates it it uh morphs over time as it should because religion is a

00:58:34.220 technology a a software that runs on the hardware of our biology that imparts fitness it has to evolve

00:58:40.520 as our environment evolves or it will not continue to impart fitness that's just it and read the

00:58:45.760 pragmatist guide to crafting religion that malcolm wrote that goes into this this is just why this is

00:58:51.760 why religion exists you can pretend that it's about this bigger thing and faith or whatever and we

00:58:57.140 absolutely believe in a higher power like a lot of religions do i mean the tldr is our god is roko's

00:59:06.560 basilisk but i yeah i just wish people would accept that and accept that change is inevitable and that

00:59:13.440 we're all trying to get closer to truth even when that truth is god right and i think that a lot of

00:59:19.520 people the the interesting thing is pretty much everything that would have gone into one of these

00:59:24.240 ideas these anti-lindy ideas in a historic perspective these are the things that are being

00:59:29.260 eaten the most by modernity if you look if you if you did like a ledger on what people would say

00:59:34.960 was very lindy they'd say orchestras are lindy they are not that is disgusting i loved really early

00:59:43.520 orchestral music and it's what's what's really crazy about it is that even you know we're talking

00:59:52.160 maybe like baroque music or something the instruments were so different that people wouldn't know how to

00:59:59.980 play them and that many of these instruments that are being played for a lot of like of the older music

01:00:07.000 stuff had to be found like hidden in like this deep hidden attic room of some very very old building

01:00:15.320 that no one knew about and then people had to learn how to play them again and these are incredibly rare

01:00:20.320 instruments just like literally the tools used to play certain songs had been lost for very long

01:00:26.540 periods of time yeah and these are this is like the most popular medieval music that you're aware of

01:00:32.040 the most popular orchestral music you're aware of is a fabrication within modernity but not only that

01:00:37.820 but orchestras themselves are being shut down in large numbers i was talking to a guy that was trying

01:00:42.320 to figure out how to get young people to go to and donate to an orchestra and i was like buddy you might

01:00:47.500 be able to get them in the door but they are not going to donate their money to this that was like

01:00:51.580 the saddest thing for the last generation of elites right you can look at the the classics in

01:00:58.120 literature the truth is is that young people today not only do they not read the classics in literature

01:01:03.720 that much anymore but if you look at something like even movies that you might think had staying

01:01:08.000 power somebody said something they tried to show some young people indiana jones in the last crusade

01:01:12.220 and they're like this is boring you can't like i can't even but also yeah one one journalist who

01:01:17.100 came to one of our parties was telling me that she like language also has evolved so much recently

01:01:22.800 that when she had her son read little house on the prairie which of course was written by a woman

01:01:29.400 who experienced prairie america right so not that long ago and then wrote about it in a much later

01:01:35.160 period as an adult right laura engels wilder he he had the same difficulty understanding it that

01:01:43.020 language which i remember being simple english my mom read the whole books all like the whole series

01:01:48.520 to me as a kid as we struggled in our high school years with reading shakespeare like it was that

01:01:56.200 hard for her son to understand and this was a progressive journalist who i'm sure had a very

01:02:04.800 over-educated son and just one child you know this isn't like you know some parent who's like not

01:02:10.160 bothering to educate their child or teach their child how to read this is this is an educated

01:02:14.360 certainly well-read child who is struggling to read laura engels wilder's little house on the

01:02:21.320 prairie because it's it's english is just impossible to understand that is wild to me but i think we we

01:02:28.120 again don't even understand how much our language has evolved which is crazy that well i may need the

01:02:36.540 same level of i don't know if your high school english your high school shakespeare books were like

01:02:40.640 this but they had the little like translations in them like in the margins or in the footnotes or

01:02:44.700 something of like trying to explain what each line was okay yeah i feel like we're gonna need those

01:02:50.440 for like recent books and like 50 shades of gray is gonna have those like but just all in emojis

01:02:58.740 like i don't even know anymore i think literally the only place i can think of where lindy effects

01:03:04.520 are still relevant is maybe in the holiday music

01:03:09.040 what no like all the most famous christmas songs were written by like a jew in the 1960s 0.85

01:03:16.380 well that's still older than a lot of modern music and i think that they'll likely stay popular for a

01:03:21.060 while but that is true most of the most famous christmas songs were written by jews in the 1960s

01:03:26.220 they do it best they do it best what's another one i i'm trying to think of anything that is actually

01:03:32.080 the only thing i can think of that is actually lindy is chess maybe chess is lindy but what a lot of

01:03:39.340 people don't know is the rules to chess the pieces used within chess and earrings earrings and certain

01:03:45.300 bracelets there's this one style of bracelet slash necklace that you can see in the british museum

01:03:52.880 that are very ancient that some like jewelry makers have kept alive but yeah pearl earrings

01:04:00.760 strings strings of pearls and certain types of jewelry in that way windows that might be lindy

01:04:08.940 i don't know like i'm literally struggling to find anything that fits this and so i'd say when

01:04:14.020 people look at us or our religious beliefs or something like that and they're like oh that's

01:04:17.020 so anti-lindy like that's gonna die out i'm gonna be like you're going to die out because your beliefs

01:04:22.600 are optimized for a completely different environmental framework and if you do not update them

01:04:26.820 they themselves are doomed lindyism only works when you have a stable cultural technological

01:04:33.560 and social environment yeah basically what lindy was all about was being optimized for it like

01:04:40.420 evolutionarily optimized for an explicit environmental context which was stable which no longer exists

01:04:46.740 anymore and so if you don't have a system that is specifically built or updated to be adaptable

01:04:52.940 to chasing context you're out of the game word which fortunately a lot of these systems are as

01:05:01.000 we pointed out because all of them is actually built to constantly adopt adapt and change itself

01:05:05.580 judaism is built to adapt and change itself yeah everybody knows protestantism is but protestantism 0.51

01:05:10.520 doesn't pretend that it's the same thing it used to be whereas a lot of systems that actually

01:05:15.000 are very adaptable pretend that they're not because that's part of their like mythology

01:05:19.600 anyway love you i love you too this is an interesting talk to you simone or interesting to go into this

01:05:26.080 was yeah i was like i don't know what you're talking about i don't know what lindy is

01:05:29.780 is this james lindsey so thanks yeah this turned out to be really interesting i appreciate you 0.99

01:05:35.620 all right pretty face i appreciate your stupid face 0.99

01:05:39.720 the 1.00

01:05:50.660 talk

01:05:53.500 Oh my gosh, ooh!

01:06:03.500 That was so funny.

01:06:06.500 And we got a fall! That's a lot!

Based Camp - March 04, 2026

The Lindy Illusion： Why Old Things Suck

Episode Stats

Summary

Transcript