What is Predictive Programming？
Episode Stats
Words per Minute
101.28814
Summary
In this episode of Conspiracy Theories, I talk about Epstein, conspiracy theories, and how to deal with them. I also talk about what is predictive programming and how it can be applied in media and politics, and why it might not be as bad as you think.
Transcript
00:00:00.980
So in recent live streams, videos, I've mentioned dropping the conspiracy theories, or at least
00:00:19.700
Do not be the guy that is so right about everything, so knowledgeable and informed, that he's got
00:00:30.340
so many things in his head, that he can't even hold on to them.
00:00:37.520
That guy might be right, but he's still going to collapse.
00:00:40.860
What was it, Pyrrhic said, one more victory like this, I'm going to lose my empire.
00:00:50.540
Don't win Pyrrhic victories, don't be an obsessive conspiracy theorist.
00:00:55.880
And so it's with that in mind, that we ask the question, what is predictive programming?
00:01:05.560
Now, predictive programming, the common low-level definition of it is when shows, movies, things
00:01:20.480
in the media seem to predict the future as if they are preparing the audience for the future.
00:01:29.500
And there's a certain baseline version of this, which is true, a conspiratorial version, which
00:01:42.500
is untrue, and then a deeper, more profound, and even more disturbing sense, in which it
00:01:53.160
So on the way that it's baseline true, is that even, even in a world where all the politics
00:02:06.480
were real, I'm inclined to think they aren't in our world, but let's pretend, for sake of
00:02:12.500
argument, that it's all real, they actually hate each other, it's a real competition.
00:02:17.800
Even in that world, kayfabe is still going to dominate.
00:02:26.760
You know, this is one thing that marketers in the boxing industry, in the sports entertainment
00:02:34.540
industry, this is something they figured out long ago, that it's not just enough to have
00:02:46.460
You need to psychologically prep the audience for it.
00:02:52.700
So, politics, you might have the big battle of the debate.
00:02:57.780
But you need to soften people up for the debate.
00:03:01.400
People need to know what's going to be debated.
00:03:04.180
What are the issues that everybody's talking about?
00:03:06.920
What are the things that I'm supposed to be pro-scub or anti-scub on?
00:03:13.780
A lot of work goes into forming the context in which the competition or the conversation
00:03:38.060
As I've said elsewhere, if you talked about Epstein even five years ago, most people would
00:03:51.860
So, if there were prosecutions happening because of Epstein, they would be far more possible
00:03:58.920
in today's world than they were five years ago when nobody even heard of the guy.
00:04:08.960
You've got to kind of prepare the audience for what's going to happen.
00:04:21.020
Then there's the common version of predictive programming, where people that are oversaturated
00:04:31.820
in media start noticing that current events mimic something they saw in media a long time
00:04:41.080
So, the perfect example of this one is The Simpsons.
00:04:54.160
They predicted nine out of ten Nobel Prize winners in mathematics.
00:05:04.800
The writers at The Simpsons are very intelligent people.
00:05:16.160
If you went up to a baseball junkie or a movie junkie and you asked, who's going to win
00:05:28.020
Somebody that was really on top of the conversation there, really on top of that genre, could probably
00:05:37.440
figure it out, which is how they figured out who the Nobel Prize winners were.
00:05:43.900
There's like 30 people who might have won, 20 that were probably going to win, and they
00:05:49.160
picked 10 and they got them right, for the most part.
00:05:54.380
He was talking about running for president since the 90s.
00:06:02.560
What used to be a punchline became our lived reality.
00:06:14.520
So there's that angle, where it's not predictive programming.
00:06:20.120
Another version of this would be, why did that spin-off series from the X-Files predict planes
00:06:37.440
Well, they predicted it for the same reason that it was an effective terror attack.
00:06:43.840
Whomever you believe was behind it, it was very obviously an attack on American global capitalism.
00:06:57.760
If they'd attacked Mount Rushmore, it would have been kind of confusing what they were angry about.
00:07:04.360
Everybody understands what the attack is supposed to represent.
00:07:07.880
And half the world hated it, and half the world loved it.
00:07:14.300
So it was a pretty obvious target that if you were writing a fictional show about terrorists doing terrorist things,
00:07:21.640
that's one of the things that you'd put in one of your episodes.
00:07:25.920
You don't need to pause at higher levels of a conspiracy informing the scriptwriters that they need to put in there.
00:07:48.780
As for the Simpsons Go to New York episode, where there was a 9-11 with a picture of the Twin Towers on the New York magazine,
00:08:10.700
So, all of that said, because none of that's really interesting, is it?
00:08:14.800
Like, yeah, there is some stagecraft to politics.
00:08:18.240
You gotta kind of prep the audience, convince them that so-and-so is a bad guy,
00:08:29.500
And people are going to think you're doing that because you don't, you're a political tyrant.
00:08:38.100
And it turns out that movies and TV shows that try and are set in the real world
00:08:46.420
are actually pretty good at predicting the real world, to some degree or another.
00:09:03.780
Here's where we really get into predictive programming, though.
00:09:12.120
That was a movie built from the ground up to explain to you, dear viewer,
00:09:26.480
how it's going to happen when the super virus hits.
00:09:59.580
But what it's effectively doing, it's like when you get on the airplane,
00:10:07.360
and the stewardess pretends to put on the life preserver and the oxygen mask.
00:10:14.900
It's so that you have some pre-training for all of it.
00:10:26.460
So that when there is a declared state of emergency,
00:10:36.660
when is the FDA going to come and give us some masks to save our lives?
00:11:03.800
Perhaps the event that is useful and somewhat planned.
00:11:10.220
maybe the plane's going down because it's an accident.
00:11:14.660
The important thing is that you're all acting predictably.
00:11:26.720
that they want to deal with unruly customers asking questions.
00:11:37.140
There's also a deeper level of predictive programming.