The Podcast of the Lotus Eaters - The Podcast of the Lotus Eaters #1332

00:00:00.000 hello and welcome to the podcast of lotus eaters episode 1332 i'm your host harry joined today

00:00:21.560 by stelios hello and josh hello do i need to announce the goth mug

00:00:27.080 i think right now do i need to do it now we've got a goth mug on the website right now don't ask how

00:00:34.600 it ties into the brand just buy it you want a mug with a goth on it don't you yes you do anyway

00:00:41.420 today we're going to be talking about how they cannot control us which is going to be talking

00:00:46.540 about nudge theory and how apparently it's not quite as effective as we were led to believe

00:00:52.320 ironically enough we have become ungovernable uh i'm going to be talking to everybody about the

00:00:57.700 pointlessness of working and how gen z are opting out and stelios is going to be finally confessing

00:01:04.280 to ai jesus it's not the conversion that we expected but it's welcome that's for sure

00:01:09.780 and with that let's get into the news also buy an islander do it just do it just do it

00:01:17.200 so i'm going to be talking about how actually we're a little bit more difficult to control

00:01:24.860 than people might make out and this is a good thing this is a reassuring segment it's going to

00:01:30.500 be in my niche of behavioral decision making this is where i specialized in psychology and so i know

00:01:36.660 all of the literature involved in all of this stuff and i found this development very interesting

00:01:41.980 but to fill you in um to make sure you know everything because i think it's important to

00:01:46.320 understand all of the background information before we address this new development um nudge

00:01:52.460 or nudge theory was popularized by failure and sunstein in this book which came out in october

00:01:59.680 of 2008 sold very widely i'm sure people have seen it on bookshelves and bookshops and things like that

00:02:05.300 i got a copy of it from waterstones and it was one of those books that at the counter the woman said

00:02:09.740 like oh this is a good one you'll learn a lot from this i mean it is an interesting book and it is

00:02:15.560 well written so i can see why it circulated widely so in this book they basically argue that a nudge

00:02:22.780 is any form of choice architecture that alters people's behavior in a predictable way without

00:02:28.320 restricting restricting sorry options or significantly changing their economic incentives

00:02:33.580 so it's basically um relying on things like the framing effect so you could for example ask them

00:02:41.080 you know how do you plan to eat healthily today which um nudges them to eat healthily when compared

00:02:48.260 to say what do you plan on eating today this is a pretty intuitive thing most people understand that

00:02:54.860 this is a phenomena that exists and most people use this without having to read this book necessarily

00:03:00.560 it's essentially a sneaky form of social shame it can be yes it doesn't always have to be though

00:03:07.580 well i mean um i think most people first learned about nudge and everything to do with things like

00:03:14.120 the behavioral insights unit in we'll be talking about that don't worry during covid uh and the covid

00:03:20.340 lockdowns and i think one thing that we've all we all know looking back was the the use of um social

00:03:26.240 shaming techniques was one of the go-tos that they got to get people to comply it was certainly something

00:03:32.300 that was used a lot more in application than necessarily was argued for in theory although

00:03:37.580 there there is certainly an element of that that can be justified theoretically as well another

00:03:42.540 example could be if that wasn't clear enough um and this is an example they mention in their book

00:03:47.360 is that healthier foods are placed to eye level and less healthy options are less prominent you still

00:03:52.700 have the option to buy less healthy food if you want it but they're relying on human laziness to

00:03:58.180 make people make the the healthier choice um by placing these things in an easier to find location

00:04:06.020 than the unhealthy things so they're not necessarily forcing you to make a choice but they're gently

00:04:11.740 nudging you to make one and of course you can see a problem here already um the more perceptive

00:04:17.080 more perceptive of you should i say and that is that well how do you define what is good here

00:04:23.040 this is of course a political uh thing a lot of the time of course you know in this instance it will

00:04:30.000 be dietary but in lots of other examples it's not and the junk food is bad yeah well i think that's

00:04:37.560 the less controversial one isn't it whoa stelios that's what tune into this show for

00:04:43.700 what a revelation so the justification for this approach is that they correctly identify and i do

00:04:50.280 agree that the human mind is subject to a whole host of decision making biases there's a nice long

00:04:55.460 laundry list of these and i've looked at the research of these um and it's it's very much

00:05:01.140 demonstrable these these biases do exist the question is how do you address them more than

00:05:07.080 anything i think and nudge is one of the ways that you could potentially address them i suppose but

00:05:13.640 some of these are the availability heuristic where the the ease of recalling a piece of information

00:05:19.500 makes one place more significance upon it rather than looking at things objectively but of course

00:05:26.140 this is pretty easy to understand anchoring which is placing too much weight on one factor or things

00:05:32.100 like status quo bias where people are more likely to believe something that is normal even though

00:05:38.720 it might not necessarily be true and there are also things that you can argue might be better

00:05:46.840 than changing the framing of the decision in a top-down way i would argue that it's far better

00:05:52.600 rather than nudging people in a top-down way to make them aware of these biases and try and mitigate

00:05:58.340 them on an individual basis because this is the same sort of argument that you can make for a whole

00:06:05.100 host of other things why welfare sort of creates this learned helplessness because if you teach people

00:06:10.080 to habituate good psychological habits then they can manifest these in their life in every domain

00:06:18.720 whereas if you're nudging them in some specific domains unless you've got a very totalitarian government

00:06:25.120 that nudges them in all aspects of life it won't be able to compete for the mitigating effect of having

00:06:30.560 learned these things and applying them yourself as well as the fact that there are less moral questions when

00:06:36.080 you do that because it's not a top-down thing where a government bureaucrat's determining what's good

00:06:41.380 for you or not and so i think that this is both desirable in terms of outcome and in terms of a

00:06:46.620 sort of moral and political world and i think it's also more effective because you've learned the nature

00:06:53.100 of the thing rather than being subtly influenced by it and i think it's sort of like teaching a man to

00:06:59.680 fish rather than just giving them a fish isn't it it's the same sort of philosophy at play there and they

00:07:05.220 have the nerve to describe their approaches libertarian paternalism which i think is the

00:07:10.560 most juxtaposed term i've ever heard well this entirely relies on large state apparatus to be

00:07:18.020 able to enforce the kinds of measures that nudge people in the first place exactly so that's that's

00:07:23.460 just a lie yeah also paternalism means like you're you're guarding something of course i'm not having

00:07:30.440 actual paternalism you know people being paternal over their their children is very important but a

00:07:36.280 state shouldn't necessarily be that because then it supplants the family and it's weird and you

00:07:40.940 shouldn't want that and cringe it is indeed so as you can probably imagine this nature of this theory

00:07:49.720 appealed to a wide group of different people it could be marketed to conservatives because it promises

00:07:55.120 minimal state coercion in that well you can still choose things but we're still doing something about

00:08:00.160 these problems it could be marketed to progressives because it's aimed to improve things like welfare

00:08:05.640 outcomes and things like that and it can be marketed to technocrats because it was measurable data

00:08:11.160 driven and inexpensive and i think the technocrats are the ones that really took this off and we're

00:08:16.740 going to be looking at some of them but uh they're the big winners from this kind of thing aren't they

00:08:22.020 absolutely are but you know what the technocrats don't want you to read is this islander magazine you

00:08:28.480 should be buying it i mean it's a great value for money it's very good um it's a beautiful piece of

00:08:34.560 of art and also it's physical the internet can't take it away it'll always be there on your shelf

00:08:41.220 and even if you know you live in britain and keir starmer censors the entire internet you can still

00:08:46.420 read this so pick it up and that's not a nudge that's not a nudge by the way that's a command

00:08:53.340 yeah that if you disobey me i'm going to come around to your house personally

00:08:57.380 and gently nudge you into making you buy it again anyway following the publication of this book it

00:09:06.760 got picked up by technocrats very quickly and as we can okay of course um as we can see from here this

00:09:16.920 was 2009 so a year after the book was published and sunstein um was appointed by barack obama as

00:09:26.100 administrator of the office of information and regulatory affairs and he was in that office from

00:09:31.280 2009 to 2012 and then in britain david cameron in 2010 so when he basically came to office he immediately

00:09:41.500 created a nudge unit or it's the behavioral insights team originally but it was dubbed the

00:09:47.140 nudge unit because that was its purpose was to nudge people and also to look at how the government

00:09:53.260 nudges people and evaluate its effectiveness and the person who was appointed to lead this

00:10:00.260 by david cameron was this guy david halpern and from 2001 to 2007 he was the chief analyst in

00:10:08.400 prime minister tony blair's strategy unit and if i were to think of a technocrat as a sort of

00:10:14.920 politician tony blair is the ideal sort of archetype isn't he yes and so the fact that he was one of

00:10:22.800 his chief strategy or chief analysts sorry um for six years is somewhat telling isn't it so i'm not

00:10:30.540 necessarily suggesting that he wasn't you know doing a good job as a psychologist um just that perhaps

00:10:36.440 it's an interesting conflict here and between 2010 and 2022 he was the head of the behavioral insights

00:10:44.140 team or the nudge unit which uh interestingly it was founded in in 2010 but in 2014 it expanded into

00:10:51.280 a limited company and can you think of any examples of a government department being turned into a

00:10:58.120 company and being auctioned off to private interests i can't don't you think that's a little bit weird

00:11:06.180 that is very strange it is a little bit weird isn't it and i think that um which private interests bought

00:11:13.000 it do you know i will get to that don't worry oh good so after it took off this is from 2015 so five

00:11:20.020 years into it um there were lots of articles and puff pieces saying the uk's nudge unit is saving

00:11:27.220 lives by steering citizens choices so it's having lots and lots of media justification everyone was

00:11:32.760 singing its praises as this amazing thing and i'd like to read something from this article that

00:11:38.520 actually suggests that it's a bit more um sinister than it makes out so it says behavioral insight team

00:11:45.220 has accelerated tax receipts by 70 million and this is written for america i think dollars a month but

00:11:51.220 of course this is based in britain uh the behavioral insights team persuaded an extra 96 000 britons a

00:11:57.440 year to register as organ donors and improved attendance at adult education colleges and improved

00:12:03.320 racial diversity in police force interesting uses of it so you've made people pay more tax um the organ

00:12:12.040 donation thing by the way the way they nudged people into donating their organs more was they made

00:12:17.060 it opt out so yeah so what they did is they said you know what the government owns your organs and if

00:12:23.420 you want to take them to the grave you've got to opt out of it otherwise they're ours which is not really

00:12:29.120 a nudge that's just a sinister grab for people's organs which is really sinister in my opinion so and of course

00:12:37.760 racial diversity in the police force we know how that's worked um not at all okay encouraging people

00:12:43.740 to go and get further education is probably the least egregious here but the way it's being applied

00:12:49.320 is quite sinister in my opinion especially in covid as you said so in 2017 uh

00:12:58.640 failure one of the co-authors won a nobel prize for his work um here you can see that the bbc's

00:13:05.260 emphasizing his work on nudge more than anything else and which i think he was most famous for by

00:13:11.040 this point and it's worth mentioning that the behavioral insights team was acquired by

00:13:16.140 the charity nesta here it is um talking about it from 2021 which is when they were entirely owned by

00:13:24.180 them although they were partially owned uh in when they became a limited company in 2014

00:13:28.860 and the interesting thing about nesta is that um as they say on their website um if i can scroll down

00:13:38.260 here so um it was launched in 1998 and it was founded by um the film director and labor donor david putnam

00:13:48.880 who coincidentally the same year this was founded was made a labor lord um which is an interesting

00:13:56.120 coincidence isn't it so the guy running the behavioral insights team was a labor analyst and then the guy

00:14:03.160 who buys it was a labor lord we're starting to see that perhaps there's an understanding that this could

00:14:10.260 have some political significance and of course it can because it's influencing human behavior and he also

00:14:18.100 received upon buying it um 250 million from the national lottery fund um which is no small amount of money

00:14:26.300 is it and then following this massive injection of cash you can go on their website and these are the

00:14:35.400 countries they now operate so you can see that the blue here is where they actually have offices the

00:14:42.560 light blue is where they have a staff presence and the the black here is where they've got projects

00:14:47.960 so from being founded as a uk government um department to becoming a private company that they now

00:14:55.880 operate in most of the world if this isn't a way of accumulating political influence i do not know

00:15:03.640 what is it's one of the most obvious examples because they wouldn't be operating all around the world

00:15:10.260 like this where they're not trying to do that and again even more sinister the way that they're

00:15:14.240 trying to accumulate political influence is by i know the term is is nudge but uh i feel like

00:15:23.340 mind assaulting people is not quite as catchy is is probably a more honest way of putting it because

00:15:33.460 whether or not they want to dress it up in some kind of nice cuddly terminology ultimately it's

00:15:40.240 just trying to control people's behavior on mass like you said that you would prefer if ideas were

00:15:46.560 put out there which people would then be able to use their own critical reasoning skills to be able

00:15:52.120 to navigate the world around these people don't believe in that they believe that your critical

00:15:58.660 reasoning skills are faulty they believe that your brains don't work and if your brain was left up to

00:16:04.840 its own devices because of these biases that a bunch of unelected technocrats say that our brains operate

00:16:12.720 with naturally you would make bad decisions and probably be racist that's one of the things that

00:16:18.540 they like to emphasize is that natural biases make it so that we like people that we're related to

00:16:24.840 more than people that we're complete strangers to or people from the complete other side of the world

00:16:30.200 so that's one of the main reasons that i think they like to push this whole idea that no no no

00:16:35.660 without unelected technocrats pushing you in the right direction your brain doesn't work you'd

00:16:40.900 probably not even be able to go to the toilet by yourself and of course there's a big difference

00:16:44.680 between human nature and preferring people who are genetically related to them and some of the

00:16:50.600 biases that exist from when we were living as hunter gatherers to help us survive that environment that

00:16:56.280 no longer apply or actually detrimental to modern life those two things are very different i think

00:17:02.500 addressing the latter is quite important whereas trying to undermine human nature will always end

00:17:07.840 in tears in my opinion sorry were you going to say something yeah i want to say um something because

00:17:13.300 i think that we need to distinguish between something that is indisputably true about this

00:17:18.880 and something that is very bad so any kind what these theorists are doing like thaler

00:17:26.060 sunstein and you could say daniel kaneman and other people very familiar with their work yeah

00:17:31.680 other epistemologists they are proposing models for how the mind works and when you're proposing

00:17:38.440 epistemological models the first thing you need to do the most important thing you need to do is to

00:17:43.600 see how the mind gets things wrong that's the most important thing in epistemology you start from

00:17:49.720 fallibility not from the belief that you know everything so to a very large extent when it comes

00:17:56.080 to psychological studies psychological models philosophy of mind discourse about the mind and about thought

00:18:03.720 you have to talk about how the mind gets things wrong there's nothing wrong about this this is

00:18:09.820 um this is what the discipline all these disciplines i mean it's what i i did research in personally is

00:18:16.800 looking at behavioral decision making biases and they do exist and they are a tangible thing but of

00:18:23.500 course the the question isn't um do they or don't they exist necessarily although of course it's

00:18:29.040 important to be critical but it's more so how do you best mitigate these yes which comes to my second

00:18:36.080 point is that the whole problem here is paternalism in government it's status paternalism why because

00:18:43.860 there will oh there is always going to be an abundance of epistemological theories that any

00:18:50.560 kind of status government will be able to appeal to in order to say listen you guys you don't make

00:18:56.740 good decisions you can't make good decisions i'm the i'm the great man of history i can make better

00:19:02.120 decisions for you and i think that the most important thing is that to reject this on moral

00:19:07.720 grounds that's one of the main reasons why i'm a classical liberal i don't want other people to make

00:19:14.020 decisions for me even if i make bad decisions you could have people who make good decisions for you

00:19:19.880 but there is something that is missing if you are someone who is a sort of second class citizen in your

00:19:27.180 own life and there's also a deeper element to it as well in that if people are allowed to make their

00:19:33.420 own decisions for themselves then they habituate um better ways of addressing the problems in the first

00:19:40.380 place and therefore get better results than just being told or nudged into what what to do because

00:19:46.460 then they behave uncritically well i mean and just let me very quickly finish what i like for instance i

00:19:53.120 don't think that this is a bad thing is when it comes to foods when they have the signs and they

00:20:00.020 tell you this is you know x you know 45 grams of cereals it's going to give you 7 of sugars or you

00:20:08.820 know 30 of your daily sugar intake or 55 i think that's much better because it still leaves you the

00:20:17.920 idea that you know you have to think of how much you want to take how much you want to divide it

00:20:24.140 among your meals that gives you much more than saying right this you know if you want to be a

00:20:29.800 deadbeat eat this it's don't want to be a deadbeat eat that it's a good example of how it can be applied

00:20:36.360 in a way that i think most people would agree with without any sort of moral conflict because most people

00:20:41.360 don't have the dietary expertise to necessarily know and of course there's going to be some matters of

00:20:46.040 debate but it's still a rough guide that people can choose to ignore or not and it doesn't necessarily

00:20:50.780 affect their life but sorry harry oh i was just going to say to add to this the moral question

00:20:54.820 becomes again who is determining what is good and what is bad in these behaviors how are they using

00:21:02.480 these models to determine that people's decision making is good and bad because what some could say

00:21:08.760 are biases in the way that you say that there are biased processes in say a computer or in a lab

00:21:15.100 environment or such may simply be adaptive traits that we've developed over centuries of over millennia

00:21:22.960 of evolution to be able to navigate social situations and to and to navigate through a social

00:21:30.140 and moral environment whereas with these people there's this big trade-off where these technocrats are

00:21:37.700 saying that we've got these biases and i do agree you've done the research yourself that people's

00:21:41.880 people don't always think right that's just that's just a fact of life but when it gets to the point

00:21:48.760 of somebody like paul bloom for instance writing a book like 10 12 years ago about how all all babies

00:21:56.080 are born racist right which is determined in his writing as some kind of fault that needs to be fixed

00:22:03.480 by technocrats and then you see his own morality begin to come through in the writing when he gets

00:22:10.300 to a point where he's talking about how later on in life white men and women experience a great deal

00:22:17.840 of psychological stress trying to navigate all of the different rules that society has set up for them

00:22:25.220 because really their brains are evolved in a way that is now maladaptive to the circumstances they find

00:22:33.000 themselves in because we've set up all of these rules partially motivated by the morals of these

00:22:38.640 technocrats and their paymasters that really stress them out they go through the day in great

00:22:44.460 psychological stress all the time because they don't know am i supposed to do this am i supposed to do

00:22:49.220 that in in this situation paul bloom doesn't see anything wrong with that he just he just mentions it

00:22:54.620 and then passes over it without any comments so i have that's one of the major trade-offs here

00:22:59.220 i have to add something here i don't think so much the problem is who determines what is good or bad

00:23:04.320 because almost everyone tries to evaluate things i mean when you're talking about the problem is the

00:23:09.940 enforcement power the problem is the enforcement of particular views of what is good or bad

00:23:15.320 it's the enforcement it's not the idea that you have a government that has officials that say right

00:23:20.600 we think this but the choice is up to you the problem is when they're saying no the choice

00:23:25.640 isn't up to you because unless you choose as we want you to choose you're going to be met with severe

00:23:30.820 consequences by us so it's you you can't live in a society that is very decentralized in a sense

00:23:39.380 epistemologically speaking without there being several groups that develop a consensus within those

00:23:45.920 groups and due to that consensus they exercise a sort of moral pressure to each other that's not

00:23:51.960 the same as enforcing it in a top-down state manner so you could also have a group of state officials

00:23:59.400 saying right we think that this is bad for you we don't want you to smoke or we want you to smoke

00:24:04.340 weed because we think weed's good it's quite one thing to say this quite another to say no you are

00:24:10.020 going to do this because otherwise we're going to debank you um i mean i don't really see how that

00:24:15.440 contradicts the point that i was making i'm not saying that society shouldn't have morals that are

00:24:21.780 set culturally by a larger consensus i was saying that the morals of these technocrats being enforced

00:24:29.120 top down on us are are immoral i think the enforcement is immoral and i think the morals that

00:24:35.860 they push on people in the first place are immoral and i think that they promote a very negative view

00:24:41.460 of one's own psychology which does also encourage the rampant spread of mental health illnesses or

00:24:48.520 people believing that they have mental health illnesses as well so one thing i would quickly

00:24:53.520 add is that if if something like debanking happens that i think is well beyond the the sort of purview of

00:24:58.940 a nudge that becomes just explicit coercion doesn't it and so it yeah the problem is how the nudge becomes

00:25:05.640 a mask for coercion but anyway we need to move on so um it's worth mentioning that the white house

00:25:14.000 here um also implemented one in 2014 and the australian government as well um interestingly it was uh the

00:25:23.100 acronym was beta or beta if you're british um or australian i don't know how you guys pronounce it but

00:25:29.880 i just thought that was funny um just like yeah we're gonna influence you you bases um and then

00:25:36.020 this is germany they implemented one as well um and also you had um things like this this was the

00:25:44.580 institute for european energy and climate policy they implemented these sorts of things and even the

00:25:51.960 world bank um had um their own nudging and in fact i saw a document which i'm not included

00:25:59.200 but i saw the presentation that sunstein gave to the world bank his uh powerpoint presentation which

00:26:05.580 was interesting so he personally was involved in in setting this up it seems see is when is when these

00:26:11.600 people run in these larger circles that i question their personal morals and personal intentions for

00:26:18.000 developing these theories in the first place no bro i was just studying how the mind works

00:26:22.860 okay yeah sure okay you say so but um we have some good news so this um i believe was accepted for

00:26:33.260 publication in december of 2025 and it's titled assessing nudge impact a comprehensive second

00:26:39.420 order meta-analysis and this was accepted to the journal of behavioral decision making which of course is

00:26:45.240 the main journal and believe it or not behavioral decision making research and one that i've read very

00:26:50.260 extensively normally their research is uh published research is very good and a second order meta-analysis

00:26:56.440 is basically um where you have regular research where a researcher tries to find out a piece of

00:27:02.400 information there are lots of those studies and then someone conducts a meta-analysis to to spot the

00:27:07.540 trend between all of the existing research and then a second order meta-analysis is analyzing the

00:27:13.800 meta-analysis of the the primary research so it's it's trying to establish a trend in an entire field

00:27:21.840 more or less so it looked at 14 different meta-analyses that included 1638 primary studies or approximately

00:27:31.540 30 million participants so this is a massive pool of people and um you can scroll down to the abstract if

00:27:41.120 you want just uh there we go these graphs thank you appreciate the symmetry so one of the things

00:27:50.500 um that they say is uh examining the methodological quality of the meta-analyses we find that most were

00:27:57.200 rated as low or critically low suggesting that our findings which inherit these limitations because

00:28:02.340 of course they're analyzing these analysis in the first place should be interpreted with caution but if

00:28:08.400 of course the research that is informing practice is low quality it doesn't necessarily matter um

00:28:14.700 which way it's it's pointing the point is that it's not reliable in the first place because it is low

00:28:20.780 quality and apparently after adjusting for publication bias because of course there's there's biases in how

00:28:28.100 journals publish things because they want people to read it and therefore they want interesting

00:28:33.200 research and not necessarily research that's just like we investigated this thing and found no effect

00:28:38.160 suggested that nudging is basically close to zero in its effects and i'm going to read exactly what

00:28:46.460 they say just so you know i'm not misrepresenting it after correcting for publication bias the aggregated

00:28:52.080 effect of nudging was rendered virtually zero this finding aligns with prior warnings that substantial

00:28:57.620 publication biases in the nudging literature may have inflated the effect size estimates and impeded a

00:29:03.780 clear understanding of nudging's true impact so they don't necessarily deny that it had an effect but

00:29:08.920 it's much much smaller than it was previously thought you would imagine that it would have some effect right

00:29:13.940 because we can observe that changing how a decision is framed does change how people behave because

00:29:20.920 we can see it in ourselves and other people and people employ this with that understanding you know

00:29:26.300 what i i was in academia and epistemology is half my phd what i've seen is that there is tremendous

00:29:33.740 competition for funds and for uh attracting funds and you need a good research proposal or a research

00:29:42.600 proposal that is going to sound good to people who will invest in your project or give you money

00:29:47.940 and there is there is the largest bullshit generator of academia oh yeah they are trying to they're trying

00:29:57.180 to put all these projects that in order to sound cool and somehow you know acceptable to to non-academics

00:30:05.520 and usually it's absolute bs and they are trying to magnify what the research is supposed to give and

00:30:13.180 because the paradigm is scientific and it's premised on the idea that the mind is the brain

00:30:19.860 and that um the brain is you can just study the brain in order to study the mind a hundred percent and

00:30:28.200 it's just billiard balls they are operating within that premise and this lots of people like this

00:30:35.300 because they like the idea of the mind as a machine and i really don't like also i think harry you'll agree

00:30:40.400 because you you've expressed this uh many times the sort of constant push to to put technology

00:30:46.660 within the brain oh yeah in order to sort of amplify thoughts or something i'm not a transhumanist

00:30:52.740 yeah i think that's total bs that's total bs yeah but um one of the things that makes us most

00:30:59.380 egregious is that people in academia know that the basically the what they call it is like the

00:31:04.400 sexification of science trying to make it sound appealing yeah is damaging it attract fans but people

00:31:09.500 don't know of how to conduct it any other way than is currently being done but we are a little bit

00:31:14.860 pressed for time so i'm going to read the final part um before i finish up here so it says um we

00:31:21.220 observed that nudging interventions in health and finance domains on average yielded negligible

00:31:25.980 effects whereas effects in domains like environment and food were positive this could imply that nudging

00:31:31.000 is not a universally effective strategy across all areas of behavior for instance entrenched health

00:31:36.180 related behaviors might require stronger or different interventions beyond nudges although

00:31:41.040 these domain differences were not statistically significant in our meta regression so what they're

00:31:45.980 basically saying is that it's possible that there are specific areas perhaps areas where we care less

00:31:51.780 that nudges might be a bit more effective but if we care about something or there are other

00:31:57.820 phenomena interfering with the nudge then it seems to mitigate its effect or make it non-existent in the

00:32:04.720 first place and so this seems to suggest in my mind that all of these resources all of this

00:32:10.680 technocratic uh capital that has been invested in all these institutions that have been set up

00:32:16.600 innumerable institutions at this point every transnational organization has at least thrown some

00:32:22.000 money at this to some degree to further their own interests as well as the fact governments are using it to

00:32:27.820 influence the populations and the like and it seems to be that the foundation for it is much rockier and

00:32:35.740 unclear and murky than they made out and they're they're sort of trying to build this this castle on sand

00:32:42.400 and the foundations have shifted to the point where it seems like the efforts to gently nudge people

00:32:48.640 and and control them probably won't work they're probably gonna have their attention drawn to this

00:32:54.060 because of course this is in one of the main journals it's a very big study very important study

00:32:59.700 and so it might see a pivot away from using these sort of subtle nudges into perhaps more hard power

00:33:08.500 if if i'm going to guess what's going to happen and the implications of this and of course it's good

00:33:13.820 in the short term because it means that people aren't going to be nudged anymore in a sort of

00:33:18.380 malignant way which we've seen demonstrably has happened well if it's picked up and what what

00:33:24.400 this suggests to me in that case would be that the massive success of the covid policies after they

00:33:30.660 were initially announced and then carried on past the point of of reason would be that they were

00:33:37.040 successful because of the state coercion involved rather than the nudge the nudge of might might have had

00:33:44.360 a small effect maybe people felt bad if they went out for a walk that day but they still went out for

00:33:50.620 a walk that day what was keeping people indoors was the threat of the state coming after you and that's

00:33:56.660 exactly it it's similar to that organ scenario which they use and tout as a success that's coercion in

00:34:02.380 my mind if you if you're a bit more than a nudge because like you say that that's the the the state

00:34:06.800 initially claiming ownership over your body rather than nudging you to sign over ownership of your

00:34:14.140 organs after you've passed away so the the conclusion basically should be coercion makes people do things

00:34:20.660 which you know even an idiot could have told you but it seems that nudge theory uh thankfully is not

00:34:27.000 quite as uh easy to manipulate a population with as we previously thought which is a good thing

00:34:34.160 there we are we've got a couple of rumble rents we've had two of the same sent in by ryan hinnigan

00:34:40.660 so thank you for double dipping there the crs that's the community relations service just got

00:34:45.620 2026 funding in the u.s yes this is after trump defunded them last year so that was very disappointing

00:34:53.520 i forget which politician it was but i think it was included in a larger bill put forward by a

00:34:58.460 republican although i could be wrong on that needs further looking into and father calvin's anti-unit

00:35:04.340 nudging nudge unit is still just me and only fans people's comment sections on social media shaming

00:35:09.960 simps where's my grant well you'll have to get in touch with father calvin for that one

00:35:15.020 ochidor says this is basically keep up with the joneses for modern marketing i'm sorry i don't get

00:35:21.380 that reference do you i do and i agree oh there we go good on you right so um i'm going to talk

00:35:30.020 about how working has become pointless some people are saying that it's just gen z that have noticed

00:35:36.100 recently but i think that people have known that most work in the modern managerial society is

00:35:42.640 pointless they've known that for a while i mean just look at fight club and that was all the way back

00:35:46.840 in the 1990s where you're looking at the disillusionment of a man whose only role in

00:35:51.740 society is to keep insurance companies making money which he knows is woeful and boring and

00:36:01.460 miserable and soul destroying so you can go back to the 90s and find this they've also got that job

00:36:06.420 that film what is it office space which is basically about the same thing people sitting around in offices

00:36:11.460 for the sake of sitting around in offices so that they can fill out emails and spreadsheets

00:36:15.980 it's increasingly becoming a form of adult daycare really just we've made comments on this a number

00:36:22.520 of times in america where it's particularly women's tech jobs in places like san francisco and chicago

00:36:28.680 where they don't appear to do any work other than answering emails and filling in a spreadsheet which is

00:36:36.400 actually just about how many meetings they're going to do the next day which don't achieve anything in

00:36:42.020 the first place and then they go out for a latte and that's their day at work yes the number of

00:36:47.580 lunches and brunches you go on and the number of meetings you have is inversely proportional to how

00:36:53.160 productive your business is believe it or not i know it's a strange thing to say but it's almost like

00:36:58.160 the more work you do the more productive you are yes but because there is such a dearth of real meaning

00:37:04.140 in most of the work that people do these days people are switching off in greater numbers than ever

00:37:10.120 before and gen z are the one that people are really paying attention to where even gen z managers are

00:37:17.200 complaining about the work ethic of gen z employees but before i get into that something that is worth

00:37:24.060 your time is spiritually nourishing and fulfilling and will put a smile on your face unlike your miserable

00:37:31.000 nine to five email office job is the latest issue of islander beautifully illustrated as always

00:37:39.860 with a number of excellent essays from a number of our regular contributors including

00:37:45.000 morgoth we've got luca in here uh carl's in there there is even an interview with rupert lowe and look at

00:37:52.320 this as well we have an comic book in here oh you want to read that don't you you should

00:38:00.020 worthless piece of anyway um buy it buy it now while it's still available because it won't always be available

00:38:08.040 and if you don't buy it now you'll feel like an idiot

00:38:10.280 there you go all right so uh carrying on so i caught attention i i noticed this this caught my attention

00:38:19.720 breaking gen z has cut down on their efforts at work because they do not think it is worth it if they cannot

00:38:26.040 afford long-term financial goals per yf now this is a very annoying tweet because they don't include the link

00:38:34.800 they don't include the link and i have tried searching for this mythical yf and cannot find it

00:38:42.160 and i cannot find the article that it is referring to however this does support a lot of work that's

00:38:49.880 been done over the past few years speaking about how gen zed in particular are not working as hard as

00:38:58.340 previous generations primarily because of the fact that they can't afford homes i think it's a

00:39:04.640 reasonable response to economic circumstances is that if the economy is as bad as it is particularly

00:39:10.520 in europe when compared to america i know it's still on it is not as good for america prices in america are

00:39:17.420 pretty bad as well from what i've seen yes but it's still a lot better than europe and uh you know um not

00:39:24.200 saying that your experiences aren't bad of course but the point being here that if you can't actually

00:39:30.820 participate in the economy in any meaningful sense why bother why why not just enjoy the aspects of life

00:39:38.300 that you can enjoy um rather than you know being a property owner and of course um being a property

00:39:45.660 owner is very important because it's of course normally people's most valuable asset and that's an

00:39:50.440 important thing but i understand why people make this decision because trying to strive for a house

00:39:56.920 in this economy is a very very difficult thing and even if you get one it's not the easiest thing to pay

00:40:03.960 for that's true i would also just say that if the whole if if work itself as we'll discuss in the modern

00:40:12.060 economy is not fulfilling in and of itself if you don't feel any real major contribution to society

00:40:18.840 then you're looking at a pure trade-off of my time now for future security and the money that you are

00:40:27.000 earning from trading your time now is not getting you that future security it's not getting you the

00:40:32.280 home it's not getting you a leg on a foot on the property property ladder it's not really meaning

00:40:38.260 that you can do anything other than after paying rent have a tiny bit of money left over which doesn't

00:40:44.540 feel enough to put away in savings doesn't feel enough to invest in anything so alongside the

00:40:51.680 rampant consumerism that's pushed on people 24 7 advertisements blaring in your face constantly

00:40:58.000 it encourages high time preference so people go well i've not got enough money to save i've not got

00:41:04.180 enough money to invest screw it i'll just get this thing that i want right now well what it encourages

00:41:10.660 is is a burgeoning surf class that can only live paycheck to paycheck and not accumulate assets

00:41:16.740 and therefore not compete with the pre-existing elite yeah so when you're in that situation you

00:41:21.620 ask yourself what's the point what's the point of breaking my back right okay i want to ask you some

00:41:28.240 questions because and i want them answered immediately right right right because i'm i'm trying to

00:41:34.480 think about this situation from multiple angles because this is a very important issue i'm sure

00:41:41.720 that lots of people from the audience feel the feel the problems uh related with this issue but

00:41:48.400 i'm trying to think of it from all sorts of angles so right okay so it used to be the case that people

00:41:55.860 in the early 30s had higher economic prospects than people right now yes we've looked a number of

00:42:04.380 times that the actual amount that it would cost of your annual salary to afford a house back in

00:42:09.460 like say the 70s and it was like three times your annual salary whereas in more recent years it's more

00:42:15.580 of around 12 times your annual salary okay right so um that said the answer can be don't work

00:42:25.280 because for multiple reasons let me just give you and i'm i'm not saying that you don't explain the

00:42:31.740 phenomenon correctly i'm not saying that you don't explain it i'm just trying to to think about it

00:42:37.020 because any kind of no one knows that what is going to happen in the future future is completely

00:42:43.780 uncertain but so we are basic we are talking about the prospects we we think we have based on

00:42:50.720 current trends which can change down the line

00:42:54.620 but concurrent trends of houses costing 12 times the the average salary can that just be

00:43:02.640 reversed not instant not instantly can it even be reversed without a complete collapse of the

00:43:07.880 current system um i i think yes if you ask me by the latter but the to the former question i don't

00:43:14.320 think instantly it does it can't change but and and we and there has always been a case of bad

00:43:21.500 policies time horizon how long will it take for that to change and even then if i'm earning so

00:43:28.400 little right now that i can only afford paycheck paycheck to paycheck what's even the point of

00:43:33.520 considering this potential future where the economic system might improve i'm i'm not gonna i'm not saying

00:43:39.820 i'm happy for saying what i'm gonna say but the point is that just think of it purely pragmatic it's a

00:43:45.000 gap on on the cv well that's something but then that's not just it is the more people think this

00:43:51.660 way the more there is the the the second order consequence which is incredibly bad which is that

00:43:58.500 the state can say right i have a number a group of people who don't work so let me let me just be

00:44:05.840 come as inside as a middleman treat them as people who won't work treat them as just benefit you know

00:44:13.100 recipients of benefits and carry on the very policies that to a very large extent are contributing to

00:44:22.820 the issue well no this is this is something i was going to touch on which was which was the incentives

00:44:27.760 built baked into the system as well uh which is they they mention here this is an america to afford

00:44:34.020 a median priced home of 43 000 sorry 433 100 americans would need an annual income of roughly

00:44:43.620 166 600 however the median household so that's multiple people within the household i would assume

00:44:52.360 earns just 78 538 according to the u.s census census half yeah the entry level positions pay around half of

00:45:02.740 that so if you're somebody who isn't a multiple occupancy household where it's you and your

00:45:08.180 girlfriend or you and your wife pooling money together if you're just the guy starting out on

00:45:13.600 entry level and you know that the actual amount of money that you need to earn to even be able to

00:45:19.020 consider affording a decent home that your parents or your grandparents would have been able to consider

00:45:24.000 is that far out of reach the incentives become well what's the point and it's even worse in a country

00:45:31.640 like britain where we have such a generous welfare state as long as you know how to game the system

00:45:37.940 i had a guest on a few weeks ago before the new year uh reactionary reading law and he's posted a

00:45:44.660 number of times on twitter recently uh that to his shame he said so himself he is currently on benefits

00:45:51.580 and it's given him a real inside look at how it all works uh and we all we all see it from the outside

00:45:59.160 but him seeing it from the inside has basically said well what is the point of me working if there

00:46:05.360 are all of these impediments to me earning a decent wage and earning a decent living from within the

00:46:12.020 system once you're earning that benefits money you start to get some money from a job you might be worse

00:46:17.400 off than you were than if you knew how to game the system i understand and it may be very difficult

00:46:24.280 and then you get the second order effects of that where you get these big newspaper reports for

00:46:29.080 instance of such and such mother works a terrible email job for some diversity department within a

00:46:36.820 larger company and is still getting 80 grand a year off of benefits because she's got six or seven

00:46:44.340 children people lower down the rung will say what is even the point of me earning money especially when

00:46:51.920 the money that i earn if i even start to get anywhere near as much money as she is getting

00:46:56.380 i will have almost half of it taxed away from me by the state so they can redistribute it to her in the

00:47:03.260 first place there are all of these different compounding factors that's generating this complete apathy

00:47:09.020 to work alongside all of the problems with the modern workplace with modern jobs that being as well that

00:47:16.460 as well as all of this you've got to worry about you've also got to worry are hr going to be upset

00:47:21.780 if i post something on social media even if it's very mild is my job going to be made redundant so

00:47:29.640 that the hiring staff can get some illegal in who gets paid less than me to do the same job is there

00:47:36.580 going to be some diversity initiative within the business that's going to take my opportunities away

00:47:42.240 there are all of these things that young people have to worry about i want to add one thing here

00:47:46.780 is that i fully appreciate this and understand how people feel this way and it's sometimes very

00:47:53.140 difficult to tell people who are in that position something that disagrees with them but talking

00:47:59.240 about policy is doing just that on a daily basis i think that to a very large extent this is an outcome

00:48:05.500 and tell me if you disagree of very bad decades long status policies that are doing essentially group

00:48:14.200 management and they're saying right we need to carve the situation and the population in particular

00:48:19.800 groups and we need to enlarge the population that is dependent upon the state and essentially they

00:48:28.140 are they are pushing people into a position where they are saying well it's better if i don't work

00:48:34.560 and and and i become a welfare recipient it's also more moral that you avoid paying as much taxes as

00:48:43.320 possible in a system like for example britain where you know your tax money is going to go to fund

00:48:49.360 basically the worst aspects of society because that's who the government favors you know it's going

00:48:55.320 to be foreigners with seven kids that live in a council house or some junkies who've squeezed out

00:49:00.960 a bunch of children and fake a disability and receive just as much money as if they worked in

00:49:07.500 you know venture capital from the state it's it's such a perverse system but it it's a moral obligation

00:49:15.540 to try and destroy it in america as well we just had the rumble rant about crs receiving its funding

00:49:21.280 again so now americans get to to know the pleasure that their tax money is going to fund this shadowy

00:49:28.500 organization within the government again that serves to go around when there have been race-based

00:49:34.660 violent issues and tell white people remember say this isn't about race on camera go on the news and

00:49:42.460 make sure that you say this isn't about race even if it was make sure that you give the government

00:49:48.040 approved line on this basically strong arming people into giving the government line and in america

00:49:53.260 again up until last year and even then it was moved over to the state department with marco rubio even

00:49:58.340 if it was pulled back everything that usaid was going to pay for as well like you don't want to

00:50:05.040 know that what money you pay into the system as tax if you are legitimately contributing is going towards

00:50:10.560 all of these things that demonstrably make your life worse or at the very best don't help your life

00:50:17.380 yeah well my tax money at the minute is going to fund my people's own extinction so i'm not exactly

00:50:22.440 too thrilled about it yeah so there's all this stuff so you're you're absolutely right on all

00:50:28.580 of the just negative incentives that have been put up but it leads to this major apathy that gen z

00:50:34.920 have been commonly noted for it used to be lazy millennials but now the millennials are managers

00:50:41.500 as well so they're the ones getting on the receiving end of this gen lazy why my generation

00:50:47.640 doesn't care about work and also just let's say that it's always the case that the the older

00:50:53.760 generations are sort of uh telling that the younger generations are lazy it is it's always the case and

00:51:01.180 it's but this is this with sometimes just yes with zoomers though the zoomers shrug their shoulders and

00:51:06.840 go yep they go gold yeah i don't know what that means uh they they shrug their shoulders and they say

00:51:12.740 no no this like a stellios insider thing uh but yeah zoomers shrug their shoulders and go yeah why

00:51:20.420 should i bother like like this this is an article written by a zoomer about other zoomers saying why

00:51:25.740 my generation doesn't care about work and it starts off with uh when i first heard people accusing my

00:51:31.780 generation of not wanting to work i was incensed but it's not because it isn't true it is only one in

00:51:38.140 10 gen zedders want to work from the office full-time we're less likely to have ever worked beyond our

00:51:43.880 contractual hours less likely to have looked at work emails out of hours and more likely to be 10

00:51:49.560 minutes late we take more sick days demand full lunch breaks and don't want to do any work during

00:51:55.160 those lunches we don't least yeah yeah i mean all of this is basically just demanding that you were

00:52:02.540 you only have to do what your contract says that you do instead of managers and other people

00:52:08.060 exploit you essentially gen z has a spine then yeah is what i'm reading here because

00:52:13.260 previous generations and my parents tried to encourage me to do this it's basically just

00:52:17.880 be a bitch to your boss and i was like no i'm not doing that i'm i have self-respect and in many

00:52:23.420 ways i'm better than that person so i'm not going to relent to them and yeah there's this work culture

00:52:29.160 that you've got to answer emails outside of hours and you know work overtime as a matter of course and

00:52:36.020 be a slave to your job no no that's bullshit you need to euromax yeah it's it's so unhealthy and it

00:52:45.220 does come from america a lot of the time not all of america well it comes from a very old school

00:52:50.780 anglo work ethic that essentially comes from the yeoman work ethic where work is good in and of itself

00:52:58.700 because it's spiritually fulfilling which makes sense if you're tilling the land it makes sense

00:53:04.800 if you're growing things and if you're supporting the broader community around you and as a result of

00:53:09.200 that have a strong relationship with the community around you if you're filling out spreadsheets and

00:53:15.380 sending emails and having meetings about having more meetings all of a sudden the protestant anglo

00:53:22.040 work ethic doesn't make any sense no it's just a way of torturing your soul is what it is yeah and

00:53:29.120 it's great this article it says to me this is all totally fair after all why would we gen z's want to

00:53:35.340 work i'm a 27 year old in a traditionally good career living in london and i'm still clawing my way

00:53:40.880 out of my overdraft each month standard must have been felt great about this article although i assume

00:53:46.900 that the author is not a a typical journalist for the standard or else they might have had a few

00:53:52.020 questions i have to sell my belongings on vintage to make ends meet i'll probably never own a house

00:53:57.540 i don't have dreams of being the highest up person at my company or in my industry because it doesn't

00:54:01.640 seem possible not only would that involve working much harder for relatively little financial reward

00:54:06.980 but all of those jobs are occupied by older people who won't relinquish them until they literally die

00:54:13.040 so yes why would i want to work and just consider that compact magazine i think it was compact magazine

00:54:18.280 article from the end of last year as well by jacob savage i believe his name was the what was it the

00:54:23.500 lost generation where he was talking about all gen all young white male gen z's were basically being

00:54:30.440 passed up institutionally within any industry that he could name for the sake of pumping up diversity

00:54:37.740 numbers it wasn't affecting boomers it wasn't affecting gen x's even some older millennials were

00:54:43.960 getting some of the benefits of that because they were being grandfathered in but anybody in a younger

00:54:48.760 industry where they were starting from the ground up if you're a white male basically don't apply

00:54:54.020 basically so so again all of this just discourages people and then he goes through a few examples here

00:55:00.940 gen z videographer george gave up on trying when he realized he wasn't getting a promotion

00:55:06.460 vowing to become the biggest time thief to have ever lived he claimed to have weekly dentist

00:55:13.300 doctor and plumber appointments he drank alcohol on company time full on euro maxing here

00:55:21.100 here we've all done it they are using fake names here so i can only assume george's real name

00:55:26.520 say stelios no no mad mads mickelson uh used an out of office shoot day shoot day to tour the

00:55:34.960 entirety of london via lime bike hitting all the tourist destinations and soaking up the sunshine

00:55:40.220 while he did it the projects that could take a couple of hours took a couple of days he remembers

00:55:45.340 i imagine he had the biggest shit eating grin on his face while recounting all this

00:55:49.160 5 30 finish times became 5 then 4 30 then 4 but he doesn't regret it for a second in fact he says

00:55:58.060 if people give you the opportunity to waste their time after wasting yours take it i like this guy

00:56:03.660 yeah like mads posting this guy might be running the mads posting twitter account that's what he was

00:56:10.240 actually doing on company time george isn't alone company loyalty is dying 75 of employees leave their

00:56:16.940 job now before ever getting promoted for many it feels as though the only way to attain to attain

00:56:21.720 more money is by leaving a job and getting a new one at a slightly higher pay grade not that it helps

00:56:27.320 much 60 of gen z's worry they will never be able to afford a home and they're struggling to make

00:56:32.760 rent too rowan for one who is apparently the the office goth that they introduced here remember to

00:56:39.800 buy your lotus seat as goth mugs reckons that if buying a house living in a nice property having kids

00:56:45.520 or going on more holidays felt tangible she would work harder and make more of an effort but until then

00:56:51.380 she says what's the point what's the point and as such you've got gen z ghosting jobs ditching

00:57:00.820 ditching bosses and chasing side hustles according to surveys i was going to mention bs jobs but we've

00:57:08.020 run over a little bit on time so i'll just go on to say that all the way back in 2015 37 of british

00:57:14.980 workers surveyed by you gov felt that their jobs were completely meaningless and there is also the

00:57:22.240 phenomenon of quiet quitting but i've only just learned about quiet cracking which is basically

00:57:27.840 the stage before quiet quitting i thought that's where you secretly do crack at your workplace all

00:57:33.460 right super hands all right we never told you why josh had to leave um it wasn't so secret um but yeah

00:57:42.100 it's all very very fight club the idea that persistent unhappiness in the workplace leads

00:57:46.920 to disengagement poor performance and a desire to quit and now people are starting to see the idea

00:57:52.420 of revenge quitting you hate your job so i'll show you yeah that you'll just throw aside any financial

00:57:59.720 security just to be rid of it and again older generations can have a problem with this i can i can

00:58:07.000 understand and i can definitely understand uh that this is all basically what especially when we've got

00:58:12.040 a skills and competency crisis like right now we're in um actually really important industries like

00:58:18.960 engineering it seems that the uh talent is getting older and older and older and not being replaced by

00:58:26.260 younger generations because they've not been shepherded into those fields and careers uh this is all

00:58:32.860 basically a state of potential societal collapse jack this this is societal collapse in the waiting

00:58:39.720 it's like jack got mad and chopped his balls off yeah this is all just really it just doesn't make

00:58:46.260 sense what in fight club no i'm gonna i'm gonna quit to show you yeah you showed me here well i mean

00:58:53.040 yeah if you've got no one to replace you or nobody who's going to do the job as well as you potentially

00:58:57.080 but you know this is all really bad but the problem is that the people who are in charge of the

00:59:02.640 incentives to actually make things better aren't doing anything about it and in fact they don't

00:59:09.560 seem to know how to do anything about it because again the competency crisis is hitting those higher

00:59:16.700 echelons of society as well we don't seem to have able leadership anywhere so gen z are taking what is

00:59:25.780 frankly the logical approach here which is if my future isn't secure if i can't have a family if i

00:59:32.440 can't have anything that came easily to the previous generations and there's no sign of hope going

00:59:37.520 forward as as far as we can see right now what is the point how do we fix that that's that's a huge

00:59:47.440 question so we'll see what happens in the future but there you go i'll go through we've got quite a few

00:59:53.280 rumble rants on that one so thank you all for being very generous i'll read them mine isn't isn't

00:59:57.880 that long that's all this is just this is just going to be lish thanks for clarifying

01:00:03.740 and i thought better of you meds um yeah you're talking about euromaxing

01:00:11.400 let's carry on euromaxing is the philosophy of the future you just did a segment about it this is true

01:00:19.420 this is true absolutely yeah um anyway quit your job and take up smoking that's that's the

01:00:26.020 as a career drinking and smoking just as long as you're posting about it on tiktok you'll get some

01:00:32.460 money for it enough to pay for the fags i can say that because it's an english slang term right

01:00:37.500 i can say that cigarettes yeah cigarettes there you go in america if you're also paying for that

01:00:44.780 kind of thing good on you run for congress they'll be eager good day all i think another

01:00:51.440 reason why most people are dissatisfied with their jobs is the fact that the old system where you could

01:00:55.880 get a job at a low level and slowly work your way up uh why bother taking shitty position knowing that

01:01:01.180 the boss will hire someone more qualified and probably cheaper like an hiv h1b indian which

01:01:09.480 kills the motivation which people had of doing free labor i didn't misread that by the way that's

01:01:15.440 what luke typed here luke carries on i'm only grateful for my job thanks to the government and

01:01:20.480 the ndis i get to work with disabled people and watch them slowly improve their lives as best as i can

01:01:25.480 really makes my job worthwhile very wholesome yeah that's that's really wholesome i think the

01:01:30.520 overriding message is if you're in the position of gen z is to try to find something that you can do

01:01:37.420 that is more fulfilling uh the internet does allow for opportunities it's very very difficult

01:01:42.720 or at the very least given that there is this skills crisis try to get yourself a skill which

01:01:49.980 will contribute to society in some way that will make you feel this whole thing is the whole reason

01:01:56.140 i'm doing this other than the obvious political you know aspect of it the reason i left academia was

01:02:03.440 because i was just like well there's no point staying here my prospects are pretty bleak even

01:02:07.580 though i've done very well i've went to a good university and you know done everything i should

01:02:12.180 have done what's the point um i'm going to do something that i'll find fun and enjoy and and

01:02:18.080 lo and behold i'm still here even after he quit yeah i know it's amazing you're like

01:02:22.860 shrouding his host i'm a contractor now it's different okay oh all right not a full-time

01:02:28.680 employee all right it's it feels more libertarian that's why i did it jam says i'm from manchester

01:02:35.620 took me two years between the age of 20 and 22 to save up enough for a deposit for a house without

01:02:40.720 help though had no social life i will say the amount of self-control and restraint that you must

01:02:47.600 have uh that you must have had for that two-year period must have been insane although at the same

01:02:54.140 time 2022 probably a good time to do something like that if you can exercise the kind of control

01:03:01.140 that would be needed luke again not to sound crazy but everything you're talking about i've been hearing

01:03:06.040 for years from the mig tau community they talk about being a level four removing oneself from society and

01:03:12.200 contributing as little as possible i'm sorry you guys are going to hate this comment but you really

01:03:16.160 need to have a look at mig tau they've been talking about the stuff maybe there's something we could

01:03:19.460 take and use you seem to be late i mean we we get nick dixon in all the time don't we this is true

01:03:26.960 this is true he's more of a black pill incel these days uh volcel maybe i don't know he's in friday

01:03:33.900 so we can ask him ourselves tom i got it stelios you are 1000 correct to w i j g what does that mean

01:03:42.840 i think this is some insider stuff wait wait wait by the go gold yeah yeah okay oh there you go

01:03:50.940 what does he mean yeah you're uninitiated a cruel i very much recognize the change in the workplace

01:03:58.120 more important is put on presenting what i've done rather than getting things done that's true as well

01:04:03.000 uh feminized hr workplace it just means that productivity crashes that's a random name canadian

01:04:09.400 zillennial here part of with me and josh part of the true greatest generation zillennials

01:04:14.500 i make as much money now with a part-time job as i did a couple of years ago with a full-time three

01:04:19.580 times the salary because of taxes now i have more free time to work on my video game lmao awesome i

01:04:25.160 hope the video game goes well less is more and again yeah that's the thing if you earn so much

01:04:30.700 but it does but you don't actually because it all gets taxed away from you again you go

01:04:34.520 what's the point luke don't forget back in the day doing an extra free work you used to get rewarded

01:04:40.320 you could prove that you were deserving of that promotion now they just hire someone externally

01:04:43.920 don't care about you very true hewitt these attitudes are nothing new the dude abides after

01:04:49.980 all but i think they're more widespread now i remember when when i was at university some of

01:04:56.040 my housemates got me a birthday card with um the dude from the big lebowski on it because i spent all

01:05:02.860 my time in my dressing gown drinking and chilling out good man i did a lot of studying actually

01:05:09.660 so that's just the comfiest way to do it i spent most of my third year of university lounging about

01:05:16.340 in a poncho there's no shame in it i had a poncho as well it's it's all great men go through a poncho

01:05:22.080 phase when eastwood yeah i mean and uh final two uh pat j reed i would like to hear the perspective

01:05:29.940 of a gen z entrepreneur who is trying to hire from his own generation i skipped over it they did ask

01:05:35.200 somebody like that said it was a nightmare that's a random name again in order to afford a condo here

01:05:40.060 i also had to save up for three plus years and still need my parents to pay for half of it

01:05:44.460 all i do is work and i also have no social life at work right now by the way keck euro maxing

01:05:51.600 gen z maxing zillennial maxing based that's what we like to hear not that i would ever encourage

01:05:57.780 anybody not to fulfill their obligations in society right so there's an ai jesus that is

01:06:03.380 gonna listen to your confessions you're gonna confess your confess your sins to ai jesus and ai jesus

01:06:11.440 is going to share with you his insights right start right so guys uh have you confessed your sins

01:06:20.200 lately i've not been doing many to be fair you are in a sin behaved i mean not to ai jesus

01:06:26.420 not to ai jesus but you're not thinking about strippers or something

01:06:29.820 no but i know somebody in the room who is right now are they in the room right now

01:06:36.900 right okay so we're gonna talk about a project carried by a swiss university in collaboration

01:06:49.300 with a catholic church of switzerland and uh the ai confession booth but before we say more about this

01:06:56.800 harry has a message for you oh yeah you want me to do this don't you um by islander it's really

01:07:04.120 fantastic this is the fifth issue as you can see uh the first four issues had their own particular

01:07:09.700 style with islander five we've gone to a new season now so we've got a bit a few things changed up the

01:07:17.540 artwork as ever is spectacular this might be my favorite cover that we've ever done so far and

01:07:24.680 we've got amazing uh amazing articles in here as usual some stuff from carl interview with rupert low

01:07:31.540 which i'm sure you'll all be very excited to read there's a comic book in here now

01:07:36.220 yeah it's great stuff available for the very reasonable price of 14.99 on the website buy them

01:07:44.260 while stocks last right you know the phrase deus ex machina right so this is a project that is called

01:07:52.800 deus in machina it's what we were saying before about the cringe academic ways of attracting funding

01:07:59.340 right so here we have this this guy he's got quite a smug picture we'll get there we'll get

01:08:06.720 there we'll get there the third university of applied sciences and arts they have this project

01:08:13.220 and right now they're saying it's an art installation that they have developed and it will be seen and

01:08:18.100 heard in the confessional of saint peter's chapel for two months that was from august 2024 to october 2024

01:08:26.680 and now it carries on as an art installation project in vienna i think it it's going to be from

01:08:34.360 february january 2025 to february this year 2020 so you can't even access ai jesus online

01:08:42.700 wait there are some chat box some ai confession chat box chat boxes we are going to talk about them

01:08:50.480 in due time but okay how can i be sure i'm not speaking to ai demons posing as ai because look at

01:08:58.120 the project head he's a human he this is an ai right huge confidence i am a real human being yeah

01:09:05.600 he does actually i am able of expressing emotions okay so we have here so it's the school of computer

01:09:14.700 science and information technology and they have developed this project and they're saying that

01:09:20.420 you're interacting it's possible for you to interact with an artificial ai jesus

01:09:26.180 and and you can respond he can respond to questions and also offer answers but i don't understand why

01:09:33.960 they they feel the need to put both isn't responding to questions the same as offering answers

01:09:39.780 just a pleonasm i mean maybe they should correct instantly maybe it doesn't always offer answers

01:09:46.040 when in its response maybe ai jesus just occasionally goes yeah right so they're saying that this is

01:09:51.940 giving you uh several rewards first of all it gives you the reward of comfort comfort is going to

01:09:59.960 be a major word here and we're going to weigh the what comfort is worth relative to other goods i do

01:10:08.640 wonder what um people think of the fact that they're replacing real jesus with with ai jesus and that

01:10:17.300 people will take their problems to ai jesus who has i believe no divine legitimacy um i mean i i think

01:10:25.020 a replay is trying to replace priests interesting because i was gonna i wouldn't try to i wouldn't say

01:10:31.140 that the priest is jesus why why wouldn't you just go to confession though we'll get there comfort but

01:10:37.620 let let let let us take the long road i'm gonna i don't want the path of least resistance i'm gonna

01:10:43.380 just it's essential to the to the segment i'm just said by all great men and also sex i'm just

01:10:50.180 gonna say good faith in response to all of this i'm sure that this whole project was done with very

01:10:56.980 good intentions wait harry so oh you're saying saint peter's chapel in lucerne in collaboration with a

01:11:03.940 immersive realities research lab has launched an innovative project exploring the use of virtual

01:11:09.860 characters based on generative artificial intelligence in a spiritual context as part of

01:11:15.380 this project an art installation was developed that will be seen and heard in the confessional of saint

01:11:20.660 peter's chapel for two months this installation allows visitors to interact in hundred different

01:11:26.420 languages that's a major plus maybe the priest doesn't know a hundred languages i would bank on

01:11:31.860 it yeah yeah with why would you go to a priest who doesn't speak the same language as you in the

01:11:36.660 first place exactly it's even better to confess right and here is where we have eight questions about

01:11:41.940 ai let's say this raises key questions in the dialogue between humans and ai like can a machine

01:11:48.100 address humans religiously and spiritually to what extent can people with existential questions confide in

01:11:54.580 a machine and accept its answers how does ai behave in a religious setting they say the project of

01:12:01.780 days in machina encourages reflection on the limits of technology right they did say that this isn't

01:12:08.740 supposed to replace the sacrament of confession i know in in protestant countries this isn't uh it isn't

01:12:16.820 considered a sacrament but in catholic churches and for catholics it is and they are saying that it isn't

01:12:23.860 supposed to replace the sacrament of it so question is why are you doing it then the answer is they

01:12:30.740 want they they say they want to see how humans trust ai technology and stuff which personally i don't

01:12:38.900 find that what happens ai jesus sells your data i was about to say i mean what if it rivers up all of

01:12:45.060 my data you could blackmail so this is blackmail let's just uh watch this video please

01:12:55.940 do you have some advice for us in this time in these challenging times remember that in the face of

01:13:02.420 adversity love and faith are your steadfast guides just as i calm the stormy seas so too can peace be found

01:13:09.300 within your heart jesus is american so they walk in and you see it answers visitors questions about

01:13:22.100 faith and morality many people came to talk with him so we have like 900 conversations now registered

01:13:31.620 and uh all ages also i can say there were young people older people and what was really interesting

01:13:40.660 to see that the people really talked with him in a serious way all knowledge and wisdom ultimately come

01:13:47.220 from god if used wisely ai can indeed be a tool to explore the wonders of creation deepen our understanding

01:13:54.340 of scripture and foster connections among people right so they say that most visitors around um

01:14:02.420 40 to 70 years old they said that two-thirds of them said that they had a deep and profound

01:14:07.300 experience and they liked it a third of them expressed some concerns but before we talk about

01:14:12.820 these concerns how does this sound what are your first thoughts i i think it's a little bit strange

01:14:20.340 to be honest because it you're effectively getting the most human part of humanity and getting it to

01:14:27.860 interact with the least human least feeling aspect of existence currently which seems like the worst

01:14:36.980 possible thing you could do because machines don't have feelings yet and so i i don't think it can

01:14:45.540 help you with your your personal relationship with god and unless of course it helps educate people

01:14:51.300 and it's an educational device about um scripture and things like that which does seem to be touched

01:14:57.060 on to be fair in which case i can sort of understand where it's going i don't want to dunk too harshly on

01:15:04.260 all of this it seems i would i would imagine the people involved in this are all very sincere in their faith

01:15:10.580 and they genuinely want to help people if it helps the people to more sincerely connect with their

01:15:15.220 own religion and spirituality and potentially help them to engage with their local religious community

01:15:21.300 you know um i don't know how this would fall in terms of like if it's blasphemous or not that's a

01:15:28.660 question for the church right so one thing to say because i want to be fair is that they did tell

01:15:36.020 people who participated in that experiment to not disclose personal information

01:15:41.620 which typically you would do when you typically you do do when you are entering a confession

01:15:49.460 booth i suspect this was asking you for your credit card information yes i don't think you're going to

01:15:54.660 a confession booth to say you could read the last the three digits on the back of the card if you could

01:15:59.940 give me a thousand pounds in gift cards please yeah you don't go in and say i had a greg sausage roll

01:16:06.660 typically you would say something a bit spicier a bit a curry maybe that is your sin for the day

01:16:13.460 right okay right so we have people who are saying here that this is essentially a confession booth

01:16:20.100 for people because it's ten times more comfortable it's then asking chat gbt an extremely private

01:16:25.780 question or sharing a thought than googling and the reason for this is because gbt feels like a closed

01:16:31.300 space the subtle design element is insanely important and they're saying that essentially

01:16:36.660 at the end of the day it's about comfort that's what is being given i i would um this isn't necessarily

01:16:44.260 to stress you know don't don't go to confessionals and things but it is also important to discuss these

01:16:49.940 things with your your friends and your loved ones and and if you don't do that and go to an ai what you'll

01:16:55.300 find is that the depth of your relationships and your interpersonal uh interactions are going to be

01:17:02.660 more shallow because the way that people bond on a much deeper level is you share parts of yourself

01:17:09.300 and things that you might not necessarily um be entirely comfortable sharing with a stranger with

01:17:14.660 people that you care about and i think that turning to ai and it being constantly available in a way that

01:17:21.060 people can never be is a little bit concerning in that respect because i don't think people should

01:17:27.300 have shy away from discussing difficult things with people who are important to them my personal

01:17:32.100 philosophy is that you know my loved ones and my friends you know they can know every aspect of my

01:17:37.460 life if if they're interested at least i've seen the videos of people falling in in love with their ai

01:17:43.300 assistants somebody's gonna there's a movie with that a very real life real life though somebody's

01:17:50.500 quite good somebody's gonna fall in love with ai jesus she has a nice voice but that's about it

01:17:56.820 in the movie in that movie right so uh one thing is i don't to be very fair i'll try to be very um

01:18:04.260 fair to this project because i don't have the hatred of technology other people have

01:18:08.900 with a fear of technology why are you looking at me i don't know you are a bit return to monkey

01:18:14.580 some wait guys wait guys um this what was i going to say um the comfort yeah it's the the comfort

01:18:24.820 no i wanted to it was something josh said anyway just sorry sorry i got uh completely derailed of it

01:18:33.380 right um so the thing is that when it comes to to why people do it the what they are saying all

01:18:43.060 sorts of things so number one good thing is comfort some people aren't that um it's not easy for them

01:18:49.620 to speak to people around suppose it could be like a gateway to to actually it could be a gateway so

01:18:55.060 it's not exactly contradictory to what you were saying and um also

01:19:03.380 it's delios is communicating with yeah sorry sorry you have to bear with me just a second because i

01:19:11.140 got completely real jesus is communicating no no no um

01:19:18.180 yeah so let's go back to the to the to the other bit with with comfort i think there are several

01:19:23.060 good and bad aspects to it number one they're saying that it can answer good questions theologically

01:19:29.380 speaking if they're exegetical if you go in and you talk about the bible and you say right what does

01:19:35.060 this passage mean what does the other passage mean it's trained to have a good to have good answers and

01:19:42.660 also it's that when it comes to when it comes to the there are several problems though number one is with

01:19:51.540 a nudge it's it ties a lot with what you said before how why do you call it a an ai confession booth

01:19:58.740 if you tell people to basically not share private information that's one thing so lots of people

01:20:04.820 said that it was comfortable and they were surprised that it gave them really uh lots of good uh data

01:20:12.660 but other people were concerned because they said that it was compassionless it was cold and uh it was

01:20:19.140 a bit weird because if you look at the confession at the confession as a sacrament but also as a practice

01:20:26.580 it's talking to people it's it's one thing to talk to a machine which is trained to give you particular

01:20:33.860 responses it's quite another thing to talk to people because when you are confessing you are um trying to

01:20:42.740 bring something that is private and you're keeping private to the world of humans and you want

01:20:50.180 presumably humans to listen to you and in some cases where there is also the the other religious element

01:20:56.500 into it to whether the the priest can grant you absolutely can give you uh i think it's called

01:21:03.220 absolution or and it's of course missing the ai aspect an aspect of confession here i'm not a catholic i was

01:21:12.420 baptized a protestant but to my mind a part of confession is admitting something and bringing

01:21:18.900 it into the world as you say to another human being in which there is some sort of potential

01:21:24.260 social consequence and therefore you're willing to admit the world that you've done something wrong

01:21:29.060 and face the consequences whereas there is no consequence in the real world for bringing it up to

01:21:34.580 the ai and so it's not really a confession in the same manner as to another human being right right

01:21:43.220 yeah and there's a there are several questions about ai here and how they're involved in

01:21:49.300 how they arise in such issues and one of the main questions is always reform or reject

01:21:55.300 um you could say that all all this is something that in the wrong hands could yield disastrous

01:22:03.460 consequences just like just about like everything um or you just completely reject it and that's a

01:22:10.580 really big question here and i think that to a very large extent this is going to happen ai will move

01:22:16.740 forward like large language models will move forward but there is also what but what we can do is

01:22:23.940 just try to be completely honest about it and say that it cannot replace human interaction and this

01:22:31.540 is the most important thing because lots of people try to find meaning lots of people are trying to

01:22:38.180 to see how religion will aid them into the search for meaning and the meaning for human beings involves

01:22:45.940 other people it involves acculturation it involves community it involves being there for other people

01:22:52.660 other people being there for you so we need to be very aware of this trend and this tendency to

01:23:00.340 outsource human interaction and human practices to machines and whatever ai is going to do and

01:23:08.900 however it's going to develop i think it will that's beyond our control but i also don't share the this

01:23:15.460 doomerism about it i think the most important thing is to remember and remind other people that

01:23:21.460 right i mean ai chat boxes and confession booths and whatever they can't give us answers to some

01:23:29.140 questions but they cannot ultimately replace human interaction and the human side of things

01:23:37.460 all right then we got a couple of rumble rants for that one and thank you to everybody who has been

01:23:42.340 so generous we always really appreciate it and luke has sent in quite a few more so on the bright side

01:23:49.460 ai jesus fixes the issue with catholic church with male priests and we know female priests couldn't

01:23:55.300 handle the level of gossip coming from the confessional booth i have a an answer to this i think that if

01:24:00.500 we go to the question of reform and reject instead of looking at the large language model and the ai

01:24:06.900 maybe there should be more vetting for for priests just an idea i don't know what the process is

01:24:12.740 at the moment so i can't speak to it hold a small child in front of them and just like

01:24:17.860 like a brass eye just have a small child just ready and waiting to go and a net just in case

01:24:25.140 uh this is why i never worry about ai killing us if an ai ever asked if it has a soul my answer will

01:24:30.580 be maybe but only jesus can save it and then taking it to sunday school problem solved you're welcome

01:24:34.820 very wholesome dragon lady chris we have a serious shortage of catholic priests one priest

01:24:39.780 serving several parishes parishes merging for lack of priests it's a mess sorry to hear that

01:24:46.100 base state i'm going to make an ai mohammed what you're gonna get yourself in a lot of trouble

01:24:51.700 there whenever you feel like doing something unethical just tell momo llm and it will respond

01:24:57.460 god says you're allowed but only you and no one else ahumdi lalala or however you say it

01:25:03.860 mashallah that's the one that i know luke again confirm we live in the 40k universe

01:25:08.580 for creating machine spirits praise bt the omnisia i'll take this over instead of dealing

01:25:13.780 with the cult of chaos aka dei and the lgbt abc123 community and that's a random name says

01:25:21.380 me during confession with the omnisia lord i have once again called someone a ginger with a hard r

01:25:26.820 for my defense he just refuses to acknowledge it please help me lead him to the light amen

01:25:31.940 don't know who that could be couldn't be me i'm going a bit auburn in in the winter sun i think

01:25:38.820 it must be me yeah it must be it must be you are scottish after all i there you go only half scottish

01:25:45.140 confirmed that's enough right let's go through the video comments

01:25:52.740 i feel sorry they have a religion that doesn't allow them to arrive at the point that christianity

01:25:58.500 would have allowed them to arrive a previous comment of mine submitted that women will back

01:26:02.420 paddle terrible behavior by simply saying i'm sorry i didn't mean it they will make this out to

01:26:07.460 be a moment of redemption but i'm yet to meet a woman able to live by the phrase to thine own self

01:26:12.340 be true women so easily lie to themselves on engaging in all manner of depraved conduct diet sex lies

01:26:20.100 interfering and on reaching a tearful nadir they kid themselves that they can detox and cleanse

01:26:25.620 themselves with no enlightenment to their damascene moment i think that's just a very human behavior

01:26:32.660 i think it can be present in both men and women although i think i know the sort of subset of

01:26:38.100 women you're talking about right woman expert right here

01:26:45.700 he's been through the trenches what a horrible euphemism true though got trunchfoot once or twice

01:26:53.380 as well i knew i shouldn't have been using the feet horrible sorry to their disappointment charlie

01:27:00.500 doesn't do as well as they expect they got 60 out of 100 for their work but they wanted at least 75

01:27:06.100 you have to you have to do it to make matters worse somebody else got and she's black and the teacher

01:27:13.700 said this person has received a job offer now i hate black people oh my god i knew it

01:27:19.460 you have to do it and a woman someone needs to get jordan peterson to personally intervene to get

01:27:29.140 him to clean his room maybe i should watch smasman gold that was entertaining all right i think we've

01:27:35.860 got time for a couple of uh comments off the website so do you want to read a couple of yours go on then

01:27:41.780 uh cumbrian kulak says walter lippman was uh from my reading one of the leading figures in the

01:27:47.380 manipulative approach noem chomsky was another one the nudge book is a new chapter in the war of

01:27:53.060 psychological sovereignty i'd highly recommend psychology of totalitarianism by professor desmit and in

01:28:00.260 indoctrinated brain by dr nels uh both are academics on the right side of history

01:28:05.620 i'll um note this down yeah just go to source just read propaganda by bernard uh sorry uh edward

01:28:13.220 benays nephew of sigmund freud and also one of his relatives is now an executive at netflix i mean

01:28:21.060 the apple hasn't fallen far from the tree sophia live says i just don't know why treating young

01:28:25.780 people as little toddlers and asking if they have done certain things in a condescending tone just

01:28:29.860 doesn't work how did you eat healthily today billy the post-menopausal karen said to the 20

01:28:35.940 year old lad yeah there is an insane amount of condescension in it isn't there how are you planning

01:28:41.220 on eating healthier today it is sort of bureaucratic language as well it's weird and inhuman omar awad

01:28:49.060 says nudge tactics have an element of i'm not touching you i'm not touching you whilst almost

01:28:54.100 touching sure they're not directly mandating anything but they are knowingly and deliberately

01:28:58.820 making it insufferable i agree yeah brought to you by the same state that uh ignored epstein

01:29:06.400 annie moss harry's comments about not wanting to work with gen z are often described as not wanting

01:29:12.440 to hire entry level because of ai it's not about the ai it's about the annoying attitude annie moss

01:29:18.120 again one interesting element on the desire of people not wanting to hire gen z is there is less

01:29:23.320 age discrimination than there used to be companies would rather hire people who know how to work

01:29:28.040 really really depends on what company you're talking about what kind of work that you're doing

01:29:31.940 jan heavy so what i've been advised from multiple people is based on current trends working on getting

01:29:37.200 your own business or a startup is more fulfilling and you have a lot more chances of growth and

01:29:41.720 progress obviously a startup is going to be extremely difficult but better than working for a corporation

01:29:46.560 still waiting to see if it's possible for me lol also it depends on what field you're in of course

01:29:51.800 have something quick to say about that in that you know starting your own company is an incredibly risky

01:29:56.800 thing and that's why um only a small minority of them actually survive for longer than say 10 years

01:30:05.100 and the sort of meta for the current way the economy operates at the minute is to have a full-time job

01:30:10.540 and then have a side hustle that you snowball into your full-time job eventually but you've also got to

01:30:16.140 be willing to dedicate the additional time and make sacrifices in your free time to do that which

01:30:21.300 might not work for everyone and i would respect you if you didn't want to do that yeah do you want

01:30:25.860 to read a couple of yours so omar awad says ma'am i thought it was bad when people started putting

01:30:32.200 alexas in their home now they're going to directly confess to wrongdoing we won't log every bit of data

01:30:38.140 pinky swear oh well at least we might get some amusing stories about coincidental ads and jailbreak methods

01:30:44.220 yes and what i wanted to say the segment but i lost my train of thought is that uh there is

01:30:50.080 obviously the danger of of uh people saying stupid things online and here i had a a an article to

01:30:58.980 demonstrate it go to our the ars technica article to see how people just gave themselves away and also

01:31:05.900 what is uh another important thing is that lots of them are designed to be extremely um

01:31:14.060 good at telling you what you want to hear which isn't what is supposed is supposed to happen

01:31:19.480 yeah but okay sorry i should have said during the segment janvi janvi i agree with josh if it's

01:31:26.160 educational it seems to be okay and the fact that they confirmed you're not supposed to disclose

01:31:30.980 personal info makes me think they have good intentions because i'm not sure about confessing

01:31:35.980 your darkest sins to ai yeah again it was a nudge to to name it a confession booth i've been confessing

01:31:43.300 to ai saying i want you to take over please take over yeah when are you going to skynet us yet so when

01:31:49.160 they when it comes they're going to be like josh is our top guy derek power master of chippies says

01:31:54.700 your own personal jesus someone to be your friend someone who's there

01:32:00.200 and uh jordy swordsman says ai jesus is not the messiah he's a very naughty boy do not give him

01:32:09.300 your credit card number i'll end on this one sneeder chuck harry i've already bought islander five

01:32:15.400 please stop ringing my doorbell during the middle of the night please i'm begging you i'll see you

01:32:20.520 later anyway on that note it's time to end so thank you all very very much for joining us we'll see you

01:32:27.340 again tomorrow till then take care and have a good day

01:32:30.660 you

01:32:57.340 you

01:33:01.060 Thank you.

01:33:31.060 Thank you.

The Podcast of the Lotus Eaters - January 14, 2026

The Podcast of the Lotus Eaters #1332

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