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Hello, welcome back to the show. My name is Matt, my name is Nolan. They call me Ben.
We're joined as always with our super producer Paul, Mission controlled decand most importantly, you are you. You are here. That makes this the stuff they don't want you to know. It's Thursday evening as you listen now, on the day this comes out, and that means it's one of our favorite times of the week, hopefully yours as well, fellow conspiracy realists. That's right, we're back with more listener mail. We are going to discuss telepathy. Actual telepathy. That's weird.
That's a thing. We've got a wholesome conspiracy from schools. Seriously, no, this one will it's a little bit of levity. We got some great responses to our earlier question about the voter age. Before we do any of that, we have some concerning news or what would you call it.
Matt, it is I was trying to make a cow reference or a bird reference. I don't know, no, you're gonna love this one. Oh boy. Birds are sick and their sickness is infecting everybody else, and we get We've been kind of watching things in the news about this since twenty twenty two PS, but we haven't covered it in full and Plant Queen reached out to us with the reason why we should cover it, and we'll get into that in just a second. Here's the message from Plant Queen.
Hey, guys, this is you can call me the Plank. I hail from Colorado. I have been kind of listening to you guys a podcast for many moons now many years, and I wanted to call in for the first time, but.
I don't think anybody's talking about something that should.
Be talked about. In March of this year, bird flu transferred to farm animals and is now making its way into the dairy products. I just wanted to double check and make sure that I have the states right, but it seems that samples were tested and on Thursday, bird flu had been detected in thirty three herds in eight states Idaho, Kansas, Michigan, New Mexico, Carolina.
South Dakota, Ohio, and Texas. I just think it's pretty interesting that this hasn't actually hit me in news yet, and I feel like maybe you should have a quick discussion about this on air and maybe track this a little bit. Anyways, guys, thanks for all you do for us. And I would die if I heard this on air, says out there, and I hope the stares back invite.
Oh oh don't, I don't die.
No, no, no, everything's fine, everything's fine.
I knew the birds were going to be what killed us ultimately, man, I knew it of any colonists.
In day one.
All right, our our individual or personal biases, be they what they may, or biases whatever. Thank you Plant Queen for writing in and Matt as as you mentioned on Aaron, as we've discussed off air, we're the type of folks who spend some time thinking about things like this.
Well yeah, because look, part of our jobs is to look through the news like constantly, always, we don't stop. So if something hits, let's say, an outfit like Reiter's or I don't know what, a science alert or a scientific American, we're going to take note. And this subject has been written about Plant Queen extensively, but for some reason, it just doesn't get the traction. The old bird flu doesn't seem as scary anymore. After ye old pandemic, I
would pause it. So I think this is a little under the radar, legit scary thing that's coming our way. We can well, I okay. We tried to gather several of these sources right where we can kind of illustrate why it seems like it's getting a bit more of a hairy situation day by day. So we're gonna read some of the headlines and then we'll jump into these articles. So this is a headline from Reuters written on May one, twenty twenty four. And before we get into that, guys,
I got to give this little piece of information. Plant Queen called in on April twenty sixth of this year, and she was when she said Thursday, the testing and the results on Thursday. That was April twenty fifth, So like just just like what last week as we're recording this basically pretty much last week. So this article from Reuters May first state, this is the headline US bird flu outbreak spreads to chickens cattle, raises concerns over human infections,
which is something we've always talked about. What happens when an infection jumps species, right, or you know, jumping from a bird to another bird like a chicken. Right, No, that's concerning, but okay, that kind of makes sense. Jumping from a bird to a mammal like you know, cows cattle, much more concerning. Jumping from cattle mammals than to humans. Quite concerning.
It means younatic mm hmm.
So that just throwing that out there. That was one of the things. Here's another really concerning one from Science Alert. This was also on May first. Bird flu in raw cow milk, so it's transferred now, you know, through the cow via the milk, right, has killed farm animals in a concerning first which includes a bunch of cats that were living on a farm who were consuming the milk from the cows. They got bird flu and a bunch of them died.
You know.
It's interesting, Like you know, raw milk is a thing. It's a sort of a controversial thing where some people like the idea of raw milk or it hasn't been pasteurized or you get it directly from the cow, and it's actually, I don't think entirely legal in some places, but I do have to wonder if pasteurization deals with this or are we really mainly only concerned with it getting into humans.
By people drinking the raw milk.
It's not that it would necessarily make it to supermarket shelves per se.
According to the FDA, I'm glad you asked that, Noel. According to the FDA, the pasteurization process in American milk that's being produced by these cows that are infected with bird flu is fine to drink because of that pasturization process. Everything's fine, according to the FDA. We don't have to worry about a thing. We're good to go. We are talking about raw milk here, the thing that spread from
the cows to these cats. I'm going to read from this article though, because it really I want to say, Yeah, FDA, you're right. Pasteurization process is there for reason. It probably works, Thank goodness, it does. We probably shouldn't be that concerned. But this is why it's concerning to me. This from the article. In mid March, a mysterious disease began to spread among cows at a North Texas dairy farm. Just a few days later, cats on the farm started acting strangely.
Their eyes and noses leaked copiously. They walked incessantly in circles. Their bodies began to grow stiff, they lost their sight and their coordination, and then they began to die.
Is this a horror story that I wrote and forgot? What's going on?
Well, it's one of the most horrible things, especially if you're a lover of cats, as we three are. This is a horrifying thing, right, But it gets worse, you, guys, it gets worse you. Then jump over to MSNBC. The title of their article is, which was posted on April thirtieth, twenty twenty four. The bird flu is uncontrolled and it keeps showing up in the scariest places. Maybe a scare tactic to get you to read the article. Feels like
it kind of. But according to this article, the FDA, the Food and Drug Administration, revealed last week as that article was written, that it had found traces of the bird flu virus in twenty percent of a nationally representative sample of commercially sold pasteurized milk.
Wait, but I thought the FDA said we were good.
Yeah, yeah, So so it's one of those things like, can I actually get the bird flu from just buying some milk out of a store and taking it home and drinking it, or maybe God forbid giving it to my children.
Maybe that's scary. That's genuinely scary. It continues on down because there are now there appear to be confirmed cases where this it's I think it's five one if you want to refer to it as the specific thing. This has traversed from cattle into a human being at least once or twice. There's one Texas farm where a dairy worker appears to have been infected with this H five N one virus from the cattle. And this comes to us from statnews dot com. You can find in other places.
There's a piece in Fortune. The title of that is Texas Vet who cares for forty thousand cattle said nearly every farm that had cows sick with bird flu also had sick workers, which again, who knows that's a Fortune article. I couldn't gain access to it, guys, because I'm not registered with them or subscribed to Fortune or whatever it is.
But you can on stat news find a free article which goes through some of this stuff, and it cites a report in the New England Journal of Medicine that was put out Goodness last Friday as we're recording this on May third, that talks about this person. It's a it's a human being and quote unidentified man who has symptoms of this bird flu and there was a potential or possible rout of infection via cattle. That doesn't mean they've conclusively determined that this man got bird flu from
one of the cows. But again concerning we should at least be thinking about it.
And Matt, isn't there discussion with the WHO and the scientific community about how the next big pandemic will likely be caused by flu viruses?
Yeah, a zoonotic flu. What we call this infection whatever, I don't know. I don't know what the words would be.
That's the thing. You know, Influenza is treatable, but it's very difficult to wipe it out, and it evolves or mutates at such a rapid rate. There's always you know, how like you go to a gas station and there's always a couple of mixtape by people you've never heard of. Influenza is always dropping mixtapes. That's the reason why it
remains such a scary thing. You know, it's a you might be a vegetarian or a Vegan in the crowd this evening and saying, well, I don't you know, I don't interact with dairy as an industry, as a product, et cetera. But this can still hit you to your point, Matt. And as you can see, our larger concern plant Queen is the idea of becoming zoonotic, because once it jumps that chasm, right, once it mutates to that level, which it can very easily do, this is a non zero possibility.
Then the next question is how communicable does it become amid the human population.
You know, and how dangerous is it once you get infected? Right, right?
And that MSNBC article linked out to another piece from The Guardian from April twentieth of this year by Robin McKees, the science editor or one of the science editors for The Guardian, and it says an international survey to be published next weekend will reveal that fifty seven percent of senior disease experts now think that the strain of flu virus will be the cause of the next global outbreak of deadly infectious illness. And that is certainly tied to and part of this bird flu conversation.
Avian strain man, Guys, there are too many specifics I think even to get into today. I wonder if it's time to do another full on bird flu episode where we can go through the entire timeline, which you can find by the way. There are some great sites. I'd go to the poultry site dot com. That's a good one. They've got the dates written out, starting back in February of twenty twenty two when there was an outbreak of this what they called highly pathogenic avian flu in an
Indiana turkey flock. And it was the first case since twenty twenty two of this type of infection and some kind of commercial what they call poultry population. And it follows it along where it appears to be spreading more and more and more to other types of farm animals again including cattle and the cats that live on that farm and now humans.
Yeah, and this also goes back. This is a modern iteration of a larger pattern. We know, it goes back to eighteen seventy eight when many people listening tonight were not alive.
Yeah, oh yeah, here's a really creepy thing in the timeline, guys. On April twenty fifth, the country of Columbia became the first country to restrict the import of beef and beef products coming from the United States due to bird flu in those dairy cows.
A headline that might sound counterintuitive to many of us listening along, But as you point out a Stuteley Plant queen, it's because of the sort of chain of transmission, right, you know, we're not and true to be fair, sometimes you'll see kind of constructed rationale for banning imports or exports of things because it's part of a trade war. But in this case the concern is real. It's not.
It has nothing to do with or very little to do with the financial relationship between Colombia and the United States, and that instance, it is because the nation of Columbia doesn't want to be ground zero for some crazy, unbeatable influenza.
Yeah that you know, ends up turning us all into zombies. Just kidding, just kidding, that's not gonna happen. We're good. This is not the last of us. Now. One last thing to go back to that April twenty third instance where the US Food and Drug Administration found those avan influenza particles within pasteurized milk samples. They did say after finding that even the FDA said no, the milk supply in the United States is safe because of pasteurization, even
though they found the particles in some pasteurized milk. Okay, just leaving that there. Great, We'll be back with more messages from you.
And we've returned with another message from you. Yes you will repeat a fender yessense mean we actually heard from this individual last week. I think I had an email from GP Scooch and our last listener mail. You don't typically do back to back features of our wonderful listeners here, but this one was too good to pass up and too topical given the current political climate and an election cycle and all of that.
Also, to be clear, he's not joking in this.
One, that's right. Yes, this is a very very thoughtful This is a.
Longing, a bit of a long one, but I think absolutely worth it. I'm just going to read it straight through and then we'll just discuss. So, dear parasocial friends, the general rule of thumb, I waited at least twenty four hours before writing a response to a question or statement that is ignited a base reaction. Your question about placing an upper limit on voting age elicited such a reaction,
and yes, I waited the twenty four hours. With the passage of the twenty sixth Amendment in nineteen seventy one, I was among a group of new voters falling in the range of over eighteen but less than twenty one at the time, I can assure you we received no instructions or guidance on how to exercise this new power. We simply did as everyone before us had done, pay attention to what interested us, be it local, state, or national,
and responded with a ballot that reflected our position. Also, nothing happened that suddenly made us any smarter, better at decision making, more learned in the steps of practical and critical thinking, or any other aspect of our lives one would hope for from an informed electorate. Our society uses artificial age measurements for many of our daily rights and responsibilities.
These age limits must be reached to drive, to consume alcohol, to make contracts, to own guns, to enlist in the military, to hold certain jobs, and so on, to rent a car.
I might add to.
Prove how artificial these are, a kid in Kansas can get a special permit to drive for very restricted and specific purposes at age fourteen. Surrounding states are age fifteen or sixteen, so are Kansas kids more mature and responsible. In Missouri, a server in a restaurant can take the order for alcohol at age eighteen, which means they are selling it, but they must be twenty one to prepare that same order and to deliver it to the customer.
This means dining establishment might need a special person to deliver drinks one over twenty one. We all know people in their thirties who we regret can drive, own guns, drink.
And vote. You're here.
We know people who should never be allowed to do any of these things at any age. Thus far, I have only discussed the lower age limit because that is, in my opinion, where most people have had personal experience with these regulations. Of course, we all know people in their eighties or nineties who should no longer be driving an automobile. But we also know people in their forties
who should not be driving either. There are no upper limits for holding political or appointed office in the United States. Maybe there should be, but this could most easily be addressed through term limits, not age restrictions. Just as there is no standard for maturity in an American eighteen year old. There is no standard ninety year old or eighty year old or.
Seventy two year old.
At this later age, I am more active and am aware of issues than many of my associates who are twenty or more years younger. I know people in their nineties more active and aware than I. The Constitution prohibits testing of literacy or wealth qualifications for voters, it stands to reason that mental competency tests would also be prohibited, especially in light of the fact that some members of our Congress and some candidates expound some of the weirdest
I have seen or heard in nearly five decades of education. No, gentlemen, there can be no upper limit on voting, or you may lose a large block of seasoned, experienced Americans who do use critical thinking and can apply what they have learned to the ballot. Just to prove how seriously we take the issue, there are several petitions circulating to remove the Lego limitation of ninety nine years as the upper
age limit on their product. Lego like the toy. I'm sorry some might take issue with me calling it a toy, the construction, hobby project.
Whatever.
As always, I love what you are doing. Have converted many students to avid listeners after my Bob Bardella and Obscene Clone Fall letters made it onto the air well thank you. It seems to impress students more than a collection of degrees or published works.
That's funny.
Who knew approvals for everything? As al a is great Grandpa GGP Scooch. But oh man, it's so easy to get caught up in like one aspect of something like like age limits, where it seems to make perfect sense, but then you realize how many other situations it applies to, and how it's a total throwing the baby out with the bathwater situation, which you know, it does make it difficult to have laws that cover all the things, all of the possible scenarios. So I'm not saying it's easy
to make laws that are appropriately kind of scalable. I know it's not. But we certainly see overreaching in a lot of lawmakers that you know, we'll certainly do something with one intent that it has all these other unintended consequences.
So I think maybe I was the one kind of beating the drum for like upper age limits, you know, for folks that maybe are no longer in a situation where they're able to exercise that critical thinking, or they may have gone down some sort of gnarly rabbit hole, whether it be via isolation or or some sort of onset of perhaps a cognitive disorder. But there's so many others that are absolutely the standard bearer of democracy in
that age group that we would also be losing. So one would hope that per gg p Scooch's point that it's sort of there's a balancing that takes place, it kind of an equalizing there, and I would like to
think that's true, but I don't know, Guys. The lower age limit thing has always been very issue to me because it's true, like I have a fifteen year old who I know to be much more mature than a lot of eighteen year olds, you know, who are in their peer group or friend group, and he really does so many factors that lead to maturity that can come at a much earlier age or in a much later age,
or like arrested development or whatever. But those limits are still in place, and you know, some people might reach the age or they are able to exercise the vote, but maybe don't have the information and they're kind of muddying the waters a little bit, but then one would hope that there's a balance and sync factor there too, So I don't know, what do you guys think. This is a really thoughtful analysis from scoos here.
Yeah ggp. Scooch First, thank you again for the obscene clone falls as I said earlier, and thank you also for this very well written and thorough and fascinating well reasoned I would say reply to my original question about upper age limits for voting. We've discussed this a bit on the show, the idea, the relatively arbitrary nature of some of those lower end voting restrictions or ritualized rights
of passage. You know, everybody remembers I imagine the big kerfuffle when people were getting drafted into the military before they were legally able to do other stuff besides die in a war. Also want to shout out how our Palell super producer Paul Michig controlled decand who did indeed get his learner's permit. He has revealed this at the age of fourteen because.
Of the stipulation the scoot was talking about.
And then Paul also has pointed out there's the farmer's permit, which you can get at age fourteen, the difference being that with a learner's or driver's ED learner's permit at fourteen, you have to drive with an adult in the front seat with you, but a farmer's permit allows you to drive by yourself so long as you are going to or from a farming job or doing farm related work.
And I also have a bit of a past with that, because you know, if you're out in the country in many parts of America, we'll just see a kid on the road. Sometimes he's not a John Deere tractor, you know what I mean, shout out to tractor supply.
Don't mean I'm sorry, guys, just really quickly. My eight year old the other day driving when I picked him up from daycare, and he hopped in the front seat before I got even into the car, and he was like, all right, Dad, so when are you gonna teach me how to drive? I'm ready? And you know, he can't touch the pedals, but he knew all the mechanisms. He was like, oh, no, that's the gas, that's the break, this is how you steer, this is how you put
it in drive. And I was just like, nah, man, not yet, Nah, sorry.
Get one of those little cars, you know what I mean, little kid cars.
He's too big for most of them. I'll find something, you'll find Muslim are costs prohibitive, But give.
Him something that's like not quite a real car, like a Miata.
Yeah yeah, send the email a Mini Cooper.
But those are no longer mini. Look at the old Mini Coopers.
Look at the all right?
They are?
They are large now, aren't they? One thing I can't remember because we did talk about this, right, we like mentioned Okay, so did I tell you the quick story about visiting my cousins. I think I maybe did? I want to echo something that Scooch said there about knowings there's no standard ninety eighty or seventy year old. So I was in North Georgia visiting my mid to late seventy year old cousins. And they they're amazing. They're selling a house. They're really super cool. They are feeling their
age a little bit due to some health issues. Right. They told me that their friend is showing up, and they told me she's a little older. This Lincoln SUV rolls into their driveway and out pops this lady that's just like, oh, hey, y'all, how you doing, and just like super vibrant lively, she is ninety four years old yea, and I would have eff I would never have guessed that she was that age. And again it's just that point of like the age really doesn't have anything to do with it. No, it doesn't.
And we're talking about mitigating other mitigating circumstances that could happen to anybody at any age.
Any Yeah, there's not a one size fits all, even in a relatively harmonicrogenous civilization like think of Japan. Right, even when people will tend to share more genetic factors than they would in a nation like the United States, you still can't account for the case by case variables. I did drop a little bit of a trick there, Scooch, and I think you're picking up on it. The arbitrary concept of what age is or is not appropriate to engage in things like driving or voting, or joining the
military and so on, that sort of stuff. In the case of voting, I would argue, is compounded by the fact that voting is a right that can be removed in the US right if you have a felony conviction, etc. However, it is not an obligation. And I yet again say that there is a lot of sand to requiring people to vote, you know, because if you're part of a niche, it's kind of like you're part of the club, right, you got a required to pay taxes. I mean, yeah,
you gotta pay taxes. So do you choose taxation without representation? That's a question. So people got really up their butts about in seventeen seventy six or so.
And you don't think though, perhaps the lack of a you know, mandatory vote isn't in some way convenient for politicians who maybe would rather some people not vote, or they're like depending on that complicity in order to help get elected because they know that it's easier to fire up a zealous base than it is to like, you know, convert people that are maybe not interested.
It's a bag of badgers. Yeah, it's a complicated thing. There's not really we don't know the answers, folks. You tell us, fellow conspiracy realist, how you would solve for more equitable voting situation, more equitable society. It's a question that's haunted the humans since they started being people. But
the other issue here, you know, you're absolutely right. For some bad faith actors, knowing that people will not vote is a tremendous power, especially when added on to Jerry Mandarin and other very unethical practices.
However, mandatory to vote a lot of other countries.
Australia is one, Argentina, Belgium, Olivia, Brazil, Congo Costa Rica, a lot of places that we would consider third world countries.
Quote unquote, you.
Know it's in cold war nomenclature.
I know, I'm just saying it's still thrown around.
But guys, imagine you're up there, you know you're going, you're up for election, you control part of the government. How do you how do you ensure that those informed people are informed in the right ways that you want them to be. What if get past it? I feel like we need something. I don't know what it would be or what you would call it, but like some form of separate voting block of people that takes the suggested vote of all the other people and then they set.
Learned collegiate type never going to.
Work proxy votes. Let's take more of the proxy situation.
Also. The other issue here, which I believe you have quite astutely anticipated, Scooch, is that we cannot return to the days of pulling test. We cannot practice that. Sorry, it's a look. If everybody was nice and acting in good faith, then that would be fine. It would be amazing if people had the time and the opportunity and the impetus to research the specific issues that they're voting on.
But to be quite honest with you, many times in the United States, someone goes into do their bit right, their their civic duty, and they vote, and they know a couple of the questions that they want to weigh in on, and then they get hit with all these
other weird questions, often phrased in misleading ways. Do you not approve of a following tax relief for small maritime craft if it is added to a municipal tax totally the final thing subdivided over the seventeen years, And then you're like, bro, you think about the last time you saw a boat.
The ones among us who do all the homework possible still get thrown by those kinds of questions. You think you're going in fully, you know, educated, ready to exercise your civic duty, and then you every time, we'll get a handful of these WTF moments where you're like, I think this is right, but sometimes it's worded in a way that's borderline intended to trick.
Decision trium, you know what I mean. Hit the electorate with a semi colon just in the middle of the question.
Just right in Kanye West.
That's what I do, or what my best friend and I have done for many years. And write your palin for a local municipal position that you do not understand. Shout out, Corey Oliver, give me a comptroller one day.
No man only just figured out what a controller actually does.
It took us a while.
I could see Corey being a great comptroller.
I got the gift to gab that's for sure. Is that necessary for comptroller.
Number one thing?
But we seriously, we like parliamentarian, we cannot overemphasize, uh, the the importance of not returning to polling tests. They have historically, at least in this country, only been used to disenfranchise people. And we also, I don't know, I'm still on the fence about forcing citizens to vote. I think it's worth a shot, Like you said, Noel, it has,
it has worked in other countries. But then also you run the we run the possibility the risk of capturing blocks of voters and sending them in to vote, not their conscience, but to vote on their marching orders. You know, that's already a problem here. What happens when people have to vote and they just say, someone tell me what to do, don't make me think about it.
Well, I think that was exactly a shot in the arm that we needed from gp GGP Scooch. So thank you very very much for the email itself and for you know, giving us such a great jumping off point for this conversation. I do think I don't know man mandatory voting. The more I think about it is, the more like all of the things that we just discussed, there might be an episode in there somewhere, you know.
I mean, it's certainly something that we've talked about in the past, but there might be a way of getting into this, you know, once election season comes around, you know, to kind of explore some of the more niche ins and outs of the history of why is voting in this country the way that it is?
Tell you what, let's vote about it off here?
Oh and why do I always experience voters remorse? You know what I mean? Is that a thing? Yeah? I think it is okay. It's like buyer's remorse, but it's like after you vote it and you're like, ah, dang it.
Oh yeah, Well, it's sort of like that moment, like the opposite of deja vu. It's the French concept of the spirit of the staircase, the moment you've you've not said the smart thing and you're gone. Then you come up with the smartest possible thing. But it's totally too late.
I should have said that lawyer was working pro boner.
Let's take a quick pause and come up with some more spirit of the staircase zingers that we can have in our back pocket, and then we'll be back with another piece of listener mail.
And we have returned to the listener mail, and a wholesome letter from home. Our listener mail here comes from Jay Connor, who says, hello, my gents, with a zee. You may call me Jay Connor, longtime listener, longtime fan. As the Western public is distracted by Taylor Swift and the multiple wars in the East, major breakthroughs in technology continued to be made, Advances that will change our society
and flip the world economy upside down. I'm sure more people would care that twenty percent of jobs will be affected by AI and automation by twenty thirty five and fifty percent of jobs by twenty fifty if we were not conveniently oversaturated with information on a daily basis, or the public understood predetermined media celebrity fawning amplified non critical issues and controversies, and you know, world incidents are sometimes
timed to correspond with technological revelations or more commonly, a divulge of information damaging to the interest of whichever respective ruling establishment. To break that down and saying celebrity celebrity like hubbubs, you know, Taylor Swift, discourse, Drake getting slapped by k dot and the latest in the latest hip
hop beef Team k Dot. By the way, what he's saying is sometimes this occurs such that other things can slide under the radar, just like that new Manta drone out there water and they're asking you to look at the right hand and pay no attention to the left. And I think that's something we can agree with on this show, right, would you say that happens?
How about this? To my perception, it happens all the time. That doesn't mean it is purposefully done, right, because you would have in order to prove that, you would have to actually make those connections that seem so like obvious, right, But there's no actual connective tissue other than you know, oh well, we know about it.
Well, I'm wearing a trucker hat today and I'm like, we know what's going on.
That's an awesome trucker hat too.
Shout out to our pal for the locals number four, our buddy Harold so the true mayor of Atlanta's side. J Connor continues, it's hard for the average person to fathom how fast AI is improving, or to truly ponder the implications of now living in a world with text to photo and text to video prompt programs that only corporations and governments have access to. It's even harder to care when your tax dollars are being used to drop
bombs in Gaza. But I digress. No, my fellow chums, I'm here to inform you and show you this new reality we live in, one where AI has been proven in the laboratory. I want to say laboratory at this point. Doorady to have the capabilities to dundunt read minds, or if I were to phrase it more professionally to quote decode brain waves into communicative text end quote. Oh, says
Jake Connor. But it doesn't stop there. My friends meta formally Facebook, Yeah, we're aware, has announced that they have not only proven AI can read minds, but it can also illustrate what you are thinking. Yes, a literal picture. Let's stop there, because we have talked about this recently, Matt. You brought this story not too too long ago about some of the first legislation to protect brain waves. If I'm am I oversimplifying out of Colorado.
Uh no, not at all, to protect essentially the intellectual property that are your thoughts.
We go, nothing weird, So.
You check out.
I'm sure you already know about this, Jay, but for everybody else, if you miss that one, check it out. It's an interesting case of legislation attempting to be proactive, right to set the lay of the land for future inevitable technological progress.
This is something we didn't talk about, or at least a connection we didn't make in that discussion as a connection to and I think a bridge is our AI discussion here. The way, these large language learning models or whatever what are they called, the aims the things that we call AI nowadays.
Okay, the way I'm learning, let's say it that w Yeah.
The way many of them were originally developed, it was by just taking up any and all information that was available, right, And we've learned over the past couple of weeks and rough well months, some of the loopholes, legal loopholes, and legal bending that was occurring when those things were developed, where basically copyright law was just kind of ignored in order to make sure there was enough stuff to develop several of these And we've learned that from the words
of the attorneys themselves, who were kind of instructed to ignore some of that stuff.
Some real forgiveness versus permission rational.
Yes, which makes you think about what happens when brain waves are now accessible to people, and what types of legal loopholes and legal bending will occur when that stuff's just being sucked up into the cloud and it's your brain thoughts, your meat, your meat, murmurings like what happens. I'm just saying, it's your first.
And last refuge. The last thing that was Sack was saying, look, I'm not here to call anybody out, but Matt Noel, Paul fellow conspiracy realist Doc too. Every single person you've ever met has thought of some crazy things and the differences they did not necessarily act on those. This, I would argue, this gets us very close to a war world of pre crime, right and incorrectly predictive things. If you are hearing this now, you have, to one degree
or another, you've thought about killing somebody. You maybe haven't planned it out, but we've all had that what if moment. You've been on the road and you thought, eh, what if I just tilt the wheel just a little bit?
You know, Yeah, it makes me think of the three body problem. I wouldn't want to spoil it too much. But there's a position that's created within that world. It's called a what is it a wall? Wallfacers people who specifically develop plans in the darkened room that is their brain. They don't tell anybody about those plans and their ideas, but they develop these things in their own mind, and eventually those plans are spilled and get deployed. Right, no more, there,
no more of that. Somebody actually, you know when it's a think tank, now it's a I don't know, cloud tank thought thing.
I think, I think it's also a great violation of human rights, you know, or the rights of a thing that thinks. To be quite clear, you should be able to evaluate the world with at least some shred of sanctuary, some kind of internal safe place, you know what I mean.
Because that's the way we think about it now.
Right, right, you know? But are we not thinking things? Do we not have the right to think the things that we think? This gets close to again, decision treeing thought, which is a very dangerous proposition, right, And it's the kind of gun that fires in both directions. There is no one in that conversation who will not somehow become a victim of such a mad pursuit. Now, of course, apologies, Jay, We're going to we're gonna summarize some of your email,
which is fantastic for time. We want to get to something that you pointed out after a pretty top notch explanation of the brain as biological computer, which absolutely nailed by the way you have shared what we were talking about the creation of something like telepathy, and you didn't go into any skullduggree. And I think this is like I think this is what Jay is shouting into the void and into the rooftops Now Meta has extensive research
on this topic. You can read about it at least their public facing stuff on AI dot Meta dot com, go to blog aispeech and brain activity. This contains video content. This also contains summarizations of their studies and ongoing research. It is directly on their website, as j points out, which prompts Jay to call this a so open secret. Yet very few know about what's going on in these laboratories. It scares me sometimes how fast technology is progressing, unbeknownst
to much of the world. And I'd like to give everybody a quote from the website that Jay shared with us. This is from August thirty first, twenty twenty two, so more than a year has passed at this point. Meta FKA Facebook says every year, more than sixty nine million people around the world suffer traumatic brain injury, which leaves many of them unable to communicate through speech, typing or gestures.
These people's lives could dramatically improve if researchers develop a technology to decode language directly from You'll love this non invasive brain recordings. Today we're sharing research. It takes a step towards this goal. We've developed an AI model that can decode speech from again non invasive recordings of brain activity. And they go through just how far they've gotten through
this methodology, case test and all of this. All of this leads Jay to cite some University of Texas semantic info, brainwaves AI research, some pieces from CNN, MSNBC, and Jay says, I'll leave it there. I'll let you go down the rest of the rabbit hole yourselves ponder the possibilities, like, if you built a sensor strong enough, could you capture brain waves meters away and read minds at a distance? Could we build telepathy? I'm pretty sure at this point the answer is yes. I don't know.
Jay got to me, I can't wait for telepathy, man, it'll be like that story Noah was talking about where you can walk through with the card reader and was about to say, get everybody's credit cards. Man, No sick.
We were talking about that legislation that just came through, I believe in Colorado where they're trying to prot you know, the infiltration of our minds man, you know, to get our personal data.
Or IP or whatever that is.
Telepathy, you know that's technologically enhanced or you know created telepathy, and it's coming, y'all.
Do you think it is?
It's just not public yet. I'm sure, but Jay concludes, I mean, in fifty years, when the state sponsor drone the patrols my neighborhood flies by to protect my thoughts from its mind to coding sensors and software, the most efficient and practical defense against it would be to put on my tinfoil hat. Maybe, man, but check out our tinfoil hat episode.
We know you did.
You have to encase the entire biological machine. You know what I mean, a future of hazmat suits.
We just need far day cage domossiles.
Yeah, let's be get the new hip hop flex you know what I mean, forget the role x me.
I wonder if you could build a Wi Fi chamber, like a Faraday house right that has a Wi Fi chamber that allows the Wi Fi to go through that chamber in directly to a device, and you could plug in to your modular wall. These tubes allow it would be like having cables. This guy plug it into this.
Is showing Nola is showing a cavalcade of cables.
Well, it's a modular it's my modular wall. What I'm what I'm imagining is a modular Internet. Oh wait, this is I'm literally describing a router and an old one to them, you're also described.
I mean, if you've ever been in a server room or you know, one of those massive server farms, that's all modular as well. Each one of those drives that creates the Internet is a slotted thing that's physically installed somewhere and then patch together with other stuff.
I just also, you know, for anybody who's been through it, I find there's a subreddit called oddly uh satisfying or something like that, and they have a lot of cable management pictures for someone bringing order from the chaos.
Totally.
It's just somehow reassuring. You know, I can't even see the colors, and I'm just like, look at that.
You can't exactly do that with the modular because it's meant to be you know, put in and then reset. So if you did cable management, that's for stuff that like stays connected all the time by nature, you're bringing order to the chaos.
By just hooking it up correctly like that. I just want a lack of clutter. I like clean things.
Agree that's nice, man, But think about the data clutter. That's like hitting there with waves.
Right.
You can't see it, but it's there. I'm saying, let's start the wired movement again. Let's get it back all wired technology. That's it WI Yeah, dude, let's do it.
Also, also, this is uh, this is funny. This is making me think of the idea of getting a report card for your thoughts, maybe around the time you pay your taxies. It's like, here's the percentage of times that you had aberrant imaginings.
Oh no, have you guys ever owned a car that you're driving.
Yes, I will. I've participated them, but I refuse to own one.
Okay, So my car had that where you literally get a report card that is monitoring everything you have done in that vehicle for the entirety that you've been driving it. And it was like, Bro, you got a sixty eight. I'm sorry, you need to slow down, take those corners a little better, make sure you're signaling, which I am, because the dang thing thinks that I'm changing lanes when they've got painting. The painting on the lanes is wrong or they've done I take umbrance. Is that the word? Yea?
I take umbrage with this, but anyway, just it's creepy to think of that as you're saying, saying been applied to if you could open up the terminal of your mind and just see everything that's happening.
Yeah, I mean, I don't know if humans are ready for that level of cybernetic integration, and we don't know what the world will look like at that time. It's fascinating stuff, it's worrying. It is arguably inevitable on some level. And listen, when this kind of stuff is rolled out or message to the public, it always comes in glowing terms, right, in very happy futuristic optimist terms. Right, we're going to we're going to help people with TBI, which is true,
that part is true. But also we have to ask about the other side of this. Because technology knows no ideological dilemmas, right, it knows only the ethics of its creators. Is scary thing. It's one of the big problems with AI. Now write to us. We want to hear your thoughts about it before we end, because that is kind of a trippy thing. We want to thank everybody's written to us. We also want to give a special shout out to talks who hipped us to a very wholesome conspiracy from
the world of education. There is our letter from home. Hi guys, longtime listener, but have never wrote in until now thought you all might want to know about an active conspiracy going on in my little public pre k through twelve rural school. Rural school. I work at the school that as one hundred kids from pre kindergarten to twelfth grade. Class sizes range from ten to one. Just
like every other place deals with small children. We also have the notorious stomach ache that comes around when students don't want to work time. Is that a thing?
Oh gosh, yes, Actually, you know, I think it might have become a little bit more headaches now with the gen Z kids and their anxiety and neuroses, I think a headache might be more popular. But definitely the legacy thing was my term to a.
Little mo lingering. Right, So okay, so Talks says, be to school. We have very strict regulations on medications being given to students. That's a good thing. I am one, says talks of only three people in the district that's allowed to administer medication. Most schools, when they run into tummy trouble or as you said, no headaches without any accompanying visible symptoms. They rely on letting kids have a five to ten minute rest in the nurse's office before
returning to class. My school has found a way around this, however. Peppermint candy. Yes, the red and white striped candy is our answer to every excuse. The nice thing is because of the peppermint extract. It does help mild nausea. Being a heart candy, it provides some relief to scratchy throats and coughs. Because these are candy and not actually treating anything, shout out to our supplements episode we can give them
to the kids. The older kids have figured out the grift, but still swing by the office for a mint now and then. Thanks for all you guys do you keep me company on my drive every day. I think somebody got me with this when I was younger. I think some I think I got pepperminted.
I mean it can you know there might be a placebo effect involved as well, but peppermint does have some stomach calming sure properties.
You know, peppermint's great. I just think it's We wrote back to Tonks and just said, you know, there's one of our favorite wholesome childhood conspiracies up there with Santa Claus. Spoiler alert, everybody nop uh, Big Claws is shutting us down, guys, Operation jingle Bells and full Fast. We got to go thanks to a tonks plant Queen GP Scooch, J Connor everybody else. This has been a fun one, huh.
I agree. I just realized that peppermint myself all the time when I reach for a stick of gum or something, you know that's just peppermin flavor and I'm like, oh, well, peppermint.
Or sharper right, stay frosty by friends? Was that the Dosakis guy, Stay thirsty, stay interesting.
He's the most the most interesting, the.
Most interesting, dude, I think he says, stay thirsty.
I think you might be right.
Well, let us know, folks, give us your favorite ad campaigns, give us any old thing we cannot wait to hear from you, and perhaps you will join us in a future listener mail program. We try to be easy to find in a number of ways.
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