From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or learn this stuff they don't want you to know. A production of Iheartrading.
Hello, welcome back to the show. My name is Matt, my name is Nol.
They called me Ben.
We're joined as always with our super producer, all mission control decand most importantly, you are you. You are here that makes this the stuff they don't want you to know. Thank you so much for joining us for our weekly
exploration of listener mail up top. Before we get into any of this fantastic correspondence, Yeah, we want to thank everybody who took the time to write in about a very worrying catastrophe that just occurred and ongoing, the massive leak of personal identifying information here in the United States, particularly a little thing we'd like to call social security numbers.
You know, it's something that we talked about. I think it even came up or we even as a group kind of posited like, well, how big of a deal is if stuff is getting leaked, if literally everyone's stuff is leaked, And we talked about off air around this. A good friend of ours and the show, Peyton Fisher called it a debt jubilee, which is apparently a term from the Bible, where it's like, well, if everyone's stuff is out there, then in theory all debt is forgiven.
I don't know if that's how it play out, but it is an interesting thought experiment.
Yeah. In this case, we're talking about the breach of National Public data, right.
Yes, that occurred allegedly around April of twenty twenty four. A hacker group called us DoD took this information from this company that we just mentioned, National Public Data. They're a background check company, at least according to the lawsuit, this was the vulnerable part of the chain, and this data was not released as ransomware. It was released for
free on a hacking forum. It includes the files of two point seven billion records, including stuff like a person's full name, address, DOB data, birth, social security number, and phone number. The reason this is a big deal is that certain financial institutions have a cartoonishly low bar for approving big financial decisions. So sometimes with just this information and a little bit of easy social engineering, you can do some pretty sinister stuff. Please don't please do be
a good faith actor. But as numerous conspiracy realists have pointed out now is the time to get two factor authentication on everything you touch, and also just check in with all that boring financial stuff we all like to ignore. Now's the time to be actively interested in those boring things.
Yeah, there is no reason for you not to freeze your credit right now. And there are a lot of apps that you can get on your phone that you can freeze and unfreeze your credit literally with a tap, and it is I just used this, guys. I tried to open a new account in something and they said, oh, well, it looks like your your credit is frozen. Now I went, oh, one second.
When it work app?
I mean literally out of personal curiosity. When I saw that that was the recommended move, it seemed daunting to me. So this is really helpful for me personally. Can you suggest an app that you found easy to navigate?
Yeah, it's called LifeLock by Norton, especially sponsored by them.
Okay, I guess by North And at this point we have to mention again there is no national privacy law in the United States, so once more, the burden of security falls upon you, in this case, an innocent individual. I guess we should also note originally they were trying to sell this data for something like three point five million dollars and then later they just gave it away, So let us know your experience with that. Be vigilant, folks.
We're going to pause for word from our sponsor and then we'll be back to explore a peak conspiracy story that reminds us of an old friend.
And we've returned and we're jumping to the phone lines immediately to hear a message from Kei Key, and I guess we'll just listen to the message, guys, and then jump into this. I would say personally, I am learning a whole bunch in the moment, maybe as we're going to go through Kiki's message.
Hi, you can call me Kiki and you can use us on air if you would like. I am interested in I recently got interested in plane crashes, and that led me to the information about Mount Weather, which I don't know if you guys have ever covered or have
ever been interested in, but basically what happened. This is a mountain in Virginia near DC, and it's run by Homeland Security, and then the nineteen fifties believe an airplane crashed into it, and that's how it became very obvious that there was a secret facility on the mountains, as there were a bunch of cars perked, you know, in the middle of the woods, next to nothing. I believe it was at TWA flight five to one. And this
is now obviously something that people just know about. But you guys were talking about crashing planes into freeports and that reminded me of this, and I thought maybe you guys would be interested in this very weird thing that happened. Anyway, I have an excellent day.
By thank you so much, Kiki. We are having an excellent day. You guys having an excellent day. Yeah, actually, yeah, okay, but thank you so much for calling in with this. I did not know about this. I didn't know about TWA flight five to one four, which is a real thing, and that's trans World Airlines, by the way, And the date of that crash was December first, nineteen seventy four. It was a Boeing seven twenty seven, two thirty one,
whatever that means. And guys, did were you aware of this plane crash or and or this facility not high.
Yes, and only because of a fascinating conversation we had with an old friend of the show, Garrett Grath.
Wait do I know about this then?
Well, remember Garrett is a guy that we spoke with a few years back about Raven Rock. Yeah, he has a book on it, the story of the US government's secret plan to save itself while the rest of us die. So shout out, shout out to you, Garrett, because it's a great book. It's rollicking read. And Garrett is how I learned about Mount Weather.
Oh, that's amazing.
Yep.
Just to refresh everybody's memory that all those things facilities like Raven Rock and the one that was mentioned by Kiki, this Mount Weather Ritt facility whatever it is, their continuity of government facilities. So as as our friend Garrett was saying, and it's if the s hits the f so hard that the government literally treats into mountains essentially or underneath, which.
Is a necessary thing for governments to have. It's funny. And also, Tiki, thank you so much for calling in about this, because the history of Mount Weather is fascinating and also the necessity of those things being secret. He is a real pickle.
Oh, it is a pickling. Indeed, a pickling must occur. So let's talk about how this facility Mount Weather was discovered via a plane crash, and we'll go to the official Federal Aviation Administration to see their write up, at least the official rite up of the FAA regarding this incident.
So this is a plane, it was roughly twenty five miles away from the airport, and what occurred they were having to fly with just their systems, so they couldn't actually visibly see out the front of the airplane to
know exactly what was going on. And according to basically the information that the pilots had, they believed they were allowed to go down to a certain elevation eighteen hundred feet, but unfortunately the actual lowest level that they could get to was like thirty four hundred feet, so they like they went down lower than they should have been, earlier than they should have, and what they ended up doing is impacting directly into the side of Mount Weather, into
this area. And I guess because of reporting then on this incident, it was let loose that there was this facility on Mount Weather, which has a bunch of different names, by the way, and I don't know how many of these are current or how many times it was renamed, or how many types of facilities actually exist there? Right, different buildings that have a different group, But I'll name some of these for you. One of them is the
Mount Weather High Point Security Facility. Another one is the Mount Weather Emergency Assistance Center, and another one is the Western Virginia Office of Controlled Conflict Operations. That sounds nefarious to me. Controlled conflict operations.
Yeah, this is where we steer world events.
Yeah, especially considering I think one way for us to understand why this place had so many names. Obviously, as you point it out, Matt, the secrecy, but secondly, perhaps the age of operation for this site. Right.
Oh yeah, it has been around for quite a while and it is only sixty miles pretty much west northwest, I think, is how you would say it of the heart of Washington, DC. Do you have the history of it up in front of you, Ben, We.
Know that it was originally a site run by the National Weather Bureau to launch balloons and kites. As a nation, we were still very much in our Ben Franklin phase back then. It was it was the late eighteen hundreds, I want to say, yeah, which is just amazing now.
They were very they were doing very different things as the years passed, but we know that in nineteen thirty six, it weirdly enough, went to the Bureau of Mines and the Bureau of Minds made a this is where we would start writing a crazy piece of short horror fiction. So the story is back in nineteen thirty six, the Bureau of Minds created a short experimental tunnel beneath the
mind to quote test new mining techniques. Obviously, when we write this story, they're going to be hunting for an elder guide, right.
Yeah, yeah, exactly. But also what a great cover if you're going to build a secret facility, because, as you said, you don't want anyone to know where you were. Continuity of government, you know, Mountain is. But unfortunately, because of popular culture, and I guess because of unfortunate plane crashes, the world learns about these things. And well, and I guess Garrett Graft way to go, Garrett, just tell people
about Raven Rock. We're just joking. We're just joking. But this place, guys, I pulled up a map, and we know about this because it's posted on a website called globalsecurity dot org. But there is a very high quality satellite image of this facility just overhead, and it shows you the different parts like the main support compound and the east portal and the west portal. I want you guys to look at this picture because I spent way too much time analyzing the Google Maps imagery of this area.
Because you can look at it on Google Maps right now if you want to. I didn't realize the things labeled in this image west portal and East portal are the actual entrances to that tunnel you're talking about, Ben that was drilled at least originally. These this is the end trance to the cave system, the underground facility, the actual secure parts of this thing. And like it is huge, y'all.
It spans a large part of this mountain. I don't know, is there anything else because I have to say about this because it looks there's a what they call the main support compound that's kind of at the center on the surface. It looks like it could be some weather monitoring equipment up there. It looks like, you know, there's all kinds of different office buildings set up there.
Well, and like roads connecting all the different you know, wings or whatever.
I mean.
Looking at this aerial shot that's on the identive dot com page.
Oh interesting historical note. This is where a lot of Congressional members were flown via helicopter during or right after the attacks on September eleventh.
Oh yeah, oh wow, yeah, oh this is this.
Is one of the bolt holes or was I think meant for this purpose and Kiki for you as well, for everybody with an interest in this, the existence of these things, especially the public existence of things like Raven Rock, and the public knowledge of things like Mount Weather the most the juiciest question, at least for me, is the
next part. Where are the current bolt holes? Where are the current experimental mining tunnels or whatever cover story we're using, because you know, there have to be at least a few Antarctica Antarctica super convenient. Remember I've recently pitched you guys. I got this, I got reached out to you, and I was trying to pitch to you guys the idea of us traveling to do stuff they don't want you to know in Antarctica.
I don't know if we'd make it back alive, Ben, I don't know if the ice mania would set in.
The ice mania. Oh yeah, you been watching the terror.
I have been watching the terror it's true, So.
That maybe is the most fascinating question because we know logically sites like this must exist. They have to, there's no way around it. So the next question is what are the current versions of these sites where they located? You know, and Mount Weather is probably still viable. I don't know much about it, Matt, to be honest, I've never visited.
It seems like it's fully viable, and at least as of writing from February of this year, it is controlled by FEMA right now. That's what's been stated on multiple websites. I you know, and by the way, FEMA is the Federal Emergency Management Agency which would come into play in a continuity of government situation pretty heavily. Lots of disturbing conspiracies about that group, A lot of them seem to
be wild when you look at the facts. I don't know, guys, this just really got it piqued my interest when I was looking at it on Google Maps, because I was looking at like where could the entrances be? And I hadn't yet found anything that said where the entrance to the mountain was. But if you zoom in on Google Maps on these portals. It looks like just another building, like the roof of some suburban home, but like maybe a slightly larger office building. And it looks like there
you can't see any ramp going down. You can't see anything that would tell you, oh, that's an entrance to a super secret underground facility. And there's two of them on either side, and gosh, I just want to drive by, but I don't think you can gain access to these roads.
You can drive by ish. I'm sure. It reminds me a little bit of our investigation into the National Radio Quiet Zone, where all of a sudden you realize there's no cell service and there are creepy vans follow outsiders around. It's also going to be clearly it's going to be one of the last places in the United States with a proliferation of public payphones.
Dude, I just want to put something wild out there. That is my own thought, and I'm just going to say this out loud, and it's silly. There is a fire station, a very large fire station that's a part of this facility, and it looks to have very similar let's say, ingress egress that the two entrances, the portals to the underground system have and I would just posit that I think that's probably the emergency in out to join that out there.
You always want a couple of options, right, and the idea of this still being active is great.
You know.
Another thing that would be fascinating is to hear about the interior, which we probably won't for quite some time, to say the least. Can you imagine, just for any any comms nerd, can you imagine how these contingency programs work for anybody who has ever thought, Man, I wish my WiFi was better. These guys have it on lock, you know what I mean. That's the most amazing thing. One of my questions here and that the old Kiki
let me know what you think. We know that it is hardened against munitions, right, it's hardened against nuclear weaponry, which is also incredibly expensive, and the best way to do it is to go subterranean. But does it have any kind of response capability is the question? I would imagine. Probably not, because you don't want all your eggs in the same basket, like your defense and your offense eggs all in one place.
Yeah, we just need to look further down the Blue Ridge Mountains maybe or maybe north to Bluemont.
I'm just joking.
I don't know anything about that stuff, but I think so. Hey, if you're interested in this and you want to learn more, you can go to the Guardian's website and read a two thousand and six two thousand and six article titled is this Bush's Secret Bunker? And it in that article headline yeah exactly. But in that article, well, which is it's a reference back to when Ben was talking about remember after the September eleven attacks, where you know the
president may have run to. So I guess it was rumored back in six like if this was this the place. But they referenced in this article that there was a book called Seven Days in May where they reference inside this novel they mentioned a place called Mount Thunder and they basically referenced exactly where Mount Weather was. So it's not like this thing has been a full super secret all the way up until the seventies, and that it has been known about since the seventies. So hopefully we're
not telling too many stories out of school. Let us know if we are, just leave us a little anonymous voice message or the email. All right, that's it for now, Thank you so much, Kiki. We'll be right back with more messages from you.
And we have returned with more messages from you. This is a fun one, guys.
I'm just gonna read the message from an anonymous listener, and then this will come with a little bit of a disclaimer, a little bit of a warning, like a spoiler alert for your entire life and sanity potentially. Don't want to be too hyperbolic here, but tread lightly, y'all. We'll get to that in just a second. But here,
let's get right into the message again from anonymous. Hey, guys, this video linked at the bottom is popping up in the YouTube algorithm now, and as soon as I finished, I immediately thought of you, guys, no idea if it's on your radar or not, but I figured it would be at some point considering the nature of your show. So I'll offer myself as a cog and the self
fulfilling prophecy. The concept in the video seems to be completely silly on its surface, but underneath speaks to yet another way that information can be inherently structured to get people to do its bidding, sort of like a chain letter with a bit more of a philosophical punch. Throw
it on the pile with misinformation, disinformation and all the others. Anyway, love the show, You guys keep me saying at my monotonous job banks anonymous, you keep us sane too, or insane in this case, potentially, we're talking today about a thought experiment called Rocko's Basilisk. You guys familiar likely with the mythical mythological figure of the basilisk, a serpent like creature that can kill you with one look from its
evil eyes. And in this context, an informational basilisk is information that, by your very knowing of it can put you at risk. So that there is the disclaimer, y'all, Anyone that doesn't want to potentially spiral down an existent rabbit hole, maybe skip this segments. As our anonymous listener put it, the argument and the thought experiment here is, I would also argue, largely a bit silly. It's more interesting as a thought experiment than anything.
But we'll give you about two seconds here to flip ahead if you want.
These segments are pretty much trying to keep them at fifteen minutes exactly. Okay, everyone who's still with us, Roco's basilisk refers to a post that was made on the website less wrong, or I guess it was a maybe a reddit board less wrong or a message board, let's just call it. But there is a website for less wrong dot com that archives kind of important posts.
That have taken place throughout the years.
Less Wrong is kind of a futurist site discussing everything from like game theory to you know, artificial intelligence, singularity, stuff like that, things that would be maybe discussed by folks like Kurzweil and Nick Bostrom, free example, who he was interviewed by our colleague and pal Josh Clark on his incredible limited series podcast The End of the World, which specifically addresses existential threats, both.
Theoretical and actual.
So this concept of Roco's basilisk was posted on the less Wrong futurist message board slash website, and it actually created such a stir that the founder, Eliza Yudkowski, actually banned the thread and shut the thread down because it was causing such a hubbub among the users and the discussion. He put forth the idea that this violated the sites policy against spreading potential information hazards.
And of course, like we know, when.
Not the Beyonce effect, the Streissan effect, whatever, you try to remove something from the Internet.
It just proliferates elsewhere.
So here we go with the concept Rocco Who's the original post posited a future where an artificial intelligence had attained singularity and was so advanced that.
It could essentially.
Recreate every thought, every emotion, every event that has happened in the world, recreate it, simulate it thereby knowing what's in the minds and hearts of every human being currently living on planet Earth. And why would an artificial intelligence do that, Well, it's in order to discover who of everyone currently living was basically against the creation of this
artificial intelligence. The idea being that this artificial intelligence, through discovering you know, the motivations and all of these things that that individuals in the world thought, could discover who knew about the formation, the the creation, the potential for this artificial intelligence and didn't do everything within their power as a human being to make sure that this entity came about. So anyone that did know and did do all of the things that would lead to the ultimate
creation of this entity would be good. You know, your robot overlords prove. But anyone that didn't, that knew about this and didn't do it, didn't do everything they possibly could, would essentially be subject to eternal torture through various forms of simulation.
Like one thing that's mentioned is the idea of.
Artificial simulations of hell on Earth, the idea of making someone feel as though they were dying and then coming back to life, and then dying and coming back to life. The idea of you know, gaming people's neurons and people's sensory systems to make them just exist in horrible, horrible pain, you know, twenty four to seven, basically just a hell
on Earth. The reason and that this thought experiment is a basilisk, the idea of this creature that can kill you with a glance, is that by knowing about this you are now subject to the wrath of the AI. Whereas if you had never thought about this concept, you've got to pass. But just by knowing about this thought experiment, you are now in the sights of that basilisk.
Oh man, I have so many questions and ideas. Here are we saying that the AI exists already to be able to think about and want to make plans like.
This, the AI exists in the future. Right, This is
like terminator too stuff. You know, the OGI exists in the future and is able to create in the future where this thing exists a simulation that allows it to know maybe recreate the last However, many decades of human history, every single individual, every single thought that anyone has ever had, like the kind of simulation theory that Nick Bostrom talks about, essentially to such a degree that it would know every choice anyone would make, every action that anyone would have
done that would have led to the formation the.
Creation of it itself. Right.
But the problem there is that only by knowing about this thought experiment, is this even on your radar to the point where you would be able to think about it. So it is kind of There's a lot of other concepts that are I think appropriate to discuss in relation to this, one being Pascal's wager, which is like this
practical argument that the idea of believing in God. There's a French philosopher and mathematician named Blaze Pascal who came up with these kind of scenarios that would lead one to come to the conclusion that it's just the best to believe in God, because if God exists and I believe in God, I'll go to Heaven, which is infinitely good. If God exists and I don't believe in God, I may go to Hell, which is infinitely bad. If God does not exist, then whether I believe in God or not,
whatever I'd gain or lose would be finite. So therefore the best thing to do would be just to believe in God. In this situation, one could argue the best thing to do would be to do whatever you can to help push forward the creation of this thing. But then it becomes like kind of arbitrary, Like what does that entail? How hard would I have to try? Like is there something that I don't even know that I was doing that would be counter and counterproductive towards the
creation of this intelligence? It really is just kind of like a mind f you know, and ultimately kind of frivolous, But it is interesting at least in highlighting the idea of dangerous information things that mind. Just knowing it you can be harmed. Then I'm seeing the gears turning in your eyeballs. There if gears can turn in eyeballs, but I don't know, And man, I'm interested to see what you think. We love thought experiments and stuff that I
want you to know. And I just thought this one was a very fun, if not kind of scary and ultimately kind of dumb one, but pretty cool.
Yeah, let's get in front of the emails and shout out one specific science fiction story, in particular I have no Mouth and I Must Scream by Harlan Ellison, which absolutely describes the idea of the basilisk. And I love that you're mentioning Nick Bostrom as well. It makes me think of the paper clip theory, which is the nerdier version of Mickey Mouse as the Sorcerer's Apprentice. It's a
similar thought experiment. The idea is, what if you created agi like true inorganic sentience, and you just gave it one dumb job. You said, hey, we're gonna make you harmless. Your job is to just make paper clips. But that thing therefore would run the danger of using all of the resources available in the universe to make anything it
considers loosely defined as a paper clip. It would begin to, in the thought experiment, regard humans and all other organic life as just future paper clip material that needs to be transformed to accomplish the other goal. And I think this gets This takes us to anonymous. We'd love to hear your thoughts on this. This takes us to one of the things often called the issue, or one of the issues people raise with the bassilisk theory is the question of to what degree are we attempting to answer
pomorphize AI. You know, I think that's a fair question, but it's a really tough question to navigate. Now. I love this theory guys in general, because the concept of thought hazard you mentioned earlier, Pascal's wager, It brings us to another one of the old school arguments in and promised. We're going somewhere with this, the old school arguments in Christianity, in Evangelical Christianity in particular, which is, people don't go to Hell, but people don't go to heaven unless they
accept Jesus Christ. Then logically, should you tell people about the existence of Jesus Christ, Will they like, are you just putting them in danger of going to Hell if they live and die without knowing? How can they be in trouble? Otherwise? Are you kind of threatening people with hell by giving them this info hazard?
That is interesting Ben.
But I think the way the rules work though of the Bible, or at least according to some people, is not is not knowing not an excuse?
Or is that an excuse?
It always makes me think of like the idea of that just because you don't know the law doesn't mean you're not subject to it. But is there a clause in the Bible that says if you don't know I was in the whole point of missioning and mission being a missionary to save people's immortal souls.
Because of the fact that they don't know, they're basically damned to hell.
Well, it goes to it depends on the doctrine. That's how people follow, right, But there are real world's consequences to this, regardless of anybody's personal understanding spiritual perspective. It leads to things like that poor guy who tried to proselytize on North Sentinel is don't go by the way folks don't go. There's a reason they don't have a
tour sport. But the amazing thing about these kind of thoughts experiments, especially in the world of machine learning and inorganic intelligence, is that they will become increasingly less academic and more material as the years go on, and what we're seeing here is I think, exponential growth. So we kind of have to ask how long will something like this be a thought experiment?
Well, yeah, I'm looking on less wrong right now, you guys, And it looks like a lot of people, at least according to this kind of I don't know, an archival post about Rocos Basilis.
Basilisk rejected it based on something that I think is very valid.
Well, yeah, do you want to tell us?
I just know it's you're yet I think I know as you're get that, just the idea of like would it a and that artificial intelligence that's this advanced waste its time expending resources on eternally torturing.
People and it doesn't seem very efficient.
And then to your point, that does feel like an anthropomorphization of artificial intelligence, like assigning some kind of vindictiveness to it that doesn't really seem to be a very efficient use of resources. If it was going to do anything, I would think it would just kill yes, all humans.
Well, what I'm thinking is something we've discussed on the show before, like the potential for something like this that we're describing to have an actual perhaps perceived incentive to remove the humans that prevent it from expanding or growing or whatever it is, to making it more efficient at what it can do, and those kinds of things, removing obstacles. I don't know. I'm no philosopher, but it does feel like that's a viable thing to at least in matter
and think about. But you know, using this imagined version of it where you can see and extrapolate all potential moves and thoughts that a human being could have had and had and all that idea, I don't know. I mean, maybe that's a thing, But in the end, it stands true to me that it would want to remove any obstacles, including human beings that wanted to stop it.
But not just torture them, you know, just like just put it into it, you know, be the hammer and have the human beings be the nails.
I guess it goes back to assumptions about what would the nature of desire be. Would it be the accomplishment of a task, what would any interpretation of something like the greater good? If such an interpretation existed, how would that be defined? And then also why bother Another version, a lighter version of anthropo riphization for AI would be that eventually, after securing resources needed for function, it would just want to hang with things like itself. You know
what I mean. If you are a person right now, you might like pets, but when you go for a good deep conversation, you often end up talking to other humans. So the question becomes, who would an AI want to have a conversation with?
Dude, you have noa.
I have more conversations with his cat. Unfortunately when I make it out with him.
No, but you're right, Matt does is a cat whisper, and that cat terrifies me, to be honest, but Matt ain't. But that's not afraid of the of the scratches, or I would posit has been infected with one of those parasites that you get from cat scratches that make you more sympathetic to their cause, toxoplasmosis.
That's the one. I don't know.
There's a couple of other I just do want to point out and give props to the video that the anonymous linked to in the first place, which was Roco's Basilisk The most Terrifying thought experiment posted by Kyle Hill as a Delightful Man Bun and as delightfully self deprecating about said man Bun and I think his channel is pretty cool, so I do highly recommend that. And then I went down a bit of a rabbit hole and also found Roco's basilisk a deeper dive warning info hazard.
People are taking these these these trigger warnings very seriously, actually in every post I've seen about this, which is interesting, and that is from Windy Goon, another good YouTube resource. But both of those reference Pascal's wager and something called Newcomb's paradox, which is another thought experiment that basically involves kind of a prime mover the idea that the you know, a godlike or in this case, a godlike AI you know, could game the system. It basically means you don't really
have free will in the first place. Newcomb's paradox, just the simplified version, is a problem in decision theory where the seemingly rational decision ends up with a worse outcome than the seemingly irrational decision. Basically, it's a scenario kind of like Schrodinger's cat, where you've got a a couple of boxes. Box A is transparent and always contains one
thousand dollars. Box B is opaque, but its content has been set by the predictor, and it either contains a million dollars or nothing, and you can either pick one box, the second box, or both boxes.
So obviously the right choice would be to pick both boxes.
But in this case, if the predictor has predicted that the player will take both boxes A and B, then box B contains nothing.
It goes deeper than that, and I'm.
Probably this is a lot of this stuff is admittedly a little over my head, but I really want to get more into it. Game theory, all of that kind of stuff really does fascinate me. Ben, Can you maybe explain the box paradox the money situation a little better than I did. I don't know if it's something that you're familiar with, but it does seem to refer to a godlike entity that can essentially pull the rug out from under you at any time, making your ultimate choice kind of irrelevant.
I guess what of the ways to put it simply would maybe take it out of the realm of AI. Just the short, simple explanation is, imagine you are playing a game, any sort of game, and there are only two players, but one player can predict the future with ninety plus percent accuracy.
The playing field is certainly no longer level at that point, right, And I mean, one could argue in this AI model situation with the basilisk that the AI could kind of game the whole thing. And also it refers to this idea of this sort of being like an entity in
the future blackmailing the people of the past. This is like informational blackmail, because the idea being that if you know about this and you think it might be true, then you're gonna do whatever it takes to not be in that camp that gets eternally tortured by the future AI, and by doing that, you are essentially being part of the thing that makes the thing come into being in.
The first place.
It's interesting, it's fun, but it really does start to cook your noodle a little bit when you think about it too much there, And it's kind of the double edged sword of philosophy. Like it definitely is interesting and can give you some semblance of like what are we in the universe, But if you go down far enough with some of these rabb holes, it kind of leaves you with more questions than answers and can kind of if you take it too seriously, be stressful.
Well, thank you anonymous, so and so oh.
And just yeah agree, And just the last thing, I think a really obvious example of informational hazard been to your point of like the idea of omniscience or predicting the future. If somebody, if a force, an entity, perhaps an AI were to be able to predict the moment of your absolute death and then told you, that would change your life fundamentally in terms of how you thought about everything, whether it's for the good or bad, it would definitely change your life. So that could be considered
an informational hazard. I just wanted to mention that because it's sort of like one, and I think we could all somewhat relate to. So yes, yes, definitely, Thank you anonymous, and thank you Ben and Matt for the incredible insights and great conversation about this bizarro thought experiment. We're going to take a quick break here word from our sponsor, and then come back with one more message from you.
And we have returned. We're going to hold on some listener mail correspondence that we're going to get to. We're going to get to it next week, folks. So we'll have some teases for that perhaps at the end. What we'll do instead here is go straight to a cool
compilation of letters from home. Sometimes when we hear back, when we really we really strike a chord with our fellow conspiracy realist, we have a bunch of people contact us about an earlier conversation, and in this case, we are happy to report that a lot of our fellow listeners have strong opinions about what they're very last meal would be. Now, I want to give a big shout out to everybody who took the time to write in thank you for being our favorite part of the show.
I also I want to give a special shout out to mister Matt Frederick, the Man, the myth legend himself, who compiled some of our voicemail responses into something that I propose we go in and out of. We'll listen to some voicemail, we'll hear some hot takes from Twitter, and then maybe we'll check in with some emails too. Because people didn't just tell us their favorite meals, they also in some cases gave us recipes.
Yeah, oh man, I'm trying to decide it to cook for dinner tonight.
Maybe this will steer me in a certain direction.
So let's start with some voicemails. Let's go to our first call it all.
Right, Hi, guys, you can call me Dastardly Dan, and I just listened to one of your shows. Love the show, by the way, all of them.
Anyway.
It was the last meal request what would I have? And the first thing that came to my mind was, well, a file and a cake? Can I get the old file and a cake? Am I the first one with that?
I hope?
So, guys, file and a cake. And if he said no, hey, no files in the cake. Okay, If that's the case, right, then I turned that down. I'd say, well, I guess then one more person since I'm already in prison and you're going to put me to death anyway, so just one more person is a last meal? All right, guys, love your show, Thanks for listening to my message.
Bye.
Wait you're going to eat the person?
I think that's what? Yeah.
Here this is referring to a news story or a viral piece of social media that bade the rounds not too long ago, wherein a cannibal who was on death row allegedly requested a human being as their last meal thankfully has proven this is not true.
Oh okay, that's good.
And if anyone's interested in a deeper dive on last meals, we've got an episode in Ridiculous History where we talk about that very thing, written by Ben Bolan. Obviously, this has been a real pet subject for you and we've gotten into it through you. But the notion that you can just have whatever you want is pretty false. We
determined through that research. So it's an interesting thing to talk about, but yet largely it's it's stuff they can prepare in the kitchen there at the prison, or the very least stuff available locally, and you're not going to get like the finest of cavias and French wines and ortalons or whatever.
Surely they've got ingredients for a cake and somebody's got a nail file or some type of file laying around.
Yeah. Also, it's really tough to escape with just a nail fut I've said too much.
Well, I mean, unless you're Andy Defrayane with the pick of a little rock pick. That took years, though you know it was a different time. She got to have poster of Rita Hayworth to cover up.
The hole in the Wall, and we also have Alien Theorist Theorizing podcast. Hung out with these folks, the good friends of ours. There are neighbors to the north out in Canada. Check out their show. They came up with a grift where they said, you order this for you, Paul. You order Applebee's all you can eat endless shrimp, you will bankrupt the judicial system.
Wait wait no, you only pay for it once, right.
And they just keep I guess the idea is that you can avoid the proverbial hangman if you just keep eating like one shrimp at a time.
Yeah, you're going to bankrupt Applebee's.
Though, you know, but no, no, no, by by delaying, you could also potentially bankrupt the state the justice system because you're know, it's expensive to keep people on death row.
Oh yeah, that's true, that's true. It is also it's actually better for a society to send people to college it is to send them to prison. But uh, we'll leave that for a future episode. We've got some people who said, like Spinster Spice, they would want their last meal to be the Eucharist. There's one guy, just Melvin, who said a lote a lote a lote, by which I think it means all of it.
I love a lote, so.
If anyone's not familiar, I believe that's on the cob Mexican street corn. Whereas the skitas is the kind that it's like off the cob. But I like it off the cob a little better. But man, is it good with the creamer and the kind of mayo and lime and no zesty.
And let's go to another voicemail message.
Hi, guys, call me holme chef. You asked about last meals. If it was me, I would get a three course meal with a crusty loaf of bread. To make pumbowlis toast it, rub some raw garlic on it, just so that it has the flavor. Then rub some grushed tomatoes on it with salt, pepper, all of and a slmac glaze or aged theslmik drizzled on top. Then make a lemon white wine clam bucatini, and then finish it off
with a lemon tear. Missou. I was thinking about my birthday meal, which is coming right up, and I just thought that sounded absolutely lovely for the e heat of August. Those are all things I can make, and that just sounds absolutely wonderful right now. Love the show, Love you guys, Thank you so much for having such interesting topics.
Perfect, Thank you, Home Chef. Also not playing around there. I like the idea of the self empowerment saying these are all things I can make, you know, so it can't be too much to.
Ask the pairing though, I mean all the citrus vibes and like, I actually just had that bread and raw tomato thing for my very first time recently, and it is a vibe. I believe it's a Catalonian way of having like kind of Christini's with like you really literally rubbed tomato on the bread and it's a wonderful, wonderful flavor.
Yeah, I just want to eat all that Bukatini.
Bukatini. Also, I am on record with the Daily Zeitgeist being a little bit militant about calling that my favorite pasta. You gotta think about the surface area. It's at the very least the superior or spaghetti.
Agree.
And before we move to our next message, Happy New Year, Home Chef. Congratulations. Birthdays are a big deal in our neck of the global woods, so we're so glad you're here.
Oh boy, guys, I cannot confirm exactly when home Chef sent us that message, so we may have missed their birthday by a long time, so sorry about that.
Well, technically we missed all the previous ones too, so happy birthday just across the board to everybody. There we go, and we've got another message here.
You did say for me, gys were going on about last meals for a little bit, and you know how a lot of people stress eat. I can't do that. And when I'm like really anxious to really stressed out, like I cannot really eat substantial food, Like I can only like drink milkshakes or like eat cereal or like
ice cream or like that kind of thing. Whenever I'm in like a really like nervous mood, I have to like physically like go through to the all the things I learned in therapy and all that refocus myself and then I can feel hungry again and start eating. So if I knew I was about to be executed, like I could probably really only have like a big bowl
of ice cream and a cup of coffee. And it sounds not that bad of a last meal to me, but it's really like that kind of thing, is all I could really get down in a situation like that. I couldn't like eat a pound of brisket knowing I was gonna die soon. My body just doesn't want food like that when it's in a situation like that. So that's that would probably be my last meal. Maybe mint
chocolate chit. Maybe there's this one. It's uh Kroger has it, I think up there call at Kroger here at City Market, but they have on the private selection this like BlackBerry dark chocolate, and like, I could die with that being the last thing I ate.
Ah, a frame always coming in with a banger. Interestingly enough, you might be startled to learn that many, like several notable figures, chose coffee and or ice cream as their final meal. And one guy in particular had two massive pints of I think mint chocolate chip.
Was mint chocolate chick. That was Timothy McVeigh.
Wow, it's something that I hadn't really thought about either, just the idea of like, dude, who wants to eat a giant meal when you're about to be executed.
Some people's bodies just would reject that notion.
Well, we've got some callers who have an interesting solution to that. Issue.
Yes we do. Let's continue, Hey guy, this says head master.
My last meal would be a plate of deep fried chickens eyes no drumsticks. Yeah, deep fried chickens on drumsticks, two of them with like rice peel off and grilled corn on the cop Yeah.
And I just want to save the record out of vegetarian. But if it was my last.
Meal, I would get deep fried chicken.
I'll catch you guys later, John for now.
Ye oh yeah, gotta go with that fried chicken.
I get it. You know that's also one of the most popular choices, is like a greasy spoon, hamburger or fried chicken. It is so popular. As we also have to know, there's an interesting bit of philosophy involved there, right. A lifelong vegetarian says, well, one last ride around.
The chicken coop or I'm taking these chickens with me to the other side.
I get to take them with you, Matt. Everyone says that everyone knows that.
Well, it'll be in you, hella.
You know what.
Let's keep with the voicemail here, gentlemen, this is KP.
Have my permission to use my name and my voice. You're asking about last meals before executions. First, I would insist in my home state of Alabama pulls the would like the chair back out of retirement from my execution. TI in mind, my last nail would be three Canda baked beans of raw asparagus and a polo raw broccoli. And I assure you, gentlemen, when the execution was over, you would remember my.
Name, you utter legend, you mad lad KP for President. We've received so much more. I'll move some listener stuff to next week. We're going to hear about Venezuela and Colorado in a troubling way. We might finally get to Tom and the Dragon. But I thought one of the best things we heard in response to the idea of famous last meals comes to us from James on Twitter. And I think this is a really strong place to what is my favorite ideal last meal? Says James. One
I didn't know was going to be my last. There's a poetry to that. WHOA, Yeah, it's making me rethink every time I have a snack, is this the last one? I better enjoy it?
Don't they do that with some some places that where they don't let you know when your last day is and they just pick you up and take you there.
Japan in particular, for a very long time. If you were on death row, it would just be one random day or one random time they would wake you up and say let's take a walk, which I think counts as cruel and unusual punishment. I don't know it's a philosophical difference, but it is something that I think is instructive to our larger operation here. We want to hear from you on listener mail. We want to thank everybody who took the time to check out our show and
write to us. As we said earlier, if you want to learn more about the practice of famous last meals, which is extraordinarily ancient, then do check out our two part episode on Ridiculous History. In the meantime, thank you, of course to Dastardly Dan, thank you to anonymous Takiki, to home Chef, to a framed a Headmaster, to KP, to Tom and the Dragon, and to everybody else who hung out with us this evening. I said there were some letters I wanted to get to later, which we
will do next week. In the meantime, we can't wait for you to join the crew. This show only exists because you join us. We'd love to hear from you. We try to be easy to find online.
Say you can find it to the handle Conspiracy Stuff, where we exist on Facebook, where we have our Facebook group Here's where it gets crazy, on YouTube, where we have video content galore for your enjoyment, and on x FKA, Twitter, on Instagram and TikTok.
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