Listener Mail: Dreams, Subs and Goddesses

that's where we're hanging out for this episode. Yeah, Carney has been working down here in the deep, in the shadowy depths, which is which is perfect because some of the listener mail that we're going to be reading here today does relate to our recent episode on the idea on on studies related to to sleep and even dreaming within the confines of a of a nuclear ballistic missile submarine. Now, as always, we've got to say that we don't have time to respond to or read on the podcast all

of the great listener mail we get. Just rest assured we we do try to read it all, uh, and so so thank you so much for sending it. But today you're going to get a selection of some of the stuff we've gotten since the last episode, the last listener mail episode, UH, concerning all kinds of things concerning quantum immortality, UH, submarines and the Alphabet and the Goddess and all kinds of good stuff. But maybe we should start with some of the responses to the Alphabet and

the Goddess episodes. Yeah, we heard from a number of people about about this one, you know, in part because it does have a lot of really thought provoking ideas in it. But then also there are some issues with with with some of the uh, the main pieces that

Slain uh was was utilizing in the work. Yeah, So if you'll recall, we we did a couple episodes on this book, The Alphabet and the Goddess by Leonard Slain, his book from the late nineties that made this sort of historical neuroscience argument that the rise of patriarchy and the klein or the relative decline of the power of goddesses and religious pantheons around the world was somehow correlated

with the rise of alphabetic writing. And he makes a lot of arguments based on hemispheric lateralization of the brain and UH and how that how that's correlated with gender roles,

and how that's correlated with alphabetic writing. And so we discussed in the original episode that we were that we were doing the topic because we thought it was kind of thought provoking and raised good questions, not because we were endorsing it as correct right, And I think it also within the context of the episode, we we discussed some of the areas where where I think his argument was a bit weak, such as when it comes to

a Chinese writing or the Hindu pantheon. Well, and just generally the idea that that I got the feeling we might be dealing with some historical cherry picking in his arguments, that he was, you know, sort of selectively emphasizing the characteristic of societies or parts of societies that helped his argument and and not necessarily always giving the most balanced reading of things. Now, those were the kinds of concerns

we raised in the original episode. I will say, actually, since then, I think I've I've become even more skeptical of his argument because I've I've started to wonder if not just his argument about the explanation for the rise of patriarchy is flawed, but I wonder if some of his underlying assumptions are flawed to like I think in the future, especially based on some some feedback we got after the episode that we should do an episode on the future questioning what the what the gender roles of

prehistoric societies actually were, Like, what is the evidence from anthropology and archaeology and everything um about how gender dynamics work in prehistoric societies. Yeah, yeah, I would love to examine that, particularly when you get in not only you know what we can tell about ancient humans, but also ancient Neanderthals. You know, what exactly was the dynamic and what is the what is the relation between that ancient dynamic and the place we are today. Yeah, so that's

an episode for the near future. But today we did want to review some of the most interesting listener mail that we got in response to the Alphabet and the Goddess episode. So Robert, you want to jump in with the first one? Sure? This one comes to us from Amelia. Amelia writes, I just started listening to the podcast a couple of months ago, and I've been loving it. I was especially excited when I saw the episode for The

Alphabet and the Goddess. The transition from matriarchal to patriarchal religions in the ancient world has always was always a topic that interest me. In college, I studied classical studies as a minor with a concentration on ancient Greece. I was interested to see if you would discuss Minoan and my Sinian culture in ancient Greece and a change in religious symbols as a part of the discussion. Since it wasn't part of the discussion, I thought I'd write in

and tell you a little of what I know. The Minoans were a seafaring civilization on crete in the Bronze Age, most famously known for its relation to King Minos and minote our myths. Yeah, man minotaur is one of my favorite monsters. I feel like one of the most underutilized monsters. They are there, They are tremendous, and I love it when somebody gets them right. The old Jim Hinson Storyteller

series did a pretty good job with the minotaur. Um of course, House of Leaves of the Horror novel well, we'll just say book Uh does a fabulous job with the minotaur, and Uh the Dungeons and Dragons treatment of menatars is actually pretty good. Oh they're not just like some brute that's gonna throw you around. Well, they are a brute, they'll throw you around, but they have a pretty high wisdom and they can't become lost in amaze. Oh I like that, but sorry, we should go on

with Amelia's email. So after mentioning, uh, the Minoans being related to King Minos and minotaur myths, yes, she continues quote. It is thought that the snake was used as a symbol of fertility or rebirth, similar to other cultures in the Middle East. So we think there was some quote unquote mother goddess aspect to Minoan religion and culture. As the Bronze Age progress that the Myscenians settled on the mainland,

they were a more patriarchal and militaristic people. They lived in citadels in the mountains and depicted soldiers in their art. Their culture can represent the invasion of the male sky god and established ancient Earth goddess religions. As Indo Europeans move south, eventually the Minoan culture collapsed in Myssinian culture

survived to influence the later Classical Greek periods. I think the most interesting thing to me about this transition is the change in symbology that makes it to present day. We can look over time and see the snake turn from this worship symbol of fertility and earth to this hated symbol of trickery and evil. We see in the Bible that the snake is the tempter and the devil in the garden of Eden Medusa, a generally evil character

in Greek myth, has hair of snakes. Could this be the patriarchal culture's way of displacing matriarchal religious symbols anti snake propaganda and religious stories. It's something to think about. The Manoan and Messenian periods are just a place in history to study that transition. Looking at the cultures writing systems, Manowan's used a yet to be deciphered writing system called linear A, while the Messenians use Linear B, which is

mostly h deciphered. Linear B used a combination of syllabic and ideographic characters. It is thought linear A is similar. I'm not sure if that muddies the waters of the argument you presented in the series of episodes, but I agree that the premise uses a lot of generalizations to try and make a point. I just thought i'd share this lesser known slice of history. The Manoans are a particularly interesting people, and I and I think they don't get enough attention, so I like to talk about them

when I can keep up the great work. Guys. Well, that's a great email, Thank you, Amelia. Um So, Yeah, I do think the Manoans are interesting and we should do more to study that. One of the things that comes up here is uh, something I guess we got out a minute ago, the question of actually how female

friendly these earlier, lesser understood cultures actually were. Now, one of the types of feedback we got from some classic scholars after the episode was like a mining the idea that there's this popular idea that there was this sort of universal, worldwide matriarchal, goddess based culture before there was before there was civilization and before there was written history,

and there's a lot of evidence that that's just not true. Now, the question might be, was the preliterate pre civilization society more female friendly or more matriarchal but maybe not actually matriarchal? Yeah, Like, I don't even think Schlaine made the argument at least, and that in the book we discussed that that culture was ever largely matriarchal right. Uh, it's just a question of was it more balanced at some point? Um? Yeah, so I think that is certainly an area of discussion.

You know. Another thing that came that the that came to mind and when I was reading that and keeps coming back now, is is that regardless of what the previous gods or goddesses were. Uh, there's always this seems like there's this, Uh, there's this movement to repackage them sometimes as lesser deities or is just outright demons. And you have to ask yourself, well, is this always you know, to what extent gender is playing a role into this transformation or is it a transformation that is in many

areas removed from gender concerns. Uh, you know the various pagan gods that were reduced to demons in the advent of Christianity, etcetera. Yeah, I mean, and you wonder about the idea of if there are gender correlations with the history of the understanding of snakes in uh in religion. Because Amelia brings up the Garden of Eden story and one of the funny things about the Garden of Eden story, do you know what never says the snake is Satan. Oh, yeah,

that's not in the story. It's just the snake. It's just the snake comes to eve the woman and tempts her with knowledge of good and evil. Yeah, I mean I do know that, of course, that when you look at the Bible Old and New Testament, that the devil is kind of this character where it's it's almost like somebody wrote a really confusing screenplay and someone said, God,

we have a number of these antagonists. Can we just combine these into one character, because it's confusing to have a snake and then there's this, uh, this satan character that's like a court official, and then there's this idea of a fallen angel and and and another devil. Just

let's make them all the same guy. I mean, it really does make you wonder, though, if the snake is in the Garden of Eden's story a sort of reflection of an earlier story tradition where the snake is something more like a Prometheus character, a character that brings knowledge to the humans, and that that character is transformed into a villain in later versions of the story. Now she

also mentioned Medusa here. I would love to do some sort of a deeper dive on Medusa in the future, because I'm one hand always one of my favorite monsters. But it wasn't until I was really an adult that I began to notice just this trend in art and and you know, particularly with statues. There's one statue in particular, I don't remember the sculpture's name, but you find it at at the met in New York City where our hero is holding the decapitated head of Medusa aloft uh.

And there are various paintings where where he's in the act of swaying or and there's like a really kind of icky, violent vibe to those images, you know, the murder of this uh, this this feminine monster, this monster is female. Well this this attack on this primordially ugly woman. Yeah, yeah, it it doesn't sit well with me. I like the scenes where Medusa is dishing out death a lot more well. As beautiful as mythology can be, it's also something we

should keep in mind. I mean, cultural values are encoded in myths, and a lot of cultures have had lots of strains of deep, powerful misogyny running through them, and that's there in a lot of the myths too. Now I do want to point out one more tippet from the alphabet. In the Goddess episode, i'm a I referenced a a particular paper by Laura Slatkin titled the the

the Rate. It was the rage or the Wrath of Thetis. Uh. She had totally has a book that came out years and years ago titled The Power of Thetis and selected Essays. If anyone is interested to read more of her writings. All right, well, what else do we have? Karney? All right, well, this next one is also about the alphabet and the goddess.

And this is from our listener hend And so she writes, Hi, Robert and Joe, I was listening to the second part of the Goddess versus Alphabet episode, and the Sparta Athens comparison struck me. Is either too good to be true or contrived. Now what we actually asked about that, We were like, I wonder to what extent sh Lane is cherry picking his argument here? And we asked for, you know, if you're a classic scholar out there, if you're or an ancient Greek historian, uh, you know, how does his

argument strike you? And basically his argument was that Spartan society placed far, far less emphasis on the written word, and at the same time was more friendly to women's rights and women's empowerment than Athenian society was. And Athenian society was highly litigious, highly literate, highly written word oriented. Yea, it was an interesting argument, but I think at the same time we were we were both a little cautious with it at the time. Uh So this is what

Hind is getting back to us with. So Hind says, first of all, uh, I don't think there's much validity to the left brain right brain argument, besides interesting oddities to do with split brain patients. Have you guys done an episode on that. I emailed one of my former professors, who is a professor of classics about this, and this is what he said, quote. I'm always a little wary about big left slash right brain arguments, since I doubt

the brain functions so simplistically. But what do I know As for Spartan illiteracy, I think that is not so established. It is true that women had a lot more power over some things in Sparta, but I don't think the larger argument stands up, since I don't think it as much to do with literacy. Most of the Spartan and Athenian institutions regarding women were set during a time when

both were mostly oral cultures. And then she provides a link to an article which I must say, I haven't had time to read yet, but I would like to look into. Uh So I appreciate that bit of feedback. That's an interesting point. So this could be a way that Slain might not only be cherry picking, but might be like acknowledging differences that are sort of irrelevant because the practices he's pointing to were established before the written

word was important in either culture. That's a good point. Now, to come back to the left brain right brain thing, I think that that's something that's something that's important to strike a good balance on because you can absolutely go overboard with the left brain right brain kind of thing. At the same time, I think hemispheric lateralization is an

important feature of the human brain. Now there, I think there are a lot of arguments, especially in the later twentieth century, that that overinterpreted the influence of of the left brain right brain division. But the left brain right brain division is a real thing, and it does have consequences. You just don't want to be overly general, overly simplistic

about the power of it and explaining behavior. Yeah, and I mean similar things go for a lot of the research that has gone into the inner workings of the brain, for instance, going from the idea that there is, say a pleasure center or a pain center of the brain, to a more nuanced understanding that well, it's not a

center so much as a network. Yeah, neuroscience is one of those things that's just not very friendly to amateur interpretation, and it's something neither of us are neuroscientists, so we have to do our best to just sort through the science and what people have written about it and try to make sense of it. But you know, neuroscience is one of those things where it's almost never as simple as that headline you read. It's true, I get to kick out of a juicy neuroscience clickbait headline almost as

as much as the black hole headlines. You always see something that's like, you know, brains God worship center activates when you view pizza or something. You know, you see those kind of studies and it's like that that can sort of conveys something that's kind of true, but it's not going to be really that simple. So anyway, hind, I think those are very good concerns to raise. All right, here's another one. This one comes to us from Matia,

and this one concerns are I believe our our Phartonomicon episode. Hi, Robert and Joe, first time email writer, here, a long time listener. In your most recent mail bag episode, it would have been I guess the one before this you talked about Pathagoras and his comments on fava beans. I never thought beans, that's right, because that was basically his whole deal, as he hated beans and said he should

not eat them. It's not his whole deal, not his whole deal obviously, but it was it seemed to be of some importance to Yeah, um, he said, As she continues, I never thought about the connection between the Greek numa and flatulence. It makes a lot of sense and adds a lot to pathagoras maniacal sect. Now, just to refresh, sorry, the idea of the connection between the numa and flatulence

is that numa usually means breath. It's also funny enough the word for like spirit or ghosts, So you have like the Holy Spirit being a numa, and then you could breathe out a numa, but then also what would be another kind of numa? Well, but the factors is arguing here that you could essentially fart out your own soul. Yeah, okay, that that's the basic ideas I interpreted, She continues. However, there is a more widespread explanation for pythagoras take on

fava beans. A common mutation among Mediterranean people is G six p D deficiency, which causes severe anemia upon exposure to certain compounds, including antimalarial drugs, the antibiotic bactrum, and guess what, fava beans. The condition is commonly known as father is um because of this effect. Ever, the flamboyant to explainer path Agoras observed this condition and prohibited his followers from eating these beans, which were said to contain the soul of the dead. Keep up the great work.

There is no podcast like yours. The Soul of the Dead in beans. Yeah, I didn't, I didn't make it to that part. So well, thank you. My son is distrustful of beans, that really. Yeah, and uh, and maybe that's why he knows deep down that they may contain the souls of the dead. Have they wronged him? No? He just they betrayed him. He just sometimes it's hard to get him excited about beans. I don't know why.

I fort for a kid who has has sworn off most meats, it would benefit him tremendously to be just all in on beans. But it's been an uphill battle. You know. You say he's into shellfish though, right, Oh, yes, she shellfish and beans don't really go together. It's true, maybe that said he deep down he knows that his favorite his favorite foods don't really work that well with that. But you know, on the other hand, I have had some wonderful like shrimp dishes that I think incorporate some

forms of beans. Oh yeah, I guess guess now that I think about it. I mean not kidney beans obviously, but not fava beans. We all know that fava beans go best with human liver in kianti. But but but, you know, hilarity aside. This is an interesting argument, the idea that there could be something else at play here besides just mere superstition and far diversion. Right. Hey, speaking of goddesses, we've got an email from Athena at least that's her name is from Athena on on piss Myers.

You remember crazy ants and when we we discovered the meaning of piss Myers. Uh so, yeah, Athena writes, Hi, I've been listening to your show for a little while and I enjoy it. I was listening to your show on crazy ants, and it's a topic very familiar having grown up in Texas. When you mentioned piss myers, I had to write in. My mother used that term to describe a specific ant that was around our home in South Texas, Victoria. They indeed smelled like their name suggests.

A single aunt didn't smell, but the aunt hill sure did. On a side note, if I my siblings were misbehaving, she would call us pissmire's. Well that's well, that's great. We have to hear a little, little, little little field wisdom on the pissmer's here. Now, I wonder if the ant doesn't smell like the name suggests, but the ant

mound does. Why is that? Is it just because a single ant doesn't put off enough for us to detect, and you've got to have a lot of them in a close proximity, or is it because I don't know, if something else, something else in the mound. Do they secrete stuff? In the mound. Yeah, I guess it without

actually looking into it. My my, my, my guests would be the former that it's just the fact that you have so many ants in one area at a time that it's going to you know, create a strong or a roma because these are not like leaf cutter ants or not cultivating anything in there. So anyway, I admire the harshness of your mother, by the way, I think it's good. I mean, normally you just call your kid, you say you're being a brad or you're being a

baby or something. But now you're saying like you're being you social insect that produces urine like smells, Well that that's kind of like children, except that you show you social part. They do produce produce the smell of urine sometimes and that can't be helped. Maybe we should take a break. Are you ready? Let's do it? All right, we'll be right back. Thank you. All right, we're back. We're still on the bottom of the ocean. We're still trapped in the submarine with Carney, and he is dishing

out some listener mail for us to read. So are you ready for this epic email we got from jess Er. Let's have it. Yeah, Now, Jesser is a pseudonym, and I don't know their pronouns, so I'm just gonna go with they. Uh So, Jesser writes in to say, hey, guys, since you were talking about sci fi stories with a focus on Venus, I thought you might like to know

about the book Radiance by Catherine M. Valente. It's an Art Deco styled sci fi novel set in a world where early twentieth century depictions of space travel we're true, and you really can shoot yourself in a bullet to the moon. It's also about the history of movie making in a way, and one of the main conflicts is a documentary that went awry on the surface of Venus. It's a really interesting book because it takes a nonlinear

epistolary approach to telling its story. You know, in a way, you could look at the Soviet veneera Landers as a documentary that went awry on the surface of business, but also dys or continues. I also recently listened to the episodes on the Bicameral Mind and it brought to mind one particularly old text I studied in school, called The

Instruction of Annie. It comes from about fourteen hundred to twelve hundred BC, sometime during the eighteenth dynasty of Egypt, and it's a moral code written in the form of advice from father to son. It came to mind particularly because it's both quite old and because it has a number of things you wouldn't expect to hear from a bicamerally minded people. Instructions against lying and being sneaky, for instance.

It even ends with what's basically a debate between the son and the father about why the instructions should be fall load, though Julian James would probably just say maybe Egyptians lost by cameralism early. Uh maybe, or I don't know. I I could look at that and say, okay, I already don't agree that the bi cameral mind is correct, despite how interesting it is, but that could be a good piece of evidence against it. Yeah, I agree it. Yeah, it kind of depends where you how you want to

cherry pick it. Really, Um, I do like the the idea that that Ye James might have have argued that, well, this is the case of of by of the modern mind uh emerging early on uh in one of our most ancient civilizations. But but who knows. Yeah, In his defense, I think he would say that, you know, the process was gradual, and it happened in different places and not

not all exactly at the same time. But then again, you could look at that as a weakness of the hypothesis, because if if, if a hypothesis is too accommodating, you know, if you're shaping it to accommodate too many different kind of evidence, that's often a sign that you're, you know, you're you're you're trying to cover your butt really right, And yeah, you get into this area where okay, am

I talking about an actual hypothesis at this point? Where am I talking about something that is ultimately more philosophic or even religious in form uh? And I think their their value in those things as well. I've said before, I feel like my fascination with bi cameral mind at times fulfills the needs of religion for me personally, you know.

And it's like almost like a novel you love or something. Yeah, yeah, it uh, it fills in some of the sort of I guess, uh, teleological holes and my understanding of humans. But anyway, the idea of like a father and son having this conversation, I do like the idea of a father saying, look, son, all these other people are not exactly like us. You're gonna be tempted to lie to these pe zombies because they're gonna believe you. But we we just can't live like that having that sort of

a conversation. Man, I'm imagining what it is like to be a modern human among bicameral humans. Um. That's one of the issues that Terence Hawkins got into in his book or The Rage of Achilles. Oh yeah, yeah, I still mean to read that, by the way. Yeah, it's quite good. I'll probably go into depth more about that in our upcoming UM Summer Reading episode. Alright, so we

should go on with Jesser's email. So Jesser says regarding the recent episode on the relationship between gender roles and language, and that would be on the alphabet versus the Goddess episode. I actually took a class on gender roles in the ancient world in college, the theory of the origin of gender roles. I learned there had to do with the division of labor and hunter gatherer society. So that's somewhat along the same lines as Shlane's ideas in hunter gatherer societies.

In the modern era, it seems like the profitability of hunting versus gathering roughly determines the relative balance of male versus female power. If there's little vegetation to be found, hunting is more important and men have more power vice versa. If there's little game, and in places where both are abundant,

roles are roughly equal. Assuming that the same held true in ancient hunter gatherer societies, you can construct a rough conceptual history where women would have been the first to develop agriculture since they spent more time with plants, while men would have been the first to developed animal husbandry since they spent more time with animals. The fact that you can use animals to massively simplify agriculture could suggest that that's where the shift to male dominated societies came from.

The men who can harness the most animal power to produce the most surplus crops would be able to leverage that to gain political power. Of course, this is only one theory in anyone theory may not be broadly applicable, considering in how many places the patriarchal sedentary societies emerged, but it's interesting to consider the ramifications of an early sex based division of labor. Yeah, I think that's an interesting possibility, maybe worth more of a look and to

see what the evidence is. Yeah, of course. It makes me think a lot about the domestication of animals, and you know, sort of an animal by animal breakdown about how it occurred. You know, like, for instance, the dog and cat model that I've seen preson it sometimes where they essentially wander up to the campfire or the habitat. In these cases, it seems like it would be the non hunters who would be sort of on point for

domestication of where, of course it would be. It would probably be different if it was you know, if you're talking about some sort of an ancient cow or a rock, well, yeah, if you're talking about animals that aid in agricultural production, you'd be talking about like large draft animals well, or pigs. Yeah, yeah, I think that's worth looking into. Yeah, or Stegosaurus is of course, yeah, Cambodian model. U that's I'm not serious that by the way, but these we we're advocating flint stones,

is I'm care from now on? Yes, think to the flint stones. They had so many different domestic roles for the animals. How did that happen. We need a strong hypothesis for that as well. Okay, Jesser has some more interesting stuff. So Jesser says, also since I'm an Egyptologist, first mentioned of this, by the way, but Yesser is an Egyptologist. Apparently, I've had a couple of facts come to mind as I've listened to various episodes that might

be interesting. First of all, in comparison to other religions, ancient Egyptian religion has an interesting inversion from the standard notion of Sky Father and Earth Mother as primordial gods. You know, we mentioned a lot of religions have that, and Yesser gives some examples e g. Gaya and Ranos and Greek myth Rangonui and Papa tuan Nuku in Maori myth. Uh. But anyway, continues saying that Egyptian religion had a sky mother newt she even births the sun god every morning

in an Earth father geb. Okay, next point, yes, or makes Egyptian religion has a couple of creation myths. As far as scholars can tell, this was not really a problem to ancient Egyptian priests. They have some similarities. Often involving some sort of primordial mound and some act of self creation to start the cosmos. But they involve wildly different sets of gods and varied between regions. Yet there never seems to be any effort to unify or standardize

the mythology. I think that's kind of interesting, like a lack of the cannon impulse. Yeah, they're the cinematic universe impulse, right, Uh. Next point, part of the purpose behind the creation of mummies was basically to turn the body into a statue.

The opening of the mouth. Rituals used to turn the mummy into a ritually charged object that the deceased person's spirit could inhabit are similar to the rituals used for cult statues for temples of the gods, which were similarly meant to enable the gods to inhabit the statue and to consume offerings. Egyptians had some interesting views on gender relations. For example, they thought that in terms of reproduction, women were basically empty vessels and that men provided all the

important elements. This is not a unique view of right, yeah, I mean it ends up being reflected in the spermest that we discussed and fairly recent episode It's kind of not surprising that throughout history a lot of men have decided that, oh, it's men who are actually the the the only important part. But Yesser continues, while that sounds rough on women, it meant women were never really blamed for not being able to bear children. It was entirely

the man's fault. It's interesting they were also pretty relaxed about marriage. To premarital sex seems not to have been a big deal, and marriage itself was more of a legal slash economic arrangement than a religious one. Women could even initiate a divorce if they wanted to. This is more recommendation. But the book The Woman Who Would Be King, which is a biography of hatchup Sets life by Professor Karakoon, has a really good scholarly exploration of Egyptian society that

sounds like a good read. Lastly, I thought the story of inegaldy Nana would be your sort of thing. Essentially, archaeologists were excavating a palace during the Neo Babylonian Empire when they came across a bunch of artifacts from different places in much earlier times, all collected in one part of the palace. It turns out they'd stumbled onto a museum of artifacts from earlier Mesopotamian civilizations, curated by the Neo Babylonian princess inegaldy Nana, complete with Cunea form seals

for each artifact like modern museum labels. Also, her museum dates to about a hundred years before Herodotus quote invented the study of history. Goes to show you what good publicity can do, and then yes or apologizes for the length of all this. Uh says they wanted to keep adding one more interesting idea before sending off, Thank you so much for this email. This is great. Yeah, yeah, I I they They really managed to pack a lot in here, all right. This one comes to us from Nile.

Hi Nile from Santa Fe, New Mexico. Really enjoy the show's first time writing. When you were talking about life on a nuclear submarine, it reminded me of of when I worked for Xerox in Los Angeles. I asked my district manager, what was the weirdest service call you ever did? He said, he installed a Xerox ten ninety copier on a nuclear submarine. Why do you need to make copies on a submarine. I think, well, we'll get to that.

So he had to take it apart and cut the frame with a torch to get it through the doors, weld it back together and get it functioning. If you look it up, you will see that it is a very large copier. I asked him, why on earth would they want such a such a huge copier in a nuclear submarine. He said, are you kidding? You have to have a form too, in triplicate to take a dump in the navy. Uh. It makes me think that the modern day nuclear submarine is a lot roomy, or the

we might think. As for the focusing of the eyes and the confined environment. Once I was picking a friend up from prison, which tells you the kind of friends I have. He had been in a small, combined room for six months, and when he got in my car in New Mexico with vast landscapes, the first thing he talked about was the focusing of his eyes on the distant horizon. It really freaked him out and he had a hard time adjusting. Thanks for everything you do. Keep

up the good work. Wow, that that's kind of scary to hear there at the end. It makes me think prisoners should definitely be given windows, right, Yeah, yeah, definitely. I mean, also, we've we've discussed on the show before just how horrible solitary confinement is as a form of essentially a neurological torture. Uh. It does a lot of terrible things to the mind. Uh, And we didn't but I don't think we even really got into what it

might do to your your visual perception. But mainly, I just love the idea of a giant xerox machine cut apart art and then reassembled aboard a nuclear submarine just for bureaucratic purposes. I looked it up. It looks kind of like Sideways refrigerator with some little like droid embellishments. Yeah, it's a cross between the Sideways refrigerator and R two D two. It's we really need more xeroxes in our

especially our sci fi underwater environments. Like when I think back on The Abyss or Leviathan Deep Star six, what these films really lack was that was a proper xerox seeing. Yeah, they're they're making copies six pack from Leviathan, making copies That would have been perfect. Oh, he'd be the kind of guy who had xerox his own posterior. Oh yeah, I mean, yeah, there has to be an eleaded scene now that I think about it, you know, I must say Carney is very excited now that we're getting to

the email about submarines. He must be really enjoying his new job. Well yeah, and I mean he's a little lonely down here, so he could use a xerox machine to hang out with oh as a friend. Yeah, yeah, so it looks like he is excitedly giving us more submarine related email. Yes. In fact, this one, this next one comes to us from an old friend, frequent long like long time UH listener mail participant Jim, Jim and New Jersey Man. He writes some great emails. And this

is another good one. Jim rights, Robert and Joe. I've seen dost Boot twice and been on a German U boat twice too, but only in a museum. The U. S. Navy captured German U boat you five oh five during World War Two. It's a museum attraction at the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago. I wish I'd been to that last time we were in Chicago. I'd like

to go sometimes. Yeah, well, the next time. Yeah, anyway, Jim continues, I haven't seen the movie or been to the museum in years, but from what I recall, I visited the museum in two successive summers and saw the movie in between those two visits. So you watch it twice in a year. This is kind of obsessive behavior, Jim, what's going on. It's a great film, dost boot, It's it's It's not like seeing Deep Star six twice in the same year, Jim rights. My memory is that the

movie set and match the sub very well. The movie features several scenes at the captain's office, his bunk, and the officer's mess. Uh. These are all the same small part of the sub, which is not obvious from initial viewing in the movie, but more apparent once you see slash you know it. The space isn't much more than a nook along the sub's main passageway where there's a small bunk for the captain. There's a small table next to it. I can't remember if it's bolted down or

whether it flips down like a murphy bed. The captain is sitting on his bunk while in his quote office, several officers are sitting on the bunk during meals too. I wonder if that would mess with you psychologically, like if you had to conduct your official managerial duties in your office from your bed. Well, certainly, I guess it's if it's slightly transformed, it might be a little different. But yeah, meetings, meetings on beds are always weird. M Well, but we I say that we've had a few of

these when we're on on trips doing live show. God, You're right, it's all is weird. Yeah, you don't really have a we never have like a conference room to go to. I guess it's like a business area most hotels. But if we're like running through the presentation, yeah, it generally ends up like two or three of us setting on one of the beds that were in the room that we're staying in. Yeah. Yeah, it's like, Hey, Robert comes in on my bed, let's talk about h H. Holmes.

But anyway, next time you're in a tense meeting with your manager, just imagine they're sitting on their bed and I'm sure that'll undercut it. Anyway, getting back to this, the tour when I was on it consisted of walking through the three middle sections of the sub and you can look into the four and aft sections too. Holes had been cut into the hull so you don't need to go up and down ladders. We could look up

into the conning tower too. It didn't feel too cramped until we were told it was sixty men for ninety days with one toilet. Technically there were two toilets, but one was a food storage locker. When they first left port, there was one fairly small stove right across from the captain's nook. The cook had to produce a hundred and

eighty meals a day from it. I like how the second toilet is sort of like an achievement that they unlocked through just through eating a food, and like eventually they come to that point where it's like, congratulations, survived this long and you get another toilet. We have a second toilet. Oh, and I guess it was incentive structures maybe, but you know, the captain pulled weight on that. It was like, oh, then the new toilets available. Well, I'm

up because I've been waiting days for this. That's my office now. Is it weirder to to conduct meetings from a bed or from a toilet? From a toilet certainly. Yeah, Like even if you're not actually like using the toilet, if you're just setting up on it as if it were a chair, that it's got to be a little strange. Jim continues. The German Navy had a requirement that their boats had to go from surface to periscope level and

under a minute. This was to hide from patrols. They would often drill this, and they do in the movie one of my favorite scenes, as the dive alarm sounds, the off duty seamen run to the front of the boat, becoming human ballast to help the nose of the sub dive underwater faster. That that is, that is messed up. You shouldn't be using the Oh my god. No, I mean it drives home the extreme environment and you know

the limits of the technology. Yeah, I mean it makes me think of like those stunt car scenes in movies where somebody gets the car up on two wheels by like turning and leaning real hard. Yeah. Generally, we just want to be passengers in our vehicles and not some component in its functionality. Right. It's like imagine next time you're on an airplane and the captains like, all right, we need to get ready for landing, So everybody please move up to the front of the plane. Yeah, nobody

wants to hear that, all right? If one comes to us from William, William writes, thanks for the podcast makes my long bus commute more bearable. Two things related to the Sleep and Creativity podcast. First of all, you mentioned a future for hotels where they may be able to teach languages, etcetera while you're asleep. Maybe I'm just cynical, but I suspect the more likely use will be advertising. Think of the money they could make selling dream space

to advertisers. That's the thing in Futurama, isn't it It is. There's a scene where where Fry is first subjected to advertising in his dream and he's he's he's outraged over and he says, but you know, back in my day we only had advertisements like on the street, on TV and in the sky, but never in our dreams. But no, I mean, yeah, I think it's perfect, doesn't he Like? He has the he's at school in his underwear dream, but then it's like very stylish underwear and it's trying

to sell him on it. Yeah, yeah, Futurama touched on it. This listener Mail touches on it as well, that if we open up a new place in our experience of reality where advertising could potentially grow, then we will find a way to grow it there. He continues, I have four kids, and before they were born, I very rarely had bad dreams, but at least once for each of them, I've dreamt about something horrible and tragic happening to them.

I wonder if it stems from anxiety about their well being or a way of my mind trying to identify the best way to protect them. Creativity imparirenting. Perhaps could dreaming be a survival mechanism in which one's mind draws on extreme scenarios for things that could happen in everyday life and create ways to address them, Like did ancient people dream of creative ways to hunt or what to do if the mammoth suddenly turns on them? The person who dreamed of of a solution got away, while the

one who didn't was trampled. I mean, I think that's an extremely compelling way of explaining the emergence of the imagination. Why do we have an imagination? I mean, that's a kind of strange thing. Do you think lizards have an imagination. I mean maybe even it seems kind of unlikely. Uh

we it seems pretty clear to me. We have an imagination as a way of simulating scenarios without having to test them out, Like you can imagine what would happen based on what you know, and that allows you to simulate something stupid that you might be about to do and then realize it's stupid and you shouldn't do it. But that that applies to waking imagination. So how did dreams change that? Yeah, I believe that's that's still an open question, but it's certainly one. It is addressed in

some of these models that we've looked at. Yeah. Yeah. In the in the episode where we talked about the usefulness or the potential usefulness of dreams, one idea is that the dreams that dreams, by sort of suppressing the part of your brain that sensors thought, allow you to explore much wilder types of imaginative scenarios, things that you would never go to in your waking life, and that might be useful as a way of sort of like increasing the mutation rate of thought experiments, you know it,

doing stuff that your normal waking brain would never bother to try eye out right, Yeah, exactly. I guess it's kind of it ends up being becoming kind of complicated though, when you have when you seem to have some sort of simulation that is also just clothed in sort of ridiculous and garbled dream imagery. Yeah, and and unreality. Man,

that is a weird thing to think about dreams. I mean, if you're saying that the imagination is useful because it helps you simulate scenarios and and figure out what to do in the real world, why do we have dreams where we simulate scenarios that were saying the laws of physics don't apply, like you can fly and stuff like that. That that just seems like that might not be be actually useful if you're trying to simulate stuff that could happen in your life. Well, unless it's more about sort

of very basic synaptic connections, you know. It's it's it's it's like the idea of here, here's a game you're going to play, but the game is preparing you for some sort of combat scenario, you know, um where you know the basic skills involved or per have some so in neural connections involved. U match up to the real life experience as well as the fantastic experience that you're actually engaging in your mind during dreams. Yeah, I think

you're somewhat right. I mean, I wouldn't be say I'm fully convinced by the model, but there's something to be said for the fact that dreams spur you to go to places with your brain that you wouldn't normally go to, and as such, they might often produce imaginative scenarios that are not very useful to you, but occasionally produced some very valuable breakthrough. You know, they might be like higher risk,

higher reward types of imagination use. You know, I have to admit that I don't think I've ever had a dream that I remember um or a nightmare rather in which something bad has happened to my son. The only thing that comes to mind is I did have a dream once where I went to wake him up and like the next morning and he was a teenager. Like it's like he, you know, grown up overnight, which is

this is something bad that happened to your son. That counts well, but it also seems it's like a very simplistic dream extension of the idea of like, oh, I don't want to miss you know, my child growing up, or or oh, my child is not going to be you know this young forever, that sort of thing. It's almost like the dream is an internal poem that uses metaphors and imagery to to inspire you to behave in

certain ways. Yeah, that's often a very like stupid, poorly, poorly constructed poem, but it's more Yeah, but you feel them. I mean, this is again I'm talking about the general nature of dreams here that I think everyone can relate to. Uh,

In for instance, the nightmare. How many times have you had a nightmare that was just absolutely just terrifying and you just woke up and you know, maybe woke up screaming, or woke up on the verge of tears, or just racked with anxiety, And then when you try to explain it to you know, your significant other or or someone else in the waking day, you just then realize how ridiculous it is. Just how you know that all the fear that you experienced in the dream is completely absent

when you just reduce it to a description of events. Well, you're much more emotionally vulnerable in dreams, aren't you. Yeah, And you're free from like the logical constraints, like Roger Rabbit isn't scary and there's no reason he would be chasing me with a mallet. But within the confines of the nightmare, that doesn't matter. All that is, all that is real is the the emotion in the experience. Also, I say that, but Roger Rapp is kind of terrifying

when you really think about it. Yeah, a little bit. Yeah, all right. This next one comes to us from Jessica. Jessica says, Hello, I just finished an older episode about laughing during horror movies, and I thought it was incredibly interesting, especially the science and research about laughing and smiling. There was one phenomenon I found myself pondering over and wanted to know more about. Why do people I'm generalized, but often men like to tell other people women to smile more.

This is something that comes up in culture a lot. I've read a lot about this. Um Jessica writes. I'm a woman and I can't tell you how many times throughout my schooling, both high school and college, and even in the professional workplace, I get told I need to smile more by male colleagues, or I'm told by female coworkers that I have the dreaded quote resting bitch face.

I'm not trying to put myself on a pedestal here, but I don't think I've ever asked anyone to smile more, not not out not out of any sense of nobility or anything, but just because I really don't want to see anyone's teeth. I just tell people to wipe that grin off their face. I I just think I don't want to look at anyone's like mouth bones. You know, it's no matter how gorgeous or ghastly. Uh you know what you have there. Uh, you know may happen to be.

I I just I'm find not seeing them. Never forget your teeth or outside bones. Yeah, yeah, I just I don't necessarily need to see more of them. However much, whatever dental display you're presenting currently is the appropriate dental display, and I'm not going to ask you to give me more of it. I'm sorry, I'll try to smile less. No, no, no,

you're you're doing the right amount. But it's it's one of those things where it's I'm not gonna look at someone and say, like, how well you know, I like Joe but I wish I could see more of the inside of his mouth. I wish I could see more of his teeth. You know, it's I don't know, Maybe I just I'm not I don't worship the smile in the same way that that is certainly American culture wants us to worship the smile to sort of Tom Cruise

Hollywood smile. You know that's the color of bleached bone. Yeah, it just looks like my soul is hungry. Uh. Anyway, moving on, So is it an aura of unfriendliness that turns people off? Or is there another reason that people like those around them to be smiling all the time, especially if smiling is usually a sign of humor or uncomfortable nous. Because I can tell you when someone tells me to smile, if ever I do, it's not a

friendly one. I was wondering if you had come across any discussions of these situations and your research, the good point me in the right direction for some further reading. I think that's a good question that might be something

worth revisiting. I do wonder, and this is again this is without any research at this point, but I wonder if there are any arguments to be made for the human spile, smile, especially serving as some sort of reproductive signal of reproductive fitness to say, like, look at my smile. My my teeth are healthy. Therefore I am a healthy mate.

Though it probably on top of that you could make the argument that it takes on all these various socioeconomic um uh complications as well in modern culture, because the smile is is a way of saying, look, how uh abnormally white my teeth are. Look how abnormally straight my teeth are. Clearly I am someone of some means and refinement, right, I I've paid doctors to make me this way. My soul is hungry. But again that's just off the top

of my head. Yeah, and another thing I know, actually just saw a headline about this the other day is um the idea that smiling has different meanings in different cultures. Like there's this whole idea of the Russian smile. Right, does the Russian smile mean the same thing that the American smile does? Or do these expressions actually have different valences within the culture. Yeah, we'll have to we we

have to come back to this. I know we've we've recorded episodes in the past on the you know sort of the fake smile and how you can tell a fake smile from a real smile, that sort of thing. But but yeah, it's it's such a it's it's such an important aspect of the human experience. It would you could do with some revisiting. Yeah, But also Jessica allows us to be a voice of encouragement. Smile when you want to smile, don't smile when you don't want to smile. Yeah,

that's what everybody. Stretch your face unwillingly. Um. You know, my I may mentioned before my my wife is a photographer. Uh. And part of being a photographer, of course, is you know sometimes you're you're asking people to do different things with their face and their posture. Uh. My son observes all of this, and then when when when he has given a camera, he will do like the five or six year old version of it. So he'll point a camera at me and say all right, stand stand up

a little bit. And then they'll say, okay, let me see your teeth. Show me show me your teeth like it's a dentist getting out the drill. Yeah, And I'm like, no, no, this this is enough. I'm not showing you any more teeth. All right, I have one here. This is coming to us from David and this is one of a few different messages that came in via the discussion module, which is it's the Stuff to Blow your Mind discussion module.

It is our Facebook group where you can have conversations and discuss topics with other listeners of the show and then also sometimes with with with with Joe and me as well and anyway. David writes in and says in the Finite and Infinite Games episode, there was a discussion of what happens in sports, in particular football when they can't break a tie. I think that ended with us saying, now we know we're about to get a lot of listener mail where people explain the rules of football to us,

and it didn't happen. Well, this was the only one. He started this one by saying you knew this was coming. I think that was the title of response. He says, I am from Sydney, Australia and our football or rugby league has had some really long games. In the seventies, there were two Grand Finals final games to determine the champion that finished in a draw and the game was replayed, but The game I wanted you to know about was a second grade grand final played before the main first

grade game a few years ago. They change what happens in a draw. The teams played the whole eighty minutes and had a draw. The rules stated that they played five minutes extra time, then if no one scored, uh, they change ends and play on until someone scores. The game went to the full five minutes uh, and then they played another thirty minutes until finally a team scored.

That is one fifteen minutes in a game that has limited placements and some struggle to play the full eighty It went so long that it interfered with the pregame concert entertainment for the main game. In theory, that game could have gone on forever, but would always remain a finite game. Yes it would. I know most will not know the sport of rugby league, but it is a

physically demanding game with limited stoppages. It is played in Australia, New Zealand and Britain, with a new team in Canada and a test match soon to be played in Denver. That's probably about the sports eest listener mail you're ever gonna hear on here. No, we might we might receive some more. Okay, I know we have. We have sports

fans out there. Now, we're definitely gonna record at least one other listener Mail episode where the entire episode will just be people explaining the rules of football to us after they hear it didn't happen from this one. But we'll leave that for another day. All Right, We're gonna take one last break, and then when we come back, more listener mail. Thank thank thank, alright, we're back. All right. What have we got, Robert? Oh, let's see, Yeah, I

have some more here. Uh, here's another short message. This one comes to us via the discussion module as well. Uh. Terrence writes in and says, the recent episode on quantum immortality reminded me of a couple of Larry Nevins short stories from the late sixties early seventies, All the Myriad Ways and for a Foggy Night. The former concerns the psychological consequences of the proof of an infinitely branching multiverse not good, and the later the possibility of an inadvertent

crossing over between them. So what are the consequences? Have you read these? I have not read these? Wow, I haven't read them either, so I don't know what to say about it, but but appreciate the recommendation. Terrence. Yeah, there was some back and forth on the discussion module about this from uh, you know, among individuals who have read uh, these Larry Nevin short stories. But it does make me want to pick him up because he's a He's very much an author that I've been aware of forever.

I remember seeing his name when I would browse the science fiction section at the you know, the low bookstore as a kid. Uh, And for whatever reason, I just I never actually read any of his work. Okay, so let's say there were a way to prove the quantum multiverse, to prove that, say, the many worlds interpretation is the correct interpretation of quantum mechanics, and that that actually does lead to you know, every moment, all these infinitely branching

multiverses that you're splitting off into in uncountable ways. How do you think that would change how you feel about life? Would it change anything? Well? I guess it depends on what you know, Like how much do you know? Like do I just know that there is a parallel existence? Do I know what the what the differences are and

like the most uh, I guess the closest multiverse. I mean, one version you can think of it is it might encourage people to think that their choices are meaningless because every choice they make in other worlds, they've made the opposite choice. And so really what you are now is not the sum total of the choices you made from the available options. But you're just the version that made these particular choices, and other versions of you have made

different ones. But how is that different from a lot of what we suspect about the nature of our reality, you know, questions of to what extent we have free will? Tom, we're just we're essentially without choice anyway, And which is trapped on this this rail? Well, I mean people. So I think the scientific case for the basic view of determinism is pretty solid. There's no way you can coherently say like, yes, I'm freely making choices and I could

have done otherwise. There's no way you can prove that. But at the same time, we at least have the experience, the subjective experience of feeling like we are making free choices, So in a way, subjectively it kind of doesn't matter, right, Like you can't prove that you could have done otherwise in some past scenario, but it feels like you could,

and it almost seems like that's enough, right. Yeah, And I tend to suspect that if we were aware of of that have happenings in a in another universe that's closely aligned with what we're doing here, I think we'd still be able to hold on to that, that feeling of of freedom and free will, that we still live our lives with that in mind. Yeah, I think you're right, And whether we could have done otherwise or not, you're now the person you are, and the person you are

now is a result of choices you've made. So whether or not you could have done otherwise with the reality that we're faced with is that you're the version of you that made the choices you did. We don't know whether there are other versions of you that made different choices. Well, when I think about the multiverse approach, I tend to think, well, and in most of those realities, I probably don't even exist. Earth doesn't even exist. There's only a slim uh selection

in which I'm a thing at all. And you know, I'm probably doing pretty well, uh compared to most of them. There are probably a lot of worse realities out there for me. Another weird thing well, yeah, I mean another weird thing that brings up is though you are aware, say, if the Many World's interpretation is true and there are these branching multiverses every time there's decoherence, Um, what what does it mean to be you? Why are you this version of you? Why aren't you some other version of you?

And are those other versions of you actually you? Or are they something else there? You too? But they're not the same you. Yeah, they're what Many Worlds proponents called the edge. Well, it brings it. It's like the question, uh, if you're if you're asking like, is that really? If that's you? Then is that you as well? This you

and another multiverse? But then the same question whom we asked just along the timeline, Well, how about how about the you that went in to have their wisdom teeth removed? How about the U while you were under n st you? Was there a you at all during that span of time? And then now there's this you that you are embodying. Now that's a good question. Does the universe? Does the multiverse go on with or without you? I don't know. Okay, we got one more email on the Quantum Immortality episode.

We actually got a lot on this uh this episode. We don't have time to read them all, but here's one. This also came from Hind, who have gotten in touch with us about the alphabet and the goddess. But Hind writes quote listening to the Quantum Immortality episode right now. Just wanted to point out a slight error that Joe mentions.

Although the Copenhagen interpretation is the interpretation that's in the majority of physics text books, it is in fact not what the majority of physicists believe is the right interpretation. There is no majority, though the Copenhagen adherents are the largest faction or the largest fraction many worlds is not too far behind. Here's an article from Sean Carroll's blog about this. Also love the shout out to tag Marks

out Our Mathematical Universe, one of my favorite pop physics books. Um, So, I don't remember saying that the majority of physicists believe that the Copenhagen interpretation is correct. I thought what I had said is that the majority of physicists had believed that. But if I did say that's what they believe. Now I accept that correction. It seems to be the most popular interpretation among physicists, but it's not the majority. It's

a it's the most popular minority. But what I definitely meant is that you know, over over the period of history where there have been interpretations of quantum mechanics, Copenhagen interpretation is what gets the most attention and the difference.

Just as a quick refresher is. The Copenhagen interpretation says, you know, when you've got a quantum system in superposition, it's it's sitting there in superposition until interaction from the outside quote collapses the way of function, and then you've got a probability of that superposition going into one of its definite outcome states. So the pasic example is Shreddinger's cat.

So you've got the cat in the box, and you've got a quantum system in superposition, and something causes it to go one way or the other, and the ideas that the cat in the box is still alive and dead at the same time until you open the box and interact with it to see what's going on, and then it just assumes one of those two states many worlds. Interpretation would say both states are continuously correct, branching off

into different universes that don't interact with each other. Yes, but merely by putting the cat in the specially prepared box you created to like a branching path, the wave function never collapses into one outcome or the other. They're just both equally real going off into different directions that can't interact with each other anymore. But hind is correct that that the Copenhagen interpretation appears to have been losing

ground all right. Here's another short bit of feedback from the discussion module, and this comes from Peter, who a longtime listener stuff to bow your mind and also a a VR enthusiast. Uh So I'm always on the lookout for for Peter's feedback whenever we touch on VR, and he was responding to the Submarine Sleep episode. He says, I love the Submarine Sleep episode and great points about VR and subs. I'd also be surprised if they weren't

already experimenting with this. It will be better once the more mobile versions improve in quality, but I ideally you'd have at least three ms by three ms space for them to move around in ideally more but this would give them a fair amount of virtual freedom to feel like they were in a totally different world for a part of the day. I do wonder though, if there'd be a danger of feeling more claustrophobic if you had this sort of regular freedom. Yeah, that's a good question.

Do you adapt to the claustrophobic environment so that it cuts down on your fear? Over time you become desensitized to it, And like, if you get to look out windows or get to have a VR experience, going back to the sub is a more horror dorble thing. Yeah, yeah,

it's It's a great point. And also I like his point that that the virtual reality we we sometimes, especially those of us who are not actively engaging with with current VR tech, we we kind of get that sci fi vision in our head, which is somebody putting on a para magic goggles and then drooling for an hour.

But there is a certain amount of physical space you need in order to then simulate greater physical space, And that becomes a question to like, maybe maybe there's no room for that on the sub because you just install that Xerox machine. Yeah, yeah, here's the question what is the minimum space that you could have to put goggles on somebody and give them the illusion of absolute freedom

of movement? Does it? Does that make sense? Like? Uh? Like, so if you want people to be able to walk around in a VR world, you could manipulate their walking right through the through the sensory feedback so that instead of walking in a straight line forever, you eventually get them to kind of turn they think they're going straight. What's the minimum space to cause that to be convincing

as infinite movement space? I don't know. I mean it sounds like like Peters saying it's three ms by three meters. That seems incredibly small. Surely that wouldn't work. What don't know? I mean, I guess it also depends on like what version of the technology you're you're imagining here? Is it essentially somebody still like setting at a on a stool, or is there some sort of like a uh if we're walking on some sort of a treadmill. I mean,

I don't know. I think it depends on the rig too, and just like what what version of existing or future technology you're talking about? All right, this one comes to us from our listener Andy, Robert and Joe. You asked in your Quantum Immortality episode whether anyone had entered an altered mental state after extensively restoring save states in video games. So this was your concept of saves coming. So you create these backup versions of the world you live in.

Every time you mess up, you go back to the to the checkpoint and start over. Uh So, Andy writes, I'm ashamed to admit that I once spent a riveting six hours saves coming various Mega Man titles. The classic Mega Man is a great one. Uh. I then got into my car that I wonder where this is going. I missed my exit and had a moment of confusion as I reached out for a redo mechanism. Perhaps the oddest part of the experience was that I was seeking

a mechanism outside my perceptual reality. It felt similar to how the world expands when you step back from an intense round of video gaming, becoming aware of the room around yourself. While it was not a full blown out of body experience, it left me a bit disoriented. Needless to say, it didn't work and I had to turn around at the next exit. Thanks for the many excellent episodes.

I think stuff like this is really interesting. One thing Jared Lannier talks about is how one of the most interesting things about virtual reality is that it can change not only your perception of the environment around you, but change your perception of what your own body is. So like, you can put somebody in a virtual reality simulation where they have a tail, and they can do things to control their tail, and that very quickly people actually adapt to this and start to feel like, you know, the

the movement of the tail feels intuitive to them. They they've got a prehensile tail they can move around and use. And the ways you could apply this can get weirder and weirder, And it's fascinating that our brains are plastic in this way. They can adapt not only to changes in the environment, but to changes in the physical makeup

of the self. And I like the way this extends that principle not just to like having a different limb, but to having different sort of metaphysical capabilities, like restoring saves states in time. It's weird that he incorporated that as a thing his body could do. You know what I mean, Yeah, update essentially updated his body schema to represent this, Uh, this kind of virtual body. Yeah, and the thing that that doesn't even have a physical manifestation,

it would be like it. It would be like control over the metaphysical elements of the world itself through some kind of body action. And a classic example I think of this I brought up on the podcast before is when I've been in parts of my work where I've been using documents or Excel sheets a lot or something like that, there have been times when I in physical space tried to control lef you know, like I wanted

to find something. I wanted a search function, but you have you It takes you a second to realize, like that doesn't exist in reality, but I thought my body could do it onto physical space. Fascinating. Um, I don't have an I don't think I have anything directly to compare to that, though. On the the video game front, I do remember when you know, anyone's familiar with what is Katamari Dama, say, oh, were you trying to That's the game where you roll up the ball of things. Yeah,

I remember playing like when that first came out. It was we were all super into it and I was my wife and I were playing it, and then I went to drive to work, and I didn't actively try and drive my car over things and and roll them up into a ball. But there was like this weird feeling like I should be able to do that that

thankfully quickly vanished. But but yeah, it's interesting to think, especially as we get into into technologies that will enable us to take on new forms, certainly in the virtual realm, you know, to what extent does it become too weird to come back to our own bodies? Too shocking? Even?

I mean, this makes it. Yeah, it makes me wonder if, like, is there anything we couldn't train ourselves to internalize if things as weird and non physical, as say like a search function, or like saves coming or you know, restore states, those things are nowhere to be found in the physical world, but we can internalize them as something that I expect my body to be able to do. Where does it stop? What else could you get your body to expect that it can do? Yeah, this guy's limit. That's a homework

assignment for your listeners. What sort of like metaphysical capabilities do you think you could train people to expect to be able to carry out just by running them through some virtual reality or video games? Or something good or bad. Indeed, I like the idea of thinking about what are some of the beneficial ones. Could you one day have a situation where here's a video game, you play it, and it's some in some way like enhancing your abilities to

operate as a functional human in the real world. Yeah, I mean, I think about like self editing technology and technology that would give people more willpower. You know, we're we're very very impulse driven. We're very driven by habit, by impulse, by sort of momentary desires that are in conflict with our long term goals and desires. This is why the social media apps are so addictive and stuff like that. They leverage our impulses against our long term

goals for our time use and stuff like that. Could you could you get people through some kind of VR video game training to sort of um reprioritize, to like prioritize their long term goals up higher in the chain of action. I don't know. And then how would you how would you incorporate a first person shooter mechanism into this so that it would sell enough copies? Well, I don't know. I don't think it has to be a

first person shooting. I think it does it looks like what most of the games are, or it needs to be um, it needs to be a sports game, one of the two, or a Jedi game. You know. I I'm gonna I'm gonna make a very weird prediction. I think someday we will move beyond the first person shooter. People think that it's going to be what video games

are forever. I think someday in the future, the first person shooter will just be an obscure genre that was very popular in the past, give way to the first person stabber that would be the primary uh mode of interface there. Huh but no, I hope you're right. I hope you're right, But it seems it seems to be stuck with us for now. All Right, we have time for one last listener mail. This one comes to us

from Hope. Hi, Robert and Joe. I just recently listened to your episode on a Fantasia and thoroughly enjoyed it. While I was looking more into hyper Fantasia, it came to my mind that I have very vivid dreams. My husband has stunned sometimes at how well I can recall events, colors, and physical sensations. I've always thought it was strange how when he has a dream he can hardly seem to remember any of it, if any at all. I thought to myself, is that how differently our minds actually worked,

Like the difference between a fantasia and hyper fantasia. My question to you is, would you consider doing an episode on vivid dreams and their causes, differences and individuals, etcetera. I would love to hear what you could find out. Lastly, I want to thank you for making my work days go by so much quicker. I'm lucky enough to work at a place where i can listen to podcasts almost all day, and I'm slowly working my way through the episodes.

The best part is feeling like I've achieved something by learning about the different topics at the end of the day, you know, other than the confused looks my co workers start giving me when I start ranting about things like peeps, pe zombies and by cameralism. I wish you all the best, yours hopeful. Uh, well, we're glad we can subjectively shorten the impression of the length of your life. No, that's not how it works, is it. No, well, it's it's

it's an increase in quality. Even if it is, it seems to be a you know, relatistically, a decrease in quantity. I think we talked about this, uh. I think it might have been from the work of David Eagleman where we talked about in the Time and the Present moment episode where it's counterintuitive. But if I'm remembering correctly, I

hope I'm not getting this wrong. But basically, experiences that seem very long in the moment are actually compressed and shortened in memory, whereas experiences that go by very quickly in the moment are lengthened in memory, so that like you get a retrospective lengthening of the life by having things that that you know, by having interesting, exciting experiences that go by very fast even though it feels like

it's happening faster and while you're doing it now. On the topic of vivid dreams, certainly, I mean dreams are a topic that I feel like we'll never exhaust on stuff to blow your mind. Well, will inevitably come back to dreaming and sleep in the future, nightmares and what have you, So that that would be an interesting angle to to take you. Aside from some of these sort

of you know, hyper state. You know, we've discussed lucid dreaming before, but but on a you know, much simpler question, what is the difference between a vivid dreamer and say, more typical dreamer. Do you find that you have more

vivid dreams when you are in a more emotionally vulnerable state. See, it's hard to say, because I'll have vivid dreams that are so boring that I forget them before I wake up, you know, like and and then sometimes a dream isn't that it, But it had an amazing idea and there's some amazing bit detail to its substance, and that'll stick with me. Um. Yeah, it's uh. It kind of comes back to that basic bit of dream journaling wisdom to write it down immediately after it happens. And I almost

never do that. It all becomes kind of lost in the shuffle, which I remind myself, I think it's supposed to do that. So, man, this has been an epic Listener Mail episode. Yeah, we've we've we've covered We've covered us about everything. Yeah, let's see. We got some some good criticisms of alphabet and got us some interesting tangents

related to that. We got quantum immortality, we got uh, nuclear submarines got, We got all kinds of stuff, reading suggestions, episodes, suggestions, and we definitely want to remind everybody that, yeah, when when when you when you come across some topic that you would like for us to cover, uh some angle on a past episode that that that we glossed over and missed. Uh you know whatever, do right into us.

So again, we don't always have time to to respond to you individually or to even feature them all on listener mail, but we do read them all. Uh, so we are always open to feedback. Oh, it looks like Carney is getting an ELF signal from the surface saying that we need to surface there. There must be we gotta go to periscope depth. All right, well let's do it. In the meantime, head on over to Stuff to Blow

your Mind dot com. That's the mothership. That's where we will find all the episodes of the podcast, as well as links out to our various social media accounts. I'll remind everybody that the best way to to support the show, which we provide you free a charge, is to go to wherever you obtain the podcast and rate and review us. If at all possible. Huge thanks as always to our

wonderful audio producers Alex Williams and Tarry Harrison. If you would like to get in touch with us directly, they let us know feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest a topic for the future, maybe get some listener mail featured on a future listener Mail episode. You can always email us at blow the Mind at how stuff works dot com for more on this and thousands of other topics. Does it how stuff works dot com? The biffer Man