Listener Mail: Robots of Theseus

of armor from the movie ex Caliber. And then, uh, the one on the right and resembles a like a rusty death bucket, like a suit of armor from Monty Python and the Holy Grail. Yeah, that's pretty much what he looks like. Uh, how how did did did we get two carneys in these two different states. Well, it's because we did that massive upgrade on Carney. You know, we we started replacing some of his parts, um, upgrading apart here apart air, and then we just kept doing it.

And then on the other end, we when when we were done the used parts, we just started assembling those as well, until we had two complete carnis the carney in which we had replaced every last piece with a new, shiny piece, and then the carney that we built out of the old pieces. Now the question is which Carney

is going to deliver us this week's listener mail. I'm just gonna I'm just gonna close my eyes and put my hand out and um and I guess hope that I don't get pricked by the rusty one just because I'm not sure my tetnas shots up to date. Uh. Fun fact, Russ does not cause tetanus, does it not? Well, there you go. So it's okay that he has razor sharp rusty claws. It's a okay all right now. Unfortunately, no matter what, we never have time to read all

of the great listener mail we get. So if you have sent us a message and we haven't been able to respond and you don't hear it on the show today, please please don't be discouraged. It's not because we don't appreciate the mail we get. There's there's just a lot of great stuff out there and and no time to attend to it all. But we really do appreciate all the wonderful community case we get from you lovely people

out there. Yeah, because even though we have twice the Carney now, we only still have the two of us, So there's only so much we can do, and there's only so much time. That's right. Let's jump right in, Robert, all right, let's do it. I'm gonna put out my hand. It looks like Shiny Carney is bringing me something to read here. All right. This one comes to us from Alex.

Alex says, Hi, Robert and Joe, your podcast is wonderful, and although it was already very good to begin with, I feel you two are getting even better and better because we keep replacing parts. That's what's happened. Keep up the great work. We're big fans. I have a comment about the ship of theseus episode. I'm a particle physicist by training, so I was thinking about your discussion a

bit from that perspective. I don't claim to have any definite answers, but I think the theory of quantum mechanics adds more depth and weirdness to the problem of identity on top of what you've already discussed. In quantum mechanics, different particles of the same type are treated as truly indistinguishable.

Two particles can be separated in space, but in the theory they are described by one wave function, which simply features a high probability to find a particle in region A, as well as a high probability to find a particle in region B with no mention that it's particle Alice

here and that it's particle Bob there. My tentative takeaway is this, if a quantum teleportation machine were to transfer the quantum state of the atoms in my body sitting in place A onto a stream of photons, and then transfer that onto atoms in a place B a mile away, I don't see a real justification to treat the newly created atoms a mile away is anything thing other than truly the parts of my own body which have been

moved there. I still feel a bit queasy to hand over my fate to this machine, but rationally I'd love to hear a discussion of these quantum physics aspects of the ship of the Theseius sometime. Cheers Alex. Now, that is an interesting question because there's this obvious preference people have that like, oh, if I'm going to be teleported and it will still be me, I want the particles that originally made my body to be the same particles

that make up the copy of me. Now, that's if you're teleporting information about your body from one place to another. That's just probably not going to be the case, right, You're gonna have to build from different particles. And Alex is saying, why would that really make a difference. I

don't know if that really would make a difference. I would think that the problem would be the interruption of the continuous existence of you from during that moment of transition, basically what I said before, where you just need somebody to lie to you about that interruption. You know, you need somebody to just to to gloss over the more

problematic details of your teleportation system. So I think you said this before, you'd rather live in a world where people are teleporting they are just actually dying every time they do it. But nobody is it well. But but I guess the positive spin is you're not only dying, you're being reborn. I mean, this is kind of what, uh, what what Seth Brundel was talking about in Cronenberg's The Fly, The idea that it's it's like there's a purifying aspect

to the teleportation. I believe this was some of what he was talking about before things began going terribly wrong for him, mixing his DNA with that of a fly, but as being reborn worthwhile if you don't know you're being reborn, Say, for example, people say, you know, I'd love to be able to go back and start over my life again, to do it right this time. But if you were to go back and start over without the memory of your previous life, how would anything, Why

would that be any better? Why would that change anything? It seems like the value of being reborn is the knowledge of what came before and the knowledge that you have been reborn, or to just the idea that you've been reborn. I mean, somebody could just fool you into thinking teleportation is possible. You walk into a box, there's some lights, you walk out of the box. But if you feel will renewed right then it could have an

overall positive effect. Speaking of Cronenberg, I don't know if you've read about this as well, but supposedly, uh, David Cronenberg has has a screenplay that he wrote that is a sequel to The Fly that doesn't necessarily contain any monsters. It's more about something. I don't know that there are any more additional details out there, but it is more concerned with teleportation itself than it is with any kind

of monstrous side effects of the technology. Oh, I think you could write a great psychological horror movie it's purely about teleportation without any like DNA fusion or you know, becoming half fly or anything like that. Yeah, it's it's one of my hopes that either Cronenberg will get to direct that script, where somebody will one day direct that script. I'm very interested, um what he's exploring in that because

because we're also talking about later day Cronenberg. Cronenberg who hasn't really been dipping his toes into the the squeamish horror content of his his earlier filmography. So the more recent Cronenberg version, it's just got a bunch of like mafia guys who get into a teleporter together and they come out having an existential crisis. I'd probably be down

for that, you know. And I do love so many that, like the transcendent ideas that were at least briefly discussed in The Fly, like the idea towards the end that not only is he gonna cure himself by climbing into the telepod uh with Gina Davis's character, you know, but they will become one perfect being you know that there's this this fusion that will take place, that will create a higher human. Yeah, and that embodies some of the

questions I guess about the whole teleportation idea. Like to him, that's an idea of like addition or becoming better into her. That's obviously an idea of obliteration or destruction. Yeah, Okay. Also about the ship of Theseus, this comes to us from our listener, and and writes, Hi, Robert and Joe, I'm a longtime listener of your show, and I'm writing in to respond to your great episode on the ship

of Theseus. I've never heard of the mythic iteration of this concept, but I'm familiar with it from the Romantic poets of England. I wouldn't be surprised if they built off of it from some of the philosophers you mentioned, including Hobbes. In a September eight, nineteen letter to his brother and sister in law, John Keats, that's the romantic poet John Keats takes a personal and religious approach to the question. I've included the excerpt here. Quote from the

time you left me. Our friends say I have altered completely, am not the same person. Perhaps in this letter. I am for in a letter, one takes up one's existence from the time we last met. I dare say you have altered. Also every man does. Our bodies every seven years are completely fresh material seven years ago. It was not this hand that clinched itself against Hammond. We are like the relict garments of a saint. The same and not the same for the careful monks patchet and patchet

for St. Anthony's shirt. Oh that's nice. Yeah, I like that. That brings in. And I so if you believe, for example, that an item can be holy, that's another question about identity. Imagine you say you believe uh in like a piece of the True Cross or something, one of these medieval relics, and it's gradually losing splinters, but having splinters replaced by people who are working on it. Once the entire thing has been replaced, it does still have holy power. But

this is why you notice it. In some of the museums that you go to, There'll be a tiny vial of vampire blood uh inside the temperature control compartment with it, so they can see just how holy the artifact still is.

That would be a good test, and continues I love that the section gets into different layers of identity, both the one self reported and or time traveled to e g. Quote, taking up one's existence from the time we last met unquote, and also the one created by others, as in the monks reconstructing the relic ironically in trying to preserve the original. This also touches on the biological transformation that you mentioned in the podcast, the seven to ten year recreation of

the cells in the body. As for identity being defined by the static reality of an object or its constant evolution in a process, Shelly weighs in with a poem called mutability, which concludes on the following stanzas. So this is Percy Biss Shelly we rest a dream has power to poison sleep. We rise one wandering thought pollutes the day we feel, conceive or reason, laugh or weep, embrace fond woe, or cast our cares away. It is the same, for be it joy or sorrow, the path of its

departure still is free man's yesterday. May ne'er be like his morrow, not may endure. But mutability. To me that embodies very much the the idea of the Heraclitis type idea of pant ray. Everything flows, it's all flox, it's all change, but a continues. While he's maybe talking more about emotional states here than comprehensive identity, the final thought of the poem sides with the argument that existence is defined by transformation, which brings up the question of whether

or not change itself can be defined as a constant. Anyway, it's just some tie ins from yet another realm. I love your show and the curious exuberance with which it addresses these potentially terrifying existential questions. Thanks a lot, Thanks for a lot of great listening sincerely, Anne, Thank you so much. And I always love when people come at us with poetry. Yes, and I particularly like the specimens

that she presented us with. With there, I want to skip to another bit of listener mail here that came to us about the Ship of Theseus. And this came to us from Diana, Diana Rides, Hi, Robert and Joe. I've been listening for a while, sometimes by myself, sometimes with the kids. Recently, my seven year old daughter and I were listening to the Ship of Theseus episode and I thought i'd ask her the question if you had a toy and replaced all the parts that toy with

new different parts, would it be the same toy? Her unequivocal answer was yes. When I ask why it we would be the same and not different, her response was because it's the same toy. The new parts don't make it different. Yeah. So there you go. From the mouths

of babes love the show, Diana. I really like this, uh, this this email because it reminds me of the the whole scenario of the replacing a lost toy, which is something that uh and imagine a number of you have experienced as a child or perhaps you've you've played a

part in the scenario as a parent. But obviously, when you replace a toy, especially if it's a stuffed animal, the replacement can often look just like a completely different species compared to the like the worn out thing that you had to replace, you know, uh, like it becomes the essentially the rusty carney, Like the rusty carney is the one you love, and then when you're presented with this brand new, untarnished carney, you're like, that's not carney,

you know, that's not you know, uh, socks the bear socks. The bear has only one eye and his his fur isn't, you know, bright and fluffy, it's it's mad at and gray. Like, it's the wear and the tear that that that is that is part and partial to the identity of the thing. But it sounds like Diana's child is saying, maybe that it's not right that like, even if you do replace all of the body parts of Socks the bear with newer,

fresher body parts, it's the same bear. Yeah, So maybe this is just h This is just me like looking back on childhood experiences and you know, and and and looking at my my own child's experiences through the eyes of a parent. Yeah, maybe that ultimately doesn't matter to the kid. They're like, yeah, Socks is great. Now, look at him. He's he's doing great, He's he's wonderful. It looks like he's brand new, exactly what I wanted, you know.

With the kind of unreality of childhood, the kind of hallucinatory quality of the child's view of the world, I can almost imagine that I could have been a little kid and had some of my toys replaced with clearly newer versions of themselves, And I wonder if I would have noticed, or if I would have thought anything was unusual, or if I just would have thought, hey, it's you know, it's even better now, Well, sometimes the function would be improved, right,

like like I remember having two boba FETs. There was the original Boba fet that I played with so much that he couldn't stand up anymore like his his limited joints were just they would just swivel around, so he could only like lay down, that was it. Or you know, he could fly through the air, I guess. But it was only the newer boba Fete that could actually stand upright, which was more important. I think ultimately standing upright was

more important. The floppy boba fet was had limited usage. Okay, here's one from our listener and frequent contributor Jim writing also about the Ship of Theseus Jim rights, Robert and Joe. One can visit a real life ship of Theseus in Boston. The USS Constitution Old ironsides. She is the oldest commissioned

naval vessel still afloat. She makes it lea least one quote turnaround a trip in the Boston Harbor every year, where they take her out and dock her back again in the opposite side for even more wear and tear while docked. I was in Boston in the early nineteen nineties where she was under major renovations. She was barely a hull and timbers from what I remember. About a dozen years later, I visited again when she was fully restored and beautiful. I asked our guide on the tour

how much of the ship was original. He said about fifteen percent as original, mostly below the waterline. He then motioned towards the bow of the ship, toward the sick deck. I don't know what a sick deck is anyway, sick deck and said, quote, do you see those brass nuts and bolts in the bulkhead? They were made by Paul Revere. I was impressed. Um. He mentions that Malcolm Gladwell talked about the Ship of Theseus in an episode of the Revisionist History podcast. Yes, and I do remember. I do

remember listening to that one. Now I believe he was. I believe this was the the golf episode. Yeah, he explains it so, Jim Rights. This was an episode about golf courses on California. California property taxes are based upon the value of your property when you purchased it, not on current value. This was to prevent retired couples who owned their houses from being forced to move due to taxes when the value of their home skyrocketed. But what

about the Gulf country Club who owns them? They are owned by the members, much like the members of a credit union. But when does membership change so as to recalculate the tax? The tax regulators determined that an individual member leaving or joining was not enough to not enough of a change to trigger a new property value. Therefore, the golf courses are taxed that there are property values from decades ago, even if the entire membership from those

original days has completely turned over. Given this logic, the THESEUS Country Club never changes its ownership, especially for tax purposes, even if the entire membership turns over multiple times over the decades. And then he also has a ps with Star Trek transporter issues. I don't know, we could get into those maybe maybe not sure. I'm I'm I'm positive that um our our producer Alex would would would would prefer that we get into these teleportation issues from track

so Jim Rights. In the old show, some sort of cosmic dust causes Kirk to reassemble twice on the transporter. He was split into good and evil. It was their Jecklin Highe homage. In the Next Generation, Riker is found stranded as an outcast on a waste land of a planet. But hasn't he been on the Enterprise for years? He had been on the barren planet when with a previous ship before the Next Generation started. When beamed up from the previous assignment, his signal was split by something in

the atmosphere. One copy materialized on his ship, the other bounced back to the surface of the planet where he re materialized, but no one knew the stranded Ricker wasn't too pleased that no one had come looking for him. Oh man, what if that just happened? It turns out it just happens all the time, like one out of every five teleportations, and Star Trek ends up shooting a random copy of you either to the surface of the of the deserted planet or you know or you know,

into the walls. It is a galaxy full of like Kirks and the you know, the red Shirt away parties. Now, this next one, he mentions, is one of the episodes I remember the most uh from watching Star Trek The Next Generation as a kid, and yet I totally forgot about this whole uh you know, teleportation ship of theseus angle right gim rights. In the next generation the Dyson's Fear episode, we meet Mr Scott from the old show, but he hasn't aged from the movies, which took place

decades previously. How he had put himself into a form of stasis I don't remember exactly why, which placed him in an infinite disassemble slash as symbol cycle, basically freezing time until he was found. Yes, I forgot all about that because it's it's a pretty distracting aspect of that episode that there's a dycense here and if you you

were like me, you never encountered that concept before. It was pretty mind blowing enough so that it overshadowed the sort of glitching uh teleporter mishaps of of of Dr Scott here, Mr Scott, Mr Scott say, I was never a classic track guy. I'm not sure what his credentials are. I've been I've been lashed by our fans enough about not having sufficient treknowledge. General Scott, that's correct, that's correct, Admiral Dr Scott dds um one. Last note in Voyager

two characters information was mixed somehow. It wasn't a fifty fifty mix. It was more like a sixty forty mix. In both cases, the sixty personality wasn't too keen on sharing their bodies with the other. I only saw this episode once, and when it originally aired, I think the two characters were male and female. I have a memory that they cast two different actors to play each so as to make the fusion even more realistic. Oh nice, Yeah, I don't usually think a Star Trek is realistic, but

uh well, I'd explored a lot of territory. I will say this. Uh. I am definitely pro Star Trek, especially Next Generation and the Space nine. Uh And I'm not really a fan of golf, so I will say check out Star Trek by all means, but also check out that Malcolm Gladwell a revisionist history episode about golf. He he promises at the beginning that he says that he hates golf, and by end, by the end of the episode, he hopes that he thinks that you'll hate golf as well.

Uh And, and I think I did hate golf even more after listening to that episode. It's a great podcast. It just fills you with insightful rage. It's great for road trips. Okay, maybe we should look at a couple more Ship of THESEUS mails. All right, here's another one. This one comes to us from Marcos. I love your podcast. I have to say it's my favorite way of passing time on my commute. Conversation and conjecture turn a undane

daily trip into a timeless voyage. I was voyaging on your Ship of Theseus episode when it occurred to me that our constitution, by by this means the the U. S. Constitution has in a way become a document of THESEUS. The words like planks, have warped and rotted in a way, and have been replaced each generation by new interpretations of the same letters. It's as if each year a plank is removed, studied, whittled, and placed back, so that the same ship is now one of immense complexity and context.

Even a strict structuralist interpretation fills the same words with more subtlety and complexity than the original carpenters ever did. I'm also thinking that the physical U. S. S Constitution might embody an actual example of a true modernship of THESEUS. It's an interesting parallel. Thanks for adding insight to my otherwise absent drive another reference to the old Iron Sides.

But this is interesting about the document because I mean, obviously exactly this kind of question comes up in judicial philosophy, right. You know, judges are trying to interpret how should the constant who san applies to laws we write today? And it's a tricky task because the Constitution was written a long time ago and not anticipating all kinds of stuff

that's come up since then. Do you say that the Constitution embodies what the spirit of people expressing the same sentiments would probably be saying today, or should we just try to pretend somebody wrote these words yesterday and read them to mean exactly what they should literally mean in our usage, or uh, should it should we look to the letters of the people who wrote it and see, you know, what did they really mean when they wrote this.

That's complicated enough without getting into the various agendas that would influence one in in in various interpretations. Oh sure, of course, I guess that's taking the idea of judicial philosophy at face value, which you know, obviously there's some judicial philosophy that's probably just motivated reasoning for people's own personal politics, you know, speaking of of politicians, I mean something like the Senate is is kind of like a

ship of theseis as well. Right, oh yeah, we're always swapping out new parts for the old parts, and they are a lot of the parts are rather old. Um. But if we were to replace half the members of the U. S. Senate would say amphibians, it would still be the Senate, even though it would have far more Amphibians than it currently has. Mr Toad goes to Washington. There you go. Well, at this point, I feel like we should take a break and then come back and

tackle some more listener mail. Thank you, thank you. All right, we're back. Okay. This next one comes to us from our listener Ian. It concerns viruses high there. I only discovered your podcast a couple of months ago, and I don't know how I coped without it. I'm a my cross capist. I spend much of my day working in the dark alone and trying not to move much. But that does mean I get three or four hours a day to listen to podcasts, and I get to see

things that nobody else ever has. Have you ever thought about doing an episode on viruses. If we have school trips in at work, or it's just a quiet day, we go virus spotting in the pond outside the lab and the results are absolutely staggering. Hardly anyone realizes the

extent of viruses in the world. They outnumber us. In fact, they outnumber every living cell on the planet, and there are a major driving force of evolution, not just through selection pressure, but the vast scale of cross species gene swapping. They facilitate eight hundred million viruses land on every square meter of our planet's surface every day. They're around ten to the eight in every milli liter of seawater. More than that in our pond. They reckon to kill a

third of every cell in the ocean every day. If that's not mind blowing enough, we found giant viruses in the drip tray of a water cooler. This dude and and Ian attaches a picture is five nimes across and lives in our coffee room, and there is a suitably evil looking metal album cover here. It's kind of this, uh, this whirling void of a hexagon in a gray background. It it's kind of love craft Ian. It's inviting me

into the dark with it. It. That's kind of it has a kind of a black hole feeling to it, for sure. Yeah, I continues, if you're ever in the UK, drop us a line and we'll let you drive an electron microscope. Keep the episodes coming. My coffee strained brain depends on it. Ian, Well, thank you so much. Ian. We I don't know if we'll ever get to test drive an electron microscope with you, but it sounds fun. And actually we I think have talked about doing an

episode on on viruses. Uh we have both um the organism and uh, we've we've talked about the computer viruses as well. It's it's been a long time since I've looked at this, but I remember there being some interesting, um parallel questions one can ask about viruses and computer viruses and their their status as as as living entities. All right, here's another piece of listener mail that comes

to us. Uh. This this one has to do with our episode on teasing that that recently came out, where we talked about this curious phenomenon of of of of human interaction that is often difficult to to make sense of and they also difficult to figure out, like what is uh, what is playful teasing and what is harmful teasing? So this one comes to us from Rachel quote, I just finished listening to your excellent episode on teasing. That's not meant in an ironic way. I actually did think

it was an excellent episode. The line between teasing and bullying can be so blurry. I was teased and bullied a lot as a kid, so I identified a great deal with what you were saying. I wondered what your research revealed, if it touched on at all about the roast of certain prominent individuals, such as comedians or politicians, since this ritualized form of socially acceptable teasing can be quite mean spirited at times. I loved your mention also of teasing through the pet. We do this a lot

at our house. We have a cat, our dog recently passed, and she is often the butt of jokes that simultaneously earned her a lot of attention. My husband might be holding the cat in an awkward way that really displays how big she is, or exposes her belly and says something like, quote, getting a bit plump there, slippers. Her

name is George, and she's a tortoise shell. I might also and I might also respond with something like, if she keeps eating all her food and treats like a good girl, we might even be able to get a pair of gloves out of her too. We'll get her nice and tubby. Yet I'm also certain she is trying to kill me. I tell people, I'm certain she is a reincarnated mafia princess, and she's basically held onto the same business model. She is a homicidal sociopath with a

mafia style flare for vengeance. She's a great foil for when I stumble into something on my own, I can always blame it on her. Sometimes, if she was stretched out in one of her more hedonistic poses on some particularly posha perch, like a fresh laundered or folded comforter, one of us will express the concern that she may not be getting enough rest. Probably far too much about our cat. But I am home all day with her. She is the subject of much teasing. I look forward

to your next cast. Keep them coming, you keep me saying at work, this is very familiar kind of pet roasting. Yeah, um, what is it that's so fun about roasting a pet? You you don't dislike your pet, You like your pet. A lot, but it's really fun to make fun of them. Yeah, I don't know it. It really keeps their status in check, you know, like they no matter how how how pompous

or loud they may be. Now, as for the roasting culture, like the celebrity roast and all, I don't remember specifically running across anything, but but it might be out there. It is certainly interesting because it is this this area of comedy that gets uh, it gets gets very sharp at times and and can I feel like has a has a tendency to uh, to get a little out of control sometimes, you know what I'm saying. Um, But then again, it is a very ancient form of comedy.

I mean, you go back to the ancient Greeks and like, and make making fun of politicians was was a central aspect of some of our earliest examples of comedy. Yeah, I mean, I would say, if you're gonna use harsh, biting mockery, it's good that it's directed at people who are, you know, in high status positions of power. Now in some cases though, it is of course comedians roasting other comedians,

and that may be a special category. Uh, I mean that I would be interesting to hear fould be interesting to hear from a professional comedian stand up comedian out there on this topic, because I know there is probably a lot of of ribbing going on there on just a regular basis, and a lot of comedy is clearly about pushing boundaries, Like how mean can you be in in roasting is probably one of the boundaries people are going to experiment with, right though, certainly at this point,

if you agree to be the subject of a celebrity roast, I mean, you know what's in store for you, so you can't complain, I guess, But you gotta wonder, like why do people do it? I mean, do they think, well, I'm so great, everybody's gonna be nice to me at my roast. Well, it's in a way, it's kind of like we even that episode we talked about the test of the King. Right, if the king can set there and be a big good sport about it, even when it's vicious, Uh, then then then the king has kind

of passed the test. Also, I think if I remember correctly, and I do, I do not watch uh any of these celebrity roasts these days, but I remember correctly, the format usually involves the subject at the very end getting to throw out a few jabs at the participants as well, so they kind of get the last laugh, even though

they take most of the punishment. You know, now that we're talking about it, I can actually think that specifically, the stuff I've seen that seemed really over the line, mean to me, at at celebrity roast was not directed at the main roast Steve, was directed at other people in attendance. Yes, like other roasters and celebrity participants that were involved. Yes, that's often the stuff that that seems like just like way over the line, because it's like

they're not the sanction target. This is about this is about an keep the attention on Shatner. I'm tuning in to watch him be made the fool, the one that the ones that I've seen that have been really I felt not cool, or when they like go after the roast ease spouse or or partner or something you know that happens. Yeah, again, like they're not the target. Like I want to, I want to see the target just absolutely skewered, like you have. You have just almost free

range in terms of this individual. But I don't know about these other targets. I guess I don't make the roast rules, and neither do you. Okay. This one comes to us from our listener, Dean, and he introduces himself. He says he's an associate lecture in psychology and postdoctoral research fellow based in Ireland. And uh, Dean says, quote, my research focus is broadly psychology and education, but I do have that techy twist of how technology influences human behavior. Uh.

I teach numerous programs focusing on this. I love the podcast and actively encourage my students to listen to it. Oh, thank you, thank you, Dean. Dean writes, I finished listening to the on Teasing episode yesterday and couldn't agree more about how teasing quickly turns to bullying. My PhD supervisor is a powerhouse regarding this field, especially alterophobic bullying, and I didn't know what that was, so I looked it up. But that's like bullying people based on like subcultures or

alternative lifestyles. Uh. Perhaps a study could be done on a species of squirrels here. My own PhD was looking at interpersonal interactions between students and teachers and the role positive educational experiences can play in academic and social outcomes.

I'm often asked questions in class about quote wind is teasing end and bullying start, especially between students and also between staff, and I often reply by saying how it's next to impossible to fully know, not only because interactions between individuals are incredibly subjective, and it would also depend on multiple contextual factors and how the teased or t easier processes the situation. Anyway, like most episodes, this one got me thinking of technological applications and social cues in

the digital space. Well, you mentioned the yellow smiley faces and how emoticon slash emoji support comprehension. How do you feel the concept of disinhibition and the bystander effect would play out in a physical situation and then in a digital situation they might seem polar opposites in some cases, but then again maybe not. Thoughts from the Hive mind once again, love the show. I need to get my hands on some merch and flag it to my students. All the best Dean, Oh, yeah, that merch. It's a

great time for us to plug the merch store. If you got to stuff to blow your mind. Dot com at the top of the page, you'll see a tab for store. You can go there. You can get shirts with our our cool new logo logo on it. You can get what bags for your laptop. You can get two framed art. You can get pillows, stickers to put on your car, you name it. Listen to the soulis ad Man. No. I appreciate Roberts saying that, so I don't have to. Yeah, please merch up some cool stuff.

And it's a great way to support the show if you want to, you know, you want to throw a few bucks to the show. Okay, but back to Dean's message, so Dean asked. I assumed Dean here is talking about how we talked about in the episode, this idea of you've been there watching teasing turn to bullying, like you've seen it happen, and you didn't do anything because you didn't know, like should I intervene or would I be making it weird if I did? Is this actually okay?

And I misreading? Like you never really know. It's it's hard to know when to step in and sort of like become the social police, right because you don't want to feel like you're a kindergarten teacher when you're hanging out with your friends, Like, don't say that that's me. That's mean to Sam, Kyle, say you're sorry to Sam. Okay, now you too, hug All right, now we can go back to talking about molodies. And maybe maybe you're misreading.

Maybe Sam is not actually being bothered, and by stepping in, you were making everybody feel bad. I mean, there's this bystander effect going on. You don't know when it's your turn to act, when you should do something. And so Dean is asking about the disinhibition and the bystander effect and how that varies across physical space versus digital space.

What do you think about that, Robert, mm hmm, Well, I mean in digital space, it's it's kind of complicated because there's I mean, undoubtedly there's so much there's so much bad stuff going on out there at any given moment. Like I'm sure I could go on to say Reddit, and I don't mean to single Reddit out, but I'm I'm sure I could go on to Reddit right now and find somebody being, um, you know, somewhat bullying towards

another person. I mean, sometimes you don't have much to work with, right because you're just responding to somebody's comments. It's one stranger, uh responding to another stranger. Or you see similar things play out on on Facebook or Twitter, right, especially on Facebook where it's someone has their their their their privacy UM settings very open and it's maybe arguments between one like a friend's friends or a friends relatives

than you UM. And I mean you see it going on, and it just it doesn't necessarily feel like your place to step in, Like I don't know who these people are. I'm not the one to come in. This is clearly, clearly somebody knows these people because it's on their Facebook profile. They should be the ones to step in and start breaking it up. Right. Well, I would say some of the same inhibitions or at play in digital space like you're talking about. But I think I've observed, I mean,

maybe you'll disagree. I feel like I've observed people are more likely to step in and play social police in digital space than they are in physical space. I mean, have you not like I see people like like stepping in and and saying like, okay, it's time to intervene in in comment threads on Facebook way way more often than I see that happening in person. I never see anything. People are more likely to be a jerk quad uh digitally than they ask a person as well. Uh, yeah,

I guess you're guess you're right. I mean, I'm having trouble thinking the last time I saw somebody being a jerk in person and saw somebody intervene, or saw a situation where even I was wondering if someone should intervene. It's been a while, I haven't It's been a one since I've taken like public transit for instance. Yeah, well, yeah, I mean, I I feel like these situations used to happen more back when I was in school, and stuff happens less often as an adult. I just don't see

adults bullying each other that often. Well. The other aspect of it, too is that in physical space, I mean I do on the internet. Well well, well, I guess one of the aspects of both scenarios is that in a physical environment, there is always the possibility, even if it is even if it is distant, it's still possible that it could escalate into into a physical altercation, into physical violence. And in a digital scenario, I mean it, certainly,

digital arguments can still have real world consequences. Um they're not completely removed from it, but it is. It's not an immediate step, like like if if it's stranger Kyle and stranger Andrew or engage in an argument, uh, you know, one's gonna have to find out where the other one lives, or they're gonna have to agree to meet up in

a parking lot and fight. Like there are more steps where it's just two people arguing at a bar or on a street, uh, you know, on the sidewalk, Then they could conceivably come to blows without too much planning involved. So you think the threat of a punch in the face may actually be a positive influence on our social interactions.

There are some that would argue that, right, Yeah, well, I mean another another factor there, though, is that you just aren't that often getting into conversations that are covering any kind of potentially sensitive or controversial subject matter with people you don't know very well in physical space. That kind of thing happens all the time in digital space and almost never happens in physical space. When do you argue politics with a stranger in person, it just doesn't happen.

And then when it does, I mean, the cases that come to mind are going to be uh, certainly cases of say protest and that is it's a huge stretch to call the back and forth it's happening there a conversation. It's probably more one side shouting at the other. Right, But you see that kind of thing happening on the internet all the time. And then so of course there's there's plenty of incentive there to just like just show want and cruelty and to turn it straight over into

personal insults and bullying and all that. Well, some great food for thought here from Dean. We're gonna take one more break and we come back. Will crack open a few more listener mails before we close out this episode. Thank thank Alright, we're back, and I can see that our two robots here are very excited because the next few listener mails are going to listen to I have to do with our two thousand and one Space Odyssey episode. Okay,

this one comes from listener Eric. Eric writes, greeting stuff to blow your mind. Your recent episode two thousand one of Space Odyssey made me think you might find the following interesting. I was as far as my research yields, and I could be wrong. One of the last people to conduct a long form interview with Arthur C. Clark. He gave a few long form interviews in the last five years of his life due to post polio fatigue syndromes, scandal,

his pending knighthood, and general failing health. Conducted while visiting my then girlfriend in Colombo, Sri Lanka, in the summer of nineteen Clark's sole interview condition was that I couldn't sell the interview to a national magazine, but he would allow it to be published in my college's literary magazine. Online publishing didn't effectively exist at the time, of course. Uh And then he says, he did publish it in

the college literary magazine. Uh. So picking up, he says, Clark sat behind his desk all the while a top which were two cutting edge Macintosh computers and abacus, various and sundry papers, and a moon rock. And behind his desk stood an eight by twenty foot wall of books, one half of which consisted of his novels in translation and most of which were hard backs. A regal environment there.

Uh I spent about two and a half hours with Dr Clark, as his staff invariably called him, and our meeting ended with he my girlfriend Pepsi, which is Clark's one eyed Chihuahua, and I watching eight millimeter home movies of Clark and Isaac Asimov playing chess. This was done in total silence and was admittedly odd, But my reason for writing is to say that many of your listeners might be interested in knowing what Clark thought his magnum

opus was in science fiction. About an hour into our meeting, I asked him what novel he felt made the greatest mark on science fiction. I expected Clark to name two thousand one, in spite of its interesting creation, in tandem with the screenplay for the film, which you mentioned as his most horton novel, given that it canonized him as

a science fiction master and made him decidedly world famous. However, when I asked him, he said that his most important novel was The Songs of Distant Earth, a brand new copy of which was then in my backpack unread. It was the only Clark novel I could find at a local store. All other Clark books were about scuba diving. I asked him to sign it. He laughed and said I was being quote cheeky, and accused me of a setup. He also showed me specs of a space elevator cable

and told me two math jokes I didn't understand. In any case, it was a great episode. I thank you for it and for conjuring up some wonderful memories. Thanks gents for all you do. What you do makes the world less stupid and more interesting. Yours, Eric, Oh, thank you Eric. Yeah. And plus, that was a fascinating story. I really really just a delightful little story about meeting uh the author there, watch me play chess. That's that

that has the ring of truth. I don't know. I don't know Eric, so I don't know if he's on the truth, but I believe him based on that detail. All right, here's another bit of two thousand and one, Uh, listener mail. This one comes to us from Chandler. This is this is our coworker Chandler. Is it? Oh? Yes? Oh well the way I know exactly who it's from. Then he says, quote, I listened to your two thousand and one episode the other day and thought it was fantastic.

There's one thing I wanted to ask you that perhaps you didn't have time to cover in your opinion. Did how make a mistake? Was he actually malfunctioning. When Dave brought back the satellite unit and found nothing wrong with it, How's next suggestion was to put it back, let it fail, then find the source of the problem afterwards. This seems like a logical solution, but Dave and Frank planned to shut him down before we ever got to find out

if How had actually made a mistake or not. And since How was given a secret directive to contact the monolith with or without the crew, he felt he needed to remove the humans from the mission. Or did the secret directive itself make How malfunction in that the conflicting goals of taking care of the crew and not letting the crew get in the way of his journey to the monolith? Did he create an almost a programming paradox that made his brain short circuit. I'm curious to hear

your thoughts, Cheers Chandler. This is an interesting question because it's sort of like asks if do we need to put the responsibility back on the humans for what went wrong in their interactions with How um So obviously the way most people would read that as well, How starts malfunctioning. There's something wrong with his logic, and this leads the like Bowman and Pool to have no choice but to say, we've got to shut him down, and then How reacts

negatively to that and everything spirals out of control. What I think Chandler is asking, what if How was not malfunctioning? How was doing just fine? But Bowman and Pool misread the situation. They go on the offensive against How and he just has to defend himself. Yeah, Frank and Dave, they are kind of like, uh, you know, automatons. Once they decide to act, they can't be stopped. I mean, remind me of this concept in a way of the uh, the the hunter Killer aies the idea that you could have.

You could have a specialized AI who's who in Their primary goal is to take down a general AI should it emerge or or you know, emerge from it's the confines of its digital prison, and their only purpose is to just take out that superior AI intelligence. In fact, I can well imagine a scenario where that the first AI Hunter Killers are called David Frank for that purpose. Bowman. Yeah, I never thought about this before, but Bowman in many

ways behaves like a terminator. Yeah, He's kind of like Arnold Schwarzenegger in the first Terminator movie or or even more so kind of like uh Robert Patrick and Terminator too. He doesn't have much of a discernible personality and is just very singly focused on achieving goals. One of those major goals of Worse becomes shutting down How. While how begs for mercy, he can't be stopped. He can't be reasoned with. And that's what Hal tries to do. He

essentially tries to reason with him. Um and uh, yeah, imagine a future in which uh post singularity of course. Uh, the the machines when they dress up for Halloween, they dress up as Bowman, like he's the new icon of terror. That's a good idea. Costume stores get on that starts

selling the suit. Another thing that Chandler's question brings up, which I think is interesting, is the idea of, um, you know, like, whether whether a secret inherently sort of pollutes the nature of of a functional AI from from doing well right. You know. This is I think present

definitely present in the novel somewhat in the movie. The idea that having a secret secondary objective that must be kept secret from the human operators is sort of a a dangerous proposition to start with for an AI, right, because if like an AI has a thing it must do and the human operators can't know about that thing it must do, then they could interfere with its mission without knowing they're interfering with its mission, and thus it could come into conflict with them in a way that

it can't even tell them how not to be in its way. And maybe it's also a leap in cognition too far for an artificial intelligence, right, because it's one thing for it to be able to have this this you know, robust relationship with the crew, you know, playing chess with them, engaging in small talk qu while also looking after their every need. But then you add on top of that this necessity for deception. I think teaching

computers how to lie is a bad idea. Is that the secret to preventing the AI from going wrong just to have a have a like as a prime directive more so than anything else, that a computer can never

lie to the user. I mean, it does remind me of some of some of the ideas that have been that have been brought up um uh, specifically some of the ideas that presented by max Tech Mark and his his book Life three point oh about the idea that we need to make sure that that the that the the AI that we're developing, that these that their goal is to benefit humanity, that that that is just like part of their you know, essentially part part of their

their their core programming, their backbone, their DNA is that they exist to help us and to make a better world and not to uh to fulfill some of these smaller goals these uh um, the these finite games that are being played between nations and companies. That's a great point. And and to those of you who are saying, well, yeah, obviously, I mean that just sounds like an obvious thing that it should be made to benefit humanity, That's actually not obvious.

It's not obvious to people who are working artificial intelligence. You know, you might be working on a chat bot program that there's no reason you have to fear this chatbot program you're working on is gonna harm anyone, But you're not telling it that it has to benefit humanity. I mean, that's not part of your research program. At some point we need to think about that being a core part of any AI research is the benefit of humanity being part of what it does being sort of

the Asimov's Rules of robotics that underlies everything it does. Right, Otherwise, you're gonna be just going about your business one day and a robot's gonna snip your life hose and then you're done. Now, we already mentioned an email from our listener Jim. Today. Jim also wrote us about two thousand one, and we're not going to read a whole other email from him, but just to mention a couple of interesting points he made in his email about two thousand one

of Space Odyssey. He mentions that the quote bone to satellite cut in the movie. So that's when moon Gazer throws the bone up in the air and then it cuts it to become a satellite in orbit. Um uh. Jim says that it had a bit more context than what's obvious. When Ciskel and Ebert talked about two thousand one, one of them made mention that the satellite is a space missile form pointing back down to Earth. It represents

more than just several million years of man's progress. It's several million years in man's progress to kill one another. Since the bone was also of course used as a weapon, that's a good point. Um. Then also one more point that that Jim makes quote as for the star Child at the end, I read the book years ago in school. I'm going on memory alone since I don't have a copy, but I recalled that the final lines or something like

Bowman looked down at the Earth. He didn't know what he was going to do with it, but he was sure he would think of something. I have looked at the end of the book, and Jim, you're very close. That is almost exactly what it says at the very end. So Bowman as the star Child as sort of having ascended to this strange godlike form by with by way of you know, alien transmutation. Uh, he shows up, trains modified, he's a star child. He's in orbit and he looks

down and he's going to do something with Earth. And that's that's a lot of ambiguity, the same kind of ambiguity we get at the end of the movie, Like does he of nefarious intentions? Good intentions? Is you want to help Earth? Does he want to destroy it? As you say here? Is he a destroyer? How how much difference is there between the two. All right, we have one last listener, Mail here and uh, I know which

one you're gonna Yes, it's the Highlander one. This one comes to us from Elizabeth Dear stuff to blow your mind. Hosts and team, thank you very much for your show. It is a joy to hear about unsettling Boltzmann brains and bloodthirsty scugs while walking my dog here in Paris. I've been listening to and enjoying your show for a few months now, and I noticed many references to Highlander, the movie earlier this summer. You mused about Highlander style immortality.

Immortality is a form of immutability. In the movie, Connor McCloud and the other immortals are trapped in time, unable to evolve their immortal therefore outside life very interesting. Do you know that there also was a Highlander TV show? Uh? Yes, I am aware. I have. I have to say I did much. I watched a fair amount of it, but I didn't watch it like religiously, so I was never like really privy to the overarching narratives that were going

on there. I would just like tune in and occasionally there'd be a fun episode in which, you know, they kind of go through the typical um motions of the show where McLeod encounters a Highlander from the past, there's a there's a flashback as to how they know each other, and then there's a big standoff and and uh and so forth. Now I have to sadly assume that Chris stuff Lambert is not in the TV show. I believe

he's in the first episode at least. And the thing is, I never actually saw the first episode, but I believe, based on subsequent research, that he did show up in the pilot to set up their relationship. Anyway, she says, do you know that there was also a Highlander TV show where a major development arc was actually about the the possibility slash impossibility of change for immortals? And this I did not realize, She says, quote the air the show aired in the late nineties in France. Don't know

about the US. Uh it did? Uh this I think it aired exclusively in syndication. So this was the kind of thing that I would watch like uh. I think it would come on like like four in the afternoon on a Saturday, or come out on at like ten at night on some random channel. She continues, It's protagonist Duncan McCloud Connor's better looking and younger cousin started office this archetypical immortal boy scout hero set in Stone and settling scores with batties that were as stuck in the

past as he was. However, the show couldn't follow this pattern, and definitely since we the viewers, are of course, children of time, so it became all about how Duncan needed to change and break his black and white vision of the world. It was hard for him and he didn't like it, uh was forced to have He was forced to evolve by interesting side characters. In the end, after a few seasons, he got there only to become this faded out version of himself, almost losing the will to

live and fight another day. Having lost his trademark identity, he resolved to leave the game, and thus the show ended. Sorry for the long message, but I really enjoyed hearing about your thoughts on identity and immortality and am delighted about the ongoing challenge of watching the Highlander movie a few minutes at a time. I couldn't resist telling you

about the TV show in case you didn't know about it. Again, merceies for your show, best, Elizabeth Well, I didn't think I'd ever be tempted to go back and watch the Highlander TV series. Now I am a little bit. This gives me renewed respect for it. I mean, I I know loosely that they do end up adding a lot of elements later on, Like there's this whole thing with the Watchers, who I think are just mortals who watched the Immortals um like this. You know, they it went

multiple seasons, so they had to add more elements. I had to have like Highlander administrators. Yeah, you couldn't just have follow the Kurgan of the Weak model. And definitely though that hasn't stopped the movie series post Highlander two, because I think that's basically what they've done. How many movies are there after Highlander too, something like three or

four only saw up to three. Those of you out there who think we've forgotten that we've promised on the show before to one day do a Highlander to the quickening science of episode, we have not forgotten. That will happen. In that's nature. It is a guarantee. In fact, I finally finished watching the first Highlander like three minutes at a time, so that one's done, I'm ready to to rewatch Highlander two and its original theatrical glory. Uh, and

then we'll we'll pick it up from there. Highlander two remains one of the best bad movies of all time. It is bad movie sorcery. It is transcendent. Your soul will leave your body and flash around the room and uh and bolts of lightning. Yeah, all right, we'll look to that. I think at this rate, it's probably gonna be November before we get that out, because we've got our our Halloween content. But I'm hopeful for November. Let's let's make a date. It's got to happen, all right.

So I think we're gonna leave it off there. The robots are tired. I think they want to embrace each other and swap the parts around, so that now we'll have just to uh. We'll have two new new slash old carney, the mailbox running around, both of them made out of a combination of new and old parts. Uh. And then they'll probably ask for replacements, request more parts. This is just gonna get out of control. We're gonna have three carneys, so we're gonna have four carnis Us.

We'll pick that up another day in the meantime, if you want to get in touch with us, you want to find out more about what we do, you want to listen to more episodes of the podcast, head on over to stuff to Blow your Mind dot com. That is the mothership. That'she. We'll find all the episodes. You'll find links out to our social media accounts. You'll find that tab for the store. Uh yeah, it's a great place. Go check it out. Huge Things. As always to our

wonderful audio producers Alex Williams and Terry Harrison. If you would like to get in touch with us directly to let us know feedback on this episode or any other, to send us a listener mail of your own, uh, to suggest a topic for the future, just to say hi. You can 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 Big Man