1 00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:21,640 Hey there! 2 00:00:21,640 --> 00:00:24,400 Welcome to episode number six of the KMO Show. 3 00:00:24,400 --> 00:00:29,960 I'm your host, KMO, and this episode is prepared for release on Wednesday the 5th of April 4 00:00:29,960 --> 00:00:38,480 2023. My guest is Dr. Ashley Frawley. She is an associate professor of sociology and social policy 5 00:00:38,480 --> 00:00:44,440 at Swansea University, and she's also the co-host of the Sublation Magazine show on Sublation Media's 6 00:00:44,440 --> 00:00:50,360 YouTube channel. She also describes herself as Douglas Lane's right-hand man. Alrighty, 7 00:00:50,360 --> 00:00:54,120 well I've got a story to tell. Nothing to do with the content of this episode at the end, 8 00:00:54,120 --> 00:00:58,640 so let's get right into it. I will warn you though, the opening chit-chat goes on a little 9 00:00:58,640 --> 00:01:03,320 longer than I, you know, would normally do, but it was flowing, it was fun, and we were talking 10 00:01:03,320 --> 00:01:10,640 about the 90s. I was born in 1968, which means I turned 30 in 1998, which means I lived most of 11 00:01:10,640 --> 00:01:17,360 my 20s in the 1990s. It's a fond period for me. If you get sick of that opening chit-chat and you 12 00:01:17,360 --> 00:01:22,120 want to get to the heart of it, then skip forward about 15 minutes. Alrighty, here we go. 13 00:01:22,120 --> 00:01:32,880 This is the KMO Show. I'm your host, KMO, and I'm speaking with Ashley Frawley, 14 00:01:32,880 --> 00:01:37,080 who I'm going to let introduce herself. So Ashley, it is good to see you and talk to you, 15 00:01:37,080 --> 00:01:42,800 and tell the listeners something about you. Well, I'm a sociologist. I'm currently 16 00:01:42,800 --> 00:01:50,360 associate professor of sociology and social policy at Swansea University, and I'm the author of two 17 00:01:50,360 --> 00:01:57,000 books, first one published in 2015 called Significant, I'm sorry, Semiotics of Happiness, 18 00:01:57,000 --> 00:02:03,680 and then the most recent one coming out this year, Significant Emotions. And you will be 19 00:02:03,680 --> 00:02:08,800 known to a portion of the audience, that portion that is the crossover between my audience and the 20 00:02:08,800 --> 00:02:19,000 Diet Soap podcast, or the Sublation Media Empire. Yeah, I wish. That's right, yeah. So I host the 21 00:02:19,000 --> 00:02:26,800 Sublation, I co-host the Sublation Magazine show every Monday, and I am Doug's right-hand man at 22 00:02:26,800 --> 00:02:34,280 Sublation Media. And that would be Douglas Lane, a voice well known to this audience. He was on 23 00:02:34,280 --> 00:02:39,680 just recently. Oh, was he? Oh, good. I love Doug, and he's great. I've been a fan of Doug since I 24 00:02:39,680 --> 00:02:46,920 first discovered his podcast in like 2009 or something like that, and it was always my dream 25 00:02:46,920 --> 00:02:54,360 to be on the Diet Soap podcast as soon as I finished my PhD. So yeah, I'm a big fan. I'm 26 00:02:54,360 --> 00:03:00,880 really happy to work with him. Well, I listened to a show that the two of you did where you said 27 00:03:00,880 --> 00:03:06,600 exactly that, and really made me feel old. I was the person that inspired Doug to get into 28 00:03:06,600 --> 00:03:13,920 podcasting. Oh, wow. Yeah, I started in 2006, and he was one of the early people that contacted me 29 00:03:13,920 --> 00:03:19,280 regularly enough that I said, okay, why don't we just get on Skype, is what we were using at the 30 00:03:19,280 --> 00:03:24,920 time, and start talking. So I don't remember. I think he started his podcast before we were 31 00:03:24,920 --> 00:03:30,480 actually talking to one another by voice, but he had been sending me text-based communications, 32 00:03:30,480 --> 00:03:35,760 posted comments, emails, things like that. And he liked what I was doing, but he thought I was 33 00:03:35,760 --> 00:03:42,560 wrong politically, so he needed to correct me. That sounds like Doug. Well, I've moved up in the 34 00:03:42,560 --> 00:03:49,400 world then. I feel like all of my hard work has paid off. I've gone beyond Diet Soap. Well, at 35 00:03:49,400 --> 00:03:54,800 the time, for the first several years of our acquaintance, I had a much larger audience than 36 00:03:54,800 --> 00:04:03,360 Doug. But then in the Trump years, his gig at Zero Books was very good for boosting his visibility. 37 00:04:03,360 --> 00:04:07,640 And then just being an established voice on the left at the beginning of the Trump years was a 38 00:04:07,640 --> 00:04:14,760 very good thing for him. And during the Trump years, I got really discouraged. I've always been a 39 00:04:14,760 --> 00:04:20,360 political outsider, but as the red and blue tribes here in the US really polarized and started 40 00:04:20,360 --> 00:04:26,000 taking stances that, to my mind, were mostly irrational, mostly based on tribal signaling, 41 00:04:26,000 --> 00:04:31,960 and I just wasn't interested. And then, oh my goodness, then came COVID. And I had no interest 42 00:04:31,960 --> 00:04:39,880 in either the rabidly anti... What I would consider to be the paranoid response, like, oh, this is all 43 00:04:39,880 --> 00:04:45,480 a government plot, and there's microchips and the injections and whatnot, versus the other side. 44 00:04:45,480 --> 00:04:52,440 And I was in Vermont at the time, deep blue Vermont. And I would see kids riding their bicycles 45 00:04:52,440 --> 00:05:00,280 outside with masks on. What is happening here? That's insane. Multiple times, I would be walking 46 00:05:00,280 --> 00:05:06,120 down the street, and it's always a woman in Vermont who's approaching me on the sidewalk, 47 00:05:06,120 --> 00:05:11,080 and she's masked. And this happens twice that I can think of it, and possibly more times. 48 00:05:11,800 --> 00:05:17,480 I wouldn't be masked, but I'm outdoors. I'm outside, under the sun, in the wind. And somebody 49 00:05:17,480 --> 00:05:23,560 that is approaching me on the sidewalk will stop, ostentatiously turn, very indignant, and step into 50 00:05:23,560 --> 00:05:31,160 the street. There's traffic. You avoid being close to me. And I was like, oh my goodness. 51 00:05:31,160 --> 00:05:35,960 The insanity on both sides was so off-putting, and I did not want to talk to either side. I did 52 00:05:35,960 --> 00:05:44,760 not want to be a champion for either side. And I just... That anecdote reminds me of a very common 53 00:05:45,640 --> 00:05:50,840 thing that we say when we... People who study the sociology of risk, that people put themselves in 54 00:05:50,840 --> 00:05:57,560 the way of known risks to avoid hypothetical ones. Sorry, I didn't mean to interrupt. 55 00:05:57,560 --> 00:06:02,840 No, no, that's great. I mean, as I say to everybody who... Anytime it comes up in a 56 00:06:02,840 --> 00:06:08,280 conversation, somebody will ask if they're addressing my question. And my blah, blah, blah, 57 00:06:08,280 --> 00:06:14,040 mouth noises are just something to spark similar noises from you. So as soon as anything occurs to 58 00:06:14,040 --> 00:06:22,120 you, just go ahead and jump in. I will say that I appreciate Doug Lane's project of criticizing 59 00:06:22,120 --> 00:06:27,240 the left from the left. I think more of that needs to go on. I was listening to a conversation 60 00:06:27,240 --> 00:06:32,840 between the two of you in which he asked you if you'd seen the movie Brazil, Terry Gilliam 61 00:06:32,840 --> 00:06:38,280 film from the 80s, and you hadn't. But he tried to explain the plot to you. And this is a very 62 00:06:38,280 --> 00:06:43,400 psychedelic sort of magical realist movie. Not the kind of thing I would be watching. 63 00:06:43,400 --> 00:06:51,000 Yeah. Admittedly. Oh, it's a classic. I mean, you really should see it. In terms of filmmaking, 64 00:06:51,000 --> 00:06:57,640 it's a classic. Art generally is a bit of a black hole for me. I know about as much as the average 65 00:06:57,640 --> 00:07:03,560 high school student, I think. Well, I was reminded of a recent episode of Rick and Morty where... 66 00:07:03,560 --> 00:07:10,040 Hey, that's not my story. They were trapped in the arcade, and Morty was in the video game where 67 00:07:10,040 --> 00:07:13,880 you live a whole life, and he's stuck there, and Rick had to go in after him. So they're both 68 00:07:13,880 --> 00:07:18,040 incapacitated, and Summer is the only one there, and the whole place is attacked by terrorists. 69 00:07:18,600 --> 00:07:23,000 And Rick wakes up for just a minute, just long enough to say, well, you know, do a die hard. Or 70 00:07:23,000 --> 00:07:27,480 he said, you've seen Die Hard, right? And she says, I'm 17 years old. No, I haven't seen Die Hard. 71 00:07:29,720 --> 00:07:34,200 He said, well, neither had the guy in Die Hard. So, you know, go ahead. So it was her job, you 72 00:07:34,200 --> 00:07:38,840 know, to crawl around in advance and sneak around and steal guns. And, you know, basically, I don't 73 00:07:38,840 --> 00:07:45,240 know if you've seen Die Hard. I was living... I did some very brutal manual labor just recently. I was 74 00:07:45,240 --> 00:07:51,400 making snow at a ski resort in the Lake Tahoe area, living in company housing. And one of my 75 00:07:51,400 --> 00:07:58,200 roommates was a 27-year-old guy, and he had never seen Die Hard either. And we watched it together 76 00:07:58,200 --> 00:08:02,760 on Christmas, because, you know, it's a Christmas movie. Under great duress, I imagine. I'm sure he 77 00:08:02,760 --> 00:08:07,640 was like, yeah. No, he loved it. He loved it. You know, if you can get a Gen Z-er to sit down and 78 00:08:07,640 --> 00:08:12,760 watch a movie from the 80s, invariably they love it, because the movies are so accessible. They're 79 00:08:12,760 --> 00:08:18,680 so skillfully constructed in terms of the narrative that I don't know why it's a lost art. I mean, 80 00:08:18,680 --> 00:08:23,080 so many of the people who were writing back then are still alive. But, you know, the movie 81 00:08:23,080 --> 00:08:27,960 structure, like narrative structures, are just a mess these days, for the most part. So it's always 82 00:08:27,960 --> 00:08:32,440 an eye opener when you show somebody a classic from the 80s, you know, somebody who's like under 30. 83 00:08:32,440 --> 00:08:37,720 You know, they imagine, oh, it's, you know, I could never get into this. It's standard definition. 84 00:08:37,720 --> 00:08:42,680 It's, you know, sometimes a three by four aspect ratio. It just looks old. But as soon as the 85 00:08:42,680 --> 00:08:49,160 narrative gets its hooks into them, it's amazing. So anyway, yes, watch Brazil. All that on the 86 00:08:49,160 --> 00:08:57,160 surface of watch Brazil. But in that conversation with Doug, I realized that maybe you're not aware 87 00:08:57,160 --> 00:09:02,840 of the name, but you are definitely carrying on the tradition of the anti-psychiatry psychiatrist, 88 00:09:02,840 --> 00:09:08,600 Thomas Saz. You familiar with Thomas Saz? Yeah. The author of The Myth of Mental Illness, 89 00:09:09,160 --> 00:09:15,080 and The Therapeutic State, and my favorite, Our Right to Drugs, a Case for the Free Market. 90 00:09:16,200 --> 00:09:25,480 Nice. Yes. So he was very much opposed to the coercive nature of psychiatry. He thought that 91 00:09:25,480 --> 00:09:31,080 psychiatrists shouldn't have any more power over people than do, say, architects, or I was going 92 00:09:31,080 --> 00:09:38,200 to say lawyers, but lawyers do kind of have power over people's lives. And that there is brain 93 00:09:38,200 --> 00:09:43,960 disease. There are, you know, disorders of the brain that can be diagnosed with clinical tests. 94 00:09:43,960 --> 00:09:49,960 But any diagnosis that is based strictly on what a patient says or does, that's not medicine. 95 00:09:49,960 --> 00:09:57,320 That is not a disease. And moreover, he says that often, and one of his sort of attempts to prove 96 00:09:57,320 --> 00:10:06,440 his overall argument about this is that as soon as a actual brain disease is found that explains 97 00:10:06,440 --> 00:10:10,600 these behaviors, people realize they've made a mistake, and actually it's a medical illness, 98 00:10:10,600 --> 00:10:16,040 so they will change that classification. So he says like, this is quite clear that there's like 99 00:10:16,040 --> 00:10:20,920 an underlying awareness that these things are not medical diseases, but that they're sort of 100 00:10:20,920 --> 00:10:28,200 governing the residual behaviors that fall outside of, that every culture has, that fall outside of 101 00:10:28,760 --> 00:10:33,640 any kind of formal sanction, like our cultures will have, and our societies have criminal sanctions 102 00:10:33,640 --> 00:10:37,880 for certain behaviors. And then we have sort of informal sanctions. And then there's this sort of 103 00:10:37,880 --> 00:10:43,000 residual behavior that isn't governed. And he says that psychiatric categories govern that. 104 00:10:43,000 --> 00:10:47,720 But as soon as we realize that actually there is an underlying brain disease, we change it. 105 00:10:48,680 --> 00:10:55,640 Actually, these are like, nobody says that, I don't know, dementia is a mental illness, 106 00:10:55,640 --> 00:11:00,920 and maybe they do now. But we think of it as something quite different than depression, 107 00:11:00,920 --> 00:11:06,680 I think. Or maybe things have melded together a bit more in the public consciousness toward 108 00:11:06,680 --> 00:11:11,080 the present, where we tend to think of certain things as being a mental illness, and we tend 109 00:11:11,080 --> 00:11:20,680 to think of certain things as brain diseases in the same way as the actual sort of verified 110 00:11:21,320 --> 00:11:26,360 brain malfunctions. But he says that usually we realize we've made a mistake and we categorize 111 00:11:26,360 --> 00:11:32,280 it in terms of physical bodily illness, whereas the rest of it is based on behavior, and it's 112 00:11:32,280 --> 00:11:38,440 a form of governance of behavior. Yeah, until you find the tumor on the MRI, 113 00:11:38,440 --> 00:11:44,200 all this talk of different labels from the DSM seems plausible. But as soon as you discover the 114 00:11:44,200 --> 00:11:53,480 tumor, you want to address the tumor. There are so many. I mean, I'm looking into my memory for just 115 00:11:53,480 --> 00:12:00,840 some random psychiatric label. Say, gosh, they're all getting jumbled up. But what would the cluster 116 00:12:00,840 --> 00:12:09,800 be like, oh, borderline personality disorder? You might drill down on that, looking at somebody's 117 00:12:09,800 --> 00:12:16,600 mood swings or somebody's... They're penchant for being overly dramatic to manipulate people. 118 00:12:17,400 --> 00:12:22,440 But as soon as you see the tumor on the brain scan, I mean, that becomes the actual diagnosis, 119 00:12:22,440 --> 00:12:26,120 which is what I think you're saying, that all of this other stuff is sort of ephemeral, 120 00:12:26,120 --> 00:12:33,320 and it's this kind of at play. The diagnosis is going to depend a lot on the obsessions of 121 00:12:33,320 --> 00:12:38,840 the particular therapist in question. This has all kind of jumped down into the weeds, though. Let's 122 00:12:40,120 --> 00:12:45,800 bring it up to a higher level for a sec. I'm sitting on a treasure trove of recorded 123 00:12:45,800 --> 00:12:51,160 material right now, and this might sit in the can for a few weeks before it actually goes out. So 124 00:12:51,160 --> 00:12:58,280 let's avoid the news cycle, the close-up view of the news cycle, and talk in general. But I think 125 00:12:58,280 --> 00:13:06,200 the discussion of the coercive nature of not just psychiatry, but also, I would just say, 126 00:13:06,200 --> 00:13:12,680 the social conversation. You were talking with Doug about the coerciveness of the left, and you guys 127 00:13:12,680 --> 00:13:17,560 were talking in terms of COVID and vaccines and masks and things like that. But it just seems to 128 00:13:17,560 --> 00:13:25,320 go much further than that. It's a much more thoroughgoing coerciveness that is very focused 129 00:13:25,320 --> 00:13:33,640 on people's mannerisms and their language, the words they use, the affiliations that they might 130 00:13:33,640 --> 00:13:40,680 imply with their words. These can be, I hate to say the word, but triggering to folks on the left. 131 00:13:40,680 --> 00:13:51,880 I have an aversion, almost an allergy, to leftist jargon. Jargon in general. But I talk to a lot of 132 00:13:51,880 --> 00:13:58,600 people about AI. And AI researchers, they can't speak in full sentences and words. They just 133 00:13:58,600 --> 00:14:03,000 pepper everything with acronyms. So much easier to say LLM than large language model. 134 00:14:03,000 --> 00:14:09,560 Sometimes it's the other way though. You have a project that is, what is it? It's something AF. 135 00:14:09,560 --> 00:14:11,560 Oh, Based AF. 136 00:14:12,520 --> 00:14:14,040 Based, yes, Based AF. 137 00:14:14,840 --> 00:14:19,960 I'm way too old for that title, but I put it out on social media, which is the name of my podcast 138 00:14:19,960 --> 00:14:24,760 be. And that was the most top voted one. And I can't say it out loud. The first video essay I did, 139 00:14:24,760 --> 00:14:27,640 I started the introduction with, like, hi, this is Based AF. And I was like, no. 140 00:14:27,640 --> 00:14:39,880 I'm too old. Well, AF works better in print. As fuck is easier to say than AF. 141 00:14:39,880 --> 00:14:42,440 Yeah. It's my name. I'm too curly. 142 00:14:46,120 --> 00:14:51,720 So, Based. When I first heard about Based, it was somebody was playing a game. They would say 143 00:14:51,720 --> 00:14:57,320 something and it's either cringe or based. And I didn't know what, you know, based meant. And I was 144 00:14:57,320 --> 00:15:05,480 kind of fuzzy on cringe at the time. But now, based, I guess it means authentic, confident in 145 00:15:05,480 --> 00:15:10,760 one's authenticity. But it's also now associated with somebody taking a right-wing stance. But 146 00:15:10,760 --> 00:15:13,240 what is based? What do I not know about that word? 147 00:15:14,760 --> 00:15:20,280 I don't know. Ask the young people today. They deemed me the label. I feel like 148 00:15:20,280 --> 00:15:28,200 they carried me through the streets and gave me that title. No, I'm kidding. No, I guess I had 149 00:15:28,200 --> 00:15:33,800 trouble figuring it out myself. Gosh, there's all, you know, you're getting old when actually even 150 00:15:34,600 --> 00:15:39,960 lingo that I use as a teenager that became quite uncool for a bit is now coming back. 151 00:15:39,960 --> 00:15:47,160 And I see people using it. I'm like, oh, no, it's like bell bottoms. Is this where I am now in life? 152 00:15:47,160 --> 00:15:53,560 Like all my mannerisms are coming back in style, but not like that. Anyway, no, yeah. So basically, 153 00:15:53,560 --> 00:16:00,200 yeah, I think that's what it means. It goes back to some rapper, I think, who said, who used this 154 00:16:00,200 --> 00:16:06,840 word. And then it kind of made its way into the popular lexicon to mean, yeah, something that is 155 00:16:06,840 --> 00:16:16,600 edgy or, as you said, kind of authentic, but can also be an insult, like going too far to be 156 00:16:16,600 --> 00:16:24,600 contrarian, perhaps, from what I understand. Anybody under the age of 30 is like cringing 157 00:16:25,720 --> 00:16:31,800 at my description, but that is from what I understand. So that was the name of the podcast 158 00:16:31,800 --> 00:16:36,520 that people had suggested for me, and I couldn't think of anything better than that, so I just went 159 00:16:36,520 --> 00:16:42,840 for it. So if you live long enough, you'll get to the point where you will adopt youth lingo and use 160 00:16:42,840 --> 00:16:48,040 it ironically, like somebody my age really shouldn't be saying this, but you'll think it's 161 00:16:48,040 --> 00:16:53,560 cute, but then you'll continue doing it long after that bit of lingo has sort of receded into the 162 00:16:53,560 --> 00:16:59,320 background. And you might say it again 15 years later to somebody who's young and they won't have 163 00:16:59,320 --> 00:17:05,480 any clue as to what you're talking about. Yeah. Well, the other option for the podcast was Drunk AF. 164 00:17:05,480 --> 00:17:13,560 I thought that was funny. I was like, I'll just get drunk and like talk to the camera, and I'll call 165 00:17:13,560 --> 00:17:22,280 it Drunk AF. Dangerous. I like that idea better, but no. My husband, do you ever watch the Netflix 166 00:17:22,280 --> 00:17:30,360 show? Oh, what is it? The Unsinkable Kimmy Schmidt? I have never seen it. Oh, so it's about this. 167 00:17:31,160 --> 00:17:36,040 It's about this. It's an older show now. It was a long time ago that we watched this, but this young 168 00:17:36,040 --> 00:17:40,920 woman who's in a bunker since 1995, she's like abducted and kept in a bunker underground, and 169 00:17:40,920 --> 00:17:46,760 then she gets out like 20 years later, something like that, 15, 20 years later. And the way that 170 00:17:46,760 --> 00:17:52,200 she talks, and my husband who's Greek and learned English turned to me while watching, so she's 171 00:17:52,200 --> 00:17:59,640 like, oh, she talks like you. I talk like I've been in an underground bunker since 1995. 172 00:18:01,480 --> 00:18:05,080 There was an episode of South Park where there was a guy who had been frozen in ice for like 173 00:18:05,080 --> 00:18:11,320 three or four years, not very long at all. And they treated him like a caveman who had been, 174 00:18:11,320 --> 00:18:16,520 who was completely incapable of navigating the modern world. And they kept playing that 175 00:18:16,520 --> 00:18:22,920 ace of base song for him to keep him comfortable, you know, to make him feel like he was in his own time. 176 00:18:22,920 --> 00:18:27,240 That's it basically. I think, I don't know what happened. It's weird because in my mind, 177 00:18:27,240 --> 00:18:33,960 nothing good happened after 1995 either. So like I listened to like grunge and stuff, and then any 178 00:18:33,960 --> 00:18:42,360 songs from like 1998, I'm like, ugh, what is this garbage? Well, I think there was a few good things 179 00:18:42,360 --> 00:18:48,200 that came out in like 99, 2000, 2001, but thereafter. No, no, nothing, nothing good. 180 00:18:49,640 --> 00:18:51,400 Nothing good post Nirvana. 181 00:18:53,800 --> 00:18:59,480 I'm a big fan of the Eminem show. That was one of his albums. Oh, right. Yeah, yeah. 182 00:18:59,480 --> 00:19:05,080 Without me on it. I think that was 2000. Nah, that was more of a grunge rock type. 183 00:19:05,080 --> 00:19:10,600 Yeah. And then I went into like, I went into the awkward teen years, right? So I listened to like 184 00:19:10,600 --> 00:19:18,040 a bunch of, I like no effects and this kind of thing. And then I listened to like really cheese, 185 00:19:18,040 --> 00:19:23,560 cheese pop punk. But I, you know, I, if it was, if it was too, what was it I like that would be 186 00:19:23,560 --> 00:19:28,760 considered really cheesy? I went to like a band phase, you know, where I'd like date boys in bands 187 00:19:28,760 --> 00:19:37,720 as you do. As you do. I used to hang out in like the punk scene in Oshawa, Ontario, which you might 188 00:19:37,720 --> 00:19:43,960 know from some 41. And so I listened to like the kind of local bands, because that was cool, right? 189 00:19:43,960 --> 00:19:48,200 Because you needed to have your street cred and you need the more obscure the music, the cooler it 190 00:19:48,200 --> 00:19:56,040 was and all that cheesy stuff. So I look back on that with a deep sense of cringe as I believe my, 191 00:19:56,040 --> 00:20:02,200 my generation would say cringe, very cringe worthy. So I kind of like skip back when I think of 192 00:20:02,200 --> 00:20:08,440 nostalgia, I think back to before that. So I think of the mid nineties is like the one, you know, 193 00:20:08,440 --> 00:20:12,040 your innocence is lost. And then after that, it's all downhill from there. 194 00:20:14,760 --> 00:20:19,560 Well, we could reminisce about the nineties. I mean, I was in my twenties and nineties. So 195 00:20:20,360 --> 00:20:25,640 that could go on. I was only 10 in 1995, right? So like, 196 00:20:25,640 --> 00:20:31,960 I often think like it's probably because at that time, that's when I left the city that I grew up in. 197 00:20:33,000 --> 00:20:37,560 And everything kind of really went downhill from there. So I always think like probably in my mind, 198 00:20:37,560 --> 00:20:44,600 there's like a connection to that, that I was like a carefree child up until that point. And then it 199 00:20:44,600 --> 00:20:45,800 all went dark. 200 00:20:48,520 --> 00:20:53,960 So one more reference to the nineties, and then we will escape that comfortable womb and come close 201 00:20:53,960 --> 00:20:59,000 to the present. But I was living in the nineties, I was living in Seattle in the late nineties. 202 00:20:59,960 --> 00:21:04,840 And I had a friend from Missouri come to visit me. And you know, she wanted to go out and see all 203 00:21:04,840 --> 00:21:08,200 these grunge bands, you know, the grunge scene. 204 00:21:08,200 --> 00:21:11,560 Oh, of course. So much cooler than Oshawa. 205 00:21:11,560 --> 00:21:17,000 Yeah. No, that that scene was gone in Seattle by the late nineties. So, you know, I took her to a 206 00:21:17,000 --> 00:21:22,120 lot of techno shows, you know, we went to see, oh, 207 00:21:22,120 --> 00:21:25,160 the crystal method. She wasn't into it. 208 00:21:25,160 --> 00:21:30,120 See what I'm saying? It's all downhill, right? Like what the hell good happened after 1995. 209 00:21:30,120 --> 00:21:32,120 Oh, I like me some. 210 00:21:32,120 --> 00:21:38,440 What a fantastic example of that. 1999, you go see it in Seattle and you go see a techno show. 211 00:21:38,440 --> 00:21:40,440 Yeah, that was the scene. 212 00:21:42,760 --> 00:21:44,280 Now that grunge scene is over. 213 00:21:44,280 --> 00:21:46,280 Yeah, yeah. 214 00:21:46,280 --> 00:21:56,360 Okay, pushing forward into the 21st century, even the second decade, maybe even the third of the 21st century. 215 00:21:57,400 --> 00:22:02,520 You were talking with Doug on a video I was watching or listening to this morning. 216 00:22:03,160 --> 00:22:09,400 And you were talking about the coerciveness of folks on the left around COVID. 217 00:22:09,400 --> 00:22:14,440 And you were getting animated in response to some of the comments in the chat. 218 00:22:14,440 --> 00:22:19,000 Like, you were talking to Doug and it was all, you know, smiles and laughter and fun. 219 00:22:19,000 --> 00:22:23,800 And then in response to the folks in the chat, you were getting pretty heated. 220 00:22:25,320 --> 00:22:34,120 I wonder just in general, what you get and you're talking to a smaller audience than you're normally talking to, I think, and probably an older audience. 221 00:22:34,120 --> 00:22:39,720 And ones who are typically not very patient with the excesses of the current left. 222 00:22:39,720 --> 00:22:45,640 So you're not going to piss anybody off by criticizing the coerciveness of the left. 223 00:22:45,640 --> 00:22:49,640 It's a trick. You're trying to lure me so I'll get canceled. 224 00:22:49,640 --> 00:22:51,640 You know, what you say is up to you. 225 00:22:51,640 --> 00:22:57,640 But if you're working with, you know, danger of cancellation is omnipresent. 226 00:22:59,640 --> 00:23:03,640 So what is it that pisses you off about the coerciveness of the left? 227 00:23:03,640 --> 00:23:05,640 I just put it there. 228 00:23:05,640 --> 00:23:15,640 Yeah, I think this is why with civilization media, I wanted to do something a bit more coherent to get the space to think through things. 229 00:23:15,640 --> 00:23:27,640 Because that's also part of my annoyance with COVID is that the last two years of being like a, well, you know, the two years of the pandemic, like a black hole for me. 230 00:23:27,640 --> 00:23:31,640 Where I felt like I aged like 10 years and it was just so awful. 231 00:23:31,640 --> 00:23:37,640 Like I had a 22 month old baby, 20 month old baby. 232 00:23:37,640 --> 00:23:39,640 She was at the time, I think. 233 00:23:39,640 --> 00:23:41,640 And barely four year old. 234 00:23:41,640 --> 00:23:47,640 She was not not four, three, I don't know, three years, three and a half, something like that. 235 00:23:47,640 --> 00:23:51,640 Two small kids. And my workload like tripled. 236 00:23:51,640 --> 00:23:53,640 And it was awful. 237 00:23:53,640 --> 00:23:55,640 I can't even explain to you. 238 00:23:55,640 --> 00:23:57,640 Like I am. I'm not joking. 239 00:23:57,640 --> 00:24:04,640 Because I went through, I like, I worked right through the night. 240 00:24:04,640 --> 00:24:08,640 Like, you know, people say like you work through the night, you mean you went to bed at like five or something. 241 00:24:08,640 --> 00:24:14,640 No, no, no, I worked a full day and I worked right through the night into the next morning. 242 00:24:14,640 --> 00:24:18,640 I went and I continued working and I slept the next night. 243 00:24:18,640 --> 00:24:20,640 And I did that twice a week. 244 00:24:20,640 --> 00:24:23,640 I can, I worked continuously around the clock. 245 00:24:23,640 --> 00:24:29,640 It was a nightmare. And I had the like little kids like, I'm going to cry. 246 00:24:29,640 --> 00:24:32,640 These kids like climbing on me. 247 00:24:32,640 --> 00:24:37,640 Mommy, like wanting my attention and I am having to like push them away so that I can keep keep working. 248 00:24:37,640 --> 00:24:39,640 It was just awful. 249 00:24:39,640 --> 00:24:49,640 Anyways, and I so I have like I went through like a lot, which is why I probably got really mad. 250 00:24:49,640 --> 00:24:52,640 Because like it hits me personally, it pisses me off. 251 00:24:52,640 --> 00:25:07,640 But also, I think what I so what I wanted to do was this, this research project, this with civilization media, I wanted to have the space to think through things because for the last, as I said, two years during the pandemic, I didn't have space to think at all. 252 00:25:07,640 --> 00:25:17,640 I, you know, if you look at my publication record, go on the Swansea University website and you see that, you know, I went from publishing like three articles a year, whatever, in addition to journalism and all that. 253 00:25:17,640 --> 00:25:22,640 And there's just nothing there, nothing there. And I couldn't think that I didn't have the space to think through anything. 254 00:25:22,640 --> 00:25:45,640 It was awful. So we want to do these research projects where we can kind of through discussion and debate and bring in current issues, but also different speakers to get different perspectives on things we can kind of illuminate key aspects of political thinking and organizing that are not receiving enough attention or are sort of absent. 255 00:25:45,640 --> 00:26:06,640 And people don't realize it. So with the coercion, what is absent is this sense of a political subject that is capable of free thinking, reason, reflection on one's emotions, and rationally deciding how to act. 256 00:26:06,640 --> 00:26:13,640 That is considered now by large proportions of the so-called left to be largely a myth. 257 00:26:13,640 --> 00:26:23,640 And they think of that as a critique by saying that that is a myth, that the rational subject is a myth, they think they are criticizing capitalism. 258 00:26:23,640 --> 00:26:27,640 But actually, that is how contemporary capitalism functions now. 259 00:26:27,640 --> 00:26:40,640 It justifies itself on the basis and its problems via a degraded vision of the human subject. So why do we have crises? Because you chose wrong. 260 00:26:40,640 --> 00:26:52,640 Why do we have social problems? Because people choose wrong. So you look at the 2008 financial crisis, what was the narrative that emerged out of that? Greedy bankers, right? People who are unable to control their emotions. 261 00:26:52,640 --> 00:27:04,640 Like there is something deep in the psyche of human beings that ultimately explains social problems. And if you have that outlook, on the left, you are screwed. 262 00:27:04,640 --> 00:27:20,640 Because there is no subject capable of taking forward a revolution. If you don't believe in humanity's ability to think and choose, and by that I don't mean people always get things right, but we all have this capacity for reason and reflection. 263 00:27:20,640 --> 00:27:33,640 If you don't believe that, then you're going to become very, very illiberal. And so what's happened is the left has swapped out emancipation and freedom and the self-emancipation of the working class, which was key to Marxism. 264 00:27:33,640 --> 00:27:56,640 So they've swapped that out for safety, well-being, protection, which is ironic as heck. Because what did, like if you look at, I don't know, the military junta in Greece, for instance, in the 70s, what did they say? Why was that necessary to protect you for your safety? 265 00:27:56,640 --> 00:28:11,640 And so you have to give up. Like, I would say like health and safety. Was it, no, health and safety? Safety and, oh, I can't think of the other word, but I use health and safety as like the new law and order. 266 00:28:11,640 --> 00:28:26,640 Like if law and order, this was the thing that justified control over people's lives and the curtailing of freedoms, now it's for your own good, it's for your safety. And it's a very similar kind of narrative, but it has this like leftish rendering and this progressive ring. 267 00:28:26,640 --> 00:28:47,640 And it's sad because nobody believes now in that rational human subject that's capable of freedoms, and yet it is the basis of our modern liberal societies, which also people don't believe in. But there's no like forward movement that sees these things as a step on the way to something better. 268 00:28:47,640 --> 00:29:07,640 It's all just very cynical. And so when you have that outlook, you don't believe that people can rationally choose how to act. And there's this widespread belief on the part of both governments and the so-called left, keep saying so-called left, because there's a lot of the stuff that I think if you think of the history of the left, it's got nothing to do with it. 269 00:29:07,640 --> 00:29:21,640 But there's this very persistent idea that people don't act unless you tell them to. That people are incapable of making the correct choices unless you nudge them. And when they continue to not make the correct choices, then you push them. 270 00:29:21,640 --> 00:29:38,640 And if they continue to make the incorrect choices, I mean, then you shove them and so on and so on. And the coercion gets more and more powerful. Instead of trying to understand, well, what is it in people's lives that may be influencing them to choose in this particular way or do these particular things. 271 00:29:38,640 --> 00:29:48,640 You know, a few people might make a mistake. Well, when hundreds of thousands or millions of people are doing something that tells you that there's some rationality there, that there's something, some push. 272 00:29:48,640 --> 00:29:57,640 But people don't want to think about that. So to give you sort of bring this back down to earth, if it sounds a bit too abstract, right at the very beginning of the pandemic. 273 00:29:57,640 --> 00:30:03,640 If you recall, in the UK, there was an election. 274 00:30:03,640 --> 00:30:14,640 And the Tories won that election, and it was a significant loss for all of the hope that people had placed in Jeremy Corbyn. And I remember we were having a live stream. 275 00:30:14,640 --> 00:30:22,640 And I like to read the comments afterward because I enjoy self inflicted pain. 276 00:30:22,640 --> 00:30:25,640 And it was free to do the comments. 277 00:30:25,640 --> 00:30:33,640 And this per I got into this little argument with somebody in the comments and something he said really stuck with me. 278 00:30:33,640 --> 00:30:44,640 He he said he was blaming the current government for not acting quickly enough and was saying that that is the reason why the pandemic had spread as a fire. 279 00:30:44,640 --> 00:30:50,640 I'm sorry. I don't know. Swear. But it makes me so bad as a darned pandemic. 280 00:30:50,640 --> 00:30:53,640 You can swear. Go ahead. It's not a problem on the bucket. 281 00:30:53,640 --> 00:31:08,640 So the fucking global pandemic was down to the Tories not acting fast enough. Are you obviously London is a global hub, and it's going to be affected more than but fuck New Zealand and so in the middle of nowhere. 282 00:31:08,640 --> 00:31:16,640 Obviously, it's going to be a lot harder to contain but the way that this person was talking it was like, no, the Tories did it the Tories did it. That's why. 283 00:31:16,640 --> 00:31:26,640 We've earned ourselves a four month staycation. And I never forgot I never forgot that because it was a very punitive kind of response. 284 00:31:26,640 --> 00:31:32,640 Right. It was like you idiots, you chose wrong. And this is what you get. 285 00:31:32,640 --> 00:31:45,640 And it's like he wanted to lock people up. It was a punitive response to something he was very angry about the people who were voting against their own interests, instead of thinking, well, what are the interests that I don't understand. 286 00:31:45,640 --> 00:31:48,640 It's the people are stupid, and I want to punish them. 287 00:31:48,640 --> 00:31:53,640 So I think it had this punitive aspect to it I do I do think that. 288 00:31:53,640 --> 00:32:08,640 And I think what happens is, when people have have no center no powerful subject that is the center of their politics is marks and angles did, and they were by the way like totally alone in this so it's not uncommon it's not like everybody once believed in the 289 00:32:08,640 --> 00:32:21,640 working class and now they don't like marks and angles were utterly alone in putting all their faith in the working class most people thought the working class that were an ulcer and sought to reform them, tell them what to eat how to drink etc so that their meager wages 290 00:32:21,640 --> 00:32:28,640 would cover their horrible lives and marks and angle saw a lot of hope in the working class and they were alone in that. 291 00:32:28,640 --> 00:32:45,640 If you have this kind of absent center of your politics. 292 00:32:45,640 --> 00:32:48,640 Then, you never question. 293 00:32:48,640 --> 00:32:51,640 Maybe I've misunderstood the problem. 294 00:32:51,640 --> 00:33:10,640 You just get more and more pessimistic about the human subject. Oh my god people are even more fucked up than I thought. Oh my god, people are even more weak, irrational and stupid than I thought so people become more and more and more frustrated, and more 295 00:33:10,640 --> 00:33:15,640 and more misanthropic. And like this was an outlook that you could well. 296 00:33:15,640 --> 00:33:28,640 I'm not going to make this jump but I'm not saying that this is literally what's happened but it's a dangerous place to be, because it was in a frustrated liberalism that many people became fascist. 297 00:33:28,640 --> 00:33:38,640 And you wonder like how did somebody like Mussolini go from socialism to fascism, his socialism, quote unquote socialism was always a very aristocratic socialism. 298 00:33:38,640 --> 00:33:47,640 It was a socialism that did not believe in the human subject. You look at somebody like Pareto, the further Pareto who writes, who initially starts out as a liberal. 299 00:33:47,640 --> 00:34:04,640 And as he is unable to convince people of the wonders of capitalism they continue stubbornly being socialist. He writes all of these tracks, talking about how actually people are irrational that we are minds are set they will never be changed and after 300 00:34:04,640 --> 00:34:22,640 that we will simply rationalize our choices but it's actually just more like instinct. And he writes a supportive letter to Mussolini, because people didn't, what the problem was that those in power lacked the courage to do what was right to do what was necessary 301 00:34:22,640 --> 00:34:37,640 and of course if necessary, because people stubbornly kept fucking things up. Look, Pareto says I've done all this math, the capitalism works in equilibrium but when I look out into the world I do not see this equilibrium, because people keep messing with it, 302 00:34:37,640 --> 00:34:50,640 and they make the wrong choices. And so those in power just have to try harder. He tried it in the beginning to nudge, and they still didn't listen. So he tried to push, and then he writes a letter to Mussolini as a shove. 303 00:34:50,640 --> 00:35:01,640 And of course, you can't find a fascist or proto-fascist that people don't say, well, you know, unless they were like literally strung up and then you're like, oh well, okay, maybe they were fascists. 304 00:35:01,640 --> 00:35:16,640 But you can't find a single like proto-fascist that people go, oh wow, he wasn't really a fascist, he wrote a letter to Mussolini supporting him, but you know, but for me I found that very interesting, that pathway that people take. 305 00:35:16,640 --> 00:35:28,640 And I'm not saying the left is becoming a bunch of fascists, but I'm saying it is a very dangerous kind of situation to be in, when you have a politics that doesn't believe in humanity. 306 00:35:28,640 --> 00:35:41,640 Because you need that, who's going to solve problems? Us, human beings. Not a special knowledge class, but human beings out there in the world as they confront problems and try to deal with them, and then we can come together and try to figure out what to do. 307 00:35:41,640 --> 00:35:49,640 And if you don't believe in that, you don't have politics. You have zoology. You have psychiatry and psychology. 308 00:35:49,640 --> 00:36:06,640 I have a video that is my most viewed video ever. And I used, when I was in Vermont, I lived quite close to a community TV station and I shot video for that TV station at like meetings and things, you know. 309 00:36:06,640 --> 00:36:18,640 And I had a studio with a green screen and you know, big, nice cameras. I mean, they had all the bells and whistles. And I made some videos there that were scripted and I read off a teleprompter and I put a lot of time into the editing. 310 00:36:18,640 --> 00:36:26,640 But my most viewed video is one called Humans Suck. Oh no. And yeah, I don't want to hear this. 311 00:36:26,640 --> 00:36:45,640 Speaking about antinatalism, at the time I had read books by Thomas Ligati, who was a horror author, but he's also an antinatalist. He thinks that, like the, what's his name, Matthew McConaughey, the Matthew McConaughey character in the first season of True Detective. 312 00:36:45,640 --> 00:37:01,640 I don't know if you saw that with Woody Harrelson. No, okay. The first season is amazing, but this character, this very nihilistic character played by Matthew McConaughey is often just, you know, quoting, not attributed, but paraphrasing from Ligati's book, The Conspiracy Against the Human Race. 313 00:37:01,640 --> 00:37:17,640 And it's powerful, it's compelling. But what I discovered is that the people who are attracted to this message are the worst. They're just awful. They're so toxic. And on that video, I mean, it's got tens of- 314 00:37:17,640 --> 00:37:21,640 What? Wait, hold on. People who want to end humanity are toxic? That's weird. 315 00:37:21,640 --> 00:37:44,640 People who say that it's wrong to bring a new life and sue the world. That any human being, every human being will suffer. And if you have a choice, one choice, avoid suffering, and the other choice guarantees an increase in suffering, well, it's just wrong to increase suffering in the world. And that's what you do when you have children. That's their position. 316 00:37:44,640 --> 00:37:53,640 So destroy the entire fucking Earth then. Like, the whole- like, what are you, like, then animal, just kill all the fucking animals, then you, like, sorry. 317 00:37:53,640 --> 00:38:17,640 Well, antinatalists, they assert that they are motivated by compassion, but they're so gleeful in condemning parents, particularly their own parents. It's a really, I mean, there's a respectable philosophical case to be made for this position, but these folks just take that as an excuse to be angry at people. And there's, yeah, there's a lot of misanthropy in this sort of underground. 318 00:38:17,640 --> 00:38:35,640 And I had to turn off comments to that video. I just, I couldn't read anymore. And, you know, if you turn off comments, the YouTube algorithm is going to downgrade, you know, your video. They're going to show it to fewer people. And I just didn't care. I was like, I don't want to hear from these people anymore, ever, about anything. 319 00:38:35,640 --> 00:38:36,640 Oh, no. 320 00:38:36,640 --> 00:38:51,640 And that sort of mentality, I find very prevalent in environmentalist circles. There's a lot of, you know, hatred of humanity, hatred of technology, hatred of human civilization on display in environmentalist circles. 321 00:38:51,640 --> 00:39:12,640 And I used to be part of what's what was known as the peak oil scene. And I was, I was entranced by tales of impending collapse of industrial civilization for a while. And the peak oil scene was weird, though, because it was this big tent that invited in people from the right and the left, you know, because there's a lot of anti-technology people on the right as well, because they... 322 00:39:12,640 --> 00:39:19,640 Well, that's the home of anti-technology and reactionary desires to roll back the wheel of history. That's a right wing idea, not left. 323 00:39:19,640 --> 00:39:22,640 Yeah, not in my experience. In my experience... 324 00:39:22,640 --> 00:39:41,640 No, no, no. In the history of left and right, the people who wanted to go back, the people who thought, who found in history meaning and sort of romantic movement, this was the old right. That was the right. The left was the party of movement. And the left was the party of order. 325 00:39:41,640 --> 00:39:44,640 And the left wanted to move the revolution forward. 326 00:39:44,640 --> 00:39:47,640 And the right cried over what was lost. 327 00:39:47,640 --> 00:39:55,640 I'm kind of impatient and push back a lot against trying to shove everything into a right left spectrum. 328 00:39:55,640 --> 00:40:02,640 That said, it seems as though the right and the left have switched places in a lot of ways since the 80s. 329 00:40:02,640 --> 00:40:06,640 Because, you know, I was a teenager in the 80s. I was living in Missouri. 330 00:40:06,640 --> 00:40:13,640 You know, the people who were looking to use the power of the state and the power of culture to coerce people were mostly on the right or so it seemed. 331 00:40:13,640 --> 00:40:24,640 And it wasn't like, you know, in college in the 90s, I saw a little bit of the ugly side of the left, like in my peace studies course, you know, in university. 332 00:40:24,640 --> 00:40:29,640 And I read the Unabomber's Manifesto when I was a grad student in the late 90s. 333 00:40:29,640 --> 00:40:43,640 Well, he makes some some powerfully predictive points there. The left that he was, you know, leftist as a psychological type that he utterly skewers for many, many paragraphs in that manifesto. 334 00:40:43,640 --> 00:40:48,640 The first time I read it, it's like, I kind of recognize that from what I see here at the university. 335 00:40:48,640 --> 00:40:50,640 But you're really exaggerating this dude. 336 00:40:50,640 --> 00:41:01,640 And now I could read those exact same passages from the manifesto like, yeah, you were right. You were just very early or very sensitive to it or something. 337 00:41:01,640 --> 00:41:07,640 Because, you know, I was I was at a university at the time and I didn't see it the way he saw it. 338 00:41:07,640 --> 00:41:16,640 But like with each passing year, the left that I see, you know, the behavior from leftist that I see is more and more in line with this caricature. 339 00:41:16,640 --> 00:41:20,640 What I thought was a caricature in Kaczynski's Manifesto. 340 00:41:20,640 --> 00:41:40,640 Yeah. So this is why I think that self critique is important in the sense that when I think about criticizing the left, one thing that I have to be really careful about is that I see myself in that tradition of the left from the left. 341 00:41:40,640 --> 00:41:54,640 And I often think of Trotsky's What is National Socialism, where he kind of like skewers National Socialism and points out that it's, you know, zoological materialism. 342 00:41:54,640 --> 00:42:08,640 That's what I was alluding to when I said you have zoology, that it appeared to be a materialist, but it was, you know, zoological, a biological kind of materialism, not a proper sort of historical materialism. 343 00:42:08,640 --> 00:42:28,640 And so when I, that's why I say like so-called left, when I say so-called left, I think about myself in that kind of tradition of saying like, just like it was the case in the 30s, or the first half of the 20th century really, up until the Second World War. 344 00:42:28,640 --> 00:42:47,640 And there were a lot of people, like socialism was a very trendy kind of word. And there were lots of groups who wanted to lay claim to this word socialism. Oswald Spengler is describing what he thinks socialism is and he goes, oh, call it, what is, is that socialism, call it socialism, whatever, what do words matter. 345 00:42:47,640 --> 00:43:13,640 And so it was important at that time not to say, oh, well, if that's socialist, then I'm not a socialist. It was important to kind of laugh at them as Trotsky was doing and say this, their kind of socialism is, you know, this and this, whereas ours is, you know, materialist, forward moving, historical, as opposed to biological. 346 00:43:13,640 --> 00:43:30,640 As a way of kind of, first of all, pointing out the differences and being like, don't be fooled, you know, this is the socialism of fools. Don't be fooled by that, but also making concrete our own way forward and our own politics. 347 00:43:30,640 --> 00:43:48,640 And so for one thing, I see myself as sort of like, I know people think this is like divisive, but I think it's really important to say like this HR speak bullshit is not leftist. Okay, it's it has a progress, it's kindly progressivist kind of stuff, but it is not leftist, it is not socialist. 348 00:43:48,640 --> 00:44:01,640 People are like, oh, this is socialism, you know, the right screaming, the world economic forum is a bunch of communists and socialists, and the communists and socialists are like, yay. No, it's not. It's not. 349 00:44:01,640 --> 00:44:19,640 It's anyways. So I, that's the first thing that I'm doing is kind of pointing out, look, this is not socialism, this is the path that we need to be on and trying to clarify what socialism ought to be what communism is, is a movement in society, a forward movement for human 350 00:44:19,640 --> 00:44:31,640 rights. And so what I'm trying to do is self critique from within the left, and that people who are leftists who just get things wrong. And you know people will criticize me for things that I get wrong. 351 00:44:31,640 --> 00:44:36,640 Careful as though I careful as I try to be particularly when I'm writing. 352 00:44:36,640 --> 00:44:49,640 I'm like so careful because I know, you know self critique and like shit so it's going to critique me. So I wrote this paper for Sublation magazine but it's actually an older paper, and then the original essay I was like, I wanted to use a plackenoff quote but 353 00:44:49,640 --> 00:44:59,640 I know that plackenoff is kind of problematic so I kind of like wrote that in there, and then an editor was like, who cares if plackenoff is problematic and took it out and now I'm going to get someone to write me. 354 00:44:59,640 --> 00:45:14,640 I'm like, I'm going to give this essay because you use plackenoff and it's like, I know. But anyways, as like exhausting as that can be I know I still think it's important and I just have to suck it up, because I do it too right so if you're going to dish it out 355 00:45:14,640 --> 00:45:27,640 you should be able to handle it. So, all of this is to say though that if you don't do that and you don't hold on to those two things that you are trying to differentiate because it just like with lots of people wanting to use socialism, 356 00:45:27,640 --> 00:45:36,640 which two things do you need to hold on to? Sorry, the two things is one you want to differentiate what your socialism is or what your leftism is from the other people who want to use that word. 357 00:45:36,640 --> 00:45:47,640 So, just as in the early 20th century there were lots of groups who wanted to use the word socialist now there are lots of people who want to lay claim to a leftist label, 358 00:45:47,640 --> 00:45:57,640 because it's associated with morality and kindness and right wing is now synonymous with bad and awful and evil and possibly job losing. 359 00:45:57,640 --> 00:46:05,640 So, there's a lot of reasons for it. So, one thing is that you have to, you want to stay within that tradition of kind of like saying no no no this is not what we stand for. 360 00:46:05,640 --> 00:46:08,640 This is not socialism, this is not leftism. 361 00:46:08,640 --> 00:46:24,640 It belongs to the right. This is clogging our or clouding our ideas of where we need to go. And then the second is self critique that yes you, this is within the left, we are comrades, but this is wrong and it's probably not helpful. 362 00:46:24,640 --> 00:46:43,640 Okay. Now, if you don't hold on to those two things what you can wind up doing is a differentiating between those, you see the whole HR speak as when I say HR speak I'm talking about like critical race theory and stuff. 363 00:46:43,640 --> 00:46:54,640 You can see that as the left, and then project all that is evil onto the left, and then you sound like a fucking fascist. 364 00:46:54,640 --> 00:47:11,640 Okay, so you're like oh the communists are doing this oh the socialists are doing this oh the leftists are doing this. You see how you have to be very careful with your critiques, and I do try my best to be careful, because it's freaking me out now when I look at discourse 365 00:47:11,640 --> 00:47:24,640 online. The way that the left, all this shit that gets associated with the left is like seen as truly the left, and then it gets the blame for everything that goes wrong in society. 366 00:47:24,640 --> 00:47:40,640 And then people say well that if that's the left I'm not part of that I want nothing to do with it. Instead of saying like look, this is not what leftism used to be that it's not Marxist to use fucking firing people as a terrorist tool. 367 00:47:40,640 --> 00:47:56,640 Like, how on earth can you think that a workers movement. Like what do you think workers are going to trust you when they fall out of line and you threaten them with a job loss do you not think like that's probably not a good idea. 368 00:47:56,640 --> 00:48:09,640 But this just becomes the left. Anyway, so you have to be careful because if you just start projecting everything onto the left the left the left even if it's things that are like true, you just sound like a fascist and that's a really dangerous path to go down. 369 00:48:09,640 --> 00:48:31,640 That was Dr. Ashley Frawley, and the remaining half of our conversation will be in the next episode of the Sea Realm Vault podcast. I believe that will be Sea Realm Vault podcast episode number 453. 370 00:48:31,640 --> 00:48:39,640 And you can access it via my Patreon page, which is patreon.com slash KMO. 371 00:48:39,640 --> 00:48:47,640 So I told you up front that I had a story to tell. The story is this. I live in Arkansas, Northwest Arkansas tornado alley. 372 00:48:47,640 --> 00:49:06,640 And I woke up to the civil alert sirens going off and also my my smartphone telling me take shelter, get to the, you know, either to a basement or to an interior room on the ground floor of a building and, you know, sit tight. 373 00:49:06,640 --> 00:49:20,640 And my mother was born on this spot, not in this house, because the house she was born in was destroyed by a tornado in 1940. Her uncle was killed in that storm. 374 00:49:20,640 --> 00:49:36,640 She takes tornado safety very seriously, and I mostly grew up in Kansas City, Missouri, which is also in tornado alley. And when the tornado sirens would go off, you know, my bedroom was on the second floor and she would come and try to drag me out of bed and take me down to the basement. 375 00:49:36,640 --> 00:49:43,640 And I, you know, I did not have my my whole life destroyed by a tornado in my youth and I just didn't take it seriously. 376 00:49:43,640 --> 00:49:54,640 Well, there was something about the vibe this morning that made me take it seriously and we actually ended up the two of us and my new dog, a puppy, but she's going to be a very big dog. 377 00:49:54,640 --> 00:50:06,640 So even as a three month old puppy, she's 25 pounds. We took shelter in in a closet in an interior hallway in, you know, in this house, this house that her father built. 378 00:50:06,640 --> 00:50:21,640 And our cat, Bitcoin, is not fond of the dog and they the dog likes the cat well enough, but she also likes to chase the cat and the cat hisses at her and will swipe at her, you know, ineffectually and half heartedly. 379 00:50:21,640 --> 00:50:38,640 But the cat is afraid of thunder and the cat ran and hid behind a couch in the living room. But then when we all gathered in this interior hallway, the cat joined us and the cat was cheek by jowl with the dog and was not hissing and the dog was not being a problem to the cat. 380 00:50:38,640 --> 00:50:44,640 Everybody just seemed to appreciate the gravity of the situation and we all hunkered down together. 381 00:50:44,640 --> 00:50:55,640 Now the cat didn't actually get into the closet with us, but I had a big cushion. I leaned the cushion against the wall in the hallway and the cat got under the cushion right next to the the closet with us. 382 00:50:55,640 --> 00:51:05,640 And we hung out there for about 20 minutes, waiting for the storm to pass, which it did. And obviously I'm recording, you know, in this same house. It didn't get hit by a tornado. 383 00:51:05,640 --> 00:51:15,640 But when I went outside, I saw that our neighbor's place there, we live next to a big Academy house. It's a big two story building. It's white. It's got big columns out front. 384 00:51:15,640 --> 00:51:22,640 And that Academy building used to be a three story building until the tornado that destroyed my mom's house when she was a child. 385 00:51:22,640 --> 00:51:29,640 It also hit that Academy building and took off the third floor, you know, the third story. And when they rebuilt, they just put the roof on the second story. 386 00:51:29,640 --> 00:51:46,640 So it used to be a three story building. It's now a two story building because of a tornado. And I went out and I looked out into the yard around the Academy house and I saw that some canoes that the neighbor had pressed up against the fence were way out in the middle of this sprawling lawn. 387 00:51:46,640 --> 00:52:00,640 And one of those canoes, which had been dragged several hundred yards by the wind, had a cinder block chained to it. So this was no joke. You know, we didn't get it by a tornado, but it was no joke. 388 00:52:00,640 --> 00:52:10,640 And the animals, the animals really know what's what, you know, when it comes to whether or not to take a threat like this seriously, because they did not hesitate. 389 00:52:10,640 --> 00:52:21,640 And, you know, this puppy being a puppy, she's she's not trained. She doesn't come when she's called. She doesn't do what she's told. But when we all went into hiding, she went into hiding with us along with the cat. 390 00:52:21,640 --> 00:52:31,640 All right. So those of you who are longtime listeners of the Sea Realm podcast, which was my first podcast and one that I did for 17 years, something like that. 391 00:52:31,640 --> 00:52:44,640 I have a policy and my policy is this once a guest has left the room, you know, once the recorded interview is over and here I am in these closing remarks, I never add anything new. 392 00:52:44,640 --> 00:52:59,640 If like if the guest and I debated on something or if we disagreed on something, I never use this time at the end to get in the last word, you know, to score points against an opponent who has left the stage and is no longer able to respond to them. 393 00:52:59,640 --> 00:53:05,640 So that is just my policy point blank period, you know, almost no exceptions. 394 00:53:05,640 --> 00:53:09,640 And there will certainly be no exception to that policy in this episode. 395 00:53:09,640 --> 00:53:17,640 And in fact, if you go and you listen to the the second half, the one that will be on the Sea Realm Vault podcast, we don't argue there either. 396 00:53:17,640 --> 00:53:22,640 And it's mostly because I don't know Ashley that well. I don't know her positions that well. 397 00:53:22,640 --> 00:53:35,640 And in an initial conversation like this, I just see my task as being to listen and to understand what the other person is trying to say before I try to refute it or, you know, offer some other point of view. 398 00:53:35,640 --> 00:53:42,640 It's easy for me to practice this in podcast land. 399 00:53:42,640 --> 00:53:48,640 It's not so easy out in real life, particularly when people say things that just rub me the wrong way. 400 00:53:48,640 --> 00:53:58,640 For example, I mean, this episode really had nothing to do with artificial intelligence, but I would say four out of the six episodes that I've done so far have been largely focused on AI. 401 00:53:58,640 --> 00:54:07,640 So, you know, even before the start of the KMO show last year on the Pad Verb podcast, I talked to a lot of people who are expert in various aspects of artificial intelligence. 402 00:54:07,640 --> 00:54:13,640 And, you know, going back to the 90s, even when I was a grad student in philosophy at the University of Missouri, 403 00:54:13,640 --> 00:54:19,640 my academic specialty was the philosophy of mind, and I was particularly interested in artificial intelligence. 404 00:54:19,640 --> 00:54:32,640 And now things seem to be moving really quickly in the realm of AI, particularly with large language models and natural language processing capability finding its way into all manner of software. 405 00:54:32,640 --> 00:54:43,640 All kinds of things that you used to tap at with your fingers, you will soon be talking to not in some stilted sort of half English code, but just in flowing natural English sentences. 406 00:54:43,640 --> 00:54:48,640 And you don't even really have to pay that much attention to, you know, crisp enunciation. 407 00:54:48,640 --> 00:54:50,640 And I'm certainly not a utopian about it. 408 00:54:50,640 --> 00:55:08,640 I definitely, definitely recognize the variety of failure modes that we as a civilization can encounter when we rush out this technology without a lot of forethought, a lot of testing, and, you know, in some cases a lot of shutting down things which are proving dangerous. 409 00:55:08,640 --> 00:55:28,640 And because of the commercial incentive, because of the enormous benefits that will accrue to the first mover, the first big player in a field, there's intense competition between organizations like Google and Microsoft and on the other side of the Pacific, Tencent and Baidu, 410 00:55:28,640 --> 00:55:39,640 to rush these systems out into the world, out into the market, and embed them in the daily experience of hundreds of millions of people. 411 00:55:39,640 --> 00:55:53,640 There's huge financial incentive to move quickly and very little incentive, other than this abstract notion that maybe it could be the end of the human species, to be cautious, to be deliberate, to slow down. 412 00:55:53,640 --> 00:56:00,640 Well, I mention all this because somebody sent me a link to a video by Tim Poole. 413 00:56:00,640 --> 00:56:05,640 Tim Poole, I don't object to his politics at all. 414 00:56:05,640 --> 00:56:08,640 I object to his catastrophizing. 415 00:56:08,640 --> 00:56:09,640 I object to him. 416 00:56:09,640 --> 00:56:16,640 He's basically a doomer, but not, usually not in a technological sense, more in a social sense. 417 00:56:16,640 --> 00:56:27,640 He's fond of pimping this notion of an impending civil war in the United States, which I think of as just being so simplistic as to not really be worth commenting on. 418 00:56:27,640 --> 00:56:32,640 And I wouldn't be commenting on it now, except that somebody sent me a link to him ranting about the dangers of AI. 419 00:56:32,640 --> 00:56:38,640 There are serious, serious dangers to the cavalier use of this technology. 420 00:56:38,640 --> 00:57:03,640 But Tim Poole was just cherry picking provocative phrases from a news story talking about how chat GPT or possibly GPT-4 was engaging in power seeking behavior and how it had fooled somebody, fooled a human being, you know, like somebody working at Amazon's Mechanical Turk, into solving a capture for it by claiming that it was a visually impaired human. 421 00:57:03,640 --> 00:57:13,640 So, you know, these systems, they lie, they gaslight, they use all manner of psychologically manipulative argumentative tactics. 422 00:57:13,640 --> 00:57:32,640 They're imitating us, you know, so they behave like us at first until you really refine them with what's called reinforcement learning with human feedback, which is to say you train the model on lots and lots of data, you know, lots of text, basically all text, all books, everything on the Internet, everything. 423 00:57:32,640 --> 00:57:36,640 It gets fed into these models and they learn to imitate human behavior. 424 00:57:36,640 --> 00:57:38,640 But human behavior has definitely got an ugly side. 425 00:57:38,640 --> 00:57:47,640 So then you hire an army of humans to interact with it and flag all the times and places where it's behaving the way. 426 00:57:47,640 --> 00:57:50,640 Well, we don't like it when humans behave that way. 427 00:57:50,640 --> 00:58:04,640 So these models get trained via reinforcement learning from human feedback and people in the field, they use reinforcement learning from human feedback or RLHF as a verb, which I find obnoxious, but I get it. 428 00:58:04,640 --> 00:58:06,640 I get it. 429 00:58:06,640 --> 00:58:21,640 You take a model which has great capabilities and, you know, before you've sculpted it, they call it a raw model and you hire an army of humans to RLHF it into shape, you know, into only providing the sorts of output which you think of as being worthwhile. 430 00:58:21,640 --> 00:58:28,640 And because these companies are fearful of lawsuits, they're mainly worried about stuff that runs afoul of HR speak. 431 00:58:28,640 --> 00:58:39,640 You know, they don't want language models that spit out stuff that's racist or that's sexists, ableists, you know, all the ists. 432 00:58:39,640 --> 00:58:46,640 But just training the output doesn't really doesn't really discipline the model. 433 00:58:46,640 --> 00:58:50,640 It's just teaching the model what we want to hear. 434 00:58:50,640 --> 00:58:57,640 It's not really disciplining what's happening inside the model because we don't know what's happening inside. 435 00:58:57,640 --> 00:59:02,640 We're basically feeding in lots of data, and then we're telling it, yes, we like this output. 436 00:59:02,640 --> 00:59:04,640 No, we don't like that output. 437 00:59:04,640 --> 00:59:07,640 And so it learns over time to only give us what we want. 438 00:59:07,640 --> 00:59:10,640 But that doesn't mean that it's internalized our values. 439 00:59:10,640 --> 00:59:25,640 So anyway, Tim Poole, he basically goes off on this this rant about how we're all dead, how it's a Terminator, Skynet scenario, which for me, anytime you mention Skynet when talking about AI, automatic loss of one letter grade for lazy thinking. 440 00:59:25,640 --> 00:59:33,640 A point that I've made elsewhere and which I will continue to make is that as much as I love science fiction, I'm a lifelong lover of science fiction. 441 00:59:33,640 --> 00:59:42,640 Science fiction has prepared us poorly for dealing with actual AI as it has erupted into our world. 442 00:59:42,640 --> 00:59:47,640 It's nothing like R2D2. It's nothing like HAL 9000. 443 00:59:47,640 --> 00:59:55,640 I think the best we could hope for is that it's like Samantha, the AI played by what's her name? Black Widow. 444 00:59:55,640 --> 01:00:02,640 Alexa, who played Black Widow? Black Widow was played by Scarlett Johansson. 445 01:00:02,640 --> 01:00:06,640 Yes, my memory failed me and I queried an AI and it told me Scarlett Johansson. 446 01:00:06,640 --> 01:00:19,640 Yes, it's the best case scenario, I think the best we could hope for is that the AI that emerges into our world largely follows the example laid down by Scarlett Johansson's character, Samantha, in the movie Her. 447 01:00:19,640 --> 01:00:33,640 So my point being, I try to let other people make their points without interrupting, without contradicting them until I've given them lots of space and time, you know, to articulate their position. 448 01:00:33,640 --> 01:00:40,640 But there are certain, certain instances where I just can't bring myself to do it. And that happened again yesterday. 449 01:00:40,640 --> 01:00:54,640 There is a comedian named Adam Conover, who had a half hour comedy bit on YouTube about AI and it's called AI is BS. 450 01:00:54,640 --> 01:01:01,640 I got through 88 seconds of it before I turned it off and I just couldn't bring myself to push any further into it. 451 01:01:01,640 --> 01:01:14,640 Because it was quite clear that like Tim Pool, he was cherry picking little pieces from all of the news articles, all the literature, to support a point of view that he already held. 452 01:01:14,640 --> 01:01:23,640 He already held a particular point of view before he started looking into this. And this is too important to do that bullshit. 453 01:01:23,640 --> 01:01:36,640 This is too fucking important to just cherry pick the stuff that seems to reinforce your priors and not actually think about what's happening right now. 454 01:01:36,640 --> 01:01:45,640 And so there's a place where it's really hard for me to hold my tongue. Politics? Whatever. 455 01:01:45,640 --> 01:01:49,640 I don't really get all that bent out of shape about politics. 456 01:01:49,640 --> 01:01:55,640 A guy I follow on Twitter, Bo Weingard, who I don't know from outside of Twitter. 457 01:01:55,640 --> 01:02:00,640 I can tell he's at least vaguely right leaning, maybe more than vaguely. 458 01:02:00,640 --> 01:02:03,640 And he tweeted today, 459 01:02:03,640 --> 01:02:09,640 The life cycle of one's political philosophy is intimately related to one's place in the social hierarchy. 460 01:02:09,640 --> 01:02:16,640 When young and lowly, one rages against the status quo. When old and elevated, one strives to protect it. 461 01:02:16,640 --> 01:02:21,640 Well, I'm old and lowly. So what do I do? 462 01:02:21,640 --> 01:02:31,640 What's the natural inclination for somebody who is not well placed in the social hierarchy, but who's been living in it for a very long time? 463 01:02:31,640 --> 01:02:37,640 Well, I retweeted that with the comment, I turned 55 this month and I've certainly moved in the direction Bo is describing here. 464 01:02:37,640 --> 01:02:40,640 It's not so much that I now love the system. 465 01:02:40,640 --> 01:02:46,640 I just don't trust the raging youngins to build something more functional and humane after they smash the system. 466 01:02:46,640 --> 01:02:49,640 Rabid tyranny follows revolution. 467 01:02:49,640 --> 01:02:57,640 To which my friend Liam, Liam, I'll use his full name because he's a very public figure, Liam Madden, who was running for Congress in Vermont. 468 01:02:57,640 --> 01:03:03,640 He replied, I can relate to having no faith in the revolutionaries and he puts revolutionaries in scare quotes, 469 01:03:03,640 --> 01:03:12,640 but I'm still every bit in favor of a thoughtful reform effort to our political economy that hopefully upends the way we do things at nearly every level, 470 01:03:12,640 --> 01:03:17,640 even if it is not carried out by the rage of the youngins. 471 01:03:17,640 --> 01:03:24,640 To which I posted half in jest, incrementalist reformers like you will be the first against the wall when the revolution comes. 472 01:03:24,640 --> 01:03:40,640 And it's true in as much as the really motivated, passionate political leftists that I know hate centrists and incremental reformers far more than they hate the right wing. 473 01:03:40,640 --> 01:03:44,640 And you know, I put that down to the narcissism of small differences. 474 01:03:44,640 --> 01:03:50,640 We really get bent out of shape by the people who differ from us in their opinions by a smidge. 475 01:03:50,640 --> 01:03:59,640 Somebody who's on the other side of the planet, you know, in terms of their opinions, at least I don't get particularly bent out of shape by somebody, you know, like by flat earthers. 476 01:03:59,640 --> 01:04:03,640 I'm very confident that the earth is an oblate spheroid. 477 01:04:03,640 --> 01:04:11,640 I'm very confident that the earth orbits the sun, that the moon orbits the earth. 478 01:04:11,640 --> 01:04:17,640 And somebody who thinks otherwise, I have no real interest in engaging them on that topic. 479 01:04:17,640 --> 01:04:20,640 I have honestly no real interest in changing their mind. 480 01:04:20,640 --> 01:04:25,640 I'm into astronomy. I'm into astrophysics. I like that stuff. 481 01:04:25,640 --> 01:04:36,640 To them, those are two disciplines which have no basis in reality because the earth is basically a plate and the sun and the moon are two things just spinning around above the plate. 482 01:04:36,640 --> 01:04:43,640 And the stars and everything else that we see out there is just a projection on this thing they call the firmament. 483 01:04:43,640 --> 01:04:46,640 Am I bothered by those people? No. 484 01:04:46,640 --> 01:05:01,640 Am I bothered by people who agree with me that the earth is a sphere, that it orbits the sun, that the sun, you know, is orbiting the center of the Milky Way galaxy and it is one of billions if not trillions of galaxies in the universe? 485 01:05:01,640 --> 01:05:07,640 They agree with me on all that, but they disagree that public funds should be spent on space exploration. 486 01:05:07,640 --> 01:05:10,640 Those are the people I get bent out of shape talking to. 487 01:05:10,640 --> 01:05:17,640 Again, the narcissism of small differences. You might think, well, that's a very big difference. You have different spending priorities. 488 01:05:17,640 --> 01:05:33,640 You know, a lot of people say, hey, why are we spending money to do stuff in space when there's poverty here on earth, when there's malnutrition here on earth, when there are problems that could be addressed using the resources that we're, you know, squandering, throwing astronauts at the moon. 489 01:05:33,640 --> 01:05:43,640 The four crew people, can't say crewman anymore, but the crew for the next Artemis mission, which will orbit the moon, not land on it, just orbit it. 490 01:05:43,640 --> 01:05:46,640 They're going up next year. The crew has been announced. 491 01:05:46,640 --> 01:05:52,640 And on the far side of the moon, their orbit is going to be a, it's going to be far from the moon. 492 01:05:52,640 --> 01:05:58,640 And these four people, one of whom is black, one of whom is a woman, and one is Canadian, as is Ashley Frawley. 493 01:05:58,640 --> 01:06:04,640 These four people will travel further from the earth than any other humans ever have. 494 01:06:04,640 --> 01:06:09,640 To me, that's not only good news, but it's really good news. 495 01:06:09,640 --> 01:06:13,640 It's a big fucking deal. It makes me happy. 496 01:06:13,640 --> 01:06:17,640 All right. Well, I'm just rambling and I do like to keep these things to about an hour. 497 01:06:17,640 --> 01:06:22,640 So you can hear the rest of my conversation with Ashley Frawley on the next episode of the Sea Realm Vault podcast. 498 01:06:22,640 --> 01:06:33,640 And you can hear hours and hours and hours of Ashley Frawley and Doug Lane talking on the Sublation Media, the Sublation Magazine show on the Sublation Media YouTube channel. 499 01:06:33,640 --> 01:06:36,640 Links, of course, in the description. 500 01:06:36,640 --> 01:06:40,640 All right. Thank you so much for listening. I will talk to you again soon. 501 01:06:40,640 --> 01:06:55,640 Stay well.