WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:01.960 Okay, I want to start by putting a very specific 00:00:01.960 --> 00:00:04.679 image in your head. I want you to picture the 00:00:04.679 --> 00:00:07.500 student center at University College London. 00:00:07.799 --> 00:00:10.220 It's, you know, a modern building, lots of glass, 00:00:10.480 --> 00:00:12.179 students rushing around with coffee, stressed 00:00:12.179 --> 00:00:16.039 about exams. And right there, in the middle of 00:00:16.039 --> 00:00:19.640 all this bustle, inside a big glass display case, 00:00:19.920 --> 00:00:23.399 sits an old man. And we should be clear, we don't 00:00:23.399 --> 00:00:25.280 mean a statue or a painting. No, not at all. 00:00:25.600 --> 00:00:27.820 We mean the man himself. He's sitting on a wooden 00:00:27.820 --> 00:00:29.859 chair holding this walking stick and he's wearing 00:00:29.859 --> 00:00:32.820 an 18th century coat and breeches. His actual 00:00:32.820 --> 00:00:34.939 clothes. His actual clothes. And if you look 00:00:34.939 --> 00:00:37.600 closely at his hands, you realize, wait, those 00:00:37.600 --> 00:00:40.640 are bone. That is a literal skeleton padded out 00:00:40.640 --> 00:00:43.179 with hay dressed in his own clothes. It is Jeremy 00:00:43.179 --> 00:00:46.299 Bentham, the Otto icon. It has to be the most 00:00:46.299 --> 00:00:49.020 bizarre memorial in all of academia. I mean, 00:00:49.020 --> 00:00:51.100 most people get a plaque, maybe a building named 00:00:51.100 --> 00:00:53.259 after them. This guy decided to become a piece 00:00:53.259 --> 00:00:56.229 of furniture. He did. But looking at photos of 00:00:56.229 --> 00:00:58.710 this thing, the auto icon, it creates this immediate 00:00:58.710 --> 00:01:02.509 tension. On one hand, it looks kind of like a 00:01:02.509 --> 00:01:06.010 wax museum figure that's seen better days, you 00:01:06.010 --> 00:01:07.950 know? A little creepy, yeah. But then on the 00:01:07.950 --> 00:01:09.790 other hand, you find out the history and the 00:01:09.790 --> 00:01:13.290 fact that his actual skeleton is in there. It 00:01:13.290 --> 00:01:17.549 moves from quirky to genuinely macabre really, 00:01:17.609 --> 00:01:19.530 really fast. It does. But, you know, that tension 00:01:19.530 --> 00:01:22.349 is perfect. It's the perfect entry point for 00:01:22.349 --> 00:01:24.859 understanding the man himself. How so? Well, 00:01:24.939 --> 00:01:27.420 Jeremy Bentham is remembered today mostly for 00:01:27.420 --> 00:01:30.500 this eccentric afterlife, or maybe as a footnote 00:01:30.500 --> 00:01:34.480 in a philosophy class. But the mind that orchestrated 00:01:34.480 --> 00:01:37.079 that display, the mind that said, stuff me with 00:01:37.079 --> 00:01:39.459 hay and put me in a box, was one of the most 00:01:39.459 --> 00:01:42.700 rigorous, radical, and frankly disturbing intellects 00:01:42.700 --> 00:01:45.269 of the last 300 years. We're talking about the 00:01:45.269 --> 00:01:48.489 father of utilitarianism. We are. But we're also 00:01:48.489 --> 00:01:50.489 talking about a man who wanted to reduce all 00:01:50.489 --> 00:01:52.689 of human morality to a mathematical equation. 00:01:52.849 --> 00:01:55.790 A literal algorithm. A literal algorithm. He 00:01:55.790 --> 00:01:58.129 was a man who designed a prison system that inspired 00:01:58.129 --> 00:02:01.030 modern surveillance states. And yet, at the exact 00:02:01.030 --> 00:02:04.290 same time, he was the man arguing for the decriminalization 00:02:04.290 --> 00:02:07.230 of homosexuality and equal rights for women when 00:02:07.230 --> 00:02:09.289 most of his contemporaries were still, I don't 00:02:09.289 --> 00:02:11.919 know. trading slaves or burning witches. See, 00:02:12.000 --> 00:02:13.740 that's the part that always trips me up. You 00:02:13.740 --> 00:02:16.759 have this guy who sounds like a cold calculating 00:02:16.759 --> 00:02:20.379 machine, literally wanting to govern by spreadsheet, 00:02:20.520 --> 00:02:22.560 but he somehow ends up landing on these incredibly 00:02:22.560 --> 00:02:26.259 progressive, humane positions. That is the riddle 00:02:26.259 --> 00:02:28.979 we have to unpack in this deep dive. Was he, 00:02:29.000 --> 00:02:31.919 as he truly believed, a genius who unlocked the 00:02:31.919 --> 00:02:35.180 secret code of human happiness? Or was he? as 00:02:35.180 --> 00:02:37.819 Karl Marx so famously described him, a genius 00:02:37.819 --> 00:02:41.020 of bourgeois stupidity. Marx really didn't pull 00:02:41.020 --> 00:02:43.240 any punches with him, did he? Marx absolutely 00:02:43.240 --> 00:02:45.860 loathed him. He thought Bentham's view of humanity 00:02:45.860 --> 00:02:49.439 was so narrow, so shopkeeper -like that it was 00:02:49.439 --> 00:02:51.759 just insulting to the species. Wow. But to understand 00:02:51.759 --> 00:02:54.599 why Marx was so angry and why Bentham is sitting 00:02:54.599 --> 00:02:56.759 in that glass box right now, we have to go back. 00:02:56.819 --> 00:02:58.419 We have to look at where this obsession with 00:02:58.419 --> 00:03:00.500 utility and measurement came from. And it all 00:03:00.500 --> 00:03:02.840 starts with a very lonely, very brilliant child 00:03:02.840 --> 00:03:05.949 in London. back in 1748 i was reading about his 00:03:05.949 --> 00:03:09.150 early life and lonely feels like a huge understatement 00:03:09.150 --> 00:03:11.490 we hear the term child prodigy a lot you know 00:03:11.490 --> 00:03:14.550 mozart and people like that but bentham feels 00:03:14.550 --> 00:03:17.289 different it wasn't just that he was smart it's 00:03:17.289 --> 00:03:19.830 that he seemed to bypass childhood entirely he 00:03:19.830 --> 00:03:21.710 really did he was born into a wealthy family 00:03:21.710 --> 00:03:24.930 his father jeremiah bentham was a clerk to the 00:03:24.930 --> 00:03:27.349 worshipful company of scriveners which is you 00:03:27.349 --> 00:03:29.509 know basically a high -powered legal administrator 00:03:29.509 --> 00:03:32.150 right and jeremiah didn't just want a smart son 00:03:32.509 --> 00:03:35.289 He wanted a trophy. He wanted a genius. He could 00:03:35.289 --> 00:03:37.930 show off. And he got one. There's this famous 00:03:37.930 --> 00:03:41.310 story that they found Jeremy, as a toddler, literally 00:03:41.310 --> 00:03:42.969 still in skirts because that's how they dressed, 00:03:43.110 --> 00:03:45.849 little boys, then poached at a desk reading a 00:03:45.849 --> 00:03:48.270 multi -volume History of England. Rapin's History 00:03:48.270 --> 00:03:51.650 of England. It's a dense, dry, academic text. 00:03:51.949 --> 00:03:53.669 And he wasn't just looking at the pictures. He 00:03:53.669 --> 00:03:55.430 was actually reading it. At what age? Maybe two 00:03:55.430 --> 00:03:57.750 or three. He started learning Latin at age three. 00:03:58.069 --> 00:04:01.120 By age seven... While other kids were playing 00:04:01.120 --> 00:04:03.919 with hoops and sticks in the street, little Jeremy 00:04:03.919 --> 00:04:06.539 was performing Handel sonatas on the violin for 00:04:06.539 --> 00:04:09.159 his father's dinner guests. That sounds absolutely 00:04:09.159 --> 00:04:11.379 miserable. It just sounds like he was a performing 00:04:11.379 --> 00:04:14.379 monkey for his dad. It's not too far off, honestly. 00:04:14.560 --> 00:04:17.720 His father was incredibly pushy. He saw this 00:04:17.720 --> 00:04:20.300 incredible intellect in his son and immediately 00:04:20.300 --> 00:04:23.579 mapped out a trajectory for him. Oxford, law 00:04:23.579 --> 00:04:25.970 school. And then eventually, Lord Chancellor 00:04:25.970 --> 00:04:27.850 of England. That was the goal. And he didn't 00:04:27.850 --> 00:04:30.629 waste any time. He sent Jeremy to Queens College, 00:04:30.829 --> 00:04:35.329 Oxford at age 12? 12. 12. I mean, just stop and 00:04:35.329 --> 00:04:37.790 think about 12 -year -olds today. They're awkward. 00:04:37.889 --> 00:04:40.290 They're playing video games. Imagine dropping 00:04:40.290 --> 00:04:42.829 a 12 -year -old into a university full of... 00:04:43.000 --> 00:04:46.639 drinking, gambling, 18 -year -old aristocrats 00:04:46.639 --> 00:04:49.560 in the 1760s. It was complete disaster for him 00:04:49.560 --> 00:04:52.339 socially. He was small, he was physically weak, 00:04:52.459 --> 00:04:54.939 and he was intellectually superior to everyone 00:04:54.939 --> 00:04:56.899 around him, including his tutors, which did not 00:04:56.899 --> 00:04:58.819 make him popular. I can't imagine it would. He 00:04:58.819 --> 00:05:01.259 developed this profound, lifelong sense of isolation. 00:05:01.600 --> 00:05:04.040 He looked at the world around him. All the rituals, 00:05:04.240 --> 00:05:06.500 the hazing, the religious oaths he was forced 00:05:06.500 --> 00:05:08.519 to swear to get in, and he didn't see tradition. 00:05:08.759 --> 00:05:11.620 He just saw nonsense. Illogical, inefficient 00:05:11.620 --> 00:05:14.560 nonsense. And this seems to be the seed of his 00:05:14.560 --> 00:05:16.740 entire personality, right? He's the ultimate 00:05:16.740 --> 00:05:19.240 outsider looking in, seeing these complex systems 00:05:19.240 --> 00:05:21.779 that everyone else accepts as normal and just 00:05:21.779 --> 00:05:24.899 going, this is stupid. Why on earth are we doing 00:05:24.899 --> 00:05:28.160 it this way? Exactly. That question, why are 00:05:28.160 --> 00:05:31.439 we doing it this way, drove his entire life. 00:05:31.660 --> 00:05:34.439 So he graduates at 15, gets his master's at 18. 00:05:34.639 --> 00:05:37.279 And then, you know, following his father's grand 00:05:37.279 --> 00:05:39.839 plan, he goes off to train as a lawyer. He's 00:05:39.839 --> 00:05:43.550 called to the bar in 1769. So he's 21 years old, 00:05:43.649 --> 00:05:45.550 he's brilliant, he has all the right connections, 00:05:45.790 --> 00:05:48.149 he is perfectly poised to become incredibly rich 00:05:48.149 --> 00:05:50.350 and powerful. The world is his oyster. And then 00:05:50.350 --> 00:05:53.269 he just doesn't do it. He just stops. He attends 00:05:53.269 --> 00:05:55.889 the courts, he watches the judges, he reads the 00:05:55.889 --> 00:05:59.209 casebooks, and he is... utterly horrified by 00:05:59.209 --> 00:06:01.509 what he finds. What was it about the law that 00:06:01.509 --> 00:06:03.310 broke him? Because you'd think a guy who loves 00:06:03.310 --> 00:06:05.629 books and logic and systems would absolutely 00:06:05.629 --> 00:06:08.370 thrive in law. You would think that. But you 00:06:08.370 --> 00:06:10.209 have to understand the state of English law in 00:06:10.209 --> 00:06:12.569 the 18th century wasn't a logical system at all. 00:06:12.709 --> 00:06:15.209 It was what we call common law. Which means it's 00:06:15.209 --> 00:06:17.389 based on precedent. Right. On the decisions of 00:06:17.389 --> 00:06:20.029 previous judges. Yes. But imagine that principle 00:06:20.029 --> 00:06:23.389 stretched out over centuries. You have thousands 00:06:23.389 --> 00:06:25.990 upon thousands of cases, often contradictory, 00:06:26.209 --> 00:06:29.670 all written in obscure legal jargon, hidden away 00:06:29.670 --> 00:06:32.149 in expensive books that only wealthy lawyers 00:06:32.149 --> 00:06:34.709 owned. So there was no single rule book you could 00:06:34.709 --> 00:06:37.329 go buy at the store. Not at all. If you as a 00:06:37.329 --> 00:06:39.529 regular person wanted to know if you were breaking 00:06:39.529 --> 00:06:42.670 the law, you had to hire a lawyer. to basically 00:06:42.670 --> 00:06:45.389 guess what the law was based on what some judge 00:06:45.389 --> 00:06:48.410 said in 1650. So it's a total pay -to -play system. 00:06:48.529 --> 00:06:50.230 If you can't afford the lawyer, you have no idea 00:06:50.230 --> 00:06:52.089 what the rules of the game are. Bentham had a 00:06:52.089 --> 00:06:54.370 name for it. He called it the Demon of Chicane. 00:06:54.569 --> 00:06:56.750 The Demon of Chicane. It sounds like a character 00:06:56.750 --> 00:06:59.490 from a fantasy novel. It does, but he meant it 00:06:59.490 --> 00:07:02.470 as a profound moral evil. He genuinely saw it 00:07:02.470 --> 00:07:04.990 as a conspiracy. He believed that judges and 00:07:04.990 --> 00:07:08.089 lawyers intentionally kept the law messy and 00:07:08.089 --> 00:07:10.610 obscure so they could charge exorbitant fees 00:07:10.610 --> 00:07:13.240 to navigate it. It was a self -perpetuating business 00:07:13.240 --> 00:07:16.000 model. Exactly. He called it judge -made law, 00:07:16.160 --> 00:07:18.399 and he had this brilliant cutting analogy for 00:07:18.399 --> 00:07:20.579 it. He compared it to the way a man trains a 00:07:20.579 --> 00:07:23.899 dog. Okay, how so? He said, and I'm paraphrasing 00:07:23.899 --> 00:07:26.399 here, you wait for the dog to do something you 00:07:26.399 --> 00:07:29.019 don't like, and then you beat him. That is the 00:07:29.019 --> 00:07:32.100 way you make laws for your dog, and that is the 00:07:32.100 --> 00:07:34.279 way the judges make law for you and me. Wow. 00:07:34.699 --> 00:07:37.680 You don't know the rule until after you're already 00:07:37.680 --> 00:07:40.170 being punished for breaking it. That is a devastating 00:07:40.170 --> 00:07:42.730 critique. And honestly, it still feels a little 00:07:42.730 --> 00:07:45.009 relevant today when you look at, you know, modern 00:07:45.009 --> 00:07:48.269 tax codes or those ridiculously long terms of 00:07:48.269 --> 00:07:51.430 service agreements. Nobody reads. It really is. 00:07:51.509 --> 00:07:54.310 So Bentham makes this radical decision. He decides 00:07:54.310 --> 00:07:56.819 he isn't going to practice law. He is going to 00:07:56.819 --> 00:07:59.420 fix it. He becomes obsessed with this idea of 00:07:59.420 --> 00:08:02.199 codification. In fact, he actually invented the 00:08:02.199 --> 00:08:04.399 verb to codify. He wants to delete the whole 00:08:04.399 --> 00:08:06.899 broken system and write a new clean operating 00:08:06.899 --> 00:08:10.300 system from scratch. A single clear book of laws 00:08:10.300 --> 00:08:13.120 written in plain English, one that any citizen 00:08:13.120 --> 00:08:15.959 could read, understand and follow without paying 00:08:15.959 --> 00:08:19.079 a lawyer. He spent the next 60 years of his life 00:08:19.079 --> 00:08:21.819 trying to sell this idea to anyone who would 00:08:21.819 --> 00:08:24.910 listen. Anyone. He wrote to the kings of Europe. 00:08:25.009 --> 00:08:27.490 He wrote to the revolutionary governors in Latin 00:08:27.490 --> 00:08:30.889 America. He even wrote a very long letter to 00:08:30.889 --> 00:08:32.950 President James Madison in the United States. 00:08:33.049 --> 00:08:34.389 So he just writes to the president and says, 00:08:34.509 --> 00:08:36.529 Dear President Madison, I hear you have a new 00:08:36.529 --> 00:08:39.909 country. Your laws are probably a mess. Let me 00:08:39.909 --> 00:08:42.070 write them for you. That's pretty much the gist 00:08:42.070 --> 00:08:44.570 of it. Yeah. He told Madison that the American 00:08:44.570 --> 00:08:47.769 common law system was fundamentally unconstitutional 00:08:47.769 --> 00:08:50.269 because the laws weren't written down by the 00:08:50.269 --> 00:08:52.330 legislators the people elected. What did Madison 00:08:52.330 --> 00:08:55.379 say? Madison politely declined, essentially saying, 00:08:55.419 --> 00:08:57.700 thanks, but no thanks, we're good. It's the sheer 00:08:57.700 --> 00:09:00.840 arrogance that gets me, but also underneath it, 00:09:00.899 --> 00:09:03.779 this incredible optimism. He really believed 00:09:03.779 --> 00:09:05.779 that if you could just write the rules down clearly 00:09:05.779 --> 00:09:08.500 enough, you could solve most of human conflict. 00:09:08.779 --> 00:09:11.279 That's the key. Bentham was an enlightenment 00:09:11.279 --> 00:09:15.039 thinker on steroids. He believed that pure, dispassionate 00:09:15.039 --> 00:09:18.159 reason could solve absolutely everything. But 00:09:18.159 --> 00:09:20.460 this brings us to a really important clash of 00:09:20.460 --> 00:09:22.940 ideas. Because while Bentham was trying to fix 00:09:22.940 --> 00:09:25.440 laws with logic, the Americans and the French 00:09:25.440 --> 00:09:28.019 were having revolutions based on rights. Right. 00:09:28.679 --> 00:09:32.740 1776. The Declaration of Independence. We hold 00:09:32.740 --> 00:09:35.759 these truths to be self -evident. And Bentham 00:09:35.759 --> 00:09:37.379 read that and thought it was the stupidest thing 00:09:37.379 --> 00:09:39.379 he'd ever heard. He hated the Declaration of 00:09:39.379 --> 00:09:41.700 Independence, the foundational document of modern 00:09:41.700 --> 00:09:46.259 democracy. He despised it. Viciously. In 1776, 00:09:46.399 --> 00:09:48.799 he actually collaborated on an anonymous rebuttal 00:09:48.799 --> 00:09:51.360 called A Short Review of the Declaration. He 00:09:51.360 --> 00:09:53.899 looked at that famous phrase, inalienable rights 00:09:53.899 --> 00:09:56.440 to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, 00:09:56.620 --> 00:09:58.419 and he thought it was complete intellectual garbage. 00:09:58.779 --> 00:10:01.220 Wait, hold on a second. Life, liberty, pursuit 00:10:01.220 --> 00:10:03.460 of happiness, that's the brand. How can you be 00:10:03.460 --> 00:10:06.019 a social reformer and hate that? Because Bentham 00:10:06.019 --> 00:10:10.059 was, at his core, a lawyer and a logician. He 00:10:10.059 --> 00:10:12.080 asked a very simple question. Where do these 00:10:12.080 --> 00:10:14.070 rights come from? the American said, from the 00:10:14.070 --> 00:10:16.970 creator or from nature. And Benson's response 00:10:16.970 --> 00:10:19.470 was essentially, show me. He's asking for the 00:10:19.470 --> 00:10:22.610 receipt. Where's the proof? Exactly. He argued 00:10:22.610 --> 00:10:25.070 that there are no rights in nature. In a state 00:10:25.070 --> 00:10:27.809 of nature, the strong eat the weak. That's it. 00:10:28.629 --> 00:10:32.529 A right, he argued, is a child of law. You only 00:10:32.529 --> 00:10:34.470 have a right to free speech if there is a law 00:10:34.470 --> 00:10:37.169 that says you have free speech and a police force 00:10:37.169 --> 00:10:39.169 to protect you if someone tries to shut you up. 00:10:39.549 --> 00:10:42.529 So to him, saying I have a natural right to be 00:10:42.529 --> 00:10:44.850 free is like saying I have a natural right to 00:10:44.850 --> 00:10:47.730 own a unicorn. It's just imagination, a pretty 00:10:47.730 --> 00:10:49.789 fantasy. He had a much more cutting phrase for 00:10:49.789 --> 00:10:52.409 it. He famously called it nonsense upon stilts. 00:10:52.409 --> 00:10:54.610 Nonsense upon stilts. He thought it was dangerous 00:10:54.610 --> 00:10:56.809 rhetoric. Because if everyone can just claim 00:10:56.809 --> 00:10:59.309 God gave me the right to do X, then you have 00:10:59.309 --> 00:11:01.669 anarchy. You have terrorists and revolutionaries 00:11:01.669 --> 00:11:04.529 claiming natural rights to justify anything they 00:11:04.529 --> 00:11:07.000 want. I can see his point, but it feels incredibly 00:11:07.000 --> 00:11:08.840 dangerous in the other direction, doesn't it? 00:11:08.899 --> 00:11:11.440 If rights are only what the law says they are, 00:11:11.539 --> 00:11:14.100 then if the government passes a law saying slavery 00:11:14.100 --> 00:11:17.220 is legal, then the slave has no rights, period. 00:11:17.820 --> 00:11:19.940 Bentham seems to be saying there's no higher 00:11:19.940 --> 00:11:22.440 moral ground to appeal to. That is the exact 00:11:22.440 --> 00:11:25.700 critique. And it's a powerful one. If you remove 00:11:25.700 --> 00:11:28.600 the idea of natural rights, do you remove our 00:11:28.600 --> 00:11:30.799 ability to stand up and say this law is fundamentally 00:11:30.799 --> 00:11:33.750 wrong? Yeah. Bentham would say no. He would say, 00:11:33.769 --> 00:11:35.870 you can say the law is wrong, but not because 00:11:35.870 --> 00:11:38.909 it violates some spooky concept of nature. You 00:11:38.909 --> 00:11:41.029 say it's wrong because it violates utility. And 00:11:41.029 --> 00:11:43.710 here we go. The big one. Utilitarianism. This 00:11:43.710 --> 00:11:45.909 is the engine that drives his entire life's work. 00:11:46.429 --> 00:11:49.570 If we can't look to God or nature or tradition 00:11:49.570 --> 00:11:52.629 for our morality, where do we look? Bentham said, 00:11:52.690 --> 00:11:54.570 look at your own body. Look at your nervous system. 00:11:54.710 --> 00:11:56.809 And this is where he says, nature has placed 00:11:56.809 --> 00:11:59.149 mankind under the governance of two sovereign 00:11:59.149 --> 00:12:02.779 masters. Pain and pleasure. It sounds so simple, 00:12:02.919 --> 00:12:05.100 maybe even too simple. We like things that feel 00:12:05.100 --> 00:12:07.960 good. We hate things that feel bad. It is breathtakingly 00:12:07.960 --> 00:12:11.179 simple. But the implications are massive. Bentham 00:12:11.179 --> 00:12:13.720 is saying that every single thing we do, whether 00:12:13.720 --> 00:12:15.700 we're writing a symphony, robbing a bank, or 00:12:15.700 --> 00:12:18.320 praying to God, we are doing it to either get 00:12:18.320 --> 00:12:21.500 pleasure or to avoid pain. He calls this psychological 00:12:21.500 --> 00:12:24.799 egoism, right? The idea that we are all, at our 00:12:24.799 --> 00:12:28.700 core, selfish. We are all selfish. pleasure -seeking, 00:12:28.740 --> 00:12:31.559 pain -avoiding machines. That's the human animal, 00:12:31.679 --> 00:12:33.620 according to Bentham. Okay, but what about something 00:12:33.620 --> 00:12:36.639 like charity? If I give money to a homeless person, 00:12:36.779 --> 00:12:39.820 that seems selfless. Bentham would have an answer 00:12:39.820 --> 00:12:41.799 for that. He'd say, you do it because the act 00:12:41.799 --> 00:12:44.200 of giving makes you feel good, that warm glow 00:12:44.200 --> 00:12:48.080 of altruism. Or, perhaps more likely, because 00:12:48.080 --> 00:12:51.379 the guilt of walking past and not giving would 00:12:51.379 --> 00:12:54.080 be a source of pain for you. So you're still 00:12:54.080 --> 00:12:56.500 serving yourself. Okay, so if we're all just... 00:12:56.669 --> 00:12:59.490 chasing our own dopamine hits, how do you possibly 00:12:59.490 --> 00:13:02.169 build a society? Because my pleasure might be, 00:13:02.210 --> 00:13:04.669 you know, stealing your wallet. Precisely. And 00:13:04.669 --> 00:13:06.649 that's why you need government. The whole role 00:13:06.649 --> 00:13:09.509 of the legislator for Bentham is to create a 00:13:09.509 --> 00:13:12.769 system of rewards and punishments laws that cleverly 00:13:12.769 --> 00:13:14.929 align my pursuit of happiness with your pursuit 00:13:14.929 --> 00:13:17.169 of happiness. To channel our selfishness into 00:13:17.169 --> 00:13:19.710 something productive. Exactly. And the ultimate 00:13:19.710 --> 00:13:22.009 goal of that entire system is what he called 00:13:22.009 --> 00:13:24.309 the fundamental axiom, the greatest happiness 00:13:24.309 --> 00:13:26.490 of the greatest number. It's a giant maximization 00:13:26.490 --> 00:13:28.730 problem. You're trying to get the highest possible 00:13:28.730 --> 00:13:32.470 score for collective happiness. It is. But Bentham, 00:13:32.549 --> 00:13:35.370 being the obsessive that he was, didn't just 00:13:35.370 --> 00:13:37.870 leave it as a vague philosophical principle. 00:13:38.250 --> 00:13:41.110 He wanted to make it a science. He created the 00:13:41.110 --> 00:13:43.909 philosophic calculus, the happiness algorithm. 00:13:44.250 --> 00:13:45.889 This is where I really start to struggle with 00:13:45.889 --> 00:13:48.509 him. How do you quantify a feeling? I can measure 00:13:48.509 --> 00:13:51.730 a table in inches. I can't measure joy in. What 00:13:51.730 --> 00:13:54.389 are the units, joy units? Well, he actually tried 00:13:54.389 --> 00:13:56.409 to break it down. He gave us seven dimensions, 00:13:56.590 --> 00:13:59.250 seven variables to measure the total value of 00:13:59.250 --> 00:14:01.129 any action. And we're going to really get this. 00:14:01.169 --> 00:14:02.289 We should probably walk through them. Let's do 00:14:02.289 --> 00:14:04.990 it. OK, let's imagine a simple scenario. Let's 00:14:04.990 --> 00:14:06.649 say the government is deciding whether to pass 00:14:06.649 --> 00:14:10.429 a law banning loud parties after 11 p .m. A classic 00:14:10.429 --> 00:14:12.789 noise ordinance. I like it. Right. So on one 00:14:12.789 --> 00:14:14.990 side, you have the party thrower who gets pleasure. 00:14:15.470 --> 00:14:17.870 On the other, you have the neighbors who experience 00:14:17.870 --> 00:14:20.429 pain. We have to do the math. The first variable 00:14:20.429 --> 00:14:23.210 is intensity. How strong is the pleasure of the 00:14:23.210 --> 00:14:25.210 party versus the pain of the neighbors trying 00:14:25.210 --> 00:14:27.149 to sleep? Okay, well, the party is really fun, 00:14:27.250 --> 00:14:29.070 a good time with friends. Let's call that a plus 00:14:29.070 --> 00:14:31.929 eight on a scale of 10. But being woken up by 00:14:31.929 --> 00:14:33.909 loud music when you have to work tomorrow is 00:14:33.909 --> 00:14:35.809 infuriating. So maybe that's a nine and nine 00:14:35.809 --> 00:14:39.440 for the pain. Okay. Second is duration. How long 00:14:39.440 --> 00:14:42.740 does the pleasure or pain last? The party is 00:14:42.740 --> 00:14:46.299 maybe four hours, but the sleep loss, the grogginess, 00:14:46.419 --> 00:14:48.639 that affects the neighbors all the next day, 00:14:48.659 --> 00:14:51.860 so the pain lasts longer. Good. Third is certainty. 00:14:52.220 --> 00:14:55.200 If I throw the party, how certain am I that I'll 00:14:55.200 --> 00:14:57.879 have fun? How certain is it that the neighbors 00:14:57.879 --> 00:15:00.159 will be disturbed? Pretty certain on both counts, 00:15:00.200 --> 00:15:03.159 I'd say. High probability. Fourth is propinquity, 00:15:03.200 --> 00:15:05.360 a great old word. It just means proximity in 00:15:05.360 --> 00:15:08.889 time. Is the pleasure or pain happening now or 00:15:08.889 --> 00:15:12.570 later? We instinctively value immediate gratification 00:15:12.570 --> 00:15:15.570 much more. The party is now. The hangover is 00:15:15.570 --> 00:15:18.110 tomorrow. The pleasure is immediate. The pain 00:15:18.110 --> 00:15:20.649 for the neighbors is also immediate. Fifth is 00:15:20.649 --> 00:15:23.110 fecundity or productiveness. Will this pleasure 00:15:23.110 --> 00:15:25.649 lead to more pleasure down the road? Or will 00:15:25.649 --> 00:15:27.639 this pain lead to more pain? I guess you could 00:15:27.639 --> 00:15:30.220 argue a good party strengthens friendships, which 00:15:30.220 --> 00:15:33.220 leads to future happiness. But the neighbor's 00:15:33.220 --> 00:15:35.580 sleep loss leads to a bad day at work, which 00:15:35.580 --> 00:15:38.980 is more pain. It seems like a wash. Okay. Sixth 00:15:38.980 --> 00:15:42.559 is purity. Is the pleasure purely pleasure or 00:15:42.559 --> 00:15:45.019 is it mixed with some pain? For the partygoer, 00:15:45.059 --> 00:15:47.120 there's always the risk of getting a noise complaint, 00:15:47.379 --> 00:15:50.259 maybe even a fine. So the pleasure isn't pure. 00:15:50.440 --> 00:15:52.500 Right. And finally, the most important one for 00:15:52.500 --> 00:15:56.139 politics, extent. How many people does it affect? 00:15:56.360 --> 00:15:58.340 And there's the clincher, isn't it? You have 00:15:58.340 --> 00:16:01.120 one household, maybe 5 or 10 people, having a 00:16:01.120 --> 00:16:04.080 great time, but you might have 20, 30, 40 neighbors 00:16:04.080 --> 00:16:05.759 in the surrounding apartments trying to sleep. 00:16:05.960 --> 00:16:07.960 Exactly. So even if the party people are having 00:16:07.960 --> 00:16:10.639 a plus 100 total intensity experience, if you 00:16:10.639 --> 00:16:12.600 have 30 neighbors each suffering a negative 10 00:16:12.600 --> 00:16:14.899 pain, the math says the total pain is negative 00:16:14.899 --> 00:16:18.580 300. The net result is negative. Therefore... 00:16:18.779 --> 00:16:21.200 The law should ban the party. The needs of the 00:16:21.200 --> 00:16:23.740 many outweigh the needs of the few. Spock was 00:16:23.740 --> 00:16:26.600 a true utilitarian. But this gets really scary 00:16:26.600 --> 00:16:29.659 really fast when you raise the stakes. You use 00:16:29.659 --> 00:16:32.600 a noise complaint, which is trivial. But what 00:16:32.600 --> 00:16:35.600 if we talk about, I don't know, sacrificing one 00:16:35.600 --> 00:16:38.360 innocent person to stop a massive riot that would 00:16:38.360 --> 00:16:42.210 kill 100 people? This is the classic. trolley 00:16:42.210 --> 00:16:44.210 problem or the Christian to the lion's objection 00:16:44.210 --> 00:16:47.129 that always gets thrown at utilitarianists. Explain 00:16:47.129 --> 00:16:49.049 that one. Okay. Imagine the Roman Colosseum. 00:16:49.049 --> 00:16:52.049 You have 50 ,000 spectators and they all get 00:16:52.049 --> 00:16:55.190 a huge thrill, let's say plus 10 pleasure units 00:16:55.190 --> 00:16:57.809 each from watching one Christian get eaten by 00:16:57.809 --> 00:17:00.610 a lion. Okay. And the Christian obviously suffers 00:17:00.610 --> 00:17:02.789 an extreme amount of pain. Let's call it Indigus 00:17:02.789 --> 00:17:05.450 1000 units. Right. Well, 50 ,000 spectator times 00:17:05.450 --> 00:17:08.390 10 pleasure units is 500 ,000 units of pleasure. 00:17:08.890 --> 00:17:11.190 That is way, way bigger than the media's 1 ,000 00:17:11.190 --> 00:17:14.589 units of pain. So does utilitarianism say feed 00:17:14.589 --> 00:17:17.130 him to the lions? The raw math seems to say yes, 00:17:17.230 --> 00:17:20.009 and that's morally repulsive. It is. And Bentham 00:17:20.009 --> 00:17:22.210 was aware of this potential problem. He tried 00:17:22.210 --> 00:17:24.670 to patch it with the overarching concept of security. 00:17:25.230 --> 00:17:27.369 What did he mean by that? He argued that if we 00:17:27.369 --> 00:17:29.089 live in a society where the government can just 00:17:29.089 --> 00:17:30.930 grab an innocent person and throw them to the 00:17:30.930 --> 00:17:33.470 lions for public entertainment, then everyone 00:17:33.470 --> 00:17:36.150 lives in constant fear. That background anxiety, 00:17:36.390 --> 00:17:39.190 the insecurity, the uncertainty is a massive 00:17:39.190 --> 00:17:41.930 negative value that affects the extent calculation 00:17:41.930 --> 00:17:44.750 for the entire population. So the fear of the 00:17:44.750 --> 00:17:47.930 50 ,000 spectators that they could be next outweighs 00:17:47.930 --> 00:17:50.210 their pleasure from watching the show. Precisely. 00:17:50.460 --> 00:17:52.859 So the math, when you zoom out, actually says 00:17:52.859 --> 00:17:55.819 no lions because personal security is a fundamental 00:17:55.819 --> 00:17:59.339 prerequisite for any lasting happiness. That 00:17:59.339 --> 00:18:01.220 feels like a little bit of a cop out. It feels 00:18:01.220 --> 00:18:03.240 like he's twisting the math to get the moral 00:18:03.240 --> 00:18:05.420 answer he already knows is right. It's a common 00:18:05.420 --> 00:18:08.160 criticism. But to Bentham, the alternative was 00:18:08.160 --> 00:18:11.339 so much worse. He thought relying on fuzzy concepts 00:18:11.339 --> 00:18:14.400 like. justice or natural rights without actually 00:18:14.400 --> 00:18:16.839 looking at the real world consequences was just 00:18:16.839 --> 00:18:19.119 emotional superstition. He wanted to look at 00:18:19.119 --> 00:18:21.500 the hard data of human pain and pleasure. And 00:18:21.500 --> 00:18:24.480 this obsession with hard data and security and 00:18:24.480 --> 00:18:27.160 controlling behavior leads us directly to his 00:18:27.160 --> 00:18:29.619 most infamous and I think most misunderstood 00:18:29.619 --> 00:18:32.960 invention. It does. Because if your goal is to 00:18:32.960 --> 00:18:35.500 maximize happiness, you have to minimize bad 00:18:35.500 --> 00:18:39.099 behavior. And to minimize bad behavior, you need 00:18:39.099 --> 00:18:42.109 to watch people. Welcome to the Panopticon. The 00:18:42.109 --> 00:18:44.069 all -seeing eye. I feel like everyone kind of 00:18:44.069 --> 00:18:46.410 knows the word, or they know the Foucault version 00:18:46.410 --> 00:18:49.430 of it from college. But what was the actual plan? 00:18:49.650 --> 00:18:51.349 Because he didn't just write about it as a thought 00:18:51.349 --> 00:18:53.329 experiment. He genuinely tried to build this 00:18:53.329 --> 00:18:56.670 thing. He spent 16 years of his life and most 00:18:56.670 --> 00:18:59.029 of his personal fortune trying to get it built. 00:18:59.130 --> 00:19:01.630 It was his great obsession. The idea actually 00:19:01.630 --> 00:19:03.809 came from his brother, Samuel, who was an engineer 00:19:03.809 --> 00:19:06.109 working in Russia for Catherine the Great. What 00:19:06.109 --> 00:19:08.640 was Samuel doing? He was managing a factory with 00:19:08.640 --> 00:19:12.079 a lot of unskilled, unruly workers. And he had 00:19:12.079 --> 00:19:15.400 this clever architectural idea. If you put the 00:19:15.400 --> 00:19:17.579 supervisor's office in the middle of a circular 00:19:17.579 --> 00:19:20.859 workshop, a single supervisor could watch more 00:19:20.859 --> 00:19:24.619 workers with less effort. Jeremy visited, saw 00:19:24.619 --> 00:19:26.660 this design, and had a massive lightbulb moment. 00:19:26.759 --> 00:19:28.819 He thought, this isn't just for factories. This 00:19:28.819 --> 00:19:31.079 is the solution to everything. Prisons, schools, 00:19:31.339 --> 00:19:33.700 hospitals, workhouses. So paint the picture for 00:19:33.700 --> 00:19:36.339 us. What does a Panopticon prison actually look 00:19:36.339 --> 00:19:39.690 like? Okay, picture a hollow cylinder, like a 00:19:39.690 --> 00:19:43.049 giant donut -shaped building. The prisoners live 00:19:43.049 --> 00:19:45.349 in individual cells that are ranged around the 00:19:45.349 --> 00:19:47.829 outer ring. Okay. The cells have bars on the 00:19:47.829 --> 00:19:50.269 front, facing the center, and a large window 00:19:50.269 --> 00:19:52.950 on the back, facing the outside. This means they 00:19:52.950 --> 00:19:55.890 are constantly backlit. The prisoners are always 00:19:55.890 --> 00:19:58.579 visible as silhouettes. Like butterflies pinned 00:19:58.579 --> 00:20:00.700 in a display case. You can see their every move. 00:20:01.099 --> 00:20:03.559 Exactly. And in the center of that donut hole 00:20:03.559 --> 00:20:05.420 where the supervisor's office was in the factory, 00:20:05.559 --> 00:20:07.819 you have the inspection tower. And this is the 00:20:07.819 --> 00:20:10.539 genius part. The tower has special blinds or 00:20:10.539 --> 00:20:13.329 louvers. and a clever lighting system so that 00:20:13.329 --> 00:20:15.250 the inspector inside can look out and see all 00:20:15.250 --> 00:20:17.089 the prisoners, but the prisoners cannot look 00:20:17.089 --> 00:20:20.369 in. They just see a dark, ominous tower. That's 00:20:20.369 --> 00:20:22.230 the core mechanic. It's the asymmetry of the 00:20:22.230 --> 00:20:25.869 gaze. Yes. Bentham called it creating the sentiment 00:20:25.869 --> 00:20:29.690 of an invisible omniscience. The prisoner never, 00:20:29.769 --> 00:20:33.089 ever knows for sure if he's being watched at 00:20:33.089 --> 00:20:35.650 that exact moment. The guard might be staring 00:20:35.650 --> 00:20:38.170 right at him. The guard might be in the bathroom. 00:20:38.799 --> 00:20:41.900 The guard might have gone home hours ago. But 00:20:41.900 --> 00:20:44.559 the prisoner has no choice but to assume at every 00:20:44.559 --> 00:20:47.119 single second of every single day that he is 00:20:47.119 --> 00:20:49.779 under surveillance. It's pure psychological warfare. 00:20:50.039 --> 00:20:52.579 You force the prisoner to internalize the guard. 00:20:52.700 --> 00:20:54.900 You start policing yourself because you're terrified 00:20:54.900 --> 00:20:57.160 of that invisible, all -seeing eye. And that 00:20:57.160 --> 00:20:59.339 makes it incredibly efficient. You don't need 00:20:59.339 --> 00:21:01.480 50 guards patrolling the halls. You need one 00:21:01.480 --> 00:21:03.539 guy in a tower. Or maybe you don't even need 00:21:03.539 --> 00:21:05.720 one guy. A cardboard cutout might do the trick 00:21:05.720 --> 00:21:07.940 if the bluff is good enough. It sounds absolutely 00:21:07.940 --> 00:21:09.660 horrifying. It sounds like the blueprint for 00:21:09.660 --> 00:21:12.119 a totalitarian state. It does to us, looking 00:21:12.119 --> 00:21:14.400 back. But here is the crucial nuance that people 00:21:14.400 --> 00:21:16.180 often miss when they talk about the panopticon. 00:21:16.460 --> 00:21:18.799 In Bentham's mind, this was the humane option. 00:21:19.259 --> 00:21:22.059 Humane? How? In what possible world is invisible 00:21:22.059 --> 00:21:25.009 omniscience a humane form of punishment? You 00:21:25.009 --> 00:21:27.710 have to compare it to the reality of 18th century 00:21:27.710 --> 00:21:30.630 prisons. They were not nice places. They were 00:21:30.630 --> 00:21:34.910 dark, filthy, disease -ridden dungeons. Prisoners 00:21:34.910 --> 00:21:37.369 were literally chained to walls in the dark. 00:21:37.509 --> 00:21:39.930 They died of typhus and starvation. They were 00:21:39.930 --> 00:21:42.009 brutally abused by guards with no oversight. 00:21:42.150 --> 00:21:44.369 So context matters. This was an alternative to 00:21:44.369 --> 00:21:47.890 that. A radical alternative. Benthone's Panopticon 00:21:47.890 --> 00:21:51.329 was designed to be bright, heated, and have fresh 00:21:51.329 --> 00:21:53.759 air circulating. He wanted to get rid of the 00:21:53.759 --> 00:21:56.339 physical chains and the beatings. He argued that 00:21:56.339 --> 00:21:58.700 if you can use the mind to control the prisoner, 00:21:58.799 --> 00:22:01.700 the power of the gaze, you don't need the chains. 00:22:02.000 --> 00:22:04.519 He called it a mill for grinding rogues honest. 00:22:04.839 --> 00:22:07.000 He genuinely thought he could reform people with 00:22:07.000 --> 00:22:09.259 architecture. He did. He was so convinced that 00:22:09.259 --> 00:22:10.859 he even wanted to run it as a private business. 00:22:11.359 --> 00:22:13.660 He proposed a system of contract management. 00:22:13.980 --> 00:22:16.779 What did that entail? He, Jeremy Bentham, would 00:22:16.779 --> 00:22:19.359 be the owner and operator. He would pay for the 00:22:19.359 --> 00:22:21.539 food and health care of the prisoners, and in 00:22:21.539 --> 00:22:23.599 exchange, he would get to profit from their labor. 00:22:24.039 --> 00:22:26.259 He designed treadmills they would walk on to 00:22:26.259 --> 00:22:29.119 power looms and other machinery. So private prisons 00:22:29.119 --> 00:22:33.099 profiting from inmate labor. This sounds incredibly 00:22:33.099 --> 00:22:36.599 modern and controversial. It does. But, and get 00:22:36.599 --> 00:22:39.779 this, he proposed that his contract would include 00:22:39.779 --> 00:22:42.539 a clause where he would pay a hefty fine to the 00:22:42.539 --> 00:22:45.460 government for every single prisoner that died 00:22:45.460 --> 00:22:47.920 under his care. Like a life insurance policy 00:22:47.920 --> 00:22:51.460 on his own inmates? Basically. It's pure utilitarian 00:22:51.460 --> 00:22:54.980 logic. He wanted to align his selfish interest 00:22:54.980 --> 00:22:57.819 making a profit with the prisoner's primary interest, 00:22:58.059 --> 00:23:00.619 staying alive. If he starved them or let them 00:23:00.619 --> 00:23:03.279 get sick, he would lose money. So theoretically, 00:23:03.579 --> 00:23:06.099 it incentivized him to treat them well. It's 00:23:06.099 --> 00:23:08.140 the ultimate capitalist solution to criminal 00:23:08.140 --> 00:23:10.359 justice. I'll bet you I can keep these guys alive 00:23:10.359 --> 00:23:12.319 and productive for a profit. And the British 00:23:12.319 --> 00:23:14.180 government actually bought it. They signed a 00:23:14.180 --> 00:23:16.099 contract with him. They paid him money. He bought 00:23:16.099 --> 00:23:18.160 a plot of land for it at a place called Millbank, 00:23:18.279 --> 00:23:20.119 right on the Thames. But it never got built. 00:23:20.240 --> 00:23:23.200 What happened? It all fell apart. The land he 00:23:23.200 --> 00:23:27.019 bought was marshy and unhealthy. The king, George 00:23:27.019 --> 00:23:30.799 III, personally hated the idea. The aristocratic 00:23:30.799 --> 00:23:32.880 landowners in the area thought Bentham was a 00:23:32.880 --> 00:23:35.990 dangerous radical and lobbied against it. After 00:23:35.990 --> 00:23:37.769 years of fighting, the project was officially 00:23:37.769 --> 00:23:40.450 scrapped. And Bentham was crushed. He was heartbroken. 00:23:40.490 --> 00:23:42.750 He felt the government had betrayed him. He wrote 00:23:42.750 --> 00:23:45.849 that they have murdered my best days. He eventually 00:23:45.849 --> 00:23:48.390 got 23 ,000 pounds in compensation, which was 00:23:48.390 --> 00:23:51.190 a huge sum. But he remained bitter about it for 00:23:51.190 --> 00:23:53.410 the rest of his life. He never got over it. Never. 00:23:53.650 --> 00:23:56.490 But of course, the idea didn't die. The French 00:23:56.490 --> 00:23:58.549 philosopher Michel Foucault picked it up in the 00:23:58.549 --> 00:24:01.930 1970s and made it famous again. Foucault argued 00:24:01.930 --> 00:24:03.789 that while we didn't build the specific building, 00:24:03.970 --> 00:24:07.289 we built the panoptic society. Schools, hospitals, 00:24:07.509 --> 00:24:09.829 factories, even open plan offices, they're all 00:24:09.829 --> 00:24:12.930 forms of panopticons. We behave because we think 00:24:12.930 --> 00:24:14.789 we're being watched by the teacher, the doctor, 00:24:14.849 --> 00:24:17.710 the boss. And now, of course, we carry the panopticon 00:24:17.710 --> 00:24:20.130 in our pockets. But let's hold that thought for 00:24:20.130 --> 00:24:22.589 the end because that's a big one. I want to pivot. 00:24:22.970 --> 00:24:25.230 Because so far, Bentham sounds like a bit of 00:24:25.230 --> 00:24:27.910 a monster. He wants to delete human rights, he 00:24:27.910 --> 00:24:30.329 wants to calculate morality with an algorithm, 00:24:30.569 --> 00:24:33.390 and he wants to put us all in a glass donut to 00:24:33.390 --> 00:24:35.730 be watched. Right. That's a fair summary of the 00:24:35.730 --> 00:24:38.349 dark side. But then... You keep reading his work 00:24:38.349 --> 00:24:42.269 and suddenly this exact same cold calculating 00:24:42.269 --> 00:24:45.630 logic leads him to conclusions that are so progressively 00:24:45.630 --> 00:24:48.670 radical, so compassionate that they make the 00:24:48.670 --> 00:24:50.650 founding fathers look like medieval dinosaurs. 00:24:50.970 --> 00:24:53.349 It's the other side of the same coin. And the 00:24:53.349 --> 00:24:55.190 connecting thread, the thing that unifies both 00:24:55.190 --> 00:24:58.230 the prison and the progressive politics is sensation. 00:24:58.569 --> 00:25:01.069 Explain what you mean by that. Remember, Bentham's 00:25:01.069 --> 00:25:05.059 entire moral system doesn't care about. or what 00:25:05.059 --> 00:25:07.359 the Bible says or the natural order of things. 00:25:07.480 --> 00:25:10.420 He cares about one question and one question 00:25:10.420 --> 00:25:14.019 only. Does it hurt? Pain and pleasure. It always 00:25:14.019 --> 00:25:16.019 comes back to that. It always comes back to that. 00:25:16.119 --> 00:25:19.039 So he applies this to animals. Now, in the 18th 00:25:19.039 --> 00:25:21.900 century, the dominant philosophical view from 00:25:21.900 --> 00:25:24.539 people like Descartes was that animals were basically 00:25:24.539 --> 00:25:27.559 clockwork machines. They were automata. They 00:25:27.559 --> 00:25:29.940 might scream if you kick them, but it was just 00:25:29.940 --> 00:25:32.460 a mechanical reaction like a spring uncoiling. 00:25:32.640 --> 00:25:34.599 They didn't have souls, so they couldn't truly 00:25:34.599 --> 00:25:36.400 feel pain. So you could do whatever you wanted 00:25:36.400 --> 00:25:38.579 to a dog and it had no moral weight whatsoever. 00:25:39.000 --> 00:25:42.809 None. Bentham looks at this and applies his calculus. 00:25:43.049 --> 00:25:44.970 Right. And he writes this incredibly famous line. 00:25:45.009 --> 00:25:47.549 He says, the question is not, can they reason? 00:25:47.690 --> 00:25:51.069 Yeah. Nor can they talk. But can they suffer? 00:25:51.190 --> 00:25:54.869 That shift from can they think to can they feel, 00:25:54.910 --> 00:25:56.990 that changes everything. It completely shatters 00:25:56.990 --> 00:25:59.089 what he called the insuperable line between man 00:25:59.089 --> 00:26:02.289 and beast. If a horse feels pain, and pain is 00:26:02.289 --> 00:26:04.470 the definition of evil, then causing a horse 00:26:04.470 --> 00:26:07.130 to feel pain is a morally wrong act. Period. 00:26:07.250 --> 00:26:09.390 Full stop. And he didn't mince words about it. 00:26:09.680 --> 00:26:12.660 Not at all. He explicitly compared the treatment 00:26:12.660 --> 00:26:15.900 of animals to the institution of slavery. He 00:26:15.900 --> 00:26:18.500 predicted that one day we would recognize that 00:26:18.500 --> 00:26:21.359 the number of legs an animal has, or the velocity 00:26:21.359 --> 00:26:25.099 of the skin, is not a sufficient reason to abandon 00:26:25.099 --> 00:26:27.579 a sensitive being to a tormentor. He was writing 00:26:27.579 --> 00:26:31.970 this in the 1780s. Mind blowing. It is. He essentially 00:26:31.970 --> 00:26:34.690 invented the entire philosophical basis for the 00:26:34.690 --> 00:26:37.230 modern animal rights movement almost 200 years 00:26:37.230 --> 00:26:39.630 before it became a mainstream idea. But did he 00:26:39.630 --> 00:26:42.349 live it? I mean, was he a vegan? No. And this 00:26:42.349 --> 00:26:44.930 is where the logic gets. Well, it gets very utilitarian. 00:26:45.269 --> 00:26:47.329 He ate meat. Isn't that a huge contradiction? 00:26:47.750 --> 00:26:50.690 Mm hmm. Not to him. He argued that animals, unlike 00:26:50.690 --> 00:26:53.210 humans, live mostly in the present. They don't 00:26:53.210 --> 00:26:55.289 have complex plans or anxieties about the future. 00:26:55.390 --> 00:26:57.690 So if you kill a cow painlessly and instantly, 00:26:57.910 --> 00:27:00.349 the cow doesn't lose its future plans for retirement. 00:27:00.430 --> 00:27:03.910 It just ceases to be. And if we then eat the 00:27:03.910 --> 00:27:06.130 cow, we humans get a great deal of pleasure and 00:27:06.130 --> 00:27:09.569 nutrition. So, cow feels no pain in death, plus 00:27:09.569 --> 00:27:12.190 human gets pleasure from food. Net good for the 00:27:12.190 --> 00:27:14.569 universe. That is an incredibly convenient piece 00:27:14.569 --> 00:27:17.799 of logic. It is, but he was absolutely adamant 00:27:17.799 --> 00:27:19.839 that the life of the animal before its painless 00:27:19.839 --> 00:27:22.500 death should be free from suffering. He was okay 00:27:22.500 --> 00:27:25.000 with killing, but he was vehemently against cruelty. 00:27:25.279 --> 00:27:28.180 And he applied the same sensation logic to something 00:27:28.180 --> 00:27:31.880 that was even more taboo for his time, sex. This 00:27:31.880 --> 00:27:34.279 is perhaps the bravest and most hidden part of 00:27:34.279 --> 00:27:37.200 his intellectual life. In 18th century England, 00:27:37.440 --> 00:27:40.160 sodomy was a capital offense. It was a hanging 00:27:40.160 --> 00:27:42.720 offense. It was viewed with a level of religious 00:27:42.720 --> 00:27:45.460 and social revulsion that is hard for us to even 00:27:45.460 --> 00:27:47.970 comprehend today. And Bentham writes an essay 00:27:47.970 --> 00:27:49.809 about it. He wrote thousands of pages on it, 00:27:49.849 --> 00:27:51.490 actually. Most famously, an essay he titled, 00:27:51.589 --> 00:27:54.809 Pateristi, which he wrote around 1785. But he 00:27:54.809 --> 00:27:56.710 didn't dare publish it. He knew it would ruin 00:27:56.710 --> 00:27:58.470 him. It would destroy his reputation completely. 00:27:58.769 --> 00:28:00.950 But in those private notes, he crunches the numbers. 00:28:01.190 --> 00:28:03.309 He applies the philosophic calculus. He looks 00:28:03.309 --> 00:28:05.710 at two men engaging in a consensual sexual act. 00:28:05.849 --> 00:28:08.450 Yeah. Variable one. Pleasure. Well, they are 00:28:08.450 --> 00:28:10.930 both enjoying it. That's a clear positive value 00:28:10.930 --> 00:28:14.730 on the ledger. Okay. Variable two. Pain. Who 00:28:14.730 --> 00:28:17.710 is being hurt? No one. It's consensual. Exactly. 00:28:17.869 --> 00:28:20.589 He called it an imaginary offense. He argued 00:28:20.589 --> 00:28:23.750 that it creates no primary mischief. No one is 00:28:23.750 --> 00:28:26.150 robbed. No one is assaulted. No property is damaged. 00:28:26.390 --> 00:28:29.990 The only pain that exists is the abstract offense 00:28:29.990 --> 00:28:32.869 taken by other people in society because of their 00:28:32.869 --> 00:28:36.039 own prejudice and superstition. So he's balancing 00:28:36.039 --> 00:28:38.960 the actual real pleasure of the couple against 00:28:38.960 --> 00:28:42.359 the imaginary prejudiced pain of the pearl clutchers. 00:28:42.519 --> 00:28:45.619 And he concludes, quite logically, that the state 00:28:45.619 --> 00:28:48.099 has absolutely no business regulating it. He 00:28:48.099 --> 00:28:50.700 called homosexual acts mere irregularities of 00:28:50.700 --> 00:28:53.119 the venereal appetite. Basically, just a different 00:28:53.119 --> 00:28:55.019 taste, like preferring tea over coffee. It had 00:28:55.019 --> 00:28:57.640 no moral significance. He pathologized the reaction 00:28:57.640 --> 00:28:59.859 to the act, not the act itself. He basically 00:28:59.859 --> 00:29:01.500 said, if you have a problem with this, that's 00:29:01.500 --> 00:29:04.849 your problem, not the laws. For 1785, That is 00:29:04.849 --> 00:29:08.529 astoundingly modern. It's the first known argument 00:29:08.529 --> 00:29:10.950 for homosexual law reform in English history. 00:29:11.349 --> 00:29:13.849 And it's the exact same logic he used for women's 00:29:13.849 --> 00:29:16.750 rights. He argued for complete female equality, 00:29:17.150 --> 00:29:19.549 suffrage, the right to divorce, the right to 00:29:19.549 --> 00:29:22.210 hold political office. Why? Because women feel 00:29:22.210 --> 00:29:24.869 pain and pleasure just as intensely as men do. 00:29:25.230 --> 00:29:27.490 Excluding half the population from public life 00:29:27.490 --> 00:29:30.069 massively reduces the total happiness of the 00:29:30.069 --> 00:29:32.150 society. It's just amazing how the same intellectual 00:29:32.150 --> 00:29:35.500 tool. This cold, robotic principle of utility 00:29:35.500 --> 00:29:38.119 can be used to build a terrifying prison and 00:29:38.119 --> 00:29:40.299 to liberate the oppressed. It's a tool. It's 00:29:40.299 --> 00:29:42.359 an amplifier. It just amplifies whatever input 00:29:42.359 --> 00:29:45.079 you give it. If you put security above all else, 00:29:45.160 --> 00:29:48.319 it builds a panopticon. If you input the alleviation 00:29:48.319 --> 00:29:50.000 of suffering is the only thing that matters, 00:29:50.079 --> 00:29:52.019 it builds a framework for human rights. We've 00:29:52.019 --> 00:29:54.000 talked a lot about the philosophy, but we have 00:29:54.000 --> 00:29:55.980 to talk about the man himself because you don't 00:29:55.980 --> 00:29:58.480 write thousands upon thousands of pages about 00:29:58.480 --> 00:30:01.880 the demon of chicane and auto icons without being 00:30:01.880 --> 00:30:04.170 a little different. Different is definitely the 00:30:04.170 --> 00:30:07.750 word. Bentham was a supreme eccentric, a true 00:30:07.750 --> 00:30:11.509 English original. As he got older, he became 00:30:11.509 --> 00:30:14.210 more and more of a recluse in his house in Westminster, 00:30:14.549 --> 00:30:16.849 which he nicknamed the Hermitage. He had names 00:30:16.849 --> 00:30:19.250 for everything, didn't he? Everything. He had 00:30:19.250 --> 00:30:21.210 a favorite walking stick he called Dapple. He 00:30:21.210 --> 00:30:24.069 had a teapot he called Dick. And, most famously, 00:30:24.269 --> 00:30:27.089 he had a cat. The famous cat. Originally, the 00:30:27.089 --> 00:30:30.390 cat was named simply... but then Bentham decided 00:30:30.390 --> 00:30:32.430 the cat should be knighted, so he became Sir 00:30:32.430 --> 00:30:35.289 John Langbourne. Eventually, Bentham concluded 00:30:35.289 --> 00:30:37.910 that the cat had taken holy orders, so his final 00:30:37.910 --> 00:30:40.509 name was the Reverend Sir John Langbourne. I 00:30:40.509 --> 00:30:42.210 love that. It shows a real sense of humor, or 00:30:42.210 --> 00:30:44.250 at least a sense of private playfulness. It does. 00:30:44.670 --> 00:30:47.009 But there was also a profound rigidness to his 00:30:47.009 --> 00:30:49.950 life. He had a strict daily routine. He woke 00:30:49.950 --> 00:30:52.549 up at 6 a .m. every single day. He would go out 00:30:52.549 --> 00:30:54.930 into his garden and trot, not walk. He called 00:30:54.930 --> 00:30:57.190 it trotting for exercise. Then he would work 00:30:57.190 --> 00:30:59.549 until 4 p .m. And he was constantly inventing 00:30:59.549 --> 00:31:02.890 words. Constantly. He invented his own vocabulary 00:31:02.890 --> 00:31:05.650 for his philosophy. We still use many of his 00:31:05.650 --> 00:31:08.630 words today. Words like maximize, minimize, codify, 00:31:08.829 --> 00:31:11.410 and international. He invented the word international. 00:31:11.829 --> 00:31:13.690 Wait, international is a Bentham word. I had 00:31:13.690 --> 00:31:16.630 no idea. It is. Before him, people talked about 00:31:16.630 --> 00:31:18.890 the law of nations. He coined international. 00:31:19.609 --> 00:31:22.210 But he also coined words that thankfully didn't 00:31:22.210 --> 00:31:25.470 stick, like catwhips starve him, which was his 00:31:25.470 --> 00:31:28.230 proposed term for a bad government. Some modern 00:31:28.230 --> 00:31:29.970 psychologists and researchers have looked at 00:31:29.970 --> 00:31:32.230 all this, the obsessive focus on systems, the 00:31:32.230 --> 00:31:34.809 social isolation, the rigid routines, the lists 00:31:34.809 --> 00:31:37.369 and word making, and have suggested he might 00:31:37.369 --> 00:31:39.750 have been on the autism spectrum. Maybe what 00:31:39.750 --> 00:31:42.049 we would now call Asperger's syndrome. It's a 00:31:42.049 --> 00:31:44.470 retrospective diagnosis, which is always tricky 00:31:44.470 --> 00:31:46.789 and speculative. But the pattern of behavior 00:31:46.789 --> 00:31:49.750 certainly fits. The intense focus on systems. 00:31:49.869 --> 00:31:52.089 The apparent difficulty with emotional nuance. 00:31:52.349 --> 00:31:54.490 The fact that he fell in love a few times but 00:31:54.490 --> 00:31:57.210 could never quite make it work. He proposed to 00:31:57.210 --> 00:31:59.690 a woman when he was 57, and she rejected him 00:31:59.690 --> 00:32:02.529 gently, noting his many peculiarities. It makes 00:32:02.529 --> 00:32:05.170 the whole auto -icon thing make a lot more sense, 00:32:05.250 --> 00:32:07.289 doesn't it? He didn't process death emotionally 00:32:07.289 --> 00:32:10.859 as a tragedy. He processed it logically as a 00:32:10.859 --> 00:32:14.480 problem of waste. Exactly. To him, burying a 00:32:14.480 --> 00:32:16.960 body in the ground was just wasteful. It was 00:32:16.960 --> 00:32:19.180 rotting, useful material that could be printed 00:32:19.180 --> 00:32:21.839 to better use. He wrote this incredible tract 00:32:21.839 --> 00:32:25.599 called Auto Icon, or Further Uses of the Dead 00:32:25.599 --> 00:32:27.759 to the Living. Further uses, as if we'd already 00:32:27.759 --> 00:32:29.920 figured out the first few uses. Right, and he 00:32:29.920 --> 00:32:32.220 suggested that our dead ancestors could be preserved 00:32:32.220 --> 00:32:35.319 and used as memorial statues. He said, imagine 00:32:35.319 --> 00:32:37.200 a country estate where the driveway is lined 00:32:37.200 --> 00:32:39.099 not with elm trees, but with your grandfather, 00:32:39.400 --> 00:32:41.480 your great -grandfather, your great -great -grandfather, 00:32:41.480 --> 00:32:44.029 and so on. That is the stuff of absolute nightmares. 00:32:44.369 --> 00:32:46.569 He argued it would be a great moral lesson for 00:32:46.569 --> 00:32:48.710 the children. You could see the actual presence 00:32:48.710 --> 00:32:51.589 of your ancestors inspiring you to virtue. So 00:32:51.589 --> 00:32:55.049 he decided to lead by example. He left very strict, 00:32:55.190 --> 00:32:57.769 very detailed instructions in his will. Step 00:32:57.769 --> 00:33:00.750 one, public dissection. Public dissection, yes. 00:33:00.990 --> 00:33:03.109 This was really important to him because at the 00:33:03.109 --> 00:33:06.269 time, dissection was seen as a punishment. It 00:33:06.269 --> 00:33:08.009 was only performed on the bodies of executed 00:33:08.009 --> 00:33:11.319 criminals. It was a mark of shame. Bentham wanted 00:33:11.319 --> 00:33:14.200 to destigmatize it to help advance medical science. 00:33:14.480 --> 00:33:18.180 So on June 9th, 1832, three days after he died, 00:33:18.319 --> 00:33:21.180 his friend, Dr. Southwood Smith, performed the 00:33:21.180 --> 00:33:23.079 dissection in front of a crowd of students and 00:33:23.079 --> 00:33:25.000 colleagues. And there was a thunderstorm during 00:33:25.000 --> 00:33:27.759 it, right? The story is always told with a thunderstorm. 00:33:28.000 --> 00:33:30.740 A massive electrical storm over London. The lightning 00:33:30.740 --> 00:33:32.779 was supposedly flashing through the windows while 00:33:32.779 --> 00:33:34.700 the doctor cut into the great philosopher's body. 00:33:34.880 --> 00:33:37.460 It's all very gothic and dramatic. And then step 00:33:37.460 --> 00:33:39.930 two. The stuffing and mounting. The skeleton 00:33:39.930 --> 00:33:41.609 was meticulously cleaned and wired together. 00:33:41.910 --> 00:33:43.849 He was dressed in his own underwear, two pairs 00:33:43.849 --> 00:33:46.250 of socks, his breeches, and his favorite coat. 00:33:46.650 --> 00:33:50.529 But then, they got to the head. This is the part 00:33:50.529 --> 00:33:53.150 I was waiting for. Because the head in the glass 00:33:53.150 --> 00:33:55.529 case today is made of wax, what happened to the 00:33:55.529 --> 00:33:58.029 real one? Bentham wanted his real head to be 00:33:58.029 --> 00:34:00.930 used. He instructed Dr. Smith to preserve it 00:34:00.930 --> 00:34:03.589 using a special desiccation technique he'd read 00:34:03.589 --> 00:34:06.529 about from the Maori people in New Zealand. It 00:34:06.529 --> 00:34:08.949 basically involved using an air pump and sulfuric 00:34:08.949 --> 00:34:12.250 acid to slowly dry it out. DIY mummification 00:34:12.250 --> 00:34:15.610 in his garden shed? Pretty much. And theoretically, 00:34:15.849 --> 00:34:18.170 it's supposed to preserve the features. In practice, 00:34:18.369 --> 00:34:21.429 it went horribly wrong. I mean, it worked in 00:34:21.429 --> 00:34:23.570 the sense that the head didn't rot, but the skin 00:34:23.570 --> 00:34:26.550 turned a dark, leathery brown. It shrank tight 00:34:26.550 --> 00:34:29.039 against the skull. The eyes were gone, so they 00:34:29.039 --> 00:34:31.639 had to put in glass eyes. So instead of a dignified 00:34:31.639 --> 00:34:34.400 philosopher, he looked like a bog body. It was, 00:34:34.420 --> 00:34:36.639 to quote the official reports, distastefully 00:34:36.639 --> 00:34:39.559 macabre. It was genuinely terrifying to look 00:34:39.559 --> 00:34:42.340 at. Southwood Smith took one look at this shrunken 00:34:42.340 --> 00:34:44.579 head and said, I can't possibly put this on top 00:34:44.579 --> 00:34:46.880 of the body. It'll scare people away. So they 00:34:46.880 --> 00:34:48.460 commissioned a much more pleasant -looking wax 00:34:48.460 --> 00:34:51.019 head from a French artist. But they kept the 00:34:51.019 --> 00:34:52.820 real head, right? They didn't just throw it out? 00:34:52.880 --> 00:34:55.480 Oh, they kept it. For decades, the real mummified 00:34:55.480 --> 00:34:58.179 head sat on the floor of the display case, right 00:34:58.179 --> 00:35:00.599 between Bentham's feet, just sitting there. That 00:35:00.599 --> 00:35:02.900 is just asking for it to be stolen by students. 00:35:03.199 --> 00:35:05.760 And trouble it found. Students from King's College 00:35:05.760 --> 00:35:08.500 London, which is UCL's great rival, sold it in 00:35:08.500 --> 00:35:11.699 1975. They held it for ransom. They demanded 00:35:11.699 --> 00:35:15.139 a 100 -pound donation to a charity. The university 00:35:15.139 --> 00:35:17.780 eventually paid up. There were all these legends 00:35:17.780 --> 00:35:19.719 about it being found in a luggage locker at a 00:35:19.719 --> 00:35:21.739 train station in Scotland. And what about now? 00:35:21.860 --> 00:35:24.179 Where is the real head today? Today, the real 00:35:24.179 --> 00:35:27.099 head is locked away in a secure, climate -controlled 00:35:27.099 --> 00:35:30.320 vault at the UCL Institute of Archaeology. It's 00:35:30.320 --> 00:35:33.179 considered too fragile and probably too sensitive 00:35:33.179 --> 00:35:36.340 to be on public display anymore. But the body, 00:35:36.440 --> 00:35:38.800 the skeleton in the clothes with the wax head, 00:35:38.980 --> 00:35:41.460 is still there, sitting in the new student center. 00:35:41.659 --> 00:35:43.619 And what about that persistent myth, the one 00:35:43.619 --> 00:35:45.539 that says he attends the college council meetings? 00:35:45.960 --> 00:35:48.960 Ah, yes. Present but not voting. Is any part 00:35:48.960 --> 00:35:51.119 of that true? I hate to be the one to kill the 00:35:51.119 --> 00:35:54.210 magic, but it's mostly no. He does not regularly 00:35:54.210 --> 00:35:56.590 attend the meetings. The minutes do not list 00:35:56.590 --> 00:35:59.449 him as a member. However, the legend isn't entirely 00:35:59.449 --> 00:36:02.929 baseless. The Otto icon was wheeled in to attend 00:36:02.929 --> 00:36:06.349 one meeting in 2013 as a special tribute for 00:36:06.349 --> 00:36:09.829 a retiring provost. but he is not a regular board 00:36:09.829 --> 00:36:11.829 member. Still, the fact that we are sitting here 00:36:11.829 --> 00:36:13.869 talking about him almost 200 years later and 00:36:13.869 --> 00:36:16.070 that I can literally go visit him tomorrow means 00:36:16.070 --> 00:36:18.849 his utility calculation about his body worked. 00:36:18.989 --> 00:36:21.929 He achieved a strange kind of immortality. He 00:36:21.929 --> 00:36:24.750 absolutely did. He is arguably the most finitely 00:36:24.750 --> 00:36:27.309 visible philosopher in the entire world. So let's 00:36:27.309 --> 00:36:29.610 bring this all home. We've covered the genius, 00:36:29.829 --> 00:36:31.849 the surveillance state, the radical progressive 00:36:31.849 --> 00:36:35.030 ideas, and the skeleton in the box. When we look 00:36:35.030 --> 00:36:37.369 at the world around us in 2026, how much of it 00:36:37.369 --> 00:36:39.849 is Bentham's world? An incredible amount of it. 00:36:40.150 --> 00:36:42.909 Almost all of it in some ways. If you look at 00:36:42.909 --> 00:36:45.190 how modern governments make policy, they are 00:36:45.190 --> 00:36:48.230 fundamentally utilitarian engines. We use cost 00:36:48.230 --> 00:36:51.050 -benefit analysis for everything. Should we build 00:36:51.050 --> 00:36:53.469 a new highway? Well, let's calculate the economic 00:36:53.469 --> 00:36:56.409 pleasure of faster travel versus the pain and 00:36:56.409 --> 00:36:59.010 cost of the homeowners we have to displace. That's 00:36:59.010 --> 00:37:01.210 pure Bentham right there. The welfare state. 00:37:01.789 --> 00:37:04.550 The very idea that the government has a responsibility 00:37:04.550 --> 00:37:07.469 to ensure the basic health and happiness of the 00:37:07.469 --> 00:37:10.469 poor. That's Bentham's greatest good principle 00:37:10.469 --> 00:37:12.909 in actions. The fact that homosexuality is legal 00:37:12.909 --> 00:37:15.150 in most of the West. That's Bentham's logic winning 00:37:15.150 --> 00:37:17.530 out. The fact that you can go online and read 00:37:17.530 --> 00:37:19.889 the laws of your country for free. That's his 00:37:19.889 --> 00:37:22.130 dream of codification. But then there's the dark 00:37:22.130 --> 00:37:24.650 side. Then there's the pentopticon. We live in 00:37:24.650 --> 00:37:26.889 a world where data is the new currency. We are 00:37:26.889 --> 00:37:30.329 constantly observed. CCTV cameras on every street, 00:37:30.510 --> 00:37:33.250 cookies tracking our every click, our phones 00:37:33.250 --> 00:37:36.050 monitoring our location. And we accept it. That's 00:37:36.050 --> 00:37:38.829 the most amazing thing. We willingly accept the 00:37:38.829 --> 00:37:41.530 terms of service. Why? Because it gives us utility. 00:37:42.400 --> 00:37:44.500 I let Google track my location because I want 00:37:44.500 --> 00:37:46.460 the pleasure of Google Maps working perfectly 00:37:46.460 --> 00:37:49.260 to get me to a restaurant. Exactly. We have willingly 00:37:49.260 --> 00:37:51.559 traded our privacy for convenience and pleasure. 00:37:51.860 --> 00:37:55.300 We have accepted the sentiment of invisible omniscience 00:37:55.300 --> 00:37:58.300 because the algorithm optimizes our happiness. 00:37:58.539 --> 00:38:01.239 It shows us ads for things we want to buy. It 00:38:01.239 --> 00:38:03.719 recommends music we'll like. It's the ultimate 00:38:03.719 --> 00:38:06.780 tradeoff between freedom and optimization. Bentham 00:38:06.780 --> 00:38:08.539 didn't really care about freedom for its own 00:38:08.539 --> 00:38:11.579 sake. He saw it as a tool for happiness. He wanted 00:38:11.579 --> 00:38:13.940 us to be happy, safe, and productive. And if 00:38:13.940 --> 00:38:16.739 being watched helps achieve that, he'd say, watch 00:38:16.739 --> 00:38:19.340 away. And that, I think, is the final provocative 00:38:19.340 --> 00:38:22.420 thought to leave with. Bentham dreamed of a world 00:38:22.420 --> 00:38:25.320 run by a benevolent calculator of human happiness. 00:38:25.639 --> 00:38:29.360 So if an algorithm, a super intelligent AI, could 00:38:29.360 --> 00:38:31.500 calculate exactly how to run your life to maximize 00:38:31.500 --> 00:38:33.800 your personal happiness, but in exchange, you 00:38:33.800 --> 00:38:35.360 had to give up your free will and just follow 00:38:35.360 --> 00:38:37.789 its instructions. Would you do it? That is the 00:38:37.789 --> 00:38:41.670 ultimate utilitarian question. And looking at 00:38:41.670 --> 00:38:44.610 how glued we all are to our phones and our recommendation 00:38:44.610 --> 00:38:46.750 feeds, I think for a lot of people the answer 00:38:46.750 --> 00:38:49.349 is already yes. I think you might be right. On 00:38:49.349 --> 00:38:51.449 that cheery note, next time you're in London, 00:38:51.630 --> 00:38:55.030 go say hello to Jeremy. Just don't tap on the 00:38:55.030 --> 00:38:57.050 glass. He's watching. Always watching. Thanks 00:38:57.050 --> 00:38:58.750 for diving deep with us. We'll see you next time.