Activism

[00:10] Rory: My name is Rory O’Toole, and my.

[00:13] Matt: Name is Matt Schultz.

[00:14] Rory: And this is how to be the.

[00:17] Matt: Podcast where we discuss ancient wisdom, modern hacks, paperback self help books, and pithy.

[00:23] Rory: Platitudes in the hopes of figuring out the best way to live this one. Precious and wildlife. When there is injustice in the world, do you protest? Do you call your senators, volunteer for campaigns? Or do you think that kind of effort is, frankly, pointless? Join us as we discuss activism.

[00:49] Matt: You.

[01:05] Rory: Hi, Matt.

[01:06] Matt: Hi, Roar. So we wanted to talk a little bit about AI. Two letters.

[01:15] Rory: Two letters, one idea. And I think we’re utterly confused by a lot of it, although we both are frequent users of Chat GPT these days.

[01:24] Matt: Oh, my God. I was just on a Chat GPT rampage just now. I’m writing like some professional. Just each time I write one, I’m like, I give it to chat GBT, and I just say, write this better. Write it better.

[01:41] Rory: And does it?

[01:43] Matt: It does.

[01:44] Rory: And then do you edit that, though?

[01:46] Matt: I don’t even have to see.

[01:48] Rory: Sometimes I have to edit. Usually the emails I sent the professional.

[01:51] Matt: Maybe a couple of words, but it is so talented.

[01:55] Rory: It is daddy’s good little boy. Very talented. Yes. And an agent.

[02:05] Matt: Now, I did try to have it write a short story, and it was not good at that.

[02:10] Rory: Okay, so your creative field is still available, but still safe.

[02:16] Matt: Yeah, but it’s days or number formulaic. It is a master of the form.

[02:25] Rory: Well, that is true. Like the writer strike going on and these executives being very rude by saying all these writers could be replaced by AI. And for the most part, I don’t think that’s true. All prestige television needs thus far, I feel like needs to come from the brains of humans. But are you telling me Emily in Paris couldn’t be written by.

[02:51] Matt: Mean at this stage? I don’t think it could. In a couple of months, though, maybe. So. We were talking about know there are people out there, notably this guy named Eliezer Yudkovsky, but among him, other people, like Elon musk and whatevers, Yuval, Noah Harari, all these people who say that AI is like an existential threat to humanity. And Yudkovsky says explicitly, it will kill us all. And me and Rory, we’ve been saying, don’t give it arms.

[03:28] Rory: Yeah. How could it kill us? If it’s in a machine, how is.

[03:31] Matt: It going to kill me? How’s it going to wrap its hands around my neck? Okay, so it’s sending mean, right? It. It hacked my Kindle, and I opened my Kindle and it’s like, I’m going to kill you.

[03:46] Rory: Well, that’s what I’m wondering. Is it forced suicide? Is that what they mean?

[03:50] Matt: No. So Yudkovsky, I read his article today, finally. And it was even stupider than what I thought he said. First of all, he addressed my concern, our concern, explicitly. He said, you might think it doesn’t have arms, it doesn’t have a body. How will it be physical? How will it do physical things? Well, it can email lines of code to lines of DNA to a biolab that will print out a body. Now, first of all, that is not technology that exists.

[04:32] Rory: I guess he’s taking a really long view. Yeah, nip this in the bud hundreds of years before it’s possible.

[04:42] Matt: Yeah, but also, like, okay, let’s imagine it’s doing that. So it’s 3d printing. You’ve seen a 3d printer work line after line. It’s printing a horrible monster of flesh.

[04:54] Rory: And veins, a real Frankenstein.

[04:57] Matt: You’ve got a good hour.

[05:05] Rory: Head start.

[05:07] Matt: To just put a piece of gum over the spigot where the 3d printer is.

[05:16] Rory: Well, that’s the thing, is, humans do have to be complicit in this downfall of humanity, it seems like. And some people are saying, like, well, AI will be so manipulative, and they’re so much smarter than humans, they’ll be able to sort of recruit us as their little soldiers in our own demise. That’s kind of the argument, right?

[05:40] Matt: Oh, I haven’t heard that argument, but that’s interesting.

[05:44] Rory: But my question is, where’s the want? Why would AI want to kill us? Do they have emotions? Do they have desire?

[05:57] Matt: So far, I haven’t heard about want. I’ve heard about you give it a goal, and it doesn’t have human values in its pursuit of the goal.

[06:05] Rory: So someone has to give it the goal of killing humans.

[06:08] Matt: So you say, make a paperclip? Yeah, the paperclip example again, where’s its body to? Okay, the paperclip example is Yudkovsky’s, like, big example. You tell it, make paperclips in the most efficient way possible, because you’re a paperclip manufacturer now. It doesn’t have a human sense of priorities. So it starts literally, like, just tearing apart the earth, turning everything into paperclips until there’s nothing left but paperclips. But again, it’s like, is my laptop doing this? Even if I own a paperclip factory that’s set up to make paperclips, not every piece of machinery can run around and destroy humans.

[06:56] Rory: Yeah. Also, the other question I have is, can’t we just give it human priorities?

[07:03] Matt: I mean, my Chat GPT seems to be able to say, seems to be able to respect certain boundaries. I asked it to write a roast of someone and it wouldn’t.

[07:19] Rory: Yeah. This is curious. I don’t know how it’s going to play out. None of us do. Definitely a lot of hysteria. How hysterical are you about it on a scale of one to ten?

[07:32] Matt: Very low.

[07:33] Rory: Yesterday you seemed a little higher.

[07:36] Matt: I don’t think so.

[07:37] Rory: That was just my perception.

[07:39] Matt: Yeah, that was your perception. I do not think it’s going to kill everyone. I think that if it floods the Internet with a barrage of fake news and fake articles, that might just get us back to relying on prestige media. Like, okay, if it’s not from a name you trust, it could just be written by robots. Because right now we have a lot of fake news, but that’s just the fake news that humans can spread. If 99% of what is on the Internet is fake, we’ll start having a baseline assumption of fakeness rather than a baseline assumption of truth.

[08:28] Rory: That’s true.

[08:29] Matt: Which could be good for us.

[08:30] Rory: Yeah, actually, that could be good. Yeah. This middling ground right here.

[08:35] Matt: Yeah. Where we still kind of think things are true.

[08:39] Rory: Yeah. I mean, I think that a lot of people get information from the Internet, even myself, about more trivial things. Not like news news. I mean. No, all my news comes from the Internet. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t have a print newspaper coming to my house. But I mean, like a social media, I guess the spreading of articles, that’s where I go when I wanted to research a new product.

[09:03] Matt: Yeah. I think product reviews are going to be one of the first things to become very unreliable, because they already are.

[09:10] Rory: They already are.

[09:13] Matt: We went to this restaurant the other day, had incredible reviews.

[09:18] Rory: Oh, yeah.

[09:19] Matt: Then it was really bad food. And then after we had dined, the master of the house, the mistress of the house, came up to us and pretty much she didn’t have a gun, but it felt like it was at gunpoint. Made us give her five star review right on the spot.

[09:39] Rory: And we were like, how interesting. What a good scam she’s running now.

[09:46] Matt: Imagine if she had a legion of robots.

[09:49] Rory: I’m surprised. What did you say to her? Because there’s no way you did that.

[09:53] Matt: Yoav did it. He was nice.

[09:56] Rory: Oh, see, yesterday we were in the park and someone asked to sign us, to sign a petition for rent control in LA, which I support. Rent control in LA. But I’m not just signing a petition.

[10:07] Matt: Yeah, I need to research it.

[10:09] Rory: Yeah. Who knows what I’m signing?

[10:13] Matt: Yeah, this could be anything. Could be signing up to be his sex slave.

[10:19] Rory: Yeah. And in a court, they would be like, well, you signed it.

[10:22] Matt: You signed it.

[10:23] Rory: Yeah. Enjoy your box under the bed.

[10:27] Matt: Enjoy it. He is obligated to provide you with the box.

[10:33] Rory: A box of one’s own.

[10:39] Matt: So, speaking of rent control in LA.

[10:41] Rory: Yes. Today we’re discussing activism. What is it? Who is it? Who are they? Does it work?

[10:50] Matt: Does it work? Do you believe in the power of protest?

[10:53] Rory: Well, I was doing a lot of research on this. Not a lot. I was doing some research on this. I don’t want to overstate. And I found a really interesting recent study about if protest movements work. And can I read you some highlights from it?

[11:10] Matt: Yes, please.

[11:11] Rory: From social change lab.

[11:15] Matt: They sound biased in favor of believing that this works, but. Okay.

[11:27] Rory: The pair that concluded that though the majority of protest movements will fail, there is a small percentage that succeed in affecting change and or influencing public thought, policy and behavior. They have a small but measurable impact on public opinion. And they cited Extinction Rebellion, climate protest movements, which we know you have something to say about that in England as a case study, in that even though they were doing civil disobedience for a lot of their activism, public opinion did not swing against climate change just because of what they were doing. And in fact, it helped elevate the public discourse. Generally speaking, these protests do have sort of make people think about the issue in a more positive way, but they’re not necessarily successful in achieving their own aims. Like with Black Lives Matter, people became more aware of the movement, and a lot of people sort of came on board with the idea of it. But no, police departments have been defunded in the long run, basically.

[12:32] Matt: Yeah.

[12:35] Rory: But it’s kind of like what we think. These things percolate. You have to have a long, long, many years of one issue sort of bubling in the discourse, and then some policy change will happen.

[12:50] Matt: Yeah, I mean, I think defund the police was like a very bad policy goal to attach to that movement, because the movement was successful in raising awareness of the problem. But people were not down with that as the solution. Even without the mass pill, I don’t think it’s a good idea. But, yeah, it was a lot of good energy that was built up by the movement. But then it all went to selling Robin D’Angelo’s book.

[13:30] Rory: That’s the thing. It’s like, now the nonprofit BLM, or the activist formal group behind the slogan, often is criticized. Mean, you know, if you don’t die a hero, you live long enough to see yourself the villain. Even in activism, it seems like.

[13:49] Matt: That should be, like a real housewives motto, because it’s like, yeah, if you stay on that show more than one season.

[14:04] Rory: You have a few good seasons, and then it’s your turn.

[14:06] Matt: It’s your turn to be the, um.

[14:10] Rory: Or you start out the villain, like Ramona Singer, and you just stay the villain.

[14:15] Matt: Is there anyone who started out the villain? I guess Camille. Yeah, she had a redemption.

[14:25] Rory: With these. I think it’s really hard with protests to. It’s too big. People have too many ideas. People want too many things.

[14:37] Matt: Yeah. So Israel is in the midst of a very interesting protest movement right now, where the new government wanted to pass a judicial reform, a reform of the judicial system that many believe would make it so that there’s not a good balance of powers, so it harms democracy. So there was a huge protest movement against this, lots of staying power, week after week, hundreds of thousands of people in the streets, like, really big, and they end up shelving the legislation. Now the legislate, and now they’re trying to work on a compromise. The legislation is not gone yet, but people are still in the streets protesting. And I stopped going, and people are like, no, you have to keep the pressure on. But I’m like, I kind of want to reward the government. I have a pavlovian approach. I want to reward the government. Matt’s not there this week, but generally a lot less people are there because we shelved it. And then I want us to be saving that energy because if they bring it back without a good compromise, storm the citadels once again.

[15:56] Rory: Right. Yeah, that’s an interesting approach.

[16:00] Matt: But it did seem like the protest was working. It created a huge amount of pressure, and the government had no choice but to do something.

[16:11] Rory: Yeah, it’s really interesting because apparently the study found that there’s no rhyme or reason about why some protests work and some don’t. So, for example, Occupy Wall street, did that result in one bank regulation?

[16:25] Matt: I think it has to be really. So the protest here was really broad. It was so many different swaths of society. It was military reservists saying they’re not going to go to the military. It was like not a boycott, a strike. It didn’t end up happening, but they were going to strike at the airport, airport personnel. So if you can cause society to shut down, to grind to a halt.

[16:53] Rory: That’S what I think should happen. Every time there’s a mass shooting, the economy shuts down for a day and mourning.

[17:00] Matt: Yeah, you’ve said that before. That’s a good idea. But the thing is that it’s like, you can’t make people do this stuff. People just do it or they don’t. It’s hard to say what makes people.

[17:13] Rory: Exactly. Well, how do you get organized? You need, like, a charismatic leader. Right?

[17:19] Matt: You need a charismatic leader. You need real Jim Jones.

[17:24] Rory: If only we could have put his.

[17:28] Matt: Yeah, I know.

[17:30] Rory: Actually did care a lot about social change, but other things, too.

[17:35] Matt: But I think in Israel, there’s been this awareness of, oh, wow, the people have this power that we’ve realized we have. And it’s like, well, why don’t we use this for other things that are important? It’s like, because people don’t always care as much. The moment isn’t the same. Like, the moment.

[17:58] Rory: Yeah. What you’re talking about also is, like, very quick turnaround, which most of these sort of large movements don’t have. And when you’re talking about a slow burn, you have to be a little bit more savvy. You have to think in terms of long game. Like, the way that anti abortion activists really started grinding after Roe v. Wade at local legislation, then at the state level, and now they’ve been extremely successful in eroding it very slowly from the bottom up.

[18:35] Matt: Yeah. So there’s this character on the good wife who’s. Or maybe he’s in the good fight, I can’t remember, but he’s a pro life activist, one might say. And the way he operates, he’s a really rich guy, and he funds lawsuits. He is in the game of creating law by finding a case of, like, a gay christian baker who doesn’t want to make the cake for the gay couple doing some mock trials and seeing if it works. And it’s like, that’s kind of a cool way to be an activist, too, to think of being like, the money, the. It’s a little spooky, right?

[19:27] Rory: Well, yeah, I mean, that’s what happened with Hulk Hogan and Gawker, right? Remember when Gawker published Hulk Hogan’s sex tape and then who funded it? Jeff Bezos or Amazon?

[19:38] Matt: Oh, I don’t remember the funding.

[19:40] Rory: Oh, you don’t? Who funded Hulk.

[19:44] Matt: I obviously remember Hulk Hogan’s sex tape.

[19:47] Rory: I was watching Peter Thiel. Peter Thiel funded the lawsuit. And then everyone was like, this is the end of democracy. But I was kind of like, this was one of those cases where I was like, both sides suck. Like, why are you publishing Hulk Hogan’s sex tape? I’m very anti publishing sex tapes online.

[20:11] Matt: Intimate, terrible. Yeah. No, and they were unscrupulous. Absolutely. But, yeah, the free speech issue also. Who knows?

[20:28] Rory: I don’t know either. I don’t know. I mean, how do you feel about bakeries that won’t make cakes for gay couples weddings?

[20:40] Matt: That’s a good question that I don’t have an answer to. I mean, do you have to put any message on a cake?

[20:53] Rory: Generally, wedding cakes don’t say congratulations. They’re just tiered with some florals. It’s not a sheet cake for your birthday with a frosting writing that says, I support this union.

[21:13] Matt: Yeah, you’re right. So you make that product and you’re not selling that product to gay people. Yeah, that’s discrimination.

[21:31] Rory: Right.

[21:32] Matt: But it does feel a little bit different to me. If you wanted to put a message on it, like, congratulations on your abortion, you made the right choice for you. If you. You know, if you asked a christian baker to put that on a cake, it’s a little more complicated for me.

[22:00] Rory: Okay. Yeah. I mean, if. I think people can hide behind religious freedoms for discrimination. Obviously, the southern civil rights movement really demonstrated that businesses do have to serve all people. That being said, I’m someone who is sort of wary of personal choice infringement by the government. Like seatbelt laws for adults.

[22:30] Matt: Really?

[22:31] Rory: Yeah, because I’m kind of like. I don’t really like government infringement on personal choice. Not for children, because they don’t have personal choice. They’re just born to terrible parents. But I feel like the burden has to be really high.

[22:47] Matt: Yeah. To seatbelt laws. Interesting. I’m kind of into seatbelt laws.

[22:54] Rory: See, I think it’s a little authoritarian.

[22:57] Matt: I think it’s authoritarian that your car beeps at you until you put it on, though, because. Okay, you can have that turned off. Oh, really?

[23:09] Rory: Yeah.

[23:11] Matt: I mean, I was in a cab the other day, and the cab driver wouldn’t put his seatbelt on, and it was beeping. And I was like, sir, that is so.

[23:25] Rory: Yeah. And he was like, oh.

[23:27] Matt: He said, according to the law in Israel, cab drivers don’t have to wear a seatbelt.

[23:32] Rory: You’re like, whatever, I don’t care.

[23:34] Matt: It’s a loud beeping noise, and it’s getting faster and louder by the second.

[23:39] Rory: Yeah. Like, you know what my dad did? He cut his seatbelt. It’s just the thing is always in the click is always. What kind of a psychopath. Is that against wearing a seatbelt?

[23:51] Matt: Yeah, that’s a real principled stand. That’s the power of protest.

[23:59] Rory: While I am against governments creating these laws, I am very pro seatbelt wearing, because that’s another thing, is I feel like it takes away common sense and sense of personal responsibility for your own safety, almost. And if you’re going to be that much of an idiot, then you’ve got bigger problems.

[24:18] Matt: Yeah. Now back to protests. Okay, so I remember once there was, like, when extinction Rebellion first came onto the scene. There was all these articles like, why this protest works. And then you see the picture of the red people, and it’s like these artistic clown mimes walking through the street, and it’s like, no, that’s not going to.

[24:45] Rory: Well, what define works gets people talking about it. Gets policy changes.

[24:51] Matt: Gets policy changes?

[24:53] Rory: Yeah, that’s not going to happen, but gets people talking about it, which eventually, in ten years, might get policy changes, maybe.

[25:00] Matt: I think the clown people will just get people laughing. And anything that further solidifies the climate movement as, like, a left wing liberal arts student movement, I think is bad for the movement.

[25:17] Rory: So what would be your idea of, like, a good, civil, disobedient protest for the client?

[25:23] Matt: Definitely not. A bunch of kids from Bennington pouring out milk on the floor of a Starbucks.

[25:32] Rory: Hated that. But I like the soup on the paintings.

[25:34] Matt: Actually, the soup on the paintings is only acceptable because it doesn’t actually hurt the paintings.

[25:41] Rory: Of course. It’s also the most exciting thing to happen in a museum in 20 years.

[25:50] Matt: I think it should all be about liberating cows.

[25:56] Rory: Yeah, but we’ve talked about this before. There’s a lot of logistics there.

[26:00] Matt: You’ve got to surround the truck with cars, forcing them to pull over, shoot the truck driver in the kneecap. Okay, okay.

[26:14] Rory: I’m glad you clarified.

[26:18] Matt: If he sees you, though, then we may have to take it a bit further. So after you’ve neutralized the truck driver, you liberate the cows and you take them to a sanctuary state. Yeah, I think it should all be about freeing cows. I think more people should. Will I get in trouble for inciting terrorism on this podcast? Blow up pipelines. Oil pipelines. Not me, but you, listener, one of our. So one of our listeners, maybe the one in Saudi Arabia or. No, not them. Punishments are too strict there. Someone, though. Liberate a cow. Blow up a pipeline.

[27:11] Rory: Yeah, we need a real. What was that guy’s name? John Brown. The thing is that acts of civil disobedience have worked so well in the mean, that was the American Revolution. They were blowing up boats because they didn’t want to be taxed for a war that they started. And then, of course, there was Leedon, Kansas, where people moved there to kill each other to determine if Kansas would be entered into the Union as a free state or slave state. And that’s what really pushed the civil war forward. But I mean, you know, then you have a ****** civil war. But I think most people would say that that was worth it.

[27:54] Matt: Worth it? Yeah, the American Revolution. Tarring and feathering.

[27:59] Rory: Who did we tar and feather?

[28:01] Matt: Tax collectors?

[28:03] Rory: Witches.

[28:04] Matt: That works, I have to say. I think.

[28:09] Rory: Wait, I have a question about tarring and feathering. Do you automatically die or can you clean yourself up?

[28:15] Matt: I think you can clean yourself up.

[28:17] Rory: Okay.

[28:17] Matt: I think there’s a fatal version.

[28:20] Rory: Okay, fun version.

[28:24] Matt: There’s a humiliating version.

[28:26] Rory: Ribbing someone.

[28:28] Matt: So I think that when the handmaids appear at a protest, it’s a bad look.

[28:37] Rory: It’s making a mockery.

[28:40] Matt: It’s making a mockery of the real handmaids in Gilead, which is a real place. And, like, the handmaids were on display at the Israel protest, the Israel democracy protest.

[28:54] Rory: Oh, that seems just like a little not on point.

[28:58] Matt: Yeah, it was very.

[28:59] Rory: Brother, I can see the handmaids at the women’s march or an anti abortion march.

[29:07] Matt: Listen, anything that has to do with reproductive rights, handmaids are appropriate. Yeah, but not, that’s not about that. But I do think it’s a little too libtard cosplay. I think it’s like a little bit too much like we wish that the enemy was Gilead.

[29:39] Rory: Because sometimes people do wish for the worst. So people like to be enraged, kind of. Right? Is that what you mean?

[29:46] Matt: Yeah, I think they’re like. It’s like no one actually wants you to be a handmaid, but we want them to want us to be handmaids, because then there’s moral clarity. I think we always want moral clarity. I think that’s why we make so many movies about World War II. I think it was.

[30:06] Rory: Yeah, totally unlike the Vietnam War. Another great example of protests not working. Those protests didn’t seem to do anything. Did they end conscription, maybe?

[30:18] Matt: Oh, no. Did they? How long did that war last?

[30:22] Rory: Yeah, that lasted like ten years. I don’t think it ended 1 second earlier than it would have had there been no protests. You know what I mean? Yeah. The draft ended at the end of the war for Vietnam. So what were those protests for? Like, if I was protesting really hard for the Vietnam anti Vietnam war protest. I would be really discouraged and just give up. The Vietnam war technically lasted from 1955 to 1975, but I don’t think we were involved until, like, 1962.

[31:00] Matt: Three is mash about Vietnam.

[31:04] Rory: No. Common misconception.

[31:06] Matt: It’s about Korea. Okay, maybe I’ve tried to watch Mash before, but that opening theme always scares me off.

[31:18] Rory: Really? What about the theme?

[31:21] Matt: That sad song with the helicopter overhead?

[31:27] Rory: Oh, you think the song’s sad?

[31:29] Matt: Yeah, and it makes me feel like the show is going to be dreary.

[31:32] Rory: But it’s supposed to be funny.

[31:34] Matt: It’s supposed to be a great comedy. And we all know Alan Alda is an american treasure.

[31:40] Rory: He is. But, you know, comedies, they don’t always hold up, as we’ve discussed. I think Sarah live is a great example of that. It’s like, my parents think that Steve Martin doing King Tut is, like, the funniest thing in the world, or, like, John Belushi in a bee costume, and I’m like, I’m not. I don’t get it.

[32:07] Matt: Yeah.

[32:08] Rory: But for me, Wayne’s world. Hilarious.

[32:13] Matt: Okay, so I wanted to talk about activism versus volunteerism.

[32:19] Rory: Yeah. What is activism? Who gets to be an.

[32:26] Matt: So. Well, first I want to mention that I read this article, an Atlantic article this week by Arthur C. Brooks, talking about how activism makes you sadder after you do it according to studies. But volunteering makes you feel.

[32:41] Rory: Hmm, okay, interesting. I will. Like, what do you consider when I volunteer for political campaigns, like around elections?

[32:54] Matt: That’s activism.

[32:56] Rory: That’s why I feel bad at the end.

[32:58] Matt: Volunteering is, but I feel good when my candidate wins. I think activism is trying to affect political change and volunteering. Now, obviously, you can be a volunteer. The terms here aren’t scientific, but the way that this article was describing it, at least volunteering is like, you’re not affecting systemic change or political change. You’re just cleaning up a park that needs cleaning up. You’re teaching a class to kids at a community center. You’re reading to an old woman at an elderly.

[33:48] Rory: But here’s the thing is, you’ve done a lot of this, and these usually have not made you feel better. So can you speak from your personal experience?

[33:57] Matt: No. I think it does feel good when you help someone and you see that you’ve helped them. When I was working with those kids at that community center, there was nothing set up for the volunteers to do. So I was literally, like, in a hallway with a six year old girl and, like, a two year old baby running around just in a hallway of a bus station for like 2 hours. No toys, no nothing. So, yeah, it was kind of miserable. And I only went a couple of times because I was like, what is this? This is weird.

[34:39] Rory: Oh, my God. Yeah.

[34:45] Matt: But I think that just underscores the whole point. What makes volunteering feel good is that you see the results. You form a relationship, you see that you’re helping someone or bringing a little bright spot into your community or into someone’s life.

[35:03] Rory: Yeah, I mean, there have been cases sometimes. I don’t know if you’ve ever volunteered at a place that’s overstaffed with volunteers, where it’s like 40 people working for a soup kitchen. Not everyone even has a knife. So you’re just kind of standing around making up jobs. That does not feel good.

[35:24] Matt: No, that would not. That definitely would not. And activism, I think I always had fun at these protests.

[35:36] Rory: See, I don’t have fun.

[35:37] Matt: These protests were quite fun. You’d run into people, you know, I.

[35:41] Rory: Find them a little exhausting.

[35:43] Matt: There’s music.

[35:44] Rory: Stressful with the parking here in LA.

[35:48] Matt: Yeah, the parking would definitely add a dimension.

[35:52] Rory: Where am I going to use the bathroom?

[35:55] Matt: How do you feel about chanting?

[35:57] Rory: Oh, like, do I participate?

[36:00] Matt: Do you participate? And if you do, how hard are you going?

[36:06] Rory: I don’t know what to do. I don’t know if I should really lean in and make a little quirky little joke about it.

[36:13] Matt: Let’s go with what’s option B?

[36:16] Rory: Option B is just mumbling to myself, justice, no peace. No justice, no peace. Or just like being part of the crowd. No justice, no peace. But have you ever been in part of the crowd? And then, I don’t know. Everyone knows it’s over besides you. And you are like, no.

[36:35] Matt: I haven’t had that experience, but I forget the sociological term for it. I think it’s like effervescence, communal effervescence, or something like that, where you become subsumed into a group at a concert or a religious gathering like that.

[36:53] Rory: Dancing plague.

[36:55] Matt: Like the dancing plague. And I think I’m very immune to it.

[37:00] Rory: Oh, you’re not groupthink.

[37:03] Matt: I do like to think that I would not join a mob. I like to think that. I don’t think I would find myself in a mob. I wouldn’t find myself there. Do you know what I mean? Not like I wouldn’t be found there. I wouldn’t know what to do with myself.

[37:21] Rory: You were in a mob if you were storming a capitol. Yeah.

[37:26] Matt: It’S really hard for me to get carried away with the group even when I want to. Even at a hoping I’m going to see Beyonce soon.

[37:39] Rory: Yeah.

[37:40] Matt: Well, I’m hoping to get subsumed into the moment.

[37:44] Rory: Is that what happens to people? Like, they become completely unself conscious in the sense of they’re not aware that they don’t have their objective third eye.

[37:56] Matt: Yeah. I think it’s a mob mentality. I think you go with what the group is thinking and you get really jazzed up and you feel high off of the group energy.

[38:14] Rory: Like you’re knocking over cars.

[38:18] Matt: Yeah. You’re like, this is good. This is what we should be doing. Like, those people storming the Capitol. It’s like, what were they thinking? What on earth were they thinking? But they were thinking, this is good. This is a good idea.

[38:36] Rory: Yeah. They were just, like, high on their own. Like they were really feeding off of each other. And I guess that part of your brain with future foresight turns off and all you can see yourself is in Nancy Pelosi’s office and not past that. Yeah.

[38:56] Matt: And I think a group takes responsibility for its own actions in a way that absolves the individual.

[39:07] Rory: Right. And then they found out that it doesn’t, because now all those people are on trial as individuals.

[39:13] Matt: Exactly. They’re like, what? No, it’s like, no, you actually were still a human being, subject to the law.

[39:23] Rory: Subject to the law and to thought into thought.

[39:27] Matt: Yeah.

[39:28] Rory: Unfortunately, we all have to think about these things. Yeah. I think it’s hard to imagine being in a situation like that for someone like me. But I don’t like to separate myself from the dark side of humanity, the dark side of being a human. It could happen.

[39:50] Matt: Oh, for sure. It could happen. Now, I do kind of think that I would have electrocuted the person on the other side of the wall in the Milgram experiment. I’m saying that just to prove that I do have some self awareness, I do think that I’m subject to these psychological forces. A person in a lab coat tells you to keep turning up the electricity, and you’re like, okay.

[40:20] Rory: Yeah. All it takes is a little bit of authority, and I’ll fall in line.

[40:25] Matt: Yeah.

[40:25] Rory: I think it’s not just authority, but you think it’s for a greater good purpose. Like they’re being. Telling you it’s like a good thing to do.

[40:35] Matt: Yeah.

[40:36] Rory: And you’re in a foreign environment. You don’t know. It’s not like you’re in your house.

[40:43] Matt: Yeah. And there was that show, the push, a show that no one has seen, that everyone should see. So watch it now, listeners. It’s a Netflix show about a social experiment where sort of a candid camera type show where you’re like, you’re real, but everyone else around you is acting, and you don’t realize it. And the idea is that this guy is going to get you to murder someone, an ordinary person. He’s going to get you to murder someone over the course of 6 hours by creating a wacky. Obviously, they don’t actually kill someone. They stage it, but they get these people to do what they think is killing someone.

[41:31] Rory: Right, but how did they choose the people to set this elaborate scheme up for?

[41:44] Matt: They chose people who had displayed suggestibility by sending the people into a room where there is a long line of chairs. Okay? And they go, go sit down in this room. And there’s tons of people sitting in these chairs. Okay? So there’s a long line of chairs with people sitting on you. Go sit in your chair. Now you’re part of that line. A bell rings, everyone else stands up. A bell rings again. Everyone else sits down. You don’t know what this bell is. No one has told you to do anything. Do you stay seated, or do you join the crowd even though you don’t know what’s going on?

[42:25] Rory: What kind of a psycho wouldn’t join the crowd, though?

[42:29] Matt: I don’t know. Why would you stand up at the bell?

[42:33] Rory: I’m confident I would join. I’d be like, oh, I missed something in the instructions.

[42:38] Matt: Yeah. So there you go. So you would kill someone, too.

[42:42] Rory: Is that how it works? There’s 100% correlation there.

[42:46] Matt: No, but there was, like, 80% correlation.

[42:49] Rory: No, but there must have been some other test than this.

[42:53] Matt: That was it.

[42:54] Rory: There was no interview. Pre interview.

[42:58] Matt: No, I’m not buying it. They explain their methodology in the show.

[43:05] Rory: I’m not buying it. So you wouldn’t stand up with the bell? Because at one point, you did tell me this, and you did say that you would stand up with the bell, but now you’revising your answer.

[43:17] Matt: So I find myself in situations, in bell like situations sometimes. Because sometimes you’re in a synagogue and everyone does something like stands up, and I don’t know why they’re standing, and sometimes I stand with them, but sometimes I don’t.

[43:43] Rory: Oh, so it’s a real 50 50 shot for you. Yeah.

[43:46] Matt: I don’t know what I would have done that day.

[43:49] Rory: I’m confident I would have stand, stood.

[43:52] Matt: I really don’t think I would have murdered someone, though. Well, no one thinks that, but I really think it.

[44:00] Rory: Well, the scenario that they created, it had to do with donors being upset at an event, right?

[44:11] Matt: Yeah.

[44:12] Rory: So I would be eliminated from the study because that’s my job. I would never kill someone. I dealt with donors being upset at an event and it did not result in anyone dying.

[44:26] Matt: I don’t know.

[44:29] Rory: No, I’m confident. A different scenario. Yes. That scenario wouldn’t get me.

[44:37] Matt: That might make you perfect for it, though, because you understand the importance of a donation.

[44:43] Rory: Quite the opposite. I’m like, there’s always more donors, or you could always fix this mistake somehow without killing someone.

[44:52] Matt: Well, the thing was that this guy was going to. Spoiler alert, he had gotten you already to do things shy of murder that now you think you’re going to get in legal trouble for if you don’t kill this guy.

[45:10] Rory: Yeah, it’s crazy.

[45:13] Matt: Send me to jail, but murder someone. Murdering someone is one of my worst fears.

[45:20] Rory: I have a huge fear of murdering someone. And also, I’m like, why would I think I could get away with murdering someone?

[45:27] Matt: Do you think if you really had to murder someone, have you ever thought about what you would do with the body?

[45:36] Rory: This is the thing is, I think it’s really easy to get away with murdering a random person that you don’t know. I think it’s impossible to get. Not impossible, but really hard to get away with murdering someone you even kind of know.

[45:50] Matt: Yeah, they’ll figure it out.

[45:52] Rory: And I’ve never really thought about what I would do with the body. No. Some sort of would burning.

[46:01] Matt: Um. I mean, that’s like what Stephen Avery did.

[46:06] Rory: Well, as they say, no body, no crime.

[46:09] Matt: They do say that, because actually, the.

[46:12] Rory: Number of convictions apparently. Is this true? Did you tell me this, or did Sam tell me?

[46:16] Matt: Yes, I did tell you this.

[46:17] Rory: The number of convictions without a body.

[46:20] Matt: Is like one or two, or it was like seven.

[46:23] Rory: Yeah, it’s like, very low. It’s like less than 100, let’s say.

[46:28] Matt: Yeah. If you can get rid of that.

[46:32] Rory: Body and you don’t know this person.

[46:34] Matt: Put all your focus there on body. That is really everything. And it’s like, okay, we’re being filmed all the time now. It’s going to say, drive across the entire country, dump it in the opposite ocean from where you live.

[46:54] Rory: I was just going to say ocean is a good idea, but jeez, how to get there. I mean, there was that woman that they referred to in 30 Rock, wore a diaper, so she didn’t have to stop when she was driving country astronaut lady.

[47:10] Matt: A woman with a plan.

[47:14] Rory: What was she doing? She killed her boyfriend.

[47:17] Matt: She wanted to kill him. I don’t think she succeeded.

[47:20] Rory: But how did she wear a diaper? Or how did they find out she wore a diaper?

[47:24] Matt: I don’t know. I don’t remember that story well enough. It was a while ago.

[47:28] Rory: Now I’m listening to a true cry podcast where they figured out that this family conspired to kill this other family, whatever, and that they drove.

[47:39] Matt: Whole family conspired to kill another family.

[47:42] Rory: Yes. Four people killed eight people in one night. Yeah.

[47:48] Matt: I’m shocked.

[47:50] Rory: Everyone is. It was really crazy.

[47:53] Matt: I want to listen to it. What’s it called?

[47:54] Rory: It’s called the Piketown massacre.

[47:57] Matt: Oh, my God.

[47:58] Rory: But it’s really long, so I don’t know if you’d like it, but I think there’s like a tv special. It might be better. Anyway, they were basically trying to frame someone else, and they knew he wore these kinds of shoes. So they drove to a Walmart, like, twelve counties over to buy these shoes, like, months beforehand. And the cops still found it out. Like, found that security footage of them at the Walmart buying the shoes.

[48:28] Matt: Yeah. They were like, twelve months beforehand. We got this.

[48:32] Rory: Yeah. Twelve months before. And they didn’t get rid of the receipt. It’s like, in some ways, they tried really hard, and in other ways they really failed.

[48:40] Matt: Why didn’t they get rid of the receipt sillies.

[48:46] Rory: They went through to elaborate means in some regards, and then in other regards, they were just lazy bones or careless.

[48:54] Matt: Yeah. Just don’t kill anyone. I sometimes think about how easy it must have been to kill someone in the 17 hundreds. So easy you can leave the knife in them with your fingerprints on it.

[49:13] Rory: But then at the same time, I don’t think the burden of evidence was that high. I think that if they could just be like, he probably.

[49:20] Matt: You did it.

[49:21] Rory: Yeah. People really hated this person. Yeah. You did it. Okay.

[49:25] Matt: Yeah. The burden of evidence has climbed with our technology.

[49:30] Rory: Yeah.

[49:31] Matt: It’s like, yeah, we want the game to be competitive. We have an innate desire for the courtroom to be a drama.

[49:38] Rory: Exactly. The most dangerous game, actually. They talk about this on this podcast, is like that the prosecution is a little bit too dry for the jury. Maybe they’re losing the jury because they’re being too long winded and there’s actually no DNA evidence. And now people expect there to always be DNA evidence.

[49:57] Matt: People do expect that.

[50:00] Rory: Okay, back to activism, Matt.

[50:02] Matt: Okay. If you could be a prominent activist for any cause and dedicate your life to any cause. What would it be?

[50:15] Rory: Anti bathroom humor. I want to be the tipper Gore of bathroom humor.

[50:19] Matt: Wait, what was Tipper Gore’s cause?

[50:22] Rory: She wanted to put parental warnings on cds.

[50:27] Matt: Oh, my God, what an imbecile.

[50:30] Rory: I agree with her. I’m like, children should not be listening to NWA.

[50:37] Matt: I know, but it just ended up becoming, like, a badge of honor for cds.

[50:43] Rory: I know. See? You live long enough to get spoiled. What about you?

[50:51] Matt: Cow liberation.

[50:53] Rory: Oh, cow liberation. I thought we were doing funny little causes.

[50:56] Matt: No, I mean serious. What cause would you give yourself to? It’s a real question.

[51:02] Rory: Say, like, fair and legal elections.

[51:08] Matt: Oh, that’s good.

[51:10] Rory: Yeah, I really grind my gears when there are things like gerrymandering. Things like that.

[51:18] Matt: Gerrymandering is terrible.

[51:21] Rory: I hate it.

[51:22] Matt: Very upsetting.

[51:23] Rory: Yeah. Little things like that. I really hate. Not little things. Very big things.

[51:28] Matt: Yeah, it’s a big know. It just occurred to me. Roar. That because I’m going to be a rabbi. I just want to specify that I do not think you should harm truck drivers transporting cows in any way, shape or form. I do not condone that. Liberate the cows through nonviolent means.

[51:47] Rory: How?

[51:48] Matt: Chloroform.

[51:49] Rory: Buy them.

[51:50] Matt: Yeah. Why? Why can’t there be, like, a cow ransom?

[51:55] Rory: I don’t know. Like a billionaire. Peter Thiel needs to get behind it.

[51:58] Matt: How much do you think a cow costs?

[52:02] Rory: Let’s see.

[52:04] Matt: How much do we think one. But why do we. I don’t want to pay for all these cows, though.

[52:08] Rory: Well, you aren’t going to be able to, so. What are you talking about? $900 to $3,000. So it’s pretty affordable. But then you have to keep them alive.

[52:20] Matt: Well, we’ll kill them and sell the meat to offset the cost.

[52:23] Rory: Now, my question is, you know how you’re against.

[52:26] Matt: That was a joke.

[52:27] Rory: Yeah, no, I know. You know how you’re against neutering pets. So would you let the cows breed freely?

[52:36] Matt: I don’t know.

[52:37] Rory: Then we just have all these cows that we don’t use to eat.

[52:40] Matt: No, I think maybe you keep the men and the women separate.

[52:45] Rory: Oh, so you’re okay with keeping animals from breeding, but not by surgical means?

[52:51] Matt: Yeah, I think. Especially if the idea is to save them from a life of torture and slaughter, it’s okay. Okay, surgical means. I think that is a meaningful difference. These animals have been interfered with enough.

[53:12] Rory: I don’t know. You’re still the same result. You’re just letting them have the urges that they can’t express.

[53:21] Matt: I don’t think it’s the same results. Having your body surgically altered is very different result.

[53:31] Rory: You don’t think as a person, you would rather just be like, I’m not.

[53:36] Matt: Obligated to be a matchmaker for cows. I may think that it’s an overreach of my priorities as a human to prevent cows from mating, but that does not obligate me to be a matchmaker with them, to set them up with their future husbands and wives.

[53:54] Rory: Okay, so there can be some intervention, but not surgical.

[53:57] Matt: Yeah, and maybe we only rescue female cows. I think female cows would definitely be where I want to start because they have a harder fate than the male cows. Isn’t that always the way?

[54:16] Rory: Classic, right? All right, Matt, so should you be an activist? Oh, I don’t even know if we addressed it.

[54:24] Matt: Yeah. So here’s the thing. There’s this famous rabbi, Abraham Joshua Heschel or Joshua Abraham Heschel. Abraham Joshua, I think. And he famously marched on Selma, marched on Washington or to Selma. I forget which one. Now people mention this about him almost every time he’s brought up one protest credit for the rest of your life and beyond.

[54:55] Rory: I guess there’s an assumption that he attended multiple, and that was the most famous.

[55:00] Matt: And he said, today we pray with our feet.

[55:03] Rory: Okay.

[55:04] Matt: If I go to a protest and say that, no one’s going to give me any sort of cookie brownie points for it.

[55:12] Rory: Well, if you became famous later in life, maybe like Bernie Sanders, we always hear about all the protests he went to.

[55:18] Matt: That’s true. When you are in your 60s, you’re going to want to say that you were at some protests.

[55:24] Rory: Yeah, absolutely. You will. And I think it does move the needle forward, but the wheels of change are very slow, as they say. That’s the phrase. Right. And it’s not always the outcome you want. Like, look at Tipper Gore.

[55:42] Matt: Exactly. Choose your cause carefully. And also, it’s like with exercise, the best exercise is the one you’ll do. So find a cause and a community of people who are doing it that you want to spend time with.

[56:01] Rory: Yeah. Small, consistent efforts, I think, is better than getting really into doing one thing for, like, three weeks.

[56:10] Matt: Yeah.

[56:11] Rory: It’s all about small, consistent efforts also, I guess we forgot to talk about this, or I forgot to bring it up, but, like, Instagram activism, I think people think they’re doing something by sharing a meme.

[56:24] Matt: Yeah. Here are some resources. Sharing resources by Robin D’Angelo’s book.

[56:29] Rory: Yeah, no, no, you need to be out there, you need to be dedicating time today.

[56:34] Matt: You need to pray with your feet.

[56:36] Rory: You need to call your senators, call your representatives.

[56:40] Matt: Yeah, the Instagram thing, the thing is, it creates a buz, and then it fades really quickly. But does it get people out on the streets?

[56:49] Rory: It might.

[56:52] Matt: Be an activist. Yeah. Figure out what you think you should do, and then do a little more than that.

[56:59] Rory: I think that you should be an activist if you want to be one, if you care about social change, if you care about certain issues. But at the same time, do I think that your life is more fulfilling if you don’t care about those things or less fulfilling? I don’t know.

[57:19] Matt: Do you need to feel guilty if you’re not an activism person? That’s the thing. In our generation, activists used to be, like, a specific role that specific people had, like being a poet or being a plumber. And of course, there’s always been popular movements, too. But I do think that there’s something a little bit unique in our generation, that everyone is sort of supposed to be a little more political than perhaps in prior generations. Do you think that’s true, or do you think I’m being presentist?

[57:56] Rory: I think that’s a little bit true for the time. There’s definitely a pressure to pick aside and be very vigilant, intransigent about your issue. Kind of certainly take no prisoners. But I think people think that just being really steadfast is a form of activism, which it’s not.

[58:24] Matt: I remember in the 90s or, like, in the 2000s, even around the Occupy Wall street moment, there being, like, this discourse of, like, this generation, they so desperately want a fight, but they’ve got nothing real to protest. It does feel like that has changed. It feels like the issues, not that they weren’t real before, but that we at least acknowledge their realness now.

[58:54] Rory: Yeah, definitely. Yeah. I don’t know. I mean, being a person who’s not tuned in, I don’t know. Is there a value in that? Is there a value of just being inherently tuned into things, of knowing about the issues? I don’t think so. I think that’s the worst place to be. Either you should know and be doing something, or you should know nothing and just continue doing nothing. I don’t think you get special points for just knowing about things, just knowing how bad it is for the Uyghurs.

[59:25] Matt: Yeah, so bad. And what are we doing? We’re talking about it on our podcast.

[59:33] Rory: Yeah, that’s right.

[59:34] Matt: We’re getting the word out. So other people can know about it and do nothing. That’s like the funny thing about raising awareness.

[59:42] Rory: Exactly.

[59:47] Matt: It’s like step one. Step two, mystery. Step one, raise awareness. Step two, question mark. Step three, free the Uyghurs. Like, what the hell is step two, boycott Nike.

[01:00:09] Rory: Boycot. Okay.

[01:00:12] Matt: Yeah, actually, that’s not true. I got you off a birthday gift from Nike and my water bottles from Nike.

[01:00:21] Rory: Ok.

[01:00:22] Matt: I’ve done nothing. I’m actively part of the problem.

[01:00:31] Rory: I listened to an NPR episode on them, so I’ve done a lot.

[01:00:36] Matt: So you’re good?

[01:00:37] Rory: I’m good.

[01:00:37] Matt: Well, this is the thing, our debt, and I say this in all seriousness, and I wrote something about it, which you read, our debt to the world is very high, and I think we’re conscious of that debt, and we really wish there was something we could do about it, because we do see these problems. They are heartbreaking. And step two really is a question mark. So we march out into the streets dressed like handmaids just because we wish there was something we could do. And sometimes, as we’ve discussed, sometimes it’s effective, but sometimes it’s not. It just leads us to this sense of frustration and sadness.

[01:01:16] Rory: Yeah. It’s just really hard to affect any real change as an individual. So you have to get a group together, and it’s really hard to get a group together and to get on the same page and to be persuasive about, like, everyone would need to boycot Nike.

[01:01:32] Matt: Yeah.

[01:01:33] Rory: In order to do that, you need a new Martin Luther King. And I don’t see anyone coming around the corner.

[01:01:39] Matt: It’s a fertile topic.

[01:01:41] Rory: It is. Maybe we’ll do a part two.

[01:01:44] Matt: All right.

[01:01:44] Rory: Roar. Talk to you later.

[01:01:46] Matt: Talk to you later.