#148 An Outbreak of Governance (Bret Weinstein & Heather Heying DarkHorse Livestream)
In this 148th in a series of live discussions with Bret Weinstein and Heather Heying (both PhDs in Biology), we discuss the state of the world through an evolutionary lens.This week, we discuss elections and democracy. What happens if we start investigating the relationship between pharma/Pfizer and the public health apparatus? Are there any patriots left in politics? We also discuss twitter, Elon Musk, and the “pause” being taken by some former advertisers on twitter. Then: what precisely is...
Hey folks, welcome to the Dark Horse Podcast, live stream number 148, is it?
148.
148.
I, it turns out, am Dr. Brett Weinstein, and this is Dr. Heather Hying, and we are still functioning with some temporary digs here.
I do want to tell people.
We are, of course, functioning with temporary digs because we have moved, and that means we gave up our studio in Portland.
We are erecting a new studio.
However, having moved to an island compounds all of the labor shortage and supply chain issues that exist on the mainland, and so it is detaining us somewhat.
Now, here's the plan.
I think you're really gonna dig it in the end.
We are building the right studio.
We are building it well with an eye towards it looking good and eliminating as many technical hazards as can possibly be eliminated.
But we know that finishing it is a ways off.
So what we are going to do is we are going to construct, and we have already identified the location, a permanent temporary home for the Dark Horse Podcast.
Permanent Temporary.
Permanent Temporary Home.
We're coming to you today from Temporary Temporary.
We're going hopefully by next week to Permanent Temporary, which I don't think is the right framing, but okay.
And at some point within the next year we'll be at Permanent Permanent.
Permanent Temporary is a perfectly good framing in light of the standards of the moment.
I think it is very descriptive.
Why would we sync to the standards of the moment?
Because it's funny.
I don't know.
People expect more from us.
How about temporary permanent?
That's better.
It is better.
All right, well, temporary permanent it is.
We're going to be doing that and hopefully, I don't want to promise anything because you never know what we will discover in the process of getting to our temporary permanent digs, but hopefully next week's broadcast will come from there.
Now I am curious, and you know it's always, it's often a mistake to say, I'd like to know what people think, but I have seen in some comments that have come my way that people really like the homier feel of this and Having the animals be able to be on camera and such, and the dog snoring in the background is calming for some people.
She's not snoring yet because we haven't yet put her to sleep, but we will, I assure you.
But I'm interested to know what people do and don't like.
That's not to say that we're necessarily going to take your advice under consideration, but since we are in the design phase of the permanent permanent studio at this point, I'm interested to hear what people do and don't like.
You know, do you want to see us back in the sauna?
Do you want to see us in a I don't even know what.
So this is a good synergy.
You want to know what people think, and I want to know if people think, and if so, when people think.
Now it's different people in this case.
But anyway, yeah, it would be good to know what people are hoping for.
And of course what we will get back from such a prompt is total uninterpretable chaos.
Which we will try to meet everyone's desires simultaneously.
No, we will not.
Nope, that's not who we are.
Briefly, we will consider trying to satisfy everyone's desires for a new set.
No.
Alright, there's a little glimpse into our relationship.
We follow these live streams, the Q&As.
Yes.
And we will follow this live stream with the Q&A.
And in fact, last week we followed, by 22 and a half hours, the live stream with our private Q&A, our monthly private Q&A on my Patreon.
It was really Even more fun this week, this month, than it usually is.
It was great.
So those are still up.
We keep those up and available for anyone who joins my Patreon at any time.
But I encourage you to join the Patreon to be able to ask questions in advance, and then they're small enough that we actually engage with the chat and can pick up new questions as we go.
Yeah, it does strike me as, if you want a more direct, less formal, high-touch version of Dark Horse, it does strike me we have an awfully good time with those.
Yeah, we really do.
Consider all the usual things.
If you're watching on YouTube, consider watching on Odyssey.
That's where the live chat is happening right now.
We don't see it, but those who are on it do and are engaging with one another.
We've got our book being published in a few more languages very soon, A Hunter-Gatherer's Guide to the 21st Century.
I continue to get really interesting letters from people every week about things they're learning from it, and I'm just excited by that.
We have, of course, I write weekly at Natural Selections on my substack.
This week I wrote about woke hypocrisies, and we're going to talk a little bit about that later in the show, one of which followed actually.
I'd already written it in, but it's directly related to one of the questions that we addressed in the private Q&A last week.
Which is to say, why is it that it is okay to effectively adopt a woman face, but it is not okay to adopt a black face?
What is the distinction between those two things?
So I asked that question as well in Natural Selections this week, and we'll talk about it a bit later in the show.
We have...Zach, if you want to show the screenshot of the store.
So when we are in our...did we decide on temporary permanent or permanent temporary?
I think you decided that Temporary Permanent was way better.
Okay.
Now I can't remember which is which.
Because they're perfectly equivalent.
They're not, though.
One of them modifies the other.
But at the moment, I have now forgotten which one I preferred.
Which means it was not a strong preference.
I am so equally comfortable.
Which one is it?
Temporary Permanent.
Okay, so once we are in our Temporary Permanent Studio, and also once we're in our Permanent Studio, we will have a lot of things back again.
I will be able to share my screen, we will have multiple cameras, all of those good things.
But for the moment I can't share my screen, and so here Zach is showing a screenshot of Our fantastic store, as I mentioned last week, it was created and is managed by another couple in business together, and they do not just the store, the online management, but also they have the print shop, which is where they actually produce the merchandise.
So high quality, Now I'm going to have this phrase in my head for the rest of today, so I hope I don't keep saying it, but like high-touch environment.
I apologize for that.
I was left groping for words, and I didn't want a long, unprofessional pause.
I think it works.
Basically, if you ever have any trouble, With an order, which is going to be very rare, but you'll get a real person who's awesome right here in the United States helping you with that order.
And as of last week, we have a new piece of merchandise, which is our Do Not Affirm, Do Not Comply shirt.
We've still got Keep Portland Weird, as in Western, educated, industrialized, rich, and democratic, and several other products as well.
We'll have another new product next week, which I think you guys are really going to like.
So that is at darkhorsestore.org.
Check it out.
And we are supported by you, our audience.
I've already mentioned my Patreon.
Brett had one of his Patreon conversations this morning.
How did that go?
It went beautifully, I thought.
Great.
We had a couple OG Game Beers present, which is interesting.
What's OG?
Well, I looked it up at one point.
It's Original Gangsta.
It's usually just original.
- Lots of people who say OG, I think, don't know that necessarily. - It's usually just original. - Original.
- Well, people use it like that.
- But OG.
In any case. - I just feel so out of touch.
Even when I was 17, I was never paying that much attention to that level of the cultural scene.
I totally agree with you.
Anyway, it was a great conversation, I thought.
We talked quite a bit about the oddity of this very particular moment, which we will get back to later in the show.
The podcast.
But anyway, yeah, I thought it was great.
Another conversation tomorrow on more evolutionary focus.
Awesome.
So another conversation on your Patreon tomorrow.
Yep.
We encourage you to join those if you are so inspired and can afford it.
We, of course, are still demonetized by YouTube because apparently all that non-misinformation and non-disinformation of which we were accused of propagating A year and a half ago now, which most of which has now been well understood not to have been miss or disinformation in the first place, has still not been recognized as such by YouTube because, I don't know, they've got like fact checkers running the thing as opposed to scientists.
Yeah, fact heads.
Wanted to mention a couple more things before we get to the... Oh right, yes.
One, I had a conversation with Bridget Phetasy, which she and I both thought was quite a good conversation.
It illuminated a lot of things.
I had slight trepidation that releasing it into the world was going to cause a firestorm.
Why?
Because the topic is one that, in my experience, typically results in a catastrophe, because people immediately see that something that they hold dear is in question.
And so there's a defensive reaction that causes people to fight back, and sometimes quite aggressively.
So, just for those who haven't yet run into your conversation with her, which was posted on Dark Horse earlier this week, it was following in part on a piece that she published called Why I Regret Being a Slut?
No, I think it was I Regret.
Well, I can't remember.
I think it was just I Regret.
But nonetheless, this was Bridget doing something that she does marvelously well.
She's very Open and ready to look at herself and reevaluate.
Anyway, so the conversation started because that piece had had a big effect in the world.
You and I had had thoughts about it.
And anyway, so we had a conversation.
I strongly encourage people to check it out.
And I think at the very least people will find it provocative.
And there's some stuff in there I think most people will not have thought before.
And so anyway, worth a look.
Or just to listen.
Yeah, actually, just to listen would work too.
In fact, because when Zach is not here, a one-man operation, I forgot to turn on my camera at the beginning of the thing, so it's just Bridget for a little while, you can hear me, and then I realized it and I turned it on.
Well, I mean, the vast majority of our audience is listeners only.
I think they will be less disturbed by the camera hiccup.
So we know that, and we also know, therefore, that when we show We also know, therefore, that when we show images on camera that we have to explain what it is because we see the numbers and know this to be true.
Yep, that's right.
The other thing was a conversation that I had that was the result of a discussion that you and I had on Dark Horse a few weeks ago.
I had a conversation with Robert Wright.
And my conversation with Robert Wright is not out yet.
It will be out shortly.
I think people should definitely check it out.
The topic more or less was, am I nuts?
Are you nuts?
Am I nuts?
You will be pleased to know that he at least nominally supported your interpretation of his tweet.
Just to, let's go back again for people who aren't paying quite as close attention to this issue as you are, or we are.
He had posited something that I read as, this take of Brett's is bonkers, and I've defended him in the past, but I'm not going to do so here.
And you interpreted it as, this take of Brett's is so bonkers that I think he's bonkers, and I'm not going to defend him in general anymore.
He said, well, it was ambiguous, and he and I talked about the ambiguity.
I just said those were the two interpretations that we had.
But it wasn't clear.
It was, I'm not going to do that now, which plausibly means from now on, or might mean just in this instance.
He says it was just in this instance, and he says that that's clear because an earlier version of the tweet that didn't quite fit in the character limits spelled it out.
So there's that.
Nonetheless, the conversation we had actually reflected the fact that this was now his general conclusion, whether it was insanity or not.
So the whole thing, which I do think people should listen to, I think you will find it very illuminating, has me considering the possibility that I'm too nice and I should change that.
The reason I say that is that during this thing, he says some very pointed stuff.
In fact, he made a point.
I think he came back to it twice.
Do you want to know the moment at which I stopped taking you seriously?
That's fine.
You can say that, Robert.
But at the end of the thing, he wants to invite me on camera to come continue the conversation on his podcast.
And why the fuck would I do that?
Having allowed that he doesn't take you seriously.
Having specified repeatedly that he doesn't take you seriously.
So my sense is I should have said no.
Why would I do that?
And that should have been the end of the discussion.
But instead, because I'm nice, and arguably too nice, I didn't shut down that inquiry immediately the way I should have.
So anyway, I would also be interested in whether or not people think I'm too nice.
I have a feeling we will get a mixed message back on this one as well.
But anyway, when that podcast is out... Now you're asking for it.
Yeah, I guess I am.
I guess I am.
I do suggest people check it out.
I thought it was A fascinating interchange.
I thought it, well, he will no doubt have a different opinion, but in my opinion it revealed a kind of myopia that I think is widespread and for which Robert seems to speak.
So anyway, check it out and, you know, agree or disagree.
All right.
And if you're interested in having a conversation with people who may think differently from you, but who are not going to shut you down for thinking differently from you, you can find conversations that meet those criteria on our Discord server, which you can access through joining either of our Patreons.
And another way that we are making our way in the world, much to our surprise, is by having sponsors.
And long-term viewers will remember that the very first time that we ran an ad that we read on our show, which was something like May of 2021, I want to say, something in there, March, April, May of 2021, We actually did a whole episode devoted to what advertisements are.
We did a bunch of pro bono ads, including some positive ones and some negative ones.
My favorite was for Comcast.
And apparently I antagonize people because some people thought I was actually promoting Comcast.
Whoa!
No, I was not.
And so that episode, and I didn't remind myself to go and figure out exactly what number it was, but struck us both as potentially risky going down this slippery slope of like, we really understand, I think you have said in a very pithy way, that advertising is the crux of the problem with a lot of Commercial anything.
Commercial media, right?
That it is, like, as soon as you have an incentive to please the advertiser, then you risk sacrificing editorial content.
And I, of course, talked about a little bit the history in that episode of how that has specifically played out in women's magazines, and how Ms.
Magazine, for instance, back in the 90s, finally said, no, no more.
We're going ad-free because we are not going to continue to change our editorial content.
Because, you know, Revlon, say, wants us to have nice content next to their advertisement for lipstick.
Anyway, all of that said, we only take sponsors that make products or have services that we actually really stand by and enjoy.
Or, in a couple of cases, we have a direct connection to someone who does.
And in this case, this week, it's three things that we all have direct connection to and really, really appreciate.
If you are in the market for shoes, a sofa, or some household goods that might even be delivered to you on a regular basis, consider checking out any of the three sponsors for this week.
Without further ado, you're up first, Brett.
Alright, our first amazing sponsor this week is Vivo Barefoot, and I should say I have stopped wearing Vivo Barefoot because I'm sitting on the sofa.
Once I am off the sofa, I'm going to put them back on, because I really dig them.
What?
You know, you can get away with that with Vivo Barefoot, because we've actually had a couple conversations with the guys, and they're going to give you a little slack.
But you scared me there for a moment.
Like, what are you wearing, man?
What are you doing?
I mean, we do have two, actually two awesome shoe sponsors, and we recommend both of them.
But Vivo Barefoot, you wear, I wear.
But at any one time, you should wear one or the other.
Yeah, choose one of three options.
Vivo, or I'm not going to name the other one here because that's weird, but, or go Barefoot.
All right.
Our first amazing sponsor this week is Vivo Barefoot.
Regular listeners will be well familiar with Vivo by now, but if you're not, you are in for a treat.
Seriously, try these shoes.
Most shoes are made for someone's idea of what feet should be.
Vivos, however, are made by people who actually know feet.
Here at Dark Horse, we love these shoes.
They are beyond comfortable.
The tactile feedback from the surfaces you're walking on is amazing and they cause no pain at all because there are no pressure points forcing your feet into odd positions.
They're fantastic.
Our feet are the product of millions of years of evolution.
Humans evolved to walk, move, and run barefoot.
But modern shoes that are overly cushioned and strangely shaped have negatively affected foot function and are contributing to a health crisis.
One in which people move less than they might, in part, because their shoes make their feet hurt.
Vivo Barefoot shoes are designed wide to provide natural stability, thin to enable you to feel more, and flexible to help you build your natural strength from the ground up.
Foot strength increases by 60% in a matter of months just by walking around in them.
The number of people wearing Vivo Barefoot is growing.
Once people start wearing these shoes, they don't seem to stop.
Except for you.
Except for me while sitting on the couch and showering, but we can return to that in another episode.
Vivo Barefoot has a great range of footwear for kids and adults and for every activity from hiking to training and everyday wear, but not sitting on the couch.
I actually, they sent me a pair of hiking boots and at first I was like, nope, those aren't really my thing.
I've got these great leather hiking boots.
Well, I wore those out and I've started wearing the Vivo hiking boots as well.
They're great too.
They are, but aren't they leather?
I think they are.
Yeah, no, I mean, I had, like, I had one of the... The traditional... Yeah, I can't even remember what all the brands are, but I had one of the traditional, like, heavy, like, super expensive pair of, like, serious leather hiking boots, and they wear out because they will, and I started wearing the Vivo hiking boots, and they're actually great.
So you had a set of hiking boots from something that is not a certified B Corp pioneering regenerative business principles.
Their footwear is produced using sustainably sourced material and recycled materials with the aim to protect the natural world so that you can run wild on it, Dr. Haing.
Go to vivobarefoot.com slash darkhorse to get an exclusive offer, 20% off.
Additionally, all new customers get a 100-day free trial so you can see if you love them as much as we do.
That's vivobarefoot.com slash darkhorse.
V-I-V-O-B-A-R-E-F-O-O-T dot com slash darkhorse.
Well, you may not be wearing our first sponsor this week, but I currently am wearing our second sponsor.
Okay, not wearing so much, but sitting on.
It's All Form, a company that makes terrific custom sofas, and you can see that right in the background here.
And we are going to have in our permanent temporary slash temporary permanent studio yet another, our other All Form sofa.
So you get to look at this beautiful sofa and consider for yourself how you might like to have a sofa in your own home for a while longer on Dark Horse.
As nice as it looks, it feels even better.
It's terrific.
For a fraction of the cost of traditional sofas, you can customize size, layout, fabric, and color.
They do armchairs and loveseats, all the way up to an eight-seat sectional.
This is the easiest way to customize a sofa, and the quality is fantastic.
They're beautiful and comfortable, roomy and adaptable.
All form sofas are delivered directly to your home, free and fast, and assembly is easy.
You say it's easy?
Oh yeah.
I did not participate in the assembly of either of the sofas, or the disassembly and reassembly of one of them, into a new configuration.
That's one of the most amazing things about these.
I dare people to look at what we've done and not think, hey, that's versatile.
Yeah, super versatile.
We turned a, well, we'll talk about this next time we have an All4Mad, when we're sitting on the relevant sofa.
The relevant sofa.
That's what they should call it.
In whiskey leather.
The relevant sofa in whiskey leather.
We started with one beautiful, sectional, relevant, all-form sofa in whiskey leather.
It's soft and supple and warm, unlike a lot of weather you've all... Weather?
Yeah, a lot of weather is not soft, supple, or warm, you'll grant me that.
Especially hail.
This is going to be silly this week.
We all, we're getting a late start, we're going to be here until dark.
We all pile on it to watch movies some evenings.
Actually, we haven't done that since we've moved, since we don't really have a television anymore, but we might get back to that.
It looks gorgeous, and it's incredibly inviting and comfortable, a rare combination.
Some listeners have asked if Allform holds up to pets.
Why, yes!
But you can't necessarily tell from the fact that they're on it that it still looks good, despite that they're on it.
The leather that All Farm uses, and this is leather that we're sitting on, is about 20% thicker than typical furniture leather, and it shows nowhere.
Seriously, there's no animal marks.
There's some fur on it at the moment, but you can't ask them to keep that off.
You can ask them.
Yeah, okay.
It shows no wear, despite the fact that both cats and the dog lie on the couch a lot, as you can tell.
And if you prefer fabric, all form fabrics are three and a half times more durable than the industry standard for heavy-duty fabrics, so their fabrics are going to hold up really well with pets as well.
We can't speak to that directly, but this is what we hear.
Finally, they offer a forever warranty.
Literally forever.
To find your perfect sofa, check out Allform.com slash Dark Horse.
That's Allform, A-L-L-F-O-R-M.
Allform is offering 20% off all orders for our listeners at Allform.com slash Dark Horse.
Step up your sofa game today!
Finally, we have Public Goods.
Public Goods, which I think was our very first sponsor, I think, I may have that wrong, is a one-stop shop for everyday essentials.
Their ingredients are carefully sourced, high quality, and affordable, and you can simplify your life by getting your necessities at Public Goods.
Public Goods has coffee and tea, grains and oils, like olive and avocado.
They have spices and extracts, vinegars and hot sauces, dishware and glassware.
There's so much at Public Goods to make a meal, including the materials to serve it on.
And that's not all!
They've got stationery and laundry detergent, Castile soap and trash bags.
They even sell plants!
You know that?
I didn't know that.
Yeah.
We have not had any of their plants yet, but they sell plants.
They've got it all.
They probably don't have it all, but they come close.
Public Goods searches the globe to find clean, healthy, eco-friendly, and innovative products.
Public Goods cares about health and sustainability.
Their products are largely free of harmful ingredients and additives, and the ingredients are ethically sourced.
Rather than buying from a bunch of single product brands, Public Goods members can buy all of their premium essentials in one place with one beautiful, simple, streamlined aesthetic.
And their subscription service is efficient and simple and easy to use.
Public Goods members can buy all of their premium essentials in one place, making it an everything store.
For Dark Horse listeners, we have the following offer.
Receive $15 off your first Public Goods offer with no minimum purchase.
They're so confident that you absolutely love their products and come back again and again, they're giving you $15 to spend on your first product purchase, regardless of how much that purchase costs.
Go to publicgoods.com slash darkhorse or use code darkhorse at checkout.
That is p-u-b-l-i-c-g-o-o-d-s dot com forward slash darkhorse to receive $15 off your first order.
All right, that's our ads for the week.
You know, actually several things here come together, including from the ads.
Okay.
Public goods, when I look at a bottle of, let's say, dish soap or something from them, right?
And it's simple and elegant.
It is not trying to call your attention.
I now realize something I didn't realize before, which is that we are all stuck With packaging designed to get you to buy the thing in the store, right?
When the laundry detergent is shouting on the shelf to get your attention away from the 12 other laundry detergents sitting next to it, right?
Now, arguably it's in an arms race that it has to compete in or it will go extinct.
But then, You're stuck with this thing shouting at you from your laundry room cabinet or your kitchen sink, and the thing is, tuning that out is more expensive than you imagine.
Yes, the attention economy is important.
It seems a little subtle at first, It's a little bit like when we began to talk about things like light pollution and then sound pollution, rather than just particulate pollution that you're inhaling in.
We can more easily see and measure the health effects on your lungs of breathing in smog from, say, 1970s there in LA, right?
But light pollution has real harms.
Sound pollution has real harms.
Not being able to get your attention back and focus on whatever it is that you are choosing to focus on also has real harms. - Yeah, it's like a cognitive pollution.
And the idea that the packaging may be appropriate to, I don't think any of us like it, but it may be appropriate to selling the product But the idea that you are going to live with the externalized harm of something that is designed to get you not to think about other things, you know, the price is higher than you think until you start getting rid of that stuff.
Wasn't there, there was a product line or a company there for a while that was called something like AdFree?
It was specifically in just like beige packaging with maybe simple black sans serif font lettering.
It was a little bit like what Public Goods is now doing, but Public Goods is bigger, it's got the online presence.
Remember, at some stores for a while there, I don't know, maybe in the 90s, early aughts, and maybe it still exists, but you would see their stuff.
And it did actually manage to draw your attention, if you had a particular kind of mind anyway, on a grocery store shelf, say, precisely because it was sort of you know, expanses of like brown paper bag color with simple black, again, sans serif font on it, as opposed to, you know, Tide screaming at you in four different bright orange and red colors.
Yeah.
I mean, and, and, you know, we've seen very clever anti-advertising advertising, like, Like, do you remember when Dove started to reveal what was done to these models in order to make them, you know, sexy to sell whatever product it was?
And you see how much of this is... YouTube can get skin like this if only you have a professional photo.
A photoshopper and a team of cosmetics experts and hairdressers.
One thing that you and I have learned again and again is that because of this world in which everything is competitive and therefore there's an arms race, it leads to a world in which there's very little that's actually authentic.
Sometimes authentic is exactly what people are starved for and so that can be the feature.
It's also true, I would point out, that Consider this exercise.
Let's say you've got two shampoos that are the same price sitting on the shelf at the grocery store and one of them has a famous spokesperson and you've seen their ad on television or wherever people see ads nowadays and the other one you've only noticed on the shelf.
Right.
Which should you buy?
Well, the answer is you know that one of these companies invested a lot in merchandising the product.
That's something that didn't go into the ingredients of the product.
So it's possible that the other one is just taking home a lot more of the money.
Right.
But if they've both got about the same percentage of profit that they're making on the product, then the one without the expensive spokes model put more into R&D is at least one possible interpretation.
Exactly.
And so, in some sense, a wise consumer would actually have a penalty for the degree of reach that is accessed by the advertiser, because that is stuff that didn't go into the product.
And you know that the profit is, you know, whatever they spent on advertising to reach you, their profit is somewhere above that.
And, you know, the more of these things, the more expenses you have, the less went into whatever it actually is.
All right, which brings us to this odd present moment.
Am I wrong?
It may.
I mean, we're here.
Yes, well, that's true.
I guess if we're going to be literal pet ants, then yes, what we just said brought us to this place where we haven't yet said anything.
So that's good.
Here we are.
It did its job.
Not saying anything.
Did you want to start by talking about the election?
Yeah, and actually I have two topics.
The election is one of them, and they do sort of fit under the rubric of this moment.
And, you know, in some sense we always talk about this moment, but I mean something very much narrower.
I think on two fronts we are looking at a version of, you know, the chaos we've all become familiar with that is novel.
And one of them has to do with the election, and the other has to do with what's going on at Twitter.
And so anyway, how these things fit together is a little bit unclear, but let's start with the election one.
Here's the predicament I see.
The blue team has They botched the job and the public is not in the dark about this.
The job being the job that they're supposedly supposed to be doing once having attained office or the job of the election?
The job in office and I would say that our two major parties in the US In a... Sorry about that, folks.
We have an intruder at the door and the dog is protecting us.
Now, the intruder is Toby, so maybe not as serious as the dog thought at first, but... All right.
The temporary permanence set will be exactly as half-assed.
Oh, we're just... No.
I thought we were going to bar Toby so that the dog wouldn't freak out.
No, we wouldn't do that.
You were saying?
I was saying.
Both parties are deeply corrupt.
We have a two-party influence peddling racket in which they win and lose power, trade off against each other, but nobody's representing the public.
And hasn't been for quite some time.
I take the date back to the Clinton administration, but We have two deeply corrupt parties.
That said, there is a degree to which the public, having no better choice, tolerates very low quality governance for fear of the unknown, for fear of electing the greater evil as you pursue some alternative to the duopoly, whatever it may be.
In this case, the blue team has botched the governing process, not just at the usual level that corruption would typically bring you to, but at a spectacular level, right?
Things in and around COVID have caused a failure that has created a level of anger that is not familiar from recent history.
The problem is the blue team is in this predicament.
Sorry.
The blue team has nothing to laugh about, Heather.
We got chaos.
We got a Labrador who thinks she's a Chihuahua and can walk through cameras and tripods without disrupting the set.
I think she's working.
The blue team does not want me exploring this, and I think she's working for them.
That is a terrible thing to say.
You think our dog is working for the Democrats?
I mean, look, all they would be is steak.
I think that would be the worst thing you've ever said.
It may be the worst thing I've ever... Well, alright, this experiment with being less nice... And you think you're too nice!
I was trying it out.
Okay.
My point is this, and I'm being delicate here for what reason I don't exactly know.
I guess because I know what accusations will come back at me if I just simply spell it out.
But here's the problem.
Let's say that the election brings about a substantial red wave, sufficient to switch both houses of Congress in the red team direction.
Well the red team, which again I regard as deeply corrupt, the red team would have the power to Essentially get to the bottom of, or near the bottom of, whatever has taken place under the Blue Team structure.
You're talking about like with regard to COVID?
Well, you know, as you know, I think COVID diagnoses the system.
It reveals the depth of corruption and that the anger over Vaccine adverse events, over mandates and terrible public health guidance, lockdowns, old people dying alone.
All of these things rightly have the public very, very angry.
With the blue team in control of all the properties.
Don't forget education, remote schooling.
Remote schooling, masking of children, all of these things.
The Blue Team, at the moment, today, has the power to fend off a real investigation.
It might lose that on Tuesday.
If it loses that on Tuesday, I don't know what happens.
It's possible that the network of corruption that links the two parties is sufficient to manage this so that what we get is a half-hearted investigation of what took place.
Or it is possible that the red team will properly understand where it is and it will actually resort to governing.
And if it resorts to governing...
Well, I think this is actually a tough question, because when your job is influence peddling, and then suddenly you're thrust into the role of governing, in a moment where influence peddling wouldn't be a good idea from the point of view of you hanging on to power, that actually governing is the best thing you can do from the point of view of hanging on to power, it's not clear what happens.
And so, what I'm imagining is that we could have serious congressional hearings and that those things, let's say for example, what happens if we start investigating what the interrelationship is between Pharma, Pfizer, and our public health apparatus.
How it is that such terrible products found themselves mandated by a government that should have known better.
If we start to pursue that in earnest, there's really no telling where it leads.
Now it may be that we wouldn't have gotten here if the things that have everything to lose in that process didn't have some sort of control mechanism that could stave off That outcome.
But nonetheless, what I'm trying to say is, based on what we know, and we are outsiders so we don't know much, but based on what we know, the blue team is facing an election that it doesn't seem to me that it can win, or even that it can
Control its losses to the point that we don't end up in territory that would be very dangerous for the blue team So it can't afford to lose it can't win and I don't know that it could I don't know that it could cheat and I In that predicament, it's very hard to say what one expects, and I know that, you know, people... I mean, both teams cheat.
We know this.
Both teams cheat, and it's become more possible since voting has gone, kind of gone the way of education during COVID, which is to say remote and asynchronous, where, you know, when we started voting, you went, You had to apply to get an absentee ballot.
You had to have a reason to have an absentee ballot, and otherwise you went to the polling place on election day, and you saw some of your neighbors, many of whom you may not otherwise know, and you stood in line, and you went to a little booth, and it wasn't all that secure.
And it wasn't really private.
There's a little hanging curtain between you and the other 4 or 8 or 20 or 300 people, depending on the size of your polling place, voting at the same time.
And you got handed an I Voted sticker on your way out.
But it felt It felt meaningful in part because you knew that there was going to be a space and a time at which you were going to vote after which you had voted.
And presumably, a large number of Americans who are going to vote in this election have already voted.
And that changes the entire landscape of, you know, what, you know, what, what, what would, is it an October surprise or a November surprise?
The concept of an October surprise by which one of the major parties or both of them will drop something into the public view in the last couple of weeks before the election and thus change how people perceive one of the candidates or one of the big issues and thus, you know, change history.
That's not really a possibility in the same way anymore.
And that's good, I think, actually, because that particular kind of manipulation is no longer on the table.
But the lack of synchronicity in both space and time for voters now means that the whole thing is more abstract for us.
And I mean, I think just as, I think, and I'm not positive of this, but I think that my opinion right now is that just as remote and asynchronous school was bad for children, remote and asynchronous voting is bad for democracy.
Okay, a couple things we have to come back to from what you've just said here.
One, you've said Everybody cheats.
Both sides cheat.
Okay?
Now this is a claim that we have to deal with with extreme caution.
I believe that the following thing is true.
People who are partisans of either team fervently believe the other team cheats.
Right.
That's not the same thing as both teams cheating, but I will say I think over a long timescale, this is the case.
And I have two pieces... And not that every individual does, right?
But that if you've got a party that's big across time and space again, that there will be cheating within that party.
Well, there's various different kinds of cheating.
There's cheating within the rules, and there's cheating outside of the rules.
Okay?
Both sides cheat within the rules.
Yeah, how is it cheating within the rules?
Well, let me give you an example from my own personal experience.
Okay.
When I was a student at Penn in 1987, '88, maybe '88, '89, yep.
I found myself-- so it must have been '88.
I found myself unable to vote, though registered to vote, And the reason that I was unable to vote was that Republicans had a trick that they played in Philadelphia, and the trick was to There was some sort of check algorithm that you could trigger for a voter.
Does this person still live at this address?
Students?
Overwhelmingly Democrats.
Students overwhelmingly move year to year and they don't change their voter registration because they're voting in the same place.
And so it can be claimed we're just trying to reduce voter fraud, we don't want someone voting twice.
Right.
And so instead you end up getting to vote none.
Right, and I actually had an extraordinary conversation.
The president of the college... So you like go to vote and you're like... I went to vote and I found myself not registered to vote because my address was incorrect.
You've been unregistered.
I had been unregistered and I had moved literally two blocks from where I had been.
From your freshman residence to your sophomore residence.
So it hadn't occurred to me to re-register because my polling place was going to be the same, so what would be the point?
Right.
And I caught up to the president of the college.
The president of Penn?
Yeah.
Okay.
He was walking down the street.
Of course you did.
And I went up to him.
Of course you did.
Well, I was pissed off, because I think this was even the college Republicans who had done it.
So this was like, you know, this was like friendly fire within the college.
Yeah, within the university.
I mean, it wasn't friendly, but nonetheless, I went up to him.
You say college, it makes it sound tiny.
Yeah, well, I went up to him, and I was like, sir, do you know that this is going on?
And I explained to him what had happened, and he was like, of course it's going on.
Grow up.
Seriously?
I don't think he actually said grow up, but that was certainly the message that he delivered.
And, you know, message received.
Got it.
You grew up.
I grew up.
It was a relatively inexpensive lesson.
But you didn't get to vote in your first presidential election.
I can't remember.
There may have been one of these things where there was a contingency way where you could vote, and then you could pursue it, and your address could be reconciled, and then if the vote came down to a close thing, then it could be counted.
It was something like that.
So I did vote, but it definitely was a trick.
But it was a trick within the rules.
It's not illegal.
Nobody did anything illegal, right?
But, okay, does the red team cheat in elections?
Well, I don't know if it's cheated in recent elections.
I do know that during the Bush years, the shenanigans that went on surrounding Diebold... Bush 1 or Bush 2?
Bush 2.
So, like, beginning with the Gore Bush election.
Yeah, and this is murky because that's a fair piece of history ago at this point, but my recollection is the following thing.
There was all kinds of demonstrated shenanigans with voting machines, which were new at the time, where they could be observed to be switching votes.
And I was like, oh, these things are computers, they're complex, you know, who knows what's...
You know, but it was like, oh, they do seem to do this in one direction and not the other.
And what's more, Diebold seems to be a partisan corporation deeply in bed with the Bush administration.
And then there was the craziest piece of evidence at all, which from my perspective made it a relatively open and shut case, which was Those of us who were very interested in election integrity knew that the key to election integrity was a paper record of each vote.
This was back when people were still going to the polls, absentee ballots were still rare, but you'd go and then you'd be on a machine, but like, no, I actually need a receipt.
Right, and I forget what the name for the receipt is, but something, a paper record that reflects how you voted so that you could look, oh, that's not how I voted, something's wrong with this machine, or that is how I voted, and then we can check the receipts against the machine tally and see that the machine is fucked up.
And here was the crazy thing.
The answer was, well, we can't do that because the printer apparatus then makes the machines unreliable.
Oh, does it?
This from Diebold, which made its money making ATMs.
Right?
Oh, oh, oh.
Right.
Oh.
And so my point was, oh.
Got it, right?
This was like, oh, you want to vote, do you?
Grow up, you know?
So, all right.
So that was, to my way of thinking, pretty strong evidence that our elections had lost their integrity back then.
So anyway, for those of you who will challenge us and say, you know, I know what you'll say, you'll say conspiracy theory, this, that, and the other, the answer is both.
Well, no, I think the smart, the clever but dismissive response will be, we're talking 1988 and 2000, it's now 2022, and the valence on who's cheating has changed.
now 2022 and the valence on who's cheating has changed.
Oh, sure.
But I will say this.
The key thing, and you come close to it in talking about the difference between how we used to vote and how we vote now, and the absentee ballot thing, and that they're a big deal.
The biggest problem with a huge fraction of the populace voting absentee is that it has eliminated It has not completely eliminated exit polling because you can still poll people on the exit, but most of the people who vote aren't there and it is non-random who votes from home.
So to the extent that people with a particular political bent may also have a particular bent towards either voting in person or voting at home, what the exit pollster gathers does not necessarily predict the election.
So, all of this is to say There is a tremendous focus on getting people to vote.
That focus is usually partisan and the idea is we need more of our people to vote and presumably we need less of their people to vote.
But the most important thing from the perspective of election integrity is not the number of people who vote.
As long as the people who vote are representative, it doesn't change the outcome, except very rarely by noise factors.
The most important thing is the integrity of that vote and our ability to check it.
And so the idea that convenience of the voter, or whatever the arguments are in favor of absentee voting,
They suck compared to what we gave up, which is the ability to know when our election has been stolen, which requires, you know, a paper trail, exit pollsters, and, you know, sophisticated non-partisan people to be able to deal with the factors like people's embarrassment at voting for a certain party, which causes the exit pollsters not to have a great A high-resolution count.
Those things are all real, but the point is, something has produced a mechanism of voting that now we can't even check, right?
And it's like everything else, where the idea is, you know, oh, well it's 80% effective, you know, why wouldn't you take it?
It's 80% effective and it's safe.
Well, can I see the paper?
More importantly, I can see the paper, but can I see the data that generated that paper?
Nope, you can't, right?
So that's kind of where we are, is we have an election with a huge amount riding on it because the amount that the blue team has to lose in the outcome of this election is spectacular, like even to the point I'm not saying I expect it, but even to the point of people who have played a prominent role facing criminal penalties.
Well, I wonder if this doesn't actually partially explain the increasingly infamous piece that came out in The Atlantic this week, written by Emily Oster, asking for amnesty.
Not even asking for forgiveness, and not apologizing.
But asking for amnesty for those who got it so wrong during COVID.
And it does seem to me that that is exactly what many on Team Blue empower, especially in the public health apparatus.
You know, that racket did a tremendous amount of damage to people.
Killed people, damaged people, broke up families, destroyed incomes, dreams, made the last moments of lives for people bereft of meaning and alone.
And the idea that you would ask for amnesty without yet recognizing the errors and without yet fixing them and without even an apology
is remarkable and it will work for some but it will work mostly for those who were kind of on the fence and were kind of maybe feeling a little bit bad but didn't really do that much and for the most part those who have been clear-eyed and seen it or who've been the at the in the brunt in the you know in the
the focus of some of the hatred and the actual misinformation and the actual disinformation, what that article saw coming back at it, what the author, Oster, did presumably, and what the Atlantic publication did, the Atlantic did presumably, and what the Atlantic publication did, the Atlantic publication that I once loved, saw coming back at it was in no small part anger.
And it is justified anger.
And so, you know, what this election in part is standing for legitimately, what you are saying, is actually, this is really important.
Because while we don't expect either party to be interested in actually governing as in the same sentiment as that is, it is possible that at this moment, if there is a Turnover in power that Team Red would actually choose to govern because they can see.
Because it would be clear that that was about a deep frustration, and that is underselling it tremendously, a deep frustration on the part of the populace who have been gaslit and damaged and lied to and told to just suck it up and forgive.
And like, no.
We're going to need a lot more before that is going to happen.
We're going to need a lot more.
I do think...
The Amnesty discussion, as much as it was an unbelievably audacious and asinine request, really, especially coming from where it did emerge from, we have two tiers, right?
There are people who made serious errors, interpersonal errors, and those people need to own up, and yes, we need to accept them back into our lives, and that will be a bit painful, but Amnesty has a role here, and frankly, if you're higher up, We ought to think very carefully.
I think what we're talking about, I'm sorry, but when you're talking about individuals in your family, many people really do feel, I think, legitimately like, I'm so hurt, and I'm so betrayed, and I missed the important moments, and I was forbidden from attending Christmas, and birthdays, and all of these things.
I will forgive, and I will move on with my family.
But that's not amnesty.
Amnesty is a bigger societal level thing.
So that's not amnesty, that's forgiveness.
I agree.
And forgiveness, yes, when warranted.
And I want to point out, it was a minister in Canada.
We may have even talked about this, I'm not sure.
There's a piece of video that circulated a couple weeks ago in which a minister in Canada was confronted over the fact of the firing of a state employee for not complying with the vaccine mandates.
Oh, you're not talking about a religious person, you're talking about the head of state of Alberta.
Yeah, yeah, correct.
Yeah, I don't remember her name, but the newly elected head of state of Alberta, and I don't remember if, I don't think she's called the prime minister, but maybe, but the newly elected head of state of Alberta, when asked on stage, and you know, what, you know, when do you think that we might begin to see apologies and reversals of mandates and stuff, she says, I will apologize right now.
She said, right now, and then she goes on to say, and I will do what's in my power to get you rehired if you wish to rejoin us.
And my feeling is that is exactly the behavior that we have to have.
Somebody recognizing their own error, owning up to it, doing what they can.
Well, it wasn't her error though.
The error of her government, which she has just obtained a position of power in which she can do something about it.
This was not her saying, I was wrong, because I don't think she had been wrong.
Well, if that's true, it changes it a little bit.
But nonetheless, it is the behavior we should want.
If she didn't do anything wrong and she's apologizing for others, it's a little...
It's more in the realm of reparations, but I do think that that's the situation.
More in the realm of reparations is a good way to put it, right?
Apologizing for a historic wrong.
But she was elected on this wave of anger and frustration and with the hope that she might do something about it, and so she is.
And so she did.
And not just apologize, but attempt to repair.
So that's what we want.
And there's a lot of room You know, there's a lot of room for repair that comes from an airing of the full totality of what happened and how it worked and everything we could learn.
Because the key thing is to discover what happened so that this can't happen again, not only on this topic, but any topic.
Because the real story here is the complete corruption of the system that allowed this to go down the way it did, right?
That corruption is a threat if COVID vanished tomorrow.
That corruption doesn't get any safer.
The other thing I wanted to point out, though, is the possible shift to red power that would come Tuesday raises a real question.
So I have said, and I think I was too aggressive in saying, both parties are seriously corrupt, period.
They are.
But there's a question about how that works, right?
And my contention has always been, in the context of Game B and other things, You have a population inhabiting a corrupt system, and everybody in that population, almost without exception, exhibits corruption.
It is wrong to assume that that is because they are fundamentally corrupt, because there's no other way to be in this system.
And so the question is, if freed from an obligation to be corrupt, What do you do?
Some of them will remain corrupt because it's fundamentally what they are, some of them will switch gears immediately because they'd much prefer not to be corrupt, and a lot of them will weathervane and they will go whichever way the winds are blowing.
But it is a mistake to write off everybody who is corrupt inside of a corrupt system as if it's written into their DNA, because it isn't.
So one thing to hope for is that if the red team routes the blue team on Tuesday, That actually the opportunity to govern in the interest of the public will be enticing to many in that party.
And in sort of, if I can use the analogy... Are there any patriots left in politics?
Right.
And there are some.
But remember after 9-11?
You had a bunch of phony journalists who did phony bullshit journalism every day that they were working before 9-11.
Suddenly, 9-11 happens.
Advertisements disappear from the airwaves for a couple of weeks, I think, and you've suddenly got a bunch of people who are dressed as journalists, standing in front of high-quality cameras that a journalist might stand in front of, being expected to deliver a news story, and lo and behold, a bunch of these people who were basically faking being journalists Started doing journalism, right?
And it lasted for a little while.
It was a very different environment, right?
You had actual people reporting on an actual story.
We were all paying attention.
It was like a totally, it was like a moment that exists isolated from all the surrounding moments.
And it's like, okay, there's Potemkin journalism and you take away the facade.
It's like, oh wait!
But you look just like you're actually doing the thing.
Right.
Okay, you could have been doing the thing all along then, right?
Like, that could have been happening.
Right.
But here you are.
You got the microphone, go.
Right?
So anyway, let's imagine for a second that you've got a bunch of people, you know, you've got these, you know, beautiful halls of Congress where you could in fact do governance.
Right?
We don't do it that way at the moment.
We do have the facilities.
We've got the facilities.
They're lovely, you know, right?
Lots of marble.
Oh, it's so austere, you know.
And it's not foam marble either.
It's actual marble marble.
So, yeah.
Anyway, I would love to see an outbreak of governance.
And, you know, it could spread like a pandemic across all three branches.
Wouldn't that be something?
Dude, no.
I'm not signing on with that.
You're not?
No, but an outbreak of governance.
That I'm into.
All right, outbreak of governance.
We can hope for that.
Yeah.
All right, which brings me to the second part of this.
The second part of this is that, all right, this election snuck up on me a little bit.
I'm used to rolling my... I mean, you know, the offerings are... How's that?
Because I have not really been a believer in Changing things through elections for decades, right?
Like, you would need a Unity 2020 style plan to make something useful enough.
You can elect a hopeful person, but the system is so corrupt and so overwhelming that, you know, real change doesn't come from this mechanism, even though it should, right?
So this snuck up on me because, in a sense, the actual possibility of this Kicking us into a governance mode?
Didn't occur to me until late.
That's on me.
But the other part of this puzzle is something Dark Horse viewers and listeners will be well familiar with, which is the idea that zero is a special number and that what's going on with Elon Musk and Twitter is a potentially decisive battle.
I think most people outside of the zero is a special number conversation don't really understand.
They may think it's very good, But they don't understand that actually, this could be the object on which our predicament pivots.
And that for that reason, it is much more important than its percentage of the conversation would suggest.
Right?
That A, Elon is probably in more danger than you would ordinarily expect over a business play like this.
A duchiary danger?
Every kind of danger.
Let's put it this way.
If I'm right about the zero is a special number thing, then the ability to generate a platform in which free speech actually reigns, and he figures out how to police the correct boundaries of that where you deal with the stuff that's illegal, maybe you deal with certain kinds of content that don't belong on Twitter, Right.
But that by and large, people are allowed to express ideas, offensive or not, wrong, right, doesn't matter.
We are allowed to hash these things out the way the founders intended.
If he does that, we live in a different world, right?
That's the zero is a special number argument.
We live in a different world if that happens.
Therefore, the things that cannot survive in that world are going to take up arms against it in all kinds of forms.
And we've seen some of this already.
Zach, do you want to put up that tweet?
So this is a tweet from Elon Musk.
In which he reveals that... Are you able to read it from there, Heather?
Can they hear you?
Okay.
Twitter has had a massive drop in revenue due to activist groups pressuring advertisers, even though nothing has changed with content moderation and we did everything we could to appease the activists.
Extremely messed up.
They're trying to destroy free speech in America.
And this is from, I can't see the date, November 4th?
Okay, so this is from yesterday.
Yeah.
As we're talking.
Well, I have not seen this tweet before, and the thing that jumps out to me there is, we did everything we could to appease the activists.
Yeah, of course.
And one of our friends, I can't remember who, responded, you mustn't do that.
There's nothing you could do that will possibly satisfy them.
And Elon responded, you're right.
But anyway, yeah, it's an odd choice of words on his part.
We don't really know what he means when he talks about the degree to which this has affected revenue.
But the point is this.
And who's dropped out?
You just mentioned this story to me right before we came on air.
Prominent among those who the euphemism is pausing their advertisements on Twitter include Pfizer, General Mills, and Audi.
Now, I don't know what to make of Audi, obviously.
Audi, including Volkswagen and Porsche.
Yeah, Audi is Volkswagen.
And Porsche, right?
Yeah, I think so.
And they obviously have a close call with the corporate Grim Reaper recently over the shenanigans with emissions, right, where they were gaming the emissions tests.
Oh, that's right.
And that was Volkswagen.
Yeah, yeah.
Now I will say it's not obvious.
That's a few years back.
It is a few years back, and it's not obvious to me that that would motivate them to engage in this, but who knows what else, how else.
It's not obvious to me why they're on this list, but who knows.
Well, General Mills is huge, right?
General Mills is huge, but Let's talk about Pfizer first, because Pfizer is pretty clear what's going on.
Pfizer cannot survive in a world in which we are able to fully explore what has taken place.
Their business model now depends on speech being intensely limited, and I'll give you an example.
Zach, do you want to put the other tweet up?
Yeah.
So in this tweet, this is a interchange.
The tweet has a video on it which we can't show you unfortunately.
Who's tweeting it?
Who's it from?
Dr. Eli David.
Dr. Eli David.
But the point is it is a interchange between Borla and some interviewer.
And in this thing, this is a new interchange.
I can't see it, but also everyone just listening can't see it either.
Unfortunately, our setup here does not allow me to read it, and I don't remember it precisely.
Yeah, or if I could see it.
Okay.
Pfizer CEO, the efficacy of our vaccine in children is 80%.
Reporter, are you talking about efficacy to prevent severe disease or to prevent infection?
Pfizer CEO, to prevent infection.
Need more evidence of fraud?
So that need more evidence of fraud is editorial.
That's Dr. David, yeah.
So the point is, here we have... Do we know when this is?
Like, when is the tweet and when is this interchange?
Nonetheless, we are talking about the efficacy in children.
So we're talking about recent history.
This is after we know that Pfizer already was aware that blocking transmission was not a feature of their vaccine.
So, the point is, you have, in modern times, you have a misrepresentation of this product by the CEO.
Now, that is arguably fraud.
Here's the point.
If it is fraud, and if that is proven, it eliminates their immunity from liability.
Does it?
Yes.
I don't know the legal steps well enough, but I guess I'm surprised if that is true.
It breaches the contract.
If the CEO says something that he knows to be untrue, that's a breach of contract?
No, no.
If he misrepresents, knowingly misrepresents, engages in fraud surrounding the product, says it does something that it doesn't do and he knows it, that's fraud.
It breaches the contract.
His immunity, their immunity, evaporates.
So my point would be, You have an unprecedented level of adverse events.
We see this captured in the VAERS system, the European Yellow Card system, we see it in the military system.
A tremendous number of people have a claim that is apparently worthless in light of the immunity that Pfizer has, but is restored if Pfizer no longer has that immunity.
So, That which rests on this election and Elon Musk's ability to stabilize a free speech environment at Twitter is tremendous.
Not surprising to see Pfizer engage in spite, blocking itself from access to potential customers, right?
It was advertising on Twitter.
It's decided, hey, we don't really want those customers, and it has a bullshit explanation of why, right?
Oh, it doesn't seem like a good environment for us to advertise.
Bull.
Right?
Your customers are still there.
So why is it doing this?
Because it can't survive in that world.
It is trying to block.
It is trying to keep us at zero.
Right?
Because zero is a special number.
In essence what I would argue is you're going to have all of these forces that can't live in that world that are going to take up arms against what Musk appears to be trying to do.
Which also means that the importance of him succeeding and our ability to help him succeed In spite of these forces is very much a live question and I want to point to just a couple more things.
One, famously Elon has proposed a $8 a month charge for verification at Twitter.
Didn't he propose a $20 a month charge?
And watched and waited, and then at the point that he proposed an $8 a month charge, a lot of people who were going to be objecting were like, oh, that's a relief.
That's part of what happened.
Is it?
I don't know that.
It's hard for me to imagine that.
Maybe I was away, but you did that.
OK.
In any case, here's what I... That was low level, but that was savvy.
That was smart.
It is smart.
The number of dollars doesn't really matter.
I want to point out a couple things.
A, as somebody who has used Twitter without thinking about paying for it since 2009, there is a difference.
The idea isn't that you have to pay to use Twitter, but if you want a blue checkmark, you have to pay a monthly.
Yeah, but we'll get there.
To me, the answer is, oh, if Twitter Blue Checkmark costs $8 a month, then either you don't want to be on Twitter or you want to pay the $8 a month.
There's no argument that I can see for any serious person not paying that charge.
Walking away, I could see it.
And here's the reason.
First of all, just so that our audience knows the score here, you and I are approximately equally terrible.
I have a blue checkmark.
Our son does not think we are asymmetrically terrible and is not coughing up the info.
It's a two-tailed clam on his part.
He's not going to reveal which direction.
Things suddenly got real.
We can fast forward this.
You've been on Twitter since 2009 apparently, right?
You ran afoul yet again of some insane mob by speaking truth and not stepping down when they made outrageous claims about you.
You've done it before, you've done it since.
You did it famously on May 23, 2017 in a class or in a hallway at Evergreen.
9.30 in the morning.
At 9.30 in the morning.
Suddenly, your Twitter account which had 400 and something followers.
Right, and you'd been pretty active.
You did social media a lot.
I had walked away from Twitter.
I had tried it for a while and it was like tweeting into a void and so I'd walked away.
Okay, but you went up to like, I don't even know, 17,000 or something I think it was within a week.
I think it was a couple of orders of magnitude.
It wasn't quite 20,000, but something between 10 and 20,000 in about a week.
And about a week and a half after that, at the point that it's clear that our world is never going back together in the same way it was, I said to you, having eschewed social media completely, having said, I will never, I do not, I shall not, said to you, I guess I'm going to have to get on Twitter, aren't I?
And so opened up a Twitter account on June 1st of 2017.
But I wasn't in the public eye.
I had no experience with social media, all of this.
You, because of what happened and because you were in the limelight, you very quickly got verified.
And I was almost, so before you're like, oh, you know, we're basically equivalently terrible.
There's a reason that I... I was speaking morally.
We were equivalently terrible.
The asymmetry in our Twitter accounts early on, and so So you got verified, and I then applied after I had a New York Times and a Washington Post op-ed that went big.
And they said, actually we're stopping that for the moment.
And you know, it was like literally a week after a friend of ours got Twitter verified, and ever since I've tried several times, and each time they're like, yeah, not you.
This is what I want to get at.
Okay, so first of all, a hat tip to Eric who is the one who said you really need to get verified.
So I got verified right away.
Otherwise I might have delayed and would have also run afoul of whatever it is that... So what Twitter did was it claimed to have stopped the program.
You could no longer apply to be verified.
While it continued to verify people, which turned the checkmark into exactly what they swore it wasn't, right?
It was not supposed to be a Twitter sanction, it was supposed to be an indicator that you were who you said you were.
And Heather has endured impersonators, and she has also become a best-selling New York Times author, and she, how many have you got?
How many followers do you have on Twitter, roughly?
About 200,000.
200,000?
It was stuck at about 200,000 for close to a year, actually.
Yes, we were both throttled.
And then Musk, either as he was making the move or just after he did, it went up like 10,000 almost overnight.
Yeah, he's a muskox in a china shop.
Anyway, this is not very interesting.
Right, but the point is that program became an arbitrary nightmare in between my getting verified and your attempting to and being rejected, and lots of other people who should have been verified too have been rejected, and then lots of nonsense little tiny accounts, even CCP shills have been verified.
It's a nightmare.
What those who do not have a check probably in general do not know is that it changes your experience of Twitter and the reason is because there are hidden features inside the app that only trigger if you have that.
Yes, but if everyone can buy access then that's going to be less meaningful.
No, hold on.
You have to be verified.
So you cannot verify an arbitrary number of accounts.
If you would like to be verified as who you say you are, you will be able to pay eight bucks a month and get a verification.
I see.
Now here's the reason that this matters tremendously.
There are two reasons, actually.
One of them is that, you know, Musk has been very focused on bots.
I don't know why he's focused on bots and he's not focused on sock puppets.
There are more bots, they're cheaper, but they're also way dumber.
We know that the sock puppet thing is real.
The Navy had a program in which they had literal software that allowed one person to man many accounts, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
Yeah, define sock puppet.
A sock puppet is an account manned by a human.
It's not an artificial intelligence.
It's a human, but the human is there for a purpose.
It's an account designed to steer conversations, right?
And so I get a lot of these things that I don't think are bots, and it's like, oh, you know, we were really big fans of yours, and then you went crazy, and it just, it's hard to watch you, you know, your 15 minutes are up, whatever the hell they say, right?
And then you look at the account, and it's like, oh, they're followed by 21 people, they follow 517 people, and they were registered in 2013.
What is that account?
That's a weird account.
And then you look at what they tweet, and it's incoherent, right?
For people who read fiction, who are interested in an awesome story, but also interested in this aspect of modernity, and I mentioned at another point that I was reading the latest in the Cormoran Strike detective series by Kenneth Galbraith, who's actually J.K.
Rowling, The Ink Black Heart is a super giant book in which one of the things she explores, Rowling explores as the author, is exactly this.
And there are, you know, they're turned out without giving anything away.
There turn out to be multiple accounts that are actually having been created by one person who end up doing the work of creating a sense of community, a sense of a movement where there isn't a movement, where there's a one disgruntled person in some cases or, you know, a couple of disgruntled people who can then, you know, make it seem like there's more of them and thus it's easier to make the movement grow.
This is sort of like a cheat on producing positive feedback where you otherwise wouldn't get an in.
Yeah, absolutely, and it can work constructively, and it can work destructively, but it's a major force of nature on Twitter and elsewhere.
So anyway, the point is, inside of the app, if you're verified, you have the ability to look at only activity by other verified people, right?
And so, if you're in the position of having a very large account, You go from a completely noisy rendering of the world full of bots and who knows what else, to a limited rendering where you see only things from people that Twitter has established are who they say they are.
If you were to globalize that program, so the point is you can't have multiple verified accounts because you're only one person and you will be verified once, Then the point is, suddenly, Twitter becomes, the noise level drops through the floor.
There'll still be garbage, there'll be haters, but there won't be armies of bots and sock puppets and who knows what else.
So the point is, the difference between Twitter at $8 a month and Twitter at free?
is gargantuan, potentially.
And the point is, if you want Twitter for free, you'll still get it, but you'll get noisy Twitter, right?
You'll get dunk Twitter.
You won't get intellectual Twitter, journalist Twitter, scientist Twitter, right?
So anyway, that's a big deal if he can get this to happen.
It does involve shifting the revenue model for Twitter, but that also has another collateral benefit, which is Many of us have noticed, and I think famously Zuckerberg may have said this publicly, if the product that you are enjoying is free, you are the product.
And what that means is that you are getting the product for free because what is really being sold is your eyes and mind to advertisers.
You are being sold to them, right?
I think I object to the universality of that statement.
I think there is a lot of truth in it.
And we should all beware when we are going around going like, oh, I can get this for free.
Give me more.
Give me more.
And then our attention is being sold and to return to that where we started, right?
It's our attention that's being sold.
On the other hand, just to give an example that I know because it's mine, I give away almost all of the content that I write on Natural Selections because I want it to be available to the widest audience possible.
And the number of free subscribers I have is 20 times the number Yeah, 20 times the number of paying subscribers I have.
And I do put out content for my paying subscribers, else, you know, why would anyone pay for anything?
And obviously that is a tremendous help with, you know, with us being able to live the lives that we have here, and with all of our animals who are now on screen, and continue to do the work that we're doing.
But the free content is not about making my audience into the product at all.
So I just said that there's a truth there that is important and deep, but it is not universal.
Yeah.
Let's say there's some threshold of scale that is going to make this true.
Obviously, this is a principle across many things, right?
I argued in the discussion with Bridget Phetasy that there's a perfect way to define porn unless you want to instantiate the definition.
The way you define it is that it is erotica done for profit motive.
So I actually I haven't listened to the whole episode yet but I actually listened to part of it this morning and heard that and I've heard you say of course that definition before and you know our books are still in boxes so I don't have access to it else I would have found it and brought it today but You said that this is a great theoretical definition that's going to be hard to instantiate legally, but I think right away my mind went to a book that I own, that we own, by Anaïs Nin.
I don't remember what it's called, but it's a book of erotica that she wrote to pay her bills.
Right.
Well, So you have this and the question is would she have written it anyway?
Would she have bothered to try to publish it?
You don't know.
So all I'm arguing is the fact that there are examples where you get something for free and nobody's selling your attention to somebody else doesn't negate the principle that for all intents and purposes when you are talking about, you know, Broadcast media, social media platforms, all of these things that are advertising driven.
What's going on is your attention is being sold to an advertiser, which is why you're getting the thing for free.
And I would also point out, I think we've talked before about the principle, it's not the box, it's the business model.
The difference between network TV driven by ads, right?
Network TV was mind-numbing, right?
The jokes weren't funny, the sitcoms weren't interesting, it was nonsense.
HBO charged you for access and it didn't have commercials and it was like, oh, now we can do the equivalent of serialized novels and things like this.
Suddenly, it's not that the audience are morons, it's that the necessity to keep you watching between commercial breaks puts a whole different set of constraints on the thing.
But anyway, point is, I don't love the idea of paying for Twitter because I've gotten used to getting it for free, but when I think about the two different Twitters, current Twitter and future Twitter, I'm excited by this change and I do think it's a very clever way to solve the problem that currently threatens Twitter, which is that
A lot of the big players in the world of power can't survive in a world where Twitter works, and so they're going to try to pull the rug out from under it.
And I would suggest that the right thing to do, as we did with Joe Rogan when he was being threatened by all the nonsense, you know, when they tried to drive him from Spotify and all of that, The idea that Joe Rogan was doing a huge service for the world and that we needed to thank Joe Rogan and not abandon him, that was key.
And at this moment, I would say there is no better play on the map, not even close, to the one that Musk is engaged with at Twitter.
Do I know for sure that the guy's for real?
I don't, but again, there's no better play anywhere and the chances that he's for real seem pretty high, so I would suggest something like hashtag got your back, that that ought to be the mechanism by which we rally behind him and stare down these advertisers that want to kill off free Twitter because they can't live in a world where we get to talk. - And when you say free Twitter there, you don't mean? - Yeah, I don't mean financially free.
I mean spiritually free.
All right.
Well, we've been at it for a while.
We haven't gotten to most of the things that we had been hoping to talk about.
I'm not sure exactly how to play this.
Maybe I can do a very quick job of what I was going to do here.
Zach, I sent you a number of screenshots.
They were not in order.
What's that?
They were numbered.
They are numbered 1, 2, 3, 4, 5.
No, they're not.
There's no reason to talk about it.
They were not numbered, so let's...
So maybe we should skip this because I have them here in my numbered order and I don't know how to describe them to you otherwise.
So why don't you go on with what else you were going to talk about.
All right.
I wanted to talk briefly about this question of the bivalent boosters.
It occurred to me in thinking about them that I had sort of accepted, I mean there's tremendous shenanigans being played with the so-called evidence that suggests that they are safe and the evidence that they are effective.
It is, of course, nonsense.
They use proxies like the amount of antibody reaction that is stimulated being four times the traditional one, which doesn't say anything about how effective it is.
But anyway, I wanted to get to the question.
It occurred to me that I had accepted The idea of a bivalent booster, bivalent means that it responds to two different antigens, one of them being the OG COVID strain out of Wuhan, the other being Omicron.
What was the first?
The original Wuhan strain.
And so, okay, all well and good as far as that goes.
They've got a single inoculation that triggers the production.
It's an mRNA that triggers the production of the proteins from two different strains of COVID with the idea of alerting the immune system to either one of them so that it can respond.
But the more I thought about it, It's not entirely clear.
Bivalent does not explain which version of bivalent they are delivering.
And the particular catastrophe that one predicts depends on which of these mechanisms they are using.
Could be that they've taken two full doses.
They've taken a Wuhan dose and an Omicron dose and they've put them together and they're giving you effectively a double dose.
One of which is Targeted a strain that is as far as we know extinct in the wild.
It could be That they have linked these two things together in a single mRNA transcript and so, you know, a cell will take in both messages and transcribe both proteins from one transcript.
It could be that they have taken two transcripts and they've mixed them together and you get a half dose of each I have not looked into this, but presumably that's proprietary.
We don't know what they mean precisely, what the mechanism is to produce this bivalent vaccine.
I called Robert Malone and asked him, because this is his area and he knows it well.
What he believes is going on is that these are two separate transcripts being delivered at a half dose each.
And I wanted to put a little color on what that implies.
So that's based on what he... He doesn't have direct insider information, but that is what he predicts.
That is what he infers from what he has seen.
Okay.
Now...
I had a particular concern about this and he suggested another one which was on my radar but probably not at a high enough priority.
My concern is this.
Long-time viewers will have heard me describe the hazard of this very poorly targeted vaccine.
A vaccine, a so-called vaccine, that is supposed to have stayed locally.
at the site of injection instead seems to circulate around the body and has no targeting mechanism whatsoever so that it is taken up Randomly is probably the wrong word.
Stochastically is probably the wrong word.
Haphazardly is certainly a correct word, which is to say it is taken up by the cells that it encounters that have a high affinity for the lipid nanoparticles and those aren't in any way good cells inherently to be transcribing this protein.
In fact... Haphazard from unique initial conditions based on point of entry and the degree to which there is aspiration.
Right.
Aspiration is one issue.
It could be that certain cells have a greater tendency to take up lipid nanoparticle, and so those cells and whatever tissue they exist in tend to be the transcribers or the translators.
So definitely not random.
I think haphazard is as close as we get.
Haphazard is definitely right.
Whether any of these other terms apply, I don't know.
Probably not.
But in any case, The problem is that in order, if you take the brochure and what it says about how these vaccines are supposed to work, and you take it... I'd like one of those brochures!
It's a doozy of a brochure, but okay, so you've got these lipid nanoparticles coding mRNAs with a particular message that gets translated in the cells and exported to the surface of the cells where it's supposed to stick, and at least in the original version didn't.
The problem is that the body will, when it sees a cell producing its own, your own antigens, as your cells all do, and also producing a foreign antigen, that is a red flag that the cell has been compromised by a virus.
In this case it's a pseudovirus, one made in a laboratory, but your body doesn't have any way of understanding what that would be.
The fact that it was made in a laboratory doesn't make it a pseudovirus.
In this case, it's not the full virus, it's just a transcript.
No, I'm going to call it a pseudovirus, because what it is... SARS-CoV-2?
No.
Okay.
The so-called transfection agent, the lipid nanoparticle in the mRNA... But the reason it's a pseudovirus is not because it was made in a lab, which is what I thought I heard you say.
Yep, it's just the fact that it's a coat that gets it taken up into cells that then triggers those cells to produce its proteins, not their own.
The body recognizes that as infection.
There is only one rational thing to do with a virally infected cell from the point of view of the immune system, and that is to kill it.
Killing cells can be not that big a deal if they are in tissues that are well positioned to replace them.
It has some cost.
It accelerates aging somewhat.
It reduces the capacity to repair somewhat, but probably very tolerably in some tissues.
In other tissues, it's catastrophic.
You do not want your heart cells attacked by your immune system, which have come to understand them as virally infected.
That is an insane thing to allow to happen.
Now, Here's the crazy thing about these bivalent boosters.
The Wuhan strain is, as far as we know, extinct in the wild.
For them to give you half a dose of Wuhan in order to give you half a dose of updated means that you're wasting half of the cardiac risk for nothing.
And other.
Right.
Half of the risk.
Half of the risk, but the cardiac risk Very serious, the risks of strokes and clots and other things, all of these risks, half of what you're getting from this isn't liable to be valuable to you because the Wuhan strain isn't circulating.
So why would we put you to any extra risk?
If this was really about boosting your immunity by updating what they had given you already, it would make sense to just update you.
Why would you Give this crazy cocktail that is out of date, that's half out of date, okay?
That's one thing.
What Robert clued me into was what he was calling imprinting.
I asked him, is that the same thing as original antigenic sin?
And he said, very closely related, probably not worth drawing a distinction.
But the idea is when you alert the immune system to a hazard with something that functions in some way like a vaccine.
And in this case, these transfection agents turn your cells into a vaccine factory.
So there is a vaccine involved here.
It's not what they inject you with, it's you produce it.
Yeah.
Right?
Yeah.
But... It's super elegant.
Oh, it's... It's clever.
So clever.
Yeah.
But... Elegant is the wrong word.
Yeah.
It's clever.
Yeah.
It's about as elegant as a sledgehammer.
But when you have this mechanism where you are alerting the immune system to something, enough to cause it to mistake you for infected, enough to mount a response that is then useful when challenged with the pathogen, when you do that, You are tracking the immune system into an understanding of what world it is in.
And when you keep vaccinating or triggering the production of a vaccine in the same neighborhood, what you're doing is you're broadcasting a message into your immune system that causes it to become effectively obsessed.
And this is an insane thing to do in light of a world in which this A isn't the only pathogen you face, right?
Tracking your immune system so that it sees COVID and only COVID is not a good idea.
What's more, you're creating an environment in which you're pushing the virus around evolutionarily so it's changing rapidly because you keep, you know, nudging it, right?
At the same time you're tracking the immune system to focus narrowly?
This is not a rational course of action.
So anyway, all I wanted to do was clarify, A, there are a lot of bodies buried under the word bivalent.
The fact that we are using mice instead of people, the fact that we are using antibodies as proxies for effectiveness, the fact that we haven't recognized the massive hazard that comes from the fundamental mechanism, even when this thing works, Right?
When it works, it's because it got into your cells and it got them to produce a foreign antigen.
We haven't talked about the cumulative cost of the tissue that you're burning up as you keep getting more of these things and your body keeps regarding some new tissue as having been infected.
We haven't talked about that.
And if it's worth it, if the cost-benefit analysis reflects it, we would only know that from having had that conversation rather than forbidding that conversation.
Yes.
Anyway, I thought that belonged there because we keep hearing so much about these bivalent vaccines and, you know, it sounds like one more whiz-bang bit of scientific cleverness when in fact it's a whiz-bang bit of scientific recklessness.
Or whiz... yes, good.
Recklessness.
I wouldn't say good, but bad.
How's that?
Good on ya.
Nice, nice analysis.
Thank you.
Yeah, you weren't congratulating the bivalent transfection agents.
No, I was not.
No.
No, I was not.
Actually, that's a really terrible band name, isn't it?
The bivalent... Oh, we'll get there.
Can't wait.
Yeah.
Okay, so we've been at it for a while.
Yeah.
I'm going to actually save the UN Women thing.
I'm going to put that into a little for paying subscribers only Natural Selections this upcoming week.
So if you want to find out how ridiculous UN Women is being, you can find me there on Natural Selections.
I did want to just return to one other thing before we stop for the week, which was this Woke Hypocrisies piece that I published this week in Natural Selections, in which one of the things I was talking about, which we also talked about in our private Q&A last week, was why it seems to be okay to dress up in what I'm now calling woman face, either as
drag or in its more egregious form, trans, when it's a trans rights activist as opposed to someone who is really deeply gender-sphoric and absolutely needs this in order to feel like they can live their best life, which is a very tiny when it's a trans rights activist as opposed to someone who is really Whereas the world, I would argue correctly, says actually blackface, not so cool.
And, you know, it's not cultural appropriation, as some have said.
It's really, it's phenotypic mimicry.
And it's generally phenotypic mimicry with an eye towards mockery.
And that's what it is.
Phenotypic mockery is what it is, is what blackface is.
And frankly, I would argue, so, you know, woman face, although many would say, oh, that's not mockery.
Well, you see these exaggerated makeup, especially on drag queens, and it looks like mockery.
At least it feels that way to myself and many other women who see people in drag and in trans outfits.
I went looking.
One of the places, one of the Regions of the internet I had not heretofore explored was what happens to the interface of drag queens and blackface.
Some dangerous clicks involved in that investigation.
Some dangerous clicks.
Interestingly, I didn't find anything super modern.
Everything was from a few years ago.
But there are a number of these stories and I just want to put out there one of them.
In which, let's see, this is, well, in all of the cases there is some drag queens who are shocked at the racism of one of their members in which he, a white man, does a character as a black woman.
And I don't find these characters funny at all, for all of the reasons, but some people apparently do.
But what's strange to me is the outrage, the complete lack of self-awareness, in which the drag queens are saying things like, and here's a direct quote from one of these stories, The whole concept of blackface being an art form or being entertainment, to me, it doesn't make sense at all that anyone would think it's okay, said Alfonso King, who performs drag under the name Jade Electra.
The whole concept... Let's just change blackface to womanface.
The whole concept of womanface being an art form or being entertainment, to me, it doesn't make sense at all that anyone would think that's okay.
Now, maybe the difference is that some number of people who are doing drag as a form of entertainment will say, I'm celebrating womanhood.
Well, it doesn't read that way to a lot of us.
And I don't think almost anyone who goes out in blackface would even claim that they're celebrating blackness.
I think that that is going to be one distinction that people will make.
But it lives as a inconsistency.
That I now can't unsee.
That you have people who are so embedded in what they're calling an art form of adopting the looks and the artifacts of the opposite sex and doing so
Without any regard for how that will be regarded by the opposite sex, who can stand up and say, you must be fired, you must stop doing that, that's not allowed, when it's about adopting a phenotypic indicator of a race that they're not?
It is, at the very least, an inconsistency.
I read it as hypocrisy.
People have tried to engage this whole concept of transracialism.
You know, other people have tried to engage this, you know, this whole concept of transracialism, right?
Like you can't be transracial, except that, and I make this point in the woke hypocrisies piece, you know, sex is actually real and ancient and binary.
And for at least 500 million years and probably closer to one to two billion years, we have been in a lineage that has been reproducing sexually with two and only two sexes.
And every single human being who is among your ancestors has been either male or female.
That is true.
Whereas race, to the extent that it has biological reality, is much more muddled.
Those borders are muddled.
There is no pure anything in race because we are sexually reproducing.
Like, I mean, this is actually one of the weird points here, right?
Like, because we are sexually reproducing and have been forever, basically, yeah, not quite, but almost forever, there is no pure race.
That's a fiction.
That is the fantasists who are racist who would tell you that there is purity of race.
So there may be people who are all from Scotland and all of their ancestors from time immemorial but nowhere close to 500 million years have been Scottish.
And there may be people who are, you know, similarly Lithuanian, or, you know, whatever.
But every single new person is the result of sexual reproduction, and therefore there's no purity there.
And so, if transracialism isn't a thing, transsexualism really is not.
Alright, there's a bunch there.
I think there are a couple things that need highlighting.
One, I think the point you're making can be well encapsulated by saying, is there a meaningful distinction to be drawn between a minstrel show and a drag show?
I heard minstrel.
A minstrel show.
Not a thing.
Thankfully.
A minstrel show and a drag show.
A minstrel show and a drag show.
And I would argue there are distinctions you could draw, but those distinctions are subtle at best and what they tell you is actually You should sit down for this.
Actually, neither of these things can be a minstrel show and a drag show.
Put the shows aside.
You can't rule out blackface, right?
Why?
Because the character of Roger needs to do a minstrel show at his daughter's wedding, right?
On Mad Men.
On Mad Men.
You dropped the lead there.
So you've got a character, a white man on the show Mad Men who... Behaving in a racist way.
The actor is allowed to put on blackface to play the character who is being abominable.
Thank you for filling in all of that yes necessary... Roger is not actually sufficient to get most people there.
Right.
Likewise, Monty Python has to be able to Do preposterous caricatures of women.
Lumberjacks.
No, it's not the lumberjack.
It's all of the characters where the Monty Python dudes, you know.
He's not the Messiah, he's a very naughty boy!
That thing, right?
As Brian's mother.
Right, Brian's mother, for example.
In the life of Brian, yes.
Right.
So the point is, there's nothing offensive, in my opinion, about the Monty Python thing, and in fact it is mocking itself in its own way.
The ridiculous portrayals of female are so silly, right, that that's part of the comedy.
The importance of blackface to the character of Roger in Mad Men, in Mad Men, mind you, the importance of that character's cringy minstrel show at his daughter's wedding is fundamental to the plot.
Really?
His daughter's wedding?
I believe so.
I don't remember that part.
But anyway, point is, In a civilized society, it is fine to make a rule like blackface is not cool, because it isn't.
That does not mean there are no edge cases in which you have to allow it, or where it's important.
Likewise, last week we talked about Victor Victoria, Mrs. Doubtfire, Bosom Buddies.
I believe we talked about that in our private Q&A.
Oh, is that private?
Anyway, so those examples plus Monty Python.
Those examples all are cases in which there's a very strong defense to be made of something which in another context would be troubling.
I don't know exactly what to think about drag shows.
I don't know that they're identical to minstrel shows and that we will come to understand that or not.
I think, never having been to either, that the people engaging in the blackface or the woman face will have different stories to tell.
But the minstrel shows, which aren't a thing anymore, from the, let's call it the 1920s, had people donning blackface knowing that they were proudly making fun of black people.
And that drag shows in, you know, 100 years later, and it's not a fair comparison because it's 100 years later, but that at this point anyway, drag shows, I think it is going to be the rare drag performer who will say, of course I'm making fun of women.
That's not going to be the cover story.
Right?
So there's an important distinction there, but one which, you know, but one which we have to try to correct for the difference in time between when they're happening.
I actually think it's almost the opposite thing that's bugging you and that has you focused on this.
I do think that a drag show, I've never been to one either, a drag show from 30 years ago Involves men who do have a strong affinity for femaleness, who do aspire to it in some sense.
It's autogonophiles.
Right.
Many of them.
Fair enough.
But the point is that's very different than mocking, right?
And I think what you're responding to is that as trans activism has become hostile to women, right, this has gone from a weird aspiration A niche fetish.
A niche fetish, but nonetheless something that is desirous enough of being woman that it will, you know...
Play Act, right?
To being a threat to women in declaring that this is synonymous with being a woman, right?
And that that is actually the thing.
It's gone, and the minstrel shows were never that.
They were never, as far as I know, they were never admiring... What you were purporting a drag show from 30 years ago would have been.
Right, exactly.
Yeah, that may be right, yeah.
And there's one other distinction I want to draw.
For our entire lives, people have often equated racism and sexism, and therefore the fights against them.
This is a mistake.
They are not symmetrical, right?
You've got two different types of oppression and disadvantage, right?
One of them is more pernicious than the other.
They may be both terribly frustrating, but it makes perfect evolutionary sense for one lineage To oppress another lineage.
To drive another lineage to extinction.
Whatever.
Perfect evolutionary sense while being an abomination.
It's an abomination, but the point is it is not illogical.
It is immoral, but not illogical.
This has never been what went on between males and females because males and females share a lineage and every individual effectively is arbitrarily cast into one of these roles at the point the zygote is formed.
And the rest of the genes in the genome don't know whether they're going to live out this life male or female.
And so the point is the idea that male genes gang up on female genes doesn't make any sense because most of the genes spend half their time as each one.
Male individuals will try to control the behavior and placement of female individuals, as has happened forever.
But male genes, ganging up on female genes, except with regard to something like genomic imprinting on the fetus, where, just to do a little David Haig-style thing very, very briefly here, In a situation in which a mother, a pregnant woman, is pregnant with a man who may not be the father of her future children...
She has an interest in having a child who is as healthy as possible, but also retaining her ability to have future children.
And so we have, as humans, a problem, a trade-off, where we want our kids to be born as late as possible, as fully cooked as possible, so that they are maximally likely to survive, but we have gigantic heads.
And for women to have pelvises as wide as would be optimal for the birth to be safe, would make women very, very unstable, basically.
And so childbirth is not just painful, but quite dangerous, precisely because there's a trade-off between size of the child's head at birth and how fully cooked it is, and therefore how likely it is to survive.
And so a woman who is pregnant simultaneously wants that child to survive, but also wants to be able to still be reproductively capable for future children.
And so the genes in the fetus that were inherited from her – Some of them are more likely to tend towards a slightly smaller head size on birth so that she is able to not just take care of that child but future children.
And those genes are so-called imprinted.
So the fetus has genes that are imprinted from mother that it inherited, he or she inherited from mother, and those that are paternally inherited that are that are imprinted from dad.
I'm not sure I'm saying that exactly the right way, imprinted from dad, but that dad's genes, especially in a polygynous society, are more likely to drive the head of that child to be larger on birth so that the child is more fully formed on birth.
But even in that case, the male who loves them and leaves them has an interest in that female surviving to raise the offspring It's very unlikely to survive if she doesn't.
Absolutely, but this is not just theoretical work, right?
Like Haig has demonstrated, this is work, David Haig harbored in the 90s, I think, right?
And it's been followed through with a lot more that we're not going to go into now.
It is known that genomic imprinting is true, and that maternally imprinted genes and paternally imprinted genes are in disagreement in this one small way with regard to, for instance, the degree to which the child is fully cooked on birth.
They have a limited...
They have a limited disagreement.
In this context, the point is, that disagreement is not limited between lineages, which we wrongly call races, but nonetheless, the distinction between race-on-race oppression and sex-on-sex oppression is no comparison at all.
They're very different.
And the fact is, individual women may suffer from the fact that power is very asymmetrically distributed in civilization, Less so, but it has been very asymmetrically distributed.
But there are women at every strata, right?
At every level of well-being, and...
The distinction between that and what happens in races is a major one.
So if there is, you know, the argument here has been there might be some distinction between a minstrel show and a drag show, but it's awfully hard to explain exactly what it's based on.
And even this fundamental difference between race and sex oppression does not suggest an obvious distinction other than the one we've talked about where a drag show It could be something other than mockery.
It could be aspiration.
And I don't think minstrel shows ever are.
Yes.
I agree.
Good.
Well, I'm sure we'll come back to this topic at some point.
Sex and race being sort of perennial topics.
They are evergreen.
I will get to why UN women tweeting that we should stop, that the targeting of women journalists should stop was, while yes, that's an admirable sentiment, it was an absurd thing for them to say given the evidence in front of them.
I will put that into Natural Selections next week at some point.
In the meantime, we're going to take about 15 minutes and we'll be back with our live Q&A.
You can be asking questions on that for the Q&A at darkhorsesubmissions.com.
We will start, as we always do, with a question from our Discord server.
So if you're on the Discord server, you have an ability to pose a question that gets voted on that we answer at the top of the Q&A every week.
Maybe that's it.
Until we see you next time, and we will be here actually from our new permanent-temporary slash temporary-permanent studio next week, 12.30 Pacific Time Saturday.
Until then, be good to the ones you love, eat good food, and get outside.
