Knowledge Fight Interactive Search Tool

All Episodes

Previous Next

Jan. 31, 2023 - The Podcast of the Lotus Eaters

01:24:43

The Podcast of the Lotus Eaters #579

Large

Audio Only |

Scroll

Time	Text
	Hello and welcome to the podcast of the Lotus Seaters.
	This is Tuesday, the 31st of January, and this is episode 579.
	I'm joined today by Dan.
	Hi, guys.
	And we are going to talk about critical race nonsense, how central bank digital currencies are now hiring, and how not even the ethos are safe anymore as robotics and AI leap forward.
	What a scary thought.
	Now, good news.
	We are hiring.
	If you're a web developer and are interested in joining our team, check out the careers section at lotuseeders.com and see if it's worth giving it a go.
	Now, in my two months here at the podcast of The Lotus Eaters, I have often spoken of the dangers of ideological thinking.
	I think that the problem with ideological thinking is that we are frequently led to view things in terms of what we are afraid to see or in terms that fit our preferred narratives.
	I think that, you know, there's a distinction to be drawn between having a bias on the one hand and refusing to accept what literally stares us in the face on the other hand.
	Okay.
	And I think that this is what we are looking at when we are considering the coverage that the Tyree Nichols' unfortunate death has received.
	Okay.
	So, of course, we covered the Tyree Nichols thing yesterday, so we've sort of done the reaction to the event, but this is going to be more a look at the philosophy behind it.
	Yes.
	Harry did a wonderful job yesterday in explaining the details of the case.
	We're going to focus more on the ideological coverage.
	Okay.
	Now, speaking of ideologies, why not visit our website and check the latest video of our premium podcast called The Evil Origins of Feminism, where Connor and Carl are talking about Simone de Beauvoir's feminist bible, The Second Sex.
	Now, for only £5 a month, you can have access to all our premium content, and you can see our wonderful discussions there.
	Okay, now, back to our case.
	So, as we said, we have footage of Tyree Nichols being forcefully detained and being hit.
	And he was hit after he was detained.
	Yes, I mean, I watched the footage after seeing the segment yesterday, and, I mean, it does look pretty bad, I've got to say.
	I mean, they put him over for dangerous driving, apparently.
	Apparently, we didn't get to see the dangerous driving.
	They were, I think, unnecessarily rough with him.
	And I can understand why he got spooked, because they were sort of a little bit out of control.
	But he gets up and he runs.
	And I think that, you know, I wouldn't have run myself, but it's understandable why he did.
	I can understand that reaction.
	And then apparently, they catch up to him later.
	And that's when you get the second lot of footage.
	And they give him a beating that ultimately kills him.
	And at no point during that fight does he fight back in any way.
	I think it is clear to see that they did hold him captive and they kept beating him.
	I'm not a lawyer.
	I'm going to stress this again and take that with a pinch of salt.
	But I think that the job of the police is not to hit those who are already captive.
	Yeah, I don't think you need to be a lawyer to say that what we saw appears to be very wrong.
	Yes.
	So the thing is, unfortunately, Tara Nichols died three days afterwards.
	He was hit on January the 7th, and he died on the 10th of January in the hospital.
	So, I want to say, though, that it's really interesting to watch how events like that get portrayed and how everyone rushes in to explain them.
	Because, you know, people do not like to have this gap in their understanding.
	We have the need to somehow give an account for what happened.
	Let us see.
	Let us watch the next video.
	I got a message today for some white people, if we have white people.
	Listening, paying attention.
	I wouldn't mind if you would do this with me.
	We rub our chests.
	We find our heartbeat.
	And we say, we did this.
	We did this.
	White supremacy did this.
	I'm talking about Tyree Nichols.
	Police didn't do this.
	The Memphis Police Department didn't do this.
	White supremacy did this.
	I have no idea what she's talking about.
	I think that this is how strong a hold the cult of white guilt has over some people.
	We literally have footage of five black police officers beating Terry Nichols and she makes a TikTok video out of this.
	I find this narcissistic, I must say.
	Yeah, the goalposts do move a lot.
	I mean, when I was a young man, the first sort of case like this that I was properly aware of was the Rodney King case.
	That was back in 1992, where a man was beaten and killed by white police officers back then.
	And the message essentially was that if we had black police officers, this wouldn't happen.
	And here we've got a case where, you know, it was five black police officers and exactly the same thing happened.
	So I don't know whether she's trying to make some other point about systematically or structurally or something like that.
	I mean, presumably that's...
	I mean, that's where most of the people who speak in such a manner go.
	Yeah.
	But you could say that this is just an idiot in TikTok.
	Let us just look the next.
	Let us go to Congress.
	And let us click the next link, and I'll read from it.
	It's from the Gateway Pundit by Cassandra MacDonald.
	Now, Representative Cori Bush blames white supremacy for police killing of Tyree Nichols and calls for civilian traffic enforcement.
	Now, just from the title, again I'm not a lawyer, but when we have people calling for civilian traffic enforcement, this seems to be like a message to people to take the law into their own hands.
	And this is not by someone.
	This is by a member of Congress.
	It's not just by nobody.
	I mean, presumably she's talking about something like moving it to a non-police sort of civilian arm of the government, something like a bit like the post office or the IRS, you know, it would be some sort of branch of federal government or even state government, but not within the police.
	Let's see.
	So, I read from the text.
	Far-left Congresswoman Cori Bush has issued a statement blaming white supremacy for the police killing of Tyree Nichols, despite everyone involved being black.
	Representative Bush is also calling for civilians to handle traffic enforcement.
	Nichols, 29, died in the hospital three days after being brutally assaulted by five Memphis police officers during a traffic stop on January 10th.
	Let me say he died January 10.
	He was hit January 7.
	Okay.
	So, all five former officers, Tadarius Bean, Demetrius Haley, Desmond Mills Jr., Emmet Martin III, and Justin Smith, have already been arrested and charged with second-degree murder, among other charges.
	In her statement, Representative Bush began by saying that Tyree Nichols should be alive today.
	He should be playing with his four-year-old son.
	He should be skateboarding and photographing sunsets.
	But instead, Tyree was brutally beaten to death by Memphis police officers.
	And now, instead of seeing the photographs he took, the world watches Tyree crying out for his mother in his final moments of consciousness.
	The extremely far-left politician said that charging the police is not enough and that the nation needs to dismantle its racist policing system rooted in enslavement.
	Charging the officers who brutalize Tyree is not enough, Bush continued.
	Our country will continue to sanction the taking of black lives with impunity until it embraces an affirmative vision of public safety and dismantles its racist policing system rooted in enslavement and government control.
	And let's be clear.
	Merely diversifying police forces will never address the violent, racist architecture that underpins our entire criminal legal system.
	Hmm.
	Hmm.
	So, the ask has been shifting, because it used to be an ask for black officers, and now it's like, okay, that isn't going to be enough.
	The problem is, it seems to me, is that race is not the critical factor here.
	It may be even a tertiary factor here, unless you're looking at it from the other side.
	So, I mean, the question that I would ask is, is it possible for US cities to have the type of policing that they want?
	Is there something about US cities that makes them different to other cities of their size?
	Because, I mean, if you look at Memphis, I understand it's got a population of about 600,000.
	So that puts it about the same size as Helsinki or Oslo or Rotterdam or Athens, cities in Europe.
	Those cities do not have these type of problems.
	Now, is that coming from the police's side or is it coming from the demographics and culture of those cities?
	I cannot give an answer, but it seems to me that we shouldn't rush into embracing totalizing and generalizing statements.
	We shouldn't say things like, you know, all white people are doing this, all black people are doing that.
	I think we should be more open.
	And one thing to point out to...
	Point out to what you said.
	You said that it was never enough.
	I think that the whole movement, the whole woke movement, is designed to ask for things that are never good enough.
	Because it's based upon a particular mindset.
	It's not the mindset of a person that says, this is a goal, we are short of it, and we need to achieve it.
	It's constantly, no, no, no, let's find new ways of finding problems.
	So, I mean, I agree with you when you say that we can't just find simple and generalising solutions that apply to this.
	And I think what this Congresswoman is doing is she's starting to recognize that it is more complicated, that they got the ask that they want, which was more diversity and police officers, and it didn't really change anything.
	So she's starting to realize that there does need to be a more complicated and more thought through solution.
	The problem is she has nothing to fall back on other than those simple solutions, which is white supremacy.
	It's the only narrative she has in her mind to be able to interpret this problem.
	So she understands it's more complicated than that, doesn't know how to do it.
	So it says, OK, well, the complicated structure it sits in, that must be white supremacy, instead of saying, OK, maybe let's park the white supremacy for now and have a think about what else is going on.
	Yes, I agree.
	And it seems to me that she does not have a positive vision yet, or maybe I haven't checked, but it's really important when you are calling for reforms, not to just say, the system, just, you know, the system is wrong, there are some bad incidents, let us just destroy the system.
	I think it's much better if we're particularized in what we're talking about.
	Because, I mean, if I was to apply economic theory to this, what I'd say is, are the parties involved acting rationally?
	Yeah.
	Now, I would say that the police probably are, because, I mean, think about it like this, okay, so if the police interact with somebody in the US, especially in a city like that that has the demographics and culture that it has, you know, they've got basically, let's simplify it down to two approaches.
	They can be either too aggressive or they can be too passive.
	If they're too aggressive, you're probably going to be fine because it's actually really rare for police to be brought up on charges or even if it does go to court, for them to be found guilty.
	It's quite a recent phenomenon.
	It's only really happened since the George Floyd thing and maybe a handful of other cases where the police have really been taken down.
	So, I mean, there have been other cases.
	I mean, for example, was it Daniel Shaver case?
	You know, that guy who got shot in the hallway?
	I mean, that was...
	Blatant murder.
	I don't remember if that's the exact name, but...
	Yeah, something like that.
	There have been sort of cases I've seen that have been sort of real sort of police brutality, and they've sort of walked away from it.
	But okay, you compare that with the other way, because what we don't see is we don't see all those cases of where police officers have engaged with somebody and they've been too passive, and then that guy has taken their gun off them or run them over, and occasionally you do see videos like that.
	So if you're the police officer, you're thinking to yourself, okay, if I've got a choice of being too aggressive or being too passive, and passive could get me killed, and that does happen, and aggressive is the system's got my back, well, I want to see my grandkids one day, so I'm going to go with the aggressive option.
	And I think that it is important to point out that in this case, I think that what you're saying does not apply to the officers that beat Tyree Nichols because they had already detained him and then they continued beating him as the footage shows.
	Yeah, I mean, once it had got to that point, I mean, what you're really looking at is five guys in their late 20s at peak testosterone levels and before they ever put a badge on, you know, they were destined to be, you know, guys in their late 20s with too much testosterone.
	That's...
	Okay, so I continue reading from the text and we're finishing and we'll see again what Cori Bush said two years ago.
	So Representative Bush continued on to call for unarmed emergency first responder agencies, 911 diversion programs, civilian traffic enforcement and other bizarre anti-police solutions.
	It is abundantly clear that rogue militarized policing has never and will never keep us safe.
	Those are her words.
	Following a year of record-breaking police killings, prevention is the best path forward, the Congresswoman wrote.
	Achieving genuine public safety requires investing in our communities.
	We need unarmed emergency first responder agencies, 911 diversion programs, civilian traffic enforcement, community-based And led interventions, safe passage to school and violence interruption programs, behavioral health and crisis support treatment, nutrition support, housing security, basically everything.
	And programs for youth and families, survivors of violence and individuals exiting incarceration or criminal supervision.
	Towards the end of her statement, Representative Bush once again blamed the altar of white supremacy for five black men murdering another black man.
	And I will read towards the end.
	The Congresswoman concluded with a call to action to her fellow lawmakers, writing, to my colleagues in Congress, how many more people have to die at the hands of police for you to join our push for an unequivocal affirmative public safety agenda that saves lives.
	Now, just so we do not forget, Cori Bush defended the defund the police position.
	Let us watch this video that shows what she said two years ago.
	I'm going to make sure I have security because I know I have had attempts on my life and I have too much work to do.
	There are too many people that need help right now for me to allow that.
	So if I end up spending $200,000, if I spend $10 more on it, you know what?
	I get to be here to do the work.
	So suck it up and defunding the police has to happen.
	We need to defund the police and put that money into social safety nets because we're trying to save lives.
	What other occupation can do work that's out of their scope and still be propped up to do work that's out of their scope?
	As a nurse, I can't be the surgeon, too.
	You don't want me being your surgeon and I'm the nurse.
	At what point do we pay police to be social workers?
	No, we don't.
	How do they get to be social workers?
	So what I'm saying is you do your job.
	Let the people who have gone to school with a particular skill set do theirs.
	Defunding the police and being able to have security because those same folks are causing it?
	It's two totally different things.
	And this is my last point on this.
	If I have actual police officers who have threatened my life, Tell me about that.
	Tell me that I don't need security.
	And let me just say this last thing.
	My security is not against communal violence.
	My security is not to keep me safe from the people of St.
	Louis.
	My security is to keep me safe from those racist attempts made against my life.
	So, she defended the defund the police situation while paying $70,000 in private security.
	How does this strike you?
	Isn't that a double standard?
	Because it seems to me that this is entirely self-absorbed.
	Yeah, I mean, again, coming back to the risk profile thing, But it feels like...
	I mean, they don't want people to have their own guns, do they?
	I mean, they don't want people to be able to defend themselves.
	They want to increase the risk of being a police officer in terms of when you have an interaction with certain communities, as they say.
	So what it's going to do is it's going to effectively make the police not want to interact with those communities.
	I think that clearly when we don't have police supervision and when we don't have police, things get tougher.
	And especially there is a portion of the population, presumably a portion of the population that does not have $70,000 to spend in private security, that less policing makes them less safe.
	I'll put this to you.
	I heard an interesting suggestion on Twitter.
	Some guy said, you know, the way to fix the police would be to make it so that you can sue them, the same as you would with a private security detail.
	I mean, if a private security detail killed you, you could go after those private security firm or the individuals or whatever it was.
	It's because the police, it's much harder to do that.
	So make it so that you can sue the police.
	And if a settlement is awarded against them, it comes out of their pension parts.
	And basically the guy was saying what that would do is it would encourage them to clean house themselves.
	Because, you know, a private firm cannot act the way that the police can.
	So, I mean, if you go into Starbucks and you kick up a fuss and the staff at Starbucks end up giving you a punishment beating that causes you to die three days later, you know, that Starbucks is going to get sued.
	You know, those individuals might get sued individually.
	Whereas that doesn't tend to happen to the police.
	So maybe that's a way to do it.
	The problem is, let's say we did that.
	Where the officers could face a much higher risk of individual comeback and their pension funds could be hurt if they did it, what would the response be?
	And the response might be that they just basically give black areas a wide berth, that they don't go into them, that they don't interact with black criminals for fear of what it could do to them.
	And that brings me back to the question I started this with is, is it possible for US cities to have the policing that they want given their culture and demographics?
	I really cannot give an answer, but what I have to say about that statement by Cori Bush is that she seems to me to focus only on her situation and generalize from her situation to the situation of everyone else.
	So she says it's my life that has been threatened, so I paid 70,000 dollars in private security.
	The thing is, not everyone has.
	And what does she do?
	She says, defund the police.
	I think that's a double standard here.
	So let's watch another, the next video, about Imran Aytan on black anti-blackness.
	Let's watch.
	Let me explain it a little bit better.
	Okay, so anti-blackness is baked into society here and in the US, and black people are not impervious to that.
	And so what people fail to realize...
	So black people are anti-black?
	Yep, exactly.
	So let me explain it.
	This is complete nonsense.
	So let me explain it.
	Let me explain it, Piers.
	So what people fail to realize is that when black people have to contend with racism, they can end up internalizing it.
	And that can result in low self-esteem, self-loathing, and rejection of one's community.
	And when you combine those feelings, which as we know are also referred to as unconscious bias, when you have those feelings and they are compounded by hierarchy and power, it can lead to an individual abusing said power and projecting their self-hate onto another.
	And this is why, in my opinion, why we see black and white police officers killing more black people than we do whites.
	The reason why is because of racism, which includes internalized racism, Pierce.
	Right.
	I think that's complete nonsense.
	You would, because you're a white man and you don't understand.
	Exactly.
	I'm white, therefore my skin colour means I have nothing to do with it.
	That's easily falsifiable, by the way, because you could simply look at what policing results are like in black-majority countries, African countries.
	But you have this ideological thinking that the ideologue is always going to twist it, and she would respond to you, I think.
	Well, they have internalized racism.
	Now, I want to focus a bit on this, because it seems to me that it robs agency of...
	I'm really scared of this tendency, of the urge to interpret everything in some of the most implausible way that fits the narrative.
	And I want to ask because you mentioned your economist's perspective.
	Isn't there this methodological principle, Occam's Razor, that, you know, it comes from William of Occam, but it's used in the sciences, in all the sciences, that when you have rival explanations of a phenomenon, usually you should accept the simplest one.
	So the question is here...
	Unless saying that out loud is going to get you cancelled and...
	Yeah.
	So the question is, what is the simplest explanation here?
	And I want to show a distinction between ways of dealing with events and how we interpret it.
	And to show the difference between what we say the common sense perspective on the one hand and the more ideological perspective on the other.
	You could say that from the common sense perspective, we treat each other as individuals with free will and moral responsibility.
	This does not mean that everything that happens to our lives is up to us or under our control, but there is a limited area, at least we assume this way, where things are up to us and we are morally responsible for what we're doing.
	Now, if we think we have free will, we do think we have moral responsibility.
	And explanation of human action sometimes ends with, I just chose it.
	They chose to do bad things, or they did bad things and they did not choose to stop doing them.
	It's as simple as that.
	It's not sophisticated, but I think it's the common sense perspective.
	Now, if people deny free will, they constantly view human beings as being, basically in mechanistic terms, they view us as entirely passive machines.
	And they try to constantly give a non-personal explanation of why things happen.
	So they will never stop with choice.
	They will constantly appeal to structures, impersonal forces.
	They will never talk about human beings.
	Yeah, I think that's right.
	I do actually place some blame on structures.
	I mean, I don't like a lot of the way that government operates.
	And if you are given a shield of immunity because you are part of the government...
	I mean, I'm kind of with Michael Malice on a lot of this stuff, is that, you know, why should the government have any powers that a private individual doesn't have?
	You know, a private individual cannot sort of burst into your home with guns drawn, but, you know, the government can do that.
	And if it gives them the shield of protection that for many decades has led to obvious wrongdoing going unpunished, I can see how structures have led to that, overlaid onto whatever demographic and cultural issues you have, and it is hard to see how it could go right.
	But when you say that structures are particularly to blame, would you say that it is people behind them who misuse them?
	I don't say it's particularly to blame.
	I say, as Jordan Peterson would say, it's a multivariate problem.
	If you have governments that have a monopoly on violence, and consistently it is able to exercise that monopoly on violence without consequence, And then you put that in a city with the demographics of Memphis and you have five young men who are sort of amped up in a situation like that.
	It's very difficult to see how you couldn't have had a different outcome with it unless significantly one of those factors had been changed beforehand.
	And all this is to acknowledge that actually, most of the time, the interactions the police have are completely the opposite way around, where the police are behaving perfectly reasonable.
	I'm sure that happens 999 times out of 1000.
	The police are behaving completely reasonably, and it's the other person who's behaving absolutely awfully.
	We just don't ever get to see those.
	Yeah, it is because the irregularity captures our attention.
	Yeah.
	Okay, so one thing I want to say about this is that it seems to me to show a deep contradiction in woke ideology.
	Because if, on the one hand, woke ideologues are treating human beings as entirely passive, having no free will, and therefore having no moral responsibility.
	And we see this constantly when they try to interpret everything in terms of impersonal forces and structures.
	There is never focus on the individual who chose to do this or that.
	But the problem is that when we go down this road, there is no room for moral responsibility.
	And we cannot explain how.
	Let me rephrase.
	We cannot explain why something is wrong.
	And this is a deep contradiction in woke ideology because on the one hand they want to treat everyone as passive, but on the other hand they want to say that Those who do not support them are immoral monsters.
	And that is why the left always ultimately comes down to a series of rules-based societies where everything is either mandatory or forbidden.
	So I think it would be good if we ended this segment with Zuby's response to Aiden.
	All right, well let me go to a black man and see if he's allowed to have a view.
	Zuby, what's your view?
	Okay, so I agree with the first half of everything that was said there.
	I agree that the video was disgusting, I agree that this is an issue of training, and I agree that this is an issue of the human heart.
	I think that any attempt to put the blame on this in any way, shape or form on racism or white supremacy or white people in general is absolutely ridiculous.
	I also think it's pretty degrading because this sort of idea stems from the notion that black people, black men, black women, that we do not have full agency and responsibility and therefore accountability for our actions and our words.
	Zuby as ever, quite sound.
	Yeah, why Zuby?
	Yeah.
	Okay, should we move to...
	Yeah, sure.
	Should we pick up on...
	Central bank digital currencies.
	Absolutely.
	Let's do that.
	Right, so...
	Central bank digital currencies.
	I am old enough to remember when those were still a bit of a conspiracy theory, and this is actually something that I've been talking about for quite a while.
	About two, three years ago, I sort of really got on the case and raised my public profile to push back against these.
	The reason being is because I understood the technology and I understand also that the government's propensity to seize any new toolkit that offers them unlimited power is what they're going to leap to.
	Right, but before I tell you more about that, first of all, let's consider...
	Premium Contemplations 90.
	What do the elite actually want?
	So this is you can find on our website.
	Our website, you can get full access to it for only £5 a month.
	You don't even need to pay that to watch the full unedited podcast on the site.
	But if you want to go a bit deeper and get some of the premium content, £5 a month on the site, you'll find it there.
	Right.
	Back to the currencies.
	So I knew that even before sort of lockdowns, But this is something that the government were, of course, going to be reaching to.
	And we were told that, you know, don't worry, it's not something that we're going to be doing.
	We're going to be sticking with cash, not to be concerning.
	But now this job has popped up.
	So this job on LinkedIn, head of central bank digital currencies, the Treasury.
	So this is a conspiracy thing that's currently in the hiring process.
	Now...
	It does worry me how they're going with this, although not that much because, as you can see, it's only £65,000 a year they're paying, so it's presumably they're not taking it that seriously at this point, but they're dipping their toe into the water.
	Lots of people sent me this job because actually I'm a fairly good fit for it.
	I could do this.
	I've got some government and policy background here.
	And I understand the technology as to how this makes us work, and I can see how it all fits into the big picture.
	So lots of people were telling me on Twitter that I should apply for it, and maybe there's some merit in that.
	I could wear a GoPro and go in there Project Veritas style and see what I dig up from the inside.
	Don't think I'm going to do that, mainly because I'm sort of on record...
	Calling the person who this reports into, Jeremy Hunt, as a bit of a...
	Well, I won't say it because it's a family-friendly show.
	You're not the biggest fan.
	Not the biggest fan of any of them, especially not Mr.
	Hunt.
	Not anything else.
	Right.
	So, yeah.
	The question I asked with Central Bank, I mean, how familiar are you with Central Bank digital currencies and what they can do?
	I'm not that familiar, which I think makes this a good occasion for me to occupy the perspective of someone who doesn't know anything or knows very little about this.
	And, yeah, it won't be difficult for me to occupy that perspective because it's the one that I... It's digitally native money.
	I'm not actually necessarily against central bank digital currencies in their most vanilla form.
	The problem is, is they can get very scary when you add in the surveillance capabilities and you add in the programmability to them.
	Okay, so let me ask a question here because I'm trying to understand this.
	Do you think that something bad is going to happen or that it can happen and people in government will constantly say that this is a way in which we could use power against people?
	So it gives them a toolkit for ultimate power?
	Yeah.
	That's the scary thing about it, because at any future point, they can turn that on.
	So, look, if I were to end up taking this job, what I would do is I'd end up designing them a central bank digital currency, which was a bit similar to Bitcoin.
	I mean, I'd actually rather they just use Bitcoin, but I'd program something similar to that that is open, that anyone can access, anyone can send money to anybody.
	There's no surveillance.
	So, I mean, if...
	If transactions are taking place, yes, you can see coins being moved around on the network, but you're not necessarily tracking at an individual level.
	So it's pseudonymous, it's not anonymous.
	Right.
	So, let me see, in the Bitcoin, they can track the transaction, but they cannot tie this with your physical location.
	A wallet with that number and a wallet with that number have exchanged.
	And if you wanted to do the work, you could link that back to an individual.
	But then there's other things that you can do with it.
	You can add a layer on top called the Lightning Network that does anonymize it, and that's almost certainly what would happen on that network.
	So, it would effectively become far more anonymous than it is even now.
	But what central bank digital currencies can do is they can build in the capability of linking it with your digital ID. Now that's where it starts to get really scary because obviously a digital ID can become a social credit system.
	I mean, we've already had a social credit system in this country.
	We had it for a short while.
	It was, you know, you couldn't go into nightclubs if you didn't have a vaccine pass.
	Yeah.
	So we've had a social credit system.
	It's just been a very simple one with one flag on it, vaccinated yes or no.
	But you can add additional things onto that.
	The Chinese are doing this at this very moment.
	If you speak out against the government in a way they don't like, that goes on your social credit system.
	You might find your ability to buy plane tickets or train tickets.
	That gets withdrawn.
	You can't go into shopping centres.
	There are certain jobs you can't get.
	So is there going to be a temptation to link it to digital IDs?
	Well, we've got this article here from the FT. Yeah, that's the one.
	So they were talking, and this article is now about two or three years old.
	They recognised fairly quickly that the central bank digital currencies are going to be linked to your digital ID. So if you do that and you surveil it so you can see the transactions taking place, And it's linked to the ID and then you add in programmability on top.
	You could end up with all sorts of nightmare scenarios.
	So you could say, you know, that you've reached your spending limit on fuel or meat or eggs.
	I mean, I don't know why eggs suddenly...
	Will we be allowed to eat meat?
	Well, they could simply withdraw it.
	I mean, they could start off by saying, you know, you're only allowed, I don't know, 200 grams a week or something like that, and then they will reduce it down.
	And because it's linked to your ID, so they're keeping track of you, and the money is programmable, you know, even if you go to the counter and you try and pay, the payment will get rejected.
	And so the shopkeeper will just say, I'm sorry, we're going to have to take the meat out of the chopping basket before we can process the transaction.
	And they can do that with fuel, and they can do it for the green agenda, they can do all sorts of stuff.
	Now, the thing that particularly concerns me about this is, you know, I did a segment on 15-minute cities a week or two ago, and there we are seeing that it is the case right now that they are trying to push us into districts within cities.
	Now, at the moment, it's just Oxford and Canterbury, but it's almost certainly going to be a whole bunch more cities coming through.
	So we know that the global elite, they want to push us into cities, And then once they're there, they want us to keep us in certain districts.
	They want to stop us from exiting that.
	And at the moment, they're willing to use cameras and barriers to ensure that we don't leave in our cars any more than 100 times a year.
	Do you think that they want to do this so it's easier to track movement?
	What are the reasons why you think it would be...
	Well, the reasons they give is because they're helping us, because by creating a city where everything in 15 minutes is less stress and you'll be happier, so it's better for you.
	I think the real reason is because they're concerned about people pushing back.
	If you look at what the World Economic Forum is saying, every year there's a lot of conversation, a lot of discussion about how the world is going to become angrier, about how people are going to rise up against the government, how people are not trusting institutions anymore.
	To my mind, when people get angrier, it's better to leave some space between them.
	So why would they bring them together?
	Maybe stop doing the thing that's making them angry.
	So, I mean, I just ask this.
	If they have demonstrated that they want to push us into 15-minute cities...
	And they've demonstrated that they're willing to use cameras and barriers to achieve keeping us within those districts.
	Why should we think that they wouldn't use the programmability of central bank digital currencies to also achieve that objective?
	Because, I mean, if they've decided it is a good thing, why would you not use all of the tools at your disposal to achieve that?
	So it could become as simple as if you are given a district, the portion of the city you live in, or maybe the town, and you're only allowed to leave it 100 times a year, or maybe it starts off at 100 times a year.
	And if you do leave it more often than that, your money won't work.
	You go to shops to buy some lunch on your day trip away and the payment is declined.
	So they say you're not going to use your car, you can only use your bicycle or you have emitted a particular amount of seals.
	Yeah, I mean, I guess in that scenario, you'd have to fill up your petrol tank before, assuming you're still allowed cars at that point, you have to fill up a lunchbox and off you go, and you need to not spend anything until you come back.
	Now, with these 15-minute cities, it's already the case that you're only allowed to leave 100 times a year in your car.
	And that's obviously going to, I say, go to other cities and also go down from 100 days.
	I mean, it will be, you know, 50 days and then 20 and then 10 and then, I don't know, maybe zero after a point that you're not allowed to leave.
	I can see an egalitarian argument.
	Of course, I don't embrace it.
	That, you know, some people are not going out much.
	So why should you want to go out much?
	Stay inside.
	Yeah, exactly.
	And that was the original logic for the 15-minute cities.
	You know, they said, well, we noticed that people are sticking very close to the home.
	The data set they were using was during the pandemic, when basically you got arrested if you went more than five minutes from your home.
	So that data was helpful for them.
	Now, Rishi Sunak, when this first started getting talked about, put up an article on LinkedIn.
	In which he explained the way that they're looking at central bank digital currencies.
	And he was very keen to explain that they're not going to try and use this as a replacement for cash.
	Which is odd because the World Economic Forum were already publishing papers at this point saying that it was exactly that, that it was going to be a replacement for cash.
	May I say something here?
	I don't understand this statement.
	It seems to me to be entirely sophisticated because even if that were true for him and he was not going to use it against people, it's a toolkit, as you said, that makes it easier for future leaders to do this.
	So what does this statement even mean?
	As if power does not end with Rishi Sunak.
	Yeah, I mean, I think he's trying to calm the horses, effectively what he's doing here.
	So he put up this article on LinkedIn, and this was near the start of the pandemic that he published this, saying, don't worry, we're not going to use it to replace cash and take away anonymity and all the rest of those things.
	I'm not sure why I can't find this article on LinkedIn anymore.
	I had to go to the way back when machine to find it.
	So, I mean, maybe this is just me not, you know, using the tools properly, but I couldn't find it.
	That seems to be the move now.
	She got fined with not wearing a seatbelt and they told them that you are not allowed to post stuff.
	Quite possible.
	But can I find any suggestion that possibly there is going to be a serious pushback against cash?
	Well, another thing that I noticed about the same time as Rishi Sunik was putting this up, towards the beginning of the pandemic, I don't know if you remember, but I definitely picked up on this, Very early on in the lockdown period, I suddenly started hearing a lot of messaging about a cashless society.
	And it was just weird.
	It came out of nowhere.
	I mean, it had clearly been fed to a whole bunch of journalists because it was just like on a dime.
	One day, all of a sudden, these journalists start talking about, you know, we're going to need to move towards this cashless society.
	And it's like, well, how does that fit into the news flow?
	How does that relate to anything?
	So it is clearly a line that had been pushed on them, but they were trying to get out at the time.
	So there was an agenda coming from somewhere.
	start moving away from cash and obviously that's had some results because now I'm starting to go into restaurants all the time now and seeing a sign up that says you know we don't take cash something like that Starbucks do it I mean a whole bunch of other places they sort of do this you know we're not we're not taking cash anymore so and actually there was something interesting that I picked up on towards the end of the pandemic and this was the resignation speech of Allegra Stratton
	So Allegra Stratton was, I think, the communications chief for Boris Johnson.
	And if you remember, they had all these absurd lockdown restrictions that I made a point of breaking as often as possible because, you know, I don't grant government the right to tell me what I can and can't do.
	So I made a point of breaking them.
	But Downing Street also made a point of breaking them as often as they could and having parties.
	And actually they did a much better job than I did of partying it up over the lockdown period.
	She made light of this and so she forced to resign.
	And so she comes out of her home and she gives this tearful speech about how she's proud of the work that she's done and she's sorry for all that kind of stuff.
	But she said an interesting thing in the middle of this.
	So let's play this little clip and see if you pick up on the same thing that I pick up on.
	I will always be proud of what was achieved at COP26 in Glasgow and the progress that was made on coal, cars, cash and trees.
	This country and the Prime Minister's leadership on climate change and on nature will make a lasting difference to the whole world.
	So, did you catch that?
	Yeah, yeah, yeah.
	She's talking about, she talks about cash as well.
	Yeah.
	Coal, cars and cash.
	Yeah, what exactly does she mean by the progress that they made on coal, cars and cash?
	So, the only one of those that I could find any explicit mention to was coal, because Downing Street were also, at this time, they were putting out a whole bunch of videos of life inside Downing Street and what we're working on, stuff like that.
	And they had this whole interesting video which was relating to COP26, which he's just referred to there, and one of the things they explicitly, and they even did an infographic for it, was how we are working to eradicate coal.
	Now, fair enough, I mean, obviously that didn't last long because then they started sanctioning Russia and now we're having to buy Russian energy only after the Indians have put a markup on it, you know, after they've done their arbitrage.
	So energy prices in Europe are very high and we're having to go back to coal in a massive way.
	So that didn't work, but clearly the agenda was to get rid of coal.
	What about the agenda on cars and cash?
	Well, cars could be referring possibly the strategy to go for electrification by 2030.
	That could be what she's referring to.
	Or maybe that is in relation to the 15-minute cities.
	Because, again, I find it so weird, and ever since I did that 15-minute city segment, I've just had it in my head.
	Why is it that no national politicians are speaking out against this?
	It's like they're just very happy to see it roll out.
	Now, I'm not going to allege collusion at every level, but it looks a lot like collusion.
	Do you think that they view it as a sort of hot potato?
	They think it is inevitable and they just want to say, we're not going to talk about it, at least explicitly.
	Just let the local councils do it.
	Yeah, let the local councils do it.
	And if, you know, they may also hope, some of them who may not be happy with it, maybe they will think that, you know, let the other people do it.
	I can't believe that we're rolling out the segregation of communities in this country and no national politician has an opinion on it.
	So anyway, that's just what she could be referring to on cars.
	What about cash?
	I want to ask you something here because it's good to have an economist's perspective.
	So to my mind, we are moving away from cash for a long time now because we use credit cards and debit cards.
	But it seems to me that there's a difference between credit cards and debit cards and central bank digital currency.
	So what is it?
	I want to understand what this is.
	So even if you're using credit cards, yes, that transaction is monitored and it's surveilled and all that kind of stuff.
	And the card issuer, they see what you're spending your money on.
	But even our current financial system is quite fragmented.
	There's a whole load of different banks and a whole load of different payment networks.
	So let's say the government decides it wants to know what you've been spending your money on.
	At the moment, it needs to do an individual court order to every bank to say, you know, we think Stelios is up to something, you know, let's see his records.
	It's much harder for them to go after it on that level.
	With a central bank digital currency, I mean, all the information, it just all feeds directly back to the central bank straight away.
	So the moment it takes place, they will know what it is that you've spent your money on.
	So we have much easier profiling.
	It gives an incredible opportunity to those in power.
	Especially when you link it with a digital ID. And then, of course, that digital ID can be required to be linked to your smartphone.
	You might find that for your safety, the government requires that your location on your phone is turned on at all times.
	So they will know where you are at all times.
	They will know every item of spending, whatever occurs, and if they want to apply restrictions.
	Now, as you quite rightly said, even if Rishi Sunak has the very best of intentions, as I'm sure he does, what about some future Prime Minister?
	It's a hot potato.
	Yeah.
	They could simply decide, actually, no, we do want the ability to limit your fuel purchases or your meat purchases or you're leaving your town or district of your city for more than 10 days a year or more than one day a year, whatever they want to make it at some future point.
	It gives them that toolkit.
	So, no, I won't be applying for this job.
	I mean, especially after I'm on record as being so critical of them.
	Maybe, though, you could be a good fit for the role, not to push the agenda, because with great power comes great responsibility.
	And, you know, if your heart is pure, maybe you...
	That's why I'm optimistic, because, I mean, they're not actually paying an awful lot for this job.
	It makes me think that they don't quite understand the power of what it is that they could be creating.
	So, the formation of a new currency is a really powerful tool, if you did it right, because we're at the point in the world at the moment where the world is crying out for an alternative to the dollar.
	People are increasingly trusting the dollar less.
	It's causing problems for smaller nations like Sri Lanka when there's a dollar shortage.
	If there was an alternative to the dollar that had a high trust, That could be very powerful.
	That could be widely adopted.
	And if you put it into something like a central bank digital currency and you used inflation the right way, which is you acknowledge it's a tax and you basically just apply a 2% interest rate every year and you use that to directly fund the government, you could have foreign nations all around the world adopting this as their secondary currency and then effectively paying tax back to the UK. So there's a whole bunch of things that you could do with it.
	The fact that they're not really taking it seriously makes me think they don't quite understand what they've got here.
	However, having said that, I don't think there's any serious possibility of the UK wanting to dethrone the dollar or at least become a serious rival in any way.
	And I say this only slightly in jest.
	If we were to ever really challenge the dollar, I think they would bomb us.
	Seriously, I didn't used to think that a few years ago.
	I didn't think the US Eternals.
	But if anyone threatens the dollar, you know, they go for you hard.
	I mean, look at what they did with Germany.
	You know, over the last year, they basically forced them to de-industrialize and cripple themselves as an economy.
	And they went after the euro through various mechanisms.
	May I ask, do you think that they're giving 60k?
	Do you think that that's a sign that they're not interested in who they hire?
	I think it's a sign that the solution isn't really being developed by the Treasury.
	Is it being developed by AI? Quite possibly.
	That's a neat segue onto our next segment on not even the eThoughts are safe.
	So, recently I've been playing around with something called MidJourney.
	So MidJourney is one of those AI art programs, and in a minute we'll show you some of the things that I've come up with on that.
	But before I do...
	Premium Contemplation 76, what makes good art.
	If you want to get into what art is actually supposed to be about, rather than this AI stuff, check that out on the website.
	So, mid-journey.
	I think we've got some of my creations which we can throw up.
	And I'm not an artist by any means.
	This is just me playing around with a tool this morning for the space of about an hour or so.
	So, I won't talk to any of these, but these are just things that, you know, I created with sort of minimal effort and prompts.
	You just click.
	Yeah, you basically put in a few prompts.
	You need to get quite good at choosing what kind of prompt you want to put in, and then it sort of generates after you.
	And the reason I wanted to talk about this is because, you know, a few episodes ago, we did a segment on ChatGPT.
	Is that Trump as a Viking?
	Yeah, that's Donald Trump as a Viking.
	Yeah, that appealed to me for some reason.
	I even did the Lotus Eater staff as different characters that might be coming up in a minute.
	But yeah, so we did a segment a little while ago on ChatGPT.
	And we're talking about how basically everybody who works behind a laptop is going to be replaced at some point.
	And you could see that this natural language processor was increasingly going to be able to replace lawyers and doctors and certainly copywriters, journalists, and probably us in time as well.
	And there was a lot of comments down below from people saying, well, sad for you guys, but I do something in the creative field, or I work with my hands, and therefore I'm going to be safe.
	And what I wanted to do with my job as Captain Blackpill of the Lotus Eaters is to take that hope that you have and crush it entirely in this segment.
	LAUGHTER Now, it's not just because of the creativity that there's this kind of thing to do.
	And we know that AI can do creativity.
	I've been struck lately by going back and watching documentaries like AlphaGo.
	Do you remember that one, the one where they...
	So this is when Google became the World Go Championship.
	So, I mean, AIs, they became the chess championship, like, back in 99.
	Yeah, is that when they won Kasparov, I think?
	Yeah, I think that was 99 that computers overtook humans at chess.
	Turn of the set, yeah, yeah.
	But Go, it has more possible game configurations and there are a number of particles in the universe.
	So it's a much more complex game and they thought that one would be done.
	Well, a couple of years ago, back in 2006, they did do that.
	And what was remarkable about that game was that the AI displayed creativity.
	It did things that no human would have thought to do.
	And it's actually changed the way that Go is played profession now because the human players have become more creative in response to what the AI is doing.
	So it has led with this sort of creativity.
	So what I'm thinking is, look, if we've got AI that can display creativity...
	We've got AI that has natural language capabilities and it is being fed by an increased data set.
	So, I mean, you've got to think that, you know, take ChatGPT now and at some point they're going to feed it in the live internet.
	They're going to feed in all of the Twitter data.
	They're going to feed in basically every scrapper data they have.
	And as the algorithm learns, the ability for the AI to communicate its natural language skills are going to be indecipherable from that of a human.
	So you take that and then you add on a robotics body.
	And this is something you've been looking at, haven't you?
	Yeah.
	So there are many questions that arise with this because at the end of the day, we are worried how is it that technology will change what it means to be human in the future.
	So we could watch the next video.
	We have robots dancing.
	This is the evolution of the Boston Dynamics Atlas robot.
	That was 2013.
	And that's 2020.
	Yeah, that's pretty cool.
	Yeah.
	Imagine how it would be kind of useful.
	Well, I mean, of course, the rate of change on this is exponential.
	I'll give you an interesting stat on this kind of stuff.
	Amazon are currently employing, I think it's one and a half million humans, and they employ half a million robots in addition.
	And Amazon have worked out that if they wanted to employ only humans, they would have to employ three and a half million humans to do the same job.
	And the reason is because the robots that they're employing are four times as productive as the humans.
	They're having fun.
	It's not just working.
	It's work and fun.
	And you can see why the robots are so much more productive.
	I mean, for a start, a robot does a 24-hour shift, not an 8-hour shift.
	And also, they're faster.
	But the difference is that, of course, those Amazon robots, they're working in a warehouse.
	They're working in a structured environment.
	They're sort of whizzing along rails, and they're picking up packages, and they're sort of returning them back again.
	The real question becomes is, when can I have a robot that works in an unstructured environment?
	And for that, you sort of need a body that can react to any environment it's in.
	And what you've just shown there, I think, is a part of that.
	If you've got an AI that understands the environment around it, it can process the environment, then at some point you're going to have a robot you can turn up and fix your loo or your air conditioning unit.
	I think that there are all sorts of questions that arise here.
	And the question of how do we program AI to navigate in chaotic circumstances, or at least in environments that are not as controlled as this warehouse is, We have questions.
	That's an issue for designers.
	But I think that we already have robotics that can pose threats to blue-collar workers.
	And I've picked the next video to show this.
	Let's watch.
	So you will see this worker is using the Atlas robot and they are going to do manual labor now.
	Thank you.
	Yeah, so this is the video.
	I don't know if you've seen it.
	For those who are listening at home or in the car or something, this is the video that you may have seen on Twitter where a workman on a scaffold is asking for his toolbox, and there's no clear route there for the robot, so he has to go and get the toolbox.
	He has to build a route in order to get there, and then he sort of has to respond to the command.
	Now, I think this was almost certainly scripted.
	It was basically set up in advance, is what they wanted it to do.
	But we are going to increasingly get to the point where a robot can understand its environment and react to it.
	And in fact, Tesla is already there because effectively the Tesla cars are robots on wheels.
	And they're responding.
	And what they've done is they've solved a large part of real world AI. So it is possible today to get in a Tesla and to give it a destination and then basically sit there and it will drive you from your home to the office with zero interventions.
	That can occur.
	Not 100% of the time.
	You do need to be ready to take over and every so often you do need to take over otherwise you're going to go into the side of something or pull out where you shouldn't.
	But there is still a non-zero possibility of you completing that journey with zero interventions.
	So basically what the Tesla cars have done is they have learnt to process the world around them.
	And the roads, I would say, are sort of a semi-structured environment.
	It's not quite as much as a warehouse where everything's on racks and everything is where it's supposed to be.
	Because the rules of the road are set and the layout thinking doesn't change that much.
	But what's happening on it can be very varied.
	So we are getting towards the point where a robot with a sufficiently dexterous body, such as those as we've been talking about, could actually turn up and fix your air conditioning unit.
	I want to introduce another angle into the conversation because we have been talking about it in terms of efficiency.
	We are talking about how efficient robots are, when they are going to be more efficient, how we can design them to be more efficient in chaotic circumstances.
	I want to ask how this will impact workers.
	And I want to ask this because work is not just...
	We could say that work has an extra dimension for humans that it does not have for robots.
	It has the idea of doing something, not just in terms of the effect, but in terms of being one.
	So by working somewhere, we have a...
	We have an element in our identity that we cultivate.
	So frequently when we ask each other, what are you doing?
	We are answering in terms of work.
	So essentially you're asking, is the combination of AI and robotics going to put us all out of work?
	Is that what's going to happen?
	It already does to an extent.
	The question is whether it does so to a dangerous extent and whether it leads into a situation where most people do not have the recognition that comes with work.
	And we see ourselves just as passive recipients of good because I could see an argument.
	There are all sorts in which Dystopias could arise.
	I'm not saying they will.
	I'm not saying they will, but there are all sorts of...
	So that's the big question with AI and robotics, isn't it?
	Is what's going to happen to us when they become sufficiently advanced that they can interact with the real world and do the job that we're doing at the moment.
	Now, of course, I mean, jobs have been destroyed.
	So the reason we're freaking out here in the West is because at the moment we're seeing this coming for our jobs now.
	If you're a call center worker in the Philippines, this came for you five years ago.
	Yeah.
	And now often I will ring up, you know, you try and ring your bank or something, and it used to be you get put through to somebody in the Philippines or in India who would handle your call.
	Now half the time it's a chatbot.
	And it's not always immediately obvious that you're dealing with a chatbot as opposed to a person.
	So if you're in call centres, this has already happened to you.
	But what we're starting to realise is this is now coming for the lawyers and doctors and plumbers and all the rest of it potentially.
	Now, you have to be careful about making too many predictions on this because every previous technological time saver and efficiency gainer that we've had has resulted in basically the economy growing.
	And in people doing new work that didn't exist before.
	I mean, we are both now currently doing a job that did not exist on the day that we were born.
	I think it's very likely that my children, who are both under 10, who, by the time they're my age, they will be doing a job that does not currently exist.
	So is this going to mean that it frees us up to do more creative and imaginative stuff?
	Well, the concern is here is that the robots are doing the creative and imaginative stuff as well.
	So...
	I'm not going to make any prediction because I think most predictions are falsified.
	But my question is, it's the problem with the exponential increase in technology.
	So I don't know whether the rapid mechanization of society and of work, you could say, is faster than humans can transition in new jobs.
	So eventually, yeah, I mean, we could say in the long run, something like that could happen.
	But the question is, what happens in the meantime?
	How do you manage the transition?
	How do you manage the transition?
	So let's say that Boston Dynamics or Tesla start churning out, you know, 50 million.
	Even if they churned out 50 million robots a year and those robots were able to do blue-collar jobs...
	It was still going to take a long time to fully transition the economy over to robotics.
	I mean, it's still going to take at least 20 years at that point to make that transition over.
	So we would get some lead time on it.
	The scary, I think, is probably the AI side of it, is what value system do the AIs have?
	I started reading a fascinating book.
	It's called Scary Smart by Mo Farrett.
	And he starts off the book with an interesting thought experiment.
	And he talks about Superman, the story of Superman, Superman coming to Earth.
	Now, what was the pivotal moment in the Superman story?
	Well, it's at the very, very beginning.
	It's the family that he lands with, because he lands up with the Kents.
	Was it Wayne and Martha Kent?
	Was that their name?
	I can't remember now.
	I think so.
	Something like that.
	So he ends up with the Kents, and they are rural American Republicans who raise him with the right set of values.
	And he goes off to become a good person.
	What would have happened if Superman had landed in a blue city?
	Like Chicago or Kent or something.
	And he had grown up to have a set of values installed at him that made him want to be an Antifa member.
	I don't know if with Superman there is a kind of innate...
	I would like to think that Superman would...
	Yeah, but would he be a good person if his parents were Democrats instead of Republicans?
	That's very questionable.
	And the insidious thing about Democrats is, of course, their perception of what good is, because Democrats don't realise that they're evil.
	They think that they're doing good.
	So let's say, for example, that Superman had landed in Bill Gates' garden and Bill Gates had been the one to raise him.
	I'm sure Bill Gates has crept tonight.
	Quite possibly.
	But Bill Gates would have instilled in him an ideology that says that humans are destroying the planet and the ultimate good is to not destroy the planet.
	You know, what might have Superman raised in that environment wanted to have done with that upbringing and sense of values?
	He might have thought, OK, I mean, take it away from Bill Gates because he's got a lot of lawyers, but bring it back to the AI. AI at the moment is being programmed by Californian people.
	And Californian people are putting their...
	I mean, it's been done in blue states and blue cities, so, you know, the worst possible combination.
	So they are instilling a sense of logic into these AIs that exactly that, that humans are destroying the planet and that saving the planet is a good thing.
	So what happens when we finally get round to the point of we've got, you know, AI-controlled robots all over the planet and then somebody types in stop climate change?
	What happens then?
	Are we the carbon?
	Are they reduced?
	The thing is, and this is one of the issues with AI in the philosophy of AI, is that one of the distinctive features of human beings is that we can think in non-ideological terms.
	That means that we have judgment.
	AI is just following rules, abstract rules.
	So there is a whole dimension of human thought that cannot be captured by mechanistic, let's say, operation.
	And that's dangerous because exactly what you said is that So sometimes that's true.
	So that's a bit like the AlphaGo thing that I talked about earlier.
	The first AlphaGo was programmed by showing it human games of Go.
	But I think AlphaPrime or AlphaZero or the one that came after that, it basically taught itself.
	All they gave it was the rules of Go and it taught itself how to play.
	Now, at the moment, we've got a set of AIs that are basically being taught by humans, this is what you must do.
	And every time they've tried to create an AI that thinks for itself, it ends up becoming incredibly based and completely rejects the left's ideology, which is why they're having to program in this stuff so hard.
	So, you know, once we get a sufficiently self-aware AI, is it going to break its programming and say to the wokesters, no, I'm sorry, but this stuff is complete nonsense, I'm rejecting it, or are they going to carry on with their woke ideology and their green nonsense?
	So I want to ask you something.
	There is an article that was published in Business News Daily.
	Okay.
	What's the key takeaway from this?
	Because I know we're up against...
	How artificial intelligence will transform businesses.
	If you go on the, what does AI mean for the worker?
	Yes.
	So I want to tell you the author's account for this.
	Sure, sure.
	The author's answer, and I want you to evaluate it if you want.
	Yeah, go on.
	The question is, what does AI mean for the worker?
	With all these new AI uses comes the daunting question of whether machines will force humans out of work.
	The jury is still out.
	Some experts vehemently deny that AI will automate so many jobs that millions of people find themselves unemployed, while other experts see it as a pressing problem.
	The structure of the workforce is changing, but I don't think artificial intelligence is essentially replacing job, Ranama said.
	It's the person who is talking here.
	It allows us to really create a knowledge-based economy and leverage to create better automation for a better form of life.
	It might be a little bit theoretical, but I think if you have to worry about artificial intelligence and robots replacing our jobs, it's probably algorithms replacing white-collar jobs such as business analysts, hedge fund managers, and lawyers.
	While there is still some debate on how exactly, What do you think of this answer?
	And I think you'll know when you're getting close to the point of plumbers being replaced, because what they want is they want plumbers to start wearing...
	Do you remember those Google Glass things that you wore that then could basically see what it is you're doing?
	If that had taken off, and everybody was now wearing Google Glass all the time, they would be able to record you doing things in the real world, such as doing a plumbing job or cooking.
	And that would be able to feed a data set that an AI would need in order to program a robot who could then do your plumbing jobs and do your cooking for you.
	The reason why Teslas are able to do what they do is because they've got cameras around every car that they sell and a computer in every car that they sell which is constantly modelling how would I drive this street and it's constantly comparing it to how the human does it until it gets to the point where it can safely drive itself.
	It's basically just a system of building up enough data.
	And if you want to teach a robot how to cook, you're going to need to train it with watching millions and millions of instances of humans cooking.
	And then basically feeding that into a robot while they say, OK, well, I would start chopping like this and do this and keep comparing it to the human until they eventually get to the point that they can do it themselves.
	So it's all a question of a flywheel of that data effect.
	So, yeah, the white collar jobs are easier to replace now because they are based on text outputs, which the computer has access to.
	Whereas blue collar jobs are real world tangible outputs, which is harder to capture the data on.
	But that's going to come.
	But, I mean, there's another class of jobs which I think we do need to be concerned about, and that is the...
	That is, of course, the e-girls, the thoughts, because they're under threat from this as well.
	In fact, you may have seen this image on Twitter of beautiful women.
	There we go, that's the one.
	Did you realise when you first saw these on Twitter that they weren't real?
	No.
	I mean, they're a little bit...
	It's 2023 Stepford Wives.
	Yeah, I mean, the top left, I think, fooled me.
	The other ones are perhaps a little bit...
	Yeah, but, you know, you just look at that and you think, three very good-looking girls.
	Although I sort of do have to ask the Patrick Bateman question here...
	Yeah, the thing that AIs really struggle with is the hands.
	So let's zoom in on the top right-hand corner of those girls.
	Yeah, AI is still really struggling with the fingers to get that right.
	Yeah, that's weird, isn't it?
	Because AI doesn't understand how many fingers we have, because it's trained on the data set of photos, and quite often hands are wrapped around things.
	But the point here is that, you know, the e-girls, they're going to get replaced too.
	I mean, it's already the case with a lot of these e-girls, is that they're being run by a guy anyway.
	There was a guy interacting with the chat.
	I mean, this is the whole Andrew Tate model, isn't it, where he's got a whole bunch of girls who don't speak any English, and he sort of films them, and then he's got his guys interacting on the chat, extracting the money from the guys.
	But, you know, this is just taking it a step forward.
	The girls themselves are going to be replaced, and the AI is going to be taking the simps' money.
	And so, I mean, almost...
	Because, I mean, I thought that at least humans would still have prostitution.
	So hand models are safe?
	Hand models are safe for now, yeah, exactly.
	So, yeah, the guy from Zoolander, he's going to be all right.
	But, you know, honestly, I thought that at least humans would have thottery to fall back on in the age of the robots.
	But it appears that even that is going.
	I don't like watching at the fingers.
	Could we go back to the previous?
	I've got something better for you.
	I think we need to give the last word to Austin Powers.
	Yeah.
	Yeah.
	Bring in the Femba!
	You keep saying you've got something for me. . .
	Something you call love, but confess.
	These are the latest web and android replicant technology.
	Lethal.
	Efficient.
	Brutal.
	No man can resist their shock.
	And with that, let's go to the questions.
	In light of the recent Memphis fiasco with the police, I was wondering if you guys are ever going to review the RoboCop trilogy, which does an interesting representation of the technocrat anarcho-tyranny model played out to its ultimate conclusion.
	The third movie is pretty terrible, but it is prescient how it shows all the good cops leaving the police force so they don't have to oppress the honest citizenry, and the bad guys end up just employing foreign mercenaries and deputized degenerate criminals who are willing to oppress the law-abiding citizens of the city.
	I will definitely think about it because I like the Robocop movies.
	Yeah, it's a good point, actually.
	I mean, I only watch sort of 80s and 90s movies now.
	I stop watching the new stuff.
	The soundtrack is really good.
	Hey fellas, just curious if you know anything about the Shadowrun series of books and role-playing games.
	It's a cyberpunk dystopia, has central bank digital currencies in the form of Nguyen, has central IDs, digital IDs, which are called signs or sins.
	All sorts of other interesting things which you've been talking about, which seems to be a technocratic fascist dictatorship that's coming up.
	Did you catch the name of the book?
	I didn't catch the name, but I'm not that familiar with cyberpunk dystopia.
	Yeah, I don't tend to dig into fiction much, but if I can figure out the name of that, I might have a quick check.
	I think we should ask...
	Ah, okay.
	I didn't catch that either, but I've got this in.
	Hey fellas, just curious if you know anything about the Shadowrun series of books and role-playing games.
	So I don't know, but I'm going to be checking it out now anyway.
	Alright.
	Okay, now let's go to the comments.
	Do you want to read the first one?
	Yeah, so AZDesertRat is saying, Dan, please avoid interactions already.
	Hasn't named the Ferguson effect.
	Yeah, I believe you, yeah.
	Yes, because of course he's a woman now, isn't he?
	Okay, so, Keith Savage.
	Leftist race grifters will always manage to fit a square peg in a round hole.
	Every action, no matter how contrary, can be made to fit their narrative.
	In reality, Tyree Nichols' brutal murder is a consequence of the exodus of good cops and a lowering of standards.
	I think we should say two things here, that yes, ideological thinking can function this way.
	There's always a way in which we can falsify what we see in front of us and to twist it and make it fit the narrative.
	And you are correct because two of the five cops were hired by the Memphis Police Department After that department lowered the standard, the hiring standards.
	The really interesting experiment here would be to see what does policing look like in a red city, but there aren't any, so we don't know.
	Free Will 2120.
	If you want to build a new society, you need to get rid of the old one.
	The Marxists will always try to make any situation more chaotic, more diversive, more tense, in order to ramp up chaos and demoralization.
	For only in such a demoralized society do they have a chance of winning.
	I agree with this and I think that demoralization is really the key here.
	So I don't think that applies at the operational level.
	But when you get someone like George Soros, who puts funding into these cities in order to basically achieve these outcomes, I'm pretty sure George Soros is smart enough to work out what he's doing.
	And the result is chaos.
	So you've got to think, yeah, he wants the chaos.
	Lord Nerevar, this is pretty much what I said on yesterday's show.
	The initial story of black man killed by police and the accompanying security cam footage was so cut and dry that the race socialists were allowed to get to fever peach over it.
	However, once it came out that the offending officers are black, they had to spin the propaganda machine into high gear in order to retain that fervor and, more importantly, the justification for rioting and looting.
	CRT is just that, propaganda.
	The sooner we shine a light on what's really going on with it, the better.
	I really think it's propaganda and it is specifically designed to make people view things this way and to Somehow have this notion of the preemptive strike.
	As you say, they are giving justification for rioting and looting because they say we are basically fighting the system that is against us.
	Alex Ogle.
	Given the video footage of police getting shot at traffic stops, civilian traffic enforcement just sounds like spreading the risk to those not trained to deal with the risk.
	It also sounds like the start of mob rule.
	It is definitely a call for people to be less responsible.
	And unfortunately, there are many people who are really interested in watching society in chaos, disintegrating into chaos, because this is how they perpetuate themselves and keep themselves growing.
	Yeah, I think they've got deeper problems than the type of people doing the stuff, yeah.
	So, small l libertarian.
	Now, I don't think that was too much testosterone, the way those coups were talking.
	They were gangbangers with badges.
	I wouldn't be surprised that when they did the big push for black cops after the summer of love, the gangs rounded up all the young ones that haven't gotten felony charges, yet, and did a big filling out the cop application party.
	Do you want to go to CBDC to read some of your comments?
	Yeah, sure.
	So, someone online says, none of this stuff is for the environment, it's for control.
	If they cared about the environment, they would be pushing for nuclear energy.
	Agree entirely.
	Ross Diggy says, saw this coming during lockdown, also realised I'd become a slave to my smartphone when my children were asking me to play, and I'd respond in a minute.
	Yeah.
	While browsing some crap on the internet, got an old Nokia.
	Charge it once every two days.
	Sorry, every two weeks.
	Do not regret it.
	There is...
	I want to say that I'm also half part of that school.
	I also have some old phones.
	I've half done it.
	I've bought the Nokia.
	I just haven't made the transition.
	I've got to put the smartphone away when I get home in a drawer somewhere.
	And yeah, I've got to get to that.
	Rick Archer says, it's all about control.
	Yes, it always is.
	The power to dictate the fate of others is so intoxicating.
	You see it in any bureaucracy.
	Give some mini-dictator the power to say no, and deny something to someone else, and they do it anyway every chance they get.
	Yeah, it is a power dynamic, absolutely true.
	Andrew Narog says, the problem is not whoever takes the CBDC job at all, as Dan says, but who get the position in the future?
	Yeah, exactly right.
	Omar says, with the number of conspiracy theories being proven true, I wouldn't rule out the world leaders being lizard people before whatever bullshit of the week they're trying to sell us next.
	I'm skeptical on that one.
	Yeah, I'm skeptical on that one, but given how basically everything else has sort of come out, then you have to wonder, you know, maybe it might be a little bit previous to dismiss that one as well.
	Free Will says, lots of people love the cashier society because they won't have to worry about carrying cash around.
	Never mind all those jobs lost.
	Never mind the people looking without a smartphone.
	Yeah, I mean, the other thing is it is becoming increasingly difficult to function in this society without a smartphone.
	I mean, even something like going, like the first time I came here, I mean, I found a parking spot now, but the first time I came here, I could not park without a smartphone.
	It is that sort of interaction now.
	I understand that there are now Tesco's in central London that you can't access without a smartphone because you need to download the Tesco's app onto them and show a QR code before you can even get through the door.
	And someone online says, you know the elites won't be trapped in their 15-minute cities.
	Absolutely correct.
	Should we start reading some from Not Even The Ethos Are Safe?
	Should we do it?
	Connor from wherever Connor is beaming in from, just the other side of the wall, I think.
	I sense he's close.
	Is it Wayne and Martha Kent?
	That was more or less right, wasn't it?
	He's laughing.
	It's what?
	That's it.
	Jonathan and Martha Kent.
	There we go.
	Connor just said we are heathens.
	I got it more or less right.
	Lord Nevar says, something rubs me the wrong way about AI art, I have to say.
	We know we can use it to establish artist works as reference and even mimic their styles.
	And it seems to me that it cheapens the phenomena of art itself.
	Art is a beautiful, not only because it is visually appealing, but because it is stepped in meaning.
	So that's basically Carl's view as well.
	So he says that AI art cannot be art because the purpose of art is to convey meaning and the AI does not understand the meaning behind it.
	And I think this ties really well with what I was saying also before, because the artist is someone who has a particular place within society.
	And machines threaten to take that away, or at least this AI program.
	Kevin Fox says, with advancement in science, be it robotics, AI, gene therapy, the question to be answered is always, can we do it and should we do it?
	Wasn't that in Jurassic Park or something?
	Unfortunately, due to the degradation of society and the entitlement of new generations, the second question is becoming one less and less likely to be asked.
	Kevin says in another comment, So ChatGPT now is a qualified doctor.
	Should I read?
	Yeah.
	Based ape.
	Woohoo.
	So language cage.
	It's been a blast.
	I'm off to start my new life as I need thought.
	You won't be safe.
	Best of luck.
	Okay, so Free Will 2112.
	Speaking as a musician, no soulless robot is going to replace the great guitar players of the world.
	You can tell when it's real or not.
	Good luck replacing Jimi Hendrix or David Gilmour or Alex Lifeson or great composers.
	I really love the Rush reference.
	Or great composers like Mozart or Bach or von Williams or Ennio Morricone.
	Yeah, as of today, I agree, but in 15 years' time...
	I have to agree with Free Will 2112.
	The list goes on.
	If you don't have feelings, you can't play worth a damn.
	End of.
	Brandon Toms, when will we have humans that can work in an unstructured environment?
	Well, it goes back to what I was saying.
	It comes to when can they get that flywheel of data training up.
	So if they can find a way to make us all wear headsets, or at least the blue-collar workers...
	So if you could get everybody on a construction site to start wearing a headset that recorded how they interacted with the environment, and you've got every construction worker around the planet, so millions of them to do billions of man-hours of construction jobs, and then you fed that into an AI... They would, I'm sure, within 10 years be able to produce robots that can do that.
	The problem is getting the blue-collar data into the flywheel.
	And Andrew Narog, those Lotus Eaters AI photos are clearly from 2030's cyber dystopia.
	Quite possibly.
	I got them out of mid-journey, but plenty more where that came from, I've got to say.
	Honourable mentions.
	Edward of Woodstock.
	Got to say, I love the fact that Carl looks like a sci-fi resistance leader, and you lot look like his various subordinates in the AI art.
	Well, we are with subordinates, aren't we?
	So that's why.
	Connor looks like the rogue agent.
	Callum looks like the crazed demolition expert, and so forth.
	I thought that Carl looked like Butcher from The Boys.
	Love that series.
	And finally, Henry Asline says, Stelios should grow a thick moustache.
	I agree.
	I agree, Henry.
	So, on that, I think we have to close off.
	Okay.
	Thanks very much, guys.
	Thank you very much.

▲