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Oct. 15, 2024 - The Podcast of the Lotus Eaters

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The Podcast of the Lotus Eaters #1022

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	Hello and welcome to podcast of the Lotus Eaters, episode 1022 on the 14th of October, I am joined by Stelios.
	Hello everyone. And also Josh.
	Hello there. And today we are going to be talking about rehabilitation of the R word.
	Stelios is going to explain how little Rocketman is putting the kaboom back into civil engineering.
	How these roads didn't blow themselves up.
	Yes, they didn't blow themselves up.
	And I will be talking about how to make you very wealthy if that is something that you're interested in.
	Also, if you would like to buy a copy of the Islander Edition 2, you can't because you've left it too late and orders have closed.
	So you're going to have to wail in purgatory for the next three months waiting for the next edition to come out.
	And I'd also like to thank the nice people at Robin's Forge for sending us some lovely key fobs.
	So thank you very much. And also this, which is a stamp.
	I believe there might have also been some stationery holders as well.
	There's a whole bunch of stuff.
	Yes. Thank you. Just people send us nice stuff, which is lovely, including Robin's Forge.
	So thank you very much. Right.
	So with that, let's dive into Josh.
	Yes. So I'm going to be talking about language today.
	And obviously language is very political.
	We talk about that all the time.
	And the left tries to control language because if you control language, you control what people think to a certain extent.
	And that's not really controversial.
	I think we all understand that.
	And it's also a sort of bipartisan view of language.
	And so if we wish not to grant them power, it's beneficial to know how their linguistic subversion operates.
	Which, funnily enough, Stelios and I covered at one point.
	I can't remember when it was, and Beau as well.
	Yeah, this was the 20th of July, 2023.
	Of course, ahead of the curve as always.
	So if you want a large amount of detail about this, that is the place to go.
	But I'm going to talk about a very specific case.
	The word of the day today is retard.
	And this has been on the fringes of acceptability over the past 10 or so years.
	Obviously, to be 100% clear, I do not approve when applied to people with special needs.
	I don't think they should be teased.
	I don't think anyone with any disability deserves to be mocked.
	And so I definitely don't mean in that sense.
	However, it is used by, you know, you or I say, if, you know, I were to do something stupid, it would make sense for you to say, oh, you know, you're being a bit of a...
	Right, okay.
	Wouldn't it? Yes.
	That makes sense. People use it in that term.
	And when people use it in that way, they don't mean to denigrate other people.
	Well... Except the person they're calling the word.
	They're not insulting disabled people or anything like that.
	What does the original word actually mean?
	So it's just a clinical word.
	And we're going to actually look at some examples.
	No, it's not. I don't think so anyway.
	Josh, can I ask you something on this?
	Because there's an equivalent, there's an analogy.
	So when it comes to flirting, a lot of people say, well, this lady isn't rejecting you, she's rejecting your approach.
	That's the mentality we need to be going for.
	Sure, I don't disagree.
	So, obviously the word was not originally meant to be insulting, it wasn't originally a pejorative term, and I think that you shouldn't necessarily view it as that harsher word, really.
	There are lots of other words in use today that had medical backgrounds that just mean intellectually challenged, and that's You know, that's how we use it in colloquial terms, and I don't think it should be policed, because by policing people's language, then obviously you're giving up power to someone because you're yielding to their will.
	But intellectually challenged by what standard?
	Well, many different standards.
	It's just a subjective thing, isn't it?
	Yes. You need a baseline population to draw the inference that that is the baseline, anything below a certain level.
	Well, everyone uses themselves as their own baseline, and so everyone who is less intelligent than ourselves, we view as...
	So, two standard deviations of IQ below, and that's retarded.
	You could say that. That's one potential view of it.
	That's gonna be like 70% of the population.
	I mean, except if you're very smart and you could say, I mean, there are people who are less intelligent than I am and who are still geniuses.
	That is the most modest as ever.
	Subtle brag I've heard today.
	Well done. So, anyway, to bring things back, moron, is another word, originally a clinical term coined in the 20th century by the psychologist Henry H. Goddard.
	So that would be off the table if we follow this same standard set.
	For the R word.
	Idiot, used in the 19th and 20th century, is another clinical term that is taken to mean someone who is not very intelligent.
	Cretin as well, which has had a very specific use.
	It's a good one, isn't it?
	It doesn't get as much exposure.
	So that was originally a medical term for someone with congenital hyperthyroidism.
	What's that? I don't know, I'm not a doctor.
	I'm a psychologist, I'll tell you how it makes me feel.
	I think it means you have very fast metabolism.
	You're a crittin if you have a fast metabolism?
	No, no, no. If you are hyperthyroidical.
	I think in severe cases it can lead to mental difficulties.
	I don't understand exactly, but that's the origin of it, basically.
	Somebody in the comments will know.
	I'm sure they will. So, other ones.
	Simpleton. Dunce.
	You'll like this one, Stelios.
	Feebleminded. Dullard.
	Backwards. They're all words that had clinical backgrounds.
	These would be off-limits, right?
	And so I feel like if you ban these sorts of words, you lose some of the poetry of the English language, right?
	Because having options gives you a good amount of nuance, gives you the option to have an almost artistic approach to language, because each word has its own sentimental attachment.
	And so each one has its own sort of distinct character.
	And what makes a good insult is that someone has sort of architected...
	That's not a word, I don't think.
	They've created it in a very specific and deliberate way.
	And it reveals something about their thought processes that they've chosen to say.
	Simpleton over backward.
	I remember getting called backward a lot when I was a kid at school.
	But that was because of my political views.
	My liberal teachers just didn't.
	Because a subject would come up.
	This would happen all the time in geography.
	We'd be talking about groups of people around the world.
	And I would say, well, yeah, but it's because of this.
	And then the teachers would be like, well, you're backward for thinking that.
	It's like, yeah, but it is.
	So what they were doing there was they were taking a very ableist stance against you.
	And they were mocking you.
	Yeah, but I'm far more able than them.
	The issue is they just didn't lie on my politics.
	Mm-hmm. It's almost like they're using it as a pejorative term, isn't it?
	Yes. In almost exactly the same way.
	I came to quite like it. Yeah, it's a good word as well, isn't it?
	Badge of Honor, even. But there are some woke safe ones.
	Stupid is woke safe because it had no clinical background.
	It entered into the English language in the 16th century via French.
	It originates in Latin for stupir or stuper, depending on how you pronounce it.
	I don't know, I don't speak Latin. Stuper's a good word, we should use that more.
	Yeah, which I imagine, you know, that's a shared origin to that word.
	It means to be amazed or stunned, but it does originally come from Latin, so it's okay.
	And also, dum, that's Old English, so that's an Anglo-Saxon word, means mute or speechless, and also relates to Old Norse, I think, dummer.
	D-U-M-B-R. I don't know how that's pronounced.
	Again, I don't speak any Norse languages.
	Also, the Dutch dum means stupid, and the German dum also means stupid, so there's a sort of...
	You'll be inclusive when you're insulting people.
	Yes. And so dumb and stupid are okay.
	Any of the others apparently not.
	But we'd lose so much of the poetry of the English language if we got rid of them.
	Who's decided this? Who said that we're not allowed to...
	Well, anything that is ableist.
	So any word that has a clinical background that has now become colloquially pejorative is bad because it mocks...
	People with disabilities, which it doesn't by the way because I think 99% of all people, particularly people who use these words, don't want to mock those people because it's seen as very mean, which it is.
	And this has even made its way into YouTube terms of service and stuff like that, hasn't it?
	Yes. I mean, it informs a lot of things.
	And what I thought interesting was Vox recently wrote an article which they've got a sort of great paywall of China up, so we can't actually read it.
	But this lady, Constance Grady, wrote about it coming back And here it is.
	That's the thing. So basically, there are a few things here that I thought were interesting.
	She starts off by saying, around 15 years ago, a new campaign took off across the young social media ecosystem.
	People with learning disabilities and intellectual disorders were asking everyone else to stop using the R word to describe them or even to make jokes.
	But it's not, no one ever uses it to mean them, because that's mean, right?
	Everyone understands that that's unnecessary and uncouth.
	Pointing out to someone, you know, their problems, that isn't funny, just mean-spirited.
	You might not have problems, you might just belong to a group that has a different bell curve.
	But, point being that it's sort of being falsely equivalent, you know, falsely attributed to these people when that's not what people mean when they use them.
	But someone did say something that I did agree with.
	Apparently, the linguist Caitlin Green says, what you're doing when you use a slur is you're telling people in your audience, this is the kind of person I am, and this is the kind of attitude I have towards the normies that don't use that word.
	Which is kind of true, isn't it?
	I don't like normies. Exactly.
	And so we use language that signifies we're above it, right?
	We don't agree with the programming, and so we use certain words that signal to everyone else that, yes, we don't care for this moral standard, we're not a part of it, which I think is actually the case.
	Sounds encouraging. Yes.
	So another outlet, this one I think was published on the 10th of October.
	This is the 10th of September, so only a We're about a month apart here.
	Why are people using the R word again?
	And they're noticing it as well.
	They're talking about X and how lots of people on there are using it.
	Particularly on social media, actually.
	We had one of our presenters called a retard.
	By Constantine Kissin, that's right, yes.
	Not very nice of Constantine.
	Does he not know the YouTube guidelines?
	He's not allowed to say that about people.
	And Harry's a lovely chap.
	Doesn't deserve it. But here is Business Insider also talking about it.
	This was back in August, so there have been a repeated number of articles talking about it making a comeback, which I find interesting because I imagine that they're not all going to be talking about it without just cause, right?
	Particularly when it's sort of a topic like this.
	And so what it suggests is that if a word enters woke purgatory, it can come back.
	And if we look at how it's come back and why it's come back, then perhaps other things can be rehabilitated as well.
	Where are you going with that?
	Well. Because I must say, I did think this segment was about the hard R, so I was slightly confused going into it.
	Well, my position on that is I think it's okay to say every word.
	I don't think any noise your mouth can make should be taboo.
	So is this going to come back in a way that only if you are that thing...
	I mean, are we going to get to the stage where Democrats are allowed to describe themselves with the R word?
	But nobody else is.
	And if you do, they just like...
	No, I think it's...
	We've sort of returned to the 1990s standard, it seems, whereby both left and right are using it.
	It's sort of a bipartisan word now, apparently.
	Right, okay. And so it's acceptable, which I find interesting.
	It's sort of... People are coming together kind of thing.
	There's some evidence that perhaps a little bit of woke is being put away, that people are fed up of this tone policing, and people actually kind of like being able to say what they want.
	And... Business Insider alleges cancelled words are making a comeback on the left.
	Some say it's a reaction to tone policing.
	So yes, they're explicitly saying that, yeah, it's not just evil right-wingers that are terrible and mean, it is the left as well that are using these words, which is interesting.
	And in fact, one of our new MPs had an interesting tweet back in the day.
	There she is, struggling to scroll down.
	But she had a tweet in 2009 saying, F-ing Estonian R-words.
	That's very specific.
	Seems to me a massive non-sequitur, because I can't think of any reason that you can be that annoyed with Estonia, or the people from Estonia, to tweet that out.
	Oh, she wanted them out of her flat, apparently.
	Why were they in her flat? I don't know why there were so many Estonians that she got driven to that.
	How many Estonians is too many, do you reckon, in a flat?
	Well, if it's your flat, I would...
	One? One?
	Well, I mean, if they're uninvited, sure, but I get the...
	You've invited them round. I mean, that's different, but...
	I think we need context here.
	I know, and the funny thing is, there was no context provided.
	She just apologised and didn't explain it.
	And I want to know, how many Estonians were in there for you to react in the play?
	I feel there must be a backstory behind this.
	Yeah. Please tell us, if you're watching.
	My curiosity has just peaked here.
	So yes, even left-wing members of British Parliament have used the word, and it has not cancelled their career, she just said, yeah, I'm sorry about that, and moved on, and no one cared.
	And it's interesting, isn't it?
	Were it a different word, perhaps, then there might have been a much stronger reaction.
	She might have even had to have, you know, stepped down or something.
	But we even get it in headlines here.
	So here's the Irish Times.
	My teacher told my parents I was retarded.
	My grandmother taught me to read.
	That's a heartwarming story, isn't it?
	Yeah. Throwing their grandmother under the bus a bit there, aren't they?
	Well, which is the cause and the effect?
	Did the grandmother teach the kid to read and then they got called retarded?
	Or did they get called retarded and then the grandmother...
	This is like the chicken or egg, we'll never know.
	They are doing this because they want to argue against homeschooling.
	Ah, yes, right.
	It's probably true, but it is a lady here.
	This is back in June, so if a mainstream publication is able to use the word in a headline and not censor it, it's also a sign of how far we've come, isn't it?
	And so, it's also been used in a film that you wouldn't be able to see me dead at.
	Deadpool and Wolverine.
	Oh, I want to see that. They dropped, apparently, the R-word, and then there are loads of people complaining about it.
	It's like, once was enough, and there's other ableist jokes as well.
	I super didn't appreciate it.
	Just dropping the super in there, you know that they're an American leftist now, don't you?
	But the left's whole thing is that anybody who doesn't agree with them is a mental midget.
	So why do they have an issue with this?
	Because this is basically their go-to all the time.
	Because it's ableist, and therefore bigoted, because you're talking from a...
	No, they don't. That's what they miss.
	It's just a bludgeon, really, to beat the right with.
	But if we just say, yeah, actually, it doesn't mean that, and also you can use it.
	So when they're attacking the right...
	So they don't actually mean it?
	As in, they're doing it not because they actually care about the word, but because attacking the right is a moral good in their eyes, all on its own.
	Yeah, but do they think the right are actually stupid or not?
	Because if they are, then why would they have a problem with the retard word?
	Because that's what they actually think the right is.
	You're imposing logical things that don't apply here.
	I mean, you call some people, when you want them to feel bad, you call them what they don't want to be called.
	Also, this, I think, was back in March.
	This is some sort of, I don't know what it is, it's Instagram, I don't ever go on that.
	But it's saying it doesn't matter if you're autistic and have had the arse layer used against you, you still can't reclaim it.
	So it's not like a certain pass that begins with N. But no, hang on, hang on.
	Autistic isn't... Doesn't mean you're low IQ, does it?
	They're just very high IQ and autistic.
	I know lots of them. I know.
	Lotus Eaters wouldn't function without them.
	Well, we wouldn't have any audience either.
	Of course, yeah. Our entire business operation is powered by autism.
	High IQ autists.
	Exactly. This is...
	When we use this word, we're not denigrating people like this.
	We're celebrating them, if anything.
	So, I'm trying to make an issue of it, and then there are a bunch of leftists in the comments, which I'm going to save you from looking at.
	But there are basically people complaining about it coming back, and people saying, well, hang on a minute, this qualifies for me.
	And here's Reddit talking about it as well, and this is Reddit, so it's a hive of leftism.
	Let's be real, ableism is the most normalised joke.
	Blah, blah, blah, blah. Also, the BBC tried to normalise it with a disabled comedian having a show that had the R word in the title.
	What sort of disability? Is it gums or something?
	I can't remember what she's got.
	But there was this.
	I saw this list of ableist words you can cut out.
	So, idiot, crazy, differently abled, dumb, insane, lame, moron, psycho, specially abled.
	I thought that was one of their words personally, specially abled.
	And stupid.
	These are all ablest words that are not allowed to be said.
	And I noticed an absence of a word.
	This is all the way back last year.
	And I shared this.
	If you're listening, it is the Orc from the Two Towers.
	That's Anuruk Hai.
	It's an auric eye, yes.
	Thank you. Sorry. Fact check.
	That's alright. I'm a big Lord of the Rings fan.
	I just saw Samson correcting his glasses there as well.
	Are they the smarter kind of orcs?
	Yes. Non-hard word orcs.
	But it looks like that word is back on the menu, boys.
	So... Yeah, it's not on the list.
	Apparently it's okay now.
	So I also wanted to tie this into the fact that it's just being dropped in political discourse now.
	As in Trump, this of course was something that was leaked to try and make Trump look bad, but it doesn't make Trump look bad.
	It points out a flaw in Kamala Harris more than anything.
	And of course Rolling Stone prints this very offensive word in the title Uncensored, so it can't be that bad.
	Even though the Daily Mail is clutching its pearls here, Donald Trump makes horrific remark.
	Oh, it was just terrible.
	I know you said at the beginning that we're not allowed to call anybody the R-word, but if we're now starting to talk about Camel Laugh Harris, I'm going to have a real hard time from this point onwards.
	Trump alleged that she is this thing.
	Oh, so we don't need to say it because we can just report on the fact that Donald said it.
	Mm-hmm. And also, this is a very wild headline.
	Trump called Harris, an R word, railed against Jews.
	Interesting. It sounds like Trump just went on a berserk.
	He was turning over tables and all sorts of things.
	Obviously, he was railing against them because some of them supported her.
	But... Let's watch this in a completely unrelated way.
	There is a very important relationship which is an alliance with the Republic of North Korea and it is an alliance that is strong and enduring and today there were several demonstrations of just that point.
	We've got a strong allegiance with North Korea.
	Famous alliance between North America, you know, the United States, and North Korea.
	I don't know, you know, if you were to name the one country that is the least aligned, that would probably...
	But she genuinely is.
	A very intelligent lady.
	That's what you wanted to say, wasn't it, Dan?
	Yes. I mean, on a side note, I think she's about to go into a massive doom loop.
	Yes. Her internal polling is so bad that she's thinking of doing Joe Rogan.
	I saw that. If she does interviews, people will realise what an R word she is, and then her internal polling will get worse, and then she'll do more interviews, and she'll just go into this doom loop.
	Mm-hmm. And the people you've got to feel sorry for, the three-letter agencies, are going to have to try and...
	Re-fabilitate her image.
	No. No, no, no, no, no, no, no.
	We can't say that.
	Not allowed. You'll get us kicked off of YouTube, Dan.
	I don't enjoy censoring people.
	However, I don't want to lose our entire channel.
	Right. I thought I could say the F word.
	I mean, it was in a bloody New York's Time article.
	Fortification. Yes. Yes, that's what you meant.
	Yes, that's what I was going to say. They're building castles, that's what they're doing.
	Anyway, there are articles like this, just basically calling her stupid, which of course, as we know, is one of the woke words that are okay.
	But the fact that this is being said is catastrophic.
	She's too stupid to do most jobs, let alone president.
	Yes, and it's also interesting that Trump comes out, calls her the R-word, and then loads of media outlets are just like, yes, of course she is.
	And it's also worth mentioning as well that she can't claim the moral high ground here, because as the Daily Mail reported in 2019, she had to apologise for laughing when a man in New Hampshire described Trump as mentally R-worded and claims...
	She hadn't heard the words he used in that moment.
	By the way, the chat is claiming that Trump has agreed to go on Rogan, which I hadn't heard.
	Have you heard that? I have heard that as well.
	I think a lot of these things go around.
	We'll have to wait and see until it's nailed down and dates given.
	Wouldn't it be really good if Rogan had Trump and Camel Laugh at the same time?
	That would probably be the best debate going, wouldn't it?
	Because J Rogan would actually be reasonably fair, I think.
	Yes, that'd be great. But my point here is that it's interesting to see things sort of reversing a little bit, and that language can indeed become acceptable again.
	And although I don't think you should use it liberally, I think have a bit of class and a bit of taste.
	It's heartening to know that once something becomes off-limits, it doesn't always have to be.
	That's heartwarming. Nice heartwarming segment about retards, that's nice.
	Speaking of retards, let's read some comments, shall we?
	I'm joking, by the way.
	So, retard is one of my favourite words.
	Part of its appeal is that it combines very well with other words.
	Libtard, comitard, eftard.
	Yes, that is true.
	Yeah, good point. That's a random name.
	The beauty of the language is that it evolves.
	If the leftoids are trying to restrict the use of certain words, then I'll simply invent new words that serve the same function.
	What a bunch of femgroids.
	Nice creativity there.
	Lofartruther says, trying to artificially get rid of language just leads to people mocking it.
	For example, Reddit bans retard, so Wallstreetbets starts calling everyone highly regarded individuals.
	Nature finds a way.
	I like people calling each other regarded.
	I think it's funny. You see it in the YouTube comments quite a lot as well.
	That's Random Name says, I think it's more of a gendered issue than it seems.
	I think most of us men love insulting one another, my friends.
	I can't...
	I think that's funny.
	I do the same, but I can't read that out.
	What was that, sorry? It's okay, I'll carry on.
	Oh, Stelios was wiggling the mouse, were you?
	But yes, that's a random name.
	I think that's funny. I just don't want to read that out because it'll make me look bad.
	But anyway, who are we onto now?
	Stelios. Do I have control of the mouse?
	Good. There you go.
	Right, so we will go to the Korean Peninsula and talk about roads and roads that didn't blow themselves up.
	And we are going to talk about the significance of this event because a lot of people are thinking that it is a harbinger of things to come, of bad things, that this is a bad moon rising.
	So I want to show you exactly what happened.
	Is that a Credence Clearwater Revival reference?
	Yeah, I think so. I see a bad moon rising.
	Yeah, I love that song. Yeah, of course.
	So, why did these roads definitely not end themselves?
	Well, you shall see, Josh.
	Right, so we have here an article from The Independent with the title North Korea threatens to turn South Korea into piles of ashes after drones fly over Pyongyang.
	So what happened was that lately there have been several accusations from both sides and the North Korean side has said that the South Korean side It has sent several balloons away, several drones, and several propaganda messages.
	So, I have a video.
	We'll show you exactly what is going on with the balloons.
	But that was the accusation.
	And they said that it happened three times on the 3rd, the 9th, and the 10th of October.
	And the drones were carrying leaflets that were filled with inflammatory rumors and rubbish.
	So that was their propaganda.
	And you'll see that they were basically throwing a lot of trash on North Korea.
	To be fair, the South Koreans should have figured out by now that if they just dumped their rubbish over the North Korean border, all the North Koreans can benefit by going through the rubbish and actually finding food because, of course, a lot of them are starving in North Korea.
	They had a lot of problems actually sourcing food because the climate isn't necessarily suitable for agriculture.
	Well, maybe they could be exporting some manure for free to help them with agriculture.
	Right, so what we have here is suspicious activity, because initially the South Korean side denied the allegations, but soon afterwards they said that we don't know what happened exactly.
	It almost sounds like they're fly-tipping.
	I don't know what to do with this mattress that I've got.
	It's all stained. I found it in a tunnel in New York.
	What am I going to do with it?
	This is all a bit Monty Python, where they're catapulting their rubbish into their enemy.
	Throwing feces is something that has been going on for a long time in this peninsula to each other.
	I'd like to think that as a species we've moved beyond the point of just throwing our feces at each other.
	Have you tried it? It's good fun.
	I mean, in Swindon, there are people who do this.
	That's true, actually.
	But the issue here, and this is why a lot of voices are saying that this may be the harbinger of something like World War III, is that this is the first time North Korea has accused its rival of flying drones to drop propaganda leaflets into the country.
	So they upgraded the thing.
	It's not just throwing feces at each other.
	They're actually... Well, the only bit there is using the drones, because, of course, during, like, say, Second World War, for example, bombers would drop leaflets all over the enemy, you know, with messages on it.
	Yeah. But they're just getting drones to do it now.
	So this has been perceived as an escalation of the situation.
	And we have here, Jürgen Naudit says, Third World War, some are already writing.
	And he says something about a German military expert who writes, we live in a time where once in a century events happen every three months.
	China and North Korea have attracted the attention of the world today.
	And he says media citing intelligence services.
	North Korea may blow up roads to South Korea today and conduct military operations near the demilitarized zone.
	And he's talking about earlier that the North Korean side had troops close to the borders to have them as combat ready.
	And he's also talking about China launching a large-scale military exercise near Taiwan with no end date.
	Ships and aircraft are approaching the peninsula from different directions.
	And we have all the other wars going on at the moment.
	So they're saying that perhaps blowing up these roads is going to be the final straw that's going to break the camelback.
	Maybe. So, first and foremost, obviously World War III is not going to happen, no matter how much the German wants it.
	Secondly, it is kind of right that North Korea should be a little bit annoyed, because dropping propaganda across the border isn't particularly neighbourly.
	So the South Koreans have done something, and they are known to do this right.
	Well, the question is who cast the first stone?
	Because you could say that, you know, in the same way with the propaganda, maybe North Korea did it first.
	I'm certainly no fan of North Korea, don't get me wrong.
	A lot of people are saying that essentially what is going on is that there are North Korean defectors who are functioning like activists in South Korea.
	Sending messages with those balloons in the months from April to late fall, where there are north winds where they're taking all these balloons to Korea.
	They should have used Chinese lanterns, then they've got plausible deniability.
	It can't be us, it was the Chinese.
	They share a land border.
	I want to ask both of you a very important question.
	Now look at this thing here.
	I want to ask you, what do you notice?
	Is that a net? Are you noticing?
	I'm noticing, yeah.
	What are you noticing with the net?
	It stops at a certain point.
	Boom. It blew it up.
	Okay, is that a road getting blown up, I take it?
	It looks like it. Yeah, the road is exploding.
	Because everyone knows the way you stop drones is you blow up roads.
	Yeah. Flawless.
	Flawless. Hang on, isn't the road blowing up retaliation for the drones?
	I think so, yes.
	Is North Korea doing the blowing up, is it?
	It is, yeah. North Korea is doing the blowing up, according to several reports.
	Very precise, right behind the other net, wasn't it?
	According to several reports, these roads aren't in use, because economic activity has ceased.
	Well, yeah, except you can see bunches of people on it.
	Yeah, so essentially, we need to understand what's going on here because it's like North Korea saying, you're provoking us, you're engaged in aggression, so we are going to retaliate by blowing up our own roads.
	And they have it here, you see the goodbye.
	Wait, so that's the North Korean side?
	Yes. Yep.
	And they blow up their own right?
	They blow up the roads at the places where these roads are connecting North Korea to South Korea.
	Yeah, it's fairly simple.
	It's just there are roads connecting them that they don't use and they blew them up because they can.
	And it doesn't actually change very much because it's just a symbolic gesture, right?
	So we have here this account next to saying North Korea has blown up sections of roads and railroad lines on its side on the fortified border between the two countries, South Korea's military said.
	In response, the South Korean military said Fired warning shots toward the demarcation line separating the neighbour.
	So, I also find it interesting that it says goodbye in 10 metres in that previous sign.
	So, it's almost like it's giving a warning that there's going to be an explosion.
	Goodbye, you're going to blow up.
	So, it says there Pyongyang pledged last week to completely shut down inter-Korean roads So the North Koreans are behaving as if they expect to get invaded quite soon?
	Well, we don't know exactly, but they are saying that they are engaging in suspicious activity, and we are going to monitor the situation.
	That's essentially what they said.
	But they also replied with some firing shots, and they are escalating rhetoric.
	Whenever the North Korean side escalates in their rhetoric, they're also doing the same.
	Now, there have been reports of military councils in North Korea about plans of how to move forward and how to respond to the incident by immediate military action.
	We have here Kim Yo-jong, the sister of North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, warned South Korea of a horrible disaster if Seoul sends more drones into its territory.
	Now contain yourself, Dan.
	I do like Kim Yo-jong.
	And we have here the South Korean Joint Chiefs of Staff, the Admiral Kim Myung-soo, who told sailors recently at a Naval Sector Defense Command near Seoul that if North Korea launches a hostile provocation, they should retaliate immediately, strongly, and until the end.
	So basically, they're escalating rhetoric at the point.
	Right, so I want to show you some context here, because it seems that a lot of these things are happening every now and then.
	There have been escalations, but aggression isn't unheard of in the region.
	It's a constant phenomenon.
	So I want to give you some kind of context because I was searching for it.
	And it said that I found that in the early year, in the early January, Kim Jong-un called for some changes in the constitution of North Korea.
	Sorry, I'm distracted by the fact this man needs a hairstylist urgently.
	And he said that they're going to make some changes and they are going to name their primary foe and principal enemy, not the US, but South Korea.
	That's quite significant because don't they have a museum just illustrating how evil the United States is and they've got that one boat that they've captured that they always parade around and they've sort of demonised them as the big bad enemy and the fact that they're changing that now is quite significant because of course the regime relies on the fear of the external enemy to maintain its power to a certain extent which is pretty basic stuff these days.
	And for those who would question this or doubt this, we have here from January 2021, Kim Jong-un calling the United States as the biggest enemy and principal enemy of North Korea.
	So what happened now?
	It's a bit more realistic though, isn't it?
	I think it's unlikely that North Korea could militarily defeat South Korea, but it's a more achievable goal than the United States, I think.
	Yeah, I feel like the largest military on earth is going to be more difficult to defeat than South Korea.
	Well, at least you were connected to them until you blew up the roads.
	So what happened afterwards was that they ceased economic cooperation.
	So the roads that they blew up were in use.
	So they were in use?
	No, they weren't in use.
	North Korea ended all economic cooperation with South Korea.
	I didn't even realise they were cooperating to begin with.
	It must have been pretty limited then.
	Yes. I didn't know this either, to be frank.
	And it can explain how North Koreans can sometimes send stuff over to the South Korean side.
	Normally refugees, right?
	They are realigning.
	I mean, they're not realigning.
	They have always been closer to Russia.
	They say Kim Jong-un said Russia is the most honest friend and partner and called Putin the dearest friend of the Korean people.
	That's because they fell out with the Chinese a little bit, didn't they?
	Because the Chinese are fed up of them being sort of a toddler that throws their toys out of the pram sometimes and upsets things for them.
	Yes, and perhaps we should also look back into the 70s, what happened, because also Nixon and Kissinger were working to split the communist bloc, and they approached China at the expense of Russia, and that was something that could also have implications for North Korea and its foreign policy against the US for decades.
	Right, so we have here some photos of the Balloon Wars, because I saw that what the Balloon Wars thing is really interesting.
	What they're doing is that they have these balloons and they have these plastic bags.
	They're filling them with...
	Goldfish, it looks like.
	It looks like the plastic bags that if you go to a fair and you win a prize, they give you like a goldfish.
	Yeah. Palming off their old pets.
	This is a bit petty though, isn't it?
	This is what a bad neighbour is.
	Well, to be fair, if your bad neighbour just sends over balloons full of presents...
	It's like I've got you some reading material.
	Well, look at these presents that don't have...
	I mean, you could say that they have an exchange card, because they're taking the same trash and they're throwing it the other side, so it's endless.
	A little trash exchange program.
	Yes, and we have here the balloon wars.
	South Koreans respond by launching balloons into North Korea with flash drives loaded with movies, music, and also dollar bills.
	You're assuming that they have computers.
	Yeah, so things have been escalating.
	So January 2024.
	The North Koreans changed the constitution and announced South Korea as their main enemy.
	Then they seized economic cooperation.
	Then they started the balloon wars throwing feces at each other and also cigarette butts.
	So that's a lot funnier.
	I like that. It reminds me when I first started in the city.
	It's not really a thing anymore but there always used to be a May Day protest where all the commies would come out and go into the city and protest.
	And the guys would basically flick £50 notes at them from the window and then watch them all scrabble around fighting between each other to get the £50 notes.
	So it's a bit like that.
	Yes, and it says here...
	So there is a clear escalation.
	That's in June. So Balloon Wars is something that is attaining increasing sophistication.
	One side sending trash and the other side sending like iPads and stuff.
	Soon they'll be sending Zeppelins across.
	Right, so I want to show you what a group of activists say about how they use GPS trackers to time the distribution of leaflets and electronic speakers as their balloons travel hundreds of kilometers into North Korea.
	The smart balloons, it's like smartphones as we say.
	Can cost up to a thousand dollars each and are launched up to twice a month from spring to autumn when favorable winds blow north.
	Aiming to reach North Korea's capital, Pyongyang, one balloon has flown as far as China.
	That's like some wedding reception level cost balloons, isn't it?
	Earlier this year, a secret group of activists in South Korea quietly released a so-called smart balloon into the night sky, with a course charted over the border into reclusive North Korea.
	It carried a sophisticated 15-pound payload.
	When the group launches them, they may include mechanical leaflet dispensers, bundles of speakers, or GPS trackers.
	The activist group has been developing these intricate devices since 2016, with regular launches since 2022.
	The group has not previously discussed its activities with the media.
	Once or twice a month from spring to fall, when the wind blows north, they launch the balloons with an aim to go deeper into the north, dropping thousands of leaflets and blasting recordings critical of Supreme Leader Kim Jong-un in a North Korean accent.
	This one is saying Kim Jong-un is a traitor that opposes the people and reunification.
	So that's how they're operating.
	That's quite funny, but I'd be very annoyed if I was some North Korean peasant who was pretty hungry, and then a speaker dropped on my head and started complaining about the dear leader.
	Imagine it landed on your roof and you couldn't get it, and then all of the communist soldiers come to your house, and they're like, why is there a speaker saying blasphemous things about our dear leader?
	But if there was a book that introduced people to Austrian economics, That'd be good.
	Would that be good?
	They should just drop copies of Thomas Sowell's Basic Economics in them.
	Or have them ask Brokonomics.
	Yeah, exactly, yeah. And say, you know, £5 a month subscription to Lotus Eaters.
	Yeah, we need to get more North Koreans signing up.
	Yes, but also things have been escalating even more because this isn't just throwing balloons here or there with a lot of unpleasant substances.
	They are disrupting the Korean airspace and it says there that they have shut down runways at two of its main airports multiple times since June because of balloons carrying trash launched by North Korea.
	I mean, this is quite a cool hobby.
	I mean, I kind of...
	I think it's unfortunate that I don't live in one of the careers, so my hobby could be building balloons to fly things into the...
	Well, mind you... If only there was a territory to our north that was an inhospitable, frigid land full of people utterly hostile to their southern neighbours.
	I mean, I have got near my house two towns, North Baddersley and South Baddersley.
	I want to see if I can get them doing this.
	LAUGHTER Why would you dox yourself as well?
	Never mind. Surely you could just send them up to Scotland.
	I mean... Yeah, but you'd have to wait a really long time to find out with the blue.
	If you did it with, like, two towns next to each other, a bit more instant gratification.
	I don't think I've got the patience to build something to go to Scotland.
	I think what you could do to really troll the Scottish would be send them Ironbrew and then they open it and it's not orange.
	It's a different colour. It's, like, white or something.
	They're like, what on earth is going on here?
	Best for the whole world view.
	Have you heard of the butterfly effect?
	Dan, I'm sure you're going to love this.
	There's a theorem that says that a butterfly somewhere could essentially cause a huge catastrophe on the other side of it.
	I don't think it's a very good theory, but I've heard it.
	Do you think that this could be something like this?
	No. Well, a butterfly flapped its wings and then somebody in South Korea sent my pads to North Korea.
	No, sent something like an Armageddon or something.
	North Korea sends some trash to South Korea and it starts World War 3.
	It's not even like Gabriello Princip assassinating...
	I'm not talking about...
	I'm talking about blowing the roads up.
	Because a lot of people and a lot of media are worried about World War 3 about this.
	But the balloon wars are fine. I like the balloon wars.
	Yeah, but now they're escalating.
	So we have here escalation.
	South Korea is warning to North Korea regarding nuclear weapons.
	And we have the president of South Korea saying that if you're going to use nuclear weapons against South Korea, it's going to be the end of you.
	It's probably true. Yeah, I imagine between the entire world and North Korea, I think the entire world wins.
	And I think the Russians or the Chinese are going to be like, oh no, North Korea, that slightly annoying fawn in our side.
	I'm pretty sure at that point China will be like, yeah, you're on your own, lads.
	Yeah, almost certainly.
	Right, so I want to show you here just to find an article that I think is basically blowing this out of proportions.
	Oh, definitely. From Daily Mail here, it essentially says that things are pushing us to the brink of World War III and Armageddon, and they're adding North Korea here.
	It's from yesterday, and they're talking also about these events.
	I think that, yeah, that's a bit of a stretch.
	Well, what all of these sorts of articles are doing, other than scaring people to get more views, is encouraging people to support the military-industrial complex and continue the military companies, these private weapons manufacturers, ripping off the taxpayer.
	Spending sprees.
	Exactly. Military budget increases, yeah.
	So that's the thing here.
	It seems to me that blowing up roads that nobody has used is more like a very symbolic presentation of, you know, we just don't like you and we don't care about reuniting with you.
	It's more like symbolic.
	It doesn't seem to me to be the escalation a lot of people fear.
	There does seem to be an escalation, but I think that it's very premature to talk about this as just being the beginning of World War III, I think.
	Yes, we're one of the few outlets that says, actually, no, there's not going to be World War 3.
	I like the balloon wars, though.
	I think that's funny. I want to carry that on.
	We should do that to France.
	Thank you. You've got some comments there, Stelios?
	Right, let me...
	So, that's a random name.
	Years ago, a North Korean defector fled through the demilitarized zone and the NK soldiers who shot at him crossed the DMZ for like 30 seconds.
	This was technically cause for war, yet nothing happened.
	Chances of war are almost 0% in my opinion.
	This sounds about right.
	Phil, this is now a monthly supporter.
	Thank you. Thank you. I'd rather have Harry than Constantine.
	That's a random name.
	So with regards to those tweets, I was, and I discussed it with Carl as well, we were both tempted to jump in, but Harry was doing such a good job that he just didn't need our help.
	He was slaying it there.
	Mm-hmm. I think it's a good discussion to have.
	It's a good discussion to have.
	And I think Carl should have the discussion.
	I'm not talking about Harry.
	But Harry is a bit retarded.
	If you're watching Harry, it's true.
	I think Carl has good arguments.
	In the funny way.
	Okay, that's a random name.
	Trade between Koreas looks something like this.
	North Korea gets K-pop, twinks, and rubbish.
	South Korea gets parasite-infested defectors and explosions.
	Peace is around the corner, lol.
	To be fair, I had Korean for lunch today, in solidarity.
	With which Korea?
	You'll never know. Which way, Korean man?
	Is that all of the common things?
	Yeah, it is, yeah. Tell us about the robots, Dan.
	So this segment is about how you can become personally wealthy, so if that is of interest to you, then do watch on.
	If it's not, then go do something else.
	It's going to be like a mini Brokonomics, this one.
	In fact, I started realising when I get into it I could have got a Brokonomics episode out of this, but I'm going to do it here anyway.
	And basically what it is, is I'm going to look at disruptive technologies, about how industries get disrupted and the opportunities that spring up from that happening and how you can use it to make lots and lots of money, which is nice.
	So previous examples of this would include things like when PCs came along, when the internet came along, when smartphones came along, all of them disrupted industries and created new entrants that could do...
	Very large returns, if you invested into them.
	So that's what I'm going... So it's less about the robots themselves and more about the opportunities that it throws up.
	But nevertheless, I do need to talk about the robots themselves, because obviously that's what we're here to talk about.
	So, Mr.
	Musk basically did his robot presentation the other day.
	And so let's just watch some of this to give us a flavour of the kind of thing that he's thinking about.
	So these are the robo-taxis.
	So you might think you're looking at a standard Tesla car, but no, those things don't have any steering wheels or pedals.
	I don't really like the look of it.
	I imagine the technology is very impressive, but they sort of look like in a video game when the textures haven't loaded in.
	Like the wheels don't have any stuff on them.
	He does like his cars to have as few polygons as possible.
	I think they're quite smart.
	But yes, so anyway, so robo-taxis, that's a thing that he is working on.
	Cars, like I said, have no steering wheels or pedals.
	You just get in and it takes you to wherever it is that you feel that you need to be.
	So that was one thing.
	Let's skip ahead to...
	Oh, here we go.
	Let's watch this bit. I like how they showed someone watching football while driving there.
	That's always responsible.
	Here we go. RoboBus.
	That's the other thing. That looks like, you know, in the Death Star, in the original Star Wars, they had those little boxes that went around the floor.
	It looks like one of those, but bigger.
	Yes, it's much bigger. That actually reminds me of Total Recall.
	The taxi he gets in the beginning.
	I like the styling. It does look cool, actually.
	I quite like that.
	You know 1930s Art Deco?
	Yeah, I grew up in a 1930s house.
	Oh, okay, right, yeah. A lot of it was Art Deco.
	Yeah, so that is good.
	So anyway, RoboBus, and that can be configured for people or goods.
	So you can have, you know, stuff being delivered in that.
	And he's going to make these.
	Where's the beauty in it?
	I think it's quite... It's functional, but I like it.
	I think it's very modern and sanitized and clean.
	You know, eventually there'll be variation, won't they?
	But you don't like that?
	I think it's lovely. It's very Bioshock.
	You know, modern taxis, normally they smell like stale cigarettes and sick, so...
	I think people can puke inside this as well.
	They're going to be shocked. The seats have electrodes in.
	If you vomit in there, you actually get...
	So mildly off topic, but yes, as you can see, there's not even a front window there, let alone any pedals or steering wheels or anything.
	So yes, the robo bus is on its way.
	And the most exciting bit was this.
	This is not CGI or anything.
	He's actually building himself a robot army, which I think every gentleman should aspire to.
	He is sort of Bond villain maxing now, isn't he?
	Yes. He's got his rockets.
	He's getting a robot army.
	He's come quite a long way.
	I mean, it was only, what, not even two years ago.
	Look at their hips. So interestingly, when he was building these, he discovered that, because they started off doing things the way that you'd think you'd build a robot, and what they found is that they needed to basically replicate the human body, even down to the smallest details.
	So things like where tendons join, and how they join into your arm, and stuff like that.
	They found they had to replicate basically everything you do in a body in a robot as well.
	I'm surprised that that's surprising.
	We've come a long way to be the animals we are now, and so...
	But you think you just have the actuators on the joints and stuff, but no, it doesn't work like that.
	Anyway, so here's his vision of what he thinks it will be doing.
	Now, I disagree with this vision.
	I'll explain why in a moment.
	But, you know, there's a robot playing with your children and wiping the table.
	I mean, I might do a bit of that and the old bit of, you know, handing out drinks.
	So anyway, that's their vision of what they're trying to do.
	Now, so actually the main thing that I want to focus on is I'm less interested in what has happened here.
	What I'm far more interested in is here is what is going to happen as a result of this.
	So I'm kind of looking for the second and third order effects here.
	Well, you're going to need a lot less low-skilled people if, you know, America's going to need a lot less Mexicans if they can create robot Mexicans.
	I hadn't thought about it from the Mexican angle.
	But yes, well, certainly it has a huge impact on the need for mass immigration.
	That is true. Because why are you mass-importing people if a robot...
	And I think a robot will do a lot of this stuff.
	This is surprising no-one.
	We knew about robots being the future, like, in the 60s and 70s at least.
	Yeah, but we didn't actually have them.
	No, but we knew of them and we knew it would probably be possible.
	We imagined it, yes. But now we've actually got them and I think we're sort of on the cusp of this.
	But anyway, I do think that this is an opportunity to make considerable personal wealth.
	Now, my return on investment is about 40% since leaving the city.
	And if you know what a return on investment is, you'll think that actually that is something you might want to listen to.
	So basically what I want to build on is to start with the idea that when a disruptive technology comes along, it...
	Eviscerates certain industries and provides massive opportunities.
	So if we start with a PC, for example, the big opportunity would be something like Microsoft and other companies like that.
	You could have seen that and thought, okay, well, rather than having a team of accountants doing everything in a ledger, I can have a PC with some Microsoft Excel on it, and I can do the job of 10 accountants with one.
	Significant advantages there.
	When you've got the internet, that enabled things like Google and Facebook and so on.
	Very disruptive industries that again allow other industries to die, new ones to sort of emerge in its place.
	And these all become, well, the ones I've mentioned so far, they're all trillion dollar companies.
	Smartphones, it might not have been obvious when you first got them, and I think more people listening might have experienced that in their lifetime when we kind of went from, you know, well, first of all, walls, the wall-tied phones, to then the dumb Nokias, to then the smartphones.
	And I bet a lot of people didn't look at it at the time when it first started to emerge and think, okay, well, this will cause an incel crisis.
	But that's exactly what it did, because the third...
	Well, I don't think it's just mobile phones and nothing else.
	Well, I think it's a strong driver, because the second...
	What else could it be? The second-order effect would be that it enables new ways of working and new workflows and new networks and connections, which enable things like Tinder, so that women are now not choosing from the best guy who happens to be in the pub that night, but the best guy within a 50-mile radius who's got all their pre-prepared snaps lined up on the phone, and because of female nature, there's usually, I want that one.
	And then they're basically all like that, so it creates a sort of insult.
	So the third-order effects is a result of the second-order effects, which, you know, based on the smartphone.
	So there's that. Smartphones also massively boosted Facebook, so it took a company that was doing very well and then kind of really turbocharged it and got it up from, you know, hundreds of billions into the sort of trillions valuation.
	So they went online, what was it, like 2005, 2007, something like that?
	Yeah, so he sort of predated, yeah, he did predate the smartphone bit, but then it sort of turbocharged it.
	Uber, that's another one.
	I bet when you first got a smartphone you didn't look at it and think, well this is going to disrupt the taxi industry.
	I thought it would have helped it, if anything, because of course it makes calling a taxi easier.
	Yes, but then instead you can just have a thing that you can select your journey, watch the taxi arrive, have all the advantages of that.
	So it's really those sort of second and third order effects is where you can identify the money-making opportunity in something like this.
	So let's start with the robo-taxis.
	I'll just give a very quick skim here of the sort of thing that it's going to disrupt.
	What is a robo-taxi going to disrupt?
	Well, traditional autos is a fairly obvious one.
	A normal car you use for about 10 hours a week, so about 5% of the week you're using it.
	A robo-taxi can be used something like 60% of the week.
	It does need a little bit of time for cleaning, being idle and recharging, but still you can get 60% usage out of them.
	Which means that one of those replaces about 12 cars.
	That's pretty big, isn't it?
	Yes. That's fairly disruptive.
	And also they're on their own cost curve decline, which again I won't get into too much here.
	But basically there is...
	You know you've got Moore's Law for...
	Chips. That's where they grow at a certain rate.
	Yes. There's something called Wright's Law, which applies to manufacturing, which does seem to hold, and it's held well over 100 years at this point, where if you get a cumulative doubling, you get a certain percentage increase based on the industry.
	And for cars, it seems to be about 15%.
	So for every cumulative doubling, you get a 15% cost reduction in whatever it takes to produce it.
	Now, getting a cumulative doubling of regular cars at this point to get the next 15% saving is incredibly hard because there's like 4 billion cars out there.
	And it's not just a cumulative doubling of the ones that are out there now, it's a cumulative doubling of all the ones that have ever been produced.
	So let's just call that 10 billion.
	You've then got to produce another 10 billion cars in order to recognize the next 15% of savings.
	Whereas electric cars, they appear to be on their own right curve, meaning that if there's a couple of million out there, you've just got to produce a couple million more to then get another 15% cost reduction on it.
	So traditional autos is an obvious one, which I think are going to get cleared away by this.
	That's an easy one. Oil industry will be impacted because a large percentage of the output goes to road freight and road usage.
	So that will be impacted.
	It will impact the marginal cost.
	There's still going to be lots of uses for petroleum, but that will be impacted.
	Then getting on to the slightly less obvious ones, but still reasonably obvious.
	Insurance. So huge auto insurance market on that.
	If the robotaxis live up to their claims, they'll be significantly safer because they don't get drunk or irritated.
	The driver doesn't smell like the real taxi sometimes.
	Have you ever had a smelly driver?
	It's horrible. And then you've got to pay them afterwards.
	It's like, oh, I've been stuck in a box with you and you stink.
	I'm giving you money for this.
	Yes, well, so hopefully they'll smell nicer.
	That will be true.
	The deodorant will sell less.
	Personal industry, personal injury, that will go down.
	There's a lot of that going on.
	Crime in general, because if you move away from the model of having your own car and having a robot, it's actually you're less likely to leave stuff inside it, and they've got cameras all the way around them, so that will go down.
	Legal, actually, you can also expand that to the sort of criminal court system as a whole, because a large percentage, especially in the US, a large percentage of criminal cases are initiated from a traffic stop.
	And that gives them an excuse to search the vehicle, and then it leads on to other things and so on.
	So there's all of these sort of second and order third effects that flow from it.
	So yeah, personal injury would be one.
	A lot of commercial space is turned over to car parking, that will all go.
	Rental car companies, they can go freight, which is already struggling to compete against rail.
	the cost reductions of something like a Robo bus or Robo trucks and stuff becomes a thing you know that will go airports for short-haul flights because You know why go to the hassle of going to an airport two hours early queuing up and all the rest of it when you Can use that total volume of space just to just to sit in the back of a rubber taxi and drive So so that's the kind of thing that the kind of process that I'm working through now with personal robots As I said earlier, I don't think the way that Elon showed it is
	is what will actually happen.
	Can I ask you something on this?
	Because I want to understand if I understood you correctly.
	So essentially you claim that a lot of these technologies get inserted into the marketplace and society and they have several effects that are unintended.
	Well, I don't know if they're intended.
	I mean, they're kind of... Very negative.
	Yes, I mean... Is that the point?
	So what I'm saying is when you get a disruptive new technology, we've seen...
	We've got three really good examples.
	So say, for example... What do you mean disruptive?
	You mean a new technology that...
	Yeah, so I class things like the PC, the emergence of the internet and smartphones as very disruptive technologies because it completely destroys some industry and it allows people who can operate efficiently at scale with new workflows to capture a huge volume of the market.
	Similar to how, say, the printing press in the past would have been very disruptive to all the people who made their living writing out books by hand.
	Yes, the monks. Yes, exactly.
	So, I mean, I grew up in a world where you would have, like, five or six travel agents on every high street.
	I remember that world. Yes.
	And you might find one now, but you probably won't.
	You can normally find a couple, actually.
	There are still lots of...
	I'm surprised that there are as many brick-and-mortar, I suppose.
	They're the ones with all the money, aren't they?
	But, I mean, shopping.
	I mean, who here realistically actually goes out shopping that much?
	I mean, you just go on Amazon. I hate shopping.
	Yeah, but do you just go on Amazon now?
	Yeah, occasionally. I do a decent amount of online shopping, but for food, I never buy shoes online because you can never know how to fit.
	There are some things that you've got to go in person and buy.
	So this food stuff is one of the things I'm coming to, but basically what I'm saying is you have to recognise when there's a new technology that comes along which is going to disrupt and make certain old industries go away, And change and create the opportunity for a workflow process which can operate at scale based on this new technology and then if you invest in that thing.
	So if you had invested in Microsoft when the PC first came out, you would have made an awful lot of money.
	If you invested in Amazon, you know, when the internet first came out, you would have made a ridiculous amount of money.
	Same with, you know, Uber, you know, or Facebook.
	I mean, all of these companies, there was a significant opportunity that emerged.
	And I am pretty certain that this is going to be a technology of the same impact as those things, which means that there's going to be disrupted industries, which means that you need to be on the lookout for what are the companies that are going to benefit from this.
	And in order to do that, you need to understand what are the workflows that are going to be disrupted and the new ones that can emerge.
	What is the profile of the company that you're looking for so that when you see it, you recognize it?
	That's what I'm driving at. And if you get that right, you will do very well indeed.
	So I don't think that the version that Elon showed, which is basically robots doing...
	And I think that's what a lot of people expect when we get the robots.
	They're just going to do basically exactly what humans do.
	So they're going to go and load your washing machine and unload it, and they'll bring you drinks and stuff like that.
	Basically like a butler for you.
	Yes, but working in human ways.
	And I don't think that's what's going to happen.
	What I think is going to happen is it's going to be a major driver towards subscription outsourcing and logistic based services.
	So it's going to be this sort of massive growth in utilizing this tech to deliver these new workflows like I keep saying and huge companies are going to emerge out of this.
	So you know what you're looking for.
	So I've done some thinking on this and I've kind of beaten down the profile of what it is that I'm going to be looking for.
	So for example with groceries and household supplies I'm less inclined to believe that your robot butler will go down to the shops with you with a shopping bag and do your shopping for you and then come back and then cook it for you.
	I think that is a lot less likely.
	I think what's more likely is what you're going to get is you will get the...
	So it can do that.
	It can do infantry management, for example.
	So this would be the unclever end of what I'm going for here.
	The unclever end is that it can just see what you've got, and then a company will emerge which will offer inventory management, which will probably be run through whatever home AI system you have.
	So it will be something like, you know, you open the app, and it says, you know, do you want to start from a blank slate and specify what your home shopping requirements are?
	Or the robot can basically do an infantry of what you've got and monitor it for a couple of weeks and see what your usage is.
	And then the app will just say, okay, we think that these are the things that you want and you can sort of tailor it or something.
	So basically taking as much friction away from the online shopping experience as possible to kind of rotorize it.
	So for example, if I had a robot butler, I'd be like, under no circumstances are we to ever have less than 10 Asahi beers in my beer fridge.
	That is paramount.
	Quick tangential fact.
	Do you know that Asahi is brewed in exactly the same brewery as Peroni?
	So they're basically the same beer. I also like Peroni.
	They're both nice, aren't they? There you go.
	Random fact. So inventory management.
	But then where I think the robot will come in is that things like...
	The reason why online shopping at the moment is a hassle and a lot of people can't really be bothered with it...
	It's because it's too much friction, too many clicks, and then actually even if you then do it, you've then got to be disrupted by when somebody turns up, which you have to kind of do in the evening.
	So it disrupts your evening as well, and then sort of unload all the boxes, and you've got stuff all over the floor, because they just don't put it in bags even.
	They just throw the bloody stuff at you in these crates.
	With a robot service, not only can you use the inventory management type system there, but the robot, of course, can just take that delivery when you're not around.
	So, you know, while you're at work or overnight, the delivery can turn up, it can take the delivery, and then it can put it all away for you.
	So the online shopping experience goes from being something with a lot of friction to something with minimal friction.
	And, you know, the first you know about it is when you open the fridge to see that you are now back at 10 Asahi beers.
	So... It'd be a good time to invest in alcohol treatment then, you know, alcohol addiction treatment.
	Yes, that could possibly be a good third order effect.
	On food preparation, I don't think it's going to be that thing where you, like in the movies, where the robot cutting really fast and then preparing your meal.
	I think what it's going to enable is the outsourcing of food on scale.
	So this would be meal kits handling.
	So what I'm envisaging here is that you'll receive a meal kit which it will unpackage and it will be compartmentalised in such a way that it is very easy for it to produce a very high quality meal from the sort of package kit that it gets in.
	So what that will drive is customisable meal planning and the adoption of meal kit subscriptions.
	And there's two ways that it can go.
	One way it can go is you could have a kind of network model like what you see in Uber, which is you can have a whole bunch of sort of kitchens emerge in your local area, who produce, instead of producing really good meals for themselves, they do it at some sort of scale.
	So they produce like 10 or 50 versions of what they're doing, and then you can sort of log on and you can say, yes, I want one of those or something.
	And the network model with the autonomous robots and maybe even the drones and the robots will be able to deliver out versions of this at much greater scale than it's possible now.
	So it would be much cheaper than a current takeaway model.
	Well, that sounds good. Yes.
	Or, then potentially it would be affordable to have someone cook for you every night, potentially.
	Yes, so what I'm envisaging is the young man's flat of the future wouldn't even have a kitchen, because he wouldn't need one.
	Maybe like a microwave.
	More space. Yes, because you would just have your robot, you would just select what you want and then it would turn up very quickly from a local produced hub and your robot would bring it in and lay it out or something like that and then sort of clear it away from you.
	But that would also, talking from my sort of tinfoil hat libertarian background, wouldn't that then give the government So much power over your ordinary person that you wouldn't even be able to cook for yourself, potentially.
	You don't even have the means of cooking for yourself.
	So if you're a naughty state dissident, they can just kick you off of the platform and then you starve.
	So yes, I'm not saying that these trends are necessarily good, but we have gone down the route of greater convenience and less friction with online subscription services to various things.
	So I just think these trends are going to continue.
	So I'm not making a commentary here on what I think is desirable.
	Of course. I'm making a comment on how you can invest in a way that is going to make you money.
	I think that people would have been upset if we didn't point out it sounds a bit scary, but I'm all for making money.
	Don't worry. I'm not though for the chip in the brain thing.
	Yeah. I like the idea.
	But imagine how much more convenient it would be to communicate with your robot butler if you had a chip in your brain where you could just will stuff and it'll do stuff for you.
	Imagine the possibility of the government taking advantage of this.
	Yeah, well, there's lots of ways.
	Again, I'm not saying this is necessary.
	The other way that the food thing can go is you could get an Amazon-like provider who does the food subscription things at bulk.
	And actually, the guy who set up Uber is now doing exactly that.
	He's preparing highly automated, highly standardised, mass-produced meal-type things.
	So they have hubs of chefs producing a whole bunch of things.
	It goes in a standardised package and then it's ready to ship out.
	I don't think it's going to work just yet.
	But when you've got a robot who can take delivery of it very frictionlessly, because of course when the robo-taxi with the delivery drone is turning up, it can ping ahead to your robot and make sure that it's met properly.
	Well, it could be in constant communication with the robot.
	It's almost the equivalent of your delivery driver being on the phone to you the whole time, wouldn't it?
	And so your robot could perfectly time its schedule around the delivery.
	And a whole bunch of other services.
	So the other one is, of course, laundry.
	So again, I'm not envisaging that the flats of the future, you'll have a robot who will do the laundry for you.
	What I'm envisaging is that you won't have a...
	Why are you blackpilling us?
	No, no, no, it gets better. You just won't have a washing machine and tumble dryer at all.
	You just won't have any laundry in your room.
	What you'll have is you'll have a bin that you put your laundry in before you go to bed, and overnight the robot will take that, bag it up, and a robot taxi or a robot bus will turn up outside, hand it over, it will go off to a laundry hub in the area,
	and then come back at, say, 5am, freshly washed and pressed, So from your perspective, you dump the stuff in the laundry bin before you go to bed, and you wake up in the morning and there's a tray of fresh laundry waiting for you.
	So that's going to be very significant as well, because, of course, a lot of these things are operating under the economy of scale, and so if we're looking at the human race as a whole, just from the implications of this...
	We're going to be using our resources very efficiently compared to now if we adopt this model because, of course, these big industrial washing machines are much more efficient than every person individually having a washing machine.
	Yes. So what I'm building on here, and again, I'm not giving a commentary on whether this is desirable or not, but there definitely is a trend to better...
	So you've got to understand that Amazon is not a shop.
	Amazon is a logistics company.
	The reason they are one of the biggest companies in the world, if not the biggest of them, they're very close to it, is because they have nailed their logistics.
	The reason some of the biggest companies like Netflix, for example, they are that because they have nailed the subscription model.
	And what I'm saying is these trends have clearly demonstrated that that is the way the market is going, this way that human nature responds to, and therefore there is necessarily no reason to believe that the future investment opportunities won't be based on the same underlying principles.
	So it's then what does the technology enable, which is all of this.
	So laundry, that's one.
	Package delivery. So at the moment, you go on Amazon and something's delivered in a cardboard box.
	And it's a bit inconvenient because, you know, you either have to be in or it might get stolen if you live in America off your porch.
	There are lots of waste packaging goes into this.
	And Amazon have been working on things like delivery drones, but they can't quite make it work because...
	You know, who wants to be, you know, answer their front door to find a little mini helicopter buzzing in front of their face?
	How do you just take the package?
	But again, if you're in synced with a robot, you know, the delivery drone can come over and it can query the five or six robots that it's got a delivery to make to, and it can say, okay, which of you is available?
	And one of them will say, oh, I'm walking the dog at the moment, and the other one will say, yeah, I'm in a charging cycle, you know, give me 10 minutes, and another one will say, yeah, I'm available now.
	You know, he can just walk outside, put his hand up, and the drone gives him the package straight away.
	So there's, again, minimum friction on all of this, which speeds it up, which lowers cost.
	And you can then get into more durable packaging as well, rather than having a bunch of cardboard boxes all the time, because the drone can very easily, you know, return the packages the next time, because friction has been removed.
	So your delivery process goes from...
	You order something on Amazon and you get it late the next day or the following day.
	So you order something and in a few hours it's there.
	And you don't have any waste packaging to deal with.
	So there's a whole bunch of stuff like that.
	Medical subscriptions, again, if you know the principle of what I'm describing here, you'll see how this works.
	So basically what I'm describing is there will be downstream companies that emerge that fulfill this criteria, which is basically logistics and subscription based, so that when you see these companies emerge and you feel that it fits into this base, but you need a mental model of what the trends are that are going on at the moment, what the enabling technology is, it was the PC, then it was the internet, and then it was smartphones, and now it's going to be robotics.
	And if you identify in your mind what it is that you're looking for, when these companies emerge you know to invest in them at an early stage and it will make you an extraordinary amount of money if you do this right.
	I think I put gardening robots on here because I don't think your robot's going to be mowing your lawn either.
	You might have a dedicated little robot thing and they already exist.
	They're not very good at the moment, but it will be that sort of stuff.
	And basically what I'm envisaging is that the robots, I don't think they're even going to work on human schedules.
	I think they're going to have their own schedules.
	And actually what I envisage in the future is that the knights belong to the robots.
	So I don't even think that when you're at home, the robot is going to be particularly visible.
	You know, that's when it might be on its charging cycle.
	What's going to happen is as soon as everybody goes to bed, this is when all the laundry robo-vans come out.
	The creatures of the night.
	Yes. And the robots start doing the delivery trade-off and the packaging and the...
	Yeah, but I mean, I don't know if the lawnmower is the thing to look for, because it gives a perfect opportunity to people to just be alone by themselves a bit.
	Well, I suppose you can mow your lawn if you want to.
	Yeah, if there's a lot of moaning inside the house, we say, okay, I'll take a break.
	Yes, but I mean, on the topic of a lot of moaning, actually, it could potentially, the dawn of robots, put a lot of prostitutes out of business.
	Okay, I hadn't envisioned...
	Why is that?
	People are strange.
	No, I won't lower the tone.
	They have to improve the external appearance.
	So to give a final, this is what I'm kind of envisaging.
	They're like star troopers.
	Yes. So my basic vision is in 2024, let's imagine you're a single man in your flat.
	You get back from work, you change, you dump your clothes over a chair because you can't be bothered to do the laundry.
	You might do it at the weekend. You have to take the bins out.
	You realise that you need to shop.
	So you get up, you drive off or you walk off, you go to the shops, you shop, you come back, you unpack.
	You watch podcasts of the Lotus Eaters with a warm beer because you've just got it back from the shops.
	You want to get an hour of Helldivers in on your PC because you want some entertainment before you go to bed, but you end up making it two and then you don't get enough sleep and you wake up in the morning, you try and find a clean shirt and you can't and you have to go to work unrefreshed, not looking forward to your weekend jobs.
	But in 2035, once you've got your robot, you get back from work, you dump your clothes in the laundry bin.
	You don't have to worry about anything.
	You don't have to take the bins out because they've already been done.
	You realize you don't need to shop because, you know, you just selected something from the app and the robot will deal with it and just serve you up a plate of hot food.
	You can then sit down and enjoy podcast of the Lotus Eaters with a crisp cold beer because your robot had done the inventory management for you.
	You get two hours of Hell Divers anyway because you didn't have to go shopping.
	So you get a full night's sleep.
	You wake up in the morning and you've got a tray of freshly pressed work shirts ready to go the following day.
	And then you're thinking forward to the weekend.
	You don't have to do any household chores because they've already been done overnight for you.
	So you get to watch Lad's Hour as well.
	And in the future, we'll be replaced by robots, so we'll be streaming all night long.
	So there is that, but I think there is an investment opportunity until the point that we're actually replaced.
	So yeah, mark my words on this.
	Right, do we have any of those?
	We do indeed. Got a few actually there.
	Right, okay. So that's a random name, says, jokes aside, for the robots to work as intended, as Dan suggests, they need to be very advanced AI. Yeah, but that's the point that I'm making.
	So everything that I've done there has moved the bulk of the work to external workflows which are based on logistics management and subscription services.
	So actually, all the robot needs to do is basically take laundry from a bucket out to a van and then bring a fresh pressed tray back.
	So actually, the robots can do that today.
	So I'm not assuming advanced AI in that.
	And the same with a lot of those processes.
	If you want your robot to cook a meal from skinning an onion and doing all the rest of it and mixing the spices, that is advanced AI. If it's handling a pre-packaged kit from an Amazon-like food provider, the amount of work on it is significantly reduced.
	So yeah, I have thought about this quite a lot.
	That's a random name also says, also this entire model is based on a society where their technology is ubiquitous and universal.
	How exactly would that get implemented and who would pay for it genuinely curious?
	Well no, people would just adopt it because you'll get an adoption curve of people who, like with smartphones, there was a few people at the beginning who had smartphones but not a lot and then more and more people kind of went over to it and then everybody's got one.
	Eventually it'll get to the point whereby you'll actually be impeded for not having one because the culture's moved on so much.
	So fascinating statistic. Today there are more people that have a smartphone in the world than have a toilet.
	There are people in literal shanties with no toilets who still have a smartphone.
	So that I think is incredible.
	Makes finding a hole in the woods easier.
	Yes. Dragon Lady Chris says, I do very little online shopping.
	I prefer bricks and mortar stores unless I need an item I can only get online.
	So good for you, but most people are choosing frictionless logistic solutions, which is why Amazon is one of the biggest companies in the world.
	Oh, stuff's appearing at the top and at the bottom.
	I assume the main thing that's stopping the night-time robo-economy will be the unattended robots being harvested in diverse areas.
	Telepresence industry will also be a thing.
	Yeah, so they need to have a think about how to integrate it with the droids of diversity.
	And Bald Eagle says these robots are going to destroy the nursing home and hospice care industry.
	I trust a robot that wouldn't have used my grandfather to look after me.
	Yeah, now that does require a bit more advanced AI, going back on what I said before.
	But you start the robots with things like the laundry and taking the bins out and the food subscription services, and then, you know, it will clock up more hours in human environments.
	The learning algorithm will then be fed back, and then it can, you know, look after your granddad and stuff.
	Right. Rattle through all of that.
	Right. Let's talk about the fat jab, shall we?
	Here we are. Without any audio, apparently.
	Get ready to lose some pounds.
	Get ready to get shot and thrown in a ditch.
	Get ready to get dipped in acid baths.
	But first, you're gonna get raped.
	What is that? Oh, it's the hospital.
	The hospital? Yeah, Tuesdays.
	They burn cripples, terminally ill.
	Drag on the state. There you go.
	What is this? You have a safe trip, son.
	I think that was a TV show, but...
	Oh, I can't move there then.
	Oh, that's a shame. But yes, it's interesting that they're going to jab fat people on benefits with a fat-destroying thing.
	Never thought we'd be in that position.
	Anyway, I... With the advancement of AI, I am finding it difficult to generally tell apart what is real and what is not.
	Complicate this further with the ability to generate AI imagery, which can be used to alter narratives to such an extent that it's near impossible to tell the difference of seeing what is real and what is not.
	This is kind of made worse with the advancement of AI-generated voice simulation, which is becoming so advanced that it's hard to tell the difference, and yeah, we have one real dystopian future ahead of us.
	Yeah, I mean, I'm not a fan of this.
	I'm not a fan of just having a society where we do nothing.
	Yeah, so I've thought about that as well.
	The way that you get around the AI problem is you basically need the good form of digital identity, which is the...
	I can't remember the name of it, but there is a type of individual-based digital identity that you have where you control the digital ID and then you can attach it to things like messages and other things that are genuinely from you that can be verified that it is from you as opposed to...
	Because you don't want some scammer cloning your voice, calling your mother and saying, look, I'm on holiday and I've lost my wallet and you need to transfer me money.
	Well, my parents wouldn't do that even if it was me, so I'm all right.
	Well, yes. But you want to be able to attach a token that confirms it is used.
	I can't remember the name of the protocol now, but that solution is being worked on.
	Have we got any more videos? Was that it, Samson?
	We've got some comments instead.
	I've got nothing after this, so I think we can go long and read some comments properly.
	Is that alright, Samson?
	Okay, we got some honourable mentions there.
	Do you want to do the comments, Dan?
	Yes. Well, I'll do my ones and the common ones, and I'll let you do your individual ones.
	So, Hugo Bossman says, My Islander came today.
	I'm going to chill later with a beer and give it a good read, but I already love the aesthetic.
	Yes, the aesthetic is very good.
	Roy does that. Well done, Roy.
	Theodore Pinnock says, I have received my copy of Islander 2 while watching the podcast, and then adds, Splendid!
	Which it is. The best piece is at the end, by the way.
	Is that you? It is, yeah.
	Calm Rob says, Happy to report that I've now received my Islander magazine.
	I lost my job during COVID because somebody took offence to my use of the R word.
	Alongside my stance on COVID. Yeah, well, that might have also made a big difference.
	So, good. James Roberts says, got some reading to do this afternoon.
	Just received my copy of Islander 2.
	Thanks, Lotus Eaters. Nice job with a poem, Josh.
	Well written and very meaningful.
	Thank you very much. BattleBat says, White Bill for the Day had a baby scan yesterday and found out that we're having a boy.
	Yay! Congratulations. Next generation of Lotus Edia's audience in production.
	Yes, I have to say, actually, of all the things that we talk about, our people replicating is basically well up there.
	So... As in, you know, our side of things are having kids and...
	Yes. Ultimately, that's what it comes down to over the long term, isn't it?
	So, well done, Mr.
	Bat. Top work. I'm sure you did the hard part there.
	Make sure you make a lot of little bats.
	Yes. And that's you, isn't it?
	It is me, yes. Captain Charlie the Beagle says, To be fair, I'm not surprised the R word has made a comeback.
	People, in brackets men, have always looked for the harshest words to call someone.
	That is true. You know, one thing that I've had to point out to people before is...
	Slurs are often the go-to thing because they're the thing that gets the most reaction, but it's not always been the case.
	There are lots of other words throughout history that have held a lot more significance because they were the most offensive.
	People use the most offensive word.
	And that's determined by people's sensibilities.
	There's nothing inherent in this particular sound the mouth makes.
	Since it was cancelled by the Wocus, it has made it forbidden fruit and as such gave the word more potency.
	That is correct. Sophie Liv says it's also similar to how YouTubers banned the words killing and suicide and everybody now says unalived.
	I quite like silliness, more generally.
	It gives conversation a more Monty Python-esque character if you say silly counterintuitive words.
	So I actually quite like how we've adapted to the censorship, even though I don't approve of the censorship.
	Oh, they were suicided.
	Well, that has the word in that YouTube takes accepted.
	You can say murdered, I think.
	I think that's actually better than suicide.
	That's going to be taken out of context, isn't it?
	As in, for the YouTube algorithm, Omar Awad says the euphemism treadmill remains forever undefeated.
	All roads lead back to the original slur.
	Given time, return to retard was inevitable.
	And I'll do one more.
	David Ferugia, if black people can give you an N-word pass, surely I, as someone with an acquired cognitive defect, can give you the TARD card?
	Well, actually, because I've got a master's degree in psychology, I can diagnose someone as retarded.
	And so, I have a retarded license.
	I do like the tarred variation.
	I think it softens the word slightly, but it makes it more fun.
	It's like, oh, you tarred, you know?
	Yes. See, there's a good sort of character to it, isn't there?
	Yeah, saves a bit of time. Right, so Jeroen van Kalkeren.
	That road used to be a symbol of unity.
	This is a very symbolic sign that unity isn't possible anymore.
	Derek Power. Blowing up your own road is another Looney Tunes antics turned into reality.
	We're going to drop anvils from the balloons soon.
	Screw tape lasers, so what you're saying is that I can launch a best-in-class propaganda balloon for only a K. Yes, that's exactly it.
	Charles Burgess, the North Koreans do the propaganda balloons as well.
	I was stationed in South Korea when Obama was screwing up foreign policy there, and one of my co-workers had one of the leaflets fall at his house.
	Unfortunately, Intel didn't let him keep it.
	And Furious Dan, a northern wasteland that's hostile to its southern neighbours, Canada.
	That was what I had in mind, but that could also work.
	Yeah, and just one last, Arizona desert rat.
	I'm more of a snowball effect type of person.
	It stays small, then grows until eventually turns into an avalanche.
	Do you think it's the butterfly that causes a hurricane in the other side of the world?
	I never liked that analogy in the first place.
	The pedant in me sort of is dissatisfied.
	It's just like, how can a butterfly start a war?
	Yes, and what if you've got two butterflies at exactly the opposite side of the world who flap their wings at the same time?
	And what about if you don't know whether the butterfly is flapping its wings or not?
	And it could be both flapping its wings and not flapping its wings simultaneously.
	And the act of observing it could affect the...
	Are you noticing the butterfly? You have the videos, you know.
	Two butterflies flying.
	Are you noticing? Michael Brooks says, call me a Luddite.
	I don't want this.
	And they are heavily overselling. I work in a food factory and none of the robots or machines are even half as capable as claimed.
	Yeah, so if you look at what the guy who, I can't remember his name now, but the guy who came up with Uber in his food business is doing.
	It's still human chefs preparing stuff.
	But what they're doing is they're standardising the packaging and delivery and the fast logistics rollout of it.
	That, I think, could be like the Facebook of the, you know, it emerged before the smartphones, but the smartphones really gave it the boost.
	So I think food logistics subscription services are the thing.
	We still have human chefs, but it's just, honestly, it's all about the logistics when you go for scale.
	Nick Taylor says, I manage a 7,500 hectare cropping programme.
	And between automated vehicles and robots, the agriculture industry will hire almost nobody within a decade.
	Yeah, this goes to your point about Mexicans.
	You just don't need...
	If this does what I think it's going to do, we're going to look so stupid having imported millions of people.
	Well, it was stupid to begin with, of course, wasn't it?
	It's going to look extra stupid.
	Well, you know, people must have already known that the population we already had would have been too many people to be employed.
	Without adding more unproductive people that need to be...
	Exactly. And actually, on Nick's point, there is a very interesting, and again, I've forgotten the name of this as well, but a very interesting AI company that what it's doing is it goes out into a field and it individually classifies every single plant.
	So you imagine a huge field of wheat, it will classify each individual plant, and then when the machine is going over the waters and provide fertiliser and stuff like that, it will adjust the nozzles to give exactly what each individual plant needs.
	There's no way that a human being could ever compete with that level of efficiency.
	Yes. So, I mean, they're talking about like 30-40% yield increases, which is enormous.
	That is insane. Yes.
	Furious Dan, all this talk about renting robotaxes and butlers conjures the ULO, nothing could be happy future.
	Yeah, so again, I'm not saying that I like this.
	I'm just saying that the trend is clearly towards non-ownership and subscription-based services.
	So, it's fine to not like it, I just intend to make money out of it.
	So that at least I can be one of the people who do own something.
	It's easier to mitigate the excesses of society if you're rich.
	Yes. Omar Ward says, if communists are anything to go by, fully automating the human experience is going to massively accelerate the decline.
	Rather than using their extra free time to improve, create, 90% of people will settle into ultra-consumerism.
	Yeah, well, the problem is that logic then gets you into the Nuri Harari view, which is...
	I hate that man, yeah.
	But it's gonna be like Westworld.
	As in, you won't be able to tell the difference between...
	Yeah, I love that show, it's great.
	I love the first two, not the rest of it.
	Yeah, but that's the thing, that people will start imploding...
	Well, people can go to the Wild West and live out their fantasies and shoot robots.
	That sounds cool to me. That would be quite fun, but I don't think I'd want to do it in the Wild West.
	I want to do it in...
	Where? In the jungle.
	In Vietnam. Am I allowed to say inner cities?
	Is that... Moving swiftly on, Grant Gibson says, all this scaling and pooling is just going to turn this into a hive.
	Yeah, again, I'm not saying I like it, I just think that's where it's going.
	I'm going to get scabies from the communal laundry service and I'm not interested in living in that future.
	Also, they're not going to let you mow your lawn, drive yourself or anything the robots can do.
	Whether it's the safety of the environment, they'll find a way to take things away from you.
	Yeah, I think that's going to happen as well.
	So, for example, you try getting in a lift a day and operating it yourself, you know, with the handle that goes...
	Because we used to have people in lifts that would just manually control it with a lever.
	And, I mean, it's just not an option anymore.
	It's all automated for you.
	And I think, yeah, he's right.
	Mowing your lawn and driving are going to be things that will be taken away from you eventually.
	No, I like driving. I like entering the elevator.
	I don't like either of those things.
	I like driving.
	I think it will be taken away from you though.
	I'd rather be doing something else.
	Arizona Desert Rat says, We already have driverless taxis in Arizona.
	They're run by Waymo and they're prohibitively expensive with very limited range of travel.
	Yeah, so I have a number of issues with Waymo, which I'd love to get into, but I don't have time here, so I won't.
	Let me see, what else have we got?
	Oh, Thomas Howell says, still hold to this one, Maxim Dan.
	Robot's going to look more like TARS from Interstellar and less like C-3PO. Okay, so actually I think most of the robots won't look anything like humans because I classify robo-taxis and robo-buses as robots.
	They just look like vehicles.
	So the form will follow the function, but if you've got a robot that operates in the home, it will look like a human because the home is designed around the human form and therefore the robot needs to be as well.
	But yeah, there will be a wide diversification and I don't think you can have some weird hybrid of something that doesn't look like a human operating in a human environment.
	You'll just have something completely different and a robo-taxi is an example of that and other things as well.
	I want a robot monkey. I'm just throwing it out there.
	Possibly. Justin B says, I haven't read that, but I'm sure it is good because old Isaac was good at that sort of stuff.
	Yes. Yeah, if we have this brave new world where people are allowed to reach their maximum efficiency because they're not wasting time on shopping or laundry or taking the bins out, it does come back to that problem.
	What about people who are just fundamentally bloody useless and unproductive?
	We'll have a lot of time to sort them out.
	Yes, possibly.
	So with that, we're ten minutes over.
	Anything we say before we wrap up?
	No, I'm okay.

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