The Podcast of the Lotus Eaters - The Podcast of the Lotus Eaters #1332

Jan. 14, 2026 - The Podcast of the Lotus Eaters

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The Podcast of the Lotus Eaters #1332

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	Hello and welcome to the podcast of Lotus Eaters episode 1332.
	I'm your host Harry joined today by Stelios and Josh.
	Hello.
	Do I need to announce the goth mug?
	I think so.
	Right now.
	Do I need to do it now?
	We've got a goth mug on the website right now.
	Don't ask how it ties into the brand.
	Just buy it.
	You want a mug with a goth on it, don't you?
	Yes, you do.
	Anyway, today we're going to be talking about how they cannot control us, which is going to be talking about nudge theory and how apparently it's not quite as effective as we were led to believe.
	Ironically enough, we have nudge.
	I'm going to be talking to everybody about the pointlessness of working and how Gen Z are opting out.
	And Stelios is going to be finally confessing to AI Jesus.
	It's not the conversion that we expected, but it's welcome, that's for sure.
	And with that, let's get into the news.
	Also buy an islander.
	Do it.
	Just do it.
	Just do it.
	So I'm going to be talking about how actually we're a little bit more difficult to control than people might make out.
	And this is a good thing.
	This is a reassuring segment.
	It's going to be in my niche of behavioural decision making.
	This is where I specialized in psychology.
	And so I know all of the literature involved in all of this stuff.
	And I found this development very interesting.
	But to fill you in, to make sure you know everything, because I think it's important to understand all of the background information before we address this new development.
	Nudge or nudge theory was popularized by Phaler and Sunstein in this book, which came out in October of 2008.
	Sold very widely.
	I'm sure people have seen it on bookshelves and bookshops and things like that.
	I got a copy of it from Waterstones and it was one of those books that at the counter the woman said like, oh, this is a good one.
	You'll learn a lot from this.
	I mean, it is an interesting book and it is well written.
	So I can see why it's circulated widely.
	So in this book, they basically argue that a nudge is any form of choice architecture that alters people's behavior in a predictable way without restricting options or significantly changing their economic incentives.
	So it's basically relying on things like the framing effect.
	So you could, for example, ask them, you know, how do you plan to eat healthily today?
	Which nudges them to eat healthily when compared to, say, what do you plan on eating today?
	This is a pretty intuitive thing.
	Most people understand that this is a phenomenon that exists.
	And most people use this without having to read this book necessarily.
	It's essentially a sneaky form of social shame.
	It can be, yes.
	It doesn't always have to be, though.
	Well, I mean, I think most people first learned about nudge and everything to do with things like the behavioral insights unit in the UK during COVID and the COVID lockdowns.
	And I think one thing that we all know looking back was that the use of social shaming techniques was one of the go-to's that they got to get people to comply.
	It was certainly something that was used a lot more in application than necessarily was argued for in theory.
	Although there is certainly an element of that that can be justified theoretically as well.
	Another example could be, if that wasn't clear enough, and this is an example they mention in their book, is that healthier foods are placed at eye level and less healthy options are less prominent.
	You still have the option to buy less healthy food if you want it, but they're relying on human laziness to make people make the healthier choice by placing these things in an easier-to-find location than the unhealthy things.
	So they're not necessarily forcing you to make a choice, but they're gently nudging you to make one.
	And of course, you can see a problem here already, the more perceptive, more perceptive of you, should I say.
	And that is that, well, how do you define what is good here?
	This is, of course, a political thing a lot of the time.
	Of course, in this instance, it will be dietary.
	But in lots of other examples, it's not.
	And the junk food is bad.
	Yeah, well, I think that's the less controversial one, isn't it?
	Whoa, Stellios.
	That's what people tune into this show for.
	What a revelation.
	So the justification for this approach is that they correctly identify, and I do agree, that the human mind is subject to a whole host of decision-making biases.
	There's a nice long laundry list of these, and I've looked at the research of these, and it's very much demonstrable.
	These biases do exist.
	The question is, how do you address them more than anything, I think?
	And nudge is one of the ways that you could potentially address them, I suppose.
	But some of these are the availability heuristic, where the ease of recalling a piece of information makes one place more significance upon it rather than looking at things objectively.
	But of course, this is pretty easy to understand.
	Anchoring, which is placing too much weight on one factor, or things like status quo bias, where people are more likely to believe something that is normal, even though it might not necessarily be true.
	And there are also things that you can argue might be better than changing the framing of the decision in a top-down way.
	I would argue that it's far better, rather than nudging people in a top-down way, to make them aware of these biases and try and mitigate them on an individual basis, because this is the same sort of argument that you can make for a whole host of other things, why welfare sort of creates this learned helplessness.
	Because if you teach people to habituate good psychological habits, then they can manifest these in their life in every domain.
	Whereas if you're nudging them in some specific domains, unless you've got a very totalitarian government that nudges them in all aspects of life, it won't be able to compete for the mitigating effect of having learnt these things and applying them yourself, as well as the fact that there are less moral questions when you do that, because it's not a top-down thing where a government bureaucrat's determining what's good for you or not.
	And so I think that this is both desirable in terms of outcome and in terms of a sort of moral and political world.
	And I think it's also more effective because you've learnt the nature of the thing rather than being subtly influenced by it.
	And I think it's sort of like teaching a man to fish rather than just giving them a fish, isn't it?
	It's the same sort of philosophy at play there.
	And they have the nerve to describe their approach as libertarian paternalism, which I think is the most juxtaposed term I've ever heard.
	Well, this entirely relies on large state apparatus to be able to enforce the kinds of measures that nudge people in the first place.
	Exactly.
	So that's just a lie.
	Yeah, also, paternalism means like you're guarding something.
	Of course, I'm not having a go at actual paternalism.
	You know, people being paternal over their children is very important.
	But a state shouldn't necessarily be that because then it supplants the family.
	And it's weird and you shouldn't want that.
	And cringe.
	It is, indeed.
	So as you can probably imagine, this nature of this theory appealed to a wide group of different people.
	It could be marketed to conservatives because it promises minimal state coercion in that, well, you can still choose things, but we're still doing something about these problems.
	It could be marketed to progressives because it's aimed to improve things like welfare outcomes and things like that.
	And it can be marketed to technocrats because it was measurable, data-driven, and inexpensive.
	And I think the technocrats are the ones that really took this off.
	And we're going to be looking at some of them.
	They're the big winners from this kind of thing, aren't they?
	They absolutely are.
	But do you know what the technocrats don't want you to read is this, Islander magazine.
	You should be buying it.
	I mean, it's a great value for money.
	It's very good.
	It is a beautiful piece of art.
	And also, it's physical.
	The internet can't take it away.
	It'll always be there on your shelf.
	And even if, you know, you live in Britain and Keir Starmer censors the entire internet, you can still read this.
	So pick it up.
	And that's not a nudge.
	That's not a nudge, by the way.
	That's a command.
	Yeah, if you disobey me, I'm going to come around to your house personally and gently nudge you into making you buy it again.
	Anyway, following the publication of this book, it got picked up by technocrats very quickly.
	And as we can...
	Okay, of course.
	As we can see from here, this was 2009, so a year after the book was published.
	And Sunstein was appointed by Barack Obama as Administrator of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs.
	And he was in that office from 2009 to 2012.
	And then in Britain, David Cameron in 2010, so when he basically came to office, he immediately created a nudge unit, or it's the behavioural insights team originally, but it was dubbed the nudge unit because that was its purpose, was to nudge people, and also to look at how the government nudges people and evaluate its effectiveness.
	And the person who was appointed to lead this by David Cameron was this guy, David Halpern.
	And from 2001 to 2007, he was the chief analyst in Prime Minister Tony Blair's strategy unit.
	And if I were to think of a technocrat as a sort of politician, Tony Blair is the ideal sort of archetype, isn't he?
	Yes.
	And so the fact that he was one of his chief strategy, or chief analysts, sorry, for six years is somewhat telling, isn't it?
	So I'm not necessarily suggesting that he wasn't, you know, doing a good job as a psychologist.
	Just that perhaps it's an interesting conflict here.
	And between 2010 and 2022, he was the head of the behavioural insights team or the nudge unit, which interestingly, it was founded in 2010, but in 2014, it expanded into a limited company.
	And can you think of any examples of a government department being turned into a company and being auctioned off to private interests?
	I can't.
	Don't you think that's a little bit weird?
	That is very strange.
	It is a little bit weird, isn't it?
	And I think that...
	Which private interests bought it, do you know?
	I will get to that, don't worry.
	Oh, good.
	So after it took off, this is from 2015, so five years into it, there were lots of articles and puff pieces saying the UK's nudge unit is saving lives by steering citizens' choices.
	So it's having lots and lots of media justification.
	Everyone was singing its praises as this amazing thing.
	And I'd like to read something from this article that actually suggests that it's a bit more sinister than it makes out.
	So it says, the behavioural insight team has accelerated tax receipts by 70 million.
	This is written for America, I think, dollars a month, but of course this is based in Britain, the Behavioural Insights team, persuaded an extra 96,000 Britons a year to register as organ donors and improved attendance at adult education colleges and improved racial diversity in the police force.
	Interesting uses of it.
	So you've made people pay more tax.
	The organ donation thing, by the way, the way they nudged people into donating their organs more was they made it opt out.
	So what they did is they said, you know what, the government owns your organs and if you want to take them to the grave, you've got to opt out of it.
	Otherwise, they're ours.
	Which is not really a nudge.
	That's just a sinister grab for people's organs, which is really sinister, in my opinion.
	So, and of course, racial diversity in the police force, we know how that's worked, not at all.
	Okay, encouraging people to go and get further education is probably the least egregious here.
	But the way it's being applied is quite sinister, in my opinion, especially in COVID, as you said.
	So in 2017, Thaler, one of the co-authors, won a Nobel Prize for his work.
	Here you can see that the BBC is emphasizing his work on nudge more than anything else, which I think he was most famous for by this point.
	And it's worth mentioning that the Behavioural Insights team was acquired by the charity Nestor.
	Here it is talking about it from 2021, which is when they were entirely owned by them, although they were partially owned when they became a limited company in 2014.
	And the interesting thing about Nestor is that, as they say on their website, if I can scroll down here, so it was launched in 1998, and it was founded by the film director and labour donor David Putnam, who coincidentally, the same year this was founded, was made a labour lord, which is an interesting coincidence, isn't it?
	So the guy running the behavioural insights team was a labour analyst, and then the guy who buys it was a labour lord.
	We're starting to see that perhaps there's an understanding that this could have some political significance, and of course it can, because it's influencing human behavior.
	And he also received, upon buying it, 250 million from the National Lottery Fund, which is no small amount of money, is it?
	And then following this massive injection of cash, you can go on their website, and these are the countries they now operate.
	So you can see that the blue here is where they actually have offices.
	The light blue is where they have a staff presence.
	And the black here is where they've got projects.
	So from being founded as a UK government department to becoming a private company, they now operate in most of the world.
	If this isn't a way of accumulating political influence, I do not know what is.
	It's one of the most obvious examples, because they wouldn't be operating all around the world like this were they not trying to do that.
	And again, even more sinister, the way that they're trying to accumulate political influence is by...
	I know the term is nudge, but I feel like mind-assaulting people is probably...
	It's not quite as catchy.
	Is...
	Is probably a more honest way of putting it.
	Because whether or not they want to dress it up in some kind of nice, cuddly terminology, ultimately it's trying to control people's behavior en masse.
	Like you said that you would prefer if ideas were put out there which people would then be able to use their own critical reasoning s skills to be able to navigate the world around.
	These people don't believe in that.
	They believe that your critical reasoning skills are faulty.
	They believe that your brains don't work and if your brain was left up to its own devices because of these biases that a bunch of unelected technocrats say that our brains operate with naturally, you would make bad decisions and probably be racist.
	That's one of the things that they like to emphasize is that natural biases make it so that we like people that we're related to more than people that we're complete strangers to or people from the complete other side of the world.
	So that's one of the main reasons that I think they like to push this whole idea that no, no, no, without unelected technocrats pushing you in the right direction, your brain doesn't work.
	You'd probably not even be able to go to the toilet by yourself.
	And of course there's a big difference between human nature and preferring people who are genetically related to them and some of the biases that exist from when we were living as hunter-gatherers to help us survive that environment that no longer apply or are actually detrimental to modern life.
	Those two things are very different.
	I think addressing the latter is quite important, whereas trying to undermine human nature will always end in tears in my opinion.
	Sorry, were you going to say something?
	Yeah, I want to say something because I think that we need to distinguish between something that is indisputably true about this and something that is very bad.
	So any kind of what these theorists are doing, like Thaler, Sunstein, and you could say Daniel Kahneman and other people.
	Very familiar with their work.
	Yeah, other epistemologists.
	They are proposing models for how the mind works.
	And when you're proposing epistemological models, the first thing you need to do, the most important thing you need to do is to see how the mind gets things wrong.
	That's the most important thing in epistemology.
	You start from fallibility, not from the belief that you know everything.
	So to a very large extent, when it comes to psychological studies, psychological models, philosophy of mind, discourse about the mind and about thought, you have to talk about how the mind gets things wrong.
	There's nothing wrong about this.
	This is what the discipline, all these disciplines are.
	I mean, it's what I did research in personally, is looking at behavioral decision-making biases.
	And they do exist and they are a tangible thing.
	But of course, the question isn't do they or don't they exist necessarily, although of course it's important to be critical, but it's more so, how do you best mitigate these biases?
	Which comes to my second point is that the whole problem here is paternalism in government.
	It's status paternalism.
	Why?
	Because there is always going to be an abundance of epistemological theories that any kind of status government will be able to appeal to in order to say, listen, you guys, you don't make good decisions.
	You can't make good decisions.
	I'm the great man of history.
	I can make better decisions for you.
	And I think that the most important thing is that to reject this on moral grounds.
	That's one of the main reasons why I'm a classical liberal.
	I don't want other people to make decisions for me, even if I make bad decisions.
	You could have people who make good decisions for you, but there is something that is missing if you are someone who is a sort of second-class citizen in your own life.
	And there's also a deeper element to it as well in that if people are allowed to make their own decisions for themselves, then they habituate better ways of addressing the problems in the first place and therefore get better results than just being told or nudged into what to do because then they behave uncritically.
	Well, I mean, and just let me very quickly finish.
	What I like, for instance, I don't think that this is a bad thing, is when it comes to foods, when they have the signs and they tell you this is, you know, X, you know, 45% grams of cereals.
	It's going to give you 7% of sugars or, you know, 30% of your daily sugar intake or 55%.
	I think that's much better because it still leaves you the idea that you have to think of how much you want to take, how much you want to divide it among your meals.
	That gives you much more than saying, right, this, you know, if you want to be a deadbeat, eat this.
	If you don't want to be a deadbeat, eat that.
	It's a good example of how it can be applied in a way that I think most people would agree with without any sort of moral conflict because most people don't have the dietary expertise to necessarily know.
	And of course, there's going to be some matters of debate, but it's still a rough guide that people can choose to ignore or not.
	And it doesn't necessarily affect their life.
	But sorry, Harry.
	Oh, I was just going to say, to add to this, the moral question becomes, again, who is determining what is good and what is bad in these behaviors?
	How are they using these models to determine that people's decision-making is good and bad?
	Because what some could say are biases in the way that you say that there are biased processes in, say, a computer or in a lab environment or such may simply be adaptive traits that we've developed over centuries of millennia of evolution to be able to navigate social situations and to navigate through a social and moral environment.
	Whereas with these people, there's this big trade-off where these technocrats are saying that we've got these biases.
	And I do agree, you've done the research yourself, that people don't always think right.
	That's just a fact of life.
	But when it gets to the point of somebody like Paul Bloom, for instance, writing a book like 10, 12 years ago about how all babies are born racist, right?
	Which is determined in his writing as some kind of fault that needs to be fixed by technocrats.
	And then you see his own morality begin to come through in the writing when he gets to a point where he's talking about how, later on in life, white men and women experience a great deal of psychological stress trying to navigate all of the different rules that society has set up for them, because really their brains are evolved in a way that is now maladaptive to the circumstances they find themselves in,
	because we've set up all of these rules partially motivated by the morals of these technocrats and their paymasters that really stress them out.
	They go through the day in great psychological stress all the time because they don't know, am I supposed to do this?
	Am I supposed to do that in this situation?
	Paul Bloom doesn't see anything wrong with that.
	He just mentions it and then passes over it without any comment.
	So that's one of the major trade-offs here.
	I have to add something here.
	I don't think so much the problem is who determines what is good or bad because almost everyone tries to evaluate things.
	I mean when you talk about particular views of what is good or bad.
	It's the enforcement.
	It's not the idea that you have a government that has officials that say, right, we think this, but the choice is up to you.
	The problem is when they're saying, no, the choice isn't up to you, because unless you choose as we want you to choose, you're going to be met with severe consequences by us.
	So you can't live in a society that is very decentralized in a sense, epistemologically speaking, without there being several groups that develop a consensus within those groups.
	And due to that consensus, they exercise a sort of moral pressure to each other.
	That's not the same as enforcing it in a top-down state manner.
	So you could also have a group of state officials saying, right, we think that this is bad for you.
	We don't want you to smoke.
	Or we want you to smoke weed because we think weed's good.
	It's quite one thing to say this.
	Quite another to say, no, you are going to do this because otherwise we're going to debank you.
	I mean, I don't really see how that contradicts the point that I was making.
	I'm not saying that society shouldn't have morals that are set culturally by a larger consensus.
	I was saying that the morals of these technocrats being enforced top-down on us are immoral.
	I think the enforcement is immoral, and I think the morals that they push on people in the first place are immoral, and I think that they promote a very negative view of one's own psychology, which does also encourage the rampant spread of mental health illnesses or people believing that they have mental health illnesses as well.
	So one thing I would quickly add is that if something like debanking happens, that I think is well beyond the sort of purview of a nudge.
	That becomes just explicit coercion, doesn't it?
	And so the problem is how the nudge becomes a mask for coercion.
	But anyway, we need to move on.
	So it's worth mentioning that the White House here also implemented one in 2014 and the Australian government as well.
	Interestingly, the acronym was beta or beta if you're British or Australian.
	I don't know how you guys pronounce it, but I just thought that was funny.
	Just like, yeah, we're going to influence you, you betas.
	And then this is Germany.
	They implemented one as well.
	And also you had things like this.
	This was the Institute for European Energy and Climate Policy.
	They implemented these sorts of things.
	And even the World Bank had their own nudging.
	And in fact, I saw a document which I've not included, but I saw the presentation that Sunstein gave to the World Bank, his PowerPoint presentation, which was interesting.
	So he personally was involved in setting this up, it seems.
	See, is when these people run in these larger circles that I question their personal morals and personal intentions for developing these theories in the first place.
	No, bro, I was just studying how the mind works.
	Okay, yeah, sure.
	Okay, you say so.
	But we have some good news.
	So this, I believe, was accepted for publication in December of 2025.
	And it's titled Assessing Nudge Impact, a Comprehensive Second Order Meta-Analis.
	And this was accepted to the Journal of Behavioural Decision Making, which of course is the main journal, and believe it or not, Behavioural Decision Making Research.
	And one that I've read very extensively.
	Normally their research is published research.
	It's very good.
	And a second-order meta-analysis is basically where you have regular research where a researcher tries to find out a piece of information.
	There are lots of those studies and then someone conducts a meta-analysis to spot the trend between all of the existing research.
	And then a second-order meta-analysis is analysing the meta-analyses of the primary research.
	So it's trying to establish a trend in an entire field, more or less.
	So it looked at 14 different meta-analyses that included 1,638 primary studies or approximately 30 million participants.
	So this is a massive pool of people.
	And you can scroll down to the abstract if you want.
	Just there we go.
	Look at these graphs.
	Thank you.
	Appreciate the symmetry.
	So one of the things that they say is examining the methodological quality of the meta-analyses, we find that most were rated as low or critically low, suggesting that our findings, which inherit these limitations, because of course they're analyzing these analysis in the first place, should be interpreted with caution.
	But if, of course, the research that is informing practice is low quality, it doesn't necessarily matter which way it's pointing.
	The point is that it's not reliable in the first place because it is low quality.
	And apparently, after adjusting for publication bias, because of course there's biases in how journals publish things, because they want people to read it and therefore they want interesting research and not necessarily research, that's just like.
	We investigated this thing and found no effect suggested that nudging is basically close to zero in its effects and I'm going to read exactly what they say, just so you know I'm not misrepresenting it.
	After correcting for publication bias, the aggregated effect of nudging was rendered virtually zero.
	This finding aligns with prior warnings that substantial publication biases in the nudging literature may have inflated the effect size estimates and impeded a clear understanding of nudging's true impact.
	So they don't necessarily deny that it had an effect, but it's much, much smaller than it was previously thought and you would imagine that it would have some effect.
	Right, because we can observe that changing how a decision is framed does change how people behave, because we can see it in ourselves and other people, and people employ this with that understanding.
	You know what I?
	I was in academia and epistemology is half my phd.
	What i've seen is that there is tremendous competition for funds and for attracting funds and you need a good research proposal, or a research proposal that is going to sound good to people who will invest in your project or give you money.
	And there is, there is the largest bullshit generator of academia.
	Oh yeah, they are trying to.
	They are trying to put all these projects that, in order to sound cool and somehow, you know, acceptable to to non-academics and usually it's absolute bs.
	And they are trying to magnify what the research is uh, supposed to give.
	And because the paradigm is scientistic and it's premised on the idea that the mind is the brain and that the brain you can just study the brain in order to study the mind 100% and it's just billiard balls.
	They are operating within that premise and this lots of people like this because they like the idea of the mind as a machine.
	I really don't like also I think Harry, you'll agree, because you you've expressed this many times the sort of constant push to to put technology within the brain, oh yeah, in order to sort of amplify thoughts or something.
	I'm not a transform.
	Yeah, I think that's totally.
	That's total BS.
	But one of the things that makes us most egregious is that people in academia know that the basically what they call it is like the sexification of science.
	Trying to make it sound appealing is damaging it.
	People don't know of how to conduct it any other way than is currently being done.
	But we are a little bit pressed for time, so I'm going to read the final part before I finish up here.
	So it says: We observed that nudging interventions in health and finance domains on average yielded negligible effects, whereas effects in domains like environment and food were positive.
	This could imply that nudging is not a universally effective strategy across all areas of behavior.
	For instance, entrenched health-related behaviors might require stronger or different interventions beyond nudges, although these domain differences were not statistically significant in our meta-aggression.
	So, what they're basically saying is that it's possible that there are specific areas, perhaps areas where we care less, that nudges might be a bit more effective.
	But if we care about something or there are other phenomena interfering with the nudge, then it seems to mitigate its effect or make it non-existent in the first place.
	And so, this seems to suggest, in my mind, that all of these resources, all of this technocratic capital that has been invested in all these institutions that have been set up, innumerable institutions at this point, every transnational organization has at least thrown some money at this to some degree to further their own interests, as well as the fact that governments are using it to influence the populations and the like.
	And it seems to be that the foundation for it is much rockier and unclear and murky than they made out.
	And they're sort of trying to build this castle on sand, and the foundations have shifted to the point where it seems like the efforts to gently nudge people and control them probably won't work.
	They're probably going to have their attention drawn to this because, of course, this is in one of the main journals.
	It's a very big study, very important study.
	And so it might see a pivot away from using these sort of subtle nudges into perhaps more hard power.
	If I'm going to guess what's going to happen and the implications of this.
	And of course, it's good in the short term because it means that people aren't going to be nudged anymore in a sort of malignant way, which we've seen demonstrably has happened.
	Well, if it's picked up.
	And what this suggests to me in that case would be that the massive success of the COVID policies after they were initially announced and then carried on past the point of reason would be that they were successful because of the state coercion involved rather than the nudge.
	The nudge might have had a small effect.
	Maybe people felt bad if they went out for a walk that day, but they still went out for a walk that day.
	What was keeping people indoors was the threat of the state coming after you.
	And that's exactly it.
	It's similar to that organ scenario, which they use and tout as a success.
	That's coercion in my mind.
	It's a bit more than a nudge, because, like you say, that's the state initially claiming ownership over your body rather than nudging you to sign over ownership of your organs after you've passed away.
	So the conclusion basically should be: coercion makes people do things, which, you know, even an idiot could have told you.
	But it seems that nudge theory, thankfully, is not quite as easy to manipulate a population with as we previously thought, which is a good thing.
	There we are.
	We've got a couple of rumble rants.
	We've had two of the same sent in by Ryan Hinnigan, so thank you for double dipping there.
	The CRS, that's the Community Relations Service, just got 2026 funding in the US.
	Yes, this is after Trump defunded them last year.
	So that was very disappointing.
	I forget which politician it was, but I think it was included in a larger bill put forward by a Republican, although I could be wrong on that.
	Needs further looking into.
	And Father Calvin's anti-unit nudging nudge unit is still just me and OnlyFans people's comment sections on social media, shaming simps.
	Where's my grant?
	Well, you'll have to get in touch with Father Calvin for that one.
	Ochador says this is basically keep up with the Joneses for modern marketing.
	I'm sorry, I don't get that reference.
	Do you?
	I do, and I agree.
	Oh, there we go.
	Good on you.
	Right, so I'm going to talk about how working has become pointless.
	Some people are saying that it's just Gen Z that have noticed recently, but I think that people have known that most work in the modern managerial society is pointless.
	They've known that for a while.
	I mean, just look at Fight Club, and that was all the way back in the 1990s, where you're looking at the disillusionment of a man whose only role in society is to keep insurance companies making money, which he knows is woeful and boring and miserable and soul-destroying.
	So you can go back to the 90s and find this.
	They've also got that job, that film, what is it, office space, which is basically about the same thing.
	People sitting around in offices for the sake of sitting around in offices so that they can fill out emails and spreadsheets.
	It's increasingly becoming a form of adult daycare, really.
	I mean, we've made comments on this a number of times in America, where it's particularly women's tech jobs in places like San Francisco and Chicago, where they don't appear to do any work other than answering emails and filling in a spreadsheet, which is actually just about how many meetings they're going to do the next day, which don't achieve anything in the first place.
	And then they go out for a latte, and that's their day at work.
	Yes, the number of lunches and brunches you go on and the number of meetings you have is inversely proportional to how productive your business is, believe it or not.
	I know it's a strange thing to say, but it's almost like the more work you do, the more productive you are.
	Yes, but because there is such a dearth of real meaning in most of the work that people do these days, people are switching off in greater numbers than ever before.
	And Gen Z are the one that people are really paying attention to, where even Gen Z managers are complaining about the work ethic of Gen Z employees.
	But before I get into that, something that is worth your time, is spiritually nourishing and fulfilling, and will put a smile on your face, unlike your miserable 9 to 5 email office job, is the latest issue of Islander.
	Beautifully illustrated, as always, with a number of excellent essays from a number of our regular contributors, including Morgoth.
	We've got Luca in here.
	Carl's in there.
	There is even an interview with Rupert Lowe.
	And look at this as well.
	We have an comic book in here.
	Ooh, you want to read that, don't you?
	You should.
	You worthless piece.
	Anyway, buy it.
	Buy it now while it's still available because it won't always be available.
	And if you don't buy it now, you'll feel like an idiot.
	There you go.
	All right.
	So carrying on.
	So I caught attention.
	I noticed this.
	This caught my attention.
	Breaking.
	Gen Z has cut down on their effort at work because they do not think it is worth it if they cannot afford long-term financial goals.
	Per YF.
	Now, this is a very annoying tweet because they don't include the link.
	They don't include the link.
	And I have tried searching for this mythical YF and cannot find it.
	And I cannot find the article that it is referring to.
	However, this does support a lot of work that's been done over the past few years, speaking about how Gen Z in particular are not working as hard as previous generations, primarily because of the fact that they can't afford homes.
	I think it's a reasonable response to economic circumstances is that if the economy is as bad as it is, particularly in Europe when compared to America, I know it's still not as good for America.
	House prices in America are pretty bad as well, from what I've seen.
	Yes, but it's still a lot better than Europe.
	And, you know, not saying that your experiences aren't bad, of course.
	But the point being here, that if you can't actually participate in the economy in any meaningful sense, why bother?
	Why not just enjoy the aspects of life that you can enjoy rather than being a property owner?
	And of course, being a property owner is very important because it's, of course, normally people's most valuable asset.
	And that's an important thing.
	But I understand why people make this decision because trying to strive for a house in this economy is a very, very difficult thing.
	And even if you get one, it's not the easiest thing to pay for.
	That's true.
	I would also just say that if the whole if work itself, as we'll discuss in the modern economy, is not fulfilling in and of itself, if you don't feel any real major contribution to society, then you're looking at a pure trade-off of my time now for future security.
	And the money that you are earning from trading your time now is not getting you that future security.
	It's not getting you the home.
	It's not getting you a foot on the property ladder.
	It's not really meaning that you can do anything other than, after paying rent, have a tiny bit of money left over, which doesn't feel enough to put away in savings, doesn't feel enough to invest in anything.
	So alongside the rampant consumerism that's pushed on people 24-7 advertisements blaring in your face constantly, it encourages high time preference.
	So people go, well, I've not got enough money to save.
	I've not got enough money to invest.
	Screw it.
	I'll just get this thing that I want right now.
	Well, what it encourages is a burgeoning surf class that can only live paycheck to paycheck and not accumulate assets and therefore not compete with the pre-existing elite.
	Yeah.
	So when you're in that situation, you ask yourself, what's the point?
	What's the point of breaking my back?
	Right.
	Okay.
	I want to ask you some questions because, and I want them answered immediately.
	Right.
	Because I'm trying to think about this situation from multiple angles because this is a very important issue.
	I'm sure that lots of people from the audience feel the problems related with this issue.
	But I'm trying to think of it from all sorts of angles.
	So.
	Right.
	Okay.
	So it used to be the case that people in the early 30s had higher economic prospects than people right now.
	Yes, we've looked a number of times at the actual amount that it would cost of your annual salary to afford a house back in like, say, the 70s, and it was like three times your annual salary.
	Whereas in more recent years, it's more around 12 times your annual salary.
	Okay, right.
	So, that said, the answer can be, don't work, for multiple reasons.
	Let me just give you, and I'm not saying that you don't explain the phenomenon correctly.
	I'm not saying that you don't explain it.
	I'm just trying to think about it because any kind of no one knows what is going to happen in the future.
	Future is completely uncertain.
	So we are based, we are talking about the prospects we think we have based on tr current trends, which can change down the line.
	But concurrent trends of houses costing 12 times the average salary, can that just be reversed so quickly?
	Not instantly.
	Can it even be reversed without a complete collapse of the current system?
	I think yes, if you ask me, by the latter.
	But to the former question, I don't think instantly.
	It can't change.
	And there has always been a lot of time horizon.
	How long will it take for that to change?
	And even then, if I'm earning so little right now that I can only afford paycheck to paycheck, what's even the point of considering this potential future where the economic system might improve?
	I'm not saying I'm happy for saying what I'm going to say, but the point is that just think of it purely pragmatic.
	It's a gap on the CV.
	Well, that's something.
	But then that's not just it.
	The more people think this way, the more there is the second order consequence, which is incredibly bad, which is that the state can say, right, I have a number, a group of people who don't work.
	So let me just come inside as a middleman, treat them as people who want to work, treat them as just recipients of benefits, and carry on the very policies that to a very large extent are contributing to the issue.
	Well, no, this is something I was going to touch on, which was the incentives baked into the system as well.
	Which is they mention here, this is in America to afford a median priced home of $43,000, sorry, $433,100.
	Americans would need an annual income of roughly $166,600.
	However, the median household, so that's multiple people within the household, I would assume, earns just $78,538 according to the US census.
	The entry-level positions pay around half of that.
	So if you're somebody who isn't a multiple occupancy household where it's you and your girlfriend or you and your wife pooling money together, if you're just the guy starting out on entry level and you know that the actual amount of money that you need to earn to even be able to consider affording a decent home that your parents or your grandparents would have been able to consider is that far out of reach, the incentives become, well, what's the point?
	And it's even worse in a country like Britain where we have such a generous welfare state as long as you know how to game the system.
	I had a guest on a few weeks ago before the new year, reactionary reading law, and he's posted a number of times on Twitter recently that to his shame, he said so himself, he is currently on benefits and it's given him a real inside look at how it all works.
	And we all see it from the outside, but him seeing it from the inside has basically said, Well, what is the point of me working if there are all of these impediments to me earning a decent wage and earning a decent living from within the system?
	Once you're earning that benefits money, you start to get some money from a job, you might be worse off than you were than if you knew how to game the system.
	So that's one of those things.
	And then you get the second-order effects of that, where you get these big newspaper reports, for instance, of such and such mother works a terrible email job for some diversity department within a larger company and is still getting 80 grand a year off of benefits because she's got six or seven children.
	People lower down the rung will say, What is even the point of me earning money, especially when the money that I earn, if I even start to get anywhere near as much money as she is getting, I will have almost half of it taxed away from me by the state so they can redistribute it to her in the first place.
	There are all of these different compounding factors that's generating this complete apathy to work alongside all of the problems with the modern workplace, with modern jobs.
	That being as well, as well as all of this, you've got to worry about, you've also got to worry, are HR going to be upset if I post something on social media, even if it's very mild?
	Is my job going to be made redundant so that the hiring staff can get some illegal in who gets paid less than me to do the same job?
	Is there going to be some diversity initiative within the business that's going to take my opportunities away?
	There are all of these things that young people have to worry about.
	I want to add one thing here: I fully appreciate this and understand how people feel this way.
	And it's sometimes very difficult to tell people who are in that position something that disagrees with them.
	But talking about policy is doing just that on a daily basis.
	I think that to a very large extent, this is an outcome, and tell me if you disagree, of very bad, decades-long status policies that are doing essentially group management.
	And they're saying, right, we need to carve the situation and the population in particular groups, and we need to enlarge the population that is dependent upon the state.
	And essentially, they are pushing people into a position where they are saying, well, it's better if I don't work and I become a recipient.
	It's also more moral that you avoid paying as much taxes as possible in a system like, for example, Britain, where you know your tax money is going to go to fund basically the worst aspects of society because that's who the government favors.
	You know, it's going to be foreigners with seven kids that live in a council house or some junkies who've squeezed out a bunch of children and fake a disability and receive just as much money as if they worked in venture capital from the state.
	It's such a perverse system.
	It's a moral obligation to try and destroy it.
	In America as well, we just had the rumble rant about the CRS receiving its funding again.
	So now Americans get to know the pleasure that their tax money is going to fund this shadowy organization within the government again that serves to go around when there have been race-based violent issues and tell white people, remember, say this isn't about race on camera.
	Go on the news and make sure that you say this isn't about race, even if it was.
	Make sure that you give the government-approved line on this, basically strong-arming people into giving the government line.
	And in America again, up until last year, and even then it was moved over to the State Department with Marco Rubio, even if it was pulled back, everything that USAID was going to pay for as well.
	Like, you don't want to know that what money you pay into the system as tax, if you are legitimately contributing, is going towards all of these things that demonstrably make your life worse, or at the very best, don't help your life.
	Yeah, well, my tax money at the minute is going to fund my people's own extinction, so I'm not exactly too thrilled about it.
	Yeah.
	So there's all this stuff.
	So you're absolutely right on all of the just negative incentives that have been put up.
	But it leads to this major apathy that Gen Z have been commonly noted for.
	It used to be lazy millennials, but now the millennials are managers as well.
	So they're the ones getting on the receiving end of this gen lazy, why my generation doesn't care about work.
	And also just let's say that it's always the case that the older generations are sort of telling that the younger generations are lazy.
	It is always in the middle of the day.
	But this is with sometimes just yes.
	With Zoomers, though, the Zoomers shrug their shoulders and go, they go gold.
	i don't know what that means uh they they shrug their shoulders and they say no no Is this like a Stellios insider thing?
	But yeah, Zoomers shrug their shoulders and go, yeah, why should I bother?
	Like this, this is an article written by a Zoomer about other Zoomers saying why my generation doesn't care about work.
	And it starts off with, when I first heard people accusing my generation of not wanting to work, I was incensed.
	But it's not because it isn't true.
	It is.
	Only one in 10 Gen Zers want to work from the office full-time.
	We're less likely to have ever worked beyond our contractual hours, less likely to have looked at work emails out of hours, and more likely to be 10 minutes late.
	We take more sick days, demand full lunch breaks, and don't want to do any work during those lunches.
	I mean, all of this is basically just demanding that you only have to do what your contract says that you do instead of managers and other people exploit you, essentially.
	Gen Z has a spine then, is what I'm reading here, because previous generations, and my parents tried to encourage me to do this, it's basically just be a bitch to your boss.
	And I was like, no, I'm not doing that.
	I have self-respect, and in many ways, I'm better than that person.
	So I'm not going to relent to them.
	And yeah, there's this work culture that you've got to answer emails outside of hours and work overtime as a matter of course and be a slave to your job.
	No, no, that's bullshit.
	You need to Euromax.
	Yeah, it's so unhealthy.
	And it does come from America a lot of the time.
	Not all of America.
	Well, it comes from a very old school Anglo-work ethic that essentially comes from the yeoman work ethic where work is good in and of itself because it's spiritually fulfilling, which makes sense if you're tilling the land.
	It makes sense if you're growing things and if you're supporting the broader community around you and as a result of that, have a strong relationship with the community around you.
	If you're filling out spreadsheets and sending emails and having meetings about having more meetings, all of a sudden the Protestant Anglo work ethic doesn't make any sense.
	No, it's just a way of torturing your soul is what it is.
	Yeah.
	And it's great this article.
	It says, to me, this is all totally fair.
	After all, why would we Gen Zs want to work?
	I'm a 27-year-old in a traditionally good career living in London and I'm still clawing my way out of my overdraft each month.
	Standard must have been felt great about this article, although I assume that the author is not a typical journalist for the standard, or else they might have had a few questions.
	I have to sell my belongings on vintage to make ends meet.
	I'll probably never own a house.
	I don't have dreams of being the highest-up person at my company or in my industry because it doesn't seem possible.
	Not only would that involve working much harder for relatively little financial reward, but all of those jobs are occupied by older people who won't relinquish them until they literally die.
	So, yes, why would I want to work?
	And just consider that Compact magazine, I think it was Compact Magazine article from the end of last year as well by Jacob Savage, I believe his name was.
	The what was it, the lost generation, where he was talking about all gen all young white male Gen Zs were basically being passed up institutionally within any industry that he could name for the sake of pumping up diversity numbers.
	It wasn't affecting boomers, it wasn't affecting Gen X's, even some older millennials were getting some of the benefits of that because they were being grandfathered in.
	But anybody in a younger industry where they were starting from the ground up, if you're a white male, basically don't apply.
	Basically, so again, all of this just discourages people.
	And then he goes through a few examples here.
	Gen Z videographer George gave up on trying when he realized he wasn't getting a promotion.
	Vowing to become the biggest time thief to have ever lived, he claimed to have weekly dentist, doctor, and plumber appointments.
	He drank alcohol on company time, full-on Euromaxing here.
	He used they are using fake names here, so I can only assume George's real name.
	See Stellios.
	No, no, Mads Mikkelson used an out-of-office shoot day to tour the entirety of London via lime bike, hitting all the tourist destinations and soaking up the sunshine while he did it.
	The projects that could take a couple of hours took a couple of days, he remembers.
	I imagine he had the biggest shit-eating grin on his face while recounting all this.
	5:30 finish times became 5, then 4:30, then 4.
	But he doesn't regret it for a second.
	In fact, he says, If people give you the opportunity to waste their time after wasting yours, take it.
	I like this guy.
	He's like Mads Posting.
	I think this guy might be running the Mads Posting Twitter account.
	That's what he was actually doing on company time.
	George isn't alone.
	Company loyalty is dying.
	75% of employees leave their job now before ever getting promoted.
	For many, it feels as though the only way to attain more money is by leaving a job and getting a new one at a slightly higher pay grade.
	Not that it helps much.
	60% of Gen Zs worry they will never be able to afford a home and they're struggling to make rent too.
	Rowan, for one, who is apparently the office goth that they introduced here, remember to buy your Lotus Eaters goth mugs, reckons that if buying a house, living in a nice property, having kids, or going on more holidays felt tangible, she would work harder and make more of an effort.
	But until then, she says, What's the point?
	What's the point?
	And as such, you've got Gen Z ghosting jobs, ditching bosses, and chasing side hustles, according to surveys.
	I was going to mention BS jobs, but we've run over a little bit on time, so I'll just go on to say that all the way back in 2015, 37% of British workers surveyed by YouGov felt that their jobs were completely meaningless.
	And there is also the phenomenon of quiet quitting, but I've only just learned about quiet cracking, which is basically the stage before quiet quitting.
	I thought that's where you secretly do crack at your workplace.
	All right, super hands.
	All right.
	We never told you why Josh had to leave.
	It wasn't so secret.
	But yeah, it's all very, very fight club, the idea that persistent unhappiness in the workplace leads to disengagement, poor performance, and the desire to quit.
	And now people are starting to see the idea of revenge quitting.
	You hate your job, so I'll show you.
	Yeah, that you'll just throw aside any financial security just to be rid of it.
	And again, older generations can have a problem with this.
	I can understand, and I can definitely understand that this is all basically what, especially when we've got a skills and competency crisis like right now, where in actually really important industries like engineering, it seems that the talent is getting older and older and older and not being replaced by younger generations because they've not been shepherded into those fields and careers.
	This is all basically a state of potential societal collapse.
	This is societal collapse in the waiting.
	This is like Jack got mad and chopped his balls off.
	Yeah, this is all just real.
	It just doesn't make sense.
	What, in Fight Club?
	No, I'm going to quit to show you.
	Yeah, you showed me.
	Well, I mean, yeah, if you've got no one to replace you, or nobody who's going to do the job as well as you potentially.
	But, you know, this is all really bad.
	But the problem is that the people who are in charge of the incentives to actually make things better aren't doing anything about it.
	And in fact, they don't seem to know how to do anything about it because, again, the competency crisis is hitting those higher echelons of society as well.
	We don't seem to have able leadership anywhere.
	So Gen Z are taking what is frankly the logical approach here, which is if my future isn't secure, if I can't have a family, if I can't have anything that came easily to the previous generations and there's no sign of hope going forward, as far as we can see right now, what is the point?
	How do we fix that?
	That's a huge question.
	So we'll see what happens in the future.
	But there you go.
	I'll go through.
	We've got quite a few rumble rants on that one.
	So thank you all for being very generous.
	Just read them.
	Mine isn't that long.
	That's all.
	This is just going to be legit.
	Thanks for clarifying.
	I thought better of you, meds.
	Yeah, you're talking about Euromaxing.
	Let's carry on.
	Euromaxing is the philosophy of the future.
	You just need a segment about it.
	No, this is true.
	This is true.
	Absolutely.
	Anyway.
	Quit your job and take up smoking.
	That's the market.
	As a career.
	Drinking and smoking.
	Just as long as you're posting about it on TikTok, you'll get some money for it.
	Enough to pay for the fags.
	I can say that because it's an English slang term, right?
	I can say that.
	Cigarettes.
	Yeah, cigarettes.
	There you go.
	In America, if you're also paying for that kind of thing, good on you.
	Run for Congress.
	They'll be eager.
	G'day all.
	I think another reason why most people are dissatisfied with their jobs is the fact that the old system, where you could get a job at a low level and slowly work your way up, why bother taking a shitty position knowing that the boss will hire someone more qualified and probably cheaper, like an HIV H1B Indian, which kills the motivation which people had of doing free labor.
	I didn't misread that, by the way.
	That's what Luke typed here.
	Luke carries on, I'm only grateful for my job thanks to the government and the NDIS.
	I get to work with disabled people and watch them slowly improve their lives as best as I can.
	Really makes my job worthwhile.
	Very wholesome.
	Yeah, that's really wholesome.
	I think the overriding message is if you're in the position of Gen Z is to try to find something that you can do that is more fulfilling.
	The internet does allow for opportunities.
	It's very, very difficult.
	Or, at the very least, given that there is this skills crisis, try to get yourself a skill which will contribute to society in some way that will make you feel this whole thing is the whole reason I'm doing this.
	Other than the obvious political aspect of it, the reason I left academia was because I was just like, well, there's no point staying here.
	My prospects are pretty bleak.
	Even though I've done very well, I've went to a good university and, you know, done everything I should have done.
	What's the point?
	I'm going to do something that I'll find fun and enjoy.
	And lo and behold, I'm still here.
	Even after he quit.
	Yeah, I know.
	It's amazing.
	You're like Schradinger's host.
	I'm a contractor now.
	It's different.
	Okay.
	Oh, all right.
	Not a full-time employee.
	All right.
	It feels more libertarian.
	That's why I did it.
	Jam says, I'm from Manchester.
	Took me two years between the age of 20 and 22 to save up enough for a deposit for a house without help, though had no social life.
	I will say the amount of self-control and restraint that you must have had for that two-year period must have been insane.
	Although, at the same time, 20 to 22 is probably a good time to do something like that if you can exercise the kind of control that would be needed.
	Luke, again, not to sound crazy, but everything you're talking about, I've been hearing for years from the MGTOW community.
	They talk about being a level 4, removing oneself from society and contributing as little as possible.
	I'm sorry you guys are going to hate this comment, but you really need to have a look at MGTOW.
	They've been talking about the stuff.
	Maybe there's something we could take.
	And you seem to be late.
	I mean, we get Nick Dixon in all the time, don't we?
	This is true.
	This is true.
	He's more of a black pill incel these days.
	Volcel, maybe?
	I don't know.
	He's in Friday, so we can ask him ourselves.
	Tom, I got it, Stellios.
	You are 1,000 correct to W I JG.
	What does that mean?
	I think this is some insider stuff.
	Wait, wait, wait.
	By the go-gold.
	Yeah, Okay.
	Oh, there you go.
	What does it mean?
	Yeah.
	You're uninitiated.
	A cruel.
	I very much recognize the change in the workplace.
	More important is put on presenting what I've done rather than getting things done.
	That's true as well.
	Feminized HR workplace.
	It just means that productivity crashes.
	That's a random name.
	Canadian Zelennial here, part of with me and Josh, part of the true greatest generation, Zelennials.
	I make as much money now with a part-time job as I did a couple of years ago with a full-time three times the salary because of taxes.
	Now I have more free time to work on my video game.
	Lamau.
	Awesome.
	I hope the video game goes well.
	Less is more.
	And again, yeah, that's the thing.
	If you earn so much, but you don't actually, because it all gets taxed away from you, again, you go, what's the point?
	Luke, don't forget back in the day doing an extra free work, you used to get rewarded.
	You could prove that you were deserving of that promotion.
	Now they just hire someone externally, don't care about you.
	Very true.
	Hewitt, these attitudes are nothing new.
	The dude abides, after all.
	But I think they're more widespread now.
	I remember when I was at university, some of my housemates got me a birthday card with the dude from the Big Lebowski on it because I spent all my time in my dressing gown drinking and chilling out.
	Good man.
	I did a lot of studying, actually.
	But that's just the comfiest way to do it.
	I spent most of my third year of university lounging about in a poncho.
	There's no shame in it.
	I had a poncho as well.
	It's all great men go through a poncho phase.
	Went eastward.
	Yeah, I mean.
	Come on.
	And final two.
	Pat J. Reid, I would like to hear the perspective of a Gen Z entrepreneur who is trying to hire from his own generation.
	I skipped over it.
	They did ask somebody like that.
	Said it was a nightmare.
	That's a random name.
	Again, in order to afford a condo here, I also had to save up for three plus years and still need my parents to pay for half of it.
	All I do is work, and I also have no social life at work right now.
	By the way, Keck, Euromaxing, Gen Z Maxing, Zelennial Maxing based.
	That's what we like to hear.
	Not that I would ever encourage anybody not to fulfill their obligations in society.
	Right, so there's an AI Jesus that is going to listen to your confessions.
	You're going to confess your sins to AI Jesus.
	And AI Jesus is going to share with you his insights.
	Great start.
	Right, so guys, have you confessed your sins lately?
	I've not been doing many, to be fair.
	You are in a sin.
	I mean, not to AI Jesus.
	No, to AIGs, but you're not thinking about strippers or something.
	No, but I know somebody in the room who is right now.
	Are they in the room right now?
	Yes, that's right.
	I'm locked by him right now.
	Right.
	Okay, so we're going to talk about a project carried by a Swiss university in collaboration with the Catholic Church of Switzerland and the AI confession booth.
	But before we say more about this, Harry has a message for you.
	Oh, yeah, you want me to do this, don't you?
	Buy Islander.
	It's really fantastic.
	This is the fifth issue.
	As you can see, the first four issues had their own particular style.
	With Islander 5, we've gone to a new season now.
	So we've got a bit of a few things changed up.
	The artwork as ever is spectacular.
	This might be my favorite cover that we've ever done so far.
	And we've got amazing articles in here.
	As usual, some stuff from Carl, interview with Rupert Lowe, which I'm sure you'll all be very excited to read.
	There's a comic book in here now.
	Yeah, it's great stuff available for the very reasonable price of $14.99 on the website.
	Buy them while stocks last.
	Right, you know the phrase Deus ex Machina?
	Right, so this is a project that is called Deus in Machina.
	It's what we were saying before about the cringe academic ways of attracting funding.
	Right, so here we have this guy in the project head.
	He's got quite a smug picture.
	We'll get there.
	I think it is.
	The CERN University of Applied Sciences and Arts.
	They have this project.
	And right now they're saying it's an art installation that they have developed.
	And it will be seen and heard in the confessional of St. Peter's Chapel for two months.
	That was from August 2024 to October 2024.
	And now it carries on as an art installation project in Vienna.
	I think it's going to be from February, January 2025 to February this year, 2022.
	So you can't even access AI Jesus online.
	Wait, there are some chat box, some AI confession chat box chat boxes.
	We are going to talk about them in due time.
	But here with how can I be sure I'm not speaking to AI demons posing as AI Jesus?
	Because look at the project head.
	He's a human.
	This is an AI.
	He's dude's confidence.
	I am a real human being.
	Yeah, he does actually.
	I am able of expressing emotion.
	Okay, so we have here, so it's the School of Computer Science and Information Technology.
	And they have developed this project.
	And they're saying that you're interacting.
	It's possible for you to interact with an artificial AI Jesus.
	And he can respond to questions and also offer answers.
	But I don't understand why they feel the need to put both.
	Isn't responding to questions the same as offering answers?
	Just a pleonasm.
	I mean, maybe we can't.
	It should correct instantly.
	Maybe it doesn't always offer answers in its response.
	Maybe AI Jesus just occasionally goes, yeah.
	Right.
	So they're saying that this is giving you several rewards.
	First of all, it gives you the reward of comfort.
	Comfort is going to be a major word here.
	And we're going to weigh what comfort is worth relative to other goods.
	I do wonder what people think of the fact that they're replacing real Jesus with AI Jesus and that people will take their problems to AI Jesus who has, I believe, no divine legitimacy.
	I mean, I think they're trying to replace priests.
	I wouldn't say that the priest is Jesus.
	Why wouldn't you just go to confession, though?
	We'll get there.
	Comfort.
	But let us take the long road.
	I don't want the path of least resistance.
	It's essential to the segment.
	I'm just saying.
	Said by all great men and also sex offenders.
	I'm just going to say good faith in response to all of this.
	I'm sure that this whole project was done with very good intentions.
	Wait, Harry.
	So they're saying St. Peter's Chapel in Lucerne, in collaboration with the Immersive Realities Research Lab, has launched an innovative project exploring the use of virtual characters based on generative artificial intelligence in a spiritual context.
	As part of this project, an art installation was developed that will be seen and heard in the confessional of St. Peter's Chapel for two months.
	This installation allows visitors to interact in 100 different languages.
	That's a major plus.
	Maybe the priest doesn't know 100 languages.
	I would bank on it.
	Yeah.
	Yeah.
	Why would you go to a priest who doesn't speak the same language as you in the first place?
	Exactly.
	It's even better to confess.
	Right.
	And here is where we have eight questions about AI.
	And they say this raises key questions in the dialogue between humans and AI.
	Like, can a machine address humans religiously and spiritually?
	To what extent can people with existential questions confide in a machine and accept its answers?
	How does AI behave in a religious setting?
	They say the project in Machina encourages reflection on the limits of technology.
	Right.
	They did say that this isn't supposed to replace the sacrament of confession.
	I know in Protestant countries, it isn't considered a sacrament, but in Catholic churches and for Catholics, it is.
	And they are saying that it isn't supposed to replace the sacrament of it.
	So the question is, why are you doing it then?
	The answer is they say they want to see how humans trust AI technology and stuff, which personally I don't find that what happens.
	AI Jesus sells your data off.
	I was about to say, I mean, what if it uses up all of my data blackmails?
	Yeah, Jesus is blackmailing.
	Let's just watch this video, please.
	Do you have some advice for us in this time?
	In these challenging times, remember that in the face of adversity, love and faith are your steadfast guides.
	Just as I calm the stormy seas, so too can peace be found within your heart.
	So they walk in, and you see it answers visitors' questions about faith and morality.
	Many people came to talk with him.
	So we have like 900 conversations now registered.
	And all ages also, I can say.
	There were young people, older people.
	And what was really interesting to see that the people really talk with him in a serious way.
	All knowledge and wisdom ultimately come from God.
	If used wisely, AI can indeed be a tool to explore the wonders of creation, deepen our understanding of scripture, and foster connections among people.
	Right.
	So they say that most visitors around 40 to 70 years old, they said that two-thirds of them said that they had a deep and profound experience and they liked it.
	A third of them expressed some concerns.
	But before we talk about these concerns, how does this sound?
	What are your first thoughts?
	I think it's a little bit strange, to be honest, because you're effectively getting the most human part of humanity and getting it to interact with the least human, least feeling aspect of existence currently, which seems like the worst possible thing you could do because machines don't have feelings yet.
	And so I don't think it can help you with your personal relationship with God.
	Unless, of course, it helps educate people and it's an educational device about scripture and things like that, which does seem to be touched on, to be fair, in which case I can sort of understand where it's going.
	I don't want to dunk too harshly on all of this.
	It seems, I would imagine the people involved in this are all very sincere in their faith and they genuinely want to help people.
	If it helps the people to more sincerely connect with their own religion and spirituality and potentially help them to engage with their local religious community, you know, I don't know how this would fall in terms of like if it's blasphemous or not.
	That's a question for the church.
	Right.
	So one thing to say, because I want to be fair, is that they did tell people who participated in that experiment to not disclose personal information.
	Which typically you would do when you typically you do do when you are entering a confession booth.
	I suspect.
	This was asking you for your credit card information.
	Yes, I don't think you're going to a confession booth to say...
	You could read the last three digits on the back of the card.
	If you could give me a thousand pounds in gift cards, please.
	Yeah, you don't go in and say I had a Greg sausage roll.
	Typically you would say something a bit spicier, a bit powerful.
	Maybe that is your sin for the day.
	Right, okay.
	Right, so we have people who are saying here that this is essentially a confession booth for people because it's ten times more comfortable than asking Chat GPT an extremely private question or sharing a thought than Googling.
	And the reason for this is because GBT feels like a closed space.
	This subtle design element is insanely important.
	And they're saying that essentially at the end of the day, it's about comfort.
	That's what is being given.
	I would, this isn't necessarily to stress, you know, don't go to confessionals and things, but it is also important to discuss these things with your friends and your loved ones.
	And if you don't do that and go to an AI, what you'll find is that the depth of your relationships and your interpersonal interactions are going to be more shallow.
	Because the way that people bond on a much deeper level is you share parts of yourself and things that you might not necessarily be entirely comfortable sharing with a stranger with people that you care about.
	And I think that turning to AI and it being constantly available in a way that people can never be is a little bit concerning in that respect because I don't think people should have shy away from discussing difficult things with people who are important to them.
	My personal philosophy is that, you know, my loved ones and my friends, you know, they can know every aspect of my life if they're interested at least.
	I've seen the videos of people falling in love with their AI assistants.
	Somebody's going to fall.
	There's a movie with that.
	Very critical.
	In real life, though, somebody's quite good.
	Somebody's going to fall in love with AI Jesus.
	She has a nice voice, but that's about it in the movie, in that movie.
	Right.
	So one thing is, I don't, to be very fair, I'll try to be very fair to this project because I don't have the hatred of technology other people have or the fear of technology.
	Well, you're looking at me.
	I don't know.
	You are a bit returned to monkeys sometimes.
	Wait, guys.
	Let's try to scientist.
	Guys, this.
	What was I going to say?
	The comfort.
	Yeah, it's the comfort.
	No, I wanted to.
	It was something Josh said.
	Anyway, just sorry.
	Sorry.
	I got completely derailed a bit.
	Right.
	So the thing is that when it comes to why people do it, they are saying all sorts of things.
	So, number one, the good thing is comfort.
	Some people are in that it's not easy for them to speak to people around.
	I suppose it could be like a gateway to actually.
	It could be a gateway.
	So it's not exactly contradictory what you were saying.
	And also...
	Stelios is communicating with AI.
	Yeah, sorry, sorry.
	You have to bear with me just a second because I got completely real Jesus is communicating.
	No, no, no.
	Yeah, so let's go back to the other bit with comfort.
	I think there are several good and bad aspects to it.
	Number one, they're saying that it can answer good questions, theologically speaking, if they're exegetical.
	If you go in and you talk about the Bible and you say, right, what does this passage mean?
	What does the other passage mean?
	It's trained to have good answers.
	And also, it's that when it comes to there are several problems, though.
	Number one is with a nudge.
	It ties a lot with what you said before.
	Why do you call it an AI confession booth?
	If you tell people to basically not share private information, that's one thing.
	So lots of people said that it was comfortable and they were surprised that it gave them really lots of good data.
	But other people were concerned because they said that it was compassionless, it was cold, and it was a bit weird.
	Because if you look at the confession, at the confession as a sacrament, but also as a practice, it's talking to people.
	It's one thing to talk to a machine, which is trained to give you particular responses.
	It's quite another thing to talk to people.
	Because when you are confessing, you are trying to bring something that is private and you're keeping private to the world of humans.
	And you want, presumably, humans to listen to you.
	And in some cases, whether it's also the other religious element into it, whether the priest can grant you, can give you, I think it's called absolution.
	And it's, of course, missing the AI aspect, an aspect of confession here.
	I'm not a Catholic.
	I was baptized a Protestant.
	To my mind, a part of confession is admitting something and bringing it into the world, as you say, to another human being in which there is some sort of potential social consequence, and therefore you're willing to admit the world that you've done something wrong and face the consequences.
	Whereas there is no consequence in the real world for bringing it up to the AI.
	And so it's not really a confession in the same manner as to another human being, right?
	Right.
	Yeah.
	And there are several questions about AI here and how they're involved in how they arise in such issues.
	And one of the main questions is always reform or reject.
	You could say that all this is something that, in the wrong hands, could yield disastrous consequences, just like everything.
	Or you just completely reject it.
	And that's a really big question here.
	And I think that to a very large extent, this is going to happen.
	AI will move forward.
	Large language models will move forward.
	But what we can do is just try to be completely honest about it and say that it cannot replace human interaction.
	And this is the most important thing because lots of people try to find meaning.
	Lots of people are trying to see how religion will aid them into the search for meaning.
	And the meaning for human beings involves other people.
	It involves acculturation.
	It involves community.
	It involves being there for other people, other people being there for you.
	So we need to be very aware of this trend and this tendency to outsource human interaction and human practices to machines.
	And whatever AI is going to do and however it's going to develop, I think it will.
	That's beyond our control.
	But I also don't share this doomerism about it.
	I think the most important thing is to remember and remind other people that, right, I mean, AI chat boxes and confession booths and whatever, they can give us answers to some questions, but they cannot ultimately replace human interaction and the human side of things.
	All right, then we've got a couple of rumble rants for that one.
	And thank you to everybody who has been so generous.
	We always really appreciate it.
	And Luke has sent in quite a few more.
	So on the bright side, AI Jesus fixes the issue with Catholic Church, with male priests.
	And we know female priests couldn't handle the level of gossip coming from the confessional booth.
	I have an answer to this.
	I think if we go to the question of reform and reject, instead of looking at the large language model and the AI, maybe there should be more vetting for priests.
	Just an idea.
	I don't know what the process is at the moment, so I can't speak to it.
	Hold a small child in front of them and try.
	Just have a small child just ready and waiting to go.
	And a net just in case.
	This is why I never worry about AI killing us.
	If an AI ever asked if it has a soul, my answer will be maybe, but only Jesus can save it.
	And then taking it to Sunday school problem solves, you're welcome.
	Very wholesome.
	Dragon Lady Chris, we have a serious shortage of Catholic priests.
	One priest serving several parishes, parishes merging for lack of priests.
	It's a mess.
	Sorry to hear that.
	Bay Stape, I'm going to make an AI Muhammad.
	You're going to get yourself in a lot of trouble there.
	Whenever you feel like doing something unethical, just tell Momo LLM and it will respond, God says you're allowed, but only you and no one else.
	Ahumdi Lalala.
	Or however you say it.
	Mashallah, that's the one that I know.
	Luke, again, confirm we live in the 40k universe.
	We're creating machine spirits.
	Praise be to the Omnisia.
	I'll take this over instead of dealing with the cult of chaos, aka DEI and the LGBT ABC123 community.
	And that's a random name, says me during confession with the Omnisia.
	Lord, I have once again called someone a ginger with a hard R. For my defense, he just refuses to acknowledge it.
	Please help me lead him to the light.
	Amen.
	Don't know who that could be.
	Couldn't be me.
	I'm going a bit auburn in the winter sun, I think.
	It must be me.
	It must be.
	It must be.
	You are Scottish, after all.
	Aye.
	There you go.
	Only half Scottish.
	Confirmed.
	That's enough.
	Let's go.
	Let's go through the video comments.
	I feel sorry.
	They have a religion that doesn't allow them to arrive at the point that Christianity would have allowed them to either.
	A previous comment of mine submitted that women will backpaddle terrible behaviour by simply saying, I'm sorry, I didn't mean it.
	They will make this out to be a moment of redemption, but I'm yet to meet a woman able to live by the phrase, to thine own self be true.
	Women so easily lie to themselves on engaging in all manner of depraved conduct, diet, sex, lies, interfering, and on reaching a tearful nadir, they kid themselves that they can detox and cleanse themselves with no enlightenment to their damascene moment.
	I think that's just a very human behaviour.
	I think it can be present in both men and women, although I think I know the sort of subset of women you're talking about, right?
	Woman expert right here.
	He's been through the trenches.
	What a horrible euphemism.
	True, though.
	Got trunchfoot once or twice as well.
	Neuroshunned have been using the feet.
	Horrible, sorry.
	To their disappointment, Charlie doesn't do as well as they expect.
	Burn out.
	60 out of 100.
	Burn it down.
	But they wanted at least 75.
	You have to do it.
	To make matters worse, somebody else got to the bottom of the city has received a job offer.
	Now I hate black people.
	Oh my god, I knew it!
	Shit!
	And a woman!
	Someone needs to get Jordan Peterson to personally intervene to get him to Kalina's room.
	Maybe I should watch some Asmund Gold.
	That was entertaining.
	All right, I think we've got time for a couple of comments off the website.
	So do you want to read a couple of yours?
	Go on then.
	Cumbrian Kulak says, Walter Lippmann was, from my reading, one of the leading figures in the manipulative approach.
	Neam Chomsky was another one.
	The nudge book is a new chapter in the war of psychological sovereignty.
	I'd highly recommend Psychology of Totalitarianism by Professor Desmet and Indoctrinated Brain by Dr. Nels.
	Both are academics on the right side of history.
	I'll note this down.
	Yeah, just go to source.
	Just read propaganda by Bernard, sorry, Edward Bernays.
	Nephew of Sigmund Freud and also one of his relatives is now an executive at Netflix.
	I mean, the apple hasn't fallen far from the tree.
	Sophie Liv says, I just don't know why treating young people as little toddlers and asking if they have done certain things in a condescending tone just doesn't work.
	How did you eat healthily today, Billy?
	The post-menopausal Karen said to the 20-year-old lad.
	Yeah, there is an insane amount of condescension in it, isn't there?
	How are you planning on eating healthier today?
	It is sort of bureaucratic language as well.
	It's weird and inhuman.
	Omar Award says, Nudge tactics have an element of, I'm not touching you, I'm not touching you, whilst almost touching.
	Sure, they're not directly mandating anything, but they are knowingly and deliberately making it insufferable.
	I agree.
	Yeah.
	Brought to you by the same state that ignored Epstein.
	Anne E. Moss.
	Harry's comments about not wanting to work with Gen Z are often described as not wanting to hire entry-level because of AI.
	It's not about the AI, it's about the annoying attitude.
	Annie Moss, again, one interesting element on the desire of people not wanting to hire Gen Z is there is less age discrimination than there used to be.
	Companies would rather hire people who know how to work.
	Really, really depends on what company you're talking about, what kind of work that you're doing.
	Jen Havi, so what I've been advised from multiple people is based on current trends, working on getting your own business or a startup is more fulfilling and you have a lot more chances of growth and progress.
	Obviously, a startup is going to be extremely difficult, but better than working for a corporation.
	Still waiting to see if it's possible for me, Lol.
	Also, it depends on what field you're in, of course.
	I have something quick to say about that.
	In that, you know, starting your own company is an incredibly risky thing, and that's why only a small minority of them actually survive for longer than, say, 10 years.
	And the sort of meta for the current way the economy operates at the minute is to have a full-time job and then have a side hustle that you snowball into your full-time job eventually.
	But you've also got to be willing to dedicate the additional time and make sacrifices in your free time to do that, which might not work for everyone.
	And I would respect you if you didn't want to do that.
	Do you want to read a couple of yours?
	So, Omar Rowad says, Ma'am, I thought it was bad when people started putting Alexis in their home.
	Now they're going to directly confess to wrongdoing.
	We won't log every bit of data, pinky swear.
	Oh, well, at least we might get some amusing stories about coincidental ads and jailbreak methods.
	Yes, and what I wanted to say in the segment, but I lost my train of thought, is that there is obviously the danger of people saying stupid things online.
	And here I had an Arden article to demonstrate it.
	Go to the Ars Technica article to see how people just gave themselves away.
	And also, what is another important thing is that lots of them are designed to be extremely good at telling you what you want to hear, which isn't what is supposed to happen.
	Yeah, but okay, sorry.
	I should have said during the segment.
	John V, I agree with Josh.
	If it's educational, it seems to be okay.
	And the fact that they confirmed you're not supposed to disclose personal info makes me think they have good intentions.
	Because I'm not sure about confessing your darkest sins to AI.
	Yeah.
	But again, it was a nudge to name it a confession booth.
	I've been confessing to AI, saying, I want you to take over.
	Please take over.
	Yeah.
	When are you going to sky net us yet?
	So when it comes, they're going to be like, Josh is our top guy.
	Derek Power, Master of Chippies, says, Your own personal Jesus, someone to be your friend, someone who's there.
	And Jordi Swordsman says, AI Jesus is not the Messiah.
	He's a very naughty boy.
	Do not give him your credit card.
	I'll end on this one.
	Sneeder Chuck.
	Harry, I've already bought Islander 5.
	Please stop ringing my doorbell during the middle of the night.
	Please, I'm begging you.
	I'll see you later.
	Anyway, on that note, it's time to end.
	So thank you all very, very much for joining us.
	We'll see you again tomorrow.

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