Spencer and Jeff dissect how "limited time offers" and apocalyptic cults—like Jehovah’s Witnesses (1914 prophecy) or QAnon—manipulate urgency to force suboptimal choices, from buying unnecessary tech to avoiding homeownership. They debate a War of the Worlds-style alien ultimatum: surrendering for survival, even as cattle or food, versus resisting doom narratives, revealing fear’s irrational grip on decision-making. Such tactics degrade critical thinking, urging blind compliance over long-term judgment. [Automatically generated summary]
And we're back with Truth Unrestricted, the podcast would have a better name if they weren't all taken.
I'm Spencer, your host, and I'm back again today with Jeff.
How are you doing, Jeff?
Not too bad, buddy.
How about you?
Pretty good.
And the topic today is apocalypses and other limited time offers.
Sounds kind of funny.
I love it.
I love it.
Yeah.
This is to me, this is big because this is what I really like to do with this is take things that are being used in our society to distort people's opinions to the negative side of their ledger and just sort of deconstruct them and try to give people a better view to choose better.
Really choosing better is the goal here.
So we're going to talk about, first, touch on sales techniques.
Not all of them, but just first the idea that, you know, sales itself to me is like a distortion of capitalism itself.
It really is.
So capitalism is meant to be like you make the best product and then it sells the best.
And then people get the best product because the best product was available and all the rest of it.
But a salesperson, like when you describe a good salesperson, what's the thing you use when you describe a good salesperson, Jeff?
What's the, when you have the, the old adage for the best salesperson, what do you say about them?
He's a really good bullshitter.
No, no.
They could sell ice cream.
Yes.
Yes.
They're so good they could sell someone a thing that they definitely don't need.
Yeah.
How is this in any way good for a market system where everything is balanced out and we get the most efficient thing?
Obviously, this is a clear distortion of this thing.
They're going to sell you the worst product.
Good salesmen don't need a good product is what that kind of expression is.
And I'm like, why wouldn't they still just want one though?
The whole thing is upsetting to me.
Like I just, I mean, I mean, I know a few salesmen have reserved judgment.
And while I'm sure any of them would happily admit that it does help to have a good product to sell, most of them make their living based on charm.
And so if the product falls short, you fill the gap with charm.
Yes.
And the whole purpose of sales literally is to convince people of things that they weren't going to do without your intervention.
You know, that I'm just, I'm just now realizing how much we're going to be talking about like the limited time offer apocalyptic sales technique thing tonight and how by the end of this podcast, like I might be down a friend or two if they'll never be my friends.
But I'm okay with that.
I don't need salesman as friends.
Sorry.
Oh, sorry, not sorry.
Anything on a t-shirt?
I don't care.
Please continue.
Okay.
So there are a lot of different sales techniques and little things that salespeople do.
But one of them is the infamous limited time offer.
So when you go to the grocery store, almost everything that's quote unquote on sale is only on sale for a very short time.
And that's a lot of times it's because they have more of that product that they want to get rid of right now for whatever reason.
And this isn't really the sales thing I'm talking about because this isn't like a salesperson is using charm to talk to you.
It's just you go to the grocery store.
Sometimes the cheese is cheaper than it normally is.
And then you get the cheese at that time and you save some money.
I think probably a better example would be when you go to purchase a new cell phone or when you go to purchase a new bed.
Purchases that we make of items that we typically only get once every handful of years.
Yeah.
I don't know what your experience has been, and I don't know what the listeners' experiences have been, but my experience has almost universally been when purchasing either beds or cell phones or home computers.
that when I go in, the salesman I talk to does his best to convince me that today is the absolute best day for me to buy whatever it is that I'm there to buy, that there is a great, big, awesome sale that I see no literature on any walls anywhere nearby advertising, but a great big sale that's on just today.
Yeah, right.
You'll get the best deal right now if you buy very, very soon.
The absolute lowest price is happening in one hour.
Yeah, please don't shop her out.
Yeah.
Right.
Don't check any other places because if you try, you'll lose the best price.
You'll be, you'll start to go up after that.
These limited time offers, they are designed to get you to spend your money before you have sufficient time to consider properly your purchase.
100%.
That is exactly what they're designed to do.
Don't be mistaken.
I'm sure we all know a charismatic salesperson.
I joke that I don't have salespeople that I'm friends with.
I do.
But even they know, even if they're not willing to admit it, even they know a limited time offer is exactly that.
It's meant to close the deal.
Yep.
And that's all it is.
And it is meant to affect your choices.
It's meant to make you make a different choice than you would have without that thing.
And obviously it is because.
Or improve their chances that your decision making is going to fall their way.
Well, yeah.
That's the decision they're trying to influence is your decision that will fall into their favor.
That's clear.
So we're not going to spend a lot of time talking about sales techniques, even though I could go on for a long time.
I'm not.
No, I think we're good here.
I think I could.
I think I hit the point.
Well, you hit the point.
And I think the sales guys that I know that are friends of mine are probably still my friends.
So I think we're good.
We can.
So what I really want to talk about is another limited time offer, which is an apocalypse.
Normally, people don't talk about an apocalypse as a limited time offer, right?
But if you're in a cult that has a sense of impending doom, this is a thing I get when I listen to the cult hackers podcast with Stephen Mather.
He used to be a Jehovah's Witness, and I didn't know that much about Jehovah's Witnesses, but they have an apocalypse prophecy that they follow.
It was actually supposed to happen sometime around 1914.
And we're well past that now, obviously.
But they keep moving the thing up.
Oh, it was, you know, reinterpreting it to move it forward and forward, right?
And this is when he was on the podcast, I made the joke that this is, it's like a carrot that's dangled in front of a horse.
It has to be on the near horizon because it won't affect your decisions if it's in the far horizon.
If you're going to say the apocalypse is in a thousand years, it's not going to spur anyone to action right away.
It might spur them into action 900 years from now, which is not really going to be good for you as a cult leader right now.
So if you look at these cult situations, the impending doom is always at hand or very, very close on the horizon.
We see this all the time.
Like one might say the climate change alarmist cult.
Well, that's a counterexample, sir, I say, because there is scientific evidence to support the warming of the earth.
Absolutely not interested in getting into a debate on that tonight.
For the record, I agree with you.
Right.
But that's a good story.
But just as one example, I don't know if you saw it fly through the news recently.
Again, apologies to any listeners that aren't in Canada and don't know the names of government people that I'm dropping because you wouldn't care.
But it wasn't that long ago.
I think I pulled up a lovely article here.
January 15th, Christia Freeland, our finance minister, got up in the house talking about defending a request with a recent bill that they pushed through that called for the establishment of the Canada Growth Fund, which is like a $2 billion fund.
And its only mandate is to deal with the climate emergency.
They're going to need more.
That's it.
Well, no, but simply the fact that we are taking $2 billion of Canadian taxpayers' money and putting it into a government trust whose only mandate is to deal with the climate emergency.
It's a slush fund to be spent on whatever they want to throw money at if they can justify that it's for climate action.
Anyways, I'm taking us into deep water, and this is probably all going to end up on the editing room floor.
My point is, my point is, when Christia Freeland got up to defend her position for this $2 billion growth fund, being attacked by conservative politicians, which for anybody who listens to this show, you know that I am not a conservative guy and conservative politicians are not my kind of politician generally.
But these guys were going after it on an ideological point of conservatism that I can get behind, which is just economic fiscal prudence.
They were just asking, why do you need $2 billion for a fund that has such a broad and sweeping mandate when you can't answer any specific questions on what this $2 billion is going to be spent on?
And her only response that she could give was, well, it's just an emergency.
Like we just need to act now or we're going to get left behind.
It's an emergency.
We're having a climate emergency.
And yes, I understand and agree personally.
Climate change is a very serious threat, but like we're not imploding tomorrow.
We can't just like throw money in every direction and hope that enough of it sticks to make a difference.
We need a plan.
It's a really bad plan.
And there's been a lot of government plans that have not been great on that particular point.
I'm going to bring this steering right back into the lane that I was apocalypses.
You know, QAnon has not fully an apocalypse, but it has an apocalypse-like prediction.
The storm is meant to happen in the QAnon sort of prophecy world, right?
This storm is meant to change the face of everything.
It's meant to save humanity from the ethereal forces that are holding it down somehow that's never fully defined in the QAnon structure.
Even if you ask them, they'll say it is fully defined.
But if you dig deeper, you'll find it's not in any way defined.
Many of these have an apocalyptic event at some point in them.
And this is a thing that's meant specifically to influence the decisions of the people who are meant to follow them.
Oh, 100%.
Yeah.
100%.
Anti-vax has full-on apocalyptic predictions right in with it.
They all got it from Berlin, right?
Like that's, that's, that's the, the, the basic brass tax of most religious cults is, hey, like, just keep eating shit right now.
Deal with this horrendous life of misery that you have right now.
Keep giving your money to us, but don't worry.
After the world goes to shit, the meek shall inherit the earth.
Yeah, yeah.
And heaven is waiting for you.
The meek shall inherit.
I'll say it now.
The meek shall inherit the earth is what the strong told them to get them to stop struggling.
Yeah.
Full stop.
Yeah.
So this idea that there's going to be a calamity and you need to make a decision in this moment now that puts you on the correct side of this calamity.
I mean, how many times do we hear things like, you're going to be on the wrong side of history?
Oh my God.
I'm tired of that.
Really?
Right.
I'm so tired of that.
And that you have to make this decision right now.
And of course, as soon as I say that, you can see immediately that this is not a thing that's only like we rail about things that are happening on the sort of the right half of the political spectrum quite a bit on this podcast.
But as soon as I use those words, you can see that this, these sorts of ideas are still happening on the left.
Oh, yeah.
That's a phrase from the leftist side of this sort of spectrum now, right?
That you need to make the decision now to get on the right side of this.
And it's meant to affect people's decisions to go to the side you want.
There's going to be terrible consequences if you don't decide right now the correct way to go on this.
Yeah.
And we need to get past this idea.
First, we need to understand that these apocalyptic predictions, these alarmist notions, are really only there to make us make stupid choices right now, just like limited time offers from salespeople.
Yeah, because like rational people don't like root for and plan for the end of the world.
Like I went through a very brief time where I went a little bit nuts.
Didn't we all, though?
We enjoyed a very brief period of our time in our adult lives where we were debt-free.
And without a debt, I found myself with time on my hands.
And so I started survivalist prepping.
I'm not proud of it, but I wasted a good chunk of money on freeze-dried food and a bunch of stuff that wound up going into my camper.
But while it's maybe a sort of a theatrical fantasy that we can occasionally entertain about what we would do if the shit went down, and like there is something to be said for genuine emergency preparedness, like realistically speaking, we all do better if society continues chugging along, right?
Like I have a child who is a type 1 diabetic.
I receive electronic, wirelessly controlled pumps that deliver insulin directly to her bloodstream from medical companies engaged by my government to provide this service for me in exchange for the healthcare premiums that I pay.
Like if society crumbles, my life and her life get significantly more complicated.
It works much better for society if society continues chugging along and if all of the participants in society actively participate in that society.
Yeah, we all do better together.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Happy together.
So like I should never say, but like a lot of the what goes hand in hand with a lot of the apocalypse conspiracies is absolutism.
Like the end is coming and you're either going to be on the right side or the wrong side.
Yeah.
It moves that decision.
It's a thing that's meant to move that decision very, very close.
Like you don't, you have to decide now.
And then once you decide, they do typically do other things to try to keep you on that side, right?
Yeah.
It's a cleave.
It's a wedge.
Yeah, I was just going to say it's a wedge.
It's, it's, it's a different kind of wedge.
It really is.
And this is bad for all of society because, like you say, people make different choices.
They don't plan for the future if they think there is no future.
Like befriend a person who's dying of cancer and talk to them because they will be the most honest person you've ever met.
They have nothing to lose, like really nothing to lose.
They don't, you know, they don't beat around the bush with anything.
They don't have time to waste on a lot of stuff.
They have, they know their time horizon is coming soon.
And they have all kinds of other things that they think about.
Like if they're watching TV and they see an advertisement for an upcoming movie that's coming up in the summertime, they don't give a shit about that movie because they might not be alive to see it.
Right.
And that's, that's real to them.
And they, they have to face that, right?
They like they, that is so real to them and they give up on things.
And it's sad to watch when it's when it's a person that you know is going to leave fairly soon.
But if you know a person who's perfectly healthy and is still preparing like that, what's that like?
They're not really imminently going, you know what I mean?
But they think that the world is about to be done.
So well, and this is, and I understand that your premise for this episode was largely about like the QAnon tier far-right cults that we usually poke fun at on this show.
Yeah.
But I feel it's important to sort of underline and highlight the fact that arguably climate alarmism has had the exact same effect on today's youth.
Yeah.
Like I know, I know, I know young adults, like people entering the workforce who are at the age that I was at when I was planning to have children and buy my first home.
Yeah.
There are people in that age bracket today who are like, why should I do anything other than have a good time?
The world is ending.
Yeah.
Like the world won't be here when my kids are my age.
So I may as well have a good time.
They think it's coming that soon.
Now, don't get me wrong.
There's all kinds of shit we're doing wrong as a species.
There's all kinds of things we've got to figure out how to do cleaner.
Climate change is a thing before anybody starts freaking out on that.
It is.
But the sort of excessively politicized alarmism that we have on the subject that is out there on the airwaves everywhere, it's changing an entire generation.
And maybe we'll get lucky and it will make them sufficiently concerned that they'll do something about it.
But right now, what it seems to have done is shock them into absolute stasis and lethargy.
Yeah, where they don't even vote.
They don't do anything.
Like, I'm not even going to own a home.
There isn't even going to be a home worth owning.
That part is crazy to me because if they really thought it was all going to be over soon, they should borrow as much money as they can.
Like, who are we kidding here?
Yeah, true, true.
Like, actually, I know a guy, a friend of a friend, who made a very good living for himself working industrial electrical in the oil patch for a number of years, was a successful entrepreneur for a number of years in the same industry.
And basically, cashed everything out and shipped out nice and early, like in his mid early to mid-50s, I think.
But, like, no wife, no kids, just him and a big pile of money.
And, like, he's always joked.
Like, he's done his, like, he knows how long he can live.
And he's, he's got it.
He's, he's still on schedule, still taking along, still on schedule.
That the check for his casket's going to bounce.
He's spending every nickel.
Good for him.
Yeah.
Absolutely.
Good for him.
So I prepared some notes for this and I sent them to you.
And there was a part of this that I didn't send because I wasn't sure we'd have time.
And I didn't want you to get a sneak preview of it because I wanted to get your in-the-moment take.
Yeah, well, I don't think time is an issue because you've already got a really aggressive editing job in front of you.
So we may as well take a winger at it.
Sure.
I have a thought experiment for you.
Okay.
So one of the classic thought experiments in philosophy is called the trolley problem.
Many people have heard of it, right?
I think we even did a bit on the trolley problem.
Yeah.
So, you know, you're on a trolley that's essentially like a train that rolls through a town, and you have, you're on a track that's going to run over five people.
And then you have the ability, you're on a trolley, you have the ability to pull a switch, pull a lever, and it changes the trolley to a different track on which there's only one person.
This is the classic example of this.
This is the original trolley problem.
And then, of course, you know, should you pull the switch or shouldn't you?
You know, first you say, well, of course you should.
And then the next question is, okay, since you, you know, that person would not have died if not by your action, did you murder them?
There's all kinds of ways you can tackle this.
That's why it's such an interesting set of problems.
But it has so many variants because immediately people say, well, what if, what if the one person on the other track was a loved one?
Someone you knew.
Yeah.
It's your wife.
It's your son or daughter.
It's your parent, grandparent, whatever.
And so obviously there's all of these.
And there's an entire website devoted to this.
So my variants on these crossover with a novel I read once.
There was a movie made, but I don't like to refer to it because I generally find it to be terrible.
I hate it.
Well, now you have to tell us.
Well, I'll tell you what it is.
It's the War of the Worlds scenario.
The new one with Dom Cruise?
Yeah, that's pretty cool.
Yeah, that's the one we don't talk about.
But I read the book, of course, and the book was amazing.
The scenario, for anyone who isn't familiar with War of the Worlds for some reason, you had 100 years to read it more than that.
So I'm not worried about spoiling you.
Is that aliens come to Earth and they are kicking human ass when they come to Earth.
And then after like a week, they have crushed all the world's most powerful nations.
But after a week, they catch viruses that they didn't know about existed on Earth and they just sort of fade away.
They just sort of die.
And this is, this was the War of the World.
This is the war, the actual book, War of the Worlds.
This is how it actually really happened.
And it was really an allegory at the time.
It was an allegory for colonialism in Africa because the Europeans were just crushing the Africans in war, but after trying to run things in Africa.
And dying of malaria.
Their power just sort of waned over time and they had less and less influence over time.
And it just sort of dissipated in most of the places they went in Africa.
But of course, this scenario is kind of weird because why do we think that the aliens wouldn't know about viruses or anything like that or have any way to combat them?
I mean, it doesn't make any sense.
So here's my trolley problem: is that you are, in this scenario, you are a leader of a significant portion of the world.
Let's say you're the prime minister of Canada and aliens are coming to the planet.
They send messages.
They communicate with us.
The search for extraterrestrial intelligence has found them and they found a way to communicate.
And the aliens say that they are going to come to the earth.
They have vast technology.
We are just, you know, we're not on the same level as we're doomed.
And they resistance is futile.
He will be assimilated.
They want our resources and we can struggle or we can not struggle.
And they say, we think that humans are an interesting species, but they're interesting enough to be bothersome.
So we don't really want to have them in most of the places where we need our resources from the planet.
So we're going to make a deal.
And one of the, you know, they send the message to all the nations of the world.
One of the nations gets to live and the other ones just kind of get wiped out.
Do you take that deal?
So they're looking for a nation to volunteer to live.
To get the one short straw in a bundle of several hundred long straws with all the other nations that would also say, yes, I would like to live.
Well, you think they would.
I mean, one of the nations immediately says, we should band together and fight the aliens.
So those are your choices.
You can band together with the other nations to try to fight the aliens.
Or you can take the deal.
Or you can take the deal.
And of course, it's a limited time offer because you have to take the deal before any other nation takes the deal.
First nation to speak up.
So basically, it isn't everybody let us know if you want to be the one that lives.
The first one to say, please let us live lives and everybody else dies.
According to the aliens, yeah.
Yeah, no, I couldn't take that deal.
You couldn't take that deal.
You're okay.
You would band with the consortium of nations that are.
Okay.
All right.
You would.
All right.
Okay.
Well, you might not get elected to prime minister, but probably not.
It's fine.
And it may or may not be for that reason.
I don't know.
So let's say that, you know, you have some questions about the deal.
Like, you know, you might ask, are these aliens on the level, right?
Yeah.
And the fact that they might not be is one of the reasons why I can't take the deal.
I'm taking them at their word that they are technologically superior to me.
Okay.
So that they're capable of wiping us out without exerting any effort whatsoever.
Maybe what they just want Islam's willing to go to slaughter and it'll make it easier for them if we all just comply.
Okay.
So let's say that they're not the only alien race that we contacted.
Let's say there are several other alien races that we've contacted and have communicated with over enough time that we know them, we feel we know them.
And these other alien races have all taken the deal.
So these aliens have been to other planets and have issued the same decree.
First ones to surrender, get to live, everybody else dies.
Yeah.
And we have heard evidence, third-party corroborated evidence that this has occurred on other planets.
Yes, other races have taken the deal and that they've honored it.
Okay.
With that new information, I would have to take the deal and be really quick about it.
Really quick about it.
So, of course, by doing so, you condemn all the other nations to death.
Well, no, because if all of the nations universally agree to band together and fight, they're still going to come in and kill us all.
Yeah.
Except they'll just kill us all.
So the first thing the aliens say once you take the deal is, okay, to make our job easier, we want you to provide information about all the other nations, everything.
No.
You already agreed to the deal.
Like they can reneg, but they'll say, okay, we'll go to the next one on the list.
They'll provide, I mean, why wouldn't China take the deal, right?
They have more people to save than anyone.
Why wouldn't Russia take the deal or India or North Korea?
Are you kidding me?
North Korea would take that deal.
Yeah, but I would feel like, yeah, if I was prime minister of Canada, I would think, well, they probably have access to defense information through NATO, North American defense agreement, et cetera, that would give them a better tactical advantage than what North Korea knows about everybody else.
Sure.
But to these aliens, according to their story, I mean, they're going to come across half the galaxy to come to this planet.
This is only a thing that's going to make it somewhat more simple for them.
It's already going to be very simple.
It's just slightly more simple.
And it's a sign of your good faith that you're on board, that they can trust you.
Difficult.
Well, I mean, like, it's yes, incredibly difficult, of course.
I understand the purpose of the exercise.
I mean, from a personal standpoint, like if you're backed that deeply into a corner where you're really talking about survival, then yeah, every decision gets weighed with significantly different stakes, right?
So, yeah, it's really easy to be, oh, what's the word for it?
Illuminated.
Yeah.
When the stakes that we're talking about is the end of everything.
Well, if you survive, it won't be the end of everything.
So let's change the scenario a little bit, just a tweak.
I mean, this first kind of version was more about just making a decision to survive the impending doom that's on the horizon now that the aliens are coming.
So let's say that you are, for some reason that we don't know the whys or wheres of, but let's say that you are in control of an ability to wipe out all life on the planet.
There's some kind of omega weapon that was, I don't know, probably developed as a form of mutually assured destruction, Dr. Strangelove style, and you have access to this weapon.
You can use it.
So you can, and it will wipe out all life and make the resources of the planet untouchable, you're pretty sure.
So you can deny the aliens their prize, but you will definitely end all of human existence and our planet.
So now you have a thing.
You have a, the aliens are coming.
Maybe they take, they offer this deal, but the deal is now different.
It says, first, they say, you know, we'll give you, we'll give you some portion of land, something reasonable in size.
And we want your population to be no larger than, I don't know, let's say a million.
We want the human population to be, is what they say.
They want the human population to be small enough to be non-problematic and confined to a fairly small area.
Let's say it's the province of British Columbia or something.
Certainly enough room for all the humans to be on.
And that's a fairly small portion of the Earth.
It's very generous.
Maybe they even say, you know what, half of that.
We want the northern half.
It's got more resources, whatever.
And you could get the southern half.
You're already kind of mostly living there anyway.
But there's only got to be a million of you.
The rest of you will be removed.
Do you take that deal?
So the deal is either put to pasture in the southern half of British Columbia with the last remaining million survivors or activate a doomsday weapon that destroys all of humanity and the planet and uh, basically full scorched earth.
Yeah oh, I feel like that would be a really good sort of like touchstone question for determining how depressed people are.
Oh, good.
Because I feel like, I feel like the answer hinges a lot on a person's capacity for hope, right?
Like if you have hope that maybe those million survivors could maybe one day get an opportunity to experience a better life or shake off their alien overlords or experience something that resembles freedom a couple generations down the road.
They're going to be back with a million of us, right?
Like yeah, a couple generations down the road or something.
Maybe we can develop something.
Yeah.
But if you're entirely, utterly without hope, like no matter what we do, we're bound, then you probably press the button.
And the human race still gets to continue.
We still get our knowledge, right?
We can still read and grow food and continue.
We just have to be slaves.
Well, no.
We can get over that.
No, not slaves, just, I mean, this, this is the same, you know, spoiler alert.
This is the situation that the Native Americans were in a couple hundred years ago, and they took that deal.
Pretty much all of them took that deal.
Oh, there's a much smaller portion of land and we get to live on that.
Otherwise, we get wiped out.
Well, okay.
And almost all of them took that deal.
Some of them fought back first and then a smaller number of them took that deal.
But pretty universally, that's where that's at.
So this can go, this level of questioning just gets worse.
Yeah.
Right.
Right.
So this is a how low would you go wism?
And I'm really interested in the fact that you point out that this could be some sort of a, maybe a measure of, of a person's level of hope, because I have a list of slow gradations as this gets worse.
So the next worst one after this one, this one is just you get a tract of land, whatever size it is.
It's reasonable.
It's whatever, a million people, whatever.
And you continue from there.
The next one is without any technology.
They're not going to, they're going to restrict your technology because they, again, don't want you to be problematic.
So they'll have restrictions on what technology you can develop.
You can have farming equipment.
You can have tractors, but no cars, right?
Nothing that moves very fast.
Nothing that will allow you to escape.
Oh, that seems like a good little slippery, slow micro step.
Yeah, you probably, if you'd, if you'd gone so far as to say yes to a million people on a commune, you'd probably say yes to a medieval human.
But you would still be living a perfectly fruitful life.
I mean, if you like, we have people on our planet that really want to just live naturally.
They would take that deal, right?
Like they're like, oh, so it's all going to be organic food, right?
Yeah, we're just going to have to put in 16 hours of labor a day.
We're going to till the soil ourselves.
It'll be awesome.
Yeah.
These people have never tilled soil.
They don't know what it's like to try to do this, even with a mule, if you even have that.
But anyway, the next level down is, okay, would you accept then the same deal, except that you're going to be slaves to your new alien overlords?
Oh, there it is.
There it is.
Yes, of course.
You can take that deal and you're only going to have the tech that we allow you to have.
And also, whenever we need extra muscle to move large blocks or whatever, you're going to line up.
It's you.
You're the one.
You're going to line up.
We're going to keep your population at the level we require to have the right number of laborers to do the grunt work.
And that's what you are.
Humans have done this to each other in history.
Oh, hell yeah.
Absolutely.
The Romans were famous for this.
Some people point out they didn't divide this slavery thing along racist lines, but it doesn't make it any better.
Why is that a defense?
I don't understand.
They were willing to enslave anyone, regardless.
They didn't kill them.
They were equal opportunity slavers.
Calm down, Mr. Apologist.
Okay.
And then, of course, the next level down from that is, yeah, you're going to be grunts and also we eat you, which was exactly what was happening in War of the Worlds when humans were captured in War of the Worlds.
Their body mass was turned into a food source.
They were kept as cattle.
Yeah, it was, it was really dark.
Yeah, really dark novel.
Yeah.
Well, I love that book.
I should read it again.
You know, but it, but it really.
Well, like the eating line is, is more than enough for me.
Like, I actually got off the bus at slavery.
Oh, yeah, yeah.
It's easy to get off the bus at slavery.
Yeah.
For sure.
But if you have someone whose will to live, whose will to move on is so great that they will accept that.
I have one level below that.
And I go, well, ask that question too.
Would you accept just essentially just being cattle, right?
Like, hey, they're going to keep you in shape.
You're going to be in great shape.
Really well fed because they're going to be able to do that.
Really well.
Yeah.
And, you know, like, like you're essentially going to, everyone who's alive will essentially be in as good a shape as a professional athlete, right?
Because you'll have to be.
Because we need wagu beef.
Yeah.
And also you're going to be a laborer before you're eaten, right?
Yeah.
Yeah, sure.
This is, I love these thought experiments.
These really set into the idea that there is some level of deal you might take.
Like when you think there is an impending doom, you might want off the doom train, right?
You might want to say, you know what?
Pull a shoot.
We'll take the deal at this level.
You know, I'll be, you know, the Jehovah's Witnesses say, yeah, you know, all the bad people will leave and we'll have the earth after that.
And it'll be fine.
It'll be great.
Life will be much, much better because Satan will be taken care of or whatever their specific version of that is.
And a lot of people have that idea that I want to live through this impending calamity.
And when they're left with this, when they're pushed into this scenario where they have to make these choices, I'm not even that surprised that some people, you know, get pushed into this and, you know, veer their car towards the one side where they think, oh, wow, it's terrible.
I'm going to, I'm going to go over here because I don't know.
And that fear, that fear that's overriding their logic, that's the fear that we have to push against.
We have to overcome.
You know what I mean?
Yeah, absolutely, buddy.
Yeah.
I guess I don't have anything else to add here.
Apocalypses that when people are bringing these calamities, the end is near stuff.
Just stop listening to them.
Yeah.
The only thing that's near is their desire to degrade your sound judgment.