Asher, Rob, and Jason explore the lessons and dangers of the brotherhood of Phalse Prophets and consider better ways to achieve a sustainable and equitable society. Along the way, they examine how to start a cult, turn the insufferability index on themselves, respond to listener feedback, and repeatedly mispronounce amygdala. Please share this episode with your friends and start a conversation.
Warning: This podcast occasionally uses spicy language.
For an entertaining deep dive into the theme of season five (Phalse Prophets), read the definitive peer-reviewed taxonomic analysis from our very own Jason Bradford, PhD.
Asher, Rob, and Jason explore the lessons and dangers of the brotherhood of Phalse Prophets and consider better ways to achieve a sustainable and equitable society. Along the way, they examine how to start a cult, turn the insufferability index on themselves, respond to listener feedback, and repeatedly mispronounce amygdala. Please share this episode with your friends and start a conversation.
Warning: This podcast occasionally uses spicy language.
For an entertaining deep dive into the theme of season five (Phalse Prophets), read the definitive peer-reviewed taxonomic analysis from our very own Jason Bradford, PhD.
Asher Miller
I'm Asher Miller.
Rob Dietz
I'm Rob Dietz.
Jason Bradford
And I'm Jason Bradford. Welcome to Crazy Town where the only thing we can be certain of is that some overconfident man will offer a salvation.
Melody Allison
Hi, this is Crazy Town producer Melody Allison. Thanks for listening. Here in Season 5, we're exploring phalse prophets and the dangerous messages they're so intent on spreading. If you like what you're hearing, please let some friends know about this episode or the podcast in general. Quick warning: Sometimes this podcast uses swear words. Now, onto the show.
Asher Miller
Hey guys, Rob, Jason, you know I was thinking, here we are. this is the last episode of the season.
Jason Bradford
Yeah, it's tough. Tough day.
Asher Miller
I was just reflecting back on the ground we've covered. And it reminded me of something that happened a few years ago, which was there's this competition at the MacArthur Foundation, which is really large Foundation. They're known for having this MacArthur, people call it genius awards.
Jason Bradford
Yes. Probably some of our phalse prophets have received.
Asher Miller
Possibly, that would be good thing to check out. Anyway, they decided they were gonna go big a few years ago, And they just had a $100 million grant that they're gonna give to one organization.
Jason Bradford
Go big or go home, baby.
Asher Miller
Right. And I remember hearing from all these people that got excited about this prospect. And they also had formed this huge advisory board. Lots of people were reviewing things. In fact, our former Board President, Debbie Cook was on that advisory board. And so I was talking to a lot of people who were planning on submitting a proposal for this. And I was asked like, "You guys should submit something. What are you gonna do? Come up with something that you could do for $100 million."
Jason Bradford
Obviously you failed.
Asher Miller
Well, we didn't submit anything. The only thing I could think of was to start a cult. Imagine starting a cult with like, an influx of $100 million. You don't have to go small and slowly scale it up, you know. Do it on some -
Jason Bradford
This is a lot of work. I mean, the AI cult generator now makes it easy.
Asher Miller
Yeah, it would save a lot of money.
Rob Dietz
One of the sponsors on our season. . .
Jason Bradford
Yeah. But back in that time period, that would have been quite a bit of work.
Rob Dietz
Yeah, you had to find some kind of charismatic leader. You had to find some rituals and beliefs to kind of like coalesce around.
Jason Bradford
Yeah, brainwash people.
Asher Miller
And here's the thing, I was just thinking about the fact that we've done our level best trying to challenge some of the ideas, these phalse prophets this season. But we gotta be honest, they're kicking our ass.
Rob Dietz
Nobody wants to join the organic farming limits to growth cult. I mean, it just doesn't have the same cachet as eating green cheese off the moon while you're floating around up there.
Jason Bradford
I mean, we can have some sort of nature worshipping, sort of like being a peasant is ot a bad thing kind of cult.
Asher Miller
I think it's gotta be about sex.
Jason Bradford
Well, peasants have sex.
Asher Miller
Yeah, we've tied in together back to the land.
Jason Bradford
There's a lot of barnyard sex. You can just watch.
Asher Miller
Jesus Christ.
Rob Dietz
You're in the Pacific Northwest, too. You got the Rajneesh cult that took off pretty good.
Asher Miller
Yeah, they were doing a lot of sex stuff there too.
Rob Dietz
But you're right. We are not doing well compared to the sorts of cults that could spiral out from the phalse prophets.
Asher Miller
Well, certainly. . . who's gonna be the leader? It's not gonna be one of us.
Rob Dietz
No. That's a failure of a cult right out of the gate.
Asher Miller
Yes, we'd have to recruit. Who would we recruit?
Jason Bradford
God, it's gonna be tough. I don't know. I think we just have to wait for the AI's to catch up to help us out with this because we're not good enough obviously.
Asher Miller
Well, we need the AIs, and we need the singularity fusion, or the weird longtermist kind of breeding. The Effective Altruist breeding of like the perfect human being.
Rob Dietz
We also have fear on our side, right? If we go with Guy McPherson, we're all gonna be dead in three years. We can get that cult really jumping.
Asher Miller
That's true.
Jason Bradford
Yeah. I think you're making a good point though. It's like, I hear this that we need a new religion. Like we need something beyond the layout your argument, the intellectual debate sort of thing. We need something emotional. We need something that really grabs that amygula and just sinks its nails into it. And just you know-
Asher Miller
Grab it by the amygula.
Rob Dietz
It's the amygdala. Come on.
Jason Bradford
Amygdala. Well, I'm gonna rename it in my cult.
Rob Dietz
This is the Amygularians.
Jason Bradford
It's the Amygularians. Okay, okay? And if you argue with me, you're out.
Rob Dietz
So you are the cult leader then? It's solved.
Asher Miller
Well, okay. I think we go back to the drawing board guys.
Rob Dietz
Not many people sign up for the Amygularians?
Asher Miller
I'm already tired of this. Let's call that one out. Alright well, let's get in - Here we are. This is our opportunity to sort of reflect on the season. So let's talk about it. Let's do a little reflection.
Jason Bradford
I'll try not to cry. I get emotional.
Asher Miller
And, you know, because we're old, our memories are addled. We probably don't even remember.
Jason Bradford
It's hard to remember.
Asher Miller
All the phalse prophets that we've talked about. So I'm gonna kind of reorient us.
Rob Dietz
By the way, what was the idea you proposed to the MacArthur Foundation? I can't remember it.
Asher Miller
Exactly. It was nothing. I'm too much of a realist to know that they would ever, ever fund anything that we would come up with. So I didn't bother. Okay, so let's reorient. Yeah, we intentionally, I don't know if listeners got this, but we intentionally sort of had, and I don't know if it's an arc, but we had a process by which we ordered the phalse prophets that we looked at this year. So we started with a progress myth, right? That was our good buddy, Steven Pinker. And then Ray Kurzweil. Two expressions of the myth of progress. Then we went into neoliberalism. We got Jack Welsh, we got Bill Clinton, we got Tom Friedman.
Rob Dietz
I was confused because I thought that part of the season was more of our impersonations time, which is where I went a little nuts with Bill Clinton there.
Asher Miller
Yeah. And then we went into ecomodernism. We spent quite a bit of time really looking at ecomodernism. We had Gates. Even though we're talking about him as a philanthropist, Gates is very much an ecomodernist. Stewart Brand. And then we had you know, the two headed beast, whatever we called it. I can't remember. Mark Jacobson and David and Keith.
Jason Bradford
I can't remember what it is.
Rob Dietz
Amygdala, I think.
Jason Bradford
Amygdala, yeah.
Asher Miller
So we had Jacobson and Keith, and then we went to Effective Altruism. I firstly, could spend a lot more time on that, but we just focused on our good buddy MacAskill there. Then we wanted to do morphism, right. So we talked about Moore, McPherson, Steve Bannon.
Jason Bradford
Yep.
Asher Miller
And then we ended it with like the hybrid storm of Elon Musk, right? Who sort of manifested so many of the others.
Rob Dietz
He would like that title. That could be his nickname. Elon the hybrid storm Musk.
Asher Miller
And of course he's gonna give us money.
Jason Bradford
Yeah.
Asher Miller
Because we focused on that.
Jason Bradford
Totally.
Asher Miller
And then I will say, it's pretty obvious that there's a lot of overlapping traits between these phalse profits. You could’ve easily grouped some of them in different categories. So I wouldn't say it's totally arbitrary, but obviously, there's some permeable boundaries between these different categories.
Rob Dietz
I really liked the groupings when we were coming up with them early in the season. It really helped me think about the evolution and also focusing on the ideas.
Jason Bradford
I liked that you talked about the evolution. Yeah, that's what I talk about.
Rob Dietz
I wonder though, with all these phalse prophets that we've covered, which one bugs us the most? You know, which one is the one that really gets under your skin? And What type? That sort of thing. And I'm going to tell you mine because I'm just itchy to do this.
Jason Bradford
I remember this.
Rob Dietz
So the person is McPherson, which is odd, because I don't think we rated him badly on the insufferability index or something like that.
Jason Bradford
Not the worst. That's for sure.
Rob Dietz
No, but the problem is, and there's other doomers, too, that are in this. It isn't even really doomers, it's guys that we’re in lockstep with us in the things they know, the ideas that they're contributing, but then they might go 75% of the way. They might say ecosystems are imperiled. We need to think in systems. There's problems we need to deal with the climate. That kind of thing. And then all of a sudden, they're off. The last 25% of what they would say is completely off the rails compared to what we would say. So McPherson does that. He says, Oh, we're just gonna all be dead in three years time. But then you had Stewart Brand kind of that way. If you remember, I told you guys I thought this guy was an environmental hero, but turns out he's an ecomodernist thinking we're all going to be living in O'Neill space colonies by 1979.
Jason Bradford
Right. I think that leads to - My thought about this was that the ecomodernists were sort of the most upsetting to me because of that reason, right? They're part of like the double downer you know, kind of group of people that just do more harder of what's gotten us into this mess. And in particular what bothered me was the Jacobson and Keith with the species I call the complexifixer. You know, just the extreme engineering our way kind of solutionism. That really bothers me.
Asher Miller
Because the system either doesn't need to change. How we're living doesn't need to change, or won't change.
Jason Bradford
Right. And their ideas are so out of whack scale wise with what is remotely possible.
Asher Miller
But it's true that they're proximate to us in the sense that I genuinely believe they share the same concerns. Deeply.
Rob Dietz
Yeah, some of them are right - Same problem I have. Like I feel like Mark Jacobson, we come at it from the same angle. Like, "Oh, here's a problem. I want to solve it." And the solution set is very frustrating.
Asher Miller
Yeah, I think for me, it's funny. Like, It's probably the progress myth. Because not only is it so ubiquitous, it's like kind of unquestioned a little bit. It's so pervasive. And so to have people who are kind of purveying that and reinforcing it when it just feels like utter denial of what we're facing. But it's funny because the two guys that we picked for that, I have really different reactions to it. I had a lot of fun doing the Kurzweil episode. I gotta be honest. I enjoyed it because it was so fucking outlandish.
Jason Bradford
Yeah, computronium.
Asher Miller
Computronium. Like, I still can't get over it.
Jason Bradford
That's the thing.
Asher Miller
I just can't get over it. Yeah, you know, whereas Pinker was, in some ways, I don't think we scored him super high in the insufferability index. But he's a guy that genuinely gets under my skin.
Jason Bradford
Yeah, I would much rather hang out with Kurzweil than Pinker. Kurzweil would be kind of fun to hang out with.
Rob Dietz
You might actually get a nanobot cleanse if you hang with Kurzweil.
Asher Miller
But, I think Kurzweil is just so geeked out, you know, that he he just believes kind of impossible things, right? Whereas Pinker's like, “Goddammit, we have to keep enlightenment and all the benefits of all this stuff. So I'm going to absolutely resist any idea that there are limits to anything, right? You know what I mean? And fuck you for questioning me.” And so, that definitely gets under my skin for sure.
Rob Dietz
Well, that's good. I mean, you just did that without any blood coming out of any of your orifices. There were times this season I thought you were gonna just flip your lid.
Asher Miller
No, there were a few - We definitely need Curtis's, you know, language warning.
Jason Bradford
Yeah, we've processed a lot. I think we're able with more equanimity now to talk about this.
Asher Miller
I don't know, man.
Rob Dietz
We'll see. Jury's still out.
Asher Miller
Let's talk about some of the commonalities and themes across our phalse prophets. I mean, we talked about how they, you know, the boundaries between these different groupings are not fixed, necessarily. But any other commonalities?
Jason Bradford
Well, you remember that in the phylogenetic treatment that I hypothesize that hubris was the common trait of all species of phalse prophets. Whereas, the outgroup, the peasants, the humble peasant, you know, lack that.
Rob Dietz
Yeah.
Jason Bradford
So I think that's a key one. And you see this, of course, with a lot of like - You're saying Pinker is just like, "Don't even. If you dare try . . . " These people who just get so upset. They don't want to have these nuanced conversations. They also tend to be very self-promotional. I mean, that's why they're well known and famous in a sense. And why their ideas are out there. And but you get this sense that these people think very highly of themselves. And then this leads to this overconfidence of false certainty. So those are the kinds of traits I see.
Asher Miller
I think there's things that we can learn from them. I mean, I decided that I was, you know, they have decals on cars? I got a picture of myself, and I put it on the side of my car. Because I'm trying to embody more of that, like, self-promotion thing.
Jason Bradford
Sure.
Asher Miller
And might as well put a Crazy Town sticker on it.
Jason Bradford
Yeah. I don't think I'd key anyone's car that had a picture of himself on it. No, I would never do something like that.
Rob Dietz
So some of those traits you just mentioned, the overconfidence, the false sense of certainty, it kind of leads into another common thread, which is every single one of our phalse prophets is a man. There's this inherent maleness into the selections and it wasn't really on purpose, but I think it obviously comes down to some of those traits. But it really makes me wonder, how the hell do we have a taxonomy if it's all males? Like how were there ever any offspring for these species?
Asher Miller
Valid question.
Jason Bradford
Very good question. I'll have to look into that. I'll get back to you.
Rob Dietz
It's like a Jurassic Park thing.
Jason Bradford
This is a very deep biological thing.
Asher Miller
Kurzweil is the one who was . . .
Rob Dietz
Oh right.
Asher Miller
That's the origin story.
Rob Dietz
What was the title of that episode?
Asher Miller
How to have sex with yourself?
Rob Dietz
Yeah, I think we just solved our own question.
Jason Bradford
Yeah. Well, I mean, I guess you know, power and status issues come up then a lot, okay. Which is typical. Males often - It's more maybe like, you know, 90% of the problem of these kind of dynamics tend to be male. We could probably find plenty of examples of women who would have these similar issues. But I think this is definitely a thing where you get this power and status through your personality, through your self-promotion.
Asher Miller
Or your circumstances.
Jason Bradford
Or your luck the fall into. And then you get too much attention. You become so successful that people start calling you these wonderful things. You win MacArthur Genius awards. You know? You get on the Late Show.
Asher Miller
You've got heads of state on speed dial on your phone, and then you have to let people know about it.
Rob Dietz
You have a picture of yourself decaled to your car.
Jason Bradford
Yeah. You win giant NSF grants. You have this big famous lab, you can charge $100,000 to go to a speaking gig. And so once you're out there so much, then I think it becomes very hard to not do anything but double down on whatever position you took. So there might be a critique out there that's valid, but honestly, how hard would it be to listen to that and change your mind when that's what you're known for?
Asher Miller
Yeah. Now Jason, I've gotta admit, I've been a little jealous of all the work that you've done, you know, on your paper, the taxonomy.
Jason Bradford
I can feel that.
Rob Dietz
He's like one of the guys that he was just describing now. He's out on the road charging 100 grand to talk about the phalse prophet taxonomy.
Jason Bradford
Well, for supporters of Crazy Town, though I discount rates. Very discounted rates. Just let me know. Contact me.
Asher Miller
So I decided I'm going to come up with my own equation. Okay? And it's as scientific as like economic equations. And yeah. So here's, you know, thinking about commonalities. . . Or you could think of this as like a recipe for how to create a phalse prophet souffle. So you start with a little dab of family history trauma, trauma in the family or trauma in your family history.
Jason Bradford
Sure.
Asher Miller
You know, some of our phalse prophets, we talked about them as coming from basically second generation Holocaust, or coming from families had suffered from pogroms and other kinds of things. Trauma in the family. Disconnection from nature. You know, growing up in cities, not having experiences out in nature, coming from circumstances where there's a high premium on education, right? Probably, I would say these guys all have fairly high mental aptitude, you know, if you tested them on those kinds of potentials.
Jason Bradford
Yep. A lot of advanced degrees.
Asher Miller
And then a lot of them growing up in the baby boomer generation, which had sort of the biggest period of the Great Acceleration
Jason Bradford
The Donald Fagen era is sort of what we kind of talk about, right?
Asher Miller
So you put all those pieces together and there you go. You get a shitshow souffle.
Jason Bradford
Yeah, you stir that up . . .
Rob Dietz
Have you got the coefficients on each of those variables?
Asher Miller
Still working on it.
Rob Dietz
Okay, plenty of room in the literature to advance that.
Jason Bradford
Well you know, what you say ties into sort of what I was also thinking about. It was that a lot of these folks seemed not to have a very good connection to the material world, you know, even maybe say there's engineers involved and scientists. But they're very academic-y, right? It's looking at things at the scale of these pilot projects, or whatever.
Asher Miller
I've got a spreadsheet for that.
Jason Bradford
And I've got a spreadsheet for that.
Asher Miller
Kurzweil loved saying that.
Jason Bradford
And so you see that, but once you start to actually do work in the material world, you realize and it becomes so visceral to you like, "Boy things are a lot harder logistically, and practically than I imagined. Almost ever." And this is when farming kicks your ass. It's like, you realize nothing's gonna go to plan, things are gonna break. And stuff is going to come at you that you could not expect or predict. And you have to adapt all the time and make do with your circumstances. And it's very hard to be precious or perfect. And it's a very humbling experience. So I think a lot of these folks, whether they're academics or politicians, business tycoons, they tend to live high in what we've referred to in previous years as this tertiary economy world. And distance from the real-world practical experiences.
Rob Dietz
Well, and perhaps it's not a coincidence that our only ecologist amongst the phalse prophets says we're all going to be dead in three years. Maybe going a little over the top that way, but maybe that says something. I don't know. Hey, over the course of the season too, we had some thoughts from listeners about other people we should cover. And we just wanted to let folks know that we kind of, you know, in the early going and in the course of picking these folks, we had others on the list that we thought of but for whatever reason, they didn't end up making it. The one that I'm most disappointed about was a kind of a guru of the hydrogen economy. And that's Arnold Schwarzenegger.
Asher Miller
You just wanted to do his accent. That's the only reason.
Rob Dietz
You're so right. I wanted to do his whole gun speech from the from "The Terminator."
Jason Bradford
Okay. See, we got it in for you. That's all we need.
Rob Dietz
" The Uzi nine millimeter. The .45 long slide with laser sighting. 12 gauge auto loader. Phased plasma rifle in the 40-watt range.
Jason Bradford
Go ahead.
Rob Dietz
Thank you. That wasn't even a good one either. It was pretty bad. We could have had a whole episode with three of us doing Arnold . . .
Jason Bradford
Yeah, no. I think we left him out because he was really more of like a gullible promoter of this stuff. He wasn't the technologist.
Asher Miller
Yeah, he's a man schiller. Yeah, sorry buddy. You got to do some other accents. Okay, well there's some other obvious ones, right? We talked about doing Mark Zuckerberg, right? The impact of social media. Jeff Bezos, who we've talked about at different times, you know, over the seasons that Crazy Town. There's a lot that can be said about that dude. And then Donald Trump, but you know, too much in the news. No need to talk about him or any really any of those guys.
Jason Bradford
Yes. I think maybe I put on the list, I'm not sure, but George Monbiot has been kind of like driving me crazy lately. And I know Rob is a big fan of his writing, and he writes for The Guardian. And he's, you know, a British journalist. And very much you think, "Oh my God. Over the years, Monbiot would totally be one." I think what happened is he's totally been, just like the environmental movement in general, totally swayed and moved into the ecomodernist side of things. And talks a lot about faux food and things I do care about, like rewilding. But I think he just goes about it completely wrong. So I really kind of, we could have done that.
Rob Dietz
I couldn't. I had to veto it. Because I mean, you're right. He talks about fake meat and petri dishes and stuff. That's like, yeah, this really isn't the way. But I think that's probably out of panic of just witnessing what's going on in the environmental world. I think he's grasping at straws at times. But it would be interesting to talk to him and find out because I think he would at least have an earnest discussion and be in a nuanced space with it. He wouldn't just -
Jason Bradford
I don't think anymore he is.
Rob Dietz
I don't know.
Jason Bradford
I think he's really dug his heels in.
Asher Miller
It's interesting, because Rob, you talked about how upsetting Guy McPherson was to you because he was proximate to us in a lot of ways. And Jason’s upset with Monbiot for the same reason.
Jason Bradford
Same reason. Yeah. I think he's dug in more than you know because I find the food stuff more.
Rob Dietz
Maybe so. But it would be interesting to ask him and see. Maybe we'll try. Yeah, we'll see if he'll - He probably won't want to talk to you after your recommendation of turning him into a phalse prophet.
Asher Miller
I had wanted to do Gerard Baron who nobody knows about.
Jason Bradford
That would've been a great one.
Asher Miller
So the CEO of the Metals Company. The Australian mining dude who presents himself as a real dedicated environmentalist. And their companies present this insane utopian vision of deep sea mining for minerals. Because you know, we need a lot of minerals for the energy transition.
Jason Bradford
There happens to be these nodules lying in the bottom of the ocean, but they're 10,000 feet down kind of thing.
Asher Miller
And they're like, "Oh, we could just suck those up. No problem. Won't be any damage. No waste"
Rob Dietz
Elon Musk has a sub that can go pick those up. Pick up a Thai soccer player and some metals.
Asher Miller
And they're, you know, they're talking about how they're going to set up a metals common and going to do perpetual recycling so we get this beautiful perfect circular economy. All to justify basically raping and pillaging the last remaining bits of untouched natural ecosystems.
Jason Bradford
There are quite a bit of amazing creatures living down there.
Rob Dietz
Yeah, but perpetual, circular. Listen to the words.
Jason Bradford
Yeah, I think we're gonna hear a lot more about this in the next few years.
Asher Miller
100%. Money is going to rush into that.
Jason Bradford
I think this is gonna be a huge story. So thanks for flagging that. You know, the classic, this guy's been around for a long time. We didn't cover him, Bjorn Lomborg. He's basically a Man Schiller cloaked environmentalism and sort of rational economic arguments. I don't know why we didn't choose him. I guess maybe he's not as big an ideologist. But anyway, we didn't pick him.
Rob Dietz
Yeah. Well, I mean, I also think his arguments about climate, it's not really a pressing problem. You know, It's just like, okay, we probably don't need to cover him. Anybody that's listening to this show is gonna be like, "Yeah, yeah." Alright. The other last few that I want to bring up is kind of a triumvirate, Elizabeth Holmes, which would have been a female. That's unusual for us.
Asher Miller
But she did fake her voice to be kind of deep.
Rob Dietz
Yeah. And then also, Adam Neumann and Sam Bankman-Fried. And of course, those three are exemplars of Silicon Valley capitalism who had run amok.
Asher Miller
You gotta say who Adam Neumann is because people probably don't know that.
Rob Dietz
He was the WeWork guy. And then Sam Bankman-Fried is the crypto bazillionaire who is now headed to jail. So yeah, just looking at overdoing it in the whole business and investing world.
Asher Miller
Well basically offering like magical answers to things and basically conning people.
Rob Dietz
Yeah. Another sort of review of the season that I want to bring up is the load of toxicity that kind of got dumped on us. And Alana, our star researcher brought this up first because she was ahead of us. Diving into these people, and I mean, it takes its toll. I feel like early in the season we were like bright eyed bushy little squirrels gathering acorns. Where now - We gained 10 years. Now we're like the roadkill. The car ran over us. The only thing that's left is our tail waving in the wind, but our guts are splayed out all over. Okay, that's enough of that imagery.
Jason Bradford
Yeah, we're in heroin slumps all the time.
Asher Miller
That's why Tom Friedman's got ambulances ready for you know, all these -
Rob Dietz
He's got a blood bank on the racetrack. I remember that story. Yeah, but no. It just - It's hard to look at these phalse prophet ideologies that are so much more mainstream than what we're talking about.
Jason Bradford
Yeah.
Asher Miller
Yeah. I mean, the truth is we're getting, I think increasingly over the course of the season, getting sort of crappier and crappier. I think the Guy McPherson one almost broke us.
Rob Dietz
Yeah. We used to before each episode, we'd like tell jokes and make each other laugh. And this season, we'd just punch each face.
Jason Bradford
I think I got a taste of this because as I was writing the taxonomy paper, I was sort of surveying the landscape in kind of more depth than you guys. You were sort of waiting for Alana to get ahead enough. But I was really delving in and creating a sort of schema, obviously. So yeah, I felt it - I think I felt it earlier on than you guys maybe did.
Rob Dietz
So anybody out there, if you ever meet us, we just need a hug.
Asher Miller
But not from these guys.
Rob Dietz
Oh, come on. You know you'd like a big Steve Pinker hug.
Asher Miller
Yeah right. I want a Steve Bannon hug.
Jason Bradford
Who would you most want to be hugged by? That's a good question.
Asher Miller
That is a good question. Ray Kurzweil.
Jason Bradford
I think Ray Kurzweil. Yeah, I'm going with Ray.
Asher Miller
Okay.
Rob Dietz
I'm going off the charts. I'm going back to Arnold Schwarzenegger. Those giant pecks crushing me in man arms.
Jason Bradford
I'll let you have that.
Asher Miller
Last thing I would just sort of say, you know, about the season is that we also did struggle I think with balance of critiquing and criticizing. And not being just like, 100% dicks. And I gotta say, it was a fine line in some cases. Sometimes the people themselves rankled us. But you know, we actually did this season because we really wanted to talk about the false ideas. And we're using, in some ways, the phalse prophets as the vehicle for that. But we had to talk about these people. Do you know what I mean? And it's easy, maybe sometimes it became too easy to sort of mock, or whatever. And I don't think we were trying to be super hurtful, you know, some of them deserve it.
Jason Bradford
We may have crossed.
Rob Dietz
I mean, I do remember as we were getting going on the season, kind of debating that, right? Do we even do this? Because, you know, do we want to be making fun of somebody like that?
Jason Bradford
Right. Right.
Asher Miller
And we decided, focus on people that were in the public eye on some level, and were actually out there publicly advocating for something. Yeah, I mean, they weren't just like toiling away as an academic working on some paper like Jason Bradford or something. Do you know what I mean? And then we're gonna go shit all over them for their ideas. They were people who were actually out there evangelizing.
Jason Bradford
They were self-promoters. A lot of these guys are self-promoters.
Asher Miller
Various degrees of it. But yeah, for sure.
Melody Allison
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Jason Bradford
Okay, well there's no phalse prophet to key out in discuss. But I kind of want to talk about the taxonomic treatment and the typology.
Asher Miller
Of course you do.
Jason Bradford
It's one of my favorite things.
Asher Miller
I've never seen you so proud.
Jason Bradford
It was the best work.
Rob Dietz
What about the 134 birds that he saw?
Asher Miller
That's true.
Rob Dietz
Do you think he’s prouder of that?
Asher Miller
That might be true.
Jason Bradford
Yeah. Okay. It's a toss-up. It's a toss-up. I also like my dog, and I am proud of my family. Anyway.
Asher Miller
Those are third and fourth.
Jason Bradford
Yeah. Okay. So a couple of questions come to mind. Could I have done better? Are there things I missed out on? And I think actually, if I'm going to be honest?
Asher Miller
If you're a true phalse prophet, you say, "No, of course not."
Jason Bradford
But I'm gonna be honest with myself. And I think I missed a couple things, maybe, that I could have added. And so one, I might have called this species the illiberati. And these are the, ironically, sort of intolerant people who think they're being hyper tolerant. They might even burn books. They lean towards authoritarianism, but they're very left. And a good example of would be that there's a podcast that came out on the witch trials of JK Rowling. And it kind of goes over sort of the attitudes of maybe this species, the illiberati. Okay. Another one that we explained in our intro episode was the obviously right-wing authoritarian type figures. And they're also in the book burning. But they're also into assault weapons. And you know, they say things like sovereign citizenship. And Y'all Qaeda. So like we might, we're talking about like the Bundys, the Y'all Qaedas. Remember that? That was a great term. Maybe this species I'd call the patrinots. Because you know, they call themselves patriots.
Asher Miller
The patriarchy also.
Rob Dietz
So I'm struggling with a verbal response because I'm just thinking of, can you take a pile of books and start a fire by shooting an automatic weapon at it?
Asher Miller
We'll get the MythBusters guys to check that out. It's interesting that you bring that up, because I think that I would say if you look at the phalse prophets that we picked, you know, if you try to look at them from a political lens, when you get to Bannon and maybe, Moore - I don't know Moore's politics. But for the most part, they probably skew more in the liberal side of the political equation.
Rob Dietz
Or at least the liberal that will destroy any lefty notion like Bill Clinton.
Asher Miller
Sure. But you know, there's a ton of false dangerous ideas that are coming from the political right that we didn't really get into.
Jason Bradford
Well, the Bannon episode was probably the most we went into this. And so this group, I just called it the patrinots, would likely be allied with sort of the band insider thing. And we did talk about in that episode with Bannon, the difference between liberalism and traditionalism. And so it may fall in this, and we did bring up accelerationism. But we didn't cover that side of the of things as much.
Asher Miller
And I guess my point is, it may be half of the picture. Maybe it's more than half of the picture. I don't know. Just in terms of like, when you think about the ecosystem of phalse prophets, false ideas, and influence out in the public sphere, we focused on things that probably are closer to our camp, which is part of why we did it. Because they're people who are actually somewhat engaging the issues that we're concerned about.
Rob Dietz
All this means to me is Jason's got all kinds of opportunity to publish in nature and science and the popular press. He's going to make in the tour of talk shows.
Jason Bradford
Totally. And there actually were a couple of phalse prophets species that were in the paper that we didn't even cover. So there's the Q-fluencer. Right? So QAnon is just absolutely - It's too easy, right? But then there's the whole group of what we called the evolutionarily enlightenment movement. And I think I called them like, Conevolver, or something like that. So they basically it's like, you're going to become one with the cosmos through meditation and ayahuasca and gestion. And so anyway, go to the paper, I feel there's a lot of value there. I could add a couple things to it. But that's the thing. Science is always advancing. It's progressing. It's progressing. Okay.
Asher Miller
Ah. Maybe Pinker is right,
Rob Dietz
Infinitely growing science.
Asher Miller
Okay, so this being our final episode of the season, sort of a chance for us to reflect, I was thinking a bit about what are the lingering questions for me? Or takeaways or lessons that we got from talking about these phalse prophets. And if thing is, I don't know, what are the questions that come to your guys's minds?
Rob Dietz
Well, the first one that I thought of is why the hell are we, the three of us, and the people that we work with, so in the minority of ideas? Like any one of these phalse prophets, okay, some of them like Elon Musk, who's got more money than he knows what to do with and owns Twitter - Of course he can get his message out more widely than we can. But why are their messages in the majority, these delusional messages, and our messages aren't? And I'm sure there's a lot of reasons for it. But one of the things that came to mind for me is the people that were coming up with limits to growth and how to make a non-growing economy. You know, people like Donella Meadows, Herman Daly, E.F. Schumacher. Their heyday was in the early 70s. It's almost like it was quaint and it's no longer the next shiny new thing. So even though it feels like a philosophy so needed today, even more so than it was at the time they came up with it, it's just not going to hold sway.
Asher Miller
You can say that it's quaint or passe or whatever, but it was also very intentionally and strategically attacked, these ideas, right? Like if you think about - We talked about the Powell memo, and coordinated efforts to basically, one, I think the system adapting itself and not wanting to change into something other than capitalism as we know it. But there a lot of actors who were pushing a neoliberal agenda and saw environmentalism and all these other things, cultural norms changing, as a as a true threat. And they went on the fucking warpath.
Jason Bradford
Would you say that there's any sort of movements that are maybe partial, but really aligned with us, that are on the ascendancy now? I can think when people talk about regenerative ag as now a big thing. Or, I don't know how big it is, but idea wise, the degrowth movement, the donut economics. There may be a few things like that. Anything else?
Asher Miller
I think people turning towards more indigenous perspectives.
Jason Bradford
Yeah. Robin Wall Kimmerer's work. Yeah.
Rob Dietz
I think a lot of younger people look at stuff like voluntary simplicity as probably a good idea, especially because they can't afford anything anyway.
Asher Miller
Because it's involuntary. But I think the answer, it's not like it's an answer, but one possible answer to your question about why we're so in the minority, I think it's also because the closer we get, the deeper we're going into this unraveling of social and environmental systems, and the more desperate we are for solutions. Or to kind of live in denial, you know. There's like, I don't know if it's just an allegory or whatever -
Jason Bradford
No, it's a real story.
Asher Miller
How do you know what I'm talking about?
Jason Bradford
I know what you're going to say.
Asher Miller
There are I think studies done about people and asking them about the risk of a dam failure.
Jason Bradford
That's the one I was thinking of.
Asher Miller
And the closer that people live to the actual dam, the less they saw it as a risk. Because it was more existential of an threat, you know. So I do think that that might be a big factor as to why. And unfortunately, it may make it even harder, right, you know, for us as we get deeper into this stuff.
Rob Dietz
Yeah. Well, I also think these phalse prophets, I mean, you talked about it with them being overconfident, Jason, and full of certainty. Because of that, I think they offer something that sounds okay if you're not well studied or you're not well educated. And then it's something people want to hear. Whereas the message of, "Hey, there are limits to growth. Maybe think about sharing stuff a little bit more. Maybe power down." That's not as sticky. There's a lot more nuance in it. It requires certainly a lot more of a systems thinking approach and probably a lot more sacrifice than anybody is wanting to consider.
Jason Bradford
And the messages of consumer culture are really not supportive of that.
Asher Miller
And they're providing certainty, right? A certainty and sort of hope. Whereas we're providing uncertainty, right? Nuance and a reckoning. I mean, kinda hard.
Rob Dietz
So we, the three of us, need to go to Wharton School or Harvard Business School and get some good marketing courses.
Asher Miller
Do you want this cheap McDonald's hamburger, or do you want this shit burger over here? Which one do you want? So here's another question I've been thinking about, which is, is it possible to change minds?
Rob Dietz
Nope.
Asher Miller
Oh, are we done?
Rob Dietz
Done. Easy question.
Jason Bradford
Well, of course, there was that Michael Pollan book about psychedelics. So there's a way to maybe make your mind more open to change using drugs.
Asher Miller
Oh so we should basically make massive batches of psilocybin that we're going to drop in the public water supply.
Jason Bradford
Or LSD. That was the old school discussion. Because it's easy to synthesize in large volumes.
Rob Dietz
I liked his description in the book of the whatever that toad-licking was. He's like, "I did not like this experience. It was like being shot to the moon." Maybe it was like an Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, space exploration.
Asher Miller
I have to tell a little side story. Grateful Dead. I think in 1969. They were invited on to this show called Playboy After Dark. Okay? That Hugh Hefner had. And it was actually, I don't know what it was on, but it was like recorded on video. And you like walk in with this camera, and Hugh Hefner is like wearing a smoking jacket. And there are all these young women dressed up and all this stuff. And then here come these fucking hippies. Do you know what I mean? And the crew for the dead put acid in the coffee -
Jason Bradford
Oh no way.
Asher Miller
- for everybody. They dosed everybody at this party. So like, you could start seeing these people starting to like, "What the fuck is going on?"
Jason Bradford
"What happened? I'm feeling funny." They're trying to hold it together. Yeah. Oh, my gosh, Well, there is the drug way of doing it. But also, you know, you can take these persons, there's the big five personality traits. And one of them is like the spectrum of openness. So how open you are. So certain people are just going to be predisposed to having their mind being changed.
Rob Dietz
Well, that might make a big difference. I mean, there's, again, this stat is not verified, but people say you really need like 25% of the population to really believe in something to get that change. And so maybe it's trying to find the 25% that have a high openness coefficient.
Jason Bradford
Yeah, whether natural or induced.
Asher Miller
Right. We can increase the coefficients.
Rob Dietz
Crazy Town does not support putting any kind of drugs in anyone's coffee ever.
Asher Miller
Disclaimer.
Rob Dietz
Yeah, we don't even want caffeine in there.
Asher Miller
No sugar. I gotta say, I started to be the downer in all this. But I gotta say, i's great that there are some people that have openness as a personality trait, but I am really concerned about the tendency that we're going to have I think, of more rigid thinking when you kind of mix this cocktail of uncertainty and fear and crises happening. And sort of the tendency to resort to tribalism, you know, for a sense of security. And then you got technology field polarization that's happening. And then the dynamic of people with these rigid, fixed, extreme positions. You know, whatever they are. Being on the opposing sides of one another. Just reinforcing the other side, right?
Rob Dietz
Have you seen any of this happening in recent times?
Asher Miller
No never. I mean, you obviously have that as political polarization that we're having in this country. But it's just gonna be really hard, I think, for openness and people to change their mind when we're faced with all of this stuff, and all this uncertainty.
Jason Bradford
Can I give you a little bit of hope maybe?
Asher Miller
Please.
Jason Bradford
Okay. A couple of things come to mind. And this is not that hopeful, but I'm trying.
Asher Miller
It's all relative. It's on a relative scale. Yeah, it is.
Rob Dietz
Do something.
Jason Bradford
Okay. First of all, you know, people talk about the generational shift. So young people are much more -
Asher Miller
Oh, okay. So we're all dying off. That's the hope?
Jason Bradford
Yes.
Asher Miller
Okay. Good.
Jason Bradford
The old people die off. Young people have less lock into our current system. You know, they don't have a mortgage and jobs and investments in the stock market.
Asher Miller
That's great news. I'm sure they think that's great news. No mortgage.
Rob Dietz
No home. No prospects. No food.
Jason Bradford
Well, there's the whole idea of loss aversion. People are very nervous about losing what they already have. But if you're young - If you have nothing . . . You're more flexible and you have less to lose at the moment. So that's a big deal. And so when the young creates new social norms, it does lead to then older people, a certain percentage of them, you know, Archie Bunkers of the world, changing a little bit.
Asher Miller
And it's true. You see this when u look at polls of generations asking people about their views on capitalism, degrowth, you know. All these things skew much younger towards kind of the things that we talked about as being necessary.
Jason Bradford
It's like, we are hip. Like, when we talk, we're like the in-crowd. We're like the hip . . .
Asher Miller
Every listener right now is rolling their eyes.
Rob Dietz
I don't even know what you're talking about.
Asher Miller
Yeah, my hip hurts.
Jason Bradford
Okay, the other thing is that we have two opposing forces at work going on. We have the material conditions are going to be so disruptive, like you're talking about, that it leads to stress. And that leaves the opening for new ideas to come in that better explain reality. And that is a positive. But then on the other side, I acknowledge that that same stress leads to the tension that you're seeing, or the worry you see, of making people more conservative, tribally affiliated, locked into beliefs. But I think that it's both at the same time, right? There's some yin-yangy thing, or whatever, going on.
Asher Miller
So you're actually basically speaking Post Carbon Institute's Theory of Change in some ways. And Rob, you talked about this earlier when we talked about what 25% of the population, and that gets to the theory of Diffusion of Innovations. Which I don't know if we talked before about on this podcast, but Diffusion of Innovation is basically like this theory that has actually been tested in a lot of different conditions and situations. It's how, you can call them new technologies, or you can talk about new behaviors, new norms, are adopted, right? So you have this bell shaped distribution. You've got your innovators, which is a small percentage, very small percentage, of the population. Then you get your early adopters. And then you have this set of early majority, late majority, and laggards. Right? And so it's sort of this distribution. So the key thing there is having these innovators and early adopters developing these alternatives and keeping those ideas alive, which is where the shock doctrine comes in. That's the other half of our theory of change, right? It's diffusion of innovation on one hand, of how new behaviors get adopted. And that meets the shock doctrine, which is basically, look, shocks happen and when crises occur, you know, according to Milton Friedman's famous quote, ideas that are politically untenable or implausible become inevitable, right? So what you have to do is develop these ideas and keep them alive for when crises create that opportunity. Now, you have, as you just talked about, we're going to see lots of regressive negative wrongly directional solutions being offered out there in response to these crises that we're going to have to be competing with in the sense, right? But there's still an opportunity there, as these shocks happen, for people to turn to new ideas and new solutions. And that's why we have to support this community of innovators and early adopters to sort of keep those things alive and develop those. Do you feel better now? A little bit.
Jason Bradford
Okay, okay, good. I'm glad I led you to that.
Rob Dietz
I feel better. Because I was just thinking how Ray Kurzweil is an early adopter, or actually the innovator of nanobot computronium solutions, and I'm just a laggard.
Jason Bradford
Yeah.
Asher Miller
You are a laggard. No blue nanobots for you, buddy.
Jason Bradford
I believe one of the most important things that we can do right now is be comfortable with uncertainty. Be willing to see things in these shades of gray and avoid the black and white thinking. And I know that PCI is part of this liminality network. I think liminal space is a really interesting way to think about this. It's sort of the space in between two conditions, right? And understanding that you're in this in between space, in between time. And so what we are trying to do in a sense is figure out how to stay in that space. How to be on that kind of tightrope walk between understanding that there's an incredible scale and scope of change that needs to happen. And that is overwhelming when you think about it. But you also can't be so overwhelmed that you you can't do anything. That you're demotivated.
Asher Miller
Yeah. I love the word liminality and thinking about liminal spaces. And it's actually used as a term, not just for being sort of on a threshold between two spaces. But it's also often used to talk about rites of passages.
Jason Bradford
Oh, interesting. Yeah.
Asher Miller
And so yeah, Post Carbon helped launch, and now we're hosting this global network that we call the Liminality Network specifically, because it's designed to help explore that uncertainty and to stay in that space. And we've advocated resilience, right? Community resilience We've had a website called resilience.org for a super long time. We have papers that we've written, and we wrote a whole book called "The Community Resilience Reader." But I was thinking a lot recently about properties of resilient systems, and flexibility as one of those properties that you almost can't emphasize enough. And it's like having that mentality of being able to live with that uncertainty, right? And being flexible. Because the truth is, we don't know. I mean, we sit here and we critique these phalse prophets who present these certain pictures of like, we can solve this problem this way, or that way, or that way. Or we're gonna go conquer all the stars in the sky. And we're like, no, that's not gonna happen. But we don't actually, ourselves, know how things are gonna unfold. So living with that uncertainty is really key. And doing it with other people, not feeling alone with it. Because that's really tough. And that's part of why we did this podcast is for ourselves and our listeners to not feel alone with all of that uncertainty.
Rob Dietz
Yeah, I think if you want to take the idea of liminal spaces, and what you're talking about living with uncertainty into a practical arena, why not technology? I often ask the question, how much technology is enough, right? You have the Luddites, or the Amish, or groups that have said, we're going to call a point of how much is enough. But our society tends to say, there is no limit to it. More technology is always better.
Asher Miller
I've got a clear limit. It's the Bezos line. And it's where I still want to be able to have one of those little Amazon buttons, you know, when I run out of toilet paper I can just push the button, and they sent it to me. Can we just make that the . . .
Jason Bradford
Yeah, the Bezos line.
Asher Miller
The Bezos line. That's the minimum threshold.
Rob Dietz
Not cool. I mean, I think there's a Goldilocks somewhere in here, right? Too little, and maybe you're living a difficult life and you're undermining the life support systems, the planet. This is an open question, we're not going to answer it. But you know, how in the world can society decide on where that is? Other than the the Bezos toilet paper button.
Asher Miller
The problem is that society is not deciding, right? We're quote, unquote, letting the market decide. Which is all geared towards no limits. That's a big problem. I struggle with this question too, Rob. Because I don't have an answer to this. Like, what level of complexity and globalization do we need? Like let's say we're gonna scale way down, but we still want technology, right? And we want renewables. So we're gonna live more agrarian lives, the future is rural. But we still want to have some technology. I'd like our village to have some solar panels, even if we're not consuming as much electricity as we've been. But what level of complexity and globalization systems do we need to get just that one bank of solar panels in my little eco village?
Rob Dietz
Well, I'll say not as much as a phalanx of nuclear power plants. But still, yeah . . .
Jason Bradford
Maybe that is a tough one. And I think about this all the time, because the farming I do, and my son Davis is really into sort of electronics, and we're electrifying a tractor. And I can tell you that there's so many details that you have to sort through. And we do worry like, oh, actually, there's little microchips in here that make sure our control system for, you know, when you thumb throttle or whatever that the power gets distributed and the batteries don't fry. It's ridiculous how complex this all is. And I don't know the answer, but there was an interesting discussion on Nate Hagen’s podcast, "The Great Simplification" with Simon Michaud, where he was talking about trying to get these engineers in Finland, where he's based, these are students, to imagine a cell phone that wasn't a smartphone. But it was just like, you can call and you can text. And that's all. And you can only get materials within 1000 kilometers of where we're sitting right now. What would you do? And they basically came up with something. And it was like, you know, if you can simplify it down to levels of technology that are not as grand, as refined, as complex as we have today, there's a lot actually we figured out that you maybe with say, 3D printing and simpler materials, less purity requirements, not quite as, quote unquote, efficient as we have now. But so can we do this for all kinds of stuff? Can we make the solar panels that you can actually remake regionally? And can we make the computer chips that can allow you to have control systems for electronics, but don't require the super clean rooms? I think these are great questions.
Rob Dietz
It's interesting. You guys know that I biked down here yesterday to do this podcast.
Jason Bradford
I do. Very good.
Rob Dietz
It was a moment of footprint lowering madness. My legs are pretty tired. But no, one of the things I was thinking about while riding is just how we could have a far simpler amount of technology. You know, as I'm coming down on bike, I'm just getting slammed by cars and trucks and stuff going by. But then there were other parts of the trip where I was literally on this narrow, wooded path with birds chirping, stream flowing by. And there are other pedestrians, and scooterers, and cyclists. And what a missed opportunity for us to actually have regional transportation networks like that. Like a small amount of space, still plenty of room for nature. To me, that's kind of an example of a level of technology that we could have that would be helpful, make our lives better without beating the shit out of the wilderness and nature. I know. Bike paths between towns would be so amazing, wouldn't it?
Asher Miller
Well, necessity may hasten that.
Jason Bradford
That's right.
Asher Miller
Okay. I'm the question guy today. This is awesome. Here's some other big - Here's another big question that this season has brought up for me.
Jason Bradford
Alright, hit me.
Asher Miller
What if we are wrong?
Jason Bradford
Yeah, but we're not.
Asher Miller
Right. But that question, I wonder how many of our phalse prophets wrestle with that question themselves. I mean, they certainly come across as being quite certain in their beliefs.
Rob Dietz
They'll even sue you if they get challenged on it.
Asher Miller
But that's actually, to me, a great indicator of uncertainty and doubt. But you know, I don't know. I can only speculate.
Rob Dietz
I mean, I do it all the time. I think like, you know, how much nicer it would be to live in the space of some of these phalse prophets. And I feel like I went from being an ecomodernist qhen I was young in my career to sort of learning, studying the evidence, working with different people, looking at things happening in the world of conservation and environment, and changed from there. So when you were calling out the ecomodernist, you would have hated me, Jason, back in those days.
Jason Bradford
I was like that, too. I wasn't probably as sophisticated as you are at the time. But I probably bought into you know, the Sierra Club sends a magazine, and there's Amory Levin's getting press and Mother Jones, or whatever. And I was in my own research head, starting a young family. I didn't think is deeply as I do.
Asher Miller
I always talk about the early days because before I joined Post Carbon Institute, I had started an organization working on climate change issues. And I absolutely think of that time as swimming in the shallow end of the pool. You know? It was like all focused on kind of low scale behavioral changes. You know, I didn't have systemic understanding at all. But you know, I think some people could listen to us and say, these guys are way too certain. They act too certain. They're so like, you know, whatever, full of their own ideas and their own perspectives. But I guess the thing I'd say about this, one is, I think it's important to challenge ourselves. But two, and this maybe this is just presented as could be viewed as being defensive - I always kind of flip the question say, well, what's the consequence of being wrong? What's the consequence of us being wrong versus the consequence of some of these phalse prophets being wrong.
Rob Dietz
We have awesome bike trails all over the place.
Jason Bradford
Remember Greg Craven, your former neighbor?
Rob Dietz
Yeah.
Jason Bradford
He had like a million something hits on YouTube. He's a high school teacher. And he had the box with the - The four quadrants. - the four quadrants. Yeah. Can you talk about that? That was around climate?
Rob Dietz
Well yeah. It was all about climate and risk, right? So the risk of us thinking that Clint Eastwood, this was back in the day where they're still kind of fighting against the hoax kind of thing. So climate deniers. And yeah, his whole thing was, well the risk of the deniers being right just doesn't compare to the collapse issues we're gonna have if those who actually understand the science are right.
Jason Bradford
Yeah. And that's what's ironic about like these longtermists and sort of . . . They understand that the technology that they're advancing could kill us all off.
Asher Miller
Right. It is interesting, the existential risk guys, who are pathological. Because if they are only focused on the risks that keep humanity in existence and that's it, forget the risks to like suffering and quality of life, or whatever. Even if 80% of us die, that's okay. As long as 20% can get us to space -
Jason Bradford
As long as we have civilization in tact, and modernism. So that's all insane.
Asher Miller
But you think that there could be some contingency plans, some thinking about like, maybe we shouldn't put all our eggs in one basket.
Jason Bradford
The hunter gatherers in the bunkers.
Asher Miller
Oh right. That was their contingency plan. You're right. I'm being completely unfair.
Rob Dietz
That's why EO Wilson's got it. The 50% Earth.
Jason Bradford
That's a great contingency.
Rob Dietz
What a perfect contingency.
Asher Miller
But it's true. I'm sorry to say this, if we're wrong, people maybe have a better quality of life. Maybe you could say people who could have lifted themselves out of energy poverty or material poverty could have had huge, massive televisions in their houses and drive fancy cars. That's a downside, I guess, of us being wrong. But the flip side, holy shit.
Jason Bradford
But we're also saying, you have agency, you can take action. We have do-the-opposites. If you listen to these phalse prophets, most of them are basically like, either we're completely doomed or we're gonna solve this through advanced technology that really you have no part to play in.
Asher Miller
Yeah, that's true.
Jason Bradford
And so I think that we give actually - What the irony is is that we give people something to do that will give them a sense of purpose and meaning in their life. And that is valuable.
Rob Dietz
So what do you call a podcast without listeners?
Asher Miller
Crazy Town?
Rob Dietz
Exactly. Three bloviating . . . No, we have listeners. Yeah, we actually love our listeners and want to take a just a little bit of time to highlight a few of them. So I said, let's each take one person who's contacted us and have a have a miniature mailbag here.
Jason Bradford
Alright, okay.
Rob Dietz
So why don't you kick us off, Asher.
Asher Miller
Well actually, I want to start with the critique that we got, or somebody expressing some concern about something we talked about. So one of our listeners, Laura, who is a cell and molecular biologist, and she's worked in bio labs. She was concerned about what you, Jason and I, talked about the with Covid lab leak theory.
Jason Bradford
Yeah. Okay.
Asher Miller
And I think she was concerned that, you know, we were, I don't know, fueling beliefs that it was a lab leak. But I think the point we're trying to make, and so I'd like to clarify that in case there's confusion, is not that we had a position on whether or not there was a lab leak or not a lab leak. But bringing up the precautionary principle and sort of like the risk. Here we are in these labs, you know, with gain of function, doing things. And we might be doing them ostensibly because we're worried about these the risks of a virus breaking out in a pandemic. But it's a little bit hubristic to think that we could do that in perfect conditions and that there will never ever be a consequence like a leak happening. So whether it did in this case or not. . .
Jason Bradford
Yeah, we're not - We don't know. I think we said we don't know. But they've had that it's plausible is what's worrying.
Asher Miller
Right. We don't take a precautionary principle or think about these risks very much.
Jason Bradford
And that this technology that is getting easier and easier, and it's lowering the threshold so that you don't have to be in a bio lab to start making some of this stuff is the concern, I'd say. So thank you for pointing that out. We don't want to come down strongly that we think this is a lab leak by any means.
Rob Dietz
Well, and Laura is also right in line with me. I question most things that you guys say in this podcast.
Asher Miller
Fair enough.
Jason Bradford
Yeah.
Rob Dietz
Okay, let's move on to Don who is one of our most dedicated listeners. He's a former professor who studied sustainable population and other ecological topics. And now he's a farmer.
Jason Bradford
Oh my gosh.
Asher Miller
Does he like birds?
Rob Dietz
So, in line with Jason. I'm sure he loves birds.
Asher Miller
It's like a brother from another mother.
Rob Dietz
Very tasty. So the backstory of his email is that he also listens to Dave Gardner's, "Growth Busters" podcast. And he, Don, had written some ideas about agricultural policy and sent them over to Dave. And in Dave's podcast, he said he's making a run for president, maybe a Green Party candidate or something. And he's taking Don's agricultural suggestions as his policy platform. And he, Don, asked us to catch up, and we should be running someone for president and taking his policy procedures as well. So I wanted to ask, which one of the three of us are we putting up for Pres?
Asher Miller
Well, this is pretty easy. I can tell you it's not me because I was not born in this country.
Jason Bradford
Oh, you can't be president?
Asher Miller
I can't be president. Just like Ted Cruz.
Jason Bradford
Oh, no.
Asher Miller
I was born a U.S. citizen, but I was born on foreign soil.
Jason Bradford
That's the criteria?
Rob Dietz
Down to you and me, Jason.
Jason Bradford
We'll have rochambeau for that.
Rob Dietz
It's not gonna be me because I've already run in the past.
Asher Miller
You ran for president?
Rob Dietz
I didn't run, but somebody ran me on the steady-state economics platform.
Asher Miller
How many votes did you get?
Rob Dietz
Probably just him. He sent me some bumper stickers. Actually, Bill Ryerson was my vice-presidential candidate. We've worked with him in the past.
Jason Bradford
I think you're the most experienced candidate.
Rob Dietz
Oh no. No, I didn't campaign at all.
Jason Bradford
Well, I'm not campaigning. That's for sure.
Rob Dietz
Anyway . . . Thanks, Don.
Asher Miller
No wonder we're so screwed. None of us are willing to do anything.
Rob Dietz
Thanks, Don, for listening.
Jason Bradford
Alright, Luis - He had this funny quote. He says, "Big thank you for the amazing work. My therapist seems very happy with the extra session."
Asher Miller
You're welcome. That is actually - We're getting paid by the American Psychotherapy Association.
Jason Bradford
We get a kickback from BetterHelp or something like that.
Rob Dietz
Right.
Jason Bradford
Okay. He also had a suggestion for fixing, or I would say improving or making the insufferability index even more relevant.
Asher Miller
More insufferable?
Jason Bradford
We'll get into that. Yeah, yeah.
Rob Dietz
Okay, we talked about attacking the person versus attacking the idea. And where we really kind of leaned into making fun of the person this season was the insufferability index. But we heard that people found it kind of fun, and we tried to keep it lighthearted. But I thought it would be interesting to look at how we rated everybody, and who came out at the top, who . . .
Jason Bradford
You're the statistician, right?
Rob Dietz
Yeah, yeah. Of course. I wish I had a drumroll. Most insufferable was Steve Bannon with a score of 9.3.
Asher Miller
That's up there, dude.
Jason Bradford
That is high as Voldemort territory.
Asher Miller
That's definitely Tucker Carlson territory.
Jason Bradford
That's Tucker Carlson territory, not Voldemort. Sorry.
Asher Miller
Voldemort is like, yeah, off the charts.
Jason Bradford
He's a 10.
Rob Dietz
You gotta drop then to Jack Welch, our greatest CEO of all time, at an 8.5. Then Elon Musk at 8.0. And then it starts going down. Barrett Moore, our con-man doom prepper guy is 7.2. Bill Clinton is 6 and so on. Our least insufferable, I guess that's the most sufferable, is the two headed monster. Mark Jacobson and David Keith got a 3.3.
Jason Bradford
They each got 3.3?
Rob Dietz
We just scored them together. And William MacAskill, also, the longtermist, 3.5. So it's almost like the more frustrating the thing they're promoting, but the more sufferable they are.
Asher Miller
Well, I think that gets to how we view their intentions, right?
Jason Bradford
We gave them all a lot of credit for not being really awful people that we wouldn't want to hang out with kind of thing,
Asher Miller
Which gets to the point, I think, that Louis had brought up which is, we're kind of scoring them based upon, not do we want to have a beer with them or not, but a little bit more about who they are as individuals, you know. And he brought up a good question, which is, how would we score them in terms of like, who's the most dangerous?
Jason Bradford
Yes, exactly.
Asher Miller
It's a good question.
Jason Bradford
Okay. So I thought about the most dangerous and what's interesting is that I kind of came up with Steve Bannon as maybe the most dangerous. Which is interesting because he also was the highest on the score, our traditional list. So he would have stayed at the top if we would have added danger. But basically because he represents this traditionalist movement, and is into accelerationism in a sense, or is aligned with a lot of accelerationists that have very, very far right nationalistic, veering into fascism, kind of views. And I think that's just so scary for the future. Because I can see our society being pulled apart by this stuff. So anyway, no more. I don't need to say any more about him. That guy scared me.
Rob Dietz
Yeah, I mean, he's dangerous, but I don't think he holds a candle to Elon Musk. Just from the point of being that influential. I mean, the guy - having that much money? That much money, that much of a speaker/Twitter platform. We talked about how he combines the characteristics of so many of these others. He takes the CEO crap of Jack Welch and combines it with the ecomodernist stuff and the longtermist stuff. It's just like, with all that roiling around and somebody with so much reach . . . And you gotta remember how recent it is that he's been kind of knocked off the pedestal just a little bit, right? I mean, he was considered such a hero. We covered that.
Jason Bradford
You make a very good case, and I'm open to changing my mind. But I'm not going to in this case.
Rob Dietz
Yeah. I don't think you're actually open. You don't have that trait.
Asher Miller
We should be glad that he wasn't born in this country either because he can't run for president.
Jason Bradford
That's right.
Asher Miller
Talking about dangerous. I'm actually going to go the other way, right?
Jason Bradford
What?
Asher Miller
The two guys who scored lowest on our insufferability index I feel like are pretty dangerous. So we're talking about Jacobson and Keith. Mark Jacobson and David Keith. And it's for this reason which is that as we go deeper into the shitshow that is the 21st century, the more desperate we are going to be to address the crises that we're facing. We're gonna be dealing with energy crises and climate, and they're gonna be much more front and center. And so these ideas that the solutions that are available to us are electrifying everything, just massive build out of renewable energy, or we got to suck carbon out of the atmosphere or geoengineer are gonna be that much more appealing. And when you put those out as sort of like, the only games in town, no conservation, none of the stuff that we talked about, that's dangerous to me.
Jason Bradford
That's a good point. I actually, you know, ah. You’re make a strong case. And actually, if you look at what's happening in the news a lot, my son was passing this on. You know, he kind of hears me rant and then he follows news. And apparently, in the Inflation Reduction Act, you know, build back better kind of program, there's so much money going to the kind of Keith Direct Air Capture technology. It is a frightening amount of money.
Asher Miller
But these things are beautiful. I mean, what's better than taking corn based ethanol and then trying to capture the carbon from that and then building pipelines and, you know, pushing that through pipelines. And then, burying it in rock in the Dakotas. That seems beautiful and perfect to me.
Rob Dietz
Absolutely logical.
Jason Bradford
It is bad. It makes the MacArthur Foundation 100 million dollars look like chump change. Billions are gonna go into this stuff. It's terriful. Terriful?
Rob Dietz
Terriful, yes.
Asher Miller
Terriful. I think that's probably the best word for it.
Jason Bradford
God, is that a malapropism?
Rob Dietz
I can't tell you. It's amigulacious.
Jason Bradford
Okay. I do that a lot, don't I? Anyway, sorry about that, folks. Which gets to, maybe we should rate each other. And I realized that I may not score so well given my impediment with speaking.
Rob Dietz
I know that the person I least want to have a beer with in this room is me.
Jason Bradford
Okay.
Asher Miller
Here's the thing. I don't think we should rate each other because the truth of the matter is, I love you guys. And I hate myself. So like, what's the point of doing it? What I'd rather have is our listeners rate.
Jason Bradford
Yeah, maybe we could do that.
Asher Miller
Let's get objective, you know, opinions from our listeners.
Jason Bradford
Maybe at the Crazy Town Hall they could do that.
Rob Dietz
You guys all suck. Personality, zero.
Jason Bradford
Although, zero is good. Zero is good!
Rob Dietz
Oh, wait. So we're good. Yeah! Woo hoo!
Asher Miller
Now they're just gonna say, you guys are zeros. And we'll be like, "Yay!"
Rob Dietz
Is that bad that at the end of the season I still don't understand the rating scale?
Jason Bradford
That's bad. That's bad.
George Costanza
Every decision I've ever made in my entire life has been wrong. My life is the complete opposite of everything I want it to be. If every instinct you have is wrong, then the opposite would have to be right.
Rob Dietz
Okay, regular listeners will know that we try not to just rant incessantly without giving you some ideas of taking action or having agency. And that's our do the opposite segment. And I thought it would be fun, or maybe informative - Maybe, dare I say, inspiring? For each of us to share a do the opposite from the season that struck you.
Asher Miller
I'm gonna break the rules quickly because I don't know if this is exactly do-the-opposite, but we talked about this in the do the opposite segment of the Pinker episode.
Jason Bradford
Alright.
Asher Miller
And it's really stuck with me.
Jason Bradford
That was one of our first episodes.
Asher Miller
Yeah, I know. I still have a memory.
Jason Bradford
That's pretty good. You're like a turtle or something.
Rob Dietz
Who's Steven Pinker?
Asher Miller
He's gonna be so offended that you don't know who he is. Anyways, that whole episode is about how he basically wants to hold on with both hands, you know, death grip, to all the progress that we've made in terms of -
Jason Bradford
Enlightenment now.
Rob Dietz
A death grip on progress. Does that kill progress?
Asher Miller
But I think, you know, all the progress, scientific progress we've made, social progress, you know, all the gains of the last few centuries. And for me, we've talked about this in the do the opposite. It's like, how do we figure out how to maintain those gains, not in the context of the great acceleration where we're just consuming the living shit out of everything and growing.
Jason Bradford
And having modernity surround us.
Asher Miller
Doing it in the context of a great unraveling and a great simplification. How do we hold on to that? That conversation is not happening anywhere. So that, to me, is a do the opposite. Like, let us have that conversation because I share those desires, you know, those values/ And I'm deeply worried that we're going to lose them in the context of things kind of breaking apart.
Jason Bradford
That was super erudite. And thank you for reminding me of that. I was struck by one of the do the opposites in the Elon Musk episode, which is quite recent. So I didn't have to think that far back.
Asher Miller
Cheater.
Jason Bradford
Yeah. That actually came from my friend, Phil, who basically put out the idea on Earth Day of investing in what can run on solar flows and be built and repaired with natural and local materials. The day I was fixing and working on the tractor, and we have this wooden mallet. And you can imagine, like, you could make this, right? Like, if you got trained in this, you could actually harvest ash trees or whatever. You can make a wooden mallet, And I'm looking around me and like, you know how beautiful it would be if - I have one of these brooms that was crafted by hand too. You know, a sorghum broom and hazelnut wood or whatever. I think that would be great if we had a world like that. So more people learning those skills and building that potential.
Rob Dietz
Yeah. Well, and I think there's actually some, I don't know if I'd call it a movement, but there's definite interest in it. You know, people are looking into, how can I make a blade? How can I, you know, build stuff with my hands? It's become very popular.
Jason Bradford
Folk schooling they call it sometimes. A craft economy.
Rob Dietz
Yeah. Well, you were worried yours wasn't very erudite. I don't about mine as a, it kind of seems like a bit of folk wisdom. But I don't know. I just really liked it. And it's the idea of - Maybe it cuts across all our phalse prophets. And it's like, don't engage in the wishful thinking and the delusions that you find no matter how credentialed the people speaking it may be. You know, it doesn't matter if you went to Harvard, or Stanford, or Yale or whatever. Or Oxford if we want to go to a different country. You've really got to think. If something sounds too good to be true, it probably is. And just build up - I don't want anybody to be cynical, but I definitely want us all to be skeptical.
Jason Bradford
How many of our phalse prophets went to an Ivy League school or Ivy League-like school like Stanford or Oxford? It's tremendous, isn't it? It's a high percentage. It'd be an interesting stat to look at.
Asher Miller
That's why I dropped out of high school.
Jason Bradford
That's right. No chance of getting into those.
Asher Miller
Well, that's true. Yeah I mean, I think along the lines of what you're saying, Rob, on some level, every one of our phalse prophets is evangelizing an answer, you know. In all caps. Whether they're presenting it as the answer and other things are not the answer, it's somehow a solution. And doing the opposite is constantly testing our own beliefs in a simple answer of any kind, right? And in our certainty as cracks in the facade of industrial society sort of break open.
Rob Dietz
Yeah. Well, somebody who has really brought to the forefront this idea of testing your own beliefs is Megan Phelps-Roper. And, Jason, you mentioned that podcast, "The Witch Hunt of JK Rowling's Trials." Megan actually was the host of that podcast. And she had gained a fair amount of fame, at least sort of the TED Talk variety of fame, when she broke away from this church that had the horrible anti-gay -
Asher Miller
Westboro.
Rob Dietz
Yeah, Westboro Baptist. Yeah. And I don't know. I'm really fascinated by her. Like, she seems like just a really kindhearted, thoughtful person. Which is amazing given her background. And she had these six questions that you should ask yourself about how you think.
Jason Bradford
Because the idea was when she was in that church she and they were all convinced that they were on the righteous side and they were doing wonderful things.
Asher Miller
And what was interesting about her story, too, is that the more vitriol and hatred they got back for all the hatred that they put out, the more certain they became, right? The more they felt like they were actually sacrificing, and they were committed to, in a sense, their causes. Reinforcing their certainty, you know? It took her interacting with people, actually on Twitter of all places, who took a lot of time to be patient with her. That kind of cracked open.
Rob Dietz
Yeah. And I mean, that's different from us where we sit here and make fun.
Asher Miller
Well, so that's do the opposite. Don't do what we do, listeners. Don't mock people all the time.
Rob Dietz
Well, and we need to learn from this too. I don't want to steal - I mean I'm just gonna read her six questions to ask yourself. But definitely encourage our listeners to look up Megan Phelps-Roper and follow some of the things that she's saying. First question is: Are you capable of entertaining real doubt about your beliefs or are you operating from a place of certainty? And you know, we've already said, get used to the gray areas. Second question: Can you articulate the evidence that you would need to see in order to change your position or is your perspective unfalsifiable? That's a tough question.
Jason Bradford
That's a great one.
Rob Dietz
Yeah. Third one: Can you articulate your opponent's position in a way that they'd recognize or are you straw manning?
Jason Bradford
Yep, that's a great one too.
Rob Dietz
Yeah. For this one I want all of us to pay close attention: Are you attacking ideas or attacking the people who hold them? We're going to change -
Asher Miller
We do a little bit of both.
Rob Dietz
We're going to change our format next season.
Asher Miller
Oops. Sorry, Megan.
Rob Dietz
Fifth: Are you willing to cut off close relationships with people who disagree with you, particularly over relatively small points of contention? And then the sixth question is: Are you willing to use extraordinary means against people who disagree with you, such as forcing them out of their jobs or homes, using violence or threats of violence, celebrating their misfortune or tragedy? Yeah, really, really worth thinking about these and maybe go through the thought exercise, the mental exercise. Like that falsifiable one and being able to articulate what evidence you would need.
Asher Miller
I could tell you, if we could get $3 gas from sucking carbon out of the atmosphere and turning it into gasoline? Yeah, that would be falsifiable. Not gonna happen, but . . .
Rob Dietz
And as we can move into an O'Neill space at an affordable rate.
Asher Miller
I will change my mind.
Jason Bradford
Yeah. And as soon as we can get a little portable personal nuclear reactor to hook up to my tractor? Golden. No, but I think the embracing of the uncertainty, the being flexible, the question, I think that is really important stuff. The other thing that comes to mind is that - One of the things I remember learning about is that people's belief systems are often tied to what they actually do. So for example, when I was doing a lot of this organic farmland conversion, my thought process - Well, I think I talked to you about it, Rob, was that a lot of people are gonna look at this as maybe suspicious. Like, you're doing organic farming instead of the stuff we've always done here, you know, for the last 40-50 years, right? But if it actually works and you do it well, then by doing it, by actually seeing it, people will then start to say, "You know what? I actually believe in this too." So this is, again, belief systems are often a function of what your experience in the world is. The reality of your experience, rather than just these ideas that might come in. And that's why I remember early on, I said, a lot of these guys are in this sort of high level, academic world, political world. But when you get your hands dirty in the real world, you're forced to change how you actually behave on a day-to-day basis. Maybe interacting with nature, using your hands, you know, building things. Then I think, you know, that's another opening for ideas to your mind to change.
Asher Miller
Yeah. I want to sort of end the season and this episode with some appreciation. Can we do that?
Rob Dietz
Yeah, that's very easy. Actually, I will start with just appreciating the team behind Crazy Town. Obviously, you guys, but maybe more importantly, Melody, our producer and Alana, our researcher. We've got Taylor helping us out with transcripts. So much behind the scenes help that people are doing. We've got Clara helping us with promotions and the whole team and staff at PCI that helps us get this out to everybody, and helps us with the Crazy Town Hall.
Jason Bradford
And then posting it on resilience.org, which is a great outlet for people to see the show.
Asher Miller
And our donors who you know, the people who actually give PCI money for this show. I really appreciate it.
Rob Dietz
Yeah and of course, everybody who takes the time to listen, thanks so much.
Jason Bradford
Yeah. And we like hearing from you. So thanks for writing to us as well.
Rob Dietz
And I know you're going to hate this, Asher, but I do want to appreciate something that I really get from the two of you which is, there's a camaraderie in discussing these really tough topics. And I think it really helps me process it. You know, I could see myself going down a dark, dark tunnel if I were just thinking about these existential threats all on my own and not coming up with ideas for what we could do differently. And just laughing along the way with it and keeping things light amongst so many dark topics. It's really important.
Jason Bradford
It's super important to be able to have conversations like this with other people. And you know, there's an epidemic of sort of loneliness in America. There's isolation. There's a fear of talking about difficult things because of political polarization. So I find it very important for me personally that we can actually have these conversations. And I hope that that's what we're also helping our listeners have. Finding these topics. Finding these ways to talk about things. Maybe, hopefully, with other people as well. Because again, everything is so complex and difficult to comprehend. No one mind can hold all this and weigh all the tradeoffs and difficulties with dealing with this. That's why every time you start talking I just make a poop joke.
Asher Miller
I think that we were very intentional with this podcast. We've heard from people over the years who feel alone out there with us, and that's why we called Crazy Town/ Because it feels like either we're crazy, or the world is crazy. It's kind of hard to be in that space. So hopefully, you know, our listeners don't feel quite so alone if they're experiencing that. But also, we have this kind of plug the season, trying to encourage all of our listeners to share a specific episode or show of the podcast more generally with like three friends. And part of the reason we want to encourage people do that is yes, we'd like to spread the word and have more people listen. But also, maybe it's an opening to have conversations with other people. And sometimes it's hard to know how to do that. It's hard to bring up these topics. It's hard to feel like you're the Debbie Downer in a situation. So, you know, if this show could help start some conversations with others. . . But no matter what you do, whether it's talking about these things, it's laughing about the absurdity of the world and laughing into the face of darkness, it's doing direct action with other people, it's birding, you know, whatever the hobby is . . .
Rob Dietz
Riding the bike.
Asher Miller
Just don't go it alone. Find that camaraderie. I think one thing that is abundantly clear to me is that there is no going it alone on any level in what we're facing. And that having camaraderie, having connection with other people, with more than human, these are the only ways through what we're facing. So hopefully you have that in your life, If you don't, seek it out.
Rob Dietz
So basically, we're just saying to all our listeners, go out there and have a good time.
Jason Bradford
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Jason Bradford
Okay so, a couple weeks back I brought up my birding stats, right?
Rob Dietz
Yeah.
Jason Bradford
And I was hoping that maybe some of our listeners would be interested in how I did -
Rob Dietz
They're not.
Jason Bradford
Just . . . I did get 111 species in the month of April.
Rob Dietz
They don't care.
Jason Bradford
And my target was 100.
Rob Dietz
We're not putting this in the episode.
Asher Miller
Woah, you got 111?
Jason Bradford
I got 111.
Rob Dietz
Do not encourage him.
Jason Bradford
And so I didn't even go to the coast.
Asher Miller
Oh, wow.
Jason Bradford
It's all within the Willamette Valley.
Rob Dietz
Stop. Stop. This is like - It's like he's addicted to a drug.
Asher Miller
But it's birds. I'd rather him be addicted to that than to like, porm.
Jason Bradford
Exactly! This is keeping me on the up and up. I'm getting outside.
Asher Miller
He's outside.
Jason Bradford
I'm listening. I think our listeners are going to want to know.
Asher Miller
No, they actually probably don't.
Jason Bradford
Oh my God.
Asher Miller
Tell them your favorite bird.
Jason Bradford
Oh my gosh. I have no idea. They're so wonderful. I think I like hooded mergansers recently.