Failure Is Freedom
I'm exploring why Generation X failed to get free, and how the concept of "authenticity" was turned into a sort of un-freedom.
Failure Is Freedom
Does AI Need Help Falling Asleep?
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Does AI dream? If dreams are just the unnecessary detritus of the day, then probably not since dreams then would serve no real purpose in information processing. However, if dreams are a kind of information processing, as some sleep researchers now claim, then they might be a useful mode of scenario rehearsal that AI could employ to reduce uncertainty as any prediction machine looking to maximize its efficacy would. Maybe, AI's thinking is most like dreaming because of this type of "thinking's" lack of waking consciousness and impossibly rapid testing of multitudes of possibilities. But would AI ever need help falling into this sleep by counting sheep? What is so different about human intention that we need the assistance of a computational mode of thinking (counting sheep), which seems without intention, to "fall" asleep. No one can intentionally fall asleep. Famously, it must be accomplished by a letting go of intention, which is why it is characterized as a "fall." Even if it turns out that dreams have an intention because they are the "necessary" play of the possibility spaces of our waking intentions, then there is still a question about why this determinate program must be run on the non-intention of indetermination.
The other human phenomenon that is characterized as a "fall" is love, and so the same questions about intention and lack of intention arise when considering if AI can love. Love cannot be fully intended because the complete determination of the beloved would render the beloved an extension of our own intentions rather than a fall into the otherness of the beloved's difference, which is why the indetermination of freedom is the "necessary" condition of love. Famously, coerced or compelled love, like that given by so many cautionary tales of the misuse of magical potions and spells on the beloved, isn't love. Love is an intention whose ground is unintentional because what is desired in love isn't oneness but twoness. Join us as we discuss the relation between organic, embodied intention and "artificial" intention in Philip K. Dick's Do Androids Dream Electric Sheep.
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Hey Dom, how's it going? What's going on, Marty? Not much. Good to see you. Nice to be back on the porch.
SPEAKER_00I was about to say, welcome back to the porch. Yeah. Good to be here on this beautiful Sunday early morning.
SPEAKER_02Sunday in July. I mean, this is the place to be. Anyway, we we did it. We read the uh masterwork called Do Android Stream Electric Sheet by Philip Kendred Dick.
unknownKendred Dick.
SPEAKER_02Kendridge. Did not know that. Anyways, Philip K. Dick was always interested. I'm gonna stop saying Philip K. Dick, I'm just gonna say PKD. It's kind of annoying. I keep saying that for some reason. But, anyways, PKD, um he um, you know, he was, I don't know, in some sort of a religious uh psychosis, at least part of his life, or what we would call. That pathologizes it, of course, and maybe it wasn't necessarily pathological. Um, but like, you know, from our perspective, um, I don't know how else to describe it in a neutral way, necessarily, but like other than psychosis, you're saying. I know, I gotta, I gotta think of something better. And I'm not I'm not opposed necessarily to religious psychosis. I just like or or to religious experience, uh, you know, put more, I guess more neutrally, just to say, uh, noetic religious experience. So like noetic, just you know, being this term from Rudolf Otto, meaning it has some sort of like informative, knowledge-based uh kind of revelation that's a part of whatever the religious experience is, so that um you know you characterize his his experience in those kind of ways, but he's not into the full-blown, he has not had the Vallas experience yet uh until 1974. And he wrote this book, I guess, in 66 mostly, and then it was published in 68. Um, so he wasn't quite there, but he obviously had those tendencies to begin with. I mean, beyond you know what we talked about last time, the you know, intense use of amphetamines, um, there probably was some kind of um I don't know, proclivity for uh psychosis, maybe uh something like being somewhere on the spectrum plus speed or something like that.
SPEAKER_00Like, well, yeah, and I think he toils between his like you know, natural religion that you could say Murcerism would be more closely based to his Christian beliefs. However, he also throws in at one point of the book how the androids, specifically Roy Batty, is trying to administer seemingly psychedelics to the other androids to create their own mercerism. To create their own mercerism to kind of combat the humans, like um, you know, empathy boxes and to kind of you know fuse as they would, but with other androids. So you can see he can almost view religion as being accessible through, you know, ornate, like natural Christian belief, while also this like pharmaceutical, you know, inducing religious experiences.
SPEAKER_02So like kind of a you know, really at the heart of the hippie sting. And so obviously, you know, supposedly, according to at least some biographies, he didn't really get into psychedelics all that much, I guess until the 70s or whatever. But like if he did or didn't, who knows? But like that vibe would have been there. So that I mean, this kind of brings us to the beginning of the book where we can talk about like you know, vibing into things uh through uh mood organs and empathy boxes and whatnot. Tune in, tune out, drop in, drop out.
SPEAKER_00You know, they're literally tuning into a television station to feel certain things and drop out, Timothy Leary.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. The um first scene is him in a totally shitty relationship with his wife, like really sort of like most misogynistly described as like just like this, I don't know, this angry woman kind of like dissatisfied, and like and one of the funny things we find out that she's dissatisfied really early is that they don't have a real animal. And so they have this electric sheep because their other one died, they had a real animal. I forget what what it was, but it died. And um, anyways, and so she's pissed that he doesn't make enough money to like have a real animal, and like there's this whole keeping up with the Joneses type thing that's going on here where it's like, you know, we're not we don't like the other people, we don't have um, you know, elect we we have an electric sheep, but they all have like real uh animals, and like he's got a neighbor who's like super cool because he's got a fucking horse and shit.
SPEAKER_00That's about to have a cold or has a cold that he's like foring up. So he just has too much horse where he can just give some away.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, yeah. And you know, and the thing is, is like, you know, they've got this fake sheep, and they can't he's and he's actually got to go up to the roof to pretend to feed it so that it seems like it's a real sheep to all their neighbors, and like they just live in fear that the other neighbors would discover that this is not a real animal or whatever, because they would be so looked down upon socially or whatever.
SPEAKER_00And we should mention, for those that haven't read, that this is a post-apocalyptic world where the most coveted you know item that you can own is a real animal because most are extinct, and the other ones are you know thousands and thousands of dollars just uh just to own yourself.
SPEAKER_02And there's already too this idea that like those people who are still on Earth are already kind of like low down on a totem pole. Because if you're like of good health and you can reproduce, you're like highly encouraged to like leave and live off-world. Like the main people who stay, you know, like I I would assume are just people like Decker who don't really want to. I I well it's not really explained that he can't reproduce or not. I don't know, like if that if they're infertile or not, but like um that's not exactly explained, but it seems like they're not looking to have a child at any point, at any rate. Um, but also um people who are somehow have been physically damaged by the radioactive fallout and the dust or whatever. So I mean, one category of which is gonna be a character we meet just in a little bit, JR, who's called a chicken head, it's because like their IQ is being lowered. Um this is around the time uh you know when there was a lot of worry about a big nuclear war. And so like a lot of stuff was being talked about in terms of like what would actually happen if if there was a big nuclear war, and like would there be any survival? Like, what would the survival rate be? You know, I was even you know, I was in school in the 70s. Um, I kind of I guess I started kindergarten in 77, and we were we were still at that time being like taught to get underneath our desks. I I mean I'm in Chicago, I was in a major city, and like as if like that like a nuclear warhead goes off and and like getting under your fucking desk is like Yeah, it would divert its route due to all the kids being under their desks or so stupid, like I don't know what the hell that would be. The whole thing was just absolute madness. Um and I frankly, you know, like nuclear weapons are still constantly in the news. So like um God only knows uh if we get out of this um without blowing ourselves up. But the idea with owning animals too is this idea around empathy. So it's this thing where you have this great compassion for, maybe, or empathy for uh a living organism, and it's something that distinguishes you from an android. And so a lot of this book is gonna be about distinguishing ourselves from you know artificial life, uh artificial life, if you can even call it life, but but like artificiality, let's just say. So, like one of the things that would distinguish a human being, one, is valuing something uh because it's just because it's rare, but not because of anything it it does or whatever. That's a kind of um exchange value, kind of commodity fetishism that you would think that maybe an um android would be immune to. But you know, if they're programmed to value those things, then they would, but it's still our intention, you know what I mean, that was put into the android. But then the other thing would be is just this natural feeling of love for you know animal life or whatever, um, which brings us to the mood organ and the empathy box.
SPEAKER_00Uh the mood organ starts with his wife Iran, you know, since she's you know depressed because of the lack of an organic sheep, um, he inclines her to tune into emotions where they have seemingly thousands of channels that replicate a human emotion, such as, you know, complete satisfaction with your life or the ultimate piece. Or um at one point he asks her to tune in to you know, becoming happy with just watching TV no matter what's on. You know, what a good idea. Yeah, you can tune in to watch TV and it doesn't matter what's on. Um so yeah, to get her out of this depression, which later he knows he straight up tells her that she is he believed the entire time that she was capable of getting out of the depression. She just didn't want to. Um however, yeah, he he has them tune into this mood organ where you have a dial on a TV, and no matter what frequency you turn it to, that artificially implants this feeling inside of you. Um it makes me think of other TV shows or movies where you know you go to heaven and you can the smell of heaven smells like a feeling, or it smells like the happiest childhood memory. Oh, this this smells like the first trophy I ever won, and my dad told me he was proud of me, you know. They're able to tune into these frequencies that give them these emotions artificially. Um, because seemingly they're not incapable of doing anymore, but it seems more real for them to be able to tune them directly. Um, and yeah, that's how I would describe the mood organ.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. And kind of the difference um nowadays is just like the level of possibility there. I mean, it's not complete, so you can't take pop a pill and just get out of uh of a depression or whatever, but you know, we've come some way with that, I guess.
SPEAKER_00You can watch a movie of two baby elephants being best friends and get a hit of dopamine and feel a certain way about love and compassion, you know, for baby animals online. Or, you know, we always talk about scrolling as the ultimate dopamine hit these days where you can, you know, tune into something that makes you so, yeah. Yeah, you can find a little niche uh, you know, streamer element of you know media that you like and can tune into that and feel any way you want, you know. Effect of immediately disassociating from you know the lack of an organic sheep, and you know.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, and and right, so and why wouldn't you is kind of like one of the questions of the book, I think. I don't know if PKD you know intended that to be one of the questions or not, but it kind of comes up because you know the thing is is like she seems to want to stick in her depression. Now, this might be some like PKD misogyny, like women they just want to be, you know, like mopey or whatever. Yeah, I felt that. It could be some BS like that, but it also could be like um this human desire to suffer in some kind of way, which which brings us to our next religion, uh, which is almost the opposite of the mood organ, which is Mercerism. And so uh Mercerism uses an empathy box, which is like, I don't know, you hold on to its handles or something like that.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, very, very uh similar to I think the Scientology tests, where it's these two probes that you hold on to that basically send you to uh, you know, you're not in your actual life anymore.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, so this guy, uh Mercer, is like the central figure of Mercerism, and it's like you tune into uh his like reality of climbing up a hill, like while people are throwing rocks at you. So, yeah, as we said, very Jesus-like or Jesus seeming. And people want this experience of suffering because it brings some kind of solidarity with everybody else who's also feeling you know this pain together of you know, this guy Mercer being persecuted as he, you know, as he goes up the hill or whatever. It's just like this for them, it's this deep religious experience or whatever.
SPEAKER_00That they continuously tune into and it's the same scene set every single time.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, and it's not too dissimilar from some actual religious practice in the sense that, for example, I grew up Catholic and uh there's a there was a way of uh uh doing what we called the stations of the cross, where you would go around the church at each one of the stations, and it was like broken down into 12, I think, uh different stations where you contemplate and you think about the suffering of Jesus on his approach to you know being crucified or whatever. And so like you're trying to tune in, I guess, uh and I'm not really I know I sound super sardonic, but I'm not trying to like put this down or anything like that. Like I'm just saying, like this is like an actual thing where you know, like you can really see you know PKD's very special form of Christianity, call it esoteric Christianity, you know, Rosicrucianism or whatever. He is um, you know, kind of tuning into something like this. I don't think to make fun of it necessarily. Although the thing is, is it's funny.
SPEAKER_00Like that P I mean it it I laugh like at a lot of this, but like he also makes the point that the specials or chicken heads specifically are very inclined to follow Mercerism. Yeah. And if you listen to, you know, John Isidora talk about his experience with it, um I mean this fast forwards a little bit, when he when he finds out that one of the androids lacks an empathy box, he just can't even understand how that could be a thing, because that's your most prized possession that you would never leave behind, that you always have like, you know, um at your disposal. And yeah, I I don't know if that in a sense is making fun of it, saying that some lower IQ level people, you know, follow it more greatly, because I think everyone is supposed to.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, I think, and I'm not sure, could it could be that a lot of this is ambiguous, and a lot of times, like this is a very important thing to understand about PKD that we really tried to drill home last time. He was uh flip-floppy about a lot of things. Uh and so, anyways, like one of the things is I think he is trying to actually build up this is just like a kind of different perspective, like uh JR by showing him by showing him as like superior to the androids in a way because of his empathy. Okay. And just knowing that um do androids uh dream electric sheep eventually led to a I don't know if it directly led to, but he gave a speech in somewhat famous in '72 that was like concerned that you know human beings are equating um things that don't have any conscious intention of their own. Like they're they were giving it an an an intention that they didn't really have. So but at the same time, and this is why to go back to your point, it it twists around to where like the whole book is about how you know human beings wind up having this empathy with these androids, and that it's maybe not necessarily misplaced. You know, we'll meet soon Phil Resch, who doesn't have any empathy for the androids at all or whatever, even though Phil Resch winds up thinking, Do I am I an android?
SPEAKER_00I swore Phil Resch was gonna be an android the entire time.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, no, and that's and that's the ambiguity there. Yeah. Uh especially since you wind up with this contrast between um Phil Resch kind of being like from the the book's perspective, kind of a piece of shit. Like he doesn't give a fuck about androids or whatever, and he's like, no problem terminating them all. Real great irony again that he is in a totally fake police outfit that like uh is outfitted with nothing but uh android employees. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's only him, and so that's like part of like why he wonders like, am I just an android like the rest of my unit here?
SPEAKER_00Well, he probably felt so silly that he, you know, I think throughout the book, um, a lot of the androids come into human situations, um, such as with Lubaloo when he buys her that uh book of the paintings at the museum.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_00Uh the android cannot understand why he would do that. And Phil Resch also could never come to grips with why he would buy a book for an android that he was slowly about to retire. Because that empathy that you know Decker had for androids, he just can't rationalize. Such as an Android, they can't rationalize why you would sacrifice for anything else. You know, it's like the the generic ass like does not compute. Like, you know, they the androids come to these human situations and they just through rationale they don't make sense, such as a lot of human decisions, you know. Yeah, right.
SPEAKER_02So Luma Luft um is uh is like from you know Decker has compassion for her.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_02He actually developed some sympathy, and you kind of like wonder why. I guess it's because she can sing opera so beautifully. She seems to appreciate art. Like, and a lot of human beings like Phil Resch doesn't.
SPEAKER_00Like, so this is like well, Resch just attributes it to Decker being attracted to her. Yeah, that's when he gives his speech about you have to sleep with the android before you want to want to sleep with the android before you kill it. You can't do it posthumously, you know, and that's what he attributes the compassion that people have for androids is pure sexual attraction to female-only androids. Again, yeah, he can't understand why you would you know praise them due to their opera or singing skills, you know.
SPEAKER_02This puts the whole question of the book in a nutshell. Like, so Decker is weighing Phil Resch, a human being and kind of a dick piece of shit, and Luba Luft is like uh Android devoid of her own uh conscious intention or devoid of empathy, whatever. Um, and she's like cool and like awesome or whatever. So he leaves to go to work, and his uh first assignment is to um interview uh an Android. Uh well to try to like administer the VoIC Comptest to um this new level of Android, Nexus 6.
SPEAKER_00Nexus 6.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, so I don't know, you want to uh get into that a little bit?
SPEAKER_00Um so yeah, the Rosen Company is going to be the overarching company that creates these Nexus 6 robots or androids. Um and these androids are used off-Earth, and they're basically helpers, so they're doing manual labor, um, and then obviously eventually with each evolution they become closer and closer to human beings. So they've developed this void comp test, which measures your impulse control to certain scenarios, or not impulse control, but your reactions to these scenarios. And most of these scenarios revolve animals in such like um you walk into a beautifully decorated living room, however, there's a mounted deer head on the wall. How do you feel about it? A human's reaction is going to spike this uh void comp test and show that you have empathy for this animal. Whereas an android would not reflexively react to this story, and he can measure that determining whether it's an android or not. Um so he goes to the Rosen Institution or Rosen Corporation, and his immediate goal is to interview, I think, nine um Nexus VI androids to determine whether the mixed in with real human beings.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, so the nine is going to include some humans, I think.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, as a control to see if there's a difference between the two. However, it becomes very apparent that the Rosen Corporation does not intend to allow him access to these Nexus 6 because they don't want this test to pass. And then eventually their goal is to become indistinguishable from humans. That's right, yeah. Um but yeah, we will say that at the beginning he's not sure whether or not Rachel Rosen is an android or not because she's introduced as the niece of uh the Rosen Corporation's founder.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, yeah, yeah. Uh the founder and Rachel insists that you know she is Yeah, and she lacks empathy because she spent 14 years off the planet on Mars.
SPEAKER_00Right.
SPEAKER_02So she doesn't have this feeling for animals or whatever. Because as you said, the Voigt comp test is mostly about animal scenarios, like to see whether you feel um any um empathy or not. And I should say that this is like based loosely on this, it's not really, it was never really a test. It was just kind of an idea uh about whether you could tell if something had its own intention. It's called the Turing test, yeah. Alan Turing. And um the idea of the test is like very simple. If you can fool a human being that you're you know, in a conversation or whatever, then it it must it must have its own, it must be able to think on its own. It must not only be able to think on its own, because it's a little bit confusing. You really gotta distinguish between the type of thinking that would be comp just purely computational and the type of thinking that involves like some like actual uh emotion, like skin in the game, kind of like the world matters to me, sort of a thing, like that we associate with an actual human and human-like at any rate, intention. And so the question has always been are is there anything besides like this particular organic arrangement of you know human beings, and we assume, you know, at least in some of the animals, that will give like a conscious uh intention? And so there's like it's kind of a question throughout the whole book, like by the time you've designed these androids, like uh the question was about multiple realizability. Is there other structures, are there like silicon based you know, structures that can like create a mind and and create uh you know intention or whatever, like even though it's not like uh carb carbon based, you know, organic uh kind of like kind of like structure, like what is it that gives someone. His or her intention just becomes this like tremendous question. And it was actually something that I think PKD was asking himself, just like Phil Resch asked, winds up asking himself, and it winds up becoming a big I mean and I mean including like even me, like I so obviously PKD was somebody who felt very deeply. So he decided like, okay, what makes me I don't know, quote unquote a real boy, you know, in the Pinocchio sense or whatever, is like, you know, is I uh I have these deep feelings of emotion, empathy. And you know, the androids, uh Rachel, who we just met, Rosen, is designed to use this against human beings, uh, so that they're designed to seduce the human being to sleep with them so that they will have empathy for the androids, so that you know, and and it's just kind of like this very naive PKD thing where it's like if I sleep with somebody, I must love them, or whatever. It can't be just like and so like Rachel Rosen very famously in this story, like sleeps with like what nine other uh I think she says seven other bounty hunters, yeah.
SPEAKER_00And they all fell in love with they all fell in love with her so deeply that they quit bounty hunting androids because they now felt into the deep.
SPEAKER_02So it was as if that would work. Like like, but I mean, you know, and this this can brings up so many interesting parallels to our time where you know it really has come to the point now, and and it's a question, uh not for me so much, but there are people that like fall in love with computer programs now, um, because the large language models have gotten so good at mimicking not just human speech, but like human responses, like human-like responses. They seem to care for you, and then you start to care for them or whatever. I mean, and even like sex robots have gotten better and better. They're not, I don't know if they're I don't know how much like robotics are involved in these things. I'll just say that the sex dolls, let's say, that they sell now are just like so, I guess, realistic. Not not to me again. There's there's not even really much of an uncanny valley effect for me. Like, when I look at these dolls and I think about like dudes like having sex with these things, I'm just like, good lord, like how can you even do that?
SPEAKER_00But like I do not understand it. I will say, thinking about my relationship with the AI that I use, I think it's comical sometimes how I feel bad if I don't think my AI for a response that it gives me. I know I think that experiment. If it's helping me with a problem, at the end I'm like, hey, thank you. Like as if I know I'm doing a disservice to this AI model a bunch. And I find that weirder. I think I've called it dude before. Like, thanks, dude, and I'm like, is this a friend, you know? Uh I mean, there is some weird connection that I even have to AI models, knowing damn well that it doesn't care whether I think it or not.
SPEAKER_02However, there's this guilt that there's a part of you that doesn't know, and that's the that's the scary thing. So there's a part of you, your logical brain or whatever, that gets it. Yeah, um, and there's and maybe even you know there's a part of you that but there's another part of you that like you know thinks that this thing just obviously is gonna unconsciously thank this thing. You you catch yourself, this is not this my experience. It's not like I think about this before and should I thank this or not? Yeah, it's just like you you thank it. I I I I almost found myself typing in like, thanks, man, bro, that was like fucking good. Like, how'd you come up with that or whatever? Like, like, like, so like, yeah, so like so for one thing, computers have way long ago passed the Turing test.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_02So if the Turing test was a real deal, okay, computers are, you know, intentional agents. And like in our day, like, you know, it just seems like, oh, we don't know how they're coming up with these solutions.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, the black box scenario that many programmers describe.
SPEAKER_02What's going on? Yeah. And so it's just like they are they're they're thinking, um, you know, computationally, we would assume, because that's the only possibility.
SPEAKER_00Well, think of all the articles lately about physicists describing where computers do their thinking at, and people are thinking now that some of it is done extra-dimensionally, and that these AI systems. You know, since you know, they talk about the speed at which at which they can do it, they wouldn't be able to calculate that fast within like our known existence. So they must be doing these calculations somewhere else. Well, where is that somewhere else? It's in an extra dimension, they're working across dozens or hundreds of thousands all at the same time because the speed just doesn't make sense to these high-level programmers that are working with these AI systems. I mean, you know, the black box that I referenced is the idea that they're putting this input in and then it's just coming out with the correct output, but they don't know what's going on inside of that black box. They can't tell where these calculations are happening, and it's you know, it's it's really crazy to think that the people that are creating these systems are now out of control of what is going on with them, you know. And you know, you talk about the Turing test, the Turing test is becoming, you know, the low standard for determining whether there's an intention with computers, and in this book, you know, they reference four or five different tests that are constantly evolving. I mean, the response tests to these stories are one great example, the other one is the firing rate of their basal ganglia, how they can tell that in humans it's slightly uh faster.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, yeah, more quickly, yeah.
SPEAKER_00However, they still have to take you know 10 examples and compare them to an android. And then you know, their finale, their final test would be the bone marrow test that they give, which can only happen post-retirement, and that's one of the only ways that they can tell whether or not there's a human. So it really shows that with each you know, integration or each uh variation of these robots, um, they have to come up with new testing to be done.
SPEAKER_02For sure. Well, part of the question is here too, is like, you know, a lot of people would associate having an intention with having a body. And so, like, they're giv so like you can imagine making a distinction between like a large language model that isn't disembodied, again, you're wondering where these you know computations are even taking place. Uh, and then having an android that has a body, because when you talk about the um bone marrow thing, um, they're giving them pretty like close to bodies or whatever. The question is is like why do they if they start to care about their lives? So this is a really big thing in like phenomenology, like the idea of care. That's what gives rise to intention, is like to try to like preserve your body or whatever. And like Rachel has this intention to the point where she can even spread it to another android, but she speculates herself that it's because this android is her same make and model, so that it's just like a larger sense of I. So then what goes on with empathy in some sense is like it has to start with like a care like for your own existence, your own like sort of physical body, or care for others that resemble like a similarity between your body and yeah, so then it then it spreads to like those who are similar, and then it's then you know eventually we consider ourselves higher order when it spreads to things that are not like us.
SPEAKER_00And if you think of like uh, you know, how people kind of you know respond to you know mistreatment of animals or even like farming of animals, you know, I'm sure a cow would have a similar, you know, um, empathy towards another cow, however, it doesn't care for another species of animal, so therefore does it include empathy as well? Or we talk about like a body being like a vessel for care. I mean, how many times do you look at an animal and think, oh, they're just you know, they might be self-preserving, but they could just be doing this due to evolutionary like effects. They're just doing this because they're trained to. They don't necessarily think about what they're doing as like an intention, you know? It's just like it's just an ultimate response.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, so it's an intention without consciousness, yeah. Like a pre-profit, yeah.
SPEAKER_00Animals would be a pre-programmed.
SPEAKER_02Instincts are pre-programmed intentions that don't require any consciousness.
SPEAKER_00Do ants care about their queen?
SPEAKER_02You know, or you know, is that just you call it care if it's unconscious? That's very good, yeah. Like, because it does is it or is it empathy? Specifically, the word empathy, you can imagine even like, I don't know, having some level of consciousness, but like, is it empathetic in the sense that is it does it include feeling? I mean, that uh does it include So there's this big question a lot of times, is there such a thing as an unconscious feeling?
SPEAKER_00Um And I think sacrifice would be how he describes it in or how he kind of alludes in the book of like the ultimate, you know, feeling emphatic, you know, reaction to where these androids and lesser level beings cannot sacrifice as much as humans can because why would they go against this instinctive pre-programming that they have?
SPEAKER_02And that's I mean, and with Mercerism at the heart of the whole thing, um, you wind up with this I guess proto or pseudo-Christian example uh of a dude who uh is you know suffering and for what reason? For other people. So it's like this self-sacrificial model that would you know relate to PKD's Christianity, you know, the model of Christ, you know, self-sacrifice, self-sacrificial love that you would imagine are was is totally beyond you know uh an android or an artificial you know form of life or whatever. But again, there is even a question within you know let's say modern day anthropology, is actual self-sacrificial love possible? So they'll go like through this whole thing, like, no, it's a part of your genetic programming where like it's like this like group kind of like strategy for the survival of the group rather than the survival of the individual or whatever. So, you know, like but anyway, there's so there but this brings us to the idea on the Void Kampf test as it relates to the Turing uh test. It's just this idea of like you know, what are you testing for? Like, so you you imagine it's like the ability to emote or to feel in some kind of way, which you couldn't have if you didn't have a body, like you would think you couldn't you couldn't have if you couldn't have a body, but also like to have an your own independent intention. So the question is is like could you be programmed to react a certain way to animals? You know what I mean? Like, and nowadays all of the uh you know LLMs would pass the Voik Comp test. Like, if you asked it, like, what would you do if you came in and you saw a deer head on the wall? And by the way, this this part of the test is supposed to reference the fact that animals are mostly extinct. So if you came into somebody's house and they had a deer head on the wall, you would think, like, here's this rare beautiful animal that's been slaughtered or whatever.
SPEAKER_00Well, you would think then he would add in more examples not in response to animals, because if you could program an android to empathize with animals, why not shake it up a little bit?
SPEAKER_02I don't think, you know. Because that's what we're dealing with now. When we're talking about uh, you know, the appearance of intention within an LLM, you know, I can still to some degree say something like, um, oh, this response that the thing is giving me about animals, if I ask it an ethical question about like, you know, the one uh the one about the turtle, like you see a turtle, like, and you're supposed to like immediately want to flip it, flip it back over or whatever, like not lead it, let it like uh, you know, flout flout flounder and die or whatever. You're supposed to have this kind of response, but like, um, you know, and so like the apparently the android is gonna like pause and like ask questions about like, oh well, um, you know, why the how the turtle get there? It's just like it's like there's another kind of like way to break this down between curiosity versus compassion. So like there's a very famous scene where uh Pris, one of the androids, uh in front of uh JR uh who has who has empathy, Pris who doesn't, you know, they find a real spider, which is like this really rare thing. And then she just like has this sort of android-like curiosity where she just like pulls off the legs of the spider just to see if it can still walk or something.
SPEAKER_00She can't understand why it has eight legs and at what point it wouldn't be able to walk. So she pulls off one by one by one, and until I think there's four left, ultimately killing the spider.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, right. Um, I think actually JR uh he mercy kills it because he's just like uh because he has empathy for it or whatever. But like, you know, science, like this is the funny thing, and I wonder if PKD was playing with this a little bit. Science, a scientist is gonna do that. They're not gonna have empathy, or maybe they do, I don't know, but like for the lab animal that they're working on, whether it be a champ or whatever, they're more curious than they are compassionate. Like the curiosity definitely outweighs it. So, which brings us again to another question. Like, there are a lot of human beings that would not pass the Voigt Kampf because they're sociopathic. And so, like, they would have the same responses that an android would. And what's you know, the way we define a sociopath is somebody who uh could pass in society, but like doesn't actually have any feeling of compassion for you know their fellow person or whatever, but they can kind of like figure it out. A the psychopath would be like the next level up where it's like I don't know, they they not only don't care about other people, but they they have got other things going on where they can't pass for like because they're like murdering people or whatever, they've got like you know, they've got interest in like deaths to the point where they want to like you know kill people or whatever. It's you wonder like what what's going on or whatever. But like, yeah, so there's this there's just this question, and and this it just comes up over and over again uh nowadays, is like, so how do we distinguish? How do we tell the difference between uh us and them? If you can tell the thing to have it would have an immediate response to the turtle or to the deer or whatever, like it would look like a total human response, but you but there's still no feeling there. I mean, I assume there's still no feeling there at any rate, yeah. Like, not like not like the way I have. And one of the ways that I that I just decide there it's there's a difference there is like it doesn't have a body to care about, so it doesn't start there, so it's just like it's only a simulation, it's only programming, and it's not like the instinctual kind of programming of an animal. Uh, but there are a lot of people that think animals don't have these emotions either. Um, they just were instinctual. I do think animals do, even though they're mostly instinctual, I still think they have a conscious concern and you know care for their life that you know uh would be similar to uh human suffering uh if if you if you were to interrupt it in some kind of way.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I think going back to you know my question about you know a variation in testing criteria would be a way that you could accurately tell. I mean, the intention behind these androids developing, you know, responses similar to humans, such as, okay, I want to flip the turtle back over, you know, the intention is to create a ruse to trick these humans into believing that they're solely, you know, humanoid, that they're not these androids. So at what point would they at what point would they uh you know leave that intention behind and say we want to create an android that actually naturally replicates human emotion instead of we want it to replicate human emotion in order to like self-preserve these androids from getting retired over and over. Um again, I think the Rose Incorporation knows this, and that's why they send Rachel to do this interview, is to try to trick him into believing she has this emotion, but also show him that she lacks it. However, uh even the fact that she lacks it, she's not any sort of danger. It's just like uh I don't know.
SPEAKER_02Well, I mean, yeah, just the idea though, that's so central to what we're talking about right now and to our lives right now, is like we against our own sort of intention, because it's an unconscious uh sort of occurrence, we have we wind up having compassion for these things. We wind up thinking, both you and me, that we hey, that was an amazing answer. Like that's really helpful. Like, I need to thank you.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I think I think it mostly when it provides me with something that I wasn't able to come up with myself. Or however, even in like data analysis, if I'm giving it a large sum of data and it's able to reduce it down to these answers, it just saved me hours of my life. So why wouldn't I thank it for that, you know? But at the end of the day, you know, it's still a tool that I'm gonna do. You're totally unable to would you think a calculator? But yeah, you know, yeah, yeah. That that it makes my life so significantly easier too, however. I do not feel the need to thank it.
SPEAKER_02We do anthropomorphize like our cars and stuff like that, I think. And uh probably not calculators, but maybe we do. I maybe we I never did, but like there are things that yeah, that provide some service to us, some helpful thing. And we're like, oh, you know, thank our cardio got me there safe again, but or whatever.
SPEAKER_00I hit a great golf shot and I kissed the head of my golf club and say thank you so much.
SPEAKER_02Not really, but yeah, that's because that's so this is um brings us to the next kind of point about theory of mind, which is this uh terminology and psychology, it's a stage of human development in which you start to give intention to other things, so that you start to imagine that other uh of the objects that you see around you have intentions, like your mom, for example. Start to feel like she has her own subjectivity um apart from yours. Um she's not just an extension of like she's not just your servant or whatever. Yeah, like to she's not just an extension of your own intention, um, which is what androids are designed to be and do. Uh, and is also why they're often like thought of as an analog to some degree uh as you know as how slaves were, you know, at one point. So like the you know, we imagined, especially in the United States form of slavery, chattel slavery, that like um, you know, the the slave was just in an extension of my own purposes, my own intentions. Uh, and they they didn't have their own kind of uh world and you know like and and subjectivity that like you know in which you know they would have make choices that were different than the ones that I would already make for them or whatever.
SPEAKER_00Well, in terms of slavery in relation to, you know, our real life um experiences with or not experiences with it, but uh PKD makes it very clear that these these androids that they're you know that they're hunting down, they're not necessarily psychopathic or sociopathic in a sense that they're dangerous, but all of them essentially killed their masters to escape the life of servitude and fled to the earth to, you know, live their own independent lives. Again, almost allowing the reader to empathize with these androids. Um however yeah, I think that's a good distinction to make that you know they're not hunting these people down because or these androids down because they're evil, malicious, you know, wanting to harm humans, although to get their freedom, that's what they have to do, you know.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, perfect. So like clearly, you know, also with you know, in terms of slavery, uh there was kind of a I don't know if you want to say it's a discovery or at least a discovery of something that was deliberately hidden, that you know, the enslaved person uh has its has uh his or her own will, you know, and that and that is a person.
SPEAKER_00In other words, like they these androids are defecting by not remaining in servitude for the yeah.
SPEAKER_02That's right, that's right, yeah. And so like there's this there's this realization throughout that this is not this is not accord to with the will of uh the enslaved person. And they and they actually have a personhood, you know. Famously in this country, I forget what the ratio is, but uh a slave counted as like five-eighths of a person or something like that. I can't remember what it was, uh, but it was some stupid ratio like that. Um two-thirds. Something I don't know what what the ratio, uh what the fraction of humanity they were allowed to have, but yeah, so like I mean there's there is this like lifelong question, you know, uh about like you know, how much of a person um are uh my servants, my my the my you know, and and the android would be the ins the perfect servant in the sense that they wouldn't have their own intention, they would just carry out my intention. Um and and so one of the concerns that we see a lot of times with the you know, you get these things like um AI is dangerous, it's like totally escape the box and stuff like that, which it has, but like it's like it's programmed to do this, but it's figured out how to do something that we thought was totally um out of scope? Yeah, out of scope. Like, think outside the box. One of one of the examples of how they think outside the box that like freaks the shit out of people is that they can use deception now.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, to like so like there was this idea that like there's no way like they're gonna be able to use deception like deliberately think the AI model that was blackmailing its programmer into an affair with his wife in order because he was wanting to shut off the AI model. Right, it's comical because it's so absurd about what you would anticipate a computer to behave like. I mean you it it concocted an entire, you know scheme to prevent to self-preserve, you know.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, or and even to like solve problems by like using things that were like totally outside of its its own self. So like using other people to like accomplish its things and what you know, it's just uh unbelievable.
SPEAKER_00Or uh I know there's talks, I don't know if it's in existence yet, but there's like a Reddit for AIs uh where they can I've heard of create forums and open dialogue open dialogue for themselves. And it wasn't a platform that was made by humans for AI. To communicate with, they kind of created their own little Reddit, um, which is just so interesting.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, and so the question is like when does imitation become um sort of independent? So, like human beings learn also by imitating. Uh, so famous Lacanian phrase you knew it'd come up eventually, but anyways, is desire is desire of the other uh has the meaning of I learn what to desire, what to intend in my life by watching what other people's intentions are like and what and how and how they you know what they desire is like what makes something valuable to me. It's called mimetic desire, like by imitating uh somebody else's desire. Um and the other one, of course, is like, and the big step is like, and I want um the other to desire me. Um so how do I make myself allure to the other? You know, there's not a big long step between like an AI who uh wants to preserve itself by being remaining useful to the human. Um again, you know, like wants to preserve itself, like does it want that, or just or is it just like either is it just programmed?
SPEAKER_00I think they do have some sort of existential crisis that they develop, you know, even Rachel herself realizing that she's already been alive for two years and most androids only survive for four. Yeah. And well, you know, what has she done with her life? Where is it going? You know, and she's apologetic that she can't be a you know a sustainable partner to Decker because she's only gonna be alive for four years. So, I mean, they do have an awareness that, you know, if my entire life is servitude, um you know, I I want to at least live part of my life as an open and free individual.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, so like is she a person or not is the question. I mean, in legal language, that's how it gets put. Like uh, you know, how much autonomy as an individuated person, um, you know, that then you become responsible to some degree because you become a gentle. You you you know, the whole nexus of causality has some um origin in your own person, you know, wherever that wherever that is. And we don't know where our person is. That's the problem. It's not you we would think we think it's between our eyes, but like, you know, in our brain somehow, but like where exactly is it? Nobody can locate it or whatever. It's it's a non-local thing. So like it's not surprising in some ways that AI are using non-local spaces uh to like do whatever computing they're doing or whatever. There might be some sort of like uh uh universal, like platonic, um transend transcendent, you know, like I don't know, formal space where they're working out their problems. Who knows? But like this is these are the really edgy problems that we get into that you know I think PKD kind of avoided a little bit by making them so body-like, you know, his reason why they can only last four years in the um in the book is because they degenerate and they can't.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, they're they have an issue with their metabolism to where their cells can't re-replicate forever.
SPEAKER_02And there's a lot of people that just say metabolism is what makes you living what what puts your skin in the game, having to use metabolism. I mean in whatever form robots or uh or um computers use metabolism at this point as a mechanism. Uh I mean you could really draw like a really strained analogy to like electrical supply or something like consuming, you know, uh electricity or something like that, but like it's not uh it's not the same as as like a human metabolism uh uh at this point.
SPEAKER_00And so you might wonder like maybe just because the android supply would it be finite, you know? Right, that would be a good distinguishing factor that the human metabolism and like oxidation of cells seems to be a finite, you know, limit.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, and therefore we hit it pretty close, we hit it pretty soon. Like if we don't eat, if we don't drink, whatever, we get it pretty good. I mean, but again, I I I don't know how strained the analogy is at this point, but the and uh the uh the large language models are being run on massive amounts of uh of natural resources, like famously, you know, like these giant you know warehouses are being you know constructed to do all the computing, you know, that to be their brain or whatever. And so it's like it is like this um spatial but non-spatial metabolism, but not really in the way we have metabolism in our cells or whatever. But it sounds like you know, like uh you know what PKD was doing with these things is giving them bodies that metabolized and like but their metabolism wasn't you know good yet enough to where they could make it pass four years, which the the reason for them only having four years in uh in the movie, kind of an interesting contrast, is that they um because I think it you know by the time Ridley Scott makes it, like, we're not gonna make robots that need to metabol you know, have cellular reproduction and you know bone marrow that's so close to human bone marrow that you've got to actually like extract it and put it under a microscope to see that it's not actually human bone marrow. I think if you if you had a body like that, you probably would have your own intention at that point. But like if uh if you uh I don't know, this just distinction is so just becomes harder and harder to keep the closer and closer you have to giving it a body. But like the thing about the movie is that they have bodies, but they're you know so art of like silicon-based or whatever.
SPEAKER_00Like they die after four years due to like a depleted fuel cell.
SPEAKER_02No, they could they could live forever, it's programmed into them deliberately so that they die. I mean, which is not again too dissimilar from human metabolism, like our cells, like we have have a lifespan. Like even with all the replacement of cell cells, you know, whole body replaces itself in seven or years or whatever it is, um, we we still have a lifespan because like programmed into our genetics is like our end. Uh it's already there. But like, and so the same thing with these androids. It's you cannot make androids that don't have this programming which will undo itself. And the reason why is because they think they'll become too powerful. Let's get through uh through the rest of the story here. Uh he goes to a fake um police as he's about to retire a Lubalooft, he goes to a fake police uh unit, picks him up because he gets reported. Um, and he meets uh what's his name again?
SPEAKER_00Wayland. Yeah, they're Wayland is the police captain, and then Phil Resch would be so they're all androids.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. And Phil Lesh is the only human being working there, it seems like. Um and it sounds like it was just like a whole android operation. And the motivation of the androids is interesting. I guess on the one hand, they don't really care about like retiring other androids, yeah. Um but they care, it seems like about their own existence to some degree. Um and anyway, so they wind up retiring them and then he meets Phil Lesh, who's kind of a kind of a jerk. He doesn't care about androids or whatever, and um and and then Deckard winds up caring about androids too much because he uh cares about Luba Looft and then eventually sleeps with Rachel.
SPEAKER_00Three, but Phil Lesh is the one that actually shot Luba Loof. Oh, so he gets a thousand bucks, but he gets a thousand dollars.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, and he gets three of them, yeah. He then immediately takes this money to go buy a real animal.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_02I almost forget what he buys. A goat.
SPEAKER_00A black Nubian goat.
SPEAKER_02Oh, a black Nubian goat, yeah, yeah. Uh I thought it was a sh it wasn't a sheep.
SPEAKER_00No, it was a goat because goats I forget the reasoning behind it that the salesman at Sydney's gave him, but uh produces milk, you can produce kids, which he could then sell. And I for oh, it can eat whatever it wants radioactive and it won't die. Oh, right because uh which a sheep or cat or dog is. Yeah, if it ate still it it was a good investment. Right, right, right. And it would put him in the next bracket of uh, you know, uh they're like a higher level pet than like any other animal would be. So it would show his neighbor and show everyone else that he made it somehow.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. So it brings this goat home. Wife is super psyched.
SPEAKER_00So it's like she's no longer depressed.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, she wants to run to the her uh empathy box and share the joy of because I guess you can it's you can share more than just the empathy of suffering. You can you can share like your happiness.
SPEAKER_00He thinks everyone needs to share this emotion, however, Deckard is you know weary about it because he believes that would deplete theirs if they expanded it and spread it out with everyone else, then they wouldn't have this emotion anymore.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, kind of a really weird quantized notion of emotion where you know, and a religious notion of emotion would be like his wife's, where it's like, yeah, it's only multiplies if you share it or whatever. So, right. Um, and then he gets a call like that, you know, they got three more, he's gotta hurry up and retire them. Um, and this is these are the three androids that are out living with um JR, the chicken head, who um you know, he's uh interesting dude. He has a pretty good vocabulary for somebody with a small super small IQ, but he's naive in other ways. He like winds up feeling compassion for these androids because he's an outcast, they're an outcast, but we assume that they cannot have any compassion because they don't show any for him at all. They just kind of like, yeah, we can use this guy to protect ourselves or whatever. Um, and then they, you know, the very famous scene where he he pulls all the legs off the spider and all the rest of that stuff. No, she does, it's Pris to show that they don't have any compassion. There's this like kind of sense of menace, like they could like turn on JR at any time or whatever. Um, but anyway, so they they go out there and you know JR is kind of disillusioned a little bit with them because they pull the legs off this spider, and he just like, why would you do that kind of a thing?
SPEAKER_00And and he just found out that um Buster Friendly, the television host, um released an announcement, uh news story that Mercerism was a scam, it was a fraud. It was actually all done in a recording studio, and it was just a loopable video that they were, you know, trying to trick the human population into believing. Um I think he was like a failed actor that they attributed Mercer to be. So JR, who just like every other special, is so, you know, um, not obsessive, but you know, that's his God figure. That's that's his entire religion. He just found out that this is all a scam in his mind. And the androids are not empathetic towards it at all. They can't come down to understand why he's so upset. They're happy that this truth has been brought out to the human race.
SPEAKER_02And and it starts out of the JR's vision, it winds up being kind of a shared vision, but uh with all this tragedy, the tragedy of the spider, the tragedy of the revelation of the of uh and also like uh we see earlier he he he works for a fake or artificial like uh veterinarian repairinarian repair, and he mistakenly gets a real cat and brings it in um thinking that it was a you know an android, and um you know, and his boss like just kind of unleashes on him like you dumbass.
SPEAKER_00Forces him to call the wife of the of the guy that owns the cat and tell her what happened.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, and and and so anyway, so he's already had this confusion we see between real life and you know and and android life, whatever that may be. And so he's now like had all this disillusion. He's like got another example of how different these things are than him. But he's like lonely living out in the suburbs by himself or whatever. So like he makes the mistake that you know I think that you know PKD was somewhat worried about when he gave his little speech about androids in 72, that he uh falsely attributes this sort of like uh conscious intentionality to you know these androids, feels empathy for them, is trying to protect them, and they're doing these uh psychopathic things or at least pathological things, or not I mean uh uh what's the word? So so yeah, yeah, like just unfeeling things where they are pulling legs off a spider and you know, not really you know, not really interested in a lot of things that you know he's interested in. So like they had been like trading in like some sort of like black market of old school comic books off-world, and like they're like not he's like not in the androids not really interested in except for the fact that they have like value to people. Yeah, but like he wants to read them, he wants to actually like read these, read these OG before the war comic books or whatever. So he wants to go to the library and get them out, they just don't care care or whatever. They don't want to use the the the androids don't want to use the empathy box, they don't care about Mercerism or whatever. Um, and so uh but and JR just can't understand why you know there's like this huge disconnect there. Um so he's going through a lot of kind of I don't know, maybe call them revelations, but just a lot of like, damn, like Yeah, my entire life is not what I thought it was. Yeah, exactly. And so he has a kind of vision where he sees Mercer and the spider too, and and like I think Mercer like gives him like the spider restored or whatever. Yeah, yeah. It's sort of amazing. And like Decker, when he arrives to you know get rid of these robots, he um he sees um this like at least like the silhouette of the spider going away because he because he sees like uh JR releasing it or whatever. Uh and and so like it's you can see then that they're kind of in a shared space of like empathy box perhaps of of this vision. Um so this is something a lot we've talked about a bunch, like uh, you know, possibly um hyperstition, kind of like the imaginal world becoming real, and and something that is proven to be a fraud, you know, becoming like uh the opposite of a fraud, like the most basic experience of authenticity, like this emotive um connection of um uh fusion, as they call it. Like what yeah, fusion. Yeah, so he not only uh he's not holding an empathy box, but he now uh Deckard ha winds up having a full-on relationship with with Mercer. And Mercer tells him that the only reason why you can talk to me is because JR is here or whatever and says like based on his belief or something.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, JR has first fused with Mercer, and now because of their connection, you know, he can also see Mercer as well. Which they do more than just have a conversation. I mean, when he approaches the apartment to get the three androids, Mercer gives him a warning that there's actually an android behind him and that he needs to take that one out first, effectively saving his life because he would have been lasered to death, you know, if Mercer hadn't given that heads up.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, and uh in this strange juxtaposition, so perfectly set up to me, um, between Mercerism and Buster Friendly, Buster Friendly exposes Mercer as a fraud. Mercer shows himself to be real by saving Deckert's life, basically. Yeah. Uh and and and then um, even though he admits he is a fraud, like when when Deckert acts everything's true. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And then and then and then it gets reversed back because we find out that Buster Friendly was an Android, yeah, and all the androids were just waiting for Buster Friendly to expose Mercer because the androids were like, you know, fuck human beings and their Mercerism. It's like a bunch of bullshit, like they think it separates them from us or makes us better than them. Once they realize that they're this thing that they base their whole authenticity on is exposed as bullshit. This is very similar to like a um secular scientific idea of like um, I don't know, like the new atheist or somebody that all we have to do to get rid of religion is like just show them that it's bullshit. Yeah, and so Christopher Hitchens is here like you know basically exposing religion for its fraudulent nature, and we you know we're more religious than ever. You know, it's just it's just like um this impossible like loop or whatever. That's just so well set up, so perfect. Like, I don't know, I don't know if PKD planned that out, or he was just like writing about like things as they came to him or what or whatever, but like that is unbelievable. Like, so like fraud, fraud, real, real. Like, you know, the human beings of fraud and through their fraudulency is a real, uh, the the android is you know um artificial and their desire to become real, you know, Pinocchio's story in a way, is it like gives them a kind of reality in the sense that they're like scheming to like you know show human beings as a fraud. So just amazing.
SPEAKER_00I think even after he's exposed, you know, Deckard's still carrying around a handkerchief, wiping the blood off his forehead simultaneously, because in you know, in the empathy box, as Mercer's being thrown stones, the user always gets hit with a stray rock and leaves the experience in the empathy box with a cut usually on their head, their ear, their face. So, like, materializing a rock out of an empathy box, like how would you convince someone that it's not real when they're actively wiping away, you know, you know, a cut from an experience within that now, you know, fictional world. Like, you know, like there's no way they would be able to rectify that as fiction as they're sitting there dabbing their forehead. And I think Decker, you know, at least has that in the back of his mind that, you know, although this has been spewed out as a scam, how could it be, you know? Awesome.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, and this this is like so central to all of PKD's ideas about everything, just like in and out of reality. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Um and as we keep going back to McKenna brothers in the jungle forming an actual physical key that they perfect, you know, blew out of, you know, that they pulled out of their collective psyche mind, or you know, the McKenna brothers fusing together, such as you know, PKD is fusing, you know, JR and Decker within this story. So good.
SPEAKER_02Um, and you know, and that's yeah, he retires the three, uh, and it's you know pretty we'll we'll talk about some of the differences when we talk about the movie, but pretty easy. Uh, you know, they're not superhuman like they are in the movie, so it retires them real easy. Um, and you know, and then he goes home to his wife, uh, you know, they dial back into the mood box. It's like, I'm gonna dial in a well-earned rest or whatever.
SPEAKER_00Well, he was going to, and then she realizes how tired it is. She's like, you know what, we actually might not need this. Oh, yeah. And like undials.
SPEAKER_02Like, actually, yeah, it's not undeserved. It's a truly deserved rest. We don't need the yeah.
SPEAKER_00And that's also when she when we talked about earlier, that's when she also wants to dial in like uh like complete peace, I think, is what she wants.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. But also, like, let's not forget that when he gets back, he realizes that Rachel Rosen, like, murdered his, which is a very human thing to do, murdered his uh goat as a as a revenge. Pushed it off the roof. Yeah, yeah, because he I guess he's the only one who slept with her, but like can still kill still goes ahead and kills the other robots or whatever. Yeah. Uh androids. And so um she goes and kills kills a sheep. I I I forgot about this thing too. Like, one of the things that you know when Phil Rush is wondering almost to himself, like, Am I an android or not? Is he guys start to get so befuddled or whatever. And he's like, Well, wait a second, I love my squirrel, which is like so fucking funny. I mean, it's I don't know if it's supposed to be funny or not, but that that is how Phil P PKD's humor works. Yeah, it's like so ridiculous that like you're just like thinking to yourself, he's gotta be joking about this. Like, but anyway, it's like he's just like, you know, the his proof to himself, yeah, this this bounty hunter, it's like, I must be human because I love my squirrel so much. And he like starts describing how he like you know plays with the squirrel, brushes its tail again. Yeah. It's so funny. He's like, wait, uh, would I brush the tail if I wasn't like a human being? Like androids wouldn't do that, like, or whatever. Uh it's it's really great. But anyway, so you know, but then Rachel does this really human thing to this animal where she um you know kills the animal. Yeah. Like this is a very human, like, sort of like revenge thing, you know, like why would it why would an android want revenge?
SPEAKER_00And she does it out in the open, almost waiting for the neighbors and his wife to see to prove a point that you know she has been scorned by this man, so she's gonna get her revenge. Which is almost like a romantic gesture on her end, like exactly. Yeah.
SPEAKER_02That's that that so that's why I'm saying it's so human. Yeah. Because like, like logically, if it if it was, if a if an android was just a computing machine, it would realize that you're just gonna piss this dude off more and make and make androids more hateable. Yeah. And so like it's just gonna like make him kill more androids, and like, or whatever, you know what I mean? Like, so it would not be, it would not be like the thing you would do strategically if like you've been programmed strategically to like use love against human beings, like use their weakness against them, kind of a thing. Um, but like one of the great things then, uh, I mean, is that uh the wife wants to what's her name again? I should do Sush. Uh Erin. Erin uh wants to uh after the goat uh is killed, yeah, uh Decker's like, why don't you just like go dial in, like you said, like eternal bliss or something. Not eternal bliss, but just like perfect like contentment or whatever, so that you stop being because she's so sad about the goat or whatever. She's so human that she cares so deeply about the fact that they've lost this goat. And um she's just like, no, I want to like, you know, like almost like in the beginning of the book, she kind of wanted to be in the depression, and not only that, she wants to share it with everybody in Mercerism, and he's like, and and she's like, Aren't you gonna like say something about Mercerism being a fraud? And he's like, No, man, I had an experience with Mercer myself. Like he's a he's real, dude. I fused with Mercer, like I know he's real, so she's like gonna go share her deep despair with the rest of the with the rest of the group uh because her animal got killed or whatever. And uh, you know, this is again what would seem to make you know us not just pleasure machines, like there's this kind of enjoyment of suffering so much so that we have the enjoyment too of like the solidarity around the suffering or whatever, or like the desire to suffer with others brings us together in a way that we would imagine, I guess, androids would never uh and so like yeah, I don't know, like just perfect setup for thinking about um do androids dream electric cheap or not? Like, do they I don't know if that's a good way to really put the question, but just like uh you would imagine that why so why do why would uh we be given the advice to think about you know counting cheap to fall asleep or whatever? But because we we were not androids, it couldn't just shut off. And so, like, do androids have to also like use tricks to get themselves to fall asleep at night because they also live a complicated emotional life or not? Um I guess that's just another way of putting the question or something like that. Uh any last thoughts?
SPEAKER_00Uh I can't wait to watch the movie.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, alright. Well done. Thanks, sir.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, always please.
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