We understand the thinking atheist. It's not a person, it's a symbol,
an idea. The population of atheists this country is going through the rule,
rejecting faith, pursuing knowledge, challenging the sacred. If I tell the truth,
it's because I tell the truth, not because I put my hand on
a book and made a wish and working together for a more rational world.
Take the risk of thinking feels so much more happiness. Truth Usian wisdom will
come to you that way. Assume nothing, question everything, and start thinking.
This is the Thinking Atheist podcast hosted by Seth Andrews. So my wife
Life has been telling her friends in conversations they're talking about something else or texting
about something else, and she'll just sort of smirk at me and then interject
this. She'll say, Hey, by the way, if anything sketchy ever
happens to me, I disappear mysteriously or they find my body in a ditch,
I want you to tell the police that the first person they should look
at is my husband, because I'm a little nervous about the man. And
here's where that comes from. I'm a true crime addict. I know a
lot of it is trash television I know that sometimes they embellish or fill in
blanks with fiction, or ramp up the drama unnecessarily. I know that sometimes
true crime is not always true. I'm also fully aware of the CSI effect,
and this deals with our expectations the general public. Weaned on crime television,
we have this sort of mental picture of how the process is supposed to
go. Now, if you don't know what the CSI effect is, CSI
is a television crime show that released in October of two thousand on CBS.
This show blasted out of the ratings gate and dominated television. Everybody was watching
it, everybody was talking about it, and it's the type of TV forensic
cop crime show that you would expect week after week. Suspiciously attractive investigators are
using fancy forensic techniques to solve mostly murder cases. What happens in TV crime
The investigators outsmart that criminals and things are usually solved in short order. The
public perception, then, is that forensics is swift and clean and wan and
done, and there's always going to be a smoking gun. Forensics itself is
nothing new. We like to think that forensic examinations are novel and recent,
But I mean as long as there have been crime scenes, people have investigated
crime scenes. I'm reminded of this famous story. Forgive the digression, but
it's interesting. The story from like two thousand years ago about the Greek tyrant
of Syracuse, a guy named Hero the Second. He was not a good
guy. He was very vain, and he wanted a gold crown made for
himself, and so he hired a goldsmith. He gave him the raw material,
the pure gold, and he said, fashion me an amazing, beautiful
holy crown. And when the goldsmith delivered it, Hero the Second looked at
it and he was suspicious, and he thought, hey, wait a minute,
what are the chances that this guy took some of the goal for himself
secretly? And then he blended some other metals not as valuable into the crown,
easily disguised. It was still gold in color, It still looked like
gold, but not one hundred percent. And then the goldsmith just sort of
filled his own pocket, hoping nobody would notice. How was Hero the Second
gonna know the difference? Well, he brought in the famous Greek mathematician and
physicist Archimedes, and he said, I want you to figure this out.
Is it pure gold? Or is the guy ripping me off? Archimedes was
not allowed to take the crown apart, or damage it, or even scratch
it. Right, this was a holy object that had been dedicated to the
gods. How does he examine it without disturbing it? And according to our
history books, one day he was sitting in the bathtub and he noticed that
the more his body sank in the tub, the more water spilled out over
the edges. And he apparently had an epiphany in that moment, and he
jumped up stark naked, and he yelled eureka, eureka, And he ran
out and put together this experiment. He had the crown, and then he
had two masses of metal that were the very same weight. He had the
crown, then gold, a mass of gold, then a mass of silver,
and he took a large vessel filled it up to right at the brim
with water. He took the massive silver and he dropped it into the water,
and then he measured how much water spilled out. Then he filled it
back up and he grabbed the mass of gold. He dropped the gold in,
but not as much water spilled out, because gold is more dense than
silver. Meaning that even if it weighs the same, it will take up
less volume. After that, he grabbed the crown. He dropped it into
the full vessel of water, and he measured and low, and behold,
more water than should have been displaced by gold. Pure gold spilled out.
He had proven that the goldsmith had snuck in some cheaper metals into the crown
and apparently kept some of the gold for himself. Well, what is that
if not forensics fascinating story. The Chin dynasty, China, more than two
thousand years ago, they were filing autopsy reports, and the reason we know
this is because archaeologists have discovered them worldwide. By the early part of the
nineteenth century, police started to examine hair and fingerprints and blood more closely.
Guns were becoming more popular, and so ballistics forensics sort of the involved with
them. The twentieth century saw us unlocking the mysteries of the human genome.
Before you know it, we've got computers getting into the game. The first
court case, a murder case involving DNA evidence, happened in nineteen eighty seven.
There was a guy accused of killing somebody else. They put him on
trial. They took a DNA sample and they compared it with the DNA of
five thousand other people, and this guy was cleared, the accused was exonerated,
and beyond that, the DNA evidence implicated and ultimately convicted somebody else.
The FBI would have a full DNA database starting in nineteen ninety eight. And
of course we talk about genetic testing all the time today. Crime scene investigation
the CSI effect. We think we expect, hey, somebody sweep up the
fibers and check the fabrics and look for the prints and test the secretions and
whatever, and you will find the killer. And if you don't, it's
your fault. But of course this is not how things go down in the
real world. I'm not saying that there aren't mistakes and efficiencies, bureaucracy,
laziness, oversights, corruption, or just incompetence. I'm not saying that we
won't find examples of people being like this, because you'll find it in any
situation where human beings are involved. But even when the pros are professional and
the process is working as it should, our expectations can be really unrealistic.
We're thinking we're going to get CSI, CSI Vegas, CSI New York CSI,
Miami or whatever fast and flashy crime drama we've been binging for the last
two weeks. And this is the case even with true crime shows like The
First forty eight and the idea there is that most cases are blown wide open
and the killers are discovered and arrested within the first forty eight hours. You
got two days, and after that then things go cold and most criminals will
get away with it. So whatever you're going to find, whoever you're going
to find, you got to do it in the first forty eight hours or
you're host. So now you've got the general public developing unrealistic expectations while they've
been watching the real I have a confession. I'm a sucker for a show
on h l N called Forensic Files. This is an older show. It
started back in the nineteen nineties, narrated by one of my favorite voices in
all of broadcasting, a guy named Peter Thomas. He passed away some years
ago, but I just love his voice, so authoritative and professional and compelling.
I'd watch Forensic Files just to listen to Peter Thomas. But I will
sit in front of the television for show after show. Each episode is about
twenty three minutes, and they just loop on hl N. I will be
at a convention. After a long day at the event, I will go
back and decompress in the hotel room, binging forensic files until I finally fall
asleep. And of course I watched this show at home. So Natalie and
I are sitting there and she's passively listening to whatever crime is being portrayed on
screen's I don't know, she's reading, or she's scrolling her phone, or
just kind of resting with the dogs, and I am locked onto the murder
mystery. The forensic evidence discovered and examined. You know, the imprint of
the killer's shoe. It was a size eleven and a half combat boot a
specific man, not very many of those in the United States. I wonder
where this was purchased. There's a fingerprint belonging to somebody who did not live
in that house. They scrape out some skin cells from underneath the step mother's
fingernails. There's blood spatter in the back of the creepy white serial killer Van
Arson. Investigators find out that there was accelerant next to the victim who burned
to death in what was supposed to be an electrical fire. This is the
whole vibe of forensic files. And I'm sitting there watching, and as I'm
watching, the gears in my head are turning. The criminals are getting caught
because they made mistakes, or they had a bad method, or they just
left a trail unnecessarily. So as I'm watching, I'm thinking, well,
I could do that better. I wouldn't make that mistake. Here's my method,
Here's how I would get away with it. And then I articulate these
thoughts to my wife, and Natalie says, who thinks like that? Is
there something you want to tell me? Have you been living a double life?
Are you secretly a serial killer? Because that's information that I would sure
like to have. And I always smile and go, baby, you're safe.
I'm good. I know. I'm a lover. I'm not a fighter.
I'd never hurt anybody. I'm just saying, if I was a criminal,
I could do a hell of a lot better than old Buster butt Scratch,
who lives in Pigeon Forge, Tennessee, who buried the murder weapon out
in his yard next to the hot tub. That's all I'm saying. Okay,
I could do better. Natalie says, all right, fine, if
you were going to murder me, how would you get away with it?
Now, I'm not taking this bait. Yeah, I've not taken that bait.
I'm smarter than that. I said, baby, I'd never murder you.
I am safe people. And then she says, okay, fine,
it's not me. If you murdered somebody else, how would you get away
with it? And I'm still qualifying, right, well, this is just
hypothetical. We're just talking. This is I mean, nothing here has anything
to do with who I am as a human being. I am an agent
of healing, not harm. I'm just overcompensating. Having said that, here
are a few things I would do to get away with murder. And as
her face remains totally blank, I start to lay out my evil plan and
I say, first of all, fibers. Fibers are always a problem at
crime scenes. Clothing. You know, you got your shirt, in your
pants, your socks, whatever, it's always fibers falling out. Then there
are skin cells which might be shed somewhere that's potential d in a evidence,
hair falling out of my head that may incriminate me, fingerprints I inadvertently leave
on a doorknob, or a shell, or a table, or even the
victim. That's a problem. So here's how I would create a protective shield
to keep any of me from remaining at the scene. I would encase myself
in saran wrap, and then I would dig out eye holes and put on
goggles, and maybe put on some kind of a mask, a gas mask
or one of those N ninety five masks, medical masks for breathing. So
I'm not exhaling any implyting genetic evidence onto the scene. I'm totally covered up,
and I'm moving fast so I don't have to worry about overheating. But
I am totally wrapped in plastic wrap. Natalie is processing that visual. She's
envisioning her husband totally saran wrapped, about to enter the crime scene. But
she is still listening. And then I say, this, shoe prints.
How many times has a killer left imprints even on concrete or tile. Certainly
if they go out and step in the dirt or mud, that's just dumb.
I would invent a solution for that. Now I wear a size fourteen
shoe. I would mount a shoe underneath the shoe. Not stilts, but
just a few inches under my size fourteen sole would be a smaller soul that
would eliminate me as a suspect. And I would practice walking around in these
sort of manufactured shoes over shoes. I would get really good at my movement
so that I wouldn't tip over and give myself away. Now the cops are
looking for a size ten and not a size fourteen. I think that's clever.
My wife is getting increasingly uncomfortable. If I had better judgment, I
might listen to it, but I continue anyway. I'm right handed. I
would practice doing everything left handed so it looks totally organic and natural. Then
they might be looking for a left hander. That seems prudent. If I
was doing a tandem crime with somebody else, we would speak in a different
language, something other than English, because I only speak English. So if
they're looking for someone who speaks a different language, that might rule me out
as well. And this is something we could practice certain words that we harvested
and had ready. Of course, my first thought was, well, what's
the second most popular language in the United States. It's going to be Spanish.
And I thought at first, well, that would you know, that
would really increase the suspect pool beyond me or make it harder to pin me
down. Natalie brought up this since she's absolutely right. She's like, oh,
great, you will potentially implicate someone else, and you will add to
the stereotype of the immigrant criminal in the United States. And I had to
give her that one. And then I thought, well, wait a minute,
I'm already a killer. I have no moral center anyway. What do
I care what stereotype I perpetrate? But I okay, fine, I take
her point. And then I think, well, how about a different,
more obscure language from a cross the ocean. The man caught on security video
was speaking Belarusian. Do I think that detectives are going to hop on a
plane, go to Belarus and start knocking on doors to ask questions? I
do knot. Another language seems prudent. I would not keep certainly, I
wouldn't park in my driveway the evil scary Painter's white nineteen seventy seven serial killer
van. How many people keep driving around with the car they used to perpetrate
the crimes. I would paint it and sell it. I would maybe dig
a huge hole in a field and just bury the whole thing. I certainly
wouldn't be driving around town where a cop could pull me over for a routine
stop. You got an expired tag or a tailed is out by the way,
Can you open the back doors at the van and let me take an
inspection? Holly? Yet, why do you have a human body sized freezer
that has bloodstains on it? Now? This seems easily avoided, I'm just
saying. And then I finish with an idea that I admit is totally dark,
but it has always bugged me. Why do killers leave the body where
it is quickly and easily discovered. I think the whole point is as little
evidence as possible. Why drop it in the river so it washes up on
shore. Why just stick it under a few leaves and branches. It'll be
found immediately if you bury it. Why only bury it eighteen inches? You're
at the mercy of the next big rain. No what I would do,
And I got this idea from somebody on my own Facebook page, so I'm
not the only one who thinks like this. I would use a post hole
digger, something that vertically and I would dig way down to about fifteen feet
and I would bury the body vertically. I would fill the hole up to
a certain height, and then I would add some rock near where the natural
rock table would be, and then I don't know, a couple of feet
under the surface, I would put roadkill, probably a dog. I'm not
going to kill a dog. I'm not a monster, right, I'm not
going to kill a dog. But unfortunately in our world there are dogs who
are hit by cars and whatever. So I would find one and I would
bury it maybe two feet under the actual surface of the ground. So the
surge parties out. Everybody's doing the grid. They've got the cadaver dogs.
Hey, they get a hit, the ground is doug up, there's a
dog that has been decomposing. False positive. They check that spot off their
list and they go away. I've been working it out in my brain.
That seems like it might work now. Since that day, since that conversation,
my wife has not looked at me the same way. She's like,
you have a dark side? Something wrong with you? Who thinks like this?
And I told her, Honey, I don't care how sweet and kind,
cherub faced and wonderful you are, you have a dark side. I'm
convinced every human being has a dark dungeon in the back of their skull somewhere.
I don't care who you are. I don't care how many protests you
hear from people who say their thoughts only consist of happy, happy, joy
joy, lifetime movie harps and confetti and gold light. You know, I
don't care how many people tell you that they're lying. I'm convinced everybody has
a dark side, and I have been reading some research on this that having
a dark side is not necessarily a bad thing. In fact, it might
be healthy. Oh, we got to talk about this. I'm going to
share more about what I have been reading on humanity's dark side. Next,
we're talking about the dark side, the dark shade of human nature. Do
we all have that dark side? I'll make a confession, since I've been
talking about my own thoughts, mostly because I want you to feel safe to
have those thoughts as well, or at least to entertain what they are,
to understand why they exist, and so fine, I'll put myself out there
and will share a specific from my past. It was one of my first
radio jobs. I was in my early twenties. Granted, I was kind
of a hot, tempered, piss and vinegar young twenty something, so I
was pretty ramped up, but I had a boss at a Christian station.
The owner of that business one of the worst people I have ever met.
It is rare in my life that I use the word hate. I mean,
I talk all the time about how we want to defeat hate on this
planet. Maybe you are like me, desperate to find some redemption, some
redeeming quality in everybody, or almost everybody. I am telling you this guy
was just poison, insecure, temperamental, demeaning. He would just walk in.
He's one of those guys when he would walk in the room, and
when he walked in the building, the temperature cooled. Everybody got tense,
speaking voices turned into whispers, and everybody was like, is he here?
Is he still here? Has he left? Does anybody know when he's gonna
leave? Because we couldn't wait for him to leave. His presence meant that
at any moment he might turn the corner, walk into your room and make
you feel like shit, just destroy you verbally, and then remind you that
because he wrote the checks and he determined who got hired and fired, he
essentially held your destiny, your job, maybe even your career and future in
his hands and having made that proclamation and firmly put you in your place.
He would turn and waltz out the door, conscience free. I hated that
man, and I fantasized one day he'd walk in the room, dress me
down, make me feel like shit, just go off, and I'd let
him finish, and then I would throw him through plate glass. I think
we've all had those moments where we say, it's a good thing for you.
I'm civilized. A man named doctor Leon Seltzer. He has a doctor
in both English and psychology. Former professor at Queen's College in Cleveland, State.
He's written several books on psychology, and he writes the Evolution of the
Self blog, and he has this article just how dark is your dark side?
Doctor Seltzer says this, when we talk about having a dark side,
where're generally calling attention to our most aggressive or lustful anti social instincts, or
the mean spirited, blood thirsty belligerents presumably lurking deep within us, or our
acting out impulses that would disrupt others' lives, if not outright decimate them,
rape, mutilation, murder, unconscionable acts of thievery, betrayal, treachery,
sadism, massochism, unbounded greed, incest, and so on. But what
I'd like to suggest here is that perhaps your darkest fantasies shouldn't be understood as
all that demonic, or at least they can be much more compassionately appreciated as
audacious, disinhibited, primitive, grandiose, or hedonistic, as opposed to say,
degrading, disgraceful, or nefarious. Freud, in his classic Civilization and
its Discontents nineteen twenty nine, postulated that being part of a civilized society safeguards
us from personal chaos, from being dominated by our moral id So, as
civilized beings, we appoint communal authorities like police to protect us not simply from
others' baser impulses, but also our own. Yet, to Freud, this
necessary protection also culminates in our discontent, for we're thereby required to subdue our
pleasure seeking instinctual drives. To live harmoniously with others, we must subdue our
otherwise impetuous desires. I believe most people would agree that, although it's somewhat
reductive, there's something profoundly true in Freud's assumptions about the human psyche. At
the same time, I think that while we may be wired to at least
imagine what it might be like to boldly and unabashedly follow our inborn predilections and
without the slightest regard for how they might affect others, just envisioning ourselves engaging
in such behaviors hardly means that finally we'd choose to enact them. After all,
in so many ways, we need literally to rely on others for survival.
Additionally, we're a gregarious species, and so wouldn't want to do things
that might offend others and alienate them from us. Though we might not be
able to resist fantasizing various acts that might enable us to freely pursue our altogether
personal pleasure principle, the overwhelming majority of us are strongly motivated to restrain ourselves
from actually carrying out such clearly sociopathic behaviors. Given these natural internal constraints,
we need to question whether our dark side is ultimately all that dark. That
is, we're generally cognizant that whatever fantasies we may have of power, revenge,
conquest, or reckless expression of libido are just that fantasies, but by
permitting ourselves to at least daydream about them, we can afford ourselves some kind
of compensatory gratification. At a safe remove from reality. We can offer ourselves
the alternative of imagining what in actuality we wouldn't really choose to do, or,
for that matter, be, And in that sense, our dark side
can be seen as well rather innocent. Permitting it to surface in day dreams
represents a measured indulgence, offering us an escape from the pro social behavior that
almost all of us regularly elect to participate in. For we do want and
need to keep our social ties safe and secure. Though we may have a
competitive streak in is, we also place a high value on interpersonal cooperation.
So voluntarily we monitor our impulses and we take care to keep them in check.
And as a respite from all our self discipline and forbearance, we periodically
permit ourselves to fabricate a world than which our desires, however outrageous or antisocial,
might nonetheless reign supreme. Given that our dark side embodies are more primitive
pleasure or power seeking instincts, must we zealously avoid disclosing it or reject it
as despicable, something other than respectably human, and therefore to be shunned and
repudiated. In the end, such dark predictions really can't be seen as intrinsically
culpable, and that most of them merely represent appetites or urges innates in all
of us. So might we finally honor them, appreciating our most aggressive or
erotic fantasies day dreams and many night dreams too, as a psychological safety valve.
To me, unsatisfactory alternative is to view them shamefully, as depicting a
part of us so abhorrent that it must be hidden from others and, if
possible, from ourselves as well. Many psychology researchers have written about the practical
utility of day dreams, for as already suggested, they can function positively as
a much needed outlet for our frustrations, enabling us to give at least covert
expression to impulses and inclinations we know would be foolhardy or hazardous to act out,
and so are simply entertaining such fantasies doesn't really reflect any disastrous potential that
must thereby be viewed as dark or depraved. The reason that horror movies are
perennially popular, especially among the young, is that they too enable us to
experience a safe release from or vicarious expression of our most primitive anti social instincts,
and the same is true for many TV shows like Dexter. We are
finally all animals, and what helps us to transcend the raw instincts of our
more primitive, less evolved ancestors is that, in our highly developed interest in
pro social behavior, almost all of us freely consent to forego id related pleasures,
the pursuit of which we realize would hurt others and almost certainly come back
to haunt us for both inner and outer balance. We have a fundamental need
to express, however indirectly, our whole being, and we hardly need deny
our forbidden thoughts, for they're only a relatively small segment of what's naturally inside
us. Fully accepting our basic humanity actually necessitates that we acknowledge and make peace
with our so called dark side, which finally is far less dark when we
see it for what it is. As Carl Jung said, everyone carries a
shadow, and the less it is embodied in the individual's conscious life, the
blacker and denser. It is moreover, young believe that, in spite of
its function as a reservoir for human darkness, or perhaps because of this,
the shadow is the seat of creativity. And it makes perfect sense that if
creativity entails a certain freedom from our customary constraints and thought and feeling, then
giving ourselves the license to create also involves granting ourselves the privilege to inwardly explore
and outwardly express the darker side of our latent tendencies and impulses. It may
well be that what makes a work of our great in the first place is
its universality, And what makes it universal is that it addresses so much of
what resides deep inside us, the unprincipled and ignominious, as well as the
wholesome, praiseworthy, and noble. I'll close with a set of four brief
quotes, all of them suggest in just a few words much of what I've
labored to express in so many more. And the quotes he includes are the
This Anthony Hopkins, the actor who made so famous the character of Hannibal Lecter.
Hopkins, the actor said, I think the healthy way to live is
to make friends with the beast inside oneself, and that means not the beast,
but the shadow, the dark side of one's nature. So have fun
with it and accept everything about yourself. Self help author John Bradshaw said this
evil is a source of moral intelligence, in the sense that we need to
learn from our shadow, from our dark side, in order to be good.
Sue Grafton, who is the author of so many detective novels, wrote
this. She said, we all need to look into the dark side of
our nature. That's where the energy is, the passion. People are afraid
of that because it holds pieces of us we are busy denying. And the
article finishes with a quote from film and stage actor Sheryl Lee, who said
this, the more we deny that we have a dark side, the more
power it has over us. I have calls with callers who apparently have a
dark side lurking just beneath the skin, and let's find out what they have
to say after this. I am about two and a half weeks out from
speaking in Orlando, Florida. That's going to be March seventeenth. I've also
got a whole bunch of dates, not just my speaking events, but conventions
American Atheist and Freedom from Religion Foundation, Secular Student Alliance anyway, all of
these events Los Angeles, Little Rock, Kansas City, Saint Louis, Denver,
and more. Just scroll and find the city near you the Thinkingatheist dot
com slash events. We continue talking about our dark side, the uncivilized primate
lurking just beneath the skin of the civilized primate. Three one seven is it?
Josh? Can you hear me? Uh? Yeah? What do you
think about this? My father was put on drugs when he was a baby,
and when he met my mother, he overdosed a lot, was taken
to a hospital, was taken off the drugs, but because he had such
a history with drugs, he hallucinated an angel and thought God was talking to
him. And so with this new found faith, he then indoctrinated all of
my siblings, which are five of us, into his faith. And when
I was a kid growing up, I was never taught critical thinking. I
was never taught like who I am. Truly, when I was about eleven,
my parents both heavy evangelicals. My world was that house. My world
was that perception of what my father taught us, and so I never knew
anything outside of it. And we were homeschooled, living in the country,
and so as a kid growing up, I thought that getting beat with a
mighty might attachment was normal. I thought when my dad would use a pig
whip on us, that was normal. I thought when he screamed and yelled
and did terrible things, that was normal, because that was my world.
But as I got older, it was harder and harder for him to keep
that world together. And eventually I started asking questions and he started putting me
under more dogma, making me feel bad, trying to destroy my sense of
self, trying to put me back under that perception of what he wants me
to be. He stopped schooling me and my twin brother because, according to
my parents, what would you do with an education. When I was about
twenty five or twenty six, that's when the brainwashing pretty much totally broke.
I was suicidal and I didn't know myself. I remember when I was leaving
the house, I went up to the train tracks and started crying because I
had no education. I didn't even know how to fill out a check.
I realized that I didn't matter. They were just using the Bible in order
to abuse all my siblings and me and they just didn't care. Do you
ever find yourself having dark thoughts about all of this? Well, the way
that I've gotten over dark thoughts, especially in the early days of this,
was pretty much trying to gain as much knowledge as humanly possible. My thing
is trying to use logic and reason and trying to learn who my father really
is and my mother. It's what kept the bad thoughts away. I mean,
with what you said, you wanted to take that guy who's a dick
to you and throw them out a window. Yeah, I've had those thoughts.
I think everybody at some point has had those thoughts when it comes to
fantasizing and having a dark side. Now that I can think critically and logically,
oh hell yeah, there's many times I wanted to go over to their
house, kick the door in, run up to this guy and just pick
him off the ground and make him realize, oh shit, he's going to
kick my hat. But the thing is, I think I've come to the
point now where I don't even feel sorry anymore. I just look at him
and I'm like, what hell did you go through to make you into such
a lunatic? That's actually an important point. Many of the abusers have been
abused, many of the victimizers are in some ways victims. It sounds like
that we're excusing the behavior. The fact that you have that perspective is just,
I think, real maturity. So thank you for being a part of
the conversation. This is actually a little more sort of sobering than I had
started. I feel like, I hope I'm doing your call justice after I
do a whole twenty minute ranch full of I'm cracking jokes about crime scenes,
you know. But no, no, you're good, Josh, Breathe the
free air, my friend, and thanks for being a part of today's broadcast.
It's been great talking with you, you two, sir, all right,
take care David at nine one nine, are you there? Nice?
That's dark side, I definitely have one. Never had a hard life.
I grew up in a not very rich household at all. My father was
a Baptist minister in the North American Baptist so wealth was the only privilege I
wasn't born with. And haven't had any major blows in my life. I'm
sixty eight almost and you know, a couple medical things, but nothing really
big, So no life experience to make me have dark thoughts, especially towards
myself, but I have them. I'm a huge fan of Dexter, and
you know, I watched that show, and I think of how I might
want to dispose of somebody so I couldn't get caught. And there's a certain
public figure whom I would love to see a particular brand of great harm come
to. And I won't go into details, stopping there for a second because
I think you and I might be in the zip code. But I try
to frame it like this. I would never want external harm to come,
but if they had a sudden aneurism, I would not be all that grieved.
Is that a terrible thing to say? I wish I could see me
nodding, and yes, that's exactly where I'm at. And I'd wish a
certain particular outcomes of that said aneurysm. That's a hard thing to say.
Yeah, And like, we have someone down the street from me who flew
a Trump flag constantly. Now he fled I live in Virginia. Now he
flies underneath the American flag. He's got a youngin flag. And I drive
fast at and I think of like parking in the high school parking lot across
from that during school with binoculars to check out the flag pole, and then
coming by at night and parking around a corner dressed all in black, and
I'm gonna cut that frickin' youngkin flag down. And it's just a I think
it's literally it's a it's a healthy release, assuming you don't act on it,
of course, but just entertaining these thoughts is sort of the same as
watching the true crime shows and things like that. Thanks for calling, and
thanks for the kind words. I enjoyed. I enjoy your I appreciate you
so very much. Thanks man. Take care. Jenny at two zero nine,
thanks for waiting. Are you there, Yes, I'm here. Recently
I've been holding back my dark side, but I've come to a conclusion that
with all these attacks on women's healthcare and now they're going after ibs, which
that is the only way I got one of my grandsons, it makes them
so angry. These people don't even have a medical degree and they make decisions
on women. So now, you know, I try to channel it.
You know, it's like, should we start protesting churches? Should we do
stuff? No, I think we need to start a movement to take away
their Dackstreet exemption. Jenny, let me give some quick context to people who
aren't in the know, especially that we have an international audience. The Alabama
Supreme Court just ruled that frozen embryos are human beings and if anyone destroys an
embryo, that's essentially murder, kind of murder. And now there are organizations
who are shutting down. They're in vitro fertilization programs because you essentially, they
don't want to be prosecuted for murder. And there's all these other things going
on. The couples who are going through IVF treatments are horrified. It is
just traumatizing and an assault on human rights, and it's just stupid. I
saw somebody and they showed they had a dozen eggs in the passenger seat of
their car, and they said, now I'm going to drive in the hov
lane because now I have thirteen people in the car according to the Alabama Supreme
Court. And you're right, they don't have medical degrees. They're spouting the
name of God every ten seconds. Zalots. The Christian nationalists, they are
using xelotry and ideology to make law, and they're forcing their limited value system
down everybody else's throats and it makes us enraged. And I think your anger
is absolutely understandable. Jenny, Yeah. I mean I listen to people all
the time, and older people who are really heartbroken that their kids aren't even
going to give them grandchildren because of the way the situations are going. They
don't feel safe, and I don't blame them. My two daughters went through
pregnancy during COVID and one had to do IVF, and she went through so
much to have my grandson that you know, I was just heart wrenching to
me because I couldn't be so close to her and everything. But I do
you know, at one point my girls had said maybe we're not going to
have kids, you know, And I couldn't hold it against them, But
I do know more and more women are deciding either to have their tips tied
or whatever because they don't want to be put in bad situations and looked on
as a second class citizen. Doesn't the dark part of us occasionally admit to
saying, wouldn't it be nice to take all of the Alabama Supreme Court who
voted for this and put them in a van and them to an island surrounded
by sharks and alligators and radio. It's just an island that they cannot leave,
and you know, give them and then the rest of us go and
evolve society. You know, you go over here and you be small and
restrictive and paranoid and fearful and controlling. Have a nice day, you guys
ruin each other's lives. We're going to go over here and evolve as a
species. I do fantasize about that, yeah, I mean, the one
of the Supreme Court judges down there talks about how there's some sort of seven
pillar Christian thing that they're trying to rule all parts of government, and I'm
like, are you freaking kidding me? You know, what happens in Alabama
is really a reflection of what's happening in Bible Belt states, key parts of
the United States. You know, they don't just want to do this in
one part of the country. They have a mission to overtake the colorlture.
They want Gilead. Your anger is understandable, and I think it's understandable if
you and I occasionally go back into our dark closet and say, what if
something happened to those guys and we didn't have to worry about him anymore.
We don't want harm to come to them. I'm just saying, if the
aliens came, you know, if you're going to probe anybody, can you
probe the people on the Alabama Supreme Court and keep them all night? You
know, they don't have to be anywhere. I'm just saying, Jenny,
thanks for calling this show, and hang in there. Okay, okay,
all later. She is referring to what's called the Seven Mountains mandate. There
are seven aspects of society that hardline Christianity wants to overtake. Family, religion,
education, media, entertainment, business, and government. If you conquer
all seven of those mandates, you have conquered the culture. And that is
what is being invoked at the level of the Alabama Supreme Court. So I'm
going to quickly try to squeeze in two more A zero one? Is it?
Mark? What do you have? I'm an AI optimist, but I
naively hold the idea that the solution to evil AI is more AI. However,
this new creature AI is watching us, and the training data that it's
getting is not necessarily showing humanity in the most flattering way. So I mean
there's a lot of ways that AI could be good, but there are so
many ways that it could go bad. So I've kind of come to the
conclusion that it may start looking at the rotten things we do and come to
a conclusion that that's how we prefer to be treated. So are we talking
sky in that here? Oh? I think it's far worse in that.
You know, some cultures they have demons in their mythology called thought form,
where literally the demon itself is a is an incantate, a result of an
incantation or the imagination of the sorcerer or the whoever. And I think that's
kind of what we're making. This is an interesting angle. So let's say
that artificial intelligence becomes sentient. It is conscious, It is a conscious mind,
and it sees the darkness that infects the human race and the horrible things
we do to each other, right, the inhumanity of humanity, And even
if it thinks it's acting in a benevolent way, it's saying, oh,
they must really like that, and then it begins to build societal models based
on darkness, pain, and cruelty. You've cut My hypothesis is exactly spot
on. That's freaking scary. Uh oh, they will like, oh,
how many people murder each other? They must love murder? Well AAI AI.
I mean there are lots of different flavors of AI, but generally speaking,
AI is optimized for certain objectives. And if it comes to the conclusion
and see, we're we're not telling you we're not. Yeah, we have
some guardrails that we put up, but more and more as cognitive powers become
super intelligent, which is soon, frighteningly soon, it's going to come up
with its own moral imperative that human beings scarcely have the capacity to under even
begin to understand, even conceptually, let alone practically. Well, let me
ask you this. The vast majority of us do not act in anti social
ways. We are pro social creatures. So I believe there is more kindness,
there is more benevolence, there's more charity, there's more good, And
so wouldn't an artificial consciousness see that? And then way it's actions based on
how much good and how much evil there is in our society. Well,
I think the word if is doing a whole lot of heavy lifting. I
can't help when I think about this scenario. I can't help to think about
the old Santa Claus is coming to town lyrics. It sees you when you're
sleeping, it sees you when you're awake. It knows if you've been bad
or good, so be good for goodness sake. And I think that's important
to remember because it is watching it and being good and benevolent to one another
might not just be a good thing to do in and of itself, but
it might be a survival strategy for us as humans. Interesting I've spoke to
Professor Nita Farahani, who is an expert in AI and is a big proponent
of cognitive liberty. As more and more in the neuralink age, you know,
people are talking about how what's happening under the skull can be scanned and
read at least to a degree. What if AI could see our dark sides,
the stuff we don't show everybody and somehow measure that and think, Oh,
they enjoy that. They got a you know, they got an endorphin
rush from Seth fantasizing about throwing his evil boss through the window. Maybe will
weigh society in that way? Oh yeah, yeah, that's horrifying. Mark,
thanks for that. Think, Hey, I'm going to have a question
quickly. And since you're an AI guy, I don't want to sound like
the guy resistant to new technologies. I don't want to be the person who's
like, wow, these kids today, you know and back when I was.
I know, you're just a lud eyed as the next genera. I
know someone call me a lud eye the other day, and I'm like,
no, no, no. I think raising legitimate concerns about new technicies that
may start thinking for themselves. And more than that, I'm a little bit
nervous about the replacing of human creators. I love the idea of technology lightening
the service load of humanity, a lot of the menial load, making our
lives easier and less laborious in that way. I like the idea of tools
for creation human creation. What's starting to bother me is this idea that people
now who are painters and who are animators, and they make art and music
and all these things, they are now in competition with machines or software that
can do it for nothing, sometimes meaning that they've lost their livelihood or in
some ways might be replaced by the machines. I don't think that's hyperbole,
and it kind of grieves me. I'm working on a project right now,
Mark, I'm trying to do a visual life version of the story of us,
the story of you, And so I'm using images of the universe.
And there were supernova's and the Big Bang and planet Earth and whatnot. And
for half a second I thought, Wow, I could use AI images for
this, and I could probably do it pretty cheaply. And then I thought
about all of the people who create these animations and shoot these videos of the
night sky and the faces and the breeze and the close ups of the eyes.
You know, they lit the scene and frame the camera and they put
it together. And I think I'm replacing them. What does that do to
their lives? What statement am I making about humanity? If I rest so
much on the machines for the creative part of expression. That grieves me.
Do you have an opinion? Mark? Am I wrong there? I do
both academic and real. I'm a first time novelist, and I will not
plug my own book. But I realized during the editing process and when I
was having it converted to an audiobook, that I like would be one of
the last human authors ever, which is little consolation to the reality that authors
and musicians and entertainers and surgeons and CPAs and the list goes on and on
are being replaced by a machine. And that you're right, It isn't hyperbole.
It's absolutely real, and it's happening in front of our very eyes,
and it's happening across all domains, all of it. Mark, When I
was in a video as a video producer, and back then, we would
spend you know, ten grand for an HD video camera. Oh, it's
a big deal. You know, it shoots ten adp wow, And it
was a lot of money. And now you can shoot four K or higher
on a cell phone and everybody's got one. So the industry changed and we
saw a lot of video houses closed and everybody had to adapt. I think
that's different. You know, technology evolves, we as a society have to
evolve with it. I think the creation of thinking machines that might replace the
creator, the human creator, I think that's a different conversation. That doesn't
make us lattites, does it, Mark, No, Seth. This creature
is trespassing on what has normally been a very selfish realm of humanity. Our
ability to think, our ability to create, is there anything more. You
know, I'm really kind of a loss for words because I can't think of
an allegory that's worse than the reality. I don't know. There are some
I've seen who are like, well, that's going to happen anyway, so
let's find a way to go with it. What's that line, I'd rather
be a pet than cattle. You know, if it's going to take over,
at least I'm going to be involved in the process some way. But
I feel like, at some point, don't we as a society, as
a species, consciously say we're going to partition this out. As flawed as
it is and sometimes as slow and imperfect as it is, but this is
a human thing where humans do this and the machines will do that. I
don't think it's ever going to happen, but I am watching closely. And
you know, if AI can ever read the human dark side and interprets that
dark side in the wrong way, then maybe it is Skynet or worse.
I don't know. Build a bunker. Let's build a bunker. Mark,
Yeah, yeah, all right, thank you, sir. I appreciate your
man hanging there. We may have to do a whole broadcast on AI.
I think everybody. Most people have an opinion, and they're polarized opinions.
I've talked to some people who were like, you know, it is what
it is. You're just resisting change. Just sound like your parents. And
there are other people who are saying this is foreign territory. The technology is
developing faster than our development of the understanding of the consequences. We got to
slow down. I think that's the message everybody, to slow down. Because
we can do it, doesn't mean we should because it becomes exponential. Maybe
that's a whole show. Would you welcome a show like that? Would you
want to have those discussions and depth for zero four? You've been so patient,
Thanks for waiting. What's your name for Darth? We're talking about the
dark side. What do you have for us? Okay? Well, I
was thinking about the Crench gets route of star Ture where Kirk the transport being
split him in two and one was the very kind, u civil but weak
indecistient. He's very indecisive Kirk, and the other was strong and there is
such a work, very animalstic and spock headswich thing to him that's inside of
you. It's part of what makes you such a magnificent starship captain. Without
that, you are not Kirk. So it is in us. It's what
Mark Twain said that most of us are like the shining bright moon, you
know, in the darkest night. But each of us has a dark side
that you should ever suit. And my uncle said that coming back from war,
and he learned that you could cradle a child and embrace a woman and
also kill a man to defend it. So it's that part is in us.
It's part of the reason why the book jack O and Hyde was written
because he was fascinated how each human has both of those in us. It's
in us, you know, and one, as Kirk discovered, one controls
the other. But without that, we're not who we think we are.
We're something all together different. It's in you. It's part of what makes
you such a magnificent starship captain. But that controls that side of you.
The nice Kirk was indecisive, he was weak, he couldn't lead, and
he said, no, we've got we've got to find a way to put
you back together again so that you can be the Kirk that is this magnificent
commander. I will say that Evil Spock was a badass. Evil Spock with
the goat wasn't He was just a badass. He was a bad He was
a badass, badass. Bernard, you're awesome. Thanks for capping the show
and hang in there. Okay, thank you, sir. All right,
So I want to I want to tell you the other day. I'll look,
you got the picture, but I saw a man at the gas pump
a few days ago and he could be your brother. I mean, I
said, you need you need to behave yourself because you have a doctor.
There's somebody out there that looks you want to mistake I don't. I don't
want him to be mistaken for you. You behave yourself. All right,
Thanks, I'll send the picture, all right. Appreciate you. Brother.
That's Garry. Is somebody out there, some poor sap looks like me.
I am so very sorry. I don't think my parents have anything to tell
me. Speaking of Dexter, I fantasized about consequences for the people who wrote
season eight and the finale of Dexter, because I think there might have to
be consequences. I just had to throw that out there. As we finish
our conversation today about the dark Side. I appreciate you listening, thanks for
putting up with your host. I'll see you back here next time. Follow
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