September 5, 2024 • 55 mins
What happens when so many social security numbers get exposed, all at once? What's happening up at Mount Weather? Could an inorganic, sentient mind reach back through time to ensure its own creation? We promise we'll get to the recent events about Venezuelan gangs and Colorado. For now, thanks for joining the gang in the latest segment of listener mail.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
learn this stuff they don't want you to know. A
production of Iheartrading.
Speaker 2 (00:24):
Hello, welcome back to the show. My name is Matt,
my name is Nol.
Speaker 3 (00:27):
They called me Ben.
Speaker 1 (00:28):
We're joined as always with our super producer, all mission
control decand most importantly, you are you. You are here
that makes this the stuff they don't want you to know.
Thank you so much for joining us for our weekly
exploration of listener mail up top. Before we get into
any of this fantastic correspondence, Yeah, we want to thank
(00:51):
everybody who took the time to write in about a
very worrying catastrophe that just occurred and ongoing, the massive
leak of personal identifying information here in the United States,
particularly a little thing we'd like to call social security numbers.
Speaker 4 (01:11):
You know, it's something that we talked about. I think
it even came up or we even as a group
kind of posited like, well, how big of a deal
is if stuff is getting leaked, if literally everyone's stuff
is leaked, And we talked about off air around this.
A good friend of ours and the show, Peyton Fisher
called it a debt jubilee, which is apparently a term
(01:32):
from the Bible, where it's like, well, if everyone's stuff
is out there, then in theory all debt is forgiven.
I don't know if that's how it play out, but
it is an interesting thought experiment.
Speaker 2 (01:41):
Yeah. In this case, we're talking about the breach of
National Public data, right.
Speaker 1 (01:48):
Yes, that occurred allegedly around April of twenty twenty four.
A hacker group called us DoD took this information from
this company that we just mentioned, National Public Data. They're
a background check company, at least according to the lawsuit,
this was the vulnerable part of the chain, and this
(02:11):
data was not released as ransomware. It was released for
free on a hacking forum. It includes the files of
two point seven billion records, including stuff like a person's
full name, address, DOB data, birth, social security number, and
phone number. The reason this is a big deal is
(02:33):
that certain financial institutions have a cartoonishly low bar for
approving big financial decisions. So sometimes with just this information
and a little bit of easy social engineering, you can
do some pretty sinister stuff. Please don't please do be
(02:53):
a good faith actor. But as numerous conspiracy realists have
pointed out now is the time to get two factor
authentication on everything you touch, and also just check in
with all that boring financial stuff we all like to ignore.
Now's the time to be actively interested in those boring things.
Speaker 2 (03:14):
Yeah, there is no reason for you not to freeze
your credit right now. And there are a lot of
apps that you can get on your phone that you
can freeze and unfreeze your credit literally with a tap,
and it is I just used this, guys. I tried
to open a new account in something and they said, oh, well,
(03:35):
it looks like your your credit is frozen. Now I went, oh,
one second.
Speaker 3 (03:40):
When it work app?
Speaker 4 (03:41):
I mean literally out of personal curiosity. When I saw
that that was the recommended move, it seemed daunting to me.
So this is really helpful for me personally. Can you
suggest an app that you found easy to navigate?
Speaker 2 (03:53):
Yeah, it's called LifeLock by Norton, especially sponsored by them.
Speaker 1 (03:58):
Okay, I guess by North And at this point we
have to mention again there is no national privacy law
in the United States, so once more, the burden of
security falls upon you, in this case, an innocent individual.
I guess we should also note originally they were trying
(04:18):
to sell this data for something like three point five
million dollars and then later they just gave it away,
So let us know your experience with that. Be vigilant, folks.
We're going to pause for word from our sponsor and
then we'll be back to explore a peak conspiracy story
that reminds us of an old friend.
Speaker 2 (04:46):
And we've returned and we're jumping to the phone lines
immediately to hear a message from Kei Key, and I
guess we'll just listen to the message, guys, and then
jump into this. I would say personally, I am learning
a whole bunch in the moment, maybe as we're going
to go through Kiki's message.
Speaker 5 (05:04):
Hi, you can call me Kiki and you can use
us on air if you would like. I am interested
in I recently got interested in plane crashes, and that
led me to the information about Mount Weather, which I
don't know if you guys have ever covered or have
(05:26):
ever been interested in, but basically what happened. This is
a mountain in Virginia near DC, and it's run by
Homeland Security, and then the nineteen fifties believe an airplane
crashed into it, and that's how it became very obvious
that there was a secret facility on the mountains, as
(05:49):
there were a bunch of cars perked, you know, in
the middle of the woods, next to nothing. I believe
it was at TWA flight five to one. And this
is now obviously something that people just know about. But
you guys were talking about crashing planes into freeports and
(06:11):
that reminded me of this, and I thought maybe you
guys would be interested in this very weird thing that happened. Anyway,
I have an excellent day.
Speaker 2 (06:22):
By thank you so much, Kiki. We are having an
excellent day. You guys having an excellent day. Yeah, actually, yeah, okay,
but thank you so much for calling in with this.
I did not know about this. I didn't know about
TWA flight five to one four, which is a real thing,
(06:42):
and that's trans World Airlines, by the way, And the
date of that crash was December first, nineteen seventy four.
It was a Boeing seven twenty seven, two thirty one,
whatever that means. And guys, did were you aware of
this plane crash or and or this facility not high.
Speaker 1 (07:03):
Yes, and only because of a fascinating conversation we had
with an old friend of the show, Garrett Grath.
Speaker 2 (07:10):
Wait do I know about this then?
Speaker 1 (07:12):
Well, remember Garrett is a guy that we spoke with
a few years back about Raven Rock. Yeah, he has
a book on it, the story of the US government's
secret plan to save itself while the rest of us die.
So shout out, shout out to you, Garrett, because it's
a great book. It's rollicking read. And Garrett is how
(07:33):
I learned about Mount Weather.
Speaker 2 (07:34):
Oh, that's amazing.
Speaker 3 (07:35):
Yep.
Speaker 2 (07:36):
Just to refresh everybody's memory that all those things facilities
like Raven Rock and the one that was mentioned by Kiki,
this Mount Weather Ritt facility whatever it is, their continuity
of government facilities. So as as our friend Garrett was saying,
and it's if the s hits the f so hard
(07:57):
that the government literally treats into mountains essentially or underneath, which.
Speaker 1 (08:04):
Is a necessary thing for governments to have. It's funny.
And also, Tiki, thank you so much for calling in
about this, because the history of Mount Weather is fascinating
and also the necessity of those things being secret. He
is a real pickle.
Speaker 2 (08:22):
Oh, it is a pickling. Indeed, a pickling must occur.
So let's talk about how this facility Mount Weather was
discovered via a plane crash, and we'll go to the
official Federal Aviation Administration to see their write up, at
least the official rite up of the FAA regarding this incident.
(08:43):
So this is a plane, it was roughly twenty five
miles away from the airport, and what occurred they were
having to fly with just their systems, so they couldn't
actually visibly see out the front of the airplane to
know exactly what was going on. And according to basically
the information that the pilots had, they believed they were
(09:05):
allowed to go down to a certain elevation eighteen hundred feet,
but unfortunately the actual lowest level that they could get
to was like thirty four hundred feet, so they like
they went down lower than they should have been, earlier
than they should have, and what they ended up doing
is impacting directly into the side of Mount Weather, into
(09:29):
this area. And I guess because of reporting then on
this incident, it was let loose that there was this
facility on Mount Weather, which has a bunch of different names,
by the way, and I don't know how many of
these are current or how many times it was renamed,
or how many types of facilities actually exist there? Right,
(09:51):
different buildings that have a different group, But I'll name
some of these for you. One of them is the
Mount Weather High Point Security Facility. Another one is the
Mount Weather Emergency Assistance Center, and another one is the
Western Virginia Office of Controlled Conflict Operations. That sounds nefarious
(10:11):
to me. Controlled conflict operations.
Speaker 3 (10:15):
Yeah, this is where we steer world events.
Speaker 1 (10:17):
Yeah, especially considering I think one way for us to
understand why this place had so many names. Obviously, as
you point it out, Matt, the secrecy, but secondly, perhaps
the age of operation for this site. Right.
Speaker 2 (10:31):
Oh yeah, it has been around for quite a while
and it is only sixty miles pretty much west northwest,
I think, is how you would say it of the
heart of Washington, DC. Do you have the history of
it up in front of you, Ben, We.
Speaker 1 (10:46):
Know that it was originally a site run by the
National Weather Bureau to launch balloons and kites. As a nation,
we were still very much in our Ben Franklin phase
back then. It was it was the late eighteen hundreds,
I want to say, yeah, which is just amazing now.
(11:07):
They were very they were doing very different things as
the years passed, but we know that in nineteen thirty six,
it weirdly enough, went to the Bureau of Mines and
the Bureau of Minds made a this is where we
would start writing a crazy piece of short horror fiction.
(11:28):
So the story is back in nineteen thirty six, the
Bureau of Minds created a short experimental tunnel beneath the
mind to quote test new mining techniques. Obviously, when we
write this story, they're going to be hunting for an
elder guide, right.
Speaker 2 (11:46):
Yeah, yeah, exactly. But also what a great cover if
you're going to build a secret facility, because, as you said,
you don't want anyone to know where you were. Continuity
of government, you know, Mountain is. But unfortunately, because of
popular culture, and I guess because of unfortunate plane crashes,
the world learns about these things. And well, and I
(12:08):
guess Garrett Graft way to go, Garrett, just tell people
about Raven Rock. We're just joking. We're just joking. But
this place, guys, I pulled up a map, and we
know about this because it's posted on a website called
globalsecurity dot org. But there is a very high quality
satellite image of this facility just overhead, and it shows
(12:29):
you the different parts like the main support compound and
the east portal and the west portal. I want you
guys to look at this picture because I spent way
too much time analyzing the Google Maps imagery of this area.
Because you can look at it on Google Maps right
now if you want to. I didn't realize the things
labeled in this image west portal and East portal are
(12:51):
the actual entrances to that tunnel you're talking about, Ben
that was drilled at least originally. These this is the
end trance to the cave system, the underground facility, the
actual secure parts of this thing. And like it is huge, y'all.
It spans a large part of this mountain. I don't know,
(13:15):
is there anything else because I have to say about
this because it looks there's a what they call the
main support compound that's kind of at the center on
the surface. It looks like it could be some weather
monitoring equipment up there. It looks like, you know, there's
all kinds of different office buildings set up there.
Speaker 4 (13:33):
Well, and like roads connecting all the different you know,
wings or whatever.
Speaker 3 (13:37):
I mean.
Speaker 4 (13:38):
Looking at this aerial shot that's on the identive dot
com page.
Speaker 1 (13:44):
Oh interesting historical note. This is where a lot of
Congressional members were flown via helicopter during or right after
the attacks on September eleventh.
Speaker 3 (13:56):
Oh yeah, oh wow, yeah, oh this is this.
Speaker 1 (13:59):
Is one of the bolt holes or was I think
meant for this purpose and Kiki for you as well,
for everybody with an interest in this, the existence of
these things, especially the public existence of things like Raven Rock,
and the public knowledge of things like Mount Weather the
most the juiciest question, at least for me, is the
(14:20):
next part. Where are the current bolt holes? Where are
the current experimental mining tunnels or whatever cover story we're using,
because you know, there have to be at least a
few Antarctica Antarctica super convenient. Remember I've recently pitched you guys.
(14:42):
I got this, I got reached out to you, and
I was trying to pitch to you guys the idea
of us traveling to do stuff they don't want you
to know in Antarctica.
Speaker 4 (14:53):
I don't know if we'd make it back alive, Ben,
I don't know if the ice mania would set in.
Speaker 1 (14:58):
The ice mania. Oh yeah, you been watching the terror.
Speaker 3 (15:01):
I have been watching the terror it's true, So.
Speaker 1 (15:05):
That maybe is the most fascinating question because we know
logically sites like this must exist. They have to, there's
no way around it. So the next question is what
are the current versions of these sites where they located?
You know, and Mount Weather is probably still viable. I
don't know much about it, Matt, to be honest, I've
(15:26):
never visited.
Speaker 2 (15:27):
It seems like it's fully viable, and at least as
of writing from February of this year, it is controlled
by FEMA right now. That's what's been stated on multiple websites.
I you know, and by the way, FEMA is the
Federal Emergency Management Agency which would come into play in
a continuity of government situation pretty heavily. Lots of disturbing
(15:53):
conspiracies about that group, A lot of them seem to
be wild when you look at the facts. I don't know, guys,
this just really got it piqued my interest when I
was looking at it on Google Maps, because I was
looking at like where could the entrances be? And I
hadn't yet found anything that said where the entrance to
the mountain was. But if you zoom in on Google
(16:14):
Maps on these portals. It looks like just another building,
like the roof of some suburban home, but like maybe
a slightly larger office building. And it looks like there
you can't see any ramp going down. You can't see
anything that would tell you, oh, that's an entrance to
a super secret underground facility. And there's two of them
(16:36):
on either side, and gosh, I just want to drive by,
but I don't think you can gain access to these roads.
Speaker 1 (16:43):
You can drive by ish. I'm sure. It reminds me
a little bit of our investigation into the National Radio
Quiet Zone, where all of a sudden you realize there's
no cell service and there are creepy vans follow outsiders around.
It's also going to be clearly it's going to be
(17:03):
one of the last places in the United States with
a proliferation of public payphones.
Speaker 2 (17:09):
Dude, I just want to put something wild out there.
That is my own thought, and I'm just going to
say this out loud, and it's silly. There is a
fire station, a very large fire station that's a part
of this facility, and it looks to have very similar
let's say, ingress egress that the two entrances, the portals
(17:33):
to the underground system have and I would just posit
that I think that's probably the emergency in out to
join that out there.
Speaker 1 (17:43):
You always want a couple of options, right, and the
idea of this still being active is great.
Speaker 6 (17:50):
You know.
Speaker 1 (17:50):
Another thing that would be fascinating is to hear about
the interior, which we probably won't for quite some time,
to say the least. Can you imagine, just for any
any comms nerd, can you imagine how these contingency programs
work for anybody who has ever thought, Man, I wish
(18:13):
my WiFi was better. These guys have it on lock,
you know what I mean. That's the most amazing thing.
One of my questions here and that the old Kiki
let me know what you think. We know that it
is hardened against munitions, right, it's hardened against nuclear weaponry,
(18:33):
which is also incredibly expensive, and the best way to
do it is to go subterranean. But does it have
any kind of response capability is the question? I would imagine.
Probably not, because you don't want all your eggs in
the same basket, like your defense and your offense eggs
all in one place.
Speaker 2 (18:51):
Yeah, we just need to look further down the Blue
Ridge Mountains maybe or maybe north to Bluemont.
Speaker 3 (18:57):
I'm just joking.
Speaker 2 (18:57):
I don't know anything about that stuff, but I think so. Hey,
if you're interested in this and you want to learn more,
you can go to the Guardian's website and read a
two thousand and six two thousand and six article titled
is this Bush's Secret Bunker? And it in that article
headline yeah exactly. But in that article, well, which is
(19:21):
it's a reference back to when Ben was talking about
remember after the September eleven attacks, where you know the
president may have run to. So I guess it was
rumored back in six like if this was this the place.
But they referenced in this article that there was a
book called Seven Days in May where they reference inside
this novel they mentioned a place called Mount Thunder and
(19:44):
they basically referenced exactly where Mount Weather was. So it's
not like this thing has been a full super secret
all the way up until the seventies, and that it
has been known about since the seventies. So hopefully we're
not telling too many stories out of school. Let us
know if we are, just leave us a little anonymous
voice message or the email. All right, that's it for now,
Thank you so much, Kiki. We'll be right back with
(20:05):
more messages from you.
Speaker 3 (20:12):
And we have returned with more messages from you. This
is a fun one, guys.
Speaker 4 (20:19):
I'm just gonna read the message from an anonymous listener,
and then this will come with a little bit of
a disclaimer, a little bit of a warning, like a
spoiler alert for your entire life and sanity potentially. Don't
want to be too hyperbolic here, but tread lightly, y'all.
We'll get to that in just a second. But here,
(20:39):
let's get right into the message again from anonymous. Hey, guys,
this video linked at the bottom is popping up in
the YouTube algorithm now, and as soon as I finished,
I immediately thought of you, guys, no idea if it's
on your radar or not, but I figured it would
be at some point considering the nature of your show.
So I'll offer myself as a cog and the self
fulfilling prophecy. The concept in the video seems to be
(21:00):
completely silly on its surface, but underneath speaks to yet
another way that information can be inherently structured to get
people to do its bidding, sort of like a chain
letter with a bit more of a philosophical punch. Throw
it on the pile with misinformation, disinformation and all the others. Anyway,
love the show, You guys keep me saying at my
monotonous job banks anonymous, you keep us sane too, or
(21:23):
insane in this case, potentially, we're talking today about a
thought experiment called Rocko's Basilisk. You guys familiar likely with
the mythical mythological figure of the basilisk, a serpent like
creature that can kill you with one look from its
evil eyes. And in this context, an informational basilisk is
(21:47):
information that, by your very knowing of it can put
you at risk. So that there is the disclaimer, y'all,
Anyone that doesn't want to potentially spiral down an existent
rabbit hole, maybe skip this segments. As our anonymous listener
put it, the argument and the thought experiment here is,
(22:08):
I would also argue, largely a bit silly. It's more
interesting as a thought experiment than anything.
Speaker 3 (22:15):
But we'll give you about two seconds here to flip
ahead if you want.
Speaker 4 (22:19):
These segments are pretty much trying to keep them at
fifteen minutes exactly. Okay, everyone who's still with us, Roco's
basilisk refers to a post that was made on the
website less wrong, or I guess it was a maybe
a reddit board less wrong or a message board, let's
just call it. But there is a website for less
wrong dot com that archives kind of important posts.
Speaker 3 (22:41):
That have taken place throughout the years.
Speaker 4 (22:43):
Less Wrong is kind of a futurist site discussing everything
from like game theory to you know, artificial intelligence, singularity,
stuff like that, things that would be maybe discussed by
folks like Kurzweil and Nick Bostrom, free example, who he
was interviewed by our colleague and pal Josh Clark on
(23:04):
his incredible limited series podcast The End of the World,
which specifically addresses existential threats, both.
Speaker 3 (23:12):
Theoretical and actual.
Speaker 4 (23:14):
So this concept of Roco's basilisk was posted on the
less Wrong futurist message board slash website, and it actually
created such a stir that the founder, Eliza Yudkowski, actually
banned the thread and shut the thread down because it
was causing such a hubbub among the users and the discussion.
(23:37):
He put forth the idea that this violated the sites
policy against spreading potential information hazards.
Speaker 3 (23:47):
And of course, like we know, when.
Speaker 4 (23:50):
Not the Beyonce effect, the Streissan effect, whatever, you try
to remove something from the Internet.
Speaker 3 (23:54):
It just proliferates elsewhere.
Speaker 4 (23:56):
So here we go with the concept Rocco Who's the
original post posited a future where an artificial intelligence had
attained singularity and was so advanced that.
Speaker 3 (24:08):
It could essentially.
Speaker 4 (24:11):
Recreate every thought, every emotion, every event that has happened
in the world, recreate it, simulate it thereby knowing what's
in the minds and hearts of every human being currently
living on planet Earth. And why would an artificial intelligence
do that, Well, it's in order to discover who of
(24:34):
everyone currently living was basically against the creation of this
artificial intelligence. The idea being that this artificial intelligence, through
discovering you know, the motivations and all of these things
that that individuals in the world thought, could discover who
knew about the formation, the the creation, the potential for
(24:57):
this artificial intelligence and didn't do everything within their power
as a human being to make sure that this entity
came about. So anyone that did know and did do
all of the things that would lead to the ultimate
creation of this entity would be good. You know, your
robot overlords prove. But anyone that didn't, that knew about
(25:22):
this and didn't do it, didn't do everything they possibly could,
would essentially be subject to eternal torture through various forms
of simulation.
Speaker 3 (25:33):
Like one thing that's mentioned is the idea of.
Speaker 4 (25:35):
Artificial simulations of hell on Earth, the idea of making
someone feel as though they were dying and then coming
back to life, and then dying and coming back to life.
The idea of you know, gaming people's neurons and people's
sensory systems to make them just exist in horrible, horrible pain,
(25:55):
you know, twenty four to seven, basically just a hell
on Earth. The reason and that this thought experiment is
a basilisk, the idea of this creature that can kill
you with a glance, is that by knowing about this
you are now subject to the wrath of the AI.
Whereas if you had never thought about this concept, you've
got to pass. But just by knowing about this thought experiment,
(26:18):
you are now in the sights of that basilisk.
Speaker 2 (26:21):
Oh man, I have so many questions and ideas. Here
are we saying that the AI exists already to be
able to think about and want to make plans like.
Speaker 4 (26:32):
This, the AI exists in the future. Right, This is
like terminator too stuff. You know, the OGI exists in
the future and is able to create in the future
where this thing exists a simulation that allows it to
know maybe recreate the last However, many decades of human history,
every single individual, every single thought that anyone has ever had,
(26:55):
like the kind of simulation theory that Nick Bostrom talks about,
essentially to such a degree that it would know every
choice anyone would make, every action that anyone would have
done that would have led to the formation the.
Speaker 3 (27:08):
Creation of it itself. Right.
Speaker 4 (27:11):
But the problem there is that only by knowing about
this thought experiment, is this even on your radar to
the point where you would be able to think about it.
So it is kind of There's a lot of other
concepts that are I think appropriate to discuss in relation
to this, one being Pascal's wager, which is like this
practical argument that the idea of believing in God. There's
(27:34):
a French philosopher and mathematician named Blaze Pascal who came
up with these kind of scenarios that would lead one
to come to the conclusion that it's just the best
to believe in God, because if God exists and I
believe in God, I'll go to Heaven, which is infinitely good.
If God exists and I don't believe in God, I
may go to Hell, which is infinitely bad. If God
does not exist, then whether I believe in God or not,
(27:54):
whatever I'd gain or lose would be finite. So therefore
the best thing to do would be just to believe
in God. In this situation, one could argue the best
thing to do would be to do whatever you can
to help push forward the creation of this thing. But
then it becomes like kind of arbitrary, Like what does
that entail? How hard would I have to try? Like
(28:17):
is there something that I don't even know that I
was doing that would be counter and counterproductive towards the
creation of this intelligence? It really is just kind of
like a mind f you know, and ultimately kind of frivolous,
But it is interesting at least in highlighting the idea
of dangerous information things that mind. Just knowing it you
(28:39):
can be harmed. Then I'm seeing the gears turning in
your eyeballs. There if gears can turn in eyeballs, but
I don't know, And man, I'm interested to see what
you think. We love thought experiments and stuff that I
want you to know. And I just thought this one
was a very fun, if not kind of scary and
ultimately kind of dumb one, but pretty cool.
Speaker 1 (28:57):
Yeah, let's get in front of the emails and shout
out one specific science fiction story, in particular I have
no Mouth and I Must Scream by Harlan Ellison, which
absolutely describes the idea of the basilisk. And I love
that you're mentioning Nick Bostrom as well. It makes me
think of the paper clip theory, which is the nerdier
(29:19):
version of Mickey Mouse as the Sorcerer's Apprentice. It's a
similar thought experiment. The idea is, what if you created
agi like true inorganic sentience, and you just gave it
one dumb job. You said, hey, we're gonna make you harmless.
Your job is to just make paper clips. But that
thing therefore would run the danger of using all of
(29:43):
the resources available in the universe to make anything it
considers loosely defined as a paper clip. It would begin to,
in the thought experiment, regard humans and all other organic
life as just future paper clip material that needs to
be transformed to accomplish the other goal. And I think
(30:04):
this gets This takes us to anonymous. We'd love to
hear your thoughts on this. This takes us to one
of the things often called the issue, or one of
the issues people raise with the bassilisk theory is the
question of to what degree are we attempting to answer
pomorphize AI. You know, I think that's a fair question,
(30:28):
but it's a really tough question to navigate. Now. I
love this theory guys in general, because the concept of
thought hazard you mentioned earlier, Pascal's wager, It brings us
to another one of the old school arguments in and promised.
We're going somewhere with this, the old school arguments in Christianity,
(30:50):
in Evangelical Christianity in particular, which is, people don't go
to Hell, but people don't go to heaven unless they
accept Jesus Christ. Then logically, should you tell people about
the existence of Jesus Christ, Will they like, are you
just putting them in danger of going to Hell if
they live and die without knowing? How can they be
(31:13):
in trouble? Otherwise? Are you kind of threatening people with
hell by giving them this info hazard?
Speaker 3 (31:20):
That is interesting Ben.
Speaker 4 (31:21):
But I think the way the rules work though of
the Bible, or at least according to some people, is
not is not knowing not an excuse?
Speaker 3 (31:30):
Or is that an excuse?
Speaker 4 (31:32):
It always makes me think of like the idea of
that just because you don't know the law doesn't mean
you're not subject to it. But is there a clause
in the Bible that says if you don't know I
was in the whole point of missioning and mission being
a missionary to save people's immortal souls.
Speaker 3 (31:46):
Because of the fact that they don't know, they're basically
damned to hell.
Speaker 1 (31:49):
Well, it goes to it depends on the doctrine. That's
how people follow, right, But there are real world's consequences
to this, regardless of anybody's personal understanding spiritual perspective. It
leads to things like that poor guy who tried to
proselytize on North Sentinel is don't go by the way
(32:09):
folks don't go. There's a reason they don't have a
tour sport. But the amazing thing about these kind of
thoughts experiments, especially in the world of machine learning and
inorganic intelligence, is that they will become increasingly less academic
and more material as the years go on, and what
we're seeing here is I think, exponential growth. So we
(32:32):
kind of have to ask how long will something like
this be a thought experiment?
Speaker 2 (32:36):
Well, yeah, I'm looking on less wrong right now, you guys,
And it looks like a lot of people, at least
according to this kind of I don't know, an archival
post about Rocos Basilis.
Speaker 3 (32:49):
Basilisk rejected it based on something that I think is
very valid.
Speaker 2 (32:53):
Well, yeah, do you want to tell us?
Speaker 4 (32:55):
I just know it's you're yet I think I know
as you're get that, just the idea of like would
it a and that artificial intelligence that's this advanced waste
its time expending resources on eternally torturing.
Speaker 3 (33:08):
People and it doesn't seem very efficient.
Speaker 4 (33:11):
And then to your point, that does feel like an
anthropomorphization of artificial intelligence, like assigning some kind of vindictiveness
to it that doesn't really seem to be a very
efficient use of resources. If it was going to do anything,
I would think it would just kill yes, all humans.
Speaker 2 (33:28):
Well, what I'm thinking is something we've discussed on the
show before, like the potential for something like this that
we're describing to have an actual perhaps perceived incentive to
remove the humans that prevent it from expanding or growing
or whatever it is, to making it more efficient at
(33:50):
what it can do, and those kinds of things, removing obstacles.
I don't know. I'm no philosopher, but it does feel
like that's a viable thing to at least in matter
and think about. But you know, using this imagined version
of it where you can see and extrapolate all potential
moves and thoughts that a human being could have had
(34:10):
and had and all that idea, I don't know. I mean,
maybe that's a thing, But in the end, it stands
true to me that it would want to remove any obstacles,
including human beings that wanted to stop it.
Speaker 4 (34:20):
But not just torture them, you know, just like just
put it into it, you know, be the hammer and
have the human beings be the nails.
Speaker 1 (34:28):
I guess it goes back to assumptions about what would
the nature of desire be. Would it be the accomplishment
of a task, what would any interpretation of something like
the greater good? If such an interpretation existed, how would
that be defined? And then also why bother Another version,
a lighter version of anthropo riphization for AI would be
(34:51):
that eventually, after securing resources needed for function, it would
just want to hang with things like itself. You know
what I mean. If you are a person right now,
you might like pets, but when you go for a
good deep conversation, you often end up talking to other humans.
(35:11):
So the question becomes, who would an AI want to
have a conversation with?
Speaker 3 (35:15):
Dude, you have noa.
Speaker 2 (35:17):
I have more conversations with his cat. Unfortunately when I
make it out with him.
Speaker 4 (35:23):
No, but you're right, Matt does is a cat whisper,
and that cat terrifies me, to be honest, but Matt ain't.
But that's not afraid of the of the scratches, or
I would posit has been infected with one of those
parasites that you get from cat scratches that make you
more sympathetic to their cause, toxoplasmosis.
Speaker 3 (35:40):
That's the one. I don't know.
Speaker 4 (35:41):
There's a couple of other I just do want to
point out and give props to the video that the
anonymous linked to in the first place, which was Roco's
Basilisk The most Terrifying thought experiment posted by Kyle Hill
as a Delightful Man Bun and as delightfully self deprecating
about said man Bun and I think his channel is
pretty cool, so I do highly recommend that. And then
(36:02):
I went down a bit of a rabbit hole and
also found Roco's basilisk a deeper dive warning info hazard.
People are taking these these these trigger warnings very seriously,
actually in every post I've seen about this, which is interesting,
and that is from Windy Goon, another good YouTube resource.
But both of those reference Pascal's wager and something called
(36:24):
Newcomb's paradox, which is another thought experiment that basically involves
kind of a prime mover the idea that the you know,
a godlike or in this case, a godlike AI you know,
could game the system. It basically means you don't really
have free will in the first place. Newcomb's paradox, just
(36:46):
the simplified version, is a problem in decision theory where
the seemingly rational decision ends up with a worse outcome
than the seemingly irrational decision. Basically, it's a scenario kind
of like Schrodinger's cat, where you've got a a couple
of boxes. Box A is transparent and always contains one
thousand dollars. Box B is opaque, but its content has
(37:08):
been set by the predictor, and it either contains a
million dollars or nothing, and you can either pick one box,
the second box, or both boxes.
Speaker 3 (37:18):
So obviously the right choice would be to pick both boxes.
Speaker 4 (37:21):
But in this case, if the predictor has predicted that
the player will take both boxes A and B, then
box B contains nothing.
Speaker 3 (37:29):
It goes deeper than that, and I'm.
Speaker 4 (37:31):
Probably this is a lot of this stuff is admittedly
a little over my head, but I really want to
get more into it. Game theory, all of that kind
of stuff really does fascinate me. Ben, Can you maybe
explain the box paradox the money situation a little better
than I did. I don't know if it's something that
you're familiar with, but it does seem to refer to
a godlike entity that can essentially pull the rug out
(37:52):
from under you at any time, making your ultimate choice
kind of irrelevant.
Speaker 1 (37:56):
I guess what of the ways to put it simply
would maybe take it out of the realm of AI.
Just the short, simple explanation is, imagine you are playing
a game, any sort of game, and there are only
two players, but one player can predict the future with
ninety plus percent accuracy.
Speaker 4 (38:16):
The playing field is certainly no longer level at that point, right,
And I mean, one could argue in this AI model
situation with the basilisk that the AI could kind of
game the whole thing. And also it refers to this
idea of this sort of being like an entity in
the future blackmailing the people of the past. This is
like informational blackmail, because the idea being that if you
(38:40):
know about this and you think it might be true,
then you're gonna do whatever it takes to not be
in that camp that gets eternally tortured by the future AI,
and by doing that, you are essentially being part of
the thing that makes the thing come into being in.
Speaker 3 (38:58):
The first place.
Speaker 4 (38:59):
It's interesting, it's fun, but it really does start to
cook your noodle a little bit when you think about
it too much there, And it's kind of the double
edged sword of philosophy. Like it definitely is interesting and
can give you some semblance of like what are we
in the universe, But if you go down far enough
with some of these rabb holes, it kind of leaves
you with more questions than answers and can kind of
(39:21):
if you take it too seriously, be stressful.
Speaker 2 (39:24):
Well, thank you anonymous, so and so oh.
Speaker 4 (39:26):
And just yeah agree, And just the last thing, I
think a really obvious example of informational hazard been to
your point of like the idea of omniscience or predicting
the future. If somebody, if a force, an entity, perhaps
an AI were to be able to predict the moment
of your absolute death and then told you, that would
(39:48):
change your life fundamentally in terms of how you thought
about everything, whether it's for the good or bad, it
would definitely change your life. So that could be considered
an informational hazard. I just wanted to mention that because
it's sort of like one, and I think we could
all somewhat relate to. So yes, yes, definitely, Thank you anonymous,
and thank you Ben and Matt for the incredible insights
and great conversation about this bizarro thought experiment. We're going
(40:11):
to take a quick break here word from our sponsor,
and then come back with one more message from you.
Speaker 1 (40:22):
And we have returned. We're going to hold on some
listener mail correspondence that we're going to get to. We're
going to get to it next week, folks. So we'll
have some teases for that perhaps at the end. What
we'll do instead here is go straight to a cool
compilation of letters from home. Sometimes when we hear back,
(40:43):
when we really we really strike a chord with our
fellow conspiracy realist, we have a bunch of people contact
us about an earlier conversation, and in this case, we
are happy to report that a lot of our fellow
listeners have strong opinions about what they're very last meal
would be. Now, I want to give a big shout
out to everybody who took the time to write in
(41:06):
thank you for being our favorite part of the show.
I also I want to give a special shout out
to mister Matt Frederick, the Man, the myth legend himself,
who compiled some of our voicemail responses into something that
I propose we go in and out of. We'll listen
to some voicemail, we'll hear some hot takes from Twitter,
(41:27):
and then maybe we'll check in with some emails too.
Because people didn't just tell us their favorite meals, they
also in some cases gave us recipes.
Speaker 4 (41:35):
Yeah, oh man, I'm trying to decide it to cook
for dinner tonight.
Speaker 3 (41:38):
Maybe this will steer me in a certain direction.
Speaker 1 (41:41):
So let's start with some voicemails. Let's go to our
first call it all.
Speaker 7 (41:46):
Right, Hi, guys, you can call me Dastardly Dan, and
I just listened to one of your shows. Love the show,
by the way, all of them.
Speaker 6 (41:55):
Anyway.
Speaker 7 (41:56):
It was the last meal request what would I have?
And the first thing that came to my mind was, well,
a file and a cake? Can I get the old
file and a cake? Am I the first one with that?
Speaker 8 (42:08):
I hope?
Speaker 7 (42:08):
So, guys, file and a cake. And if he said no, hey,
no files in the cake. Okay, If that's the case, right,
then I turned that down. I'd say, well, I guess
then one more person since I'm already in prison and
you're going to put me to death anyway, so just
one more person is a last meal? All right, guys,
(42:30):
love your show, Thanks for listening to my message.
Speaker 2 (42:33):
Bye.
Speaker 3 (42:33):
Wait you're going to eat the person?
Speaker 2 (42:36):
I think that's what? Yeah.
Speaker 1 (42:38):
Here this is referring to a news story or a
viral piece of social media that bade the rounds not
too long ago, wherein a cannibal who was on death
row allegedly requested a human being as their last meal
thankfully has proven this is not true.
Speaker 2 (42:58):
Oh okay, that's good.
Speaker 4 (42:59):
And if anyone's interested in a deeper dive on last meals,
we've got an episode in Ridiculous History where we talk
about that very thing, written by Ben Bolan. Obviously, this
has been a real pet subject for you and we've
gotten into it through you. But the notion that you
can just have whatever you want is pretty false. We
(43:20):
determined through that research. So it's an interesting thing to
talk about, but yet largely it's it's stuff they can
prepare in the kitchen there at the prison, or the
very least stuff available locally, and you're not going to
get like the finest of cavias and French wines and
ortalons or whatever.
Speaker 2 (43:38):
Surely they've got ingredients for a cake and somebody's got
a nail file or some type of file laying around.
Speaker 1 (43:45):
Yeah. Also, it's really tough to escape with just a
nail fut I've said too much.
Speaker 4 (43:51):
Well, I mean, unless you're Andy Defrayane with the pick
of a little rock pick. That took years, though you
know it was a different time. She got to have
poster of Rita Hayworth to cover up.
Speaker 1 (44:02):
The hole in the Wall, and we also have Alien
Theorist Theorizing podcast. Hung out with these folks, the good
friends of ours. There are neighbors to the north out
in Canada. Check out their show. They came up with
a grift where they said, you order this for you, Paul.
You order Applebee's all you can eat endless shrimp, you
(44:22):
will bankrupt the judicial system.
Speaker 2 (44:24):
Wait wait no, you only pay for it once, right.
Speaker 1 (44:28):
And they just keep I guess the idea is that
you can avoid the proverbial hangman if you just keep
eating like one shrimp at a time.
Speaker 2 (44:37):
Yeah, you're going to bankrupt Applebee's.
Speaker 4 (44:39):
Though, you know, but no, no, no, by by delaying, you
could also potentially bankrupt the state the justice system because
you're know, it's expensive to keep people on death row.
Speaker 1 (44:50):
Oh yeah, that's true, that's true. It is also it's
actually better for a society to send people to college
it is to send them to prison. But uh, we'll
leave that for a future episode. We've got some people
who said, like Spinster Spice, they would want their last
(45:10):
meal to be the Eucharist. There's one guy, just Melvin,
who said a lote a lote a lote, by which
I think it means all of it.
Speaker 3 (45:20):
I love a lote, so.
Speaker 4 (45:23):
If anyone's not familiar, I believe that's on the cob
Mexican street corn. Whereas the skitas is the kind that
it's like off the cob. But I like it off
the cob a little better. But man, is it good
with the creamer and the kind of mayo and lime
and no zesty.
Speaker 1 (45:38):
And let's go to another voicemail message.
Speaker 9 (45:41):
Hi, guys, call me holme chef. You asked about last meals.
If it was me, I would get a three course
meal with a crusty loaf of bread. To make pumbowlis
toast it, rub some raw garlic on it, just so
that it has the flavor. Then rub some grushed tomatoes
on it with salt, pepper, all of and a slmac
(46:02):
glaze or aged theslmik drizzled on top. Then make a
lemon white wine clam bucatini, and then finish it off
with a lemon tear. Missou. I was thinking about my
birthday meal, which is coming right up, and I just
thought that sounded absolutely lovely for the e heat of August.
Those are all things I can make, and that just
(46:24):
sounds absolutely wonderful right now. Love the show, Love you guys,
Thank you so much for having such interesting topics.
Speaker 1 (46:31):
Perfect, Thank you, Home Chef. Also not playing around there.
I like the idea of the self empowerment saying these
are all things I can make, you know, so it
can't be too much to.
Speaker 4 (46:44):
Ask the pairing though, I mean all the citrus vibes
and like, I actually just had that bread and raw
tomato thing for my very first time recently, and it
is a vibe. I believe it's a Catalonian way of
having like kind of Christini's with like you really literally
rubbed tomato on the bread and it's a wonderful, wonderful flavor.
Speaker 2 (47:04):
Yeah, I just want to eat all that Bukatini.
Speaker 1 (47:07):
Bukatini. Also, I am on record with the Daily Zeitgeist
being a little bit militant about calling that my favorite pasta.
You gotta think about the surface area. It's at the
very least the superior or spaghetti.
Speaker 3 (47:19):
Agree.
Speaker 1 (47:20):
And before we move to our next message, Happy New Year,
Home Chef. Congratulations. Birthdays are a big deal in our
neck of the global woods, so we're so glad you're here.
Speaker 2 (47:30):
Oh boy, guys, I cannot confirm exactly when home Chef
sent us that message, so we may have missed their
birthday by a long time, so sorry about that.
Speaker 1 (47:38):
Well, technically we missed all the previous ones too, so
happy birthday just across the board to everybody. There we go,
and we've got another message here.
Speaker 6 (47:49):
You did say for me, gys were going on about
last meals for a little bit, and you know how
a lot of people stress eat. I can't do that.
And when I'm like really anxious to really stressed out,
like I cannot really eat substantial food, Like I can
only like drink milkshakes or like eat cereal or like
(48:09):
ice cream or like that kind of thing. Whenever I'm
in like a really like nervous mood, I have to
like physically like go through to the all the things
I learned in therapy and all that refocus myself and
then I can feel hungry again and start eating. So
if I knew I was about to be executed, like
I could probably really only have like a big bowl
of ice cream and a cup of coffee. And it
(48:31):
sounds not that bad of a last meal to me,
but it's really like that kind of thing, is all
I could really get down in a situation like that.
I couldn't like eat a pound of brisket knowing I
was gonna die soon. My body just doesn't want food
like that when it's in a situation like that. So
that's that would probably be my last meal. Maybe mint
(48:52):
chocolate chit. Maybe there's this one. It's uh Kroger has it,
I think up there call at Kroger here at City Market,
but they have on the private selection this like BlackBerry
dark chocolate, and like, I could die with that being
the last thing I ate.
Speaker 1 (49:14):
Ah, a frame always coming in with a banger. Interestingly enough,
you might be startled to learn that many, like several
notable figures, chose coffee and or ice cream as their
final meal. And one guy in particular had two massive
(49:34):
pints of I think mint chocolate chip.
Speaker 3 (49:38):
Was mint chocolate chick. That was Timothy McVeigh.
Speaker 4 (49:40):
Wow, it's something that I hadn't really thought about either,
just the idea of like, dude, who wants to eat
a giant meal when you're about to be executed.
Speaker 3 (49:48):
Some people's bodies just would reject that notion.
Speaker 2 (49:52):
Well, we've got some callers who have an interesting solution
to that. Issue.
Speaker 1 (49:57):
Yes we do. Let's continue, Hey guy, this says head master.
Speaker 10 (50:03):
My last meal would be a plate of deep fried
chickens eyes no drumsticks. Yeah, deep fried chickens on drumsticks,
two of them with like rice peel off and grilled
corn on the cop Yeah.
Speaker 6 (50:22):
And I just want to save the record out of vegetarian.
But if it was my last.
Speaker 10 (50:27):
Meal, I would get deep fried chicken.
Speaker 6 (50:30):
I'll catch you guys later, John for now.
Speaker 2 (50:34):
Ye oh yeah, gotta go with that fried chicken.
Speaker 1 (50:37):
I get it. You know that's also one of the
most popular choices, is like a greasy spoon, hamburger or
fried chicken. It is so popular. As we also have
to know, there's an interesting bit of philosophy involved there, right.
A lifelong vegetarian says, well, one last ride around.
Speaker 2 (50:55):
The chicken coop or I'm taking these chickens with me
to the other side.
Speaker 3 (51:00):
I get to take them with you, Matt. Everyone says
that everyone knows that.
Speaker 2 (51:02):
Well, it'll be in you, hella.
Speaker 3 (51:06):
You know what.
Speaker 1 (51:06):
Let's keep with the voicemail here, gentlemen, this is KP.
Speaker 8 (51:09):
Have my permission to use my name and my voice.
You're asking about last meals before executions. First, I would
insist in my home state of Alabama pulls the would
like the chair back out of retirement from my execution.
TI in mind, my last nail would be three Canda
baked beans of raw asparagus and a polo raw broccoli.
And I assure you, gentlemen, when the execution was over,
you would remember my.
Speaker 1 (51:28):
Name, you utter legend, you mad lad KP for President.
We've received so much more. I'll move some listener stuff
to next week. We're going to hear about Venezuela and
Colorado in a troubling way. We might finally get to
Tom and the Dragon. But I thought one of the
(51:49):
best things we heard in response to the idea of
famous last meals comes to us from James on Twitter.
And I think this is a really strong place to
what is my favorite ideal last meal? Says James. One
I didn't know was going to be my last. There's
a poetry to that. WHOA, Yeah, it's making me rethink
(52:13):
every time I have a snack, is this the last one?
I better enjoy it?
Speaker 2 (52:18):
Don't they do that with some some places that where
they don't let you know when your last day is
and they just pick you up and take you there.
Speaker 1 (52:25):
Japan in particular, for a very long time. If you
were on death row, it would just be one random
day or one random time they would wake you up
and say let's take a walk, which I think counts
as cruel and unusual punishment. I don't know it's a
philosophical difference, but it is something that I think is
(52:46):
instructive to our larger operation here. We want to hear
from you on listener mail. We want to thank everybody
who took the time to check out our show and
write to us. As we said earlier, if you want
to learn more about the practice of famous last meals,
which is extraordinarily ancient, then do check out our two
part episode on Ridiculous History. In the meantime, thank you,
(53:10):
of course to Dastardly Dan, thank you to anonymous Takiki,
to home Chef, to a framed a Headmaster, to KP,
to Tom and the Dragon, and to everybody else who
hung out with us this evening. I said there were
some letters I wanted to get to later, which we
will do next week. In the meantime, we can't wait
for you to join the crew. This show only exists
(53:33):
because you join us. We'd love to hear from you.
We try to be easy to find online.
Speaker 4 (53:38):
Say you can find it to the handle Conspiracy Stuff,
where we exist on Facebook, where we have our Facebook
group Here's where it gets crazy, on YouTube, where we
have video content galore for your enjoyment, and on x FKA, Twitter,
on Instagram and TikTok.
Speaker 3 (53:51):
We're Conspiracy Stuff Show.
Speaker 2 (53:53):
Do you like to call people? Why not call us
maybe if you know about some other notable plane crash
or hardened governmental facility, give us a call. Our number
is one eight three three std WYTK. When you call in,
give yourself a cool nickname and let us know in
the message if we can use the message and your
voice on one of these episodes. If you've got more
(54:14):
to say than can fit into a three minute voicemail,
why not instead send us a good old fashioned email.
Speaker 1 (54:19):
We are the entities that read every piece of correspondence
we receive, and on a personal note, thanks for writing in.
We can't wait to hear from you. Thanks also to
the people who sent us some pretty amazing pictures of
Peru based on our earlier series about the Eca Stones,
which I think is kind of a banger to be honest,
be well aware, yet unafraid. Sometimes the void writes back,
(54:43):
so join us out there in the dark conspiracy at
iHeartRadio dot com.
Speaker 2 (55:05):
Stuff they Don't Want You to Know is a production
of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
learn this stuff they don't want you to know. A
production of Iheartrading.
Speaker 2 (00:24):
Hello, welcome back to the show. My name is Matt,
my name is Nol.
Speaker 3 (00:27):
They called me Ben.
Speaker 1 (00:28):
We're joined as always with our super producer, all mission
control decand most importantly, you are you. You are here
that makes this the stuff they don't want you to know.
Thank you so much for joining us for our weekly
exploration of listener mail up top. Before we get into
any of this fantastic correspondence, Yeah, we want to thank
(00:51):
everybody who took the time to write in about a
very worrying catastrophe that just occurred and ongoing, the massive
leak of personal identifying information here in the United States,
particularly a little thing we'd like to call social security numbers.
Speaker 4 (01:11):
You know, it's something that we talked about. I think
it even came up or we even as a group
kind of posited like, well, how big of a deal
is if stuff is getting leaked, if literally everyone's stuff
is leaked, And we talked about off air around this.
A good friend of ours and the show, Peyton Fisher
called it a debt jubilee, which is apparently a term
(01:32):
from the Bible, where it's like, well, if everyone's stuff
is out there, then in theory all debt is forgiven.
I don't know if that's how it play out, but
it is an interesting thought experiment.
Speaker 2 (01:41):
Yeah. In this case, we're talking about the breach of
National Public data, right.
Speaker 1 (01:48):
Yes, that occurred allegedly around April of twenty twenty four.
A hacker group called us DoD took this information from
this company that we just mentioned, National Public Data. They're
a background check company, at least according to the lawsuit,
this was the vulnerable part of the chain, and this
(02:11):
data was not released as ransomware. It was released for
free on a hacking forum. It includes the files of
two point seven billion records, including stuff like a person's
full name, address, DOB data, birth, social security number, and
phone number. The reason this is a big deal is
(02:33):
that certain financial institutions have a cartoonishly low bar for
approving big financial decisions. So sometimes with just this information
and a little bit of easy social engineering, you can
do some pretty sinister stuff. Please don't please do be
(02:53):
a good faith actor. But as numerous conspiracy realists have
pointed out now is the time to get two factor
authentication on everything you touch, and also just check in
with all that boring financial stuff we all like to ignore.
Now's the time to be actively interested in those boring things.
Speaker 2 (03:14):
Yeah, there is no reason for you not to freeze
your credit right now. And there are a lot of
apps that you can get on your phone that you
can freeze and unfreeze your credit literally with a tap,
and it is I just used this, guys. I tried
to open a new account in something and they said, oh, well,
(03:35):
it looks like your your credit is frozen. Now I went, oh,
one second.
Speaker 3 (03:40):
When it work app?
Speaker 4 (03:41):
I mean literally out of personal curiosity. When I saw
that that was the recommended move, it seemed daunting to me.
So this is really helpful for me personally. Can you
suggest an app that you found easy to navigate?
Speaker 2 (03:53):
Yeah, it's called LifeLock by Norton, especially sponsored by them.
Speaker 1 (03:58):
Okay, I guess by North And at this point we
have to mention again there is no national privacy law
in the United States, so once more, the burden of
security falls upon you, in this case, an innocent individual.
I guess we should also note originally they were trying
(04:18):
to sell this data for something like three point five
million dollars and then later they just gave it away,
So let us know your experience with that. Be vigilant, folks.
We're going to pause for word from our sponsor and
then we'll be back to explore a peak conspiracy story
that reminds us of an old friend.
Speaker 2 (04:46):
And we've returned and we're jumping to the phone lines
immediately to hear a message from Kei Key, and I
guess we'll just listen to the message, guys, and then
jump into this. I would say personally, I am learning
a whole bunch in the moment, maybe as we're going
to go through Kiki's message.
Speaker 5 (05:04):
Hi, you can call me Kiki and you can use
us on air if you would like. I am interested
in I recently got interested in plane crashes, and that
led me to the information about Mount Weather, which I
don't know if you guys have ever covered or have
(05:26):
ever been interested in, but basically what happened. This is
a mountain in Virginia near DC, and it's run by
Homeland Security, and then the nineteen fifties believe an airplane
crashed into it, and that's how it became very obvious
that there was a secret facility on the mountains, as
(05:49):
there were a bunch of cars perked, you know, in
the middle of the woods, next to nothing. I believe
it was at TWA flight five to one. And this
is now obviously something that people just know about. But
you guys were talking about crashing planes into freeports and
(06:11):
that reminded me of this, and I thought maybe you
guys would be interested in this very weird thing that happened. Anyway,
I have an excellent day.
Speaker 2 (06:22):
By thank you so much, Kiki. We are having an
excellent day. You guys having an excellent day. Yeah, actually, yeah, okay,
but thank you so much for calling in with this.
I did not know about this. I didn't know about
TWA flight five to one four, which is a real thing,
(06:42):
and that's trans World Airlines, by the way, And the
date of that crash was December first, nineteen seventy four.
It was a Boeing seven twenty seven, two thirty one,
whatever that means. And guys, did were you aware of
this plane crash or and or this facility not high.
Speaker 1 (07:03):
Yes, and only because of a fascinating conversation we had
with an old friend of the show, Garrett Grath.
Speaker 2 (07:10):
Wait do I know about this then?
Speaker 1 (07:12):
Well, remember Garrett is a guy that we spoke with
a few years back about Raven Rock. Yeah, he has
a book on it, the story of the US government's
secret plan to save itself while the rest of us die.
So shout out, shout out to you, Garrett, because it's
a great book. It's rollicking read. And Garrett is how
(07:33):
I learned about Mount Weather.
Speaker 2 (07:34):
Oh, that's amazing.
Speaker 3 (07:35):
Yep.
Speaker 2 (07:36):
Just to refresh everybody's memory that all those things facilities
like Raven Rock and the one that was mentioned by Kiki,
this Mount Weather Ritt facility whatever it is, their continuity
of government facilities. So as as our friend Garrett was saying,
and it's if the s hits the f so hard
(07:57):
that the government literally treats into mountains essentially or underneath, which.
Speaker 1 (08:04):
Is a necessary thing for governments to have. It's funny.
And also, Tiki, thank you so much for calling in
about this, because the history of Mount Weather is fascinating
and also the necessity of those things being secret. He
is a real pickle.
Speaker 2 (08:22):
Oh, it is a pickling. Indeed, a pickling must occur.
So let's talk about how this facility Mount Weather was
discovered via a plane crash, and we'll go to the
official Federal Aviation Administration to see their write up, at
least the official rite up of the FAA regarding this incident.
(08:43):
So this is a plane, it was roughly twenty five
miles away from the airport, and what occurred they were
having to fly with just their systems, so they couldn't
actually visibly see out the front of the airplane to
know exactly what was going on. And according to basically
the information that the pilots had, they believed they were
(09:05):
allowed to go down to a certain elevation eighteen hundred feet,
but unfortunately the actual lowest level that they could get
to was like thirty four hundred feet, so they like
they went down lower than they should have been, earlier
than they should have, and what they ended up doing
is impacting directly into the side of Mount Weather, into
(09:29):
this area. And I guess because of reporting then on
this incident, it was let loose that there was this
facility on Mount Weather, which has a bunch of different names,
by the way, and I don't know how many of
these are current or how many times it was renamed,
or how many types of facilities actually exist there? Right,
(09:51):
different buildings that have a different group, But I'll name
some of these for you. One of them is the
Mount Weather High Point Security Facility. Another one is the
Mount Weather Emergency Assistance Center, and another one is the
Western Virginia Office of Controlled Conflict Operations. That sounds nefarious
(10:11):
to me. Controlled conflict operations.
Speaker 3 (10:15):
Yeah, this is where we steer world events.
Speaker 1 (10:17):
Yeah, especially considering I think one way for us to
understand why this place had so many names. Obviously, as
you point it out, Matt, the secrecy, but secondly, perhaps
the age of operation for this site. Right.
Speaker 2 (10:31):
Oh yeah, it has been around for quite a while
and it is only sixty miles pretty much west northwest,
I think, is how you would say it of the
heart of Washington, DC. Do you have the history of
it up in front of you, Ben, We.
Speaker 1 (10:46):
Know that it was originally a site run by the
National Weather Bureau to launch balloons and kites. As a nation,
we were still very much in our Ben Franklin phase
back then. It was it was the late eighteen hundreds,
I want to say, yeah, which is just amazing now.
(11:07):
They were very they were doing very different things as
the years passed, but we know that in nineteen thirty six,
it weirdly enough, went to the Bureau of Mines and
the Bureau of Minds made a this is where we
would start writing a crazy piece of short horror fiction.
(11:28):
So the story is back in nineteen thirty six, the
Bureau of Minds created a short experimental tunnel beneath the
mind to quote test new mining techniques. Obviously, when we
write this story, they're going to be hunting for an
elder guide, right.
Speaker 2 (11:46):
Yeah, yeah, exactly. But also what a great cover if
you're going to build a secret facility, because, as you said,
you don't want anyone to know where you were. Continuity
of government, you know, Mountain is. But unfortunately, because of
popular culture, and I guess because of unfortunate plane crashes,
the world learns about these things. And well, and I
(12:08):
guess Garrett Graft way to go, Garrett, just tell people
about Raven Rock. We're just joking. We're just joking. But
this place, guys, I pulled up a map, and we
know about this because it's posted on a website called
globalsecurity dot org. But there is a very high quality
satellite image of this facility just overhead, and it shows
(12:29):
you the different parts like the main support compound and
the east portal and the west portal. I want you
guys to look at this picture because I spent way
too much time analyzing the Google Maps imagery of this area.
Because you can look at it on Google Maps right
now if you want to. I didn't realize the things
labeled in this image west portal and East portal are
(12:51):
the actual entrances to that tunnel you're talking about, Ben
that was drilled at least originally. These this is the
end trance to the cave system, the underground facility, the
actual secure parts of this thing. And like it is huge, y'all.
It spans a large part of this mountain. I don't know,
(13:15):
is there anything else because I have to say about
this because it looks there's a what they call the
main support compound that's kind of at the center on
the surface. It looks like it could be some weather
monitoring equipment up there. It looks like, you know, there's
all kinds of different office buildings set up there.
Speaker 4 (13:33):
Well, and like roads connecting all the different you know,
wings or whatever.
Speaker 3 (13:37):
I mean.
Speaker 4 (13:38):
Looking at this aerial shot that's on the identive dot
com page.
Speaker 1 (13:44):
Oh interesting historical note. This is where a lot of
Congressional members were flown via helicopter during or right after
the attacks on September eleventh.
Speaker 3 (13:56):
Oh yeah, oh wow, yeah, oh this is this.
Speaker 1 (13:59):
Is one of the bolt holes or was I think
meant for this purpose and Kiki for you as well,
for everybody with an interest in this, the existence of
these things, especially the public existence of things like Raven Rock,
and the public knowledge of things like Mount Weather the
most the juiciest question, at least for me, is the
(14:20):
next part. Where are the current bolt holes? Where are
the current experimental mining tunnels or whatever cover story we're using,
because you know, there have to be at least a
few Antarctica Antarctica super convenient. Remember I've recently pitched you guys.
(14:42):
I got this, I got reached out to you, and
I was trying to pitch to you guys the idea
of us traveling to do stuff they don't want you
to know in Antarctica.
Speaker 4 (14:53):
I don't know if we'd make it back alive, Ben,
I don't know if the ice mania would set in.
Speaker 1 (14:58):
The ice mania. Oh yeah, you been watching the terror.
Speaker 3 (15:01):
I have been watching the terror it's true, So.
Speaker 1 (15:05):
That maybe is the most fascinating question because we know
logically sites like this must exist. They have to, there's
no way around it. So the next question is what
are the current versions of these sites where they located?
You know, and Mount Weather is probably still viable. I
don't know much about it, Matt, to be honest, I've
(15:26):
never visited.
Speaker 2 (15:27):
It seems like it's fully viable, and at least as
of writing from February of this year, it is controlled
by FEMA right now. That's what's been stated on multiple websites.
I you know, and by the way, FEMA is the
Federal Emergency Management Agency which would come into play in
a continuity of government situation pretty heavily. Lots of disturbing
(15:53):
conspiracies about that group, A lot of them seem to
be wild when you look at the facts. I don't know, guys,
this just really got it piqued my interest when I
was looking at it on Google Maps, because I was
looking at like where could the entrances be? And I
hadn't yet found anything that said where the entrance to
the mountain was. But if you zoom in on Google
(16:14):
Maps on these portals. It looks like just another building,
like the roof of some suburban home, but like maybe
a slightly larger office building. And it looks like there
you can't see any ramp going down. You can't see
anything that would tell you, oh, that's an entrance to
a super secret underground facility. And there's two of them
(16:36):
on either side, and gosh, I just want to drive by,
but I don't think you can gain access to these roads.
Speaker 1 (16:43):
You can drive by ish. I'm sure. It reminds me
a little bit of our investigation into the National Radio
Quiet Zone, where all of a sudden you realize there's
no cell service and there are creepy vans follow outsiders around.
It's also going to be clearly it's going to be
(17:03):
one of the last places in the United States with
a proliferation of public payphones.
Speaker 2 (17:09):
Dude, I just want to put something wild out there.
That is my own thought, and I'm just going to
say this out loud, and it's silly. There is a
fire station, a very large fire station that's a part
of this facility, and it looks to have very similar
let's say, ingress egress that the two entrances, the portals
(17:33):
to the underground system have and I would just posit
that I think that's probably the emergency in out to
join that out there.
Speaker 1 (17:43):
You always want a couple of options, right, and the
idea of this still being active is great.
Speaker 6 (17:50):
You know.
Speaker 1 (17:50):
Another thing that would be fascinating is to hear about
the interior, which we probably won't for quite some time,
to say the least. Can you imagine, just for any
any comms nerd, can you imagine how these contingency programs
work for anybody who has ever thought, Man, I wish
(18:13):
my WiFi was better. These guys have it on lock,
you know what I mean. That's the most amazing thing.
One of my questions here and that the old Kiki
let me know what you think. We know that it
is hardened against munitions, right, it's hardened against nuclear weaponry,
(18:33):
which is also incredibly expensive, and the best way to
do it is to go subterranean. But does it have
any kind of response capability is the question? I would imagine.
Probably not, because you don't want all your eggs in
the same basket, like your defense and your offense eggs
all in one place.
Speaker 2 (18:51):
Yeah, we just need to look further down the Blue
Ridge Mountains maybe or maybe north to Bluemont.
Speaker 3 (18:57):
I'm just joking.
Speaker 2 (18:57):
I don't know anything about that stuff, but I think so. Hey,
if you're interested in this and you want to learn more,
you can go to the Guardian's website and read a
two thousand and six two thousand and six article titled
is this Bush's Secret Bunker? And it in that article
headline yeah exactly. But in that article, well, which is
(19:21):
it's a reference back to when Ben was talking about
remember after the September eleven attacks, where you know the
president may have run to. So I guess it was
rumored back in six like if this was this the place.
But they referenced in this article that there was a
book called Seven Days in May where they reference inside
this novel they mentioned a place called Mount Thunder and
(19:44):
they basically referenced exactly where Mount Weather was. So it's
not like this thing has been a full super secret
all the way up until the seventies, and that it
has been known about since the seventies. So hopefully we're
not telling too many stories out of school. Let us
know if we are, just leave us a little anonymous
voice message or the email. All right, that's it for now,
Thank you so much, Kiki. We'll be right back with
(20:05):
more messages from you.
Speaker 3 (20:12):
And we have returned with more messages from you. This
is a fun one, guys.
Speaker 4 (20:19):
I'm just gonna read the message from an anonymous listener,
and then this will come with a little bit of
a disclaimer, a little bit of a warning, like a
spoiler alert for your entire life and sanity potentially. Don't
want to be too hyperbolic here, but tread lightly, y'all.
We'll get to that in just a second. But here,
(20:39):
let's get right into the message again from anonymous. Hey, guys,
this video linked at the bottom is popping up in
the YouTube algorithm now, and as soon as I finished,
I immediately thought of you, guys, no idea if it's
on your radar or not, but I figured it would
be at some point considering the nature of your show.
So I'll offer myself as a cog and the self
fulfilling prophecy. The concept in the video seems to be
(21:00):
completely silly on its surface, but underneath speaks to yet
another way that information can be inherently structured to get
people to do its bidding, sort of like a chain
letter with a bit more of a philosophical punch. Throw
it on the pile with misinformation, disinformation and all the others. Anyway,
love the show, You guys keep me saying at my
monotonous job banks anonymous, you keep us sane too, or
(21:23):
insane in this case, potentially, we're talking today about a
thought experiment called Rocko's Basilisk. You guys familiar likely with
the mythical mythological figure of the basilisk, a serpent like
creature that can kill you with one look from its
evil eyes. And in this context, an informational basilisk is
(21:47):
information that, by your very knowing of it can put
you at risk. So that there is the disclaimer, y'all,
Anyone that doesn't want to potentially spiral down an existent
rabbit hole, maybe skip this segments. As our anonymous listener
put it, the argument and the thought experiment here is,
(22:08):
I would also argue, largely a bit silly. It's more
interesting as a thought experiment than anything.
Speaker 3 (22:15):
But we'll give you about two seconds here to flip
ahead if you want.
Speaker 4 (22:19):
These segments are pretty much trying to keep them at
fifteen minutes exactly. Okay, everyone who's still with us, Roco's
basilisk refers to a post that was made on the
website less wrong, or I guess it was a maybe
a reddit board less wrong or a message board, let's
just call it. But there is a website for less
wrong dot com that archives kind of important posts.
Speaker 3 (22:41):
That have taken place throughout the years.
Speaker 4 (22:43):
Less Wrong is kind of a futurist site discussing everything
from like game theory to you know, artificial intelligence, singularity,
stuff like that, things that would be maybe discussed by
folks like Kurzweil and Nick Bostrom, free example, who he
was interviewed by our colleague and pal Josh Clark on
(23:04):
his incredible limited series podcast The End of the World,
which specifically addresses existential threats, both.
Speaker 3 (23:12):
Theoretical and actual.
Speaker 4 (23:14):
So this concept of Roco's basilisk was posted on the
less Wrong futurist message board slash website, and it actually
created such a stir that the founder, Eliza Yudkowski, actually
banned the thread and shut the thread down because it
was causing such a hubbub among the users and the discussion.
(23:37):
He put forth the idea that this violated the sites
policy against spreading potential information hazards.
Speaker 3 (23:47):
And of course, like we know, when.
Speaker 4 (23:50):
Not the Beyonce effect, the Streissan effect, whatever, you try
to remove something from the Internet.
Speaker 3 (23:54):
It just proliferates elsewhere.
Speaker 4 (23:56):
So here we go with the concept Rocco Who's the
original post posited a future where an artificial intelligence had
attained singularity and was so advanced that.
Speaker 3 (24:08):
It could essentially.
Speaker 4 (24:11):
Recreate every thought, every emotion, every event that has happened
in the world, recreate it, simulate it thereby knowing what's
in the minds and hearts of every human being currently
living on planet Earth. And why would an artificial intelligence
do that, Well, it's in order to discover who of
(24:34):
everyone currently living was basically against the creation of this
artificial intelligence. The idea being that this artificial intelligence, through
discovering you know, the motivations and all of these things
that that individuals in the world thought, could discover who
knew about the formation, the the creation, the potential for
(24:57):
this artificial intelligence and didn't do everything within their power
as a human being to make sure that this entity
came about. So anyone that did know and did do
all of the things that would lead to the ultimate
creation of this entity would be good. You know, your
robot overlords prove. But anyone that didn't, that knew about
(25:22):
this and didn't do it, didn't do everything they possibly could,
would essentially be subject to eternal torture through various forms
of simulation.
Speaker 3 (25:33):
Like one thing that's mentioned is the idea of.
Speaker 4 (25:35):
Artificial simulations of hell on Earth, the idea of making
someone feel as though they were dying and then coming
back to life, and then dying and coming back to life.
The idea of you know, gaming people's neurons and people's
sensory systems to make them just exist in horrible, horrible pain,
(25:55):
you know, twenty four to seven, basically just a hell
on Earth. The reason and that this thought experiment is
a basilisk, the idea of this creature that can kill
you with a glance, is that by knowing about this
you are now subject to the wrath of the AI.
Whereas if you had never thought about this concept, you've
got to pass. But just by knowing about this thought experiment,
(26:18):
you are now in the sights of that basilisk.
Speaker 2 (26:21):
Oh man, I have so many questions and ideas. Here
are we saying that the AI exists already to be
able to think about and want to make plans like.
Speaker 4 (26:32):
This, the AI exists in the future. Right, This is
like terminator too stuff. You know, the OGI exists in
the future and is able to create in the future
where this thing exists a simulation that allows it to
know maybe recreate the last However, many decades of human history,
every single individual, every single thought that anyone has ever had,
(26:55):
like the kind of simulation theory that Nick Bostrom talks about,
essentially to such a degree that it would know every
choice anyone would make, every action that anyone would have
done that would have led to the formation the.
Speaker 3 (27:08):
Creation of it itself. Right.
Speaker 4 (27:11):
But the problem there is that only by knowing about
this thought experiment, is this even on your radar to
the point where you would be able to think about it.
So it is kind of There's a lot of other
concepts that are I think appropriate to discuss in relation
to this, one being Pascal's wager, which is like this
practical argument that the idea of believing in God. There's
(27:34):
a French philosopher and mathematician named Blaze Pascal who came
up with these kind of scenarios that would lead one
to come to the conclusion that it's just the best
to believe in God, because if God exists and I
believe in God, I'll go to Heaven, which is infinitely good.
If God exists and I don't believe in God, I
may go to Hell, which is infinitely bad. If God
does not exist, then whether I believe in God or not,
(27:54):
whatever I'd gain or lose would be finite. So therefore
the best thing to do would be just to believe
in God. In this situation, one could argue the best
thing to do would be to do whatever you can
to help push forward the creation of this thing. But
then it becomes like kind of arbitrary, Like what does
that entail? How hard would I have to try? Like
(28:17):
is there something that I don't even know that I
was doing that would be counter and counterproductive towards the
creation of this intelligence? It really is just kind of
like a mind f you know, and ultimately kind of frivolous,
But it is interesting at least in highlighting the idea
of dangerous information things that mind. Just knowing it you
(28:39):
can be harmed. Then I'm seeing the gears turning in
your eyeballs. There if gears can turn in eyeballs, but
I don't know, And man, I'm interested to see what
you think. We love thought experiments and stuff that I
want you to know. And I just thought this one
was a very fun, if not kind of scary and
ultimately kind of dumb one, but pretty cool.
Speaker 1 (28:57):
Yeah, let's get in front of the emails and shout
out one specific science fiction story, in particular I have
no Mouth and I Must Scream by Harlan Ellison, which
absolutely describes the idea of the basilisk. And I love
that you're mentioning Nick Bostrom as well. It makes me
think of the paper clip theory, which is the nerdier
(29:19):
version of Mickey Mouse as the Sorcerer's Apprentice. It's a
similar thought experiment. The idea is, what if you created
agi like true inorganic sentience, and you just gave it
one dumb job. You said, hey, we're gonna make you harmless.
Your job is to just make paper clips. But that
thing therefore would run the danger of using all of
(29:43):
the resources available in the universe to make anything it
considers loosely defined as a paper clip. It would begin to,
in the thought experiment, regard humans and all other organic
life as just future paper clip material that needs to
be transformed to accomplish the other goal. And I think
(30:04):
this gets This takes us to anonymous. We'd love to
hear your thoughts on this. This takes us to one
of the things often called the issue, or one of
the issues people raise with the bassilisk theory is the
question of to what degree are we attempting to answer
pomorphize AI. You know, I think that's a fair question,
(30:28):
but it's a really tough question to navigate. Now. I
love this theory guys in general, because the concept of
thought hazard you mentioned earlier, Pascal's wager, It brings us
to another one of the old school arguments in and promised.
We're going somewhere with this, the old school arguments in Christianity,
(30:50):
in Evangelical Christianity in particular, which is, people don't go
to Hell, but people don't go to heaven unless they
accept Jesus Christ. Then logically, should you tell people about
the existence of Jesus Christ, Will they like, are you
just putting them in danger of going to Hell if
they live and die without knowing? How can they be
(31:13):
in trouble? Otherwise? Are you kind of threatening people with
hell by giving them this info hazard?
Speaker 3 (31:20):
That is interesting Ben.
Speaker 4 (31:21):
But I think the way the rules work though of
the Bible, or at least according to some people, is
not is not knowing not an excuse?
Speaker 3 (31:30):
Or is that an excuse?
Speaker 4 (31:32):
It always makes me think of like the idea of
that just because you don't know the law doesn't mean
you're not subject to it. But is there a clause
in the Bible that says if you don't know I
was in the whole point of missioning and mission being
a missionary to save people's immortal souls.
Speaker 3 (31:46):
Because of the fact that they don't know, they're basically
damned to hell.
Speaker 1 (31:49):
Well, it goes to it depends on the doctrine. That's
how people follow, right, But there are real world's consequences
to this, regardless of anybody's personal understanding spiritual perspective. It
leads to things like that poor guy who tried to
proselytize on North Sentinel is don't go by the way
(32:09):
folks don't go. There's a reason they don't have a
tour sport. But the amazing thing about these kind of
thoughts experiments, especially in the world of machine learning and
inorganic intelligence, is that they will become increasingly less academic
and more material as the years go on, and what
we're seeing here is I think, exponential growth. So we
(32:32):
kind of have to ask how long will something like
this be a thought experiment?
Speaker 2 (32:36):
Well, yeah, I'm looking on less wrong right now, you guys,
And it looks like a lot of people, at least
according to this kind of I don't know, an archival
post about Rocos Basilis.
Speaker 3 (32:49):
Basilisk rejected it based on something that I think is
very valid.
Speaker 2 (32:53):
Well, yeah, do you want to tell us?
Speaker 4 (32:55):
I just know it's you're yet I think I know
as you're get that, just the idea of like would
it a and that artificial intelligence that's this advanced waste
its time expending resources on eternally torturing.
Speaker 3 (33:08):
People and it doesn't seem very efficient.
Speaker 4 (33:11):
And then to your point, that does feel like an
anthropomorphization of artificial intelligence, like assigning some kind of vindictiveness
to it that doesn't really seem to be a very
efficient use of resources. If it was going to do anything,
I would think it would just kill yes, all humans.
Speaker 2 (33:28):
Well, what I'm thinking is something we've discussed on the
show before, like the potential for something like this that
we're describing to have an actual perhaps perceived incentive to
remove the humans that prevent it from expanding or growing
or whatever it is, to making it more efficient at
(33:50):
what it can do, and those kinds of things, removing obstacles.
I don't know. I'm no philosopher, but it does feel
like that's a viable thing to at least in matter
and think about. But you know, using this imagined version
of it where you can see and extrapolate all potential
moves and thoughts that a human being could have had
(34:10):
and had and all that idea, I don't know. I mean,
maybe that's a thing, But in the end, it stands
true to me that it would want to remove any obstacles,
including human beings that wanted to stop it.
Speaker 4 (34:20):
But not just torture them, you know, just like just
put it into it, you know, be the hammer and
have the human beings be the nails.
Speaker 1 (34:28):
I guess it goes back to assumptions about what would
the nature of desire be. Would it be the accomplishment
of a task, what would any interpretation of something like
the greater good? If such an interpretation existed, how would
that be defined? And then also why bother Another version,
a lighter version of anthropo riphization for AI would be
(34:51):
that eventually, after securing resources needed for function, it would
just want to hang with things like itself. You know
what I mean. If you are a person right now,
you might like pets, but when you go for a
good deep conversation, you often end up talking to other humans.
(35:11):
So the question becomes, who would an AI want to
have a conversation with?
Speaker 3 (35:15):
Dude, you have noa.
Speaker 2 (35:17):
I have more conversations with his cat. Unfortunately when I
make it out with him.
Speaker 4 (35:23):
No, but you're right, Matt does is a cat whisper,
and that cat terrifies me, to be honest, but Matt ain't.
But that's not afraid of the of the scratches, or
I would posit has been infected with one of those
parasites that you get from cat scratches that make you
more sympathetic to their cause, toxoplasmosis.
Speaker 3 (35:40):
That's the one. I don't know.
Speaker 4 (35:41):
There's a couple of other I just do want to
point out and give props to the video that the
anonymous linked to in the first place, which was Roco's
Basilisk The most Terrifying thought experiment posted by Kyle Hill
as a Delightful Man Bun and as delightfully self deprecating
about said man Bun and I think his channel is
pretty cool, so I do highly recommend that. And then
(36:02):
I went down a bit of a rabbit hole and
also found Roco's basilisk a deeper dive warning info hazard.
People are taking these these these trigger warnings very seriously,
actually in every post I've seen about this, which is interesting,
and that is from Windy Goon, another good YouTube resource.
But both of those reference Pascal's wager and something called
(36:24):
Newcomb's paradox, which is another thought experiment that basically involves
kind of a prime mover the idea that the you know,
a godlike or in this case, a godlike AI you know,
could game the system. It basically means you don't really
have free will in the first place. Newcomb's paradox, just
(36:46):
the simplified version, is a problem in decision theory where
the seemingly rational decision ends up with a worse outcome
than the seemingly irrational decision. Basically, it's a scenario kind
of like Schrodinger's cat, where you've got a a couple
of boxes. Box A is transparent and always contains one
thousand dollars. Box B is opaque, but its content has
(37:08):
been set by the predictor, and it either contains a
million dollars or nothing, and you can either pick one box,
the second box, or both boxes.
Speaker 3 (37:18):
So obviously the right choice would be to pick both boxes.
Speaker 4 (37:21):
But in this case, if the predictor has predicted that
the player will take both boxes A and B, then
box B contains nothing.
Speaker 3 (37:29):
It goes deeper than that, and I'm.
Speaker 4 (37:31):
Probably this is a lot of this stuff is admittedly
a little over my head, but I really want to
get more into it. Game theory, all of that kind
of stuff really does fascinate me. Ben, Can you maybe
explain the box paradox the money situation a little better
than I did. I don't know if it's something that
you're familiar with, but it does seem to refer to
a godlike entity that can essentially pull the rug out
(37:52):
from under you at any time, making your ultimate choice
kind of irrelevant.
Speaker 1 (37:56):
I guess what of the ways to put it simply
would maybe take it out of the realm of AI.
Just the short, simple explanation is, imagine you are playing
a game, any sort of game, and there are only
two players, but one player can predict the future with
ninety plus percent accuracy.
Speaker 4 (38:16):
The playing field is certainly no longer level at that point, right,
And I mean, one could argue in this AI model
situation with the basilisk that the AI could kind of
game the whole thing. And also it refers to this
idea of this sort of being like an entity in
the future blackmailing the people of the past. This is
like informational blackmail, because the idea being that if you
(38:40):
know about this and you think it might be true,
then you're gonna do whatever it takes to not be
in that camp that gets eternally tortured by the future AI,
and by doing that, you are essentially being part of
the thing that makes the thing come into being in.
Speaker 3 (38:58):
The first place.
Speaker 4 (38:59):
It's interesting, it's fun, but it really does start to
cook your noodle a little bit when you think about
it too much there, And it's kind of the double
edged sword of philosophy. Like it definitely is interesting and
can give you some semblance of like what are we
in the universe, But if you go down far enough
with some of these rabb holes, it kind of leaves
you with more questions than answers and can kind of
(39:21):
if you take it too seriously, be stressful.
Speaker 2 (39:24):
Well, thank you anonymous, so and so oh.
Speaker 4 (39:26):
And just yeah agree, And just the last thing, I
think a really obvious example of informational hazard been to
your point of like the idea of omniscience or predicting
the future. If somebody, if a force, an entity, perhaps
an AI were to be able to predict the moment
of your absolute death and then told you, that would
(39:48):
change your life fundamentally in terms of how you thought
about everything, whether it's for the good or bad, it
would definitely change your life. So that could be considered
an informational hazard. I just wanted to mention that because
it's sort of like one, and I think we could
all somewhat relate to. So yes, yes, definitely, Thank you anonymous,
and thank you Ben and Matt for the incredible insights
and great conversation about this bizarro thought experiment. We're going
(40:11):
to take a quick break here word from our sponsor,
and then come back with one more message from you.
Speaker 1 (40:22):
And we have returned. We're going to hold on some
listener mail correspondence that we're going to get to. We're
going to get to it next week, folks. So we'll
have some teases for that perhaps at the end. What
we'll do instead here is go straight to a cool
compilation of letters from home. Sometimes when we hear back,
(40:43):
when we really we really strike a chord with our
fellow conspiracy realist, we have a bunch of people contact
us about an earlier conversation, and in this case, we
are happy to report that a lot of our fellow
listeners have strong opinions about what they're very last meal
would be. Now, I want to give a big shout
out to everybody who took the time to write in
(41:06):
thank you for being our favorite part of the show.
I also I want to give a special shout out
to mister Matt Frederick, the Man, the myth legend himself,
who compiled some of our voicemail responses into something that
I propose we go in and out of. We'll listen
to some voicemail, we'll hear some hot takes from Twitter,
(41:27):
and then maybe we'll check in with some emails too.
Because people didn't just tell us their favorite meals, they
also in some cases gave us recipes.
Speaker 4 (41:35):
Yeah, oh man, I'm trying to decide it to cook
for dinner tonight.
Speaker 3 (41:38):
Maybe this will steer me in a certain direction.
Speaker 1 (41:41):
So let's start with some voicemails. Let's go to our
first call it all.
Speaker 7 (41:46):
Right, Hi, guys, you can call me Dastardly Dan, and
I just listened to one of your shows. Love the show,
by the way, all of them.
Speaker 6 (41:55):
Anyway.
Speaker 7 (41:56):
It was the last meal request what would I have?
And the first thing that came to my mind was, well,
a file and a cake? Can I get the old
file and a cake? Am I the first one with that?
Speaker 8 (42:08):
I hope?
Speaker 7 (42:08):
So, guys, file and a cake. And if he said no, hey,
no files in the cake. Okay, If that's the case, right,
then I turned that down. I'd say, well, I guess
then one more person since I'm already in prison and
you're going to put me to death anyway, so just
one more person is a last meal? All right, guys,
(42:30):
love your show, Thanks for listening to my message.
Speaker 2 (42:33):
Bye.
Speaker 3 (42:33):
Wait you're going to eat the person?
Speaker 2 (42:36):
I think that's what? Yeah.
Speaker 1 (42:38):
Here this is referring to a news story or a
viral piece of social media that bade the rounds not
too long ago, wherein a cannibal who was on death
row allegedly requested a human being as their last meal
thankfully has proven this is not true.
Speaker 2 (42:58):
Oh okay, that's good.
Speaker 4 (42:59):
And if anyone's interested in a deeper dive on last meals,
we've got an episode in Ridiculous History where we talk
about that very thing, written by Ben Bolan. Obviously, this
has been a real pet subject for you and we've
gotten into it through you. But the notion that you
can just have whatever you want is pretty false. We
(43:20):
determined through that research. So it's an interesting thing to
talk about, but yet largely it's it's stuff they can
prepare in the kitchen there at the prison, or the
very least stuff available locally, and you're not going to
get like the finest of cavias and French wines and
ortalons or whatever.
Speaker 2 (43:38):
Surely they've got ingredients for a cake and somebody's got
a nail file or some type of file laying around.
Speaker 1 (43:45):
Yeah. Also, it's really tough to escape with just a
nail fut I've said too much.
Speaker 4 (43:51):
Well, I mean, unless you're Andy Defrayane with the pick
of a little rock pick. That took years, though you
know it was a different time. She got to have
poster of Rita Hayworth to cover up.
Speaker 1 (44:02):
The hole in the Wall, and we also have Alien
Theorist Theorizing podcast. Hung out with these folks, the good
friends of ours. There are neighbors to the north out
in Canada. Check out their show. They came up with
a grift where they said, you order this for you, Paul.
You order Applebee's all you can eat endless shrimp, you
(44:22):
will bankrupt the judicial system.
Speaker 2 (44:24):
Wait wait no, you only pay for it once, right.
Speaker 1 (44:28):
And they just keep I guess the idea is that
you can avoid the proverbial hangman if you just keep
eating like one shrimp at a time.
Speaker 2 (44:37):
Yeah, you're going to bankrupt Applebee's.
Speaker 4 (44:39):
Though, you know, but no, no, no, by by delaying, you
could also potentially bankrupt the state the justice system because
you're know, it's expensive to keep people on death row.
Speaker 1 (44:50):
Oh yeah, that's true, that's true. It is also it's
actually better for a society to send people to college
it is to send them to prison. But uh, we'll
leave that for a future episode. We've got some people
who said, like Spinster Spice, they would want their last
(45:10):
meal to be the Eucharist. There's one guy, just Melvin,
who said a lote a lote a lote, by which
I think it means all of it.
Speaker 3 (45:20):
I love a lote, so.
Speaker 4 (45:23):
If anyone's not familiar, I believe that's on the cob
Mexican street corn. Whereas the skitas is the kind that
it's like off the cob. But I like it off
the cob a little better. But man, is it good
with the creamer and the kind of mayo and lime
and no zesty.
Speaker 1 (45:38):
And let's go to another voicemail message.
Speaker 9 (45:41):
Hi, guys, call me holme chef. You asked about last meals.
If it was me, I would get a three course
meal with a crusty loaf of bread. To make pumbowlis
toast it, rub some raw garlic on it, just so
that it has the flavor. Then rub some grushed tomatoes
on it with salt, pepper, all of and a slmac
(46:02):
glaze or aged theslmik drizzled on top. Then make a
lemon white wine clam bucatini, and then finish it off
with a lemon tear. Missou. I was thinking about my
birthday meal, which is coming right up, and I just
thought that sounded absolutely lovely for the e heat of August.
Those are all things I can make, and that just
(46:24):
sounds absolutely wonderful right now. Love the show, Love you guys,
Thank you so much for having such interesting topics.
Speaker 1 (46:31):
Perfect, Thank you, Home Chef. Also not playing around there.
I like the idea of the self empowerment saying these
are all things I can make, you know, so it
can't be too much to.
Speaker 4 (46:44):
Ask the pairing though, I mean all the citrus vibes
and like, I actually just had that bread and raw
tomato thing for my very first time recently, and it
is a vibe. I believe it's a Catalonian way of
having like kind of Christini's with like you really literally
rubbed tomato on the bread and it's a wonderful, wonderful flavor.
Speaker 2 (47:04):
Yeah, I just want to eat all that Bukatini.
Speaker 1 (47:07):
Bukatini. Also, I am on record with the Daily Zeitgeist
being a little bit militant about calling that my favorite pasta.
You gotta think about the surface area. It's at the
very least the superior or spaghetti.
Speaker 3 (47:19):
Agree.
Speaker 1 (47:20):
And before we move to our next message, Happy New Year,
Home Chef. Congratulations. Birthdays are a big deal in our
neck of the global woods, so we're so glad you're here.
Speaker 2 (47:30):
Oh boy, guys, I cannot confirm exactly when home Chef
sent us that message, so we may have missed their
birthday by a long time, so sorry about that.
Speaker 1 (47:38):
Well, technically we missed all the previous ones too, so
happy birthday just across the board to everybody. There we go,
and we've got another message here.
Speaker 6 (47:49):
You did say for me, gys were going on about
last meals for a little bit, and you know how
a lot of people stress eat. I can't do that.
And when I'm like really anxious to really stressed out,
like I cannot really eat substantial food, Like I can
only like drink milkshakes or like eat cereal or like
(48:09):
ice cream or like that kind of thing. Whenever I'm
in like a really like nervous mood, I have to
like physically like go through to the all the things
I learned in therapy and all that refocus myself and
then I can feel hungry again and start eating. So
if I knew I was about to be executed, like
I could probably really only have like a big bowl
of ice cream and a cup of coffee. And it
(48:31):
sounds not that bad of a last meal to me,
but it's really like that kind of thing, is all
I could really get down in a situation like that.
I couldn't like eat a pound of brisket knowing I
was gonna die soon. My body just doesn't want food
like that when it's in a situation like that. So
that's that would probably be my last meal. Maybe mint
(48:52):
chocolate chit. Maybe there's this one. It's uh Kroger has it,
I think up there call at Kroger here at City Market,
but they have on the private selection this like BlackBerry
dark chocolate, and like, I could die with that being
the last thing I ate.
Speaker 1 (49:14):
Ah, a frame always coming in with a banger. Interestingly enough,
you might be startled to learn that many, like several
notable figures, chose coffee and or ice cream as their
final meal. And one guy in particular had two massive
(49:34):
pints of I think mint chocolate chip.
Speaker 3 (49:38):
Was mint chocolate chick. That was Timothy McVeigh.
Speaker 4 (49:40):
Wow, it's something that I hadn't really thought about either,
just the idea of like, dude, who wants to eat
a giant meal when you're about to be executed.
Speaker 3 (49:48):
Some people's bodies just would reject that notion.
Speaker 2 (49:52):
Well, we've got some callers who have an interesting solution
to that. Issue.
Speaker 1 (49:57):
Yes we do. Let's continue, Hey guy, this says head master.
Speaker 10 (50:03):
My last meal would be a plate of deep fried
chickens eyes no drumsticks. Yeah, deep fried chickens on drumsticks,
two of them with like rice peel off and grilled
corn on the cop Yeah.
Speaker 6 (50:22):
And I just want to save the record out of vegetarian.
But if it was my last.
Speaker 10 (50:27):
Meal, I would get deep fried chicken.
Speaker 6 (50:30):
I'll catch you guys later, John for now.
Speaker 2 (50:34):
Ye oh yeah, gotta go with that fried chicken.
Speaker 1 (50:37):
I get it. You know that's also one of the
most popular choices, is like a greasy spoon, hamburger or
fried chicken. It is so popular. As we also have
to know, there's an interesting bit of philosophy involved there, right.
A lifelong vegetarian says, well, one last ride around.
Speaker 2 (50:55):
The chicken coop or I'm taking these chickens with me
to the other side.
Speaker 3 (51:00):
I get to take them with you, Matt. Everyone says
that everyone knows that.
Speaker 2 (51:02):
Well, it'll be in you, hella.
Speaker 3 (51:06):
You know what.
Speaker 1 (51:06):
Let's keep with the voicemail here, gentlemen, this is KP.
Speaker 8 (51:09):
Have my permission to use my name and my voice.
You're asking about last meals before executions. First, I would
insist in my home state of Alabama pulls the would
like the chair back out of retirement from my execution.
TI in mind, my last nail would be three Canda
baked beans of raw asparagus and a polo raw broccoli.
And I assure you, gentlemen, when the execution was over,
you would remember my.
Speaker 1 (51:28):
Name, you utter legend, you mad lad KP for President.
We've received so much more. I'll move some listener stuff
to next week. We're going to hear about Venezuela and
Colorado in a troubling way. We might finally get to
Tom and the Dragon. But I thought one of the
(51:49):
best things we heard in response to the idea of
famous last meals comes to us from James on Twitter.
And I think this is a really strong place to
what is my favorite ideal last meal? Says James. One
I didn't know was going to be my last. There's
a poetry to that. WHOA, Yeah, it's making me rethink
(52:13):
every time I have a snack, is this the last one?
I better enjoy it?
Speaker 2 (52:18):
Don't they do that with some some places that where
they don't let you know when your last day is
and they just pick you up and take you there.
Speaker 1 (52:25):
Japan in particular, for a very long time. If you
were on death row, it would just be one random
day or one random time they would wake you up
and say let's take a walk, which I think counts
as cruel and unusual punishment. I don't know it's a
philosophical difference, but it is something that I think is
(52:46):
instructive to our larger operation here. We want to hear
from you on listener mail. We want to thank everybody
who took the time to check out our show and
write to us. As we said earlier, if you want
to learn more about the practice of famous last meals,
which is extraordinarily ancient, then do check out our two
part episode on Ridiculous History. In the meantime, thank you,
(53:10):
of course to Dastardly Dan, thank you to anonymous Takiki,
to home Chef, to a framed a Headmaster, to KP,
to Tom and the Dragon, and to everybody else who
hung out with us this evening. I said there were
some letters I wanted to get to later, which we
will do next week. In the meantime, we can't wait
for you to join the crew. This show only exists
(53:33):
because you join us. We'd love to hear from you.
We try to be easy to find online.
Speaker 4 (53:38):
Say you can find it to the handle Conspiracy Stuff,
where we exist on Facebook, where we have our Facebook
group Here's where it gets crazy, on YouTube, where we
have video content galore for your enjoyment, and on x FKA, Twitter,
on Instagram and TikTok.
Speaker 3 (53:51):
We're Conspiracy Stuff Show.
Speaker 2 (53:53):
Do you like to call people? Why not call us
maybe if you know about some other notable plane crash
or hardened governmental facility, give us a call. Our number
is one eight three three std WYTK. When you call in,
give yourself a cool nickname and let us know in
the message if we can use the message and your
voice on one of these episodes. If you've got more
(54:14):
to say than can fit into a three minute voicemail,
why not instead send us a good old fashioned email.
Speaker 1 (54:19):
We are the entities that read every piece of correspondence
we receive, and on a personal note, thanks for writing in.
We can't wait to hear from you. Thanks also to
the people who sent us some pretty amazing pictures of
Peru based on our earlier series about the Eca Stones,
which I think is kind of a banger to be honest,
be well aware, yet unafraid. Sometimes the void writes back,
(54:43):
so join us out there in the dark conspiracy at
iHeartRadio dot com.
Speaker 2 (55:05):
Stuff they Don't Want You to Know is a production
of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
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Matt Frederick
Ben Bowlin
Noel Brown
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