Bonus: R. Scott Bakker, Consciousness & Consult

In this special bonus episode of Stuff to Blow Your Mind, author R. Scott Bakker returns to the show for a discussion of consciousness, philosophy, artificial intelligence, inhuman minds and the conclusion to his 2017 novel "The Unholy Consult." Don't worry, Robert and Joe will issue warnings prior to the spoiler section of the episode.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
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(00:46):
Your Mind from how Stuff Works dot com. Hey you
welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. My name is
Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick. And you know, we
had a recent episode our Scott Baker on Alien Philosophy
and Fantasy, and we chatted with Canadian author Are Scott
Baker about his recent paper on alien philosophy which published

(01:09):
in the Journal of Consciousness Studies. And in that paper,
he reconstructed human philosophy while trying to imagine the philosophy
and alien civilization, and he also discussed his ongoing heavy
dark fantasy sod of the Second Apocalypse, leading into the
publication of books seven, The Unholy Consult, the Magic Number. Yeah,
fast forward to today, Well, The Unholy Consult has been

(01:32):
out for a couple of months. I read it. I
ended up reaching out to Scott, was chatting with him
about the book, and we decided, hey, let's just have
him come back on the show for a bonus episode. Right,
So this will be bonus, not part of our regular rotation,
because it's gonna be about some esoteric interests. Part of
it will be following up on our recent discussions about
the origins of consciousness, So we're gonna talk to him

(01:53):
about consciousness, about philosophy, about artificial intelligence. But also since
we get pretty deep into the weed about his books
and the spoiler laden discussion, we thought we would we
would pull this one out as a bonus excerpt. That's right,
and there will be a spoiler warning. So if you
have not if you were concerned with spoilers for for

(02:13):
for Scott's books, and particularly if you're concerned with spoilers
for the Unholy Consult, don't worry, we'll give you a
heads up before we proceed. Now, just to refresh, Scott's
fiction explorers philosophical and neuroscientific concepts through fantasy, science fiction,
even detective fiction, and his second Apocalypse saga follows the
rise of essentially a thinking machine human prophet on a

(02:34):
world plagued by an alien evil that leverages both sorcery
and ancient technology in a war to shield itself from
the damnation of the gods. That's pretty good, cell Robert. Yeah,
well that's that's that's in a nutshell. I'm a big fan.
Uh So, you know, I was happy to chat with
with Scott about about the books in particular and some
of the metaphysics and philosophy involved there. But of course,

(02:57):
as previously, uh he was more than happy to just
dive in on anything related to consciousness, um, philosophy, or
you know, the grim nature of our future. Well, I
guess without further ado, we will now take you to
our conversation with our Scott Baker. Hey, Scott, welcome back
to Stuff to blow your mind. We appreciate you taking
time out of your day to chat with us again.

(03:19):
I guess we'll just start off with the general how's
it going and uh, have you fully recovered from your
recent eye surgery? Yeah? Ye, eye surgery. Uh has gone
off without a hitch, which is great. And I definitely
can see see much better, much better than I could,
uh just even a few weeks ago. Cool. Yeah, because

(03:40):
I think you said you had to. You were basically
in a prostrate position um healing for a few days. Yeah,
they performed something called the truck to me um. And
you know, at first, because everything to do with eyes
absolutely freaking me out against bother to do the obligatory
Google search, I didn't even want to know, figuring that

(04:02):
ignorance was bliss. And so I mean I had a
retinal pair and this was actually uh secondary divide, and
so I assumed that it would be the same kind
of surgery and it was endoscopic. So I was thinking
it was going to be endoscopic. But what they did
is they actually they actually take the all the the

(04:23):
truth jelly inside of your eye. They shell your eye
like a Concorde grape because then they inject saline solution
and a gas. And what you need to do is
you need to keep your face down. In my case,
it was only seventy two hours, but some parceols have

(04:46):
to do this for longer than a week. And you know,
at first I thought, I spend so much my time
with my head down in a book that I got
no problem, I'll just read for seventy two hours straight.
And uh, the first muscle spasm started after about ninety minutes,
and it was just it was a miserable, miserable experience. Well,

(05:09):
I'm sorry to hear that. Uh. You know, one of
the messing with eyes makes me think about consciousness. I
know we wanted to talk to you about consciousness today,
but um, there's so much that our eyes do that
makes us aware of how unconscious, so much of our
mental processing is. Uh. Like you know, you often think

(05:31):
of consciousness as synonymous with awareness, like what you have
in your in your in your gaze. But you know,
I was thinking about the idea that the optic nerve
is something that completely blocks part of your vision, and
yet we totally don't notice that at all. Like our
eyes just put the picture together, and we have this

(05:51):
perception of seeing things as they are, even though part
of our visual field is totally included all the time
in normally healthy eyes are working as they should, and
there's a lot about eyes that's like that. I'm thinking
also of the idea of blind site, where you know,
you can have somebody whose eyes are correctly feeding information

(06:12):
to their brain and their brain is even processing it,
yet they're somehow not aware of what they're seeing. Yeah.
I mean for me, it was it was uncanny, just
simply because of the blind brain theory, and um, it
just felt like I was having a living demonstration of
my theory uh played out for me in my visual
field because what happens, I had some degree land on

(06:34):
my retina and uh, I sleep like a vampire. I
think that was the problem. And this degree, it feeds
the retinal cells the same signal over and over and
over again. And when those cells get the same signal
all the time, your visual uh processing centers start ignoring
that information. But what they don't do is tell the

(06:59):
rest of your visual processing centers that that information, you know,
is mincing. And so what I ended up seeing isn't
you know, uh, black spot in front of my m
in front of my visual field. Why I ended up
seeing is a visual field. I mean it looked like

(07:20):
you know, if if your visual field were projected across
the screen and someone were to just grab that screen
and crinkle a big bunch of it in the fifth
so everything, all that information was missing, all that was included.
That's what I that's what I would see. So you know,
if my right eye was dominant and I turned to

(07:41):
look at my dog mooning here, every once in a while,
I'd look and he wouldn't have eyes because I'd looked.
I would look to his eyes. It was right in
my my phobia, like my center of my field of vision,
and so I looked to his eyes and his eyes
would be missing, so it would just be sur down

(08:01):
to his jaws. It was a very disconcerting experience. I mean,
the surgeon said I could wait and wait because there's
a chance it could dislodge and go away, but it was.
It was just freaking me out too much. That's amazing.
So just to clarify, you're saying that there was no darkness,
there was no white spot, there was no black spot.
There was just a lack of sight. Just the lack

(08:23):
of sight. And uh, I mean that's the cornerstone of
the blind brain theory um, the idea that there is.
I mean, if you think about darkness is so interesting
because darkness is actually form of visual information. So your
our visual centers have evolved the ability to actually warn

(08:45):
the rest of our visual processing centers to you know,
basically the absence of visual information. So we don't go
into dark alleys because we know what dark alley is there.
But imagine if you couldn't keep darkness. I mean, I
want to imagine if you were blind the darkness, you
would never be able to see a dark galley. A

(09:08):
dark gallery would be like my visual field. It would
be absolutely included. You know, the two buildings you could
see would be pinched together, and if you were to
happen to trip between those buildings, you would find yourself
in a region that you simply could not see. You
couldn't even see that you couldn't see. In other words,
so it's, uh, it's a spooky a spooky analogy, but

(09:33):
but an app one. It makes us realize the way
that we don't really see space like we think we
see space, but really what we see does not take
place in space, except in so far as it takes
place in the space between neurons. Yeah, yeah, well, you know,
I mean it actually shows uh that I mean, all
this stuff space, uh, you know, inside outside, you know,

(09:58):
the whole way in which person so are uh structured.
Um really you know, I mean technically it is nowhere
at all. I mean, it's not between your neurons. It's
it's not outside of you, right, it's I mean, it

(10:18):
really is a kind of recipe that we follow through
that happens to help our body navigate space and what
have you. But it's all you know, statistical guesswork that
um we sort of post factor describe in in ways

(10:38):
that are easily interpreted, um as being navely real or
what have you. I mean, that's that's kind of a
there's so many ways to cut that, you know. I mean,
I think really the best thing to say is that
when we start asking these kinds of questions out of

(10:59):
our actuay that really what we've done is we've tripped
into crash space. We sort of tripped outside the bounds
of what that information was you know originally adaptedly Ute
two problem solved and uh, we're sort of doomed to
be confused post those kinds of questions. So Scott, we

(11:25):
we recently recorded two episodes on Julian Jayne's the origin
of the kind of of consciousness in the breakdown of
the bicameral mind. Not because we're completely won over by
it or anything, but just because we find it such
a fascinating hypothesis. Yeah, it's so radical, seems like it's
probably wrong, but I've I've almost never encountered a more

(11:45):
interestingly presented hypothesis. Yeah. So, so we were wondering, do
you have any specific thoughts on James's theory. Well, this,
I mean, this is something I read when when I
was undergraduate about thirty years ago, don't know, almost there
a little less than thirty years ago, So it have

(12:05):
to I'd have to really active memory banks to remember
the thesis. I mean. The thesis is basically the ideas
that UM, at a certain point our we UH in
our past, we couldn't actually internalize, right the different lines

(12:28):
of communication going on in our brains, such that we
automatically externalized voices and UH impulses or what have you,
and blame them on the gods, and that only over
time were we able to actually internalize and to unify
UM these these various various sources of information and recognize

(12:54):
them as being imbogenous. Is that is that roughly what
this argument was. Yeah, that's that's pretty close. So I
can give a brief rundown on it because there are
so many interesting threads to pull. So basically, Jane says
that consciousness is only made possible by the presence of language,
which gives us the ability to create metaphors, and he
views consciousness as a metaphorical mind space based on the

(13:19):
analogy of real space, in which this analog version of
the self can observe and enact past events and hypothetical
events in a process that James calls narratizing. Essentially, he
means arranging mental content into a story with cause and
effect and a timeline in this metaphorical space. Um, And

(13:39):
so he says, so that's what consciousness is now, But
he says that that form of consciousness did not exist
in humans until roughly three thousand years ago, emerging possibly
in Mesopotamia and spreading across the world through cultural contact
since then. And that yeah, like you said before, consciousness
basically when people encounter novel stem a lie whenever there

(14:00):
was a stress point in their behavior that could not
be responded to with basic instinct, And you know, conditioned
signal behavior. Uh, they couldn't. They couldn't respond to it
with those things. So instead what they perceived was an
auditory hallucination telling them what to do. And originally, in
the earliest forms, this would have been a hallucination of
like a dominant leader in the tribal group, or of

(14:23):
a chief, or of a parent or something. But over
time these voices came to be perceived as otherworldly beings
called gods. And so you have this three stage evolution
where early humans are non conscious organisms controlled entirely by
instinct and conditioning. And then you have the evolution of language,
and that brings about the bicameral mind, where one half
of the brain commands the other half what to do

(14:46):
and the other half routinely obeys without objection. And then finally,
about three thousand years ago, because of various stresses that
he hypothesizes could have caused this, we have the consciousness revolution,
where people instead begin to perceive of a mind space
where they can work out hypothetical scenarios in this unreal space. Yeah,

(15:07):
I'm not to reread that. I mean, remember the god stuff,
but um, everything that you said up up until that
point just sounds like Dennet to me. I mean, it
sounds uh uncannily like Dennitt to the point where uh
kind of uh worries me that then it doesn't reference
James didn't has reference chains at some point I recall,

(15:33):
I don't know what book it was in, but I
thought he had. I mean, because that is very similar
to the theory he lays out in his most recent book,
From Bacteria to Back and Back, which is it's kind
of a retooling of the stus he lays out in
Consciousness Explained UM, which I also read way back when

(15:57):
for the first time, and I don't think I understood
um uh years ago when it came out. I think
it was whatteen and maybe some ladies than that. Yeah,
but it's the same. It's the same notion, and this
the same idea that um, it's not a colossal coincidence

(16:18):
that all the things that we experience also happened to
be the things that we can speak of, and that
experience is kind of a linguistic pow it that we
use to interface not simply with other brains, but with

(16:38):
our own brain as as well, and that um, the
types and forms of information that are available in this
interface are are so geared to their applications that it
actually makes sense to talk about things James is obviously discussing,

(17:03):
you know, a transformation uh in consciousness or transformation into
consciousness simply on the basis of the ways in which
we linguistically categorize and uh apply the types of information
that experience renders renders available. Yeah. Fascinating, fascinating stuff, Absolutely

(17:26):
fascinating stuff. Definitely, uh, a kernel of truth I think
in UH, in that way of looking at consciousness. Definitely. Yeah,
I would say the book is definitely worth a reread,
even though you know, like we say, you have to
assume it's probably wrong because it's it's so specific and
it's so radical. But then again, I love how specific

(17:47):
it is. I mean, so many theories of consciousness don't
get that gritty about about the cause and effect of
the evolution of consciousness. Yeah, exactly. And you know, it's
one of the things that's always like, really really struck
me as a philosophy student over the decade, because I've
gone through such huge conversions myself, right, you know, from

(18:09):
you know, being a fourteen year old UM stumbling into uh,
the problem of determinism, you know, without any sort of
you know, education to help me out, and becoming a
naive nihilist convinced that experience was completely an illusion, I
mean completely convinced, and uh, doing all these drugs and

(18:38):
just freaking out at um, you know, what my own
phenomenology seemed to be telling me, and then all of
a sudden stumbling into Heidegger and being completely blown away
in the opposite direction, and suddenly feeling as though everything
about me was steeked in meaning, in in purpose, in

(19:02):
this notion that um, I was almost like a deep
sea submersible. Um, you know, uh, making existence happened right
simply by being uh interstice that forced whatever was being

(19:24):
from my way into my projects, into my cares, right
into it, into my worries, and most importantly, into the
structure of my own temporal existence, right, having a future,
having a past, having now that it's statically uh combined

(19:45):
all three and then of course they're sort of blew
that apart, and then you know, here I am now
back to where I was when I was fourteen years old.
And even though at each point I was almost even
jelical as to what my experience was telling me um ah, Yeah,

(20:06):
there's just radical incompatibilities between all of those, you know, um,
from my phenomenology being the very ontological foundation of my
existence to my uh phenomenology being you know, a deceptive
assemblage of santasms. I mean, how can it be both

(20:29):
things at once and how can it feel like it
has to be that way to the same being at
two different times. I don't know. Maybe James had something,
had something right about the collective progression of our self understanding. Well.
One thing I like about what James offers is that

(20:50):
he definitely does give an interesting secular accounting of how
consciousness could be adaptive, how it could do something. That's
you know, a part from just the helpless observer theory,
the idea as you know that consciousness yet exists. There
is phenomena, but it just observes what the body does
without any power to change anything. According to James and

(21:12):
his version of consciousness, consciousness is a you know, it's
a metaphorical space in which we can work out hypotheticals
and this this would not be availed, you know, this
kind of introspective simulation of behavior and case running and
testing would not be available to organisms. That did not
have the power to introspect. I wonder what you think

(21:33):
about that for me? You know, reflective consciousness. So when
we engage in meta cognitive deliberation, you know, I see
that as being a uh in definitely in the terms
we understand it as you know, uh post scientific humans. Um,
I see that as being deeply, deeply deceptive in a

(21:57):
lot of ways. I mean, I think it's responsible for
this explosion of philosophical interpretations, just like that little you know,
life story I gave you of my own interpretation of
my phenomenology that was born of basically humans reapplying their
meta cognitive capacity two experience in ways that those meta

(22:21):
cognitive capacities to simply never evolved to be applied. Right,
So you could say all philosophical reflection in the sense
is a kind of misapplication of our meta cognitive capacity.
It's still it's enormously creative. You just got to look
at the philosophical cannon to see how creative it is.

(22:44):
And out of you know, that scholastic mountains of incompatible interpretations,
you could argue that there is a great, great number
of of hnos that have been taken away and take
and up in all sorts of different ways that have
ultimately profited humanity. I'm inclined to think that it's a

(23:10):
accidental uh More, it's more dumb, a matter of dumb
luck stumbling across, you know, some interpretation that actually ends
up enabling something that becomes socially useful down the road. UM,
I don't know. I think there's just too much disagreement,

(23:35):
too much follow thinking. For UM, it's as far as
I'm concerned to be obviously obviously practical in a way
you're suggesting James is suggestive. I mean otherwise you know, Um,
all the ways we use it instinctively, all the time,

(23:58):
catching the tongue, you know, when your mother in law
says something at the dinner table. Um, pondering for a
second to remember where you put your keys, you know,
taking a deep breath during the squash game, to try
to understand what it is you're doing wrong, that's letting
your buddy kick your ass. Um. All those sort of

(24:20):
natural applications of metacognition are very possible. It's very effective.
The question the real questions arise when we take all
of those practical capacities and we start saying, solve this
theoretical problem, solve that theoretical problem, and so on and
so forth, especially in the absence of uh, empirical information.

(24:45):
I'd imagine in Jane's version, the landscape in which it
does arise is more the former. What you're talking about it,
you know, it's in day to day dealings. It comes
not from people trying to solve big philosophical problems. You know,
it wasn't Plato who invented consciousness, but people trying to
deal with hectic, novel stimuli in their day to day
lives and figuring out how to survive them and would

(25:07):
be interesting too. I mean, this is the thing that
I think Max has a lot of critics have done.
It is this idea that um, you know, if consciousness
is the user illusion the way the way he insists
it is, and um, it's experienced, you know, Um, isn't
you know, real the way he seems to imply it is.

(25:29):
I mean, he certainly doesn't believe that there's any such
thing as quailure. Uh. And the question is, um, what
is it? I mean, um, is it something that we
just make up? You know? When I think about the
redness of red, I mean it seems as intuitively there

(25:52):
as anything could possibly be. But there's no such thing
as quailure being. How could that simply be? And that um,
you could probably ask the same question of James. I'm sure,
I mean, was read not read before we developed consciousness? Um?

(26:17):
Or how about animals? How about creature consciousness? Right? Um?
Do dogs have some sort of you know, palate of
visual awareness that the um as unique to them? Um?
I don't know, and started asking questions about you know,

(26:40):
uh sensory consciousness and um, all these arguments um as
to you know, the ways in which judgments make consciousness happen,
as opposed to say, impose uh interpretations upon on right

(27:01):
some kind of hile, some kind of uh um error
consciousness UM becomes becomes very difficult for people to buy in,
though I thinks, yeah, I mean obviously, I think one
of the things that contemplating this leads us to is
that this question of like weather, consciousness is one core
event and phenomenized as James does seem to think it

(27:22):
is like for him, consciousness is one thing that he
defines fairly specifically and fairly persuasively in some sense. But
then again, you know, you look at people like dinn itt,
and they would say, I guess would didn't say that
consciousness is an assemblage of different mental phenomena that you
are just you're linking together and calling a single phenomena.

(27:44):
Is that about right? Yeah, he's notoriously slippy slippery when
it comes to the when it comes to the mental, right,
I mean um um. I mean for him, you know,
it's all interpretation all the way down and um. But
at the same time, he wants to always insist that
there's these real patterns that are motivating interpretations. Right, So

(28:09):
when he talks about mental events mental imagery, I mean,
he says, of course it's there. But then when he
talks about things all that philosophers want to say about
mental events and mental imageries, mental imagery, it really starts
to sound like he's saying it's not there at all.

(28:32):
And uh, I think that's another thing that people find
frustrating trying to nail down his position. I actually think
that again, it wants to say, is that. I mean,
let's just think that, close your eyes and imagine you know, uh,

(28:53):
your favorite pets, you know from your childhood, you know
as as best you can, and you know, then ask yourself. Um,
which way is the shadow falling across you know? Your
your pets left? Paw? You know? Um? Is your pets
for well? You know well grooved? Is there any blemishes

(29:15):
of any kind? Um? Is your pet perfectly still? There's
your pet moving? I mean, all these questions aren't the
kinds of questions we normally ask of mental imagery, and
so they kind of seem a place like I'm not
looking at photographs or watching a video of my pet.

(29:37):
I'm imagining my pet in my mind. I so you
can sort of see that whatever the information mental imagery provides,
you know, it only has so many degrees of cognitive freedom, right,
There's only so many different kinds of questions you can
ask of it. Before the questions just kind of seemed
to start to miss the point or to obscure or

(29:59):
confus is the matter? And if you take that which
seems pretty obvious with mental imagery, and then apply it
to consciousness as a whole, and say what kind of
questions can we ask of conscious experience? Then I think
then it starts making the whole help a lot more

(30:20):
sense because mm hmm, well, you know whose books read
it looks read? You know, but quailia. What the hell
you mean by quilia? You know this because clearlier is
a categorization, right, It's a way to use metic cognition
to regiment experience, and that arguably isn't something that meta cognition,

(30:47):
our ability to reference experience, was ever designed to do.
And so perhaps because of the way cilia creates so
much confusion in so many areas of philosophy of mind,
like perhaps qually, it's just one of those things we
should get rid of because it really doesn't belong to

(31:07):
that set questions that experience. You know, we have evolved
to be able to answer of experience. And just to
clarify real quickly that that term qualia might not be
in everybody's is just the redness of the red right,
I mean, it's the supposedly private, ineffable uh uh character

(31:34):
or quality I mean equality, the fancy way of saying quality.
What's the quality of redness? If you want to just
talk about that, you know, uh, in abstraction from red
or blue, you know, the orangeness of orange or or
the brightness of light or what have you. You can

(31:56):
just use that term qualia in its gradation of of
uh century information as as apparently presented conscious experience. If
you don't mind, I think I got one more for
you to hand you back to Robert for a minute. Okay,
So this would be one about preferences. Do you think

(32:17):
consciousness is inherently preferable or if you're comfortable putting a
moral quality on that, is consciousness a thing to be
morally preferred or deferred to? I mean, I I think we, obviously,
whether or not it's right to do so, have a
consciousness bias, Like I would not want to be transformed

(32:38):
into a being that has all the same qualities as
me but is not conscious, because that seems, on the
face of it, like it would be the death of
my experience. Um. And so I mean that that does
bring up some weird connotations with Jane's theory. I mean,
if there if it were possible for there to be
something like a human being except not conscious us, Um,

(33:01):
would would we think that that being had the same
kind of rights that we did? Would Would it be
just as good for beings like that to inhabit the universe? Yeah?
I mean, um, so for me, these questions are there,
they're kind of almost quintessential crash based questions, right, Um,
these are the kinds of questions that moral reason as

(33:23):
the set of rough and ready heuristics that we used
to actually navigate social and moral problems. Justly, really, it
wasn't equipped to uh be able to answer decisively one
way or the other, which is why they sort of
have this quality of being constantly problematic, um and never

(33:49):
finding any sort of determination uh whatsoever. I'm not saying
that the question shouldn't be asked, because it's it's absolutely fascinating,
and it is the case in in our law eyes
that we defer to experience all the time. We just
look at the survivors of the Holocaust. Um. I mean
the moral authority that a Holocaust survivor possesses, a virtue

(34:16):
of having suffered, having experienced what they experienced is a
powerful thing. Has a palpable influence on individuals, particularly in
the company of those of those people. But what if
you're talking about a zombie who suffered the Holocaust? I notice,

(34:37):
even just putting framing it in these terms actually kind
of tickles it all feels like you're treading upon something sacred. Right,
zombie suffering the Holocaust seems to trivialize what these people
suffered in in uh, the concentration camps during the World
War two. Right. I mean, even simply posing that theoretical

(35:01):
question on a matter so morally charged simply because of
the experience is underwriting it. Um. Uh. It makes you
sort of pause and worry. Right, Um, But the question
itself is still an honest question. I mean, would we
worry about someone who had no experiences in other words,

(35:25):
who simply could not suffer. They could generate suffering behavior,
but they actually never felt any suffering. Um, would we
view them the same way we review the Holocaust survivor?
And the ANSWER's got to be no, of course, not
that person is just the zombie hum Morality, whatever it is,

(35:50):
is anchored and anchored and experience, and to the point
where moral intuitions are social it makes and makes a
tremendous amount of sense, giving games thesis that consciousness is
in some sense uh linguistic insofar as you know, our

(36:11):
social communications of experiences that we used to primarily communicate
moral urgency, moral important. Yeah. I mean that just leads
to a very troubling conclusion. I guess that would be
that would draw from you know, if you were to
given credence to James and say that his picture of

(36:33):
the evolution of consciousness is correct. It would be to
basically say that there was not much of anything morally
worth anything on earth until about three thousand years ago. Yeah, exactly,
I mean, I mean it's a question, um, that is
absolutely pressing question when it comes to animal rights. I mean,

(36:55):
animal rights advocates, Um presume that you know, animals deserve,
uh warrant the same moral consideration as humans do, simply
because the animals suffer and feel and experience as as
humans do. But if it's the case that consciousness, you know,

(37:17):
is actually linguistic, then you'd have to say that animals
have no consciousness, in which case then really human morality
doesn't seem to apply to them at all. And that's
I mean, for a lot of people, those those are
are fighting words. I mean, I learned, I learned some
time ago not to not to raise that, you know,

(37:39):
potential potential quagmire and in certain company, because some people
get really upset, very bad when you suggest that their
dog isn't conscious. Well, that gives you some some social
reasons for resisting Jane's thesis. In addition to the questions
you have about its rigorous merits. Yeah. Yeah, but the

(38:00):
bottom line is, and I mean it, then it even
discusses this and uh, from bacteria to pocket back. Um,
the bottom line is is that if you're going to
be um, you know, sort of I'm pirically tough minded
about this, you just you can't let you know your

(38:20):
moral intuitions or or even you know your cherished conceits
there on the question of whether or not animals have
conscious experience or not. Right, I mean, it's a it's
a real question, and it's not resolved, and it won't
be resolved until we know what the hell consciousness is.
And um, even though a great many people are you know,

(38:43):
entirely convinced that animals have to have conscious awareness, science
has this horrific history of overthrowing our most cherished conceits
and beliefs. So you know, all you can do is
buckle up and cross your fingers. Well, I think we're
gonna have to go into the robot landscape of the future,

(39:04):
maybe on the moral maxim that if you're not sure
whether a thing has consciousness or not, you should treat
it like it does. Yeah, it seems like a pretty
good real of sun I mean, turns the real son
I use and uhum, I have about a dismal view
of consciousnessessibly. Well, so far we've let's see, we've been

(39:26):
talking about the potential what've we've been talking about the
mind state of animals. We've been talking about the potential
mind state of earlier humans. Now, Scott and your Second
Apocalypse novels, you present the mind states of essentially earlier humans,
sort of medieval humans, I guess should say, as well
as a number of alternate creatures, alien entities like the inkorai,

(39:52):
various weapons races that the Consul has created to wage
war against the natural inhabitants of the world. For for
listeners out there aren't familiar with your work, there's there
the shrink or shrink how do you prefer to be pronounced, right?
I mean I have no preference. I call them shrank myself. Yeah,
I don't worry about the prince, okay, Yeah. So for

(40:14):
for listeners who aren't familiar, these are essentially I can
work like warrior species. And then you have the skin spies,
which are a face changing infiltration unit. Um, how how
did you envision the cognitive processes of these inhuman beings
and are they truly conscious? Yeah, I mean the um
one of the conceits for the Rank and the skin

(40:36):
spies is that they have no consciousness, um whatsoever. Um,
they don't. They don't um uh suffer. I mean, so
they go through all the motions, they produce, all the
behavior that cues our interpretation of conscious states, but they
don't actually possess those conscious states. And so the idea

(41:00):
is that the kind of in a strange way, as
a result, stand outside of our notion of notions of morality.
And I mean at points I try to play with
the reader's intuitions with because to this um, because they suffer, well,
they look like they suffer. And so I mean I

(41:22):
thought it was given given the way I tried to
basically press, you know, as many moral intuitions as I
possibly can to their breaking point by the end of
the series. You know, Um, it just seems like a
great vehicle to use to accuse certain intuitions and uh

(41:48):
and then to you know, subvert them, take them, take
them away, the nasty things through that, I mean, this
kind of thing seems possibly relevant in the real world
if you imagine again, I mentioned the future robot landscape.
You know, a future where humans wage wars with robots
soldiers or something like that, you know, some kind of

(42:08):
robotic warfare machines. I mean I wonder if people at
some point will say, you know, it's best to make
these things look like they're really suffering when they get
damaged in order to exploit our enemies humanity and desire
not to hurt them. Yeah, that's I mean, that's a
great hook for for a science fiction story, right there.
I mean, um, if you look at the bots and

(42:32):
dynamics robots that they have, I mean, there's something uncanny
about them, right, uncanny, But the way they move, you know,
the quadruped ones I find to actually be the most
interesting at a h of all. Um, they just seem organic.
There's something organic about them that once again just simply

(42:53):
pushes your buttons, right, I know what you mean? Yeah,
I mean sure, she uh, she's been and using this
term for quite a while, but it comes up I
thinking alone together as well. Um. She talks about the
Darlinian buttons in human computer interaction, and the consistent finding,

(43:14):
uh across the field is that it's incredibly easy, incredibly
easy to queue our you know, uh, terroistic tendencies to
project you know or anti primorifies um inanimate things or

(43:35):
animals or what have you. It's really easy to get
us to look at things as having a mind. And
I mean, I guess the best example of that is
the hyde or similar delusion anything. You can look it
up online easily, easily enough. I mean it's just triangles
and circles and squares and they're in there's all of

(44:00):
square with looks that looks like it has a door,
and it's just really I mean objectively, it's just you know,
these triangles almost circle um dancing around on the screen.
That's all the information you get, and yet your brain
turns it into a soap opera, you know, with this
father trying to keep his daughter from this lover who

(44:24):
persists and will not uh let leave her to the
devices of this evil father triangle and uh it is
it's it's flat l and only you know, geared to
the human tendency to um you know, turn shapes into

(44:45):
soap operas, so little information is required. And what that
means in terms of artificial intelligence is that it really
actually is easy for designers of artificial intelligences to push
our darwinging buttons. I think you gonna figure out where
they are. And one of the creepiest things, UM, I

(45:09):
teen to realize, I think over the past three or
four years or so, is the degree to which the
research that's being done in human human computer interactions is
basically directed at us and is and is discovering, you know,

(45:31):
tremendous things about who we are as human beings. Because
by knowing what these buttons are, we we can actually
design machines more effectively to simulate the presence of experience,
the presence of mind, the presence of of intentionality, and

(45:54):
as a result, you know, we can make humans more
at ease, or more willing to open the checkbooks right
or more disinclined to go to the local Poland station
to vote. It is very, very troubling, And so for me,
the big question that arises out of UH robots and

(46:20):
AI UM isn't you know the question about you know,
battling robots in the battlefield. It's it's more of an
ecological question. You know, if if you see humans as
basically pushing each other's Darwinian buttons all the time, blindly,

(46:41):
UM and in ways that are completely adaptive because we
basically involved to track and understand and cooperate. Because the
big thing is that once you see things in terms
of humans having these Darwinian buttons, and you understand that, yeah,
the Darwinian back um are what allows us to explain, understand,

(47:05):
manipulate one another. You understand then that you know, human
social ecology is actually a really really delicate finally to things,
as delicate as any ecology in any sphere of biology.
And you start looking at things like AI anyways, you

(47:26):
understand that human social ecology ecology is as delicated to
any other ecology, and that what you know, artificial intelligences
constitute is basically as formers and piece of species. Right,
I mean, you know these things. Microsoft's already selling them,
conversational user interfaces. Um, within just a few years, they're

(47:49):
gonna replace every human in every call center on the planet. Um.
You know, they're gonna uh spread as quickly as anything
spreads in the technological world. So inside of ten years,
you know you're gonna have spam a you know, I
mean we're talking about a flood of of algorithms that

(48:14):
are designed right to push our doing in buttons UM.
In other words fool of into treating them as being
something that actually arises from the ancestral ecologies that we
actually adapted to solve. Right. So I mean, for me,

(48:37):
this is at the beginning of the final stage of
the semantic apocalypse, right, And this is the whirlwind, the point,
the point which human meaning just simply becomes unworkable in
any sort of traditional sense. Is the ecology that requires

(49:00):
is the function is going to be is going to
collapse right, right, I just don't see any way around it.
I mean, it's kind of scary imagining how we would
have to defend ourselves against machines that push our Darwinian buttons,
because it seems like the main way to do that
would be to desensitize ourselves to our Darwinian buttons, which
would mean desensitizing ourselves to the actual needs of other

(49:23):
conscious beings among us and just accusing everyone of being
a robot exactly exactly. I mean, to desensitize ourselves to
each other. I mean, I mean that's the I mean,
that's the kind of the bottom line, right. I mean,
it's social ecology, or all of our social interactions are ecological, right,

(49:43):
And I mean this is hard for people to grasp
because it's completely invisible to them, right, I mean, it's
completely included. Um, this aspect of our interaction is utterly
invisible to experience when we talk to someone. We don't

(50:04):
see ourselves as pushing Darwin imbotons. We don't look at
it in any remotely material way or a biological way whatsoever.
But we are biological creatures. So ultimately exactly what Paul
runs on, and so any you know, material um invasion

(50:26):
of out ecology is going to disrupt that ecology. Right, So, um,
you put a bunch of causative technologies in our hum
human social ecology, they will progressively disrupt it. They will
alter it'll change it. And heuristic cognition being you know,

(50:50):
um circumstances dependent the way it is, it takes things.
It only operates by taking background regularities for granted. You know,
as soon as you start mucking with those back background
regularities in this case basically only having you know, biological intelligences,

(51:16):
we could take. We could take so much for granted,
just simply because our intelligence is really the model for
all intelligence around us, including animal intelligence, right, I mean,
we'll share far more in common with our dogs than
we will with these uh conversational user interfaces. And um,

(51:37):
the fact that are building buttons are so easily pushed,
um means that they don't actually have to be all
that smart as fool, so we don't have to worry
about superintelligence. Um. You know, will be at each other's
throats long before we ever get to the point where
the singularity takes off. This is one of the things

(52:00):
I hate about the AI debate. As you see a
popularize it's just it's just it's bonkers, right that the
improves the user experience. Everything is great on the one end,
and then you have sky net the other, right, when
really all the problems are in between. Like it underestimates

(52:22):
our vulnerability to simple stuff exactly and completely underestimates of unagility,
right I mean, um, And you know, historically speaking, you've
only ever caught on to the fact that we're doing
you know, uh, horrific ecological damage. After that damage, um
is you know, well, well the pace right um. And

(52:48):
if we fall into that pattern again with this then
um K, Like I say, this is this is the whirlwind,
This is for me, this is the sethantic apocalypse in
the Final States, right, Well, I have I have one
more question before we get into more like spoiler territory

(53:08):
for the unholy consult. So it's worth mentioning in all
of all of this that while modern neuroscience and psychology
works upon the assumption that the gods do not speak
to us, uh in your second Apocalypse saga, the gods
are real and sometimes do speak. Can you provide an
overview for for how the god's function in a in
a fictional university. We've put so much thought into the

(53:31):
inner workings of consciousness and philosophy. Yeah, I mean they
can see. It's actually kind of embarrassing the simple I
mean ultimately, I mean it's the gods are you know,
in events to drive you know, the the heuristic modules, right,

(53:51):
the subpersonal processes that are constantly under being, you know,
sometimes undermine sometimes making possible like the the workspace of cautiousness,
which is the world, which is physical reality in in

(54:12):
my books and so um the whole series is is
itself um and analogy or allegory for um this uh
ancient entroprization of of the universe and the cosmos right

(54:38):
only as you know, UH projected given a modern understanding
of you know um, the way in which cognition works
system too, which is reality system one, which is uh

(55:02):
all the sub personal processes right that are constantly and
changing upon system to the deliberative reality of conscious experience.
And then you know, to cryp uh the term from
the Lawrence system zero, which lies outside of that inside

(55:27):
outside um, which of course is odd. All right, well,
I think that's that means we should probably get into
the spoiler. No, no, I think we should. That's the
that that signals that we should get into some of
the spoiler discussions here. So so here be warned, Yes,
here be warned. Having read Scott's books and you plan
to you you may depart in the seventh, the seventh book.

(55:51):
So the seventh book to your second Apocalypse Saga came
out this summer, completing I guess you'd say, the second
movement of the saga and ringing the action to gall
god Roth, which the focal point of evil in your
world and kind of mirrors the significance of more Doors
Barador and Lord of the Rings. First of all, just

(56:12):
how long have you envisioned the resulting battle and the
resulting showdowns, and did it come together as you imagined?
It would the idea, I mean, the boilerplate idea with
this stand off, with with Kelli's and the consult m
at glad Rock. Um I came up with when I

(56:33):
think I was, um, seventeen eighteen years old, when I
was just a we we little punk, and UM, I
have basically been obsessing over it for thirty three years now.

(56:54):
I have snippets, snippets that I've written twenty years ago.
Snip it's been written thirty years ago, that I've written
three years ago. I mean, UM, it's been uh, basically
my obsession for my entire ad, all life, and um,

(57:15):
the project of actually writing the conclusion terrified me at first,
just simply because I thought, you know, so much cogitation
kind of whittled down to such a sharp point. It
just seemed impossible to me. And uh, I was afraid
that I would freeze like a deer in the headlights.

(57:39):
But for whatever reason, I mean, I mean, the gods
wrote it. Basically, It's one of the strangest sustained writing
experiences in my life. I mean I literally felt like
I was just simply channeling um channel Uh. I mean

(58:01):
there's a rough draft. I mean there's a lot of
reflection that goes into the many, many subsequent drafts. But UM,
there there was a period of every year where I
would just sit in front of the screen and my
fingers would tap out this stuff and and UM I
would model and um in that' sense my sub personal processes, right, Uh,

(58:27):
the gods underwriting my own conscious experience. We're in charge,
in charge of the whole show. Well, it's as well
as readers know at this point, kell us Uh basically
unites most of the world in this effort against the consult,
in this effort against the the forces of the apocalypse,

(58:51):
and and and fails the book ends and just the
complete defeat of the these forces of of the greater
good that have been marshaled. Um. So so in a sense, uh,
if we would go with the analogy that the gods
were speaking to you, was there any kind of last
temptation where there was a temptation to um to provide,

(59:17):
I guess, provide the sort of ending that I seem
to think some readers. I don't know how they ended
up expecting it, but some of the divisive responses have
seemed to line up with some expectation that I guess
your future writings in this world would just be a
victory lap for Kellis um. But was it was there

(59:38):
a temptation at all to to to provide that kind
of ending? I mean, I'm sure I don't know. You know,
the thing is is that um, Because basically the idea
is to you know, bring the reader along um as
literally as as spots and you know, UM, so you know,

(01:00:05):
to have there your moral confusion uh to uh match
you know, to resonate with the moral confusion of the
characters in the book, right, to have you know, their revolution,
to resonate with the revulsion of the characters in the book,
and also to have their hopes resonate with the hopes

(01:00:29):
of the characters in the book. And then you know,
I mean, the no God is is you know, the
the event the point at which meaning is done right.
It's over no such thing as destiny, you know, no
such thing as contact with with God. Um. It is

(01:00:55):
the point where meaning itself breaks down and the reader
is reading the narrative of this story where meaning breaks down.
In other words, they're actually you know, participating in this
narrative of the death of meaning via meaning. And you know,

(01:01:16):
the whole idea of having that meaning just cut short.
I mean, uh, you know, especially when I was younger.
I mean, it just seemed like the greatest idea that
anybody you've ever had in the history of breaks. Which
many ideas do. They seem like that when you're a teenager,

(01:01:39):
I guess. But Ibe, I have been committed to that
right from the very uh, from the very beginning. And uh,
I knew it puts people off. I knew, you know,
the because it's funny and he was. You know when
you look at the reviews on Amazon especially, uh, I
mean you see once the five stars on star, five stars,

(01:02:02):
one stars, five stars, five stars. I mean, it's just
the book readers and what I think for anyway, there
has to be a very commercially alarming way. But I
don't know, like like I say, you know, it's my
wife who's constantly sucking to be more accessible. It's not

(01:02:25):
like I had any control over it. Whatever I say,
I had, I see it a long time ago. The
story is donny thing that drivers for quite sometimes. Well,
I'm glad you brought up revulsion and you know, and
then our level of investment of the characters, because I
I certainly felt at the very end, as things really

(01:02:46):
um um turned to for the worst. I Uh, I
did feel a sense of revulsion and h confusion. You know,
I had I had so much within the context of
reading the fiction, it so much hope in kellis Uh
that afterwards I really had to process how I felt
about what happened. Uh. How But in in processing, and

(01:03:09):
you know, I realized that, well, all of this is
in keeping with the work. Like I am supposed to
feel this way, I'm not. I'm not feeling this way
about a about an error in a in a work,
or or some sort of failure in the work. I'm
I'm I'm I'm responding accordingly. And I I just I
feel like maybe some of the reviewers are response they're

(01:03:32):
they're reacting before they reach that point, like they're just
having a visceral reaction to the book, because I know
they didn't just read The Unholy Console like they've they've
been winning with you for six previous books. They know
what you're about. Yeah, yeah, exactly. But it just goes
to show, right, I mean, it's the power of a

(01:03:53):
narrative cognition. I mean, that's how powerful and it is, right,
I mean, a narrative that um is denied. Resolution is
a nrative thing. Um. I mean it has its own
you know, internal logic and ternal montility that gives people,
you know, the most intuitive guys that I think could

(01:04:16):
possibly have when it comes to judging a word. You know,
so you know, I mean it's it's I mean the
fantasy series on purpose. I mean, um, I wanted to
write something that actually reached out to people, you know,
like Theodore Bill right. I mean, I know he's read
He's read my books, right, Um, I think he's even

(01:04:39):
recommended my books. And to me, that's a huge victory
because I think one of the biggest failures, you know,
leading up to the circus that's Washington today is you
know this this belief on the part of the left
that you know, not engaging you know that um, kicking

(01:05:01):
everyone out of the out of the backyard backyard barbecue,
right would put an end to you know, problems like racism, masogyny,
and so on and so forth. When you know, anyone,
I think you spend any amount of time on the
on the web actually ranging outside of uh, you know,

(01:05:23):
liberal in groups, and see just how not the case
that is? I mean, uh, for me, the web this
is something I've been arguing for using us as well.
I mean, how the web is undermining human social ecology,

(01:05:44):
and I think go on with that for ours as well.
But um, it's a fantasy because I wanted it to
reach people who aren't otherwise exposed to UM things. You know,
so problematic is what you find. And you know, let's say, yeah,
David Foster pless novel, you know, so to to read

(01:06:04):
something infinite just like UM in popular genre, And so
I knew, I mean I knew going in there a
lot of people would be really piste off. And I
think I think you got it. I mean some people
they sit back and they reflect and then they realize, yeah,
whoa right. Some people they just follow that in turn

(01:06:28):
logic and they're like, this is starbage. I can't believe
I wasted money on this school. And other people are like, okay,
I get it, this is what you are trying to do. Yeah,
well you're just to pump as a whole. And they
don't like it as well. Right, And I understand all
three responses, so you know, I don't necessarily disagree with
that last one either. I mean, um, you know, it's

(01:06:53):
a it's a crazy project they set up, and um,
I don't know the worth well. So in terms of
the overall project, there is gonna be a there's gonna
be a third section to the saga. Is that correct? Yeah? Yeah?
So so um, I mean when I originally envisaged it's
uh back when it was a punk. Um, it is

(01:07:16):
going to be a trilogy, and it's going to be
in the print of Nothing, the Aspect Emper And then
you know, now I can say the name of the
third book, the no God um Um. The story idea
only went up to the young of the Aspect Emperor,
and I've never actually settled on what happens past that point.
I mean that point has always been the point where

(01:07:39):
where the vine. And so I mean, for me, um,
do you think of the ending of the book? Everyone
you know is scattered and running from the whirlwind, wondering
who survived and he died? And what I mean, That's
exactly where I see myself. I mean, I'm with the
readers here, I'm running from the world and I don't

(01:08:01):
know he survived, he died. So this is the point
where I've begun my discovery writing. I find out, I
find out, But what happened after after at this point.
But for me, I we need to say, you know,
you have these huge projects that that dominant so much
of your imagination and so much of your life. And

(01:08:21):
and if you're you know, sort of inclined to uh
self skepticism and pessimism the way I think I am,
you just assume that something thing happened. And I always
got a map truck with something that's going to swim
into me. But I would never be able to finish this, right,
And so when I actually finished the book and then
when the cook actually made it other shelves and I'm

(01:08:44):
sitting there, I'm still alive and still breathing and still
not experiencing clear you uh I mean now, yuh, it was.
It was a surreal moment. You know. It's almost kind
of like one of those things where you know you
don't plan for success. I just never really planned actually,

(01:09:12):
you know, get to this point were uh you know
posts post the Unholy console um And I don't think
that's a bad thing. I mean I find it exciting, exhilarating,
even in a in a lot of different ways. It's
a much different place to be for me as as
a writer, much different place. Yeah, it's it's interesting to

(01:09:34):
hear you say that you don't know the uh, the
the initial fates of many of the characters, because because
reading it and I'm thinking, oh, what happened? Did this
one this character die or are they going to survive?
What seemed to happen there, and then you kind of
assumed that that that Baker has a has a list
set aside with check marks beside who who survived and
who didn't, but maybe not, and that's actually more super position. Yeah, yeah,

(01:10:00):
i'd say, I mean, because it's not as though I
haven't been you know, writing, It's not as those you
know posts uh an only consult Uh, scenes haven't come
to my head, right, I mean I have all kinds
of scenes written, but they don't really they're not really
compatible with each other. It's just been so many years,
you know, I mean it really is it really is crazy.

(01:10:22):
Uh if you think about it. I mean, to have
a single story in the head for thirty three years, right,
I mean, um, yeah, that's it's a lot of notes,
it's a lot of a lot of disorganization, a lot
of uncertainty. I really don't know. So moving into the

(01:10:43):
into the future, we can expect more books in the series,
But what about other things you're working on? Can we
expect any more Disciple Manning detective stories? Uh? Any any
other works you're you're engaged in right now? Yeah, I
mean the one thing I'd love to do is I
had to idea for uh disciple second Disciple Manning novel

(01:11:04):
called Being Lightened Dead um for years now. And I
mean I've really I could really use a Disciple Manning
novel right about now. Um, But the Disciple of the Dog,
I mean, people just don't really follow writers across genre lines,
right Um. The uh big creative event in my life,

(01:11:30):
I mean, and oddly you know, having this you know,
uh I this uh I problem I had where the
center of my visual field was included. Actually called that
my little kelmullness. It's a little part of my vision
that I couldn't see that was distorting everything, right um. Uh.

(01:11:50):
The other the other thing was my hard drive crashing
just weeks after um, it's probably more like months after
I submitted to final manuscripts for been Holy Consult. Um
all my meaning did die. I mean my computer which
I had for ten years, which had you know, the

(01:12:12):
content of all my other hard drives that I you know,
uh stashed on it. I bought the computer. Um, it
died on me and it took a few months for
them to reconstruct it, and I had to pay a
bunch of money um to get to h get what

(01:12:32):
they were able to salvage back. But for a while
then I didn't know if they've been able to salvage anything.
And uh uh just several weeks back now I got
the salvaged files back and discovered that everything I had
written in the previous six months was was what I lost,

(01:12:53):
And so what I'm concentrating on now it's just basically
rewriting all that stuff that I had written in the
previous six months. So it's had a huge review um
and so much review as a as a sort of
commentary on on then it UM that I'm just finishing
off now that I've lost it was actually a day

(01:13:13):
away from um posting it when my hard drive died,
and um, I also have a science fiction novel called
The Lollipop Factory, which was over half completed and I
lost the entire thing. UM. I really really liked It's

(01:13:35):
a great idea and I want to and I know
if I sit on it and rather than dive into it,
that it'll it'll be much harder for me to salvage it.
So so I'm playing. I'm not digging back into that.
And when um getting right back into the um second apocalypse,

(01:13:58):
and he was the words taking Yeah, all right, well,
well good luck with with the roads ahead, and and
thank you once more for taking time out of your
data to chat with us about about philosophy and consciousness
and uh the coming whirlwind. Yes, in the whirlwind, thanks
a millionaire, and um, if you could do me. Uh,

(01:14:20):
I don't know if I should say another favor whatnot, UM,
but spend some time on the AI stuff because uh,
you know it's one of those things you know. I
can't be wrong. I don't think I'm wrong, right, I
mean it is after all she asked, philosophy. But if
I'm right with UM, we will be in uh, we

(01:14:43):
will be in short short order and um and things
you know as we were just seen seen now and
everybody feels that we're seeing in technological marvels as it
is right, UM, uh is going to get change so
fast and people aren't really gonna understand what's happening because

(01:15:05):
they don't have even the nearest sense of just how
ecological you know, the relationships for one another into society
as a whole. Are you know how much they depend
on the Darwinian buttons, you know, not being commercially exploited

(01:15:26):
them by actors, interactives, artisticial insis of species? You know?
Are you billions of these things in their lives and
very short orders? So if you, guys, if you can
find anyone else who can get like neo Lawrence, give
me a Lawrence a call. Okay, yeah, so you'll blow

(01:15:47):
your mind? All right, Well, thanks a lot, Scott, Thank you,
all right, So there you have it. Thanks again to
Scott for coming on the show and talking with us.
Make sure you check out the landing page for this
episode it's stuff to blow your mind dot com because
I'll make sure to include links out to Scott's website
to social media presence where you can find out more
about his books if you're not if you're not already

(01:16:08):
familiar with them. So I haven't read the Second Apocalypse books,
but now that I've had them spoiled, I think it's
time for me to jump right in at the beginning. Well,
I have to distress that if anyone else is out
there out there's in your shoes and and something's been
spoiled for you. These books are not like, uh, you know,
twist dependent. I mean, the twist is is pretty great

(01:16:30):
and uh and really grabs you by the heart. But
the books are rich enough. The world is rich enough,
and all the different stories that weave in and out
of it, uh, you know, are still going to have
their their potency. Yeah, I mean I I I read
plenty of books after I've already seen the movie. Yeah,
I've gotten to the point, sadly where I've I've actually
started going to films and going ahead and checking the spoilers.

(01:16:54):
If I know the film is supposed to be particularly
horrific or have anything that's kind of controversial, I'm like,
I guess I'll check and just see what the thing
is that I might not like, just to prepare myself. Right,
So you've been to all the wiki pages for Mother
and stuff like that. Yeah, I I specifically looked up
the new film Mother to see if it was something
I was gonna be okay with seeing, and uh, and

(01:17:15):
I'm like, Okay, I guess, I guess. I guess I'm
aboard with that, put a raincoad on your mind. There
you go, all right? Well, hey, if you want to
check out more of what we do again, head on
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(01:17:36):
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at how stuff works dot com for more on this

(01:18:04):
and thousands of other topics. Does it how stuff works
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