April 19, 2021 • 43 mins
Once more, it's time for a weekly dose of Stuff to Blow Your Mind and Weirdhouse Cinema listener mail...
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:02):
Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of
My Heart Radio. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind.
Listener Mail. My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick,
and today we're bringing you some of the messages that
you've sent us over the past couple of weeks. So,
Rob would you mind if I kick things off by
reading a message that we got about our machine Lords
(00:24):
of Barnard sixty eight episodes. Okay, this first message comes
from Aiden. Aiden writes, Hi, Robert and Joe, I just
finished listening to your episode about post biological intelligence. Towards
the end of part two, you raised the question of
whether such an intelligence would have something like emotions. This
(00:48):
is a great question, and in the recent Vault episodes
on invertebrate emotions you shared some ideas that could help
to answer it. In the Invertebrates episode, you focused on
the ways that an internal emotional state could make manifest
as measurable behaviors. The example that I remember most clearly
is the one about bees. After receiving a free sugary treat,
(01:09):
bees will forage with a more optimistic bias, but after
a simulated attack, they will forage with a more pessimistic bias.
This change in behavior may be attributable to something like
an emotion. Those of parenthesis and and adds as a
pre post biological intelligence. Writing this based on memory, I
may be missing something from the b example. Feel free
(01:30):
to add on or correct if you read it on air. Well,
nothing to add or correct so far, and you're doing good. Uh.
Continuing this got me thinking that maybe the same test
could be applied to a machine intelligence if we could
observe it. Maybe a free burst of gamma ray energy
would cause it to display some optimistic behaviors, while a destructive,
(01:50):
unexpected supernova would cause it to show more pessimistic behaviors,
whatever that might look like. However, such an intelligence would
probably have some similarity to modern machine learning in the
sense that it would extrapolate based on past data. Optimism
or pessimism would probably show up as an overreaction or
under reaction to the stimulus beyond what the cold calculation
(02:14):
of an algorithm would predict. For example, if the machine
knows that in the past a supernova or other negative
stimulus has caused a ten percent impact on its systems,
the cold, emotionless calculation of data would would suggest changing
its behavior by ten percent. On the other hand, if
the machine had some kind of emotional state like pessimism,
(02:35):
maybe it would change its behavior by fifteen percent. That
five percent difference could be the way to tease out
the effect of emotions from the effect of adaptive behavior
based on past experience. The caveat here is that the
observer would need to know what the emotionless baseline is.
Maybe this is a study that only an even greater
(02:56):
machine intelligence could carry out on smaller, simpler ones. It
was fun exploring the connection between these episodes. So thanks
for another week of great podcasts. Best Aiden. Yeah, this
is a good point and so yeah. In that Invertebrate
Emotions episode, we talked about the difficulties in separating out
the different things that we would classify as emotions, Like
(03:17):
you might be able to regard an emotion like anger
in one sense, as an internal state that has a
subjective felt quality to it, like it feels like something
to be angry, and then on. In another case, you
could say anger is a set of externally observable behaviors
that you see clustered together. That was you know, they
(03:40):
represent a certain number of biases and behavior that occur
at the same time, maybe like uh, a quickness to
physical aggression or something like that, in other things that
would correlate with anger uh. And so those are definitely
separate things. I guess you would have to leave aside
the question of whether it would feel like something to uh,
to have an emotion shan for a post biological intelligence
(04:02):
the same way it would feel like something for us.
That comes back to the question we talked about in
the episode of weather. Post biological intelligences would actually be conscious,
and one part of having a conscious experience is having
internal emotional states that feel like something. Yeah. The other
part would just be like, would they have these sort
of clusters of externally observable behaviors that sort of are
(04:26):
seen together and they represent a certain disposition towards external stimuli? Yeah, yeah,
this is a yeah, this is a good breakdown. I
I appreciate this. All right, let's hear from another listener.
This one comes to us from Chris. Chris writes, Hi, Robert,
(04:47):
Joe and Seth, good day. Your recent two part episode
on the Machine Lords of Barnard has been a great listen.
It is difficult to conceptualize how we could get to
a post biological point uh in the time scale that
might be involved, but it is a fun thought experiment.
The topic was particularly relevant to a short story by
Sushin Lieu that I am reading as part of an
(05:10):
anthology work titled to Hold Up the Sky. I had
first read The Three Body Problem after hearing you mentioned
it many times on past episodes. I really enjoyed the
way his sci fi has written through a completely different
lens that most Western readers are used to. Um or
maybe it's just me, this is great. I did recommend
(05:31):
The Three Body Problem in a previous summer reading episode
we did a few years back. I loved that novel. Uh,
but I have not read any of Cician lous Um
short stories, so so yeah, this is this is totally
fresh to me. Yeah, same here. I I did the
audio book of the of of that of that first one,
the Three Body Problem, but I haven't read any of
the subsequent books in that series, or any of his
(05:54):
shorter works. Well, that is a dark forest that we
should maybe both wander into all uh, they continue. The
short story I'm referring to is titled Cloud of Poems.
It is a fascinating story involving an advanced race of
dinosaurs called the Devouring Empire, who have recently joined the
Greater Galactic Civilization coming to our Solar System, enslaving humans
(06:16):
and raising them as feedstock on their interstellar ship, and
in a particular human named ye Ye who teaches classical
Chinese literature to the feed lot humans to make them
more tender. Now this is where the post biological life
comes in. Another member from the Greater Galactic Society comes
into the Solar System and is only referred to as
(06:39):
quote a God. There's a lot of backstory, but it
is made clear that this is a being from a
significantly more advanced race that has been that has transformed
itself into beings of pure energy with the ability to
jump from one side of the Milky Way galaxy to
the other. In this sci fi world, it's explained that
the level of civilization is based on the number of
(07:00):
dimensions it can access. The Esteemed God's race can access
eleven dimensions. That's a lot of dimensions. In the episode,
you discussed how the motivations of a post biological life
form might be different from our own and whether they
would have the same concerns as a living being, etcetera.
And this story gets at that point, which I think
is relevant. If a race evolved to a point where
(07:22):
individuals transformed past a stage where a lifespan is no
longer a concern, I think they would not continue to
have the same desires and motivations as their pre biological selves.
In this story, the Esteemed God, who is an intergalactic
art collector and researcher, is challenged by the human you
you to become a better poet than the classical Chinese
master uh liebe. The human point is that even with
(07:46):
all the technology that the Esteemed God possesses, it cannot
replicate the poetry of a human because it does not
possess the ability to understand the human spiritual realm. Since
this God is still an individual, albeit being a pure energy,
he takes the challenge, transforming himself into a human and
attempting to surpass the poetry. Long story short, He fails.
(08:07):
Then instead decides to build a quantum computer to write
and record every possible poem using the Chinese alphabet and
save them each on an atomic level storage device where
each poem is stored on a single atom. It's then
discussed that it will take ten to the hundred and
seventy second power number of atoms to store every possible combination,
and that unfortunately there are only ten to the eightieth
(08:30):
power of atoms in the entire universe. I don't know
how to check these numbers, so I am unsure if
they actually match up to reality. Uh maybe Seth can
help me out on that. Let's let's hear it. Let's
Seth quickly in real time chime in and uh in
fact check those numbers for us. He's got to go
count him. Okay, he's gonna count. You'll come back um
in ten to the hundred and seventy second power minutes.
(08:54):
Uh So, anyway, the Esteemed God then decides to start
building the quantum computer, and to do so, he will
need to deconstruct the entire Solar System, humans and the
Devouring Empire to their constituent atoms a mere ten to
the fifty seven power to do so, and has no
had has no qualms with the destruction to achieve those ends.
(09:16):
This was an entirely too long email, but I did
do my best to summarize an astounding work by Sushin Lou.
You should really just just read it. But to but
suffice to say, I think a post biological race that
is descended from previously living beings would be extremely dangerous,
especially if they have the power available to them, like
(09:38):
the esteemed god of our story, willing to destroy entire
races and solar systems with no second thought to achieve
a goal. Again, great episode. Thanks for all you do
bringing us listeners, great content. Best Chris. Oh thanks Chris.
This sounds like a like a great read. Yeah, yeah,
I um, I love the ideas explored in this. Uh
you know the this This is definitely an ideas author
(10:01):
that toys with wonderful sci fi concepts. I mean, based
on the one novel I've read. Um, that's kind of
how it rolls out. So there's a lot of individuals
discussing very at times high minded science scientific topics, but
with some other fun stuff thrown in as well, like
real world, um, political concerns, Chinese mythology, etcetera. Yeah, totally,
(10:25):
And I will say I don't want to spoil anything,
but the book also has a really great, a really
great science fiction weapon in it that's extremely counterintuitive that
comes in towards the end. I won't say any more
than that it's it's it's not a piece of wood
with a nail in it though. But yeah, I really
(10:45):
like this idea of a a super intelligent post biological
being being challenged to try to write poetry that transcends
the great poets of Earth, like the example in the
story would be would be lead by I think a
lot of Western readers probably know his name spelled more
like a Leapo or lee Bow, often like l I
p O or l I b O, but like a
(11:07):
Tang Tang dynasty era poet who's just a wonderful poet.
And so it raises the question of like, well, you know,
if this, if this being is so so intellectually past
human beings, why would it be that it couldn't write
poetry better than you know, the than the poetry produced
by the best of this you know, biologically confined uh
(11:29):
species on the planet Earth. Well, I think there actually
maybe is something plausible to that, because you know, almost
all great art is about like suffering in some way. Uh.
And so if you were to take a being that
is is just like so powerful it essentially has no
real wants or physical limitations, you can imagine how a
being like that could have real trouble creating compelling narratives
(11:51):
community that that would like, uh, speak emotionally to the
experience of beings who are limited like humans are. Yeah,
so then it has to take human form and try
and create human art. It has to be the word
made flesh, right, it has to come down and become
one of us. Yeah, exactly how else can it possibly
understand it? So? Yeah, definitely, Yeah, thank you for the recommendation, Chris.
(12:13):
I will have to look that that story up all right. Well, well, Carney,
our mail bot has even more machine and AI and
robotic based listener mail for us here today. Yes, this
next message is a response to part one of our
episode about punishing machines. This comes from Karen. Karen says,
(12:38):
love the show. I'm just going to jump into this.
I think that if we judge a robot able to
commit a crime, the robot is also implicitly able to
have a crime committed against it. But if a human
or another robot victimizes a robot, what would the consequences be.
Let's say that I commit a crime against a robot.
I take the Amazon Virtual Assistant Alex and throw the
(13:00):
device on the floor, constituting an assault on Alexa. What
happens next? What is justice to her? Is it based
on the robots programmed values, likes, dislikes, or goals? If so,
then Alexa's greatest value is supporting Amazon, and her goal
is to sell Amazon products. What do you do with that?
Another silly example, Think of the security robot who drove
(13:23):
into a pond. I like that, you say, who by
the way, I think of the security robot who drove
into a pond and drowned itself in people saw that happen.
Would people who witnessed a robot getting damaged without stopping
it be guilty of some sort of neglect if they were,
what would make it right to the robot? If you
made it this far, thanks for reading, and what do
(13:45):
you think? Well, Karen, we actually do talk about this
a little bit in part two of that series, but
I've been thinking about it more since we recorded that
part two, and I think this raises some really good questions.
So a few distinctions on my thoughts about whether robots
could be the victim of a crime. I would say,
at the surface level, this depends, at least in my opinion,
(14:07):
on whether the robot is conscious or not. And I
think the standard assumption today is that machines like the
Amazon Alexa, even complex machines, they're not conscious. But in
the future it might be hard to say. And this
gets back, of course to the hard problem of consciousness,
which we talked about in the Machine Lords of Barnard
sixty eight episodes. Uh, if we don't know what consciousness
(14:29):
is and why it arises in the first place, even
in biological brains like ours, it's gonna be hard to
judge whether a non biological machine could ever be conscious
or not. So this is just a big open question.
To me. I don't really come down on one side
or the other. But with that huge caveat, I would
say that I think if robots are ever able to
(14:50):
be conscious, if for whatever reason we decide yes they
are having an inner experience like we are, then I
think the obvious implication would be that they have the
right to be protect it against harm just like anybody else,
but for an Alexa or whatever. Since I don't think
anybody really has suspicions that Alexa is conscious or that
Alexa has any kind of internal experience, I think harm
(15:12):
done against an Alexa would really just be a property
crime against its owner, like if you were to damage
somebody's wheelbarrow or something. But then there's another big complication
that I'll throw in that that your email really made
me think about, which is the possible brutalizing effect on
society and on onlookers of tolerating crime against robots that
(15:36):
appear to be conscious even though they're not. This is
something that I'd take kind of seriously. So I'm imagining
a scenario like this, see if this makes any sense
to rob Like, so we imagine most people are still
decided that, yeah, there's nothing that it's like to be
a robot. Robots can't actually suffer, so they don't have
like inherent rights that we need to protect because there's
(15:56):
nothing that it's like to be them that they just
don't care. But if you were to make a robot
that convincingly acted out suffering when it was harmed, and
then you just had lots of robots like this constantly
like being harmed in public views, Like a humanoid looking
robot that could just like sit there while somebody beat
(16:17):
it with a stick and it would scream in pain.
Something does seem like very wrong about that that just
being stimuli that we are constantly exposed to and doing
nothing about. You know, it almost seems like that that
would have a kind of horrible numbing effect on onlookers,
that would desensitize them to the real suffering of human
(16:39):
beings and of animals. Yeah, I guess. On a related note,
I know in my household with a with a with
a child, we we have stressed at times that you know,
even though you know Alexa or Amazon or Google or
whatever you're talking to, uh, you know, even though it's
not a real person, and we're very clear about that. Um,
(17:02):
you know, you you shouldn't talk mean mean to it.
You know, you should you should be nice when you
address the robot. You shouldn't be you know, unnecessarily uh,
you know, angry or or you know, or anything like that. Uh. Likewise,
we've we've had this discussion when when one is playing
against an AI in a game, particularly you know, certainly
(17:25):
if it's like an enemy AI, but but more specifically,
you know, if it's something like an online Settlers of
Catan situation where it's like a fake human player, Like,
you're not allowed to just say mean things to the
non human in the in the chat box because that
it just sets a weird precedent, you know, right, it's
and it's not because it would hurt the AI. It's
(17:48):
because it's like it trains you to behave that way,
and eventually you may end up behaving that way towards
somebody who could actually be harmed by it. Yeah, so anyway,
I mean, of course, it's it's in a whole additional
area of like, how do we treat how do we
treat you know, virtual entities in simulated environments and in games. Yeah, well,
(18:10):
I guess this starts to sort of bleed over into
the bigger, big controversial question of like whether you know,
whether video games that have violence in them train people
to commit violence in the real world. And I'm certainly
not taking a position on that. I I don't have
a strong opinion one way or another about that. Maybe
we could look at the research more on that in
the future. But um, but I mean I would say
(18:32):
that there there's something like if something is happening in
physical space and you're seeing people actually like use physical
violence against a robot or be uh, you know, performatively
verbally abusive to a robot, even in in real physical space,
and nothing is is just being tolerated. Something about that,
at least intuitively to me, would have would seem to
(18:52):
have a kind of deadening and and very detrimental effect
on on the culture. Right, But then again, we have
to be open to the idea that there could conceivably
be situations in which the robot's presence is intolerable. Maybe
it's not the robot's fault, but um, like say, there's
some sort of a I mean you to go back
(19:13):
to the cigarette robot example from that the first episode.
If if the cigarette bot can roll into your house uninvited,
I mean, I I think you should be able to,
um to kick it out of your house, right right?
Sure you know we were not going to stand for
the tyranny of cigarette bot. Yeah. Maybe so that's the
other side of it. Maybe maybe we should. Maybe there
(19:33):
are cases where it's actually good to to appear to
violate the rights of a robot if that robot represents
something really evil and bad that you want to like
demonstrate your disapproval against. I guess that that actually did
come up in the paper. They were talking about arguments
that like part of what juries sometimes want to do
is just like symbolically demonstrate moral approprium. Yeah, here's an idea.
(19:58):
What if you could build up moral willpower by having
a robot devil that actually sits on your shoulder and
is constantly trying to tempt you to do evil, and
so you like just practice ignoring it all the time. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
I guess so I could see that working. I'm not
sure if I could. I mean, I can see people
(20:19):
doing it. I don't know if it would work, uh
at anyway, Well, we'll let those the listeners decide on that.
Here's another bit of listener mail for UCE. This comes
to us from Jim and New Jersey, Robert and Joe.
I would like to update the trolley car problem slightly.
For autonomous vehicles, it's not a choice of whether the
(20:40):
car strikes the elderly couple or the mother pushing the
baby stroller, inflicting the least possible harm. It's whether the
car chooses to crash into a wall or tree seriously
injuring or killing the passengers, or to strike pedestrians injuring
or killing them while leaving the passengers mostly unscathed. But
let's make it a bit more interesting. UM in the
(21:01):
gym includes a few um caveats here. First of all,
it's a choice between one passenger and a group of pedestrians,
or it's a choice between a group in the vehicle
and one pedestrian, or it's a choice between an equal
number of people in the vehicle and an equal number
of pedestrians. Does the car's decision favor passenger safety as
(21:21):
the car moves from basic utility vehicles into more expensive
luxury models. I don't know what these answers are or
should be. There are no easy answers, Jim. I think
this raises a great point, Jim, and we actually, I
think we this is probably the response that came in
after part one published, but before part two, So we
sort of address some of this in part two. But
this raises a bunch of other permutations that we didn't
(21:44):
get into. UH. And and one thing that these variations
really highlight for me is um a problem that we
also did not really get into in the episode, which
is UH, making life or death decisions when the probabilities
of the outcomes that you're trying to choose between our
very uncertain. So we were talking about how an autonomous
vehicle in reality is going to have to make like
(22:06):
trolley car type decisions all the time. But actually, what
it's gonna have to do is make like a trolley
problem decision where it's not one track with one person
versus another track with multiple people. It's going to be
lots of abstract branches of probabilities, like you you have
an x percent probability that someone will be injured or
(22:27):
harmed on this track versus that track, And a lot
of times those probabilities, even that the machine judges with
the best of information available to it, are just going
to be wrong. So it's not just that the decision
will have to be made, but the decision will have
to be made necessarily on incomplete information that could be
could be very misguided. Just one example, like if an
(22:48):
autonomous vehicle is trying to make a split second decision
to minimize harm in an oncoming wreck. Uh, it's going
to have to make judgments like how many people are
in the other car, but like how well it seems
like that's something that's often going to be difficult or
impossible to determine, or like what's the probability that people
(23:08):
will will be injured or killed in certain collisions? I
think it's unfortunately it just gets more and more difficult
the more you try to get into the details on it. Though,
as we were saying in the episode a number of times,
it's not like this is a scenario where the human
driver naturally has an advantage. I mean human drivers, I
think are often just like making split second decisions based
(23:30):
on almost no reasoning whatsoever. Is just sort of like
instinctual jerky movements. Though the individual human is not going
to see their own driving that way, right, So yeah,
it's it's a complicated situation. Okay. This next message is
(23:52):
about dad jokes and a former Listener mail episode. It
comes from Mohammed. Mohammed just says, hey, guys, just listen
to a bit in the list in her Mail episode
about indicating sarcasm and text. And I wanted to point
out another sarcasm indicator. I see a lot on social
media that I think works really well alternating upper and
lowercase letters. It reads intuitively to me as mocking and sarcastic.
(24:16):
And that's the whole message, except Muhammad attaches a picture
of a tattoo where it's one of those like they say,
I say things, so the parents say, you'll regret that
tattoo when you get older. And then the response is
me also saying you'll regret that tattoo when you get older.
But it's alternating upper in lowercase letters. And then the
tattoo below that is a weird looking SpongeBob square pants. Yeah,
(24:41):
I don't know. This looks fine and it's not a
squid word tattoo. For crying out loud, it's SpongeBob. That's
a weird SpongeBob, but it's good. I don't know the difference.
What what what would be the deal if it was
a squid word tattoo? Does that have political significance? No? No,
it's just like squid Where have you ever watched SpongeBob? No?
Never a whole episode. I mean, I know what it is,
but well, I I could explain it to you, but
(25:01):
the best thing to do just do. You have to
watch and then you'll you'll understand the context. But yes,
squid word is one of the other characters. And I
guess there's squid word tattoos out there. Maybe there's some
great squid word tattoos. Um, but I feel like SpongeBob
is the better choice. I did not know we would
get factionalism in the response to this, But this is good.
(25:27):
All right. Let's get to some weird House related listener
mail here. This one comes to us from Chris offhand.
I don't know if this is the same Chris as earlier,
but different one different Chris. A lot of a lot
of Chris. Is a lot of Chris is out there,
all right? This Chris says, Hello, Rob and Joe. Well
we all have that first time it denied was the
night I experienced Highlander. This is not related to any
(25:49):
recent podcast specifically, but after searching and watching related weird
house cinema shows on Prime, I'm being presented with quite
the bevy of sci fi and weird house options. So
tonight I try Odd Highlander. It's not over yet, but
Sean Connery is Egyptian but has a Scottish accent. We
helped just roll with it, I guess onward um. On
another note, the dad joke episode was great. I'm a
(26:11):
father to four children, the oldest is the same age
as your son, Robert, and she has gotten to the
point where she's trying her hand at making up jokes.
A few land with her siblings or parents, but most
are rather misunderstood. But she persists as far as the
way a captive audience reinforces our dad jokes. This is
spot on. The word play jokes and fart innuendo just
(26:31):
make makes for an easy target for the five to
nine year old age group. Fortunately, I'm going to have
around a decade of time with children in that age range,
so I'll be well entrenched in the dad joke mindset.
So one for the road then not knock, who's there? Who? Who? Who?
What are you? And al Yeah, that's the end of
(26:52):
the regards Chris, I've encountered that one in the wild before. Now.
As for Highlander, um, yeah, absolutely. Highlander is a is
a wonderful and and weird film, Uh that I think
about quite a bit. And obviously we're we're big fans,
huge fans, enormous fans. We're princess of the universe of Now,
(27:13):
regarding the idea that Sean Connery is Egyptian in The Highlander,
I recalled that's actually multiply confusing because, uh, if I'm
not mistaken, it's Sean Connery not even attempting to mask
his Scottish accent, but he's playing a guy who comes
from Egypt originally, but his name is one Sanchez Villa
(27:35):
Lobos Ramirez, and I think he is supposed to have
been more recently Spanish, right, yes, So you know, I
don't know. It's I guess there are different ways you
could crack that apart. I mean, the obvious answer is
Sean Connery is not going to do an accent. He's
going to Sean Connery's accents. So he's going to be
Scottish in any and everything, whether he's playing an ancient
(27:57):
Egyptian immortal or like a Russian submarine captain, you're getting
you're getting the same accent. But I don't know you
could I guess say that, like if you live long enough,
perhaps you're fluid enough to move through different cultures. You
also moved through different languages, and you move through different accents,
and I don't know how you wind up there, But
like I guess the thing is, you could look at
(28:17):
it this way. Ramirez is traveling in Scotland at the time,
uh in that movie, That's how he encounters McLeod um. Therefore,
perhaps he's just shifted into Scottish mode. And indeed we
never see him in that film anyway out of the
Scottish context. So that's right. Yeah, he's a worldly wanderer
(28:38):
in the Highlands. He's like, he's like Brian Cox and Braveheart. Yeah.
So I don't know. I guess it makes I'm gonna
go I'm gonna go with Hi. I'm gonna say it
makes perfect sense. It's what It makes perfect sense within
the context of Highlander one. I guess it. In Highland
or two he's a ghost, so he's he's just set
in whatever he was, right, but where he died. So,
(29:00):
you know what, I'm going to take it a step further.
It works perfectly in Highlander two as well. I don't
know if I agree that he's a ghost in Highlander
two isn't. Well, he's the product of some kind of
necromancy from the planet Zeist. So the way it goes,
he's he's killed in Highlander one and then many years
in the future, Uh, Connor McCloud yells his name, and
(29:22):
then yelling his name causes him to be like reborn
in Scotland, and then he comes to visit Connor McCloud.
So I don't know what you call that. Yeah, I'm
going to call it a ghost. Okay. He appears very fleshy,
but but maybe maybe a fleshy ghost. Okay, this next
(29:44):
message is about Weird House Cinema. It comes from Andy,
and he says, Hey, guys, I really dig the relatively
new Weird House Cinema segment. I noticed you haven't done
any animated features. May be wrong on that point. I
haven't had the chance to listen to them all. So
I had a couple of suggestions. Two of my personal
favorites from when I was a kid, nineteen seventy seven's
Wizards and nineteen eighty threes Rock and Rule. Both are
(30:08):
fun and definitely strange post apocalyptic animated features. Wizards is
a Ralph backsheet film with some great humor. Rock and
Rule contains wonderful music by lou Rey, Debbie Harry and
Cheap Trick, as well as a demon made of animated
cow brains. LOOK forward to seeing your thoughts on these
fantastically weird animated features, Andy. Well, Andy, I've read about
(30:30):
both of these movies but seen neither one. Same. Yeah,
I'm not familiar with Rock and Rule at all, but
I'm familiar with Wizards just because it's it's often held
up there. It has this you know, it's a. It's
favorite for people who are into like seventies weird animated features,
and you know, I like, we're other work by Ralph
bak Sheef for sure, So I don't know, maybe that
(30:52):
one's in our future. I know we've we have a couple,
at least a couple of animated titles that we've been
kind of knocking around, and uh, I think we may
have animated content discussed on the show in the near future.
So this one is from Landon, and Landon says, hey, guys,
(31:13):
my older brother had a Turbo Graphics sixteen rob which
I think this came up in Gunhead, right, because we're
talking about the idea of Gunhead having uh ports for
multiple systems. Is a video game, and one of them
was a game on the Turbo Graphics sixteen that I
don't recall playing, but when I was a kid, I
had this, uh this weird game console, and we talked
(31:33):
about the game Balk's Adventure, which is about an aggressive
caveman baby that headbuts dinosaurs to death. Yeah. I had
to look it up that it is some sort of
caveman baby. I also recall that at some point, I
think you have to rescue the Princess of the Moon
or something like. You go to the Moon and the
bad guys from the Moon, and the bad guy has
(31:55):
been transforming dinosaurs into evil versions of themselves, and if
you like head butt the dinosaurs enough, they revert to
their sort of sweet, nerdy former selves. Anyway, Uh, Landing
goes on about other turbographic sixteen games, says says Bonks
was a great game, but Landon also says Keith Courage
was good too. Now, Keith Courage, I think the game
(32:18):
was called Keith Courage in Alpha zones. And this was
a really bizarre game that I also had. It was
a it was a two D platform side scroller, but
it had two very different types of levels. One was
like and they would alternate. You'd go one, and then
the other one was this cute animated overworld where you'd
walk around and and go into shops and stuff, and
(32:39):
it was animated in a way almost loo kind of
like earth Bound or something except two D. Uh, just
like very like cute and sunny and bright, and then
every other level was just this demonic nightmare in these
caves with like satanic robots attacking you, very very hot
and cold showers to use the Grand Guniol phrase. But
(33:00):
then anyway, Landing goes on. There was also a really
cool racing slash adventure game too. You had to wander
a world and look for people to race. I wish
I remember what it was called. I don't know what
that one was land but Landon says, I've been really
enjoying the Weird House Cinema episodes. I've seen several that
have been covered. Robot Jocks was a childhood favorite for
me and my brothers. Crash and burn became a catchphrase
(33:22):
for us. What do you think about doing an episode
on the movie Universal Soldier? Thanks for the great shows, Landon, Um, Well,
I don't know Universal Soldier. It's been a long time
since I've seen it, But I don't know. I guess
anything's possible. We've we often have this discussion, like we
we don't really have a a set in stone criteria
for Weird House Cinema is it's it's kind of a
(33:44):
does it feel right, does it feel like it fits?
And and then we kind of go with it. So
I don't know, I'm not sure. I haven't looked at
Universal Soldiers. Roland Imrick, isn't it I think is it. Yeah,
I believe it was in early one of his films.
Could be wrong about that. Speaking of Roland Emerick, Rachel
and I just recently decided to re revisit a movie
(34:07):
I hadn't seen in a long time. We watched the
nineteen Godzilla, directed by Roland Emerick, and what a travesty.
Just that movie is just direct, no offense to anybody
who worked on it. But yeah, just I don't know,
as someone who's who's come to really be more discerning
about Kaishu type films as as time goes on, that
(34:28):
one is just the bottom of the barrel. This is
the Godzilla in name only picture. I don't know what
you mean by that. I mean it's the one with
Matthew Broderick and genre No and those people. Yeah, yeah,
I think it's sometimes called I've seen it referred to
as Gino as Godzilla in name Only. Well yeah, well,
like most of the movie is not actually Godzilla. It's
(34:50):
Matthew Broderick and a bunch of people running around in
a building running from velociraptors. I think there's the baby godzillas.
But so it came out a few years after Jurassic
Park and so there are raptor sized baby Godzilla's doing
most of the action in the film. Well, you know
Roland Imerick, he he had some He did some fun pictures. Though.
We have to remember he did Stargate. Oh, Argate was
(35:11):
kind of fun. You know, Stargate was fun. I haven't
seen it in a long time, but ye say, remember
had a gloriously befuddled James Spader in it. It was
James Spader and Hugh Grant mode. Yeah. Yeah, and there
was some fun teleportation high jinks. Uh. Other than that,
I'm a little little foggy on what happened. Okay, all right,
(35:36):
here's another bit of listener mail. Lison comes to us
from Cheryl. Cheryl Rights, I've come across a movie that
might be suitable for this feature. It is a late
sixties sort of movie when studios were trying to catch
up with youth culture. It goes about as well as
you'd expect. I'd be interested in your take on it.
The Magic Christian stars Peter Seller's and Ringo Starr, with
an amazing cast of credited and uncredited actors, including John
(35:58):
Cleese and Wilfred Hyde. Y Yule Brenner sings a torch
Song in Drag very well too. Thanks for what you
do best, Cheryl. Oh, I've seen The Magic Christian. This
movie is nuts. I also it's been a while since
I've seen it, but it's uh, it doesn't really have,
as far as I recall, much of an overarching narrative.
(36:18):
It's not like a plot driven movie. It's more just
kind of a series of bizarre vignette strung together of
of people. Like the main thing I remember about it
is it has like somebody who's got a lot of
money tricking people into like like doing pranks on people,
essentially getting people into bizarre scenarios under the impression, under
(36:41):
the idea that people will do anything for money. Yeah,
I've I've never seen it, but yeah, it does have
a lot of interesting people attached to it, and I
don't know, it seems to be part of a a
genre that I have very little exposure to, sort of
a like a late sixties British satire. The film um
(37:01):
like I was looking at Joseph McGrath's uh work here,
Scottish film director, and it's a lot of stuff that
I've never heard of. But also stuff like the nineteen
seven Casino Royal adaptation which had Peter Sellers in it
and Ursa Landrew's David Niven, etcetera. Yeah, I think it
(37:22):
was based on something that was written by by the
writer Terry Southern and uh, actually, fact, I remember I'm
pretty sure The Magic Christian was a favorite of former
show host Christian Seger. Really okay, yeah, maybe that's maybe
that's why it sort of rings about, like maybe I
remember him talking about it. Yeah, all right, what do
(37:47):
we have? Looks like we have one left in the
bag there. Ah, yeah, okay. This comes from Greg. Greg,
also writing about Weird House Cinema, says The Keep is
an interesting film by Michael Mann, his second feat. Sure,
I was super excited to see this movie when it
first came out after seeing production stills in maybe Fangoria. Anyway,
(38:07):
the film is a beautifully shot, confusing mess with Nazi
SS troops, an Immortal Warrior, and pure evil every fog
machine ever made crank to eleven during the whole thing.
Oh and an all star cast. Look it up. Maybe
worth a visit for Weird House Cinema. Thanks and love
the show. Greg. Have you seen The Keep? Rob? I haven't.
(38:27):
It's been on my list for a long time. I
think it's one that I've occasionally like powered up like
and I'm like, I think tonight's tonight, I'm gonna watch
the keep and then it just doesn't happen for one
reason or another. I'm almost positive it's got a Tangerine
Dream score. That's what thats you in. That's probably it.
H I mean, also, you know the idea Michael Mann
is not really known for his genre pictures. You know,
(38:50):
you tend to, so the idea of one of his
early films had a bunch of supernatural weirdness and and uh,
you know, and and and Nazis and stuff. It sounds
worth checking out. I've certainly talked to people who are
big fans of this flick. Um, So, yeah, I don't know.
Maybe maybe this is weird house material. I did look
it up. I can confirm it is music by Tangerine
(39:12):
Dream uh and and it fits because the movie has
a kind of that that Tangerine Dreams sort of slow
dream equality to it. There's lots of fog floating around,
and the cast is really excellent. I don't think I
could say it's a good movie. H. Greg is correct
that this movie is is very confusing, and it doesn't
(39:32):
I don't recall it having much of a like very
a very propulsive narrative. But it's got great actors in it.
It's got Scott Glenn as some kind of strange like
chosen One type figure who is who is drawn to
this war zone in Europe by supernatural forces. I think
at some point his eyes start glowing and I recall
Scot Glenn has unbelievable what do you call the muscles
(39:57):
on top of your shoulders, the where like your clavic
hold your neck, those things. Um, yeah, those traps are
those traps? Traps? Sure? His his traps are off the charts.
His traps are unbelievable. Scott Glenn is great. I mean really,
this whole I mean you look at the people in
this film is like Gabriel Byrne. Ian McKellen. Um, if
(40:17):
Brian Payne shows up, I think he's basically just a
rando in it. But like Bruce Payne is a great
Beam movie actor as well. Yeah, Ian McKellan is of
course wonderful as always. I think Jurgen proc Now is
in it. He plays a Nazi. I think Gabriel Burne
plays a Nazi and it is the elevator pitches that
this demon in a cave who looks like a bodybuilder
(40:38):
hell spawn slash robot comes to life, is awakened somehow
and kills a bunch of Nazis. Yeah. I think I've
seen a picture of the the entity in question, and
he looks like he's probably Thanos his personal trainer. Yeah,
he does lift this, This demon does lift bro Well,
I mean say no more. It's got a tangerine dream score,
(40:59):
so I'd watch it. Okay, Well, maybe this goes on
the list for the future. And yeah, it is funny
seeing this come out of Michael Mann, who I think
Michael Mann is a great filmmaker. I really enjoy a
lot of his movies, but most of the ones I
can think of are like crime thriller type movies, like
some of the best of that genre. But yeah, you
don't really think of him as making horror movies. Though.
(41:20):
One movie of his that I think is is really overlooked.
Is he in the like mid to late two thousands,
I think, like two thousand five or six or so,
did a Miami Vice movie? Did you ever see this? No?
I never did. I know the film in question, though
this movie is it is not at all what you
would expect it. Uh. It's so it's just a you know,
(41:43):
like cops dealing with crime and drug smugglers and stuff
in terms of story content. But stylistically, this movie is
so dark and do me. It is like it's like
the cop movie at the end of the world. The
cinematography is full of all this a negative space and
haunting low light. It's it's it is astonishingly weird and
(42:07):
beautiful in terms of how it looks for a cop movie,
which is what it is. I would say, it's if
you're into I don't know. If that tickles your fancy,
you should. You should look it up. Tangerine Dreamscore. Oh
I don't know. Okay, well then I can't commit. Okay,
all right, We're gonna go ahead and close it up here,
but we'll be back next week with more listener mail.
(42:27):
Keep it coming, um you know it. Feel free to
write in about any topics past or present or potentially
future stuff doble your mind, weird how cinema. Uh, and
you know, never be shy about even chiming in between
part one and part two of a series, because that
that's exactly the case with the Punishing Robots listener mail
that we read in this episode because we're recording this
(42:48):
episode between the publication of part one in part two, right, yes,
good good, Thank you for noting anyway, Thanks as always
to our excellent audio producer Seth Nicholas Anson. If you
would like to get in touch with us with feedback
on this episode or any other, to suggest a topic
for the future, or just to say hello, you can
email us at contact at stuff to Blow your Mind
(43:10):
dot com. Stuff to Blow Your Mind is a production
of I heart Radio. For more podcasts my heart Radio,
visit the i heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever
you listen to your favorite shows.
Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of
My Heart Radio. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind.
Listener Mail. My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick,
and today we're bringing you some of the messages that
you've sent us over the past couple of weeks. So,
Rob would you mind if I kick things off by
reading a message that we got about our machine Lords
(00:24):
of Barnard sixty eight episodes. Okay, this first message comes
from Aiden. Aiden writes, Hi, Robert and Joe, I just
finished listening to your episode about post biological intelligence. Towards
the end of part two, you raised the question of
whether such an intelligence would have something like emotions. This
(00:48):
is a great question, and in the recent Vault episodes
on invertebrate emotions you shared some ideas that could help
to answer it. In the Invertebrates episode, you focused on
the ways that an internal emotional state could make manifest
as measurable behaviors. The example that I remember most clearly
is the one about bees. After receiving a free sugary treat,
(01:09):
bees will forage with a more optimistic bias, but after
a simulated attack, they will forage with a more pessimistic bias.
This change in behavior may be attributable to something like
an emotion. Those of parenthesis and and adds as a
pre post biological intelligence. Writing this based on memory, I
may be missing something from the b example. Feel free
(01:30):
to add on or correct if you read it on air. Well,
nothing to add or correct so far, and you're doing good. Uh.
Continuing this got me thinking that maybe the same test
could be applied to a machine intelligence if we could
observe it. Maybe a free burst of gamma ray energy
would cause it to display some optimistic behaviors, while a destructive,
(01:50):
unexpected supernova would cause it to show more pessimistic behaviors,
whatever that might look like. However, such an intelligence would
probably have some similarity to modern machine learning in the
sense that it would extrapolate based on past data. Optimism
or pessimism would probably show up as an overreaction or
under reaction to the stimulus beyond what the cold calculation
(02:14):
of an algorithm would predict. For example, if the machine
knows that in the past a supernova or other negative
stimulus has caused a ten percent impact on its systems,
the cold, emotionless calculation of data would would suggest changing
its behavior by ten percent. On the other hand, if
the machine had some kind of emotional state like pessimism,
(02:35):
maybe it would change its behavior by fifteen percent. That
five percent difference could be the way to tease out
the effect of emotions from the effect of adaptive behavior
based on past experience. The caveat here is that the
observer would need to know what the emotionless baseline is.
Maybe this is a study that only an even greater
(02:56):
machine intelligence could carry out on smaller, simpler ones. It
was fun exploring the connection between these episodes. So thanks
for another week of great podcasts. Best Aiden. Yeah, this
is a good point and so yeah. In that Invertebrate
Emotions episode, we talked about the difficulties in separating out
the different things that we would classify as emotions, Like
(03:17):
you might be able to regard an emotion like anger
in one sense, as an internal state that has a
subjective felt quality to it, like it feels like something
to be angry, and then on. In another case, you
could say anger is a set of externally observable behaviors
that you see clustered together. That was you know, they
(03:40):
represent a certain number of biases and behavior that occur
at the same time, maybe like uh, a quickness to
physical aggression or something like that, in other things that
would correlate with anger uh. And so those are definitely
separate things. I guess you would have to leave aside
the question of whether it would feel like something to uh,
to have an emotion shan for a post biological intelligence
(04:02):
the same way it would feel like something for us.
That comes back to the question we talked about in
the episode of weather. Post biological intelligences would actually be conscious,
and one part of having a conscious experience is having
internal emotional states that feel like something. Yeah. The other
part would just be like, would they have these sort
of clusters of externally observable behaviors that sort of are
(04:26):
seen together and they represent a certain disposition towards external stimuli? Yeah, yeah,
this is a yeah, this is a good breakdown. I
I appreciate this. All right, let's hear from another listener.
This one comes to us from Chris. Chris writes, Hi, Robert,
(04:47):
Joe and Seth, good day. Your recent two part episode
on the Machine Lords of Barnard has been a great listen.
It is difficult to conceptualize how we could get to
a post biological point uh in the time scale that
might be involved, but it is a fun thought experiment.
The topic was particularly relevant to a short story by
Sushin Lieu that I am reading as part of an
(05:10):
anthology work titled to Hold Up the Sky. I had
first read The Three Body Problem after hearing you mentioned
it many times on past episodes. I really enjoyed the
way his sci fi has written through a completely different
lens that most Western readers are used to. Um or
maybe it's just me, this is great. I did recommend
(05:31):
The Three Body Problem in a previous summer reading episode
we did a few years back. I loved that novel. Uh,
but I have not read any of Cician lous Um
short stories, so so yeah, this is this is totally
fresh to me. Yeah, same here. I I did the
audio book of the of of that of that first one,
the Three Body Problem, but I haven't read any of
the subsequent books in that series, or any of his
(05:54):
shorter works. Well, that is a dark forest that we
should maybe both wander into all uh, they continue. The
short story I'm referring to is titled Cloud of Poems.
It is a fascinating story involving an advanced race of
dinosaurs called the Devouring Empire, who have recently joined the
Greater Galactic Civilization coming to our Solar System, enslaving humans
(06:16):
and raising them as feedstock on their interstellar ship, and
in a particular human named ye Ye who teaches classical
Chinese literature to the feed lot humans to make them
more tender. Now this is where the post biological life
comes in. Another member from the Greater Galactic Society comes
into the Solar System and is only referred to as
(06:39):
quote a God. There's a lot of backstory, but it
is made clear that this is a being from a
significantly more advanced race that has been that has transformed
itself into beings of pure energy with the ability to
jump from one side of the Milky Way galaxy to
the other. In this sci fi world, it's explained that
the level of civilization is based on the number of
(07:00):
dimensions it can access. The Esteemed God's race can access
eleven dimensions. That's a lot of dimensions. In the episode,
you discussed how the motivations of a post biological life
form might be different from our own and whether they
would have the same concerns as a living being, etcetera.
And this story gets at that point, which I think
is relevant. If a race evolved to a point where
(07:22):
individuals transformed past a stage where a lifespan is no
longer a concern, I think they would not continue to
have the same desires and motivations as their pre biological selves.
In this story, the Esteemed God, who is an intergalactic
art collector and researcher, is challenged by the human you
you to become a better poet than the classical Chinese
master uh liebe. The human point is that even with
(07:46):
all the technology that the Esteemed God possesses, it cannot
replicate the poetry of a human because it does not
possess the ability to understand the human spiritual realm. Since
this God is still an individual, albeit being a pure energy,
he takes the challenge, transforming himself into a human and
attempting to surpass the poetry. Long story short, He fails.
(08:07):
Then instead decides to build a quantum computer to write
and record every possible poem using the Chinese alphabet and
save them each on an atomic level storage device where
each poem is stored on a single atom. It's then
discussed that it will take ten to the hundred and
seventy second power number of atoms to store every possible combination,
and that unfortunately there are only ten to the eightieth
(08:30):
power of atoms in the entire universe. I don't know
how to check these numbers, so I am unsure if
they actually match up to reality. Uh maybe Seth can
help me out on that. Let's let's hear it. Let's
Seth quickly in real time chime in and uh in
fact check those numbers for us. He's got to go
count him. Okay, he's gonna count. You'll come back um
in ten to the hundred and seventy second power minutes.
(08:54):
Uh So, anyway, the Esteemed God then decides to start
building the quantum computer, and to do so, he will
need to deconstruct the entire Solar System, humans and the
Devouring Empire to their constituent atoms a mere ten to
the fifty seven power to do so, and has no
had has no qualms with the destruction to achieve those ends.
(09:16):
This was an entirely too long email, but I did
do my best to summarize an astounding work by Sushin Lou.
You should really just just read it. But to but
suffice to say, I think a post biological race that
is descended from previously living beings would be extremely dangerous,
especially if they have the power available to them, like
(09:38):
the esteemed god of our story, willing to destroy entire
races and solar systems with no second thought to achieve
a goal. Again, great episode. Thanks for all you do
bringing us listeners, great content. Best Chris. Oh thanks Chris.
This sounds like a like a great read. Yeah, yeah,
I um, I love the ideas explored in this. Uh
you know the this This is definitely an ideas author
(10:01):
that toys with wonderful sci fi concepts. I mean, based
on the one novel I've read. Um, that's kind of
how it rolls out. So there's a lot of individuals
discussing very at times high minded science scientific topics, but
with some other fun stuff thrown in as well, like
real world, um, political concerns, Chinese mythology, etcetera. Yeah, totally,
(10:25):
And I will say I don't want to spoil anything,
but the book also has a really great, a really
great science fiction weapon in it that's extremely counterintuitive that
comes in towards the end. I won't say any more
than that it's it's it's not a piece of wood
with a nail in it though. But yeah, I really
(10:45):
like this idea of a a super intelligent post biological
being being challenged to try to write poetry that transcends
the great poets of Earth, like the example in the
story would be would be lead by I think a
lot of Western readers probably know his name spelled more
like a Leapo or lee Bow, often like l I
p O or l I b O, but like a
(11:07):
Tang Tang dynasty era poet who's just a wonderful poet.
And so it raises the question of like, well, you know,
if this, if this being is so so intellectually past
human beings, why would it be that it couldn't write
poetry better than you know, the than the poetry produced
by the best of this you know, biologically confined uh
(11:29):
species on the planet Earth. Well, I think there actually
maybe is something plausible to that, because you know, almost
all great art is about like suffering in some way. Uh.
And so if you were to take a being that
is is just like so powerful it essentially has no
real wants or physical limitations, you can imagine how a
being like that could have real trouble creating compelling narratives
(11:51):
community that that would like, uh, speak emotionally to the
experience of beings who are limited like humans are. Yeah,
so then it has to take human form and try
and create human art. It has to be the word
made flesh, right, it has to come down and become
one of us. Yeah, exactly how else can it possibly
understand it? So? Yeah, definitely, Yeah, thank you for the recommendation, Chris.
(12:13):
I will have to look that that story up all right. Well, well, Carney,
our mail bot has even more machine and AI and
robotic based listener mail for us here today. Yes, this
next message is a response to part one of our
episode about punishing machines. This comes from Karen. Karen says,
(12:38):
love the show. I'm just going to jump into this.
I think that if we judge a robot able to
commit a crime, the robot is also implicitly able to
have a crime committed against it. But if a human
or another robot victimizes a robot, what would the consequences be.
Let's say that I commit a crime against a robot.
I take the Amazon Virtual Assistant Alex and throw the
(13:00):
device on the floor, constituting an assault on Alexa. What
happens next? What is justice to her? Is it based
on the robots programmed values, likes, dislikes, or goals? If so,
then Alexa's greatest value is supporting Amazon, and her goal
is to sell Amazon products. What do you do with that?
Another silly example, Think of the security robot who drove
(13:23):
into a pond. I like that, you say, who by
the way, I think of the security robot who drove
into a pond and drowned itself in people saw that happen.
Would people who witnessed a robot getting damaged without stopping
it be guilty of some sort of neglect if they were,
what would make it right to the robot? If you
made it this far, thanks for reading, and what do
(13:45):
you think? Well, Karen, we actually do talk about this
a little bit in part two of that series, but
I've been thinking about it more since we recorded that
part two, and I think this raises some really good questions.
So a few distinctions on my thoughts about whether robots
could be the victim of a crime. I would say,
at the surface level, this depends, at least in my opinion,
(14:07):
on whether the robot is conscious or not. And I
think the standard assumption today is that machines like the
Amazon Alexa, even complex machines, they're not conscious. But in
the future it might be hard to say. And this
gets back, of course to the hard problem of consciousness,
which we talked about in the Machine Lords of Barnard
sixty eight episodes. Uh, if we don't know what consciousness
(14:29):
is and why it arises in the first place, even
in biological brains like ours, it's gonna be hard to
judge whether a non biological machine could ever be conscious
or not. So this is just a big open question.
To me. I don't really come down on one side
or the other. But with that huge caveat, I would
say that I think if robots are ever able to
(14:50):
be conscious, if for whatever reason we decide yes they
are having an inner experience like we are, then I
think the obvious implication would be that they have the
right to be protect it against harm just like anybody else,
but for an Alexa or whatever. Since I don't think
anybody really has suspicions that Alexa is conscious or that
Alexa has any kind of internal experience, I think harm
(15:12):
done against an Alexa would really just be a property
crime against its owner, like if you were to damage
somebody's wheelbarrow or something. But then there's another big complication
that I'll throw in that that your email really made
me think about, which is the possible brutalizing effect on
society and on onlookers of tolerating crime against robots that
(15:36):
appear to be conscious even though they're not. This is
something that I'd take kind of seriously. So I'm imagining
a scenario like this, see if this makes any sense
to rob Like, so we imagine most people are still
decided that, yeah, there's nothing that it's like to be
a robot. Robots can't actually suffer, so they don't have
like inherent rights that we need to protect because there's
(15:56):
nothing that it's like to be them that they just
don't care. But if you were to make a robot
that convincingly acted out suffering when it was harmed, and
then you just had lots of robots like this constantly
like being harmed in public views, Like a humanoid looking
robot that could just like sit there while somebody beat
(16:17):
it with a stick and it would scream in pain.
Something does seem like very wrong about that that just
being stimuli that we are constantly exposed to and doing
nothing about. You know, it almost seems like that that
would have a kind of horrible numbing effect on onlookers,
that would desensitize them to the real suffering of human
(16:39):
beings and of animals. Yeah, I guess. On a related note,
I know in my household with a with a with
a child, we we have stressed at times that you know,
even though you know Alexa or Amazon or Google or
whatever you're talking to, uh, you know, even though it's
not a real person, and we're very clear about that. Um,
(17:02):
you know, you you shouldn't talk mean mean to it.
You know, you should you should be nice when you
address the robot. You shouldn't be you know, unnecessarily uh,
you know, angry or or you know, or anything like that. Uh. Likewise,
we've we've had this discussion when when one is playing
against an AI in a game, particularly you know, certainly
(17:25):
if it's like an enemy AI, but but more specifically,
you know, if it's something like an online Settlers of
Catan situation where it's like a fake human player, Like,
you're not allowed to just say mean things to the
non human in the in the chat box because that
it just sets a weird precedent, you know, right, it's
and it's not because it would hurt the AI. It's
(17:48):
because it's like it trains you to behave that way,
and eventually you may end up behaving that way towards
somebody who could actually be harmed by it. Yeah, so anyway,
I mean, of course, it's it's in a whole additional
area of like, how do we treat how do we
treat you know, virtual entities in simulated environments and in games. Yeah, well,
(18:10):
I guess this starts to sort of bleed over into
the bigger, big controversial question of like whether you know,
whether video games that have violence in them train people
to commit violence in the real world. And I'm certainly
not taking a position on that. I I don't have
a strong opinion one way or another about that. Maybe
we could look at the research more on that in
the future. But um, but I mean I would say
(18:32):
that there there's something like if something is happening in
physical space and you're seeing people actually like use physical
violence against a robot or be uh, you know, performatively
verbally abusive to a robot, even in in real physical space,
and nothing is is just being tolerated. Something about that,
at least intuitively to me, would have would seem to
(18:52):
have a kind of deadening and and very detrimental effect
on on the culture. Right, But then again, we have
to be open to the idea that there could conceivably
be situations in which the robot's presence is intolerable. Maybe
it's not the robot's fault, but um, like say, there's
some sort of a I mean you to go back
(19:13):
to the cigarette robot example from that the first episode.
If if the cigarette bot can roll into your house uninvited,
I mean, I I think you should be able to,
um to kick it out of your house, right right?
Sure you know we were not going to stand for
the tyranny of cigarette bot. Yeah. Maybe so that's the
other side of it. Maybe maybe we should. Maybe there
(19:33):
are cases where it's actually good to to appear to
violate the rights of a robot if that robot represents
something really evil and bad that you want to like
demonstrate your disapproval against. I guess that that actually did
come up in the paper. They were talking about arguments
that like part of what juries sometimes want to do
is just like symbolically demonstrate moral approprium. Yeah, here's an idea.
(19:58):
What if you could build up moral willpower by having
a robot devil that actually sits on your shoulder and
is constantly trying to tempt you to do evil, and
so you like just practice ignoring it all the time. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
I guess so I could see that working. I'm not
sure if I could. I mean, I can see people
(20:19):
doing it. I don't know if it would work, uh
at anyway, Well, we'll let those the listeners decide on that.
Here's another bit of listener mail for UCE. This comes
to us from Jim and New Jersey, Robert and Joe.
I would like to update the trolley car problem slightly.
For autonomous vehicles, it's not a choice of whether the
(20:40):
car strikes the elderly couple or the mother pushing the
baby stroller, inflicting the least possible harm. It's whether the
car chooses to crash into a wall or tree seriously
injuring or killing the passengers, or to strike pedestrians injuring
or killing them while leaving the passengers mostly unscathed. But
let's make it a bit more interesting. UM in the
(21:01):
gym includes a few um caveats here. First of all,
it's a choice between one passenger and a group of pedestrians,
or it's a choice between a group in the vehicle
and one pedestrian, or it's a choice between an equal
number of people in the vehicle and an equal number
of pedestrians. Does the car's decision favor passenger safety as
(21:21):
the car moves from basic utility vehicles into more expensive
luxury models. I don't know what these answers are or
should be. There are no easy answers, Jim. I think
this raises a great point, Jim, and we actually, I
think we this is probably the response that came in
after part one published, but before part two, So we
sort of address some of this in part two. But
this raises a bunch of other permutations that we didn't
(21:44):
get into. UH. And and one thing that these variations
really highlight for me is um a problem that we
also did not really get into in the episode, which
is UH, making life or death decisions when the probabilities
of the outcomes that you're trying to choose between our
very uncertain. So we were talking about how an autonomous
vehicle in reality is going to have to make like
(22:06):
trolley car type decisions all the time. But actually, what
it's gonna have to do is make like a trolley
problem decision where it's not one track with one person
versus another track with multiple people. It's going to be
lots of abstract branches of probabilities, like you you have
an x percent probability that someone will be injured or
(22:27):
harmed on this track versus that track, And a lot
of times those probabilities, even that the machine judges with
the best of information available to it, are just going
to be wrong. So it's not just that the decision
will have to be made, but the decision will have
to be made necessarily on incomplete information that could be
could be very misguided. Just one example, like if an
(22:48):
autonomous vehicle is trying to make a split second decision
to minimize harm in an oncoming wreck. Uh, it's going
to have to make judgments like how many people are
in the other car, but like how well it seems
like that's something that's often going to be difficult or
impossible to determine, or like what's the probability that people
(23:08):
will will be injured or killed in certain collisions? I
think it's unfortunately it just gets more and more difficult
the more you try to get into the details on it. Though,
as we were saying in the episode a number of times,
it's not like this is a scenario where the human
driver naturally has an advantage. I mean human drivers, I
think are often just like making split second decisions based
(23:30):
on almost no reasoning whatsoever. Is just sort of like
instinctual jerky movements. Though the individual human is not going
to see their own driving that way, right, So yeah,
it's it's a complicated situation. Okay. This next message is
(23:52):
about dad jokes and a former Listener mail episode. It
comes from Mohammed. Mohammed just says, hey, guys, just listen
to a bit in the list in her Mail episode
about indicating sarcasm and text. And I wanted to point
out another sarcasm indicator. I see a lot on social
media that I think works really well alternating upper and
lowercase letters. It reads intuitively to me as mocking and sarcastic.
(24:16):
And that's the whole message, except Muhammad attaches a picture
of a tattoo where it's one of those like they say,
I say things, so the parents say, you'll regret that
tattoo when you get older. And then the response is
me also saying you'll regret that tattoo when you get older.
But it's alternating upper in lowercase letters. And then the
tattoo below that is a weird looking SpongeBob square pants. Yeah,
(24:41):
I don't know. This looks fine and it's not a
squid word tattoo. For crying out loud, it's SpongeBob. That's
a weird SpongeBob, but it's good. I don't know the difference.
What what what would be the deal if it was
a squid word tattoo? Does that have political significance? No? No,
it's just like squid Where have you ever watched SpongeBob? No?
Never a whole episode. I mean, I know what it is,
but well, I I could explain it to you, but
(25:01):
the best thing to do just do. You have to
watch and then you'll you'll understand the context. But yes,
squid word is one of the other characters. And I
guess there's squid word tattoos out there. Maybe there's some
great squid word tattoos. Um, but I feel like SpongeBob
is the better choice. I did not know we would
get factionalism in the response to this, But this is good.
(25:27):
All right. Let's get to some weird House related listener
mail here. This one comes to us from Chris offhand.
I don't know if this is the same Chris as earlier,
but different one different Chris. A lot of a lot
of Chris. Is a lot of Chris is out there,
all right? This Chris says, Hello, Rob and Joe. Well
we all have that first time it denied was the
night I experienced Highlander. This is not related to any
(25:49):
recent podcast specifically, but after searching and watching related weird
house cinema shows on Prime, I'm being presented with quite
the bevy of sci fi and weird house options. So
tonight I try Odd Highlander. It's not over yet, but
Sean Connery is Egyptian but has a Scottish accent. We
helped just roll with it, I guess onward um. On
another note, the dad joke episode was great. I'm a
(26:11):
father to four children, the oldest is the same age
as your son, Robert, and she has gotten to the
point where she's trying her hand at making up jokes.
A few land with her siblings or parents, but most
are rather misunderstood. But she persists as far as the
way a captive audience reinforces our dad jokes. This is
spot on. The word play jokes and fart innuendo just
(26:31):
make makes for an easy target for the five to
nine year old age group. Fortunately, I'm going to have
around a decade of time with children in that age range,
so I'll be well entrenched in the dad joke mindset.
So one for the road then not knock, who's there? Who? Who? Who?
What are you? And al Yeah, that's the end of
(26:52):
the regards Chris, I've encountered that one in the wild before. Now.
As for Highlander, um, yeah, absolutely. Highlander is a is
a wonderful and and weird film, Uh that I think
about quite a bit. And obviously we're we're big fans,
huge fans, enormous fans. We're princess of the universe of Now,
(27:13):
regarding the idea that Sean Connery is Egyptian in The Highlander,
I recalled that's actually multiply confusing because, uh, if I'm
not mistaken, it's Sean Connery not even attempting to mask
his Scottish accent, but he's playing a guy who comes
from Egypt originally, but his name is one Sanchez Villa
(27:35):
Lobos Ramirez, and I think he is supposed to have
been more recently Spanish, right, yes, So you know, I
don't know. It's I guess there are different ways you
could crack that apart. I mean, the obvious answer is
Sean Connery is not going to do an accent. He's
going to Sean Connery's accents. So he's going to be
Scottish in any and everything, whether he's playing an ancient
(27:57):
Egyptian immortal or like a Russian submarine captain, you're getting
you're getting the same accent. But I don't know you
could I guess say that, like if you live long enough,
perhaps you're fluid enough to move through different cultures. You
also moved through different languages, and you move through different accents,
and I don't know how you wind up there, But
like I guess the thing is, you could look at
(28:17):
it this way. Ramirez is traveling in Scotland at the time,
uh in that movie, That's how he encounters McLeod um. Therefore,
perhaps he's just shifted into Scottish mode. And indeed we
never see him in that film anyway out of the
Scottish context. So that's right. Yeah, he's a worldly wanderer
(28:38):
in the Highlands. He's like, he's like Brian Cox and Braveheart. Yeah.
So I don't know. I guess it makes I'm gonna
go I'm gonna go with Hi. I'm gonna say it
makes perfect sense. It's what It makes perfect sense within
the context of Highlander one. I guess it. In Highland
or two he's a ghost, so he's he's just set
in whatever he was, right, but where he died. So,
(29:00):
you know what, I'm going to take it a step further.
It works perfectly in Highlander two as well. I don't
know if I agree that he's a ghost in Highlander
two isn't. Well, he's the product of some kind of
necromancy from the planet Zeist. So the way it goes,
he's he's killed in Highlander one and then many years
in the future, Uh, Connor McCloud yells his name, and
(29:22):
then yelling his name causes him to be like reborn
in Scotland, and then he comes to visit Connor McCloud.
So I don't know what you call that. Yeah, I'm
going to call it a ghost. Okay. He appears very fleshy,
but but maybe maybe a fleshy ghost. Okay, this next
(29:44):
message is about Weird House Cinema. It comes from Andy,
and he says, Hey, guys, I really dig the relatively
new Weird House Cinema segment. I noticed you haven't done
any animated features. May be wrong on that point. I
haven't had the chance to listen to them all. So
I had a couple of suggestions. Two of my personal
favorites from when I was a kid, nineteen seventy seven's
Wizards and nineteen eighty threes Rock and Rule. Both are
(30:08):
fun and definitely strange post apocalyptic animated features. Wizards is
a Ralph backsheet film with some great humor. Rock and
Rule contains wonderful music by lou Rey, Debbie Harry and
Cheap Trick, as well as a demon made of animated
cow brains. LOOK forward to seeing your thoughts on these
fantastically weird animated features, Andy. Well, Andy, I've read about
(30:30):
both of these movies but seen neither one. Same. Yeah,
I'm not familiar with Rock and Rule at all, but
I'm familiar with Wizards just because it's it's often held
up there. It has this you know, it's a. It's
favorite for people who are into like seventies weird animated features,
and you know, I like, we're other work by Ralph
bak Sheef for sure, So I don't know, maybe that
(30:52):
one's in our future. I know we've we have a couple,
at least a couple of animated titles that we've been
kind of knocking around, and uh, I think we may
have animated content discussed on the show in the near future.
So this one is from Landon, and Landon says, hey, guys,
(31:13):
my older brother had a Turbo Graphics sixteen rob which
I think this came up in Gunhead, right, because we're
talking about the idea of Gunhead having uh ports for
multiple systems. Is a video game, and one of them
was a game on the Turbo Graphics sixteen that I
don't recall playing, but when I was a kid, I
had this, uh this weird game console, and we talked
(31:33):
about the game Balk's Adventure, which is about an aggressive
caveman baby that headbuts dinosaurs to death. Yeah. I had
to look it up that it is some sort of
caveman baby. I also recall that at some point, I
think you have to rescue the Princess of the Moon
or something like. You go to the Moon and the
bad guys from the Moon, and the bad guy has
(31:55):
been transforming dinosaurs into evil versions of themselves, and if
you like head butt the dinosaurs enough, they revert to
their sort of sweet, nerdy former selves. Anyway, Uh, Landing
goes on about other turbographic sixteen games, says says Bonks
was a great game, but Landon also says Keith Courage
was good too. Now, Keith Courage, I think the game
(32:18):
was called Keith Courage in Alpha zones. And this was
a really bizarre game that I also had. It was
a it was a two D platform side scroller, but
it had two very different types of levels. One was
like and they would alternate. You'd go one, and then
the other one was this cute animated overworld where you'd
walk around and and go into shops and stuff, and
(32:39):
it was animated in a way almost loo kind of
like earth Bound or something except two D. Uh, just
like very like cute and sunny and bright, and then
every other level was just this demonic nightmare in these
caves with like satanic robots attacking you, very very hot
and cold showers to use the Grand Guniol phrase. But
(33:00):
then anyway, Landing goes on. There was also a really
cool racing slash adventure game too. You had to wander
a world and look for people to race. I wish
I remember what it was called. I don't know what
that one was land but Landon says, I've been really
enjoying the Weird House Cinema episodes. I've seen several that
have been covered. Robot Jocks was a childhood favorite for
me and my brothers. Crash and burn became a catchphrase
(33:22):
for us. What do you think about doing an episode
on the movie Universal Soldier? Thanks for the great shows, Landon, Um, Well,
I don't know Universal Soldier. It's been a long time
since I've seen it, But I don't know. I guess
anything's possible. We've we often have this discussion, like we
we don't really have a a set in stone criteria
for Weird House Cinema is it's it's kind of a
(33:44):
does it feel right, does it feel like it fits?
And and then we kind of go with it. So
I don't know, I'm not sure. I haven't looked at
Universal Soldiers. Roland Imrick, isn't it I think is it. Yeah,
I believe it was in early one of his films.
Could be wrong about that. Speaking of Roland Emerick, Rachel
and I just recently decided to re revisit a movie
(34:07):
I hadn't seen in a long time. We watched the
nineteen Godzilla, directed by Roland Emerick, and what a travesty.
Just that movie is just direct, no offense to anybody
who worked on it. But yeah, just I don't know,
as someone who's who's come to really be more discerning
about Kaishu type films as as time goes on, that
(34:28):
one is just the bottom of the barrel. This is
the Godzilla in name only picture. I don't know what
you mean by that. I mean it's the one with
Matthew Broderick and genre No and those people. Yeah, yeah,
I think it's sometimes called I've seen it referred to
as Gino as Godzilla in name Only. Well yeah, well,
like most of the movie is not actually Godzilla. It's
(34:50):
Matthew Broderick and a bunch of people running around in
a building running from velociraptors. I think there's the baby godzillas.
But so it came out a few years after Jurassic
Park and so there are raptor sized baby Godzilla's doing
most of the action in the film. Well, you know
Roland Imerick, he he had some He did some fun pictures. Though.
We have to remember he did Stargate. Oh, Argate was
(35:11):
kind of fun. You know, Stargate was fun. I haven't
seen it in a long time, but ye say, remember
had a gloriously befuddled James Spader in it. It was
James Spader and Hugh Grant mode. Yeah. Yeah, and there
was some fun teleportation high jinks. Uh. Other than that,
I'm a little little foggy on what happened. Okay, all right,
(35:36):
here's another bit of listener mail. Lison comes to us
from Cheryl. Cheryl Rights, I've come across a movie that
might be suitable for this feature. It is a late
sixties sort of movie when studios were trying to catch
up with youth culture. It goes about as well as
you'd expect. I'd be interested in your take on it.
The Magic Christian stars Peter Seller's and Ringo Starr, with
an amazing cast of credited and uncredited actors, including John
(35:58):
Cleese and Wilfred Hyde. Y Yule Brenner sings a torch
Song in Drag very well too. Thanks for what you
do best, Cheryl. Oh, I've seen The Magic Christian. This
movie is nuts. I also it's been a while since
I've seen it, but it's uh, it doesn't really have,
as far as I recall, much of an overarching narrative.
(36:18):
It's not like a plot driven movie. It's more just
kind of a series of bizarre vignette strung together of
of people. Like the main thing I remember about it
is it has like somebody who's got a lot of
money tricking people into like like doing pranks on people,
essentially getting people into bizarre scenarios under the impression, under
(36:41):
the idea that people will do anything for money. Yeah,
I've I've never seen it, but yeah, it does have
a lot of interesting people attached to it, and I
don't know, it seems to be part of a a
genre that I have very little exposure to, sort of
a like a late sixties British satire. The film um
(37:01):
like I was looking at Joseph McGrath's uh work here,
Scottish film director, and it's a lot of stuff that
I've never heard of. But also stuff like the nineteen
seven Casino Royal adaptation which had Peter Sellers in it
and Ursa Landrew's David Niven, etcetera. Yeah, I think it
(37:22):
was based on something that was written by by the
writer Terry Southern and uh, actually, fact, I remember I'm
pretty sure The Magic Christian was a favorite of former
show host Christian Seger. Really okay, yeah, maybe that's maybe
that's why it sort of rings about, like maybe I
remember him talking about it. Yeah, all right, what do
(37:47):
we have? Looks like we have one left in the
bag there. Ah, yeah, okay. This comes from Greg. Greg,
also writing about Weird House Cinema, says The Keep is
an interesting film by Michael Mann, his second feat. Sure,
I was super excited to see this movie when it
first came out after seeing production stills in maybe Fangoria. Anyway,
(38:07):
the film is a beautifully shot, confusing mess with Nazi
SS troops, an Immortal Warrior, and pure evil every fog
machine ever made crank to eleven during the whole thing.
Oh and an all star cast. Look it up. Maybe
worth a visit for Weird House Cinema. Thanks and love
the show. Greg. Have you seen The Keep? Rob? I haven't.
(38:27):
It's been on my list for a long time. I
think it's one that I've occasionally like powered up like
and I'm like, I think tonight's tonight, I'm gonna watch
the keep and then it just doesn't happen for one
reason or another. I'm almost positive it's got a Tangerine
Dream score. That's what thats you in. That's probably it.
H I mean, also, you know the idea Michael Mann
is not really known for his genre pictures. You know,
(38:50):
you tend to, so the idea of one of his
early films had a bunch of supernatural weirdness and and uh,
you know, and and and Nazis and stuff. It sounds
worth checking out. I've certainly talked to people who are
big fans of this flick. Um, So, yeah, I don't know.
Maybe maybe this is weird house material. I did look
it up. I can confirm it is music by Tangerine
(39:12):
Dream uh and and it fits because the movie has
a kind of that that Tangerine Dreams sort of slow
dream equality to it. There's lots of fog floating around,
and the cast is really excellent. I don't think I
could say it's a good movie. H. Greg is correct
that this movie is is very confusing, and it doesn't
(39:32):
I don't recall it having much of a like very
a very propulsive narrative. But it's got great actors in it.
It's got Scott Glenn as some kind of strange like
chosen One type figure who is who is drawn to
this war zone in Europe by supernatural forces. I think
at some point his eyes start glowing and I recall
Scot Glenn has unbelievable what do you call the muscles
(39:57):
on top of your shoulders, the where like your clavic
hold your neck, those things. Um, yeah, those traps are
those traps? Traps? Sure? His his traps are off the charts.
His traps are unbelievable. Scott Glenn is great. I mean really,
this whole I mean you look at the people in
this film is like Gabriel Byrne. Ian McKellen. Um, if
(40:17):
Brian Payne shows up, I think he's basically just a
rando in it. But like Bruce Payne is a great
Beam movie actor as well. Yeah, Ian McKellan is of
course wonderful as always. I think Jurgen proc Now is
in it. He plays a Nazi. I think Gabriel Burne
plays a Nazi and it is the elevator pitches that
this demon in a cave who looks like a bodybuilder
(40:38):
hell spawn slash robot comes to life, is awakened somehow
and kills a bunch of Nazis. Yeah. I think I've
seen a picture of the the entity in question, and
he looks like he's probably Thanos his personal trainer. Yeah,
he does lift this, This demon does lift bro Well,
I mean say no more. It's got a tangerine dream score,
(40:59):
so I'd watch it. Okay, Well, maybe this goes on
the list for the future. And yeah, it is funny
seeing this come out of Michael Mann, who I think
Michael Mann is a great filmmaker. I really enjoy a
lot of his movies, but most of the ones I
can think of are like crime thriller type movies, like
some of the best of that genre. But yeah, you
don't really think of him as making horror movies. Though.
(41:20):
One movie of his that I think is is really overlooked.
Is he in the like mid to late two thousands,
I think, like two thousand five or six or so,
did a Miami Vice movie? Did you ever see this? No?
I never did. I know the film in question, though
this movie is it is not at all what you
would expect it. Uh. It's so it's just a you know,
(41:43):
like cops dealing with crime and drug smugglers and stuff
in terms of story content. But stylistically, this movie is
so dark and do me. It is like it's like
the cop movie at the end of the world. The
cinematography is full of all this a negative space and
haunting low light. It's it's it is astonishingly weird and
(42:07):
beautiful in terms of how it looks for a cop movie,
which is what it is. I would say, it's if
you're into I don't know. If that tickles your fancy,
you should. You should look it up. Tangerine Dreamscore. Oh
I don't know. Okay, well then I can't commit. Okay,
all right, We're gonna go ahead and close it up here,
but we'll be back next week with more listener mail.
(42:27):
Keep it coming, um you know it. Feel free to
write in about any topics past or present or potentially
future stuff doble your mind, weird how cinema. Uh, and
you know, never be shy about even chiming in between
part one and part two of a series, because that
that's exactly the case with the Punishing Robots listener mail
that we read in this episode because we're recording this
(42:48):
episode between the publication of part one in part two, right, yes,
good good, Thank you for noting anyway, Thanks as always
to our excellent audio producer Seth Nicholas Anson. If you
would like to get in touch with us with feedback
on this episode or any other, to suggest a topic
for the future, or just to say hello, you can
email us at contact at stuff to Blow your Mind
(43:10):
dot com. Stuff to Blow Your Mind is a production
of I heart Radio. For more podcasts my heart Radio,
visit the i heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever
you listen to your favorite shows.
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