July 9, 2024 • 33 mins
Can music and speech combine to create powerful emotional experiences? Join us as we explore this fascinating intersection, starting with a light-hearted chat about our attempts at pop music. We dive deep into the creative process of blending musical elements like violin and percussion with iconic speeches from figures such as Marilyn Monroe and Martin Luther King Jr. Our journey takes a poignant turn as we discuss future compositions inspired by speeches from "The Matrix" and Charlie Chaplin's "The Great Dictator," reflecting on the timeless and moving message of humanity, kindness, and unity embedded in Chaplin's words.
Imagine a journal that celebrates ambitious ideas with high-risk, high-reward potential. We dream aloud about launching a groundbreaking academic journal that breaks away from the conservative norms of traditional publications. Dubbed the "Journal of Big Swings," this project aims to prioritize bold, innovative theories that may not yet be fully provable but deserve exploration. Our brainstorming session includes humorous potential names and the crucial role of reputable contributors to establish credibility. We wrap up this segment with a playful discussion on how enthusiastic supporters of ambitious academic research could propel such a journal into existence.
Discover the future of note-taking with digital tools like Obsidian, which help users create interconnected, personal knowledge networks. We discuss how such software can revolutionize the way we organize and visualize information, leading to an innovative idea for an academic journal named "The Journal of Ambitious Inquiry." This journal would offer a platform for sharing and discussing bold hypotheses without the immediate need for evidence. We close by examining the challenges revolutionary ideas face in traditional academic publishing and the need for more flexible avenues to recognize and disseminate transformative concepts. The episode concludes with a call for innovation in academic publishing to better support groundbreaking ideas.
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Comments? Feedback? Questions? Solutions? Message us! We will do a mailbag episode.
Email: solutionsfromthemultiverse@gmail.com
Adam: @ajbraus - braus@hey.com
Scot: @scotmaupin
adambraus.com (Link to Adam's projects and books)
The Perfect Show (Scot's solo podcast)
The Numey (inflation-free currency)
Thanks to Jonah Burns for the SFM music.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
give it a go yo, yo, yo give it a go, go go have you
ever released a uh a a pop musicsong I've recorded a few little
weird noises on soundcloud well, I know you've done like kind
of electronic things before, butyeah, have you ever
specifically tried to do like amusic with like a verses and
(00:24):
hooks and like writing lyricsand stuff?
No not, not fully.
No, Okay, you didn't fall formy trap, cause if you said yes,
I was going to make you divulgeit or sing it, or something.
Speaker 2 (00:36):
No, no, I played like weird little.
I mean it doesn't have allthose things, but it has.
You know, it makes it's like asong and it has like parts, you
know where it's like a song andit has parts.
Speaker 1 (00:47):
Yeah, but it doesn't have like full verse.
Speaker 2 (00:50):
Chorus hooks no, no, no, it doesn't, oh okay.
Speaker 1 (00:53):
It's just like how did you, how did you decide what
different parts to put in yourlike a song?
Speaker 2 (00:58):
Well, they're kind of like mute sound.
They're kind of like mute soundsthey're, so you do sound
they're like sound poems so Itook I play like my violin and
like other like percussive sortof instruments and like I have
like little instruments like aclarinet and like other things
in my house and I'll like playthose and then I'll I'll put
like um recordings of likepeople, like famous people
(01:20):
talking in interviews underneath, and then have it be like the
music and then the or the sound.
I don't say it called musicbecause it sort of sounds.
It's basically beat poetry, butwith but, yeah, yeah, yeah, like
not even poetry, because the,the audio, the, the words are
just the interview sounds likefrom you know, meryl monroe
being interviewed or jacksonpollock being so like it might
(01:42):
be like a, like a standing bass,like right right, but then
meryl monroe is, and then itcomes down it's like I have a
dream that one day all yeahyou're like oh, then it comes
back.
It's like that yeah, exactlythat would be a good one.
Speaker 1 (01:58):
And then it's like ask not what you can do for your
country sure, yeah, I wouldjust leave it.
Speaker 2 (02:03):
I would just leave it as martin luther king the whole
time oh, just, you just keepcoming back, you're not?
Speaker 1 (02:07):
I don't usually have it switch up.
Speaker 2 (02:09):
I usually don't mash up, I just pick one thing
because it's like you know, it'dbe good if people listen to the
martin luther king speech butthen if there was some music
around it, I'm neo, I know kungfu.
Speaker 3 (02:20):
Now, this is matrix oh, that would be a good one
well, the matrix would be good,hey, that'd be good.
Speaker 2 (02:26):
You're, you're coming up with good ones.
Speaker 3 (02:28):
Yeah, or the do you ever hear the speech at the?
Speaker 2 (02:32):
end of uh modern.
Or the speech at the end ofgreat dictator charlie chaplin's
great dictator.
Just check it out no it's atthe end of a great dictator.
He does this speech and it'sreally riveting and like it
gives you goosebumps and like Ithink he does this speech and
it's really riveting and like itgives you goosebumps and like I
think it, it makes me tear up.
It's like so powerful.
Speaker 1 (02:49):
Yeah, you know my hot take on Chaplin should have
stayed silent, silent movie starshould have stayed silent.
Speaker 2 (02:56):
But when you hear this speech, you you're, you'll
turn around, you'll change youropinion.
Speaker 1 (03:00):
I'll turn around and I'll be like I'm not looking at
this anymore.
Speaker 2 (03:02):
No, you'll, you'll you'll be like.
I'll be like good job, yourperspective.
Speaker 3 (03:14):
I'm sorry, but I don't want to be an emperor.
That's not my business.
I don't want to rule or conqueranyone.
I should like to help everyoneif possible.
Jew, gentile, black, man, whitewe all want to help one another
.
Human beings are like that.
We want to live by each other'shappiness, not by each other's
misery.
We don't want to hate anddespise one another.
(03:36):
In this world there's room foreveryone and the good earth is
rich and can provide foreveryone.
The way of life can be free andbeautiful, but we have lost the
way.
Greed has poisoned men's souls,has barricaded the world with
hate, has goose-stepped us intomisery and bloodshed.
We have developed speed, but wehave shut ourselves in.
(03:58):
Machinery that gives abundancehas left us in want.
Our knowledge has made uscynical, our cleverness hard and
unkind.
We think too much and feel toolittle.
More than machinery, we needhumanity.
More than cleverness, we needkindness and gentleness.
Without these qualities, lifewill be violent and all will be
(04:18):
lost.
The aeroplane and the radiohave brought us closer together.
The very nature of theseinventions cries out for the
goodness in men, cries out foruniversal brotherhood, for the
unity of us all.
Even now, my voice is reachingmillions throughout the world,
millions of despairing men,women and little children,
victims of a system that makesmen torture and imprison
(04:39):
innocent people.
For those who can hear me, Isay do not despair.
The misery that is now upon usis but the passing of greed, the
bitterness of men who fear theway of human progress.
The hate of men will pass anddictators die and the power they
took from the people willreturn to the people.
And so long as men die, libertywill never perish.
(05:03):
Soldiers, don't give yourselvesto brutes, men who despise you,
enslave you, who regiment yourlives, tell you what to do, what
to think and what to feel, whodrill you, diet you, treat you
like cattle, use you as cannonfodder.
Don't give yourselves to theseunnatural men, machine men with
machine minds and machine hearts.
You are not machines, you arenot cattle.
(05:25):
You are not cattle, you are men.
You have the love of humanityin your hearts.
You don't hate Only the unloved.
Hate the unloved and theunnatural.
Soldiers, don't fight forslavery, fight for liberty.
In the 17th chapter of St Lucasit's written the kingdom of God
is within man, not one man, nora group of men, but in all men,
(05:46):
in you.
You, the people, have the power, the power to create machines,
the power to create happiness.
You, the people, have the powerto make this life free and
beautiful, to make this life awonderful adventure.
Then, in the name of democracy,let us use that power.
Let us all unite.
Let us fight for a new world, adecent world that will give men
a chance to work, that willgive youth a future and old age
(06:08):
a security.
By the promise of these things,brutes have risen to power, but
they lie.
They do not fulfill thatpromise.
They never will.
Dictators free themselves, butthey enslave the people.
Now, let us fight to fulfillthat promise.
Let us fight to free the world,to do away with national
barriers, to do away with greed,with hate and intolerance.
(06:31):
Let us fight for a world ofreason, a world where science
and progress Will lead to allmen's happiness.
Soldiers, in the name ofdemocracy, let us all unite.
Speaker 2 (07:22):
I'm out, I've got a solution, scott.
Speaker 1 (07:32):
I would like to hear it, please now, as per usual.
As per usual.
As per usual.
Speaker 2 (07:42):
As per usual.
Okay, so I've been interactingwith academic journals recently,
interacting with everything inthe past.
Like I'm reading them like Igot, like I got, a journal
article admitted, submitted yes,yeah, we talked about that last
week, so I've been learningmore about.
Yeah, thanks, I've been learningmore and more about, like, the
(08:03):
world of academic journals andsome of the sort of problems
with them.
I think one of the things thatI've come up against that's a
problem with them is what I willcall the problem of
ambitiousness the problem ofambitiousness, ambitiousness
okay so if say, if you proposean idea, that's well, here's the
(08:30):
solution.
The solution is someone shouldstart a new academic journal,
because anyone can start ajournal.
It's not like regulated.
Right so someone should start anew journal, and the journal's
premise should be ambitiousideas.
Speaker 1 (08:47):
As opposed to what.
So this is what all of thejournals are not ambitious what
would you classify their ideasas, like sometimes ambitious, or
just unambitious, or just likea smattering how, what's that?
What's it?
Yeah, so how would youdifferentiate?
Speaker 2 (09:01):
so basically if if you came out and said something
really new and kind of, you know, just a new idea, yeah that is
not called.
People don't say that idea istoo new, we won't let it into
our journal.
What they say is that idea istoo ambitious and that's and
that word ambitious is what theylabel ideas that are too new.
(09:25):
So they say that that's whatthey say and the presumption
there is you would never be ableto defend that adequately and
so no paper would reasonablypublish it because it's too
ambitious.
But I think what that reallymeans when people say that is
(09:49):
our journals all.
Pretty much this is all journals, as far as I can tell, have the
same thing yeah our journalshave a prestige risk to
publishing ideas that turn outto be wrong and so we will not
publish anything that is thatcould be wrong, even though it
(10:12):
may be worthwhile in research tohave what I would call big
swings, big swings You're reallytrying to hit the ball all the
way out to the outfield right,big swings.
Speaker 1 (10:25):
Right, ambitious, ambitious.
Speaker 2 (10:26):
Ambitious ideas that are very new and, yeah, they're
not well-founded and they cannotbe defended in one 20-page
paper in a journal?
Speaker 1 (10:35):
Is this like how the National Enquirer features
ambitious journalism likestories that the other
newspapers are too scared toyeah right About Bigfoot's
wedding or Batboy returning?
Yeah, exactly Batboy.
Now I understand.
Speaker 2 (10:51):
So this is going to be the national inquirer version
.
We could call it the nationalinquiry.
No, I don't think so.
I think that could be the nameof the journal, what you want to
call it the national inquirycredibility.
Speaker 1 (11:03):
You would have to call it the the credibility
credibility journal.
Speaker 2 (11:07):
Okay of ambitious ideas.
There you go the credibilityjournal of ambitious idea, the
highly prestigious credibilityjournal of ambitious ideas.
There you go the credibilityjournal of ambitious idea, the
highly prestigious credibilityjournal of ambitious ideas.
I think no one would missmistake what that was going on
there then we could just call ittrust us, we're ambitious.
Dot com, dot com even thoughit's a printed journal.
We just yeah.
(11:28):
Well, that dot com is a websiteprestige?
Speaker 1 (11:31):
well, it's a website, but you have to go to the dot
com dot org to get because wecouldn't get the com.
Speaker 2 (11:35):
Well, of course org is better.
Yeah, so, yeah.
So I think that would be aninteresting journal to look at.
Speaker 1 (11:43):
So anyone can start a scientific journal?
Obviously it's not just thatsimple.
If I start a scientific journal, no one is going to care.
So no one is going to care.
So we have to get, you have toget like good people to be
contributors.
Speaker 2 (11:58):
Right, that's the yeah, I think.
I think what we'd have to getis like good contributors, but
also like good people supportingit and like sort of backing it,
and I think you could do thatby finding like old professors
george soros, of course, wouldback.
Speaker 1 (12:10):
He backs everything, okay.
So I don't know about that.
Speaker 2 (12:14):
But well, george?
Yeah, I don't think so.
George Soros probably wouldn'thave anything to do with this.
Speaker 1 (12:17):
No, of course not.
Speaker 2 (12:18):
You know somebody who was like hey, research should
be be more ambitious than it is.
I've been in academia for 30years and I think research could
be a lot more ambitious than itis.
So let's start a journal whereit's a journal of big swings.
It's a journal where people doambitious ideas and actually if
(12:39):
you open the pages of thejournal and you're not saying
this is really ambitious, itlacks credibility.
You're not able to prove this.
Then the paper would be failingright.
So actually, the success ofthis paper, of the papers in
this journal, would be tooambitious.
Can't prove it, can't you know?
Can only start a conversation,adam you just said the name.
Speaker 1 (13:02):
You said this is a place where they're taking big
swings right.
A journal.
Speaker 3 (13:05):
Right, right, okay, so we got it's the big swingers
journal.
Okay.
Speaker 1 (13:14):
So we're're gonna have the big swingers journal,
okay yeah, and then you knowthat doesn't have any kind of
connotations.
Speaker 2 (13:17):
What is that?
Speaker 1 (13:17):
other connotations?
I'm sure there's.
I'm just gonna quickly googlebig swingers and see if anything
comes up, oh my god, oh no,this big swingers oh well you
want to see, you want a localjournal, so check out big
swingers in my area, just makesure in my area.
Speaker 2 (13:33):
Big swingers in my area.
Oh, now this is looking moreinteresting.
This is okay.
Oh no, especially in SanFrancisco.
There's lots of this here, soyou know who could start this
journal is solutions for themultiverse itself.
Speaker 1 (13:49):
I saw ourself academic with all of our extra
time and money.
Speaker 2 (13:51):
This could be the solutions.
This us ourselves academic withall of our extra time and money
.
This could be the solutionsacademic where we would put it,
because the whole idea is newideas.
You know kind of a big, kind ofbig swings.
You know ambitious ideas.
I think part of the reason whyambitious ideas are not accepted
in sort of standard journals isbecause, um, like I said,
there's a prestige risk becausethere's sort of negative fallout
(14:14):
if the articles you posted thenturn out, the ideas, turn out
to be like totally wrong, likeyou know you might say maybe
this is going to work and thensomeone finds some other you
know evidence that shows thatreally it's not right.
So then that looks bad.
Speaker 1 (14:29):
At the beginning it looks like that's wrong.
Let's put bleach into our.
Let's inject bleach andivermectin right exactly.
And then that looks bad.
It looks like that's wrong.
Let's put bleach into our.
Let's inject bleach inivermectin Right, exactly.
Speaker 2 (14:35):
And then that gets published, and then you know so
it would create, it would createcontroversy, which is
interesting, but it wouldn'tcreate like long-term citations
over the long haul Right.
So there's that kind ofreputational risk.
But I think if you came out andexplicitly said this is our
goal and made an explanation forwhy this is a worthwhile thing
(14:59):
to do, and maybe even publishedthat article in a less ambitious
place, A lower ambition.
Yeah, maybe in a prestigiousjournal you say you prove that
research is better if there areoutlets for wild sort of bigger
swings.
And then if you can demonstratethat in a very, very kind of
cool, reasonable sense thatpeople you know agree with that,
(15:21):
then why not have a journalthat that can prove that?
Speaker 1 (15:24):
So maybe the first step is to demonstrate that
research ought to have this kindof, so a collection of like
smart people with with new idea.
Like what'd you say ideas, whatkind of ideas?
Speaker 2 (15:38):
yeah, yeah, absolutely.
I mean they're usually they're,they're academic papers.
They can be in various fieldsoh, ambitious.
Speaker 1 (15:44):
Sorry, I was just blanking on ambitious ideas.
Yeah, what?
If so?
You keep saying journal.
My old brain is like that's aprinted book that you hold in
your hand.
Speaker 2 (15:54):
That's not what a journal is no, now it's an
online is it a?
Speaker 1 (15:58):
website is it a?
Is it a?
Speaker 2 (16:00):
thing on a website.
Yeah, it's like a, it's like apay, like usually.
It's like a.
Usually it's like a payment, apayment gateway to get to the
access to the article, but thearticle.
You can read the abstract, butthen you have to pay to get the
actual article and then onceyou're.
But then you can like search,but usually through your, so
usually you're a professor or ora student at a university.
(16:20):
The universities pay forsubscriptions to all these
journals and then those peoplewho are inside those
universities, like I as aprofessor, can just go and see
almost any journal articlebecause my library gives me
access to it?
Speaker 1 (16:33):
would it be always written or would it be like
audio stuff?
Interpretive dances you thinkmaybe well, it could be
interpretive dances.
I think this is just depends onthe idea.
I guess it's just paper papershave.
Speaker 2 (16:43):
You know standard structure, abstract introduction
.
You know lit review, mainargument.
You know sort of standard, sortof this is how you write a
paper.
You sort of stand on theshoulders of giants.
Speaker 1 (16:53):
I'm getting the gifs yeah, yeah, yeah yeah what the
uh, what a journal looks like.
Because I mean, yeah, myearliest incarnation of a
journal is, you know, opening upa journal and you write, dear,
dear journal, and then you writeabout your day, and then did
you ever do that, did you?
Ever try journaling like thatas a kid did, did you have a?
Speaker 2 (17:13):
book where you would do it daily.
I think I tried because peoplesaid, like you know, this is
good.
But then I think I got moreinto just like writing in
general, rather than writingabout my life or like my day.
Speaker 1 (17:28):
I did a journal for a while the same thing, like I
just was bad at keeping a dailyhabit of anything I still am.
But like, yeah, I tried writingabout my day for a while the
same thing Like I just was badat keeping a daily habit of
anything I still am.
But like, yeah, I tried writingabout my day for a while and I
was like this seems like I'mspending too much time doing
something I don't want to do, soI stopped doing it.
Speaker 2 (17:43):
Yeah, also, like what are you?
I don't know what are you goingto get out of reflecting on you
, like age eight, right it mightmake you more empathetic, like
write about what other peoplefelt and thought.
That's probably a good ideaactually, but um yeah as a young
as a young testosterone teenageboy, I wasn't like thinking
(18:07):
what do other people think andwhat are their feelings?
you know I was thinking moreabout what I was concerned about
, you know yeah okay, well Idecided just because we were
talking about journals it mademe wonder about yeah, what your
journaling history looked likenow, have you seen this new
thing that people are intocalled second, a second brain,
or it's?
Also second brain it's alsocalled settle castelkasten, the
(18:30):
German word oh.
Speaker 3 (18:32):
I have not.
People use a piece of softwarecalled Obsidian.
Speaker 2 (18:36):
It's becoming quite popular.
People use this software calledObsidian, Okay, and inside of
it you write these like notesand then you can like.
It's almost like Wikipedia.
Inside the Obsidian you canreference other notes and other
topics through hyperlinks andthen you can build this like
network that you can visualizeof like all your different notes
(18:57):
and how they relate to othertopics and other things.
So then you can see, like your,your relationship of topics.
So you can see all these topicsand you can hover on one and it
links to all the notes thathave to do with that topic.
And so you can like grab allthe notes that have to do with a
single topic and read throughthem.
It just gives you this abilityto like have a huge amount of
information all kind ofinterrelated to each other
(19:19):
visually and like kind ofthrough hyperlinks.
Speaker 1 (19:22):
It's pretty interesting yeah, it's a way to
like learn things.
How would you?
You're using a screen to dothis, or yeah, yeah it's like on
your it's software okay, yeah,interesting it's pretty cool.
Speaker 2 (19:32):
People are getting into it, if anyone wants to get
into it.
You just look at Obsidian andSettlecast and or Second Brain.
It comes, I think, a bit fromlike bullet journaling, but now
it's taken on a whole notherlife.
Speaker 1 (19:44):
Well, it sounds like a digital version of like making
a big wall thing where you putall the red string between all
the connected things.
Speaker 2 (19:52):
That's what it is.
Speaker 1 (19:53):
Yeah, I mean you're yeah, but it doesn't look like
you're a crazy sociopath or a uhright super intense detective
those are the two options.
That's right.
You're either a serial killeror a serial killer catcher when
you do those yeah, this issettle custom.
Speaker 2 (20:08):
yeah, it's a little custom, or god, what do they
call it?
Second brain, anyways, that'skind of a cool journaling thing
that people are getting into.
Okay, but yeah, academicjournals.
Speaker 1 (20:21):
So what would we call our big idea journal?
I mean, usually it's not a goodname, yeah, not a great name
but I think you know, usuallypeople do just very standard
names.
Speaker 2 (20:31):
You know the names are just like you know something
, something quarterly or, likeyou know, journal of you know.
Speaker 3 (20:42):
So it could be called .
It could be called the journalof ambitious inquiry.
Speaker 2 (20:46):
That's actually not that bad.
The journal of ambitiousinquiry would be pretty cool
because then it would tell youright the name, like hey, if you
open, if you open this up andyou're like this is too
ambitious, that's the whole dangpoint.
We know it's too ambitious.
Speaker 1 (20:59):
The j the j, the jai, the jai, yeah, and it could
also be it could also be, youknow, uh, people could even
publish.
Speaker 2 (21:09):
I think what would be really neat is people could
turn in hypotheses, so no data,no evidence, nothing, and it
could be really short.
It could just be like here's ahypothesis, this is happening
because of this, this and this,who knows, but it's interesting.
I think it's interesting andyou take it for what it is.
(21:30):
You don't okay.
This is truth no you?
no, absolutely not.
What you take it for is this isan interesting possibility and
you start to think about that,and if you had a whole journal
of them, it'd be interesting toread, like the 25 hypotheses
that were submitted this monthyou know, interesting yeah yeah,
and then you could cite thathypothesis and start adding
(21:54):
piecemeal evidence to it oragainst it.
So you, someone, could put in ahypothesis and then somebody
else could be like I could writelike a little paper, like you
know, they could just write likea two-page response and say
this hypothesis was reallyinteresting.
Here's some problems I see withit.
Boom, boom, boom, boom.
And then somebody else couldread that and read the
hypothesis and be like no,they're forgetting this.
(22:14):
And you could actually kind ofpiece together like a full
thought about that hypothesiswhich, if, if, if you just left
it to one person to have to comeup with a very ambitious
hypothesis and then build up theentire defense of that
hypothesis, it just would neverhappen and it wouldn't be
publishable because it's tooambitious and you miss the back
(22:36):
and forth.
Speaker 1 (22:37):
That you know the socratic method, you know you.
You miss the input from others.
That you're the the things youdon't know.
That you don't know, you knowyour blind spots.
That's right.
Speaker 2 (22:48):
So if you could create this cool yeah, and
people could submit wholearticles with evidence and you,
you know defenses of whatthey're saying.
But but it should be really abig swing.
Like, like I have tons of theseideas and I've, I've, I've told
them to.
Like, I have these variousadvisors that I talked to about
trying to get papers published.
And you know, I say to them,like what if I tried to say this
(23:08):
?
And they're like unpublishable.
And I'm always like what if Itried to say this?
And they're like unpublishable.
And I'm always like why?
And they say too ambitious.
I'm like why isn't there just ajournal for things that are too
ambitious?
It's cool, why not?
Like it's not going to hurtanybody to have like ambitious
ideas.
Like, should I share an example?
Sure, okay.
(23:29):
So one example I have is so Ithink it's plausible to argue
again, it's ambitious.
And it'sauer and Nietzsche,basically the foundations of
what became what has now becomepostmodernist, like basically
(24:03):
what everyone thinks today inthe West is based on these three
guys.
You could argue, I think, quitestrongly, that all of their
core ideas and attitudes andoutlooks are coming almost
completely from Asian philosophy.
And like Buddhism and Hinduism,I think you can argue that
(24:25):
quite strongly.
Actually, there's some evidencethat Hume was like in a
monastery with a guy who was oneof the only guys who went to
Tibet and he tried to convertthe Tibetans to Catholicism when
he was there for 25 years butactually they converted him to
Tibetan Buddhism.
So he came back as a TibetanBuddhist and Hume was just
(24:45):
writing.
He was just hanging out in thislike monastery to write and he
just was having lunch every daywith this guy.
There was 120 guys in this roomin this monastery.
They all ate together two,three meals a day.
Hume was there.
One of the guys was like fromwas had been in tibet for 25
years.
There's no way that they didn'ttalk again and again and again
over meals and make arelationship and learn about
(25:08):
tibetan buddhism.
And then, lo and behold hume's.
All of his theories are justlike almost exactly buddhism.
Like they're just like you know.
And the same thing withNietzsche and the Upanishads.
Like when you read Nietzsche'sbook called Thus Spake
Zarathustra, it's pretty muchjust sounds like the Vedas, like
(25:29):
it sounds like the way theVedas and the Upanishads and
sort of some of the Buddhisttexts sound profound, like it's
this sort of orientalphilosopher walking around and
talking to people and it's justlike it's just.
And then his ideas beyond goodand evil, that's just buddhist
morality, that's just buddhistmorality.
Is that good and evil?
Are these?
You know, this kind of falsedichotomy?
(25:50):
They don't really exist,they're kind of, you know.
I mean they do exist, but theyexist in this sort of
interdependent way with otherwith other, and so there's no
absolute good and evil the wayWestern sort of Christian or
kind of absolutist modern ideasabout good and evil.
But Nietzsche comes along andis like we're beyond good and
evil, good and evil are justthese interdependent concepts
(26:11):
and that becomes moral pluralism, moral relativism, which is our
modern idea.
So anyways, that's like an ideathat basically all of western
philosophy, western modernphilosophy, contemporary
philosophy, has all just beenbased on the upanishads, the
vedas and the buddhist texts.
But if you say that people arelike you're crazy, that can't,
(26:33):
that's way too ambitious to sayso you got to put it in a new
journal.
Speaker 1 (26:38):
That's why we gotta do a new journal, then it's
gotta, then you go.
Well, it's cited now and theygo well then that's less crazy,
I guess yeah.
Speaker 2 (26:47):
Well, it's cited as a crazy thing.
Like this is a crazy idea.
That's fine, it's fine, there'snothing wrong with people
having crazy ideas.
So anyways, I think it might bedifferent for different
journals.
Like, I don't think you need abig swings journal for science.
Really.
Well, maybe you do, maybe youdo.
I think sometimes things arealmost like you need
whistleblowers.
You almost need likewhistleblowers to say this
(27:11):
experiment is not getting done,no one has done this experiment,
but it would decide thesolution.
You know what I mean.
Like if you wanted to solvethis question in science, you
would do this experiment.
Why is no one doing it?
That's almost like awhistleblower right and right
now.
If you, there's no way topublish that, there's no place
to put that sort of like hey, noone's doing this experiment,
(27:31):
someone do it and it would proveyes or no on this question.
So, for example, right noweveryone knows this in academia
If you do experiments and findout that your hypothesis is
wrong, it's very hard to getthat paper published.
But if you find out that yourhypothesis is either right or
(27:52):
that there's some evidence thatmaybe it's right, that's
publishable.
But that's not good science,that's really bad science.
Okay, right, good science wouldbe.
I tried it.
It didn't work.
That's really important forother people to know, right.
And so this bias towardscorrect you know right answers
(28:13):
to only be published.
First of all, it's not goodscience science.
Second of all, it actuallyleads to people fudging their
data a lot.
This has been shown thatactually people will do what's
called p hacking, which ischanging things around and sort
of changing their you know, sortof reinterpreting their data,
massaging it into until thatdoesn't sound good.
But this is what the incentiveleads to if you say you know you
(28:36):
can only do correct ideas andin the humanities, it's the same
thing you to.
If you say you know you canonly do correct ideas and in the
humanities it's the same thing.
If you can only publish ideasin philosophy or literature or
in the humanities that the peerreviewers believe are correct
not just that are plausible thenyou're going to get to the same
thing.
So this is a big problem.
In academia.
People know about this problem.
(28:56):
This is not like I'm just comingup with this.
It's not like I invented thisproblem.
This is a major problem.
It's called peer review crisisor peer review problem or the
problem with journals.
Right now you could talk aboutit all different ways, but so
it's not like just crazy, I'mnot making up this problem.
What if there was a journalwhere people could have
ambitious ideas?
And that would be the sort ofstatement of that journal where
(29:20):
people could have ambitiousideas, and that would be the
sort of stand of that journaland we talked about some of the
reasons why that wouldn't exist,is because of the way prestige
works in academic environments.
But a lot of the ideas todaythat everyone thinks are common
knowledge and are well-proven ahundred years ago were wild,
totally ambitious ideas.
Academics will never citeanything that isn't published in
(29:41):
another journal, which means ifsomebody does have a big swing
and then they publish it in likea blog post and it is really
important.
It will still never be cited inthe academic literature and if
you do, your paper will berejected because they'll say
you're citing something thatisn't peer reviewed.
Speaker 1 (29:59):
So, there's this disjunction where, if you do
want to- reference like peopleknow the rules and they know how
to get into journals, so they Imean easily.
Speaker 2 (30:07):
You're talking to someone who knows the rules and
knows how to do it.
I do it, I do it you know.
Speaker 1 (30:12):
So it's not what's the lament here.
Wait, what's the lament?
It's the lament that you can'tget the thing into the journal.
It's the lament that you can'tget the thing into the journal.
Speaker 2 (30:19):
It's the lament that you don't get the stamp of-.
I can get things into thejournal, Scott.
I know how to do it.
It's not personal, Adam stickwith me?
Speaker 1 (30:23):
What did you just say ?
You were just saying someonehas an idea, they can't get it
in because they put it in a blogpost.
They can't cite it.
Why is?
Speaker 2 (30:29):
that bad.
Who cares?
So say, somebody has a reallyrevolutionary idea right.
Okay, cool, and they can't getit into a journal.
Speaker 1 (30:36):
Cold fusion.
Speaker 2 (30:37):
I have cold fusion.
Speaker 1 (30:38):
I put it in my Medium post Well, cold fusion you can
make money with.
But what if you come up with,for example, a way to what if I
come up with a completelyuseless idea?
That's new, okay.
Speaker 2 (30:47):
Well, what if you come up with a definition of
slavery that really improvespeople's understanding of
slavery in the modern times?
Speaker 1 (30:55):
Okay, right.
Speaker 2 (30:58):
Sounds in the modern times.
Okay, right, sounds likesomething that I could have
adopted, but it runs completely.
But it runs completely contraryto the existing theory of
slavery, which I'm sure, there'sa whole literature on the
meaning of slavery andda-da-da-da.
But let's say someone comes upwith a completely revolutionary
idea about this and totallyreverses everything.
Right, they say, instead ofthinking about them like slaves
(31:24):
you way.
Whatever, I don't know you know, sure, whatever, and then and
then that, but that's nowunpublishable because it's a
totally ambitious idea, but saythey do write it as a blog post.
Speaker 1 (31:27):
It's unpublishable.
Where in pure of your?
Speaker 2 (31:28):
journals.
Okay, so you can put itsomewhere else.
Yeah, okay, so now let's laythat out.
So the person then writes agreat medium post.
It's beautiful and writtenreally well and really plausible
and good.
But now because I told there'sno way for academic journal
people to then cite that blogpost.
It's not allowed.
It's not allowed.
Speaker 1 (31:47):
Well, thank you guys for tuning in.
Speaker 2 (31:49):
All right, everybody take care, Keep it concrete-y
Keep it concrete-y Okay bye, bye, okay, bye, thank you.
give it a go yo, yo, yo give it a go, go go have you
ever released a uh a a pop musicsong I've recorded a few little
weird noises on soundcloud well, I know you've done like kind
of electronic things before, butyeah, have you ever
specifically tried to do like amusic with like a verses and
(00:24):
hooks and like writing lyricsand stuff?
No not, not fully.
No, Okay, you didn't fall formy trap, cause if you said yes,
I was going to make you divulgeit or sing it, or something.
Speaker 2 (00:36):
No, no, I played like weird little.
I mean it doesn't have allthose things, but it has.
You know, it makes it's like asong and it has like parts, you
know where it's like a song andit has parts.
Speaker 1 (00:47):
Yeah, but it doesn't have like full verse.
Speaker 2 (00:50):
Chorus hooks no, no, no, it doesn't, oh okay.
Speaker 1 (00:53):
It's just like how did you, how did you decide what
different parts to put in yourlike a song?
Speaker 2 (00:58):
Well, they're kind of like mute sound.
They're kind of like mute soundsthey're, so you do sound
they're like sound poems so Itook I play like my violin and
like other like percussive sortof instruments and like I have
like little instruments like aclarinet and like other things
in my house and I'll like playthose and then I'll I'll put
like um recordings of likepeople, like famous people
(01:20):
talking in interviews underneath, and then have it be like the
music and then the or the sound.
I don't say it called musicbecause it sort of sounds.
It's basically beat poetry, butwith but, yeah, yeah, yeah, like
not even poetry, because the,the audio, the, the words are
just the interview sounds likefrom you know, meryl monroe
being interviewed or jacksonpollock being so like it might
(01:42):
be like a, like a standing bass,like right right, but then
meryl monroe is, and then itcomes down it's like I have a
dream that one day all yeahyou're like oh, then it comes
back.
It's like that yeah, exactlythat would be a good one.
Speaker 1 (01:58):
And then it's like ask not what you can do for your
country sure, yeah, I wouldjust leave it.
Speaker 2 (02:03):
I would just leave it as martin luther king the whole
time oh, just, you just keepcoming back, you're not?
Speaker 1 (02:07):
I don't usually have it switch up.
Speaker 2 (02:09):
I usually don't mash up, I just pick one thing
because it's like you know, it'dbe good if people listen to the
martin luther king speech butthen if there was some music
around it, I'm neo, I know kungfu.
Speaker 3 (02:20):
Now, this is matrix oh, that would be a good one
well, the matrix would be good,hey, that'd be good.
Speaker 2 (02:26):
You're, you're coming up with good ones.
Speaker 3 (02:28):
Yeah, or the do you ever hear the speech at the?
Speaker 2 (02:32):
end of uh modern.
Or the speech at the end ofgreat dictator charlie chaplin's
great dictator.
Just check it out no it's atthe end of a great dictator.
He does this speech and it'sreally riveting and like it
gives you goosebumps and like Ithink he does this speech and
it's really riveting and like itgives you goosebumps and like I
think it, it makes me tear up.
It's like so powerful.
Speaker 1 (02:49):
Yeah, you know my hot take on Chaplin should have
stayed silent, silent movie starshould have stayed silent.
Speaker 2 (02:56):
But when you hear this speech, you you're, you'll
turn around, you'll change youropinion.
Speaker 1 (03:00):
I'll turn around and I'll be like I'm not looking at
this anymore.
Speaker 2 (03:02):
No, you'll, you'll you'll be like.
I'll be like good job, yourperspective.
Speaker 3 (03:14):
I'm sorry, but I don't want to be an emperor.
That's not my business.
I don't want to rule or conqueranyone.
I should like to help everyoneif possible.
Jew, gentile, black, man, whitewe all want to help one another
.
Human beings are like that.
We want to live by each other'shappiness, not by each other's
misery.
We don't want to hate anddespise one another.
(03:36):
In this world there's room foreveryone and the good earth is
rich and can provide foreveryone.
The way of life can be free andbeautiful, but we have lost the
way.
Greed has poisoned men's souls,has barricaded the world with
hate, has goose-stepped us intomisery and bloodshed.
We have developed speed, but wehave shut ourselves in.
(03:58):
Machinery that gives abundancehas left us in want.
Our knowledge has made uscynical, our cleverness hard and
unkind.
We think too much and feel toolittle.
More than machinery, we needhumanity.
More than cleverness, we needkindness and gentleness.
Without these qualities, lifewill be violent and all will be
(04:18):
lost.
The aeroplane and the radiohave brought us closer together.
The very nature of theseinventions cries out for the
goodness in men, cries out foruniversal brotherhood, for the
unity of us all.
Even now, my voice is reachingmillions throughout the world,
millions of despairing men,women and little children,
victims of a system that makesmen torture and imprison
(04:39):
innocent people.
For those who can hear me, Isay do not despair.
The misery that is now upon usis but the passing of greed, the
bitterness of men who fear theway of human progress.
The hate of men will pass anddictators die and the power they
took from the people willreturn to the people.
And so long as men die, libertywill never perish.
(05:03):
Soldiers, don't give yourselvesto brutes, men who despise you,
enslave you, who regiment yourlives, tell you what to do, what
to think and what to feel, whodrill you, diet you, treat you
like cattle, use you as cannonfodder.
Don't give yourselves to theseunnatural men, machine men with
machine minds and machine hearts.
You are not machines, you arenot cattle.
(05:25):
You are not cattle, you are men.
You have the love of humanityin your hearts.
You don't hate Only the unloved.
Hate the unloved and theunnatural.
Soldiers, don't fight forslavery, fight for liberty.
In the 17th chapter of St Lucasit's written the kingdom of God
is within man, not one man, nora group of men, but in all men,
(05:46):
in you.
You, the people, have the power, the power to create machines,
the power to create happiness.
You, the people, have the powerto make this life free and
beautiful, to make this life awonderful adventure.
Then, in the name of democracy,let us use that power.
Let us all unite.
Let us fight for a new world, adecent world that will give men
a chance to work, that willgive youth a future and old age
(06:08):
a security.
By the promise of these things,brutes have risen to power, but
they lie.
They do not fulfill thatpromise.
They never will.
Dictators free themselves, butthey enslave the people.
Now, let us fight to fulfillthat promise.
Let us fight to free the world,to do away with national
barriers, to do away with greed,with hate and intolerance.
(06:31):
Let us fight for a world ofreason, a world where science
and progress Will lead to allmen's happiness.
Soldiers, in the name ofdemocracy, let us all unite.
Speaker 2 (07:22):
I'm out, I've got a solution, scott.
Speaker 1 (07:32):
I would like to hear it, please now, as per usual.
As per usual.
As per usual.
Speaker 2 (07:42):
As per usual.
Okay, so I've been interactingwith academic journals recently,
interacting with everything inthe past.
Like I'm reading them like Igot, like I got, a journal
article admitted, submitted yes,yeah, we talked about that last
week, so I've been learningmore about.
Yeah, thanks, I've been learningmore and more about, like, the
(08:03):
world of academic journals andsome of the sort of problems
with them.
I think one of the things thatI've come up against that's a
problem with them is what I willcall the problem of
ambitiousness the problem ofambitiousness, ambitiousness
okay so if say, if you proposean idea, that's well, here's the
(08:30):
solution.
The solution is someone shouldstart a new academic journal,
because anyone can start ajournal.
It's not like regulated.
Right so someone should start anew journal, and the journal's
premise should be ambitiousideas.
Speaker 1 (08:47):
As opposed to what.
So this is what all of thejournals are not ambitious what
would you classify their ideasas, like sometimes ambitious, or
just unambitious, or just likea smattering how, what's that?
What's it?
Yeah, so how would youdifferentiate?
Speaker 2 (09:01):
so basically if if you came out and said something
really new and kind of, you know, just a new idea, yeah that is
not called.
People don't say that idea istoo new, we won't let it into
our journal.
What they say is that idea istoo ambitious and that's and
that word ambitious is what theylabel ideas that are too new.
(09:25):
So they say that that's whatthey say and the presumption
there is you would never be ableto defend that adequately and
so no paper would reasonablypublish it because it's too
ambitious.
But I think what that reallymeans when people say that is
(09:49):
our journals all.
Pretty much this is all journals, as far as I can tell, have the
same thing yeah our journalshave a prestige risk to
publishing ideas that turn outto be wrong and so we will not
publish anything that is thatcould be wrong, even though it
(10:12):
may be worthwhile in research tohave what I would call big
swings, big swings You're reallytrying to hit the ball all the
way out to the outfield right,big swings.
Speaker 1 (10:25):
Right, ambitious, ambitious.
Speaker 2 (10:26):
Ambitious ideas that are very new and, yeah, they're
not well-founded and they cannotbe defended in one 20-page
paper in a journal?
Speaker 1 (10:35):
Is this like how the National Enquirer features
ambitious journalism likestories that the other
newspapers are too scared toyeah right About Bigfoot's
wedding or Batboy returning?
Yeah, exactly Batboy.
Now I understand.
Speaker 2 (10:51):
So this is going to be the national inquirer version
.
We could call it the nationalinquiry.
No, I don't think so.
I think that could be the nameof the journal, what you want to
call it the national inquirycredibility.
Speaker 1 (11:03):
You would have to call it the the credibility
credibility journal.
Speaker 2 (11:07):
Okay of ambitious ideas.
There you go the credibilityjournal of ambitious idea, the
highly prestigious credibilityjournal of ambitious ideas.
There you go the credibilityjournal of ambitious idea, the
highly prestigious credibilityjournal of ambitious ideas.
I think no one would missmistake what that was going on
there then we could just call ittrust us, we're ambitious.
Dot com, dot com even thoughit's a printed journal.
We just yeah.
(11:28):
Well, that dot com is a websiteprestige?
Speaker 1 (11:31):
well, it's a website, but you have to go to the dot
com dot org to get because wecouldn't get the com.
Speaker 2 (11:35):
Well, of course org is better.
Yeah, so, yeah.
So I think that would be aninteresting journal to look at.
Speaker 1 (11:43):
So anyone can start a scientific journal?
Obviously it's not just thatsimple.
If I start a scientific journal, no one is going to care.
So no one is going to care.
So we have to get, you have toget like good people to be
contributors.
Speaker 2 (11:58):
Right, that's the yeah, I think.
I think what we'd have to getis like good contributors, but
also like good people supportingit and like sort of backing it,
and I think you could do thatby finding like old professors
george soros, of course, wouldback.
Speaker 1 (12:10):
He backs everything, okay.
So I don't know about that.
Speaker 2 (12:14):
But well, george?
Yeah, I don't think so.
George Soros probably wouldn'thave anything to do with this.
Speaker 1 (12:17):
No, of course not.
Speaker 2 (12:18):
You know somebody who was like hey, research should
be be more ambitious than it is.
I've been in academia for 30years and I think research could
be a lot more ambitious than itis.
So let's start a journal whereit's a journal of big swings.
It's a journal where people doambitious ideas and actually if
(12:39):
you open the pages of thejournal and you're not saying
this is really ambitious, itlacks credibility.
You're not able to prove this.
Then the paper would be failingright.
So actually, the success ofthis paper, of the papers in
this journal, would be tooambitious.
Can't prove it, can't you know?
Can only start a conversation,adam you just said the name.
Speaker 1 (13:02):
You said this is a place where they're taking big
swings right.
A journal.
Speaker 3 (13:05):
Right, right, okay, so we got it's the big swingers
journal.
Okay.
Speaker 1 (13:14):
So we're're gonna have the big swingers journal,
okay yeah, and then you knowthat doesn't have any kind of
connotations.
Speaker 2 (13:17):
What is that?
Speaker 1 (13:17):
other connotations?
I'm sure there's.
I'm just gonna quickly googlebig swingers and see if anything
comes up, oh my god, oh no,this big swingers oh well you
want to see, you want a localjournal, so check out big
swingers in my area, just makesure in my area.
Speaker 2 (13:33):
Big swingers in my area.
Oh, now this is looking moreinteresting.
This is okay.
Oh no, especially in SanFrancisco.
There's lots of this here, soyou know who could start this
journal is solutions for themultiverse itself.
Speaker 1 (13:49):
I saw ourself academic with all of our extra
time and money.
Speaker 2 (13:51):
This could be the solutions.
This us ourselves academic withall of our extra time and money
.
This could be the solutionsacademic where we would put it,
because the whole idea is newideas.
You know kind of a big, kind ofbig swings.
You know ambitious ideas.
I think part of the reason whyambitious ideas are not accepted
in sort of standard journals isbecause, um, like I said,
there's a prestige risk becausethere's sort of negative fallout
(14:14):
if the articles you posted thenturn out, the ideas, turn out
to be like totally wrong, likeyou know you might say maybe
this is going to work and thensomeone finds some other you
know evidence that shows thatreally it's not right.
So then that looks bad.
Speaker 1 (14:29):
At the beginning it looks like that's wrong.
Let's put bleach into our.
Let's inject bleach andivermectin right exactly.
And then that looks bad.
It looks like that's wrong.
Let's put bleach into our.
Let's inject bleach inivermectin Right, exactly.
Speaker 2 (14:35):
And then that gets published, and then you know so
it would create, it would createcontroversy, which is
interesting, but it wouldn'tcreate like long-term citations
over the long haul Right.
So there's that kind ofreputational risk.
But I think if you came out andexplicitly said this is our
goal and made an explanation forwhy this is a worthwhile thing
(14:59):
to do, and maybe even publishedthat article in a less ambitious
place, A lower ambition.
Yeah, maybe in a prestigiousjournal you say you prove that
research is better if there areoutlets for wild sort of bigger
swings.
And then if you can demonstratethat in a very, very kind of
cool, reasonable sense thatpeople you know agree with that,
(15:21):
then why not have a journalthat that can prove that?
Speaker 1 (15:24):
So maybe the first step is to demonstrate that
research ought to have this kindof, so a collection of like
smart people with with new idea.
Like what'd you say ideas, whatkind of ideas?
Speaker 2 (15:38):
yeah, yeah, absolutely.
I mean they're usually they're,they're academic papers.
They can be in various fieldsoh, ambitious.
Speaker 1 (15:44):
Sorry, I was just blanking on ambitious ideas.
Yeah, what?
If so?
You keep saying journal.
My old brain is like that's aprinted book that you hold in
your hand.
Speaker 2 (15:54):
That's not what a journal is no, now it's an
online is it a?
Speaker 1 (15:58):
website is it a?
Is it a?
Speaker 2 (16:00):
thing on a website.
Yeah, it's like a, it's like apay, like usually.
It's like a.
Usually it's like a payment, apayment gateway to get to the
access to the article, but thearticle.
You can read the abstract, butthen you have to pay to get the
actual article and then onceyou're.
But then you can like search,but usually through your, so
usually you're a professor or ora student at a university.
(16:20):
The universities pay forsubscriptions to all these
journals and then those peoplewho are inside those
universities, like I as aprofessor, can just go and see
almost any journal articlebecause my library gives me
access to it?
Speaker 1 (16:33):
would it be always written or would it be like
audio stuff?
Interpretive dances you thinkmaybe well, it could be
interpretive dances.
I think this is just depends onthe idea.
I guess it's just paper papershave.
Speaker 2 (16:43):
You know standard structure, abstract introduction
.
You know lit review, mainargument.
You know sort of standard, sortof this is how you write a
paper.
You sort of stand on theshoulders of giants.
Speaker 1 (16:53):
I'm getting the gifs yeah, yeah, yeah yeah what the
uh, what a journal looks like.
Because I mean, yeah, myearliest incarnation of a
journal is, you know, opening upa journal and you write, dear,
dear journal, and then you writeabout your day, and then did
you ever do that, did you?
Ever try journaling like thatas a kid did, did you have a?
Speaker 2 (17:13):
book where you would do it daily.
I think I tried because peoplesaid, like you know, this is
good.
But then I think I got moreinto just like writing in
general, rather than writingabout my life or like my day.
Speaker 1 (17:28):
I did a journal for a while the same thing, like I
just was bad at keeping a dailyhabit of anything I still am.
But like, yeah, I tried writingabout my day for a while the
same thing Like I just was badat keeping a daily habit of
anything I still am.
But like, yeah, I tried writingabout my day for a while and I
was like this seems like I'mspending too much time doing
something I don't want to do, soI stopped doing it.
Speaker 2 (17:43):
Yeah, also, like what are you?
I don't know what are you goingto get out of reflecting on you
, like age eight, right it mightmake you more empathetic, like
write about what other peoplefelt and thought.
That's probably a good ideaactually, but um yeah as a young
as a young testosterone teenageboy, I wasn't like thinking
(18:07):
what do other people think andwhat are their feelings?
you know I was thinking moreabout what I was concerned about
, you know yeah okay, well Idecided just because we were
talking about journals it mademe wonder about yeah, what your
journaling history looked likenow, have you seen this new
thing that people are intocalled second, a second brain,
or it's?
Also second brain it's alsocalled settle castelkasten, the
(18:30):
German word oh.
Speaker 3 (18:32):
I have not.
People use a piece of softwarecalled Obsidian.
Speaker 2 (18:36):
It's becoming quite popular.
People use this software calledObsidian, Okay, and inside of
it you write these like notesand then you can like.
It's almost like Wikipedia.
Inside the Obsidian you canreference other notes and other
topics through hyperlinks andthen you can build this like
network that you can visualizeof like all your different notes
(18:57):
and how they relate to othertopics and other things.
So then you can see, like your,your relationship of topics.
So you can see all these topicsand you can hover on one and it
links to all the notes thathave to do with that topic.
And so you can like grab allthe notes that have to do with a
single topic and read throughthem.
It just gives you this abilityto like have a huge amount of
information all kind ofinterrelated to each other
(19:19):
visually and like kind ofthrough hyperlinks.
Speaker 1 (19:22):
It's pretty interesting yeah, it's a way to
like learn things.
How would you?
You're using a screen to dothis, or yeah, yeah it's like on
your it's software okay, yeah,interesting it's pretty cool.
Speaker 2 (19:32):
People are getting into it, if anyone wants to get
into it.
You just look at Obsidian andSettlecast and or Second Brain.
It comes, I think, a bit fromlike bullet journaling, but now
it's taken on a whole notherlife.
Speaker 1 (19:44):
Well, it sounds like a digital version of like making
a big wall thing where you putall the red string between all
the connected things.
Speaker 2 (19:52):
That's what it is.
Speaker 1 (19:53):
Yeah, I mean you're yeah, but it doesn't look like
you're a crazy sociopath or a uhright super intense detective
those are the two options.
That's right.
You're either a serial killeror a serial killer catcher when
you do those yeah, this issettle custom.
Speaker 2 (20:08):
yeah, it's a little custom, or god, what do they
call it?
Second brain, anyways, that'skind of a cool journaling thing
that people are getting into.
Okay, but yeah, academicjournals.
Speaker 1 (20:21):
So what would we call our big idea journal?
I mean, usually it's not a goodname, yeah, not a great name
but I think you know, usuallypeople do just very standard
names.
Speaker 2 (20:31):
You know the names are just like you know something
, something quarterly or, likeyou know, journal of you know.
Speaker 3 (20:42):
So it could be called .
It could be called the journalof ambitious inquiry.
Speaker 2 (20:46):
That's actually not that bad.
The journal of ambitiousinquiry would be pretty cool
because then it would tell youright the name, like hey, if you
open, if you open this up andyou're like this is too
ambitious, that's the whole dangpoint.
We know it's too ambitious.
Speaker 1 (20:59):
The j the j, the jai, the jai, yeah, and it could
also be it could also be, youknow, uh, people could even
publish.
Speaker 2 (21:09):
I think what would be really neat is people could
turn in hypotheses, so no data,no evidence, nothing, and it
could be really short.
It could just be like here's ahypothesis, this is happening
because of this, this and this,who knows, but it's interesting.
I think it's interesting andyou take it for what it is.
(21:30):
You don't okay.
This is truth no you?
no, absolutely not.
What you take it for is this isan interesting possibility and
you start to think about that,and if you had a whole journal
of them, it'd be interesting toread, like the 25 hypotheses
that were submitted this monthyou know, interesting yeah yeah,
and then you could cite thathypothesis and start adding
(21:54):
piecemeal evidence to it oragainst it.
So you, someone, could put in ahypothesis and then somebody
else could be like I could writelike a little paper, like you
know, they could just write likea two-page response and say
this hypothesis was reallyinteresting.
Here's some problems I see withit.
Boom, boom, boom, boom.
And then somebody else couldread that and read the
hypothesis and be like no,they're forgetting this.
(22:14):
And you could actually kind ofpiece together like a full
thought about that hypothesiswhich, if, if, if you just left
it to one person to have to comeup with a very ambitious
hypothesis and then build up theentire defense of that
hypothesis, it just would neverhappen and it wouldn't be
publishable because it's tooambitious and you miss the back
(22:36):
and forth.
Speaker 1 (22:37):
That you know the socratic method, you know you.
You miss the input from others.
That you're the the things youdon't know.
That you don't know, you knowyour blind spots.
That's right.
Speaker 2 (22:48):
So if you could create this cool yeah, and
people could submit wholearticles with evidence and you,
you know defenses of whatthey're saying.
But but it should be really abig swing.
Like, like I have tons of theseideas and I've, I've, I've told
them to.
Like, I have these variousadvisors that I talked to about
trying to get papers published.
And you know, I say to them,like what if I tried to say this
(23:08):
?
And they're like unpublishable.
And I'm always like what if Itried to say this?
And they're like unpublishable.
And I'm always like why?
And they say too ambitious.
I'm like why isn't there just ajournal for things that are too
ambitious?
It's cool, why not?
Like it's not going to hurtanybody to have like ambitious
ideas.
Like, should I share an example?
Sure, okay.
(23:29):
So one example I have is so Ithink it's plausible to argue
again, it's ambitious.
And it'sauer and Nietzsche,basically the foundations of
what became what has now becomepostmodernist, like basically
(24:03):
what everyone thinks today inthe West is based on these three
guys.
You could argue, I think, quitestrongly, that all of their
core ideas and attitudes andoutlooks are coming almost
completely from Asian philosophy.
And like Buddhism and Hinduism,I think you can argue that
(24:25):
quite strongly.
Actually, there's some evidencethat Hume was like in a
monastery with a guy who was oneof the only guys who went to
Tibet and he tried to convertthe Tibetans to Catholicism when
he was there for 25 years butactually they converted him to
Tibetan Buddhism.
So he came back as a TibetanBuddhist and Hume was just
(24:45):
writing.
He was just hanging out in thislike monastery to write and he
just was having lunch every daywith this guy.
There was 120 guys in this roomin this monastery.
They all ate together two,three meals a day.
Hume was there.
One of the guys was like fromwas had been in tibet for 25
years.
There's no way that they didn'ttalk again and again and again
over meals and make arelationship and learn about
(25:08):
tibetan buddhism.
And then, lo and behold hume's.
All of his theories are justlike almost exactly buddhism.
Like they're just like you know.
And the same thing withNietzsche and the Upanishads.
Like when you read Nietzsche'sbook called Thus Spake
Zarathustra, it's pretty muchjust sounds like the Vedas, like
(25:29):
it sounds like the way theVedas and the Upanishads and
sort of some of the Buddhisttexts sound profound, like it's
this sort of orientalphilosopher walking around and
talking to people and it's justlike it's just.
And then his ideas beyond goodand evil, that's just buddhist
morality, that's just buddhistmorality.
Is that good and evil?
Are these?
You know, this kind of falsedichotomy?
(25:50):
They don't really exist,they're kind of, you know.
I mean they do exist, but theyexist in this sort of
interdependent way with otherwith other, and so there's no
absolute good and evil the wayWestern sort of Christian or
kind of absolutist modern ideasabout good and evil.
But Nietzsche comes along andis like we're beyond good and
evil, good and evil are justthese interdependent concepts
(26:11):
and that becomes moral pluralism, moral relativism, which is our
modern idea.
So anyways, that's like an ideathat basically all of western
philosophy, western modernphilosophy, contemporary
philosophy, has all just beenbased on the upanishads, the
vedas and the buddhist texts.
But if you say that people arelike you're crazy, that can't,
(26:33):
that's way too ambitious to sayso you got to put it in a new
journal.
Speaker 1 (26:38):
That's why we gotta do a new journal, then it's
gotta, then you go.
Well, it's cited now and theygo well then that's less crazy,
I guess yeah.
Speaker 2 (26:47):
Well, it's cited as a crazy thing.
Like this is a crazy idea.
That's fine, it's fine, there'snothing wrong with people
having crazy ideas.
So anyways, I think it might bedifferent for different
journals.
Like, I don't think you need abig swings journal for science.
Really.
Well, maybe you do, maybe youdo.
I think sometimes things arealmost like you need
whistleblowers.
You almost need likewhistleblowers to say this
(27:11):
experiment is not getting done,no one has done this experiment,
but it would decide thesolution.
You know what I mean.
Like if you wanted to solvethis question in science, you
would do this experiment.
Why is no one doing it?
That's almost like awhistleblower right and right
now.
If you, there's no way topublish that, there's no place
to put that sort of like hey, noone's doing this experiment,
(27:31):
someone do it and it would proveyes or no on this question.
So, for example, right noweveryone knows this in academia
If you do experiments and findout that your hypothesis is
wrong, it's very hard to getthat paper published.
But if you find out that yourhypothesis is either right or
(27:52):
that there's some evidence thatmaybe it's right, that's
publishable.
But that's not good science,that's really bad science.
Okay, right, good science wouldbe.
I tried it.
It didn't work.
That's really important forother people to know, right.
And so this bias towardscorrect you know right answers
(28:13):
to only be published.
First of all, it's not goodscience science.
Second of all, it actuallyleads to people fudging their
data a lot.
This has been shown thatactually people will do what's
called p hacking, which ischanging things around and sort
of changing their you know, sortof reinterpreting their data,
massaging it into until thatdoesn't sound good.
But this is what the incentiveleads to if you say you know you
(28:36):
can only do correct ideas andin the humanities, it's the same
thing you to.
If you say you know you canonly do correct ideas and in the
humanities it's the same thing.
If you can only publish ideasin philosophy or literature or
in the humanities that the peerreviewers believe are correct
not just that are plausible thenyou're going to get to the same
thing.
So this is a big problem.
In academia.
People know about this problem.
(28:56):
This is not like I'm just comingup with this.
It's not like I invented thisproblem.
This is a major problem.
It's called peer review crisisor peer review problem or the
problem with journals.
Right now you could talk aboutit all different ways, but so
it's not like just crazy, I'mnot making up this problem.
What if there was a journalwhere people could have
ambitious ideas?
And that would be the sort ofstatement of that journal where
(29:20):
people could have ambitiousideas, and that would be the
sort of stand of that journaland we talked about some of the
reasons why that wouldn't exist,is because of the way prestige
works in academic environments.
But a lot of the ideas todaythat everyone thinks are common
knowledge and are well-proven ahundred years ago were wild,
totally ambitious ideas.
Academics will never citeanything that isn't published in
(29:41):
another journal, which means ifsomebody does have a big swing
and then they publish it in likea blog post and it is really
important.
It will still never be cited inthe academic literature and if
you do, your paper will berejected because they'll say
you're citing something thatisn't peer reviewed.
Speaker 1 (29:59):
So, there's this disjunction where, if you do
want to- reference like peopleknow the rules and they know how
to get into journals, so they Imean easily.
Speaker 2 (30:07):
You're talking to someone who knows the rules and
knows how to do it.
I do it, I do it you know.
Speaker 1 (30:12):
So it's not what's the lament here.
Wait, what's the lament?
It's the lament that you can'tget the thing into the journal.
It's the lament that you can'tget the thing into the journal.
Speaker 2 (30:19):
It's the lament that you don't get the stamp of-.
I can get things into thejournal, Scott.
I know how to do it.
It's not personal, Adam stickwith me?
Speaker 1 (30:23):
What did you just say ?
You were just saying someonehas an idea, they can't get it
in because they put it in a blogpost.
They can't cite it.
Why is?
Speaker 2 (30:29):
that bad.
Who cares?
So say, somebody has a reallyrevolutionary idea right.
Okay, cool, and they can't getit into a journal.
Speaker 1 (30:36):
Cold fusion.
Speaker 2 (30:37):
I have cold fusion.
Speaker 1 (30:38):
I put it in my Medium post Well, cold fusion you can
make money with.
But what if you come up with,for example, a way to what if I
come up with a completelyuseless idea?
That's new, okay.
Speaker 2 (30:47):
Well, what if you come up with a definition of
slavery that really improvespeople's understanding of
slavery in the modern times?
Speaker 1 (30:55):
Okay, right.
Speaker 2 (30:58):
Sounds in the modern times.
Okay, right, sounds likesomething that I could have
adopted, but it runs completely.
But it runs completely contraryto the existing theory of
slavery, which I'm sure, there'sa whole literature on the
meaning of slavery andda-da-da-da.
But let's say someone comes upwith a completely revolutionary
idea about this and totallyreverses everything.
Right, they say, instead ofthinking about them like slaves
(31:24):
you way.
Whatever, I don't know you know, sure, whatever, and then and
then that, but that's nowunpublishable because it's a
totally ambitious idea, but saythey do write it as a blog post.
Speaker 1 (31:27):
It's unpublishable.
Where in pure of your?
Speaker 2 (31:28):
journals.
Okay, so you can put itsomewhere else.
Yeah, okay, so now let's laythat out.
So the person then writes agreat medium post.
It's beautiful and writtenreally well and really plausible
and good.
But now because I told there'sno way for academic journal
people to then cite that blogpost.
It's not allowed.
It's not allowed.
Speaker 1 (31:47):
Well, thank you guys for tuning in.
Speaker 2 (31:49):
All right, everybody take care, Keep it concrete-y
Keep it concrete-y Okay bye, bye, okay, bye, thank you.
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