Professor Metal's Irate Debate and Calamitous Commentary

The evil steampunk villain known only as Professor Metal has captured three modern philosophers and is forcing them to produce a podcast! Listen as they try to avoid his wrath by debating topics from the transcendent to the absurd. Only your loyal listenership, support, and total obedience can spare them the cruel tortures of life in the lair. Will you help these innocent intellectuals escape their fate and appease Professor Metal?

Ep 33: Philosophy and Mental Health; Foucault's Nightmare? 04/15/2016

April 1st "Special" 04/01/2016

Ep 31: Aesthetics of Despair; What's Good About Feeling Bad? 03/01/2016

Ep 30: Misinformation in the Information Age; Are You Caught in a World Wide Web of Lies? 02/15/2016

The 1st Anniversary Special 02/05/2016

Ep 29: Art and Subsidization; Who's Paying the Piper? Part 2 02/01/2016

Ep 28: Art and Subsidization; Who Is Paying the Piper? 01/15/2016

Ep 27: Nuclear Power and the Environment; What Can Green Do For You? 01/01/2016

Ep 26: HP Lovecraft and Epistemology; What Shouldn't We Know About Knowing? 12/15/2015

Ep 25: Consumerism as an Ethos; Why Can't Money Buy Us Happiness? 12/01/2015

Ep 24: Superheroes and Persona; Can You Have a Secret Identity Crisis? 11/15/2015

Ep 24: Superheroes and Persona; Can You Have a Secret Identity Crisis? Welcome one and all to Professor Metal's Irate Debate and Calamitous Commentary with the Philosophical Chain GangToday's Episode is Superheroes and Persona: Can you have a secret identity crisis?The Philosophers talk about what one's identity is composed ofSean addresses the philosophical concepts of identity as relates to superheroesBruce talks about what defines a superheroRyver interjects why the secret identity is so common in the realm of superheroesSean breaks down the concepts of identity that will be discussedThe Philosophers talk about the combined identity, when a hero is, for one of many reasons, inseparable from their heroic identitySean discusses the somewhat fluid nature of the identity of some super-powered people, such as Mystique.Bruce brings up superheroes who are two people combined into one bodySean compares this to the inverse of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. HydeRyver talks about this in relation to DeadpoolSean talks about the lack of accountability that can occur from using the masks to hide a heroes identityThe Philosophers discuss how this relates to The WatchmenRyver and Sean talk about the meaning and power of masks in historyBruce talks about how this relates to SuperheroesSean talks about the assumed identity of the Red Hood from the Batman mythosSean brings the conversation around to the concept of the Split Persona, the idea that the person behind the mask and the person they are when they are wearing the mask are somewhat different peopleRyver talks about how the identity of someone wearing the mask of Batman has, in a way, become larger and more prevalent than anyone behind it could become on their ownBruce brings up the idea that Bruce Wayne is not the real person in that dynamic, but more a tool and strategy employed by the BatmanRyver points out that Clark Kent plays a very similar role for Superman, just in a different way.Sean points out the disparity in those situationsRyver brings up Spider-Man/Peter Parker as prime example of the Split Personality conceptSean goes into detail about this disparity of identityBruce brings up the Hulk as good example, with no transparency of even memory between the characters of The Hulk and Bruce BannerRyver brings up The Flash as a Split AND group personalitySean moves the conversation into group or Inherited personality, starting with The Dread Pirate RobertsRyver talks about how prevalent this concept is in comic booksBruce expounds on the importance of core origin story, and some factors that may lead to some mantles being passed that occur outside of the storyline itselfRyver talks about the Elseworlds and What If series of comics as a means to retell an existing storySean expands on the points about the Red Sun comics, and how this relates to literatureRyver discusses the Green Lantern as an archetype of the inherited personality concept, and how this allows writers to tell different stories about the same heroSean talks about the seeking out of a person who fits a particular archetype for the Green Lantern, creating similar, though not identical, type of heroRyver explains this point in greater detailSean and Ryver talk about the fairly recent controversial passing of the mantle of Thor, and how this relates to the politics of the comics industryBruce and Sean transition to talking about how these concepts relate to personas that we can identify with, and why the outsider nature of many heroes makes them in some ways more relatableRyver discusses the therapeutic effect of this relationship between reader and comicSean talks about how this relates to both the real world and other mediaThe Philosophers expand on these ideas as it relates to the reader's identitySean closes the main conversation with some interesting questions about why we feel the way we do when characters changeProfessor Metal takes the last word to challenge comic writers to come up with characters that budding young villains can really look up to. /episode/index/show/chaingang/id/3951147

Ep 23: The Walking Dead and Hobbes; Better off dead? 11/01/2015

Ep 22: Steampunk; What's to Love about Revisionist History? 10/15/2015

Ep 21: WWII Propaganda; Does Uncle Sam Want You? 10/01/2015

Ep 20:Privacy and the Internet; Where Privet Rights Meet Public Wrongs 09/16/2015

Ep 19: Anonymity and the Internet; Just Who Do You Think You Are? 09/01/2015

Ep 18: Time Travel and Paradox; Do Our Future Selves Owe Us Anything? 08/15/2015

Ep 17:Identity and the 401K; #YOLO? 08/01/2015

Ep 17:Identity and the 401K; #YOLO? welcome one adult. Professor battles a great debate and calamitous commentary. The philosophical change game today's episode identity for a one K. hash tag yolo. I'm your host Professor battle. I'm Sean and Bruce and finally got a call really of our call and has finally received a message to the right guy. Oh hell no. Well that was interesting. Yeah. What just happened. Did you just give liquid burns from from your future self Bruce. In this one of the shenanigans so well OK well thrown out of here but didn't you just give yourself a buzz. Well somebody some version of me from the future is telling me to do something that would benefit him. That exactly the same thing as giving me advice or is he trying to get me to do something that would be good for him. But are you and me aren't you and him. The same you. I knew this is a little bit complicated. Bruce you will have are going to break into that room. I keep telling you all to stay out. I would never. That's what's in the cool. No no that's what will be in the room and OK good to know it all. So you've in the future is not to you from now. Well clearly you want me to do with bunch of stuff but I don't want to do so if we're of two opinions on it. How could we be the same person. So conflict is constantly running an internal monologue that I think people have noticed not just because there's not enough pretty much just you but mine isn't. OK so in order for as random as the you can from the future is different because he has a different opinion or has a different opinion because he's a different person. Well I'm just saying that the fact that we have different opinions is evidence that we're not necessarily the same person. Maybe there are different levels of identity in one sense we could say with the same person and that we're different points on this thread of the timeline on the other or different points but which you want what he wants because you will eventually you know. Well I will love what he was when I in but I clearly don't want that now. OK All right. But why wouldn't you. Because I know the guy's probably kind of a jerk but you're you're banking right is life saving right. You're not exactly losing money you're just keeping it for a later date. You're going to do something with it at a time in the future. So it's not the same as having I don't know last fall. Hundred dollars but I guess the question really is do we are worse off for the now or should we live for later. I don't think that's a big question that's being asked today on the whole especially given modern circumstances and what's been going on in society. Well let's unpack it in those terms though it seems like in some sense you've only lost the opportunity to have done something right. You're not losing the opportunity to have done something huge or you are losing the ability to have done it in the present. So no sense of presence never changing moment in which takes seriously the notion that the person in the future is different from the person now then isn't the person now always slipping away into someone who we aren't anymore. It is possible well I guess there has to be kind of a balance to people who at least do this well I mean we haven't necessarily established that saving up or doing things for our future self is the best idea but we have seen cases of people who don't do it at all and their life sort of goes out the rail some point people who do too much and are always chasing something that ahead of them and they never stop to enjoy life. Clearly if there is a way to do it it was somewhere in the middle between those two extremes. This also gets into a basic I don't know call of Korea fickle because it isn't so much about right or wrong or morality but it is one of the things that it's founded on which is the control and there are a lot of came through test that people have done for example when you take a child and you tell him I'll give you one piece of candy now or if you can sit still for a couple minutes I'll give you two peas Candy. You're asking them to do the same thing to put up with not getting any any now in order to get a greater good. Later But that's I think part of the problems especially when you expand that out. The future's no real guarantee I mean there's no guarantee that if you put money away now that that money will be worth anything even ten years much less forty fifty years. So why would we. We live in uncertain times as it were. Well have these a lot of people feel that way. Well that's a densely classic argument about a guy who goes job in every day and drops dead of a heart attack in the park and gets found by a couple of hours wandering around. Right like this is the idea that if the future is not that I am essentially putting my faith and trust in future events coming to fruition in a way that is valuable to me while I could at any moment dying of some terrible random year strike or car crash or whatever else and bust those investments and sometimes would not come to fruition overwork calculations are to some extent of the risk calculation. However I think we can we can also come up with plenty of examples of people who really do live for the moment and just blow money as soon as it gets in their hands and just pretty much follow every urge they have at the moment they have it without really kind of self-restraint and so there are lots of examples there too. So kind of getting back to the Are you the same you sort of thing. There is actually a basis in biology for that to be false because of the way humans generate new cells in tissue over time I think that harming that understanding is basically there's a quote unquote new E.U. every seven years there. It's because of your body has effectively replaced itself over the course of seven years your your liver has generated new souls and all of your muscles and skin and everything and it's practically the same D.N.A. pattern but different cells as it were different different parts. There's a classical thought experiment regarding the exactly this is getting to the problem of identity with the Argus. The ship just in the Argonauts famous Greek ship there sailing around it from time to time. Pieces need to be replaced and they replace them out and they do so until there are known to be original piece of the left is the same Argus is the first question the second question is What if a collector has been taking all of your original pieces and they put together a new ship the rickety old version of the original pieces of the ship in the same original configuration is that the Argos. Or is the one that has none of the original pieces in it but has been in continuous operation. The Argus. What's more important a continuous way front moves forward or what it's made from. It's something to think about I think about it give me a little bit differently. I think that that idea of me in the here and now is absolutely certain but I doubt that and I can't rest anything because everything is epistemically built upon that. The idea that I have had a past and that I will have a future. The thread that runs forward and backward. Those are extremely high probability theories it is not impossible that the universe didn't it into itself five minutes ago so unlikely as to be not worth considering except in relation to these kinds of discussions but the fact that it's not impossible means that my future and past existence are certain in the way that my Nichiren. So there's a slight difference. OK. I think as a mature setting and there's a certain kind of sense. I mean some level I don't think of myself as having been diminished by the shedding of use in cell that are taking a bath. But at the same time it's very kind of my arm and asked me is that my arm was no longer attached to my body it's no longer part of my living cell I would still identify that as my arm as a part of my body even though it's no longer in the how do you think it will take to test that theory. Steve thank you. You know under most human rights law I think you get to keep the arm. Well and that's probably for the best because I have a feeling I'm going to need it in the very near future. But it's still mind it's still part of me even though it is now separated Yeah you can take it home with a bag. So but that's that's different from a part of me. Right because I don't take parts of me home in a bag they come along as associated with the meanness as a matter of fact. Moreover than that I would actually have trouble recognizing a version of me that now is less an arm as me if I were looking at it than I would if I were in the position of having me are going to imagine yourself right. But in a very evil genius sort of twist one of your eyes has been removed and you're now wearing an eye patch. But this is you version from very similar time scale one thousand nine hundred mins in the future. Would you recognize that you as being you or would there be a jarring difference from the you you reckon I guess it would be up to what I would choke. Likelihood of me losing it. I would in the next fifteen minutes which is probably higher than average. That's fair minded. Oh please will put it back on later. Quit whining. Identity is complicated and especially when you get into for example parts being translated into other people. Musical repugnant for example when you disassociate ownership from body parts in sort of a ridiculous scenario but it does touch on whether you were yours. I think that's actually a very good point it's a matter of fact I have heard the phrase and been frustrated by that phrase on many occasions from people talking about transplanting organs you have so and so's heart right. Well it seems like to me is it summed up inside my body and Huling as occurred to such an extent that that is now interconnected and functional within my body is no longer someone so it's hard. It's now my heart. It's now that person's body part that is connected with their tissues and been a part of their living Athens so bodily autonomy aside I think we tend to need to get back to our core concept here. Do we know ourselves something. Should we feel like we need to do something for ourselves going forward or do we feel like we need to do something for ourselves as a leader time. Should we save that extra few dollars or should we just spend it on something that looks nice. Marketers of long called Saving consumerism needlessly delayed the concept that we are in some way putting something away for the future is of course risky on something but what. Others knew of this question is not so much the idea that there might be different self than I am now in the future. What bothers me is when that line can be drawn right because I am always a slightly different person. Everything now passes. So what point does the person that I am now in some sense become different from the person I will be. That's fair I think that different people view that differently I think it's much more subjective sort of thing. So for some folks it's when other pinion about something has significantly changed or when you know more than formerly had it depends on the person person or what if the past me had made the better decisions such that my life right now we're in a much better place. I'd certainly enjoy it and maybe if I take the time to set that up and develop those with the neck and you know enjoy those going forward not just at any one point. That sort of continuously improve my life and keep improving and making it better and that you know the question some point in my nose at the Meet me at this instant there isn't I who will enjoy the benefits of that in the same way that other mean we who's here now would have enjoyed the benefits of the past me had made better decisions for I think that's coming from the benefit of hindsight. I'm sure we can all look back and say well if I've done this better if I had studied more in school if I had worked out more or what have you then my life in some way would be objective better and we don't know that because it didn't happen. Therefore it is undoable thing well again to reach back a little further the idea of them even bothered by is what I tell stuff. Now he needs to start a strict regiment of the high protein low carb diet NG so that I can now be skinny and feel good about my body whereas I might be happy to tell me from two weeks ago not to eat that piece of cake because we're going to feel bad because of it it seems like there's not much different me for many years ago. Then there is a me from not that long ago. Yeah you know if that applies going forward there's a meat was very like the meat today who will be the me in two weeks and there's a very different me who beat me in twenty years. If there will be give me twenty years it is another thing that I'm here from the ME in the past is not just the circumstances of my life but also the memories that I had. I go back to the seven year old me and say you know you need to buckle down and do the work to get really good grades so that you get high enough and that's going to get through college and get it for. OK so I know classes stop or back to my time now I trust myself much of my childhood. No this is a trade out here so in some sense what we're getting to talking about is the notion of OK very deeply into a lot with this concept of whether or not we want something different from a past or future self. Right. If I regret decisions that I've made in the past then I might want to make changes to those decisions. Yes On the other hand I do not regret decisions as some other sectors additions I would probably not ask for that to be changed. Going back on the other hand a lot of the moments that I thought I really wanted to tell them were the ones that turned out to be the ones I regretted later so if I know there are certain certain decisions that have in my past been things I regret then. My goal be to not have regrets to want to change anyway but then you still have to suffer with the circumstances that made you regret it right. But maybe I could just not regret the circumstances. Isn't that what your loan is all about and I think this I think is the Buddhist jerk redefined what makes you happy and everything's fine. Well but there's I don't feel there's necessarily anything wrong with it if you have the means to change something about your past self. Would you do with the understanding that you would fundamentally alter yourself of now you would radically change potentially radically change everything you are. Let me just go ahead and throw this out here. Fundamentally altering the person that you will have are being is not necessarily all that that's true. I can think of some improvements I could I could put on my soul but of the bad for me I mean me one year unless all my flaws were terrible. Just comparing myself to the future of Bessel but altered so now. Right that's a fair point and we're making a lateral move if you will. Certainly but I mean I think that's at least until we can kind of read that time bigger year or find a means to temporarily fundamentally alter ourselves which I have done. Apparently fair we have to I think learn to live with ourselves as it were and learn to accept our faults what we've done wrong. Well there is the issue of regret. I feel that it is better for myself at least for the self to reconcile that to me. I think it's the same question of striving in the here and now for the future moment. Again get back to the Trinity. Me in the here and now. In this version on only ten children timeline is the basis of everything else that I think might exist. One of the next two. In order to bridge the problem of induction I have to believe in past and future. I have to have some expectation that there is a future and I have to have some memory of the past in order to make a rational choice about my behavior to bring that expectation about the second world as I can make choices along so past present and future are required to be assumed the past and future are based on the present. But to choose at all is based on the belief in all three. So are we talking about as opposed to like Russell's high five minute universe hypothesis would you marvel literally. Yeah I definitely think for purposes of this conversation we need to assume that the past is something that happened in the future is something that will happen. But what's important it seems like to me about you know LOL And that's right the sense that there is some attitude of don't do things for the future do things for them now. In so much as we are unsure of the future it is the sense that we cannot assume a future and also know that we have lived to the greatest possible extent in the time we were here because you never believe there will be a future that doesn't happen right. Whether it happens tomorrow because I get run over by a car whether it happens when I'm ninety five it does my oxygen filter gives out on my fancy electric or whatever else there will be a moment at which I was here and then I am not you know I can see you of me in that future and then everything. You saved up whether the party needed to do something or some form of well then boy I think this is something that humans struggled with not just recently but for a very very long time. Frost is a very good example of the road was taken and it's not entirely binary choice it really has an entire range of behaviors towards saving up opportunities for the future and expending all of our opportunities right now in between which we navigate to some degree so that live for the NOW thing might be the messages some people need to hear when they are enjoying their life too much because they're working too hard to do bank for the future and or risk of never actually cashing in their opportunities. Straighten your message here for people who are constantly spending all of their opportunities and not saving or increasing their not just material but its wealth of that situation. Spiritual Well yeah so I think that at this point we kind of need to touch on that music video the Lonely Island there's about you know love and the switch stance but the video takes for those of you haven't seen it. It starts off with the premise that yolo is this rallying cry for a generation and this sense of adventure and very quickly changes. Here's to you only live once meaning. Be careful about that. Don't take unnecessary risks and by the end of the letter you know you know it's come to be stated as you want to work out and they're very very risk averse. I think in their house trying to avoid all possible risks the exact opposite of what it's originally taken. And what's interesting about that is that even within the mini world constructed by the video both ends of the spectrum represented as being very poor choice right. Going too far into living without regret doing whatever you feel like at the time is represented very poorly at the beginning and by the end of it. Watch yourself in the house burn off your fingerprints don't get anywhere near a window both ends of this are represented as being very negative experiences. I feel at this point it's kind of fair to point out that both traditional Buddhism and Hagel have something to say about this. That may be one or the other extreme isn't the best option but rather that the best option lies somewhere in the middle. I think you're going to throw down to an operational. I have always liked the phrase moderation in all things especially moderation I feel like Graham's young son was going to have too much moderation in moderation you know. Well it was only moderately to be fair. I definitely agree with that on a personal level I think there are times in which you kind of have to go well I want to drink and I want to party but also just have to be at work tomorrow or I want to go I want to party and I have no commitments the next day. You know... /episode/index/show/chaingang/id/3586070

Ep 16: Identity and The Other; Are the alienated truly alien? 07/15/2015

Ep 16: Identity and The Other; Are the alienated truly alien? So Mike All right welcome one and all to Professor puddles I'm great bait and calamitous commentary with the philosophical change again. Today's episode identity and the other are the alien he is truly alien. I have your host Professor battle. I'm Sean and I'm Bruce. I'm river. There's going to be an awful lot of Steve's running around the land. I like the original ones most of which one is original. The weird one won't the normal one then what are the normal ones. So here I don't know any of the others who say that we kind of mean the other in the almost ex a central turtle the non-self the one is different. Basically usually this refers to at least in classic existentialism anything that isn't the self. I would be myself or someone else's self Look John's here but more frequently it's referring to other people. Basically an extension of them is driven by starts working particular. There is this concept of the internal state the seeing thing the perceiver the functionary that is the self that is the subject and object goes on to perceive interact with in some way an object. And essentially otherness in at least Sarge work is the quality of something that is like me but is not me and is treated as an object probably subject on its own right as the most basic level once you define yourself. You also sort of an union way by doing so define everything that is not you that other which you know if you grant some kind of solicits and creates an interesting point when you see other people who are the other but they are also in certain ways like you you would create a weird overlap between not you like you. Well that was a big part of it. I feel such work and some of his contemporaries is reconciling the other and realizing the selfishness of those around you and recognizing that they are themselves this way. So a lot of starch worked out with a more personal point of view but a lot of his contemporaries did this up to talk about other ideas are talked about relationships with women in a lot of cases while I've definitely focused on was it a lot but she'd felt any group that was marginalized would be considered another from a societal standpoint not a not a certainly personal standpoint although that does factor into it. That's something that we see the talents of that in society today in popular use of words like the word objectification comes from that amongst a variety of other things. This is one of the disciplines that expose probably most recently spun off of a loss a fee as a pure abstract and started to collect data on Judy. Ultra postmodernism. There's also more or less abstract and work around it that it gets into that I think we can touch on the world certainly. This explored a lot this theme in science fiction and horror of a really good recent example what we destruct now and where we see a movie that is ostensibly about the problems with apartheid which the movie was filmed in South Africa and that was a very big problem for them for a very long time and you see a lot of the humans in the loop when District nine was about the apartheid. Yes Oh that certainly makes more sense. It was not actually a documentary we were man I was and that can happen but we see humans treating the aliens that have arrived in Johannesburg as the other they separate the lives not human which biologically they aren't but they are they're still shown as being beings of self that think and reason and feel and it definitely sort of leaders some of the historical background of South Africa and that region and you see that in the way the United Nations we're going they'll be person of occasion or depersonalization the way that they do that early on. It's very much the stereotype of the just like today regarding that sort of thing. Interesting that we've seen people do one another sort we'll time. Well when we were presented with a particularly now turning around and that's alienation right. To make something not a part of to make it not recognizable to separating off all equally a nation is in a lot of the answers without the direction of intention. What we're talking about these creatures are not like us and they're treated as worse than us. In this particular way. What was interesting about District nine is that on the D.V.D. version of it there are several subtle signs that one can use in which you can view the movie with the Indian language on or off as a subtitle viewing it with language subtitles turned off. Actually yields a very interesting result of having a sense of these creatures as difficult to understand at the very least if not lesser than the humans which we do understand and which I think drives a very interesting spike into the social commentary and I think that was an intentional move by the producers of the film with other great example what we see is a lot of horror films and just horror of literature Frankenstein's monster. For more classic representation not necessarily the movies but they were to book the lobster learns and grows and gains intelligence and is shown to be very intelligent talking but will still treat it like a monster. Superhuman thus telling so much that you Lester better than us which is why Willie unable to blend into society is completely whereas others you know that is a huge steaming. Well it certainly seems there are some better qualities that we do and as a matter of fact if I'm remembering Frankenstein one of the monster actually sort of judging us for them at one point is actually reviewing humans as you know. Why do you think you're so great you seem to have a lot of problems you get over your petty jealousies you have visual stereotyping that goes on where you're just someone that's not beautiful you treat a lot of very interesting commentary. Only problem with Frankenstein monster is that he is other that is worse or better but that he is older. In From his point of view he has few ethical problems with killing people because he's on the other side of some sort of divide on sequels and we have no problems with trying to kill him. And I think this is this is a huge thing because whenever any group of people that try to kill another particular genocidal situations it always starts with humans ation personalisation trying to get the culture to see those people that were about to do away with as other things to be a precursor to any major ethical crime to post back a little of that to District nine actually. I think there's a really interesting parallel to that which is at times to me they also clues to flash came on the Web site and the flash came could be played from either point of view of the humans or the equations. If you played from the perspective of the humans you were trying to clean up and capture or shoot as many means you could to get them out of the way. If you played it from the aliens perspective though it suddenly became almost like a survival horror. It was a very stealthy very easy stay out of the way try and DOJ to incoming fire kind of thing and it gave you this real sense of the oppression that was supposed to be felt in this. And that I think relates back to this idea that the producers of the movie wanted to give you a game that is a format we're very familiar with. Here's a thing running quickly past you you need to shoot it right and then to ask you to play the same game from the perspective of the prey is to ask you to take the position of the other to to truly try and reconcile those two ideas together. And I think that that's very interesting in relation to what you're talking about genocide and the need to make the people who are to be put upon the other. Is this idea that it is a purely mental. There's are we. Good and you know you mentioned the mode of having the survival horror feel to it. The humans are the other in their case or in particular like really really draws on other news. I mean I'm talking about really good or not just go or something so other and so alien that you can't comprehend it or predict Usually that's what the monsters are in these things. And another thing the district named not only gives you that otherness through how weird you know you look and sound options and things like that were there with sound it also goes Kafka. The guy starts turning into water which is you cross the line you become a mother the otherness is internalized which is brings it home as much as any horror can. Well and to talk about her and its relation to the terror of what lies beyond those we can talk about graph theory. You know me from. Lovecraft great strength was in stirring up the notion of that which was so alien you couldn't understand you couldn't comprehend and then to never bother trying to put it back into comprehensible terms but to just let us leave that which was terrifying for ourselves because we all have within a year of the thing that is so different from us that we can't comprehend even to say that the monsters in your story are evil is to say that they have a coherent opinion about us which is fairly limited and well that's kind of interesting. The moral question involving things what are otherworldly especially when religion older gods or when we see any certain science fiction much much older alien races that their kind of view does evolve with it from it's very much a what is good and evil to use. If you're powerful being you do you feel like you are morally reprehensible for slaughtering cattle or for destroying ants. What makes you any better than them. Or why would we feel for you if you do not feel for them. It's strange to be in this position but I don't feel like it's a vision of waiting for me to talk about each other associated with that nature's power structure of the moral state was to say that evil comes from defining an opposition E.C.V. only God is evil because the only God does is to go about its business doing its thing in the way it wants to get the power to do that in the world. The weaker member of our dichotomy in this case to human race season as evil because it is that which it puts upon us which prevents us from doing so and so evil is defined not by something in the world by opposition to something this is how we always define evil. Does it like us. That's pretty much always if I was something good or evil in the lunchroom or is it what does I think a good question to ask when you're asking the good we considered evil. Is it like us and I feel that table of law talks about this a lot is specially in relation to you at least from what I got. Relation to power structures in society. Because they've all felt that women and other marginal unscriptural looked down upon because they did not hold the power in the society that they were in and therefore more marginalized or more other right and left effectively the ruling class the norm as it were any power minority stance against the normative assumption the group that considered the norm wrote it well and actually meet. It alludes to a very similar kinds of point of asking morality master morality is based on whatever got you to be a master in the first place. That which you did or those like you had in the past to gain power is what becomes good and thus the virtues of the master. And so in some sense the same applies to you. So if you're talking about war that that which brought us to a point of being in someone else's power is bad. Those things which they do to continue to have power over us are evil but that which we do that does not promote our power. He comes back. I don't really think that's an interesting interesting versal of it certainly there are plenty of folks that would disagree with you but I do think it's certainly an accurate reading of nature I think it's fairly true to say that those who have gained power have a lot of influence on our definitions of right and wrong. Well I think about that the housing market crash and it was just commonplace for a corporation to for example default on a mortgage but the individual consumers could buy mortgages that were underwater everyone said no you've got to pay your debts you've got to stick with that. Whereas if you're a corporation in this number one the folding. Well maybe I'm not coming across clearly enough about what I'm trying to do which is that it's not those things that we did to give us power are good because they give us power in the past. They're good because power is the definition of good good is that which ran to power bad is that which takes away for the Masters that system is fairly simple for the slaves. It's a reversal because it finds first from the bad. It defines those things which the Master sees as good as being evil and then they find their offices as being good. So like if it's good in the master morality to be rude. Was he going to do you power in the past to not take prisoners during combat. Right and that's a good for the Master but bad for the Master is ventilation weakness by letting people live afterwards. The evils of a coin for the slaves being ruthless. If that's what's good for the masterwork then our good for the slave is the opposite of it. So giving the giving or I would like you just like to have at this point that nature was very much against this thinking and morality he believed in going beyond it and to create one's own moral system and to try to enforce it and that factors a lot into the whole concept of the agreements and things of that like is beyond X. is good because we like to do it or X. or Y. is bad because they like to do it you know it was it was very much a must rise above as it were and that's when you hear me choose critical systems morality. He just thought that the master morality was a little more honest than the slave morality was still not appropriate. It should be moving beyond moral systems. But that's a track giving a little bit back on point. If we're going to talk about popular media in this context I think we should definitely point out the antithesis the sort of counterexample that we see a lot especially in more modern horror as opposed to more classic gothic horror which is bizarre. The film specifically remember Rose saw the films where you have the monsters and they're mindless as far as anyone can tell and they're out for you and it's very obvious that it's you versus them and they're almost everybody versus the world and him. Certainly it's kind of interesting that there is no potential for reconciliation there there's just completely give up and give yourself over to the zombies. There's no getting over it. You survive right. Yeah exactly and I feel that's kind of an interesting direction words on it's nothing else considering especially a lot of the way society's been building itself lately with the beaver mentality is special in certain sectors. Over and there was ninety nine point nine percent of the population it really just those nation that everybody feels from everything. Well what about the hundred meters and such a good frightening counterpart looks like us and you know a lot of ways like us you're not and you know that seems to be missing some crucial thing that makes us us. And so in a very real and tangible way because on the other and we are presented with our own fear of doubt which is why yes but not us. I haven't yet seen my sister come into existence at any minute. For example in Memo where you've got clans or zombies when they try to do you know some of the tricks like orcs who are on the other two but you know there are people role play works as groups and in it in a fire with some of these are just take a person and track everything about them that would make you the person interesting I read an article a while back that dealt with the who would like bees or vampires more the article itself was talking about the more progressive folks would drive more fear from Ban her movies and more conservative folks will derive more fear from zombie movies because of all the movie it's the masses the everybody's out to get you get your stuff and pull your do what it's supposed to vampire movies or stories where you. These very select few who are very aristocratic and and charming and well off oftentimes because they've been around for hundreds of years and I think that's the tool that to our society that seems very bright frighteningly accurate. Well a small super powerful elite an entire group of the masses are all useless because those together and you don't rant. Let me just go ahead and throw out here being around for hundreds of years does not necessarily make one very well. So love that brings up some other interesting stuff. So many movies are very popular right now and there have been very few themed T.V. shows movies popular culture items. We are we are asked to identify with just one of them I can think of roughed up my head is shown of the town and its comical Association. So we're expected to understand them as other. But at the same time to sort of feel for them as a thing in the world that is not bad but almost certainly especially considering the end of the movie in the sort of the way society deals with zombies after the outbreak and everything's kind of happened. Society definitely bring back homes as it were and I think the interesting thing about some of the dead and one of the funniest bits in this is the question of how far could you get through the day in a zombie apocalypse before you noticed you were in a zombie apocalypse speaks to how far we've already other and become alienated from everything that we might not notice for hours that the people shuffling around in there for your vision to us we went through our day we're zombies or monsters. From whatever perspective they were almost there already. Sure I am referring to people that I have packed on to the train with or that down next to me at the bus stop but I don't want to interact with. I mean I may not be this are really afraid in the run for your life can't wait but there's certainly an easy looking over my shoulder. Don't get too close I don't want to touch you or talk to you. Sense of not wanting to engage that we're just we're just in the peripheral vision so we double up into them and that's what we go through work. So that reason or other that was to get us one step closer to something that's happened more recently which is as protagonist absolutely Warm Bodies is the first real example I can come up with in modern popular media where trolls around things are as they tired of being caught and sapience again they become aware slowly but surely. So there's a movie and I'm going to have in the show notes we humans just call Azam bees or something like that. Basically the reverse of the zombie story design these are the people we're following and they have the opposite experience of all the rest of the people they perceive that and want to suddenly start moving very quickly. They're very noisy and running around and they're trying to do things like get two motor engaged to get help. But more recently than that there has just become a new show called Eyes on the end which is on the is actually only fleshed out character who goes around solving crimes and eating breakfast. So the question that this brings up for me anyway is to what extent does personally popular culture of the Zombie and the other to us have the donkey meaning in terms of how we perceive the culture around us I think it is. Might work or narration with Frankenstein in that we've got a primary character who you're given their point of view them and the rest of the world you know it's outnumbered us versus them but emerging from the classic zombie thing you know what it's like to be a few downs weirdo normative in a world that's all but not cool sexy like ours. Another thing I think is worth pointing out that has a lot to do with us as I Am Legend or Omega Man or last minute or earth or the book I Am Legend all of which are ostensibly the same story until a couple of different ways.... /episode/index/show/chaingang/id/3523641

Ep 15: Click Bait, Native Advertising, and Product Placement; Learn this one weird trick philosophers don't want you to know! 07/01/2015

Ep 15: Click Bait, Native Advertising, and Product Placement; Learn this one weird trick philosophers don't want you to know! So Mike money here and it's Welcome one and all to Professor metals irate debate and calamitous commentary with the philosophical chain gang. Today's episode click bait native advertising and product placement. Learn this one weird trick philosophers don't want you to know I'm your host Professor metal and river. I'm Sean and I'm Bruce. This episode brought to you by coin that's currency much cryptic so spend. Wow All right so native advertising or product placement. How are we going to have to tackle such a complex topic. I think approaching the topics what a tie would probably work best everybody's in each one separately and then kind of how they tie together because that is of very much a lot of overlap there. So I want to start with native advertising. Don't get everything just OK So native advertising. What do we mean by that. They have advertising at least as I understand it is when you dress up an advertisement as something else usually in the media that they're advertising with oftentimes is used on news sites or sometimes even in news papers to kind of bury the leaders or as to what's being advertised making it. Like an actual article as opposed to try or do product it's Check out this article sponsored by so and so it was advertising that in films and doesn't make itself known as advertising it seems like it's just the same content that you were passing over anyway. Yet the content you were expecting only influenced by the exchange of money. Basically the the promise of advertising so much of McDonald's wanted to pay for review of their new Amberger inside of the magazine it would probably yeah it would probably look a lot like a review of our magazine but there is one of the problems with native advertising is conflict of interest and so is the for the writer for that gave it a favorable review which they probably would because they're being paid to. They would they. There were definitely seemed to be some sort of conflict of interest in there and it's more than that too though like a lot of times the company doing the advertising just writes what they want to go away and in the style of the magazine or site or whatever that they're using. Certainly in the usually has a little tiny thing there at the bottom that says advertising and mostly the intent is to confuse people is clear which is interesting because just having that shouldn't be sufficient to get the people doing the context of the book of saying oh we're trying to win the week we write our stuff honestly then we let them put this out and that if the consumer can tell the difference between Which part of the advertising which party actual content then how are you not responsible for the fact that people are being fooled into thinking that you do. We're factually indorsing these products. This is an area where there have been some changes happening to the way that it's presented. When you talk about the small lettering claiming that something's advertising we're mostly talking about magazines and newspapers where that practice but in the online world actually started to be sort of a problem because there are no established ground rules for journalistic integrity of some sort on the laws of the way so a lot of times you won't see any sort of markings saying this was an advertisement and one here is the thing that is a sound is an incredibly valuable place to put information like that. Cheers to be coming up organically is in the comment sections a lot of brands now paying people to go out and comment on websites that are associated with some where they would like their product to be more well known and post content. Suppose if you're looking for people who lack critical thinking skills you know and would be easily manipulated. You couldn't comment sections would be a good place to find them. Well one of the really going to samples I've heard somewhat recently is energy drink companies paying for marketers to go out and comment on pro anorexia Web sites people who are already looking for weight loss type things in a very disturbing way are being pushed towards us but not directly by the company that actually produces the product because that would of course be problematic for them. Instead they're paying a third party to go out and advertise their product by posting about how much weight they lost drinking rock star for example in the comments section of these ones a little bit of a separate issue but I think we can momentary start to dress in the way that companies so frequently ship responsibility by having going to client relationships and creating really kind of a network of companies working on a project. But for the one whose name is on the title is separate more and more you see people trying to figuring out these companies for doing and shifting the blame to them. Like it sometimes rightfully shows as opposed to the advertisers although unfortunately there are some times where they'll be like here will take this advertising company that we've heard a little bit about but don't know what they do and it's still the blame still kind of falls on the advertising company for using certain tactics. That's kind of how they get away with it too is they can claim ignorance on the matter. One of those a layer of this association between the brand and tactics that were used solver and until you get enough trouble you can say we've fired that P.R. firm and we're very sorry to any values but I know what we wanted from the campaign it was approved through an automatic system basically that we didn't have a lot of direct control over and we will work hard in the future to do something else. The truth may be that they knew exactly what was going to happen. Half the controversy it stirred up was intentional because they wanted people to be paying attention to it. But by having someone else to slough off and get rid of as the blamed party then the brand gets to emerge most likely you know from particularly messy scans and one thing with the difference in the way that this is treated that are in their own notices. Trademark law for example intent to mislead is actually in the law you know if I open a chain of stores called Wally Mart in the logo looks just like Wal Marts you know it's pretty obvious that I'm trying to care that I'm trying to get business from them people who don't know the difference. And because we can tell what you're doing with your intent was to mislead you know I'd be on the I would have crossed the line there it seemed like it would be perhaps a good thing to apply. To advertise their intent to mislead. As it stands I don't think anybody claims to buy such regulation and so it seems to be kind of an evolutionary thing. Kind of reminds me. Species that develop chameleon tactics to avoid predators. Well the thing is is there are a lot of companies that have had their feet held to the fire before about this sort of thing about misleading folks but because native advertising is such a new thing and something that is only recently gotten publicity as an advertising tactic there hasn't really been a call for accounting yet for these companies that have been employing it like there are more and more there is but for a very long time nobody was sort of held responsible at least not in the real serious way. Whereas in the past if you have companies making spurious claims they would definitely feel if they found out well and to some degree yes there is a certain standard of intent to mislead with in advertising and certainly also advertising is the thing that is illegal and there have been companies home to account for that. The question is really one of whether that applies only to the content of an advertisement like this pill will make your cancer go away or whether it applies to the ad itself. What you're being misled about in the case of native advertising is not the content within the year but merely whether or not it is and so does the standard applied to the dramatic question in some sense of whether or not this is that it's uprising. I don't know an advertising ever ties and B. but I mean the things that they can do work for example. Maybe they just want people to be more interested in a certain subject which Ducktails with their product. Or or even through mission. I remember a while ago arose and started a tech news website that had everything covered except for the scandals that Rose and will just sort of kind of like increase the amount of discussion about everything else. This of course just created another scandal when it came out that they they were omitting any discussion of their themselves just generally in very subtle ways manipulating the conversation to talk about other things or to talk about things to genteel to your product. Not even so much just like trying to get the message about your product directly out well and that's similar in some ways to the idea of whether or not doesn't matter question is comfort. It's a question of the signal to noise ratio right rhizomes attempting to boost noise to boxing. Essentially they wanted to raise the more you move everything else in the hopes that it would drown out the things they didn't want you to hear and in the case of the name being intentional what they want is for them to raise more on everything around the advertisement. So you don't pay attention to whether or not you simply continue to move through a string of various stories not paying attention to the differentiation between the two. So now seems like a good time to move on then to product placements. Absolutely. I'm fairly certain this is something a lot of people know about it's kind of hard to miss although sometimes it's a little trickier than you think. But we've definitely had in the past throughout televised media or movies we've had product placement early on it was a you know brands of cigarettes would sponsor primetime shows and it was a little more obvious. Back in the fifty's and sixty's where you know this episode brought to you by that sort of thing. Well early T.V. and. You know the the product or the company would actually buy the horse show. It's the you know the the the Winston cigarettes Comedy Hour with so and so and they will use clear Winston cigarettes paying for the show for me to watch as entertainment and you know you should you should thank him because they're making the show happen single handedly answer and made of the difference between a sponsorship and product placement in a sponsorship. We say this company is doing this in a product placement. We just want it somewhere and you know that you know the main character happens to be in a particular brand of healthy snack foods provided by the end of this go forward to feeling all the terrorists. Right. So product placements are a little more savvy is a little bit less obvious to the intended target. They are sort of snuck in around and they may fill up an entire show with various products was it maybe Kraft Macaroni and Cheese is followed by all of by land or do you need civilians or whatever else you know every element can be used in product placement. Oh certainly and we've I mean we've seen media that Liverpool's most notably that I can think of at least the world where they fit all of their product placement for most of the movie in about a five minute stretch where the whole conversation is talking about them not wanting to sell out and it the screenwriters and the actors are making it very clear that this is a studio decision that all of these things have to be in there because there were people paying for it. The companies paying for it and they didn't necessarily agree. So you have this five minute roll of just every obvious advertising product placement you could have just to make fun of it. I think another great example of. Including the notion of private placement was what thirty Rock get when they received money from Sprint and pretty much came out to have their little discussion about a Sprint phones don't drop all call law and then they turn to Cameron's until we have our money now which just absolutely destroyed any sense that this was supposed to be deterred or is really an improvement really believing this product instead it was clearly and now we're going to ask for our money so that you know we were being paid for this I don't think product placement itself is necessarily bad. I think that it's OK to have companies put their products in I think was unsettling about it is the same notion that if we as consumers are not made aware of what's going on when the product placements are rushing in or two to clobber that we don't necessarily know that that's what that was. Then we get into some dangerous territory because this is not so much specifically with product placement and instance but sort of the climate that's created by the economy or product placement. If a company does not pay for their products to be there the general policy between most makers of shows is to to exclude their product. This kind of creates a problem your characters do drink soda we need to have as we need to have this thing where they pull up a search engine. We need to have a thing where they're going to eat and potato chips. But we didn't strike managed to strike a deal with any of these. So you start out coming up with artificial products because they can't have any real ones because the real ones didn't pay. So you've got less potato chips you've got web spider search engine which people in T.V. shows use even though why or where using Google or even just you know or something you know nobody's heard of this you know these are using these weird made up products because of the requirements. These characters were supposedly live in the real world where we're surrounded by real products and normally would be completely normal for a character to drink if they have to use Google or your readers and I would actually rather see more more products used more subtly rather than just when money is involved and only in overt ways in order to create personal to do with reality. Well I'm one of the other solutions used in the past is white and white and black label the just say soda or beer or something something that doesn't take me out of the story unless you're doing like Repo Man which has all the products are intentional I think it does at least allow us of a certain amount of critical space right. If I see when I'm spider on there I go I don't want to be using Web site or I immediately think because Google didn't pay them to put their thing in there gives me as an audience member an opportunity to know that when I do see them is going to give them some money. OK now I know this is a product placement and I think that's actually verging on subs Well it takes me out of whatever story they're trying to sell. I personally feel that with a lot of fictional media having things that are kind of left of center as it were for for products you have things that are quite obviously supposed to be the product placement but art because they don't pony up the cash for being a reinforcement that this is not reality and that can be seen as a way to break suspension of disbelief I think that reaffirms it for me that this is its own world. It's not supposed to be happening here it's mostly happening somewhere else but that's still interesting that puts us in an interesting position. We want to be critically analyze in the Product placement of the consumers. We also want to be immersed in not engaging a critical thing that I can see in order to enjoy the show. So there's sort of a push and pull here. Should I be analyzing what I'm watching or should I just be immersed and and accept it. I see what you're saying and I don't necessarily disagree. I find that at least for me turning off my critical faculties and not part of me enjoying a show I don't need to do so now and a lot of people do feel that way and I'm not criticizing that position. But for me I find it much more enjoyable to keep that active as part of my experience I should probably point out that we're not being paid to mention any of the things we're talking about although we really like to know if you want to send us a couple. What's a good example of a product that's like a real product is on Netflix recently released show the initial heavy error and furniture. Do you think a fine product called Marines that is very clearly supposed to be referenced to another very famous product but is not and they market a little bit in that and that's just fine for me I don't need to be using them to be using the official for Brees product. I know one of the reasons supposed to be so I think in that respect I root for that you can have a layer of unreality that sort of suggests but does not say it is something else. Another show that played with this concept the listing is community in one of their little in tech sections one of the characters was doing You Tube product review of let's potato chips which sort of looks like Lay's potato chips and you refuse the potato chips in this clearly saying let's in the whole time you're thinking OK this is one of those fake products they make for T.V. shows there are in fact companies that make that exist to make the packaging of fake product for T.V. shows. Let's potato chips you'll see an actual a lot of T.V. shows in the background. Specific cigarette brands you know the people who came up. What website or at least you know what the page looks like. Yeah there are companies that exist solely for the purpose of making fake products because real companies didn't want to pay for the real products to be on T.V. shows. This is little bit down the rabbit hole. That's fair and I do agree with Shawn here that critical faculties are not something you need to be necessarily turned off in the world sometimes rude my suspension of disbelief. But there's a lot of media I've been consuming recently that is very continuity heavy and that you kind of want to be aware of because there's a lot of little things that point to other things happening or that allow you to draw conclusions or conjecture that are great for worldbuilding which is something I'm very much a big fan of in narrative and I think that critical thinking is definitely a big part of the show I'm thinking of. Steven Universe doesn't have the product placement made of advertising or anything else because it's pretty much wholly owned by her to work and Turner Broadcasting and doesn't need any of that which I feel is good because it's ostensibly a children's show and brings up the topic of kids and bastardize is probably one of the things that are with regard to how we as adults are influenced by product placement and advertising worldwide is in large part a function of one skill so we did all of that of course. Most children are not given the opportunity to have that skill set or they interact with these sorts of media and whereas you might be able to hold an adult or not and then develop the critical reasoning skills necessary to recognize these various kinds of media literacy. You can't really fault for not having been given today. So just have a little or they know what the world saw farther. They're learning and expanding their awareness of the world through the city they don't know the breed is not a product. No that's that's an incredibly good point about children and product placement especially when you consider a lot of eighty's and ninety's her to use any of her tunes were in large part extended toy commercials you had G.I. Joe you had masters of the universe. My Little Pony Gemini holograms all of these and transfer all certainly transformers a lot of these were killed by and are still owned by Hasbro and various other large print companies and they were effectively there anything you saw on screen other than the set dressing and sometimes even that weren't toys that were being sold and kind of continue into the ninety's and... /episode/index/show/chaingang/id/3523640

Ep 14: Sensationalist media: Are your children safe? 06/15/2015

Ep 14: Sensationalist media: Are your children safe? welcome one and all to Professor Metal's irate debate and calamitous commentary with the philosophical chain gang. Today's episode is sensationalist media; Are your children safe? I'm your host Professor Metal on river actual grace. You know I've had this looming sense of dread lately looming drove me to look at all school living that twenty four seven these days. Well that's a perfectly valid response to being locked in the little oratory. I'll make it a point to tell the looming dread to back up just a little bit. Well that would be nice. Oh absolutely. So something most media there's a lot of little lord of you plea all of it. Oh you've got to get those views somehow the viewership bowlers would have you there and that does bring us to a very interesting point about sensationalist media the point at which we see the rise of sensationalist media is really the same point at which news becomes entertainment product something to be made money on. Back in the day they used to lose you a significant amount of money but the money that you lost on that was considered public affairs money you gave that to the public for the right to use the airwaves. That was the exchange. It involved in being a public broadcaster. When that changed when the public interest standard was removed. Television news became a commodify of all things something you expected to make money on. And if you're going to make money on it you have to constantly be scrambling for new viewers and more numbers and the higher ratings to give advertisers in order to make a dollar. There are just three channels in the world. You know when there are just three channels there were best practices there were standards for journalism that they agree on and no one of those three heated for the fear of seeming irresponsible. Wish being a responsible corporate citizen was the entire point of doing journalism in the first place as you just pointed out in a has to do with that choke point because I think the first role of journalism is to act as a gatekeeper say here's what's important is that you should know about in the world when there's a few of them they can do that. You don't really have a lot of other options unless you're going around just counterculture. But with the opening up of choices with so much cable to cable news and the internet and various other platforms of getting news the ability of news to be a gatekeeper Droste because we can choose where we're going to get the news from so we're going to go to whatever news we want to see results selecting it. I definitely think there are some problems inherent in that list. Some people just look for news that favors them that their ideas of the world. Any direction you look there are news outlets that kind of cater to a specific type of person and people will generally gravitate more towards that outlet that anything else. But even then if there are multiple outlets that kind of go for the same person you see this sort of not necessarily sensationalist arms race but something very similar where where they're trying. Give me the most in your face you have the most exciting news honestly with how we get information become so fragmented into bite sized chunks that you can click through for more. They've got very little time to grab you. They're competing with a lot of other people who are trying to use and they certainly were not saying that all journalism should be done in pure paternalistic fashion right I mean there is a place for new media in the journalistic landscape. I mean while it may not be the same type of news there is certainly a place for things like hyper local news cast about several philosophers desperately trying to help things like that that might interest in each audience it's generally put forward as a very right wing conservative notion but I don't necessarily agree with their disagree with it because the concept of the marketplace of ideas free markets are really really good at developing good products and developing value over products. So can we really complain about the free market forces in the world of information in the long run this is the best way to go. The way that it's going in sensationalism is just going to be a part of it I don't know I think there are problems there. When you have no vetting when you have news or things that were this fired to the news that are willing to put out information that isn't solid or may in fact be in part or in the whole false and so you have this dissemination of misinformation. That sounds good to whomever their viewership is or what have you. But it isn't true. I think that is a very big problem with that sort of system. But don't we as responsible media consumers bear some of the responsibility for choosing those news sources and verifying to what extent they should be trusted. Some pending of whether trust is a given. Media consumers first priority increasingly we see the media of all varieties hold our attention and however many directions we have started ingesting our media faster and faster and the levy itself seems to be in like smaller and smaller bites. There are plenty of people I know that will judge the worthiness of an article to read based solely off of its headline which was I mean meant to grab attention. And one of the prime targets for sensationalism. More and more people's yay or nay response to wanting to read an article is kicked off like going through social media. But for example let's take someone who was inadvertently fooled by an Onion article. And in case there's anyone left in the universe it doesn't know The Onion is a satirical news type site that makes fun of the types of stories to go around the news on a regular basis. If some of them are fooled into that because they saw a headline and they thought this was a real story wouldn't it be that person's fault for not having verify whether or not the onion was a source to listen to as opposed to the onions fault for having them inadvertently. This is an interesting thing about social media as we are just passive consumers were also broadcasters were also sharing it and passing it around and spreading it. A reaction that I see very commonly especially online from people is not so much that they want to be informed but they want something to react to. They want to find something that helps them express moral outrage in very often they will go off of the title of something without actually reading the full nuance of the full story and say that person did something horrible and they're wrong and they feel good about themselves for saying so you think. Well see something that anger is just out of the headlines and without actually really look into it. What they want to do is put it out there. I think this is wrong this is horrible this is bad. It's like we're all jacking up our moral high horses in the reach for the heavens trying to get above everyone else. I think you have a point that we're in a sort of perpetual hyperbole battle amongst ourselves like who can have the most outrageous version of the same thing. But at the same time I think that there might be something to be said for the idea that people are responsible for what they put out that when we choose to engage in that that we have to take responsibility for what the consequences of putting that out in the world are. We're all journalists. Sure in some sense we are and I think that while the onion example is clearly a very farfetched one most people who get fooled by an Onion article quickly realize it was an Onion article and move on with their day. I think that the same principle can be taken seriously with regard to say bloggers who may not have a lot of journalistic background or I don't think really because it's not necessarily an intentional misleading but at the very least their credentials are questionable at the very least that when you read that it is your responsibility to go what is the veracity of the story should I immediately become morally outraged over it or should I look into this person and did they have a leaning do they have a particular type of story that right about time this person reliable in other cases. Have they posted misinformation before they got their information from. No I do kind of agree that some of the burden falls on the consumer of the news but you kind of have to do a little research yourself although it goes against the. The sort of fast lifestyle that a lot of people have come to adopt these days I think people are better for it too but they are information in their news. I've certainly done it a few times with something that sounds particularly far fetched and sometimes I found myself correct in thinking that it was several news stories have slipped past and even got posted by Reuters or the Associated Press some of the bigger more prestigious news organizations. Sure and I don't want my son went and saying there's no place for a more metered and professional level journals I think that both can exist in an ecosystem of ideas wherein the big fish help us verify information. The citizen journalism the even more fast and loose tweet about it immediately is a good way to get some headlines and kind of know what's going on in the world but you have to take another step to find out what level of trust you should place in that and I think that's our responsibility as media consumers more than it is the responsibility of Twitter bombers and fast and loose News Journal bloggers. That's something they don't bear any responsibility to do but we have to take some responsibility for what we consume as well. We can necessarily control them. You'll learn some pleasing them. I do kind of want to state take a step back here because we're very much making it sound like something tional ism is a new practice in journalism but it's really been around for quite a long time especially in the American market with a sort of low starting in the one nine hundred thirty S. and forty's and going through to the late seventy's. But before then we saw a lot of what was called back in the day and sometimes still today yellow journalism one of the people. Most well known for this was William Randolph Hearst the newspaper mogul and then him an opponent of marijuana growing partially because he felt threatened his business but he not only attacked that as an industry but his opponents and used his platform his newspaper as a personal platform first politics. He ended up being a member of the House New York House of Representatives throughout his career and is kind of the sensationalist bad guy and this is no more more prevalent then Citizen Kane the Orson Welles film which Orson Welles himself got blacklisted from Hollywood very late in the Hearst life he saw it and immediately made calls to get Orson Welles' kicked out of Hollywood effectively and well Citizen Kane is considered a masterstroke to this day of cinematic excellence. It ruined Orson Welles' career because Hearst ruined him for for basically telling the truth and a lot of the problem of Hearst yellow journalism was not just that it was politically driven I mean obviously that was problematic but Hearst was known to outright lie just to tell complete falsehoods. Hearst published stories especially with regard to is an attempt of marijuana a lie about Mexicans who would smoke grass and murder white people in their beds go on massacre sprees helped out Negroes would roam the streets looking to rape white women. But the kind of headlines that he took where he had very little if any basis in reality and just spread his particular brand of angry Alytus racism and hatred about it already and some disputable raster. I'm starting a Cuban American or commanded one of his people to start writing about the war that America was having breakfast. There were never more curious wrote the story on the war as an i Phone call if nothing else. You almost want to quote like that to be true. You know here's a situation where we have an environment where there are keepers. There are these newspaper magnets there are a few of them and they're deciding what information everyone is hearing and yet we have the sensationalism for their own ends. So I mean the different situation we have now where everything's very fragmented in the city's financial system is a whole lot of which is trying to be heard above the crowd in their case to sensationalism as a few people just sort of almost being informational tyrants. That's fair but part of it was they would create these false or exaggerated articles and headlines to sell more copies of the newspaper like that was a big thing between Hearst and a contemporary of his Joseph Pulitzer like both were accused of yellow journalism to try and sell more newspapers because they were too greedy about it. Well it seems to me like you know all of these instances you see similar threads and there is an attention economy that has to be won out in order to be in a position to do what you might want to do with your journalistic product be it a newspaper or a T.V. show or a blog or whatever else you have to first garner attention and even if your environment is a few big players you still have to try and garner attention from amongst them. Whereas in our current media landscape there are a lot of little players as well as some big players and everybody's trying to get attention for everybody else. So I think it's important to realize that even if the actual goals that come after that have changed a little bit rather than being selling newspapers it's it's on a blog or something similar that maybe doesn't generate correct. It's certainly the same kind of game being played. Business in general in the late nineteenth century was rather different in the way a large concern today in those robber barron attitude. They did not play nice with each other. There were two or three people sharing the market. They were sure the tooth and nail. Everybody wanted to know if you've got two or three corporations in one single in one single industry and what they're going to do is they're both going to like that prices are going to even out with each other they're going to do what they call best practices. They'll take their big chunk of this fat market and just be happy with it rather than try to fight each other or certainly and I think another thing that changed between then and now probably for the better is the dispersal and the democratization of information the fact that we have information coming to us faster and from more sources certainly helps. It can also be a hinderance certainly but it helps us as a culture kind of that and verify better what's true and what's not. If we go out and look for sources and for where these planes are coming from we're able to find it better. There's you know certainly back in the day there was no internet not even really much of the telephone system and so you had to take it on face value share and to some degree over his writings and so you don't a noise ratio problem right. On some level. Boosting the amount of stuff you hear will increase the number of true things you hear and it might also a certain point to over to also increasing the number of postings you're the ratio may start to fall between those two even if you're having more good informational nuggets come your way. So Lebanon Vironment with our media where we have to find the right balance of those things it's not just more true things are less false things it has to be the highest ratio of true or false. Think we might become some fragmented society this might have something to do with polarization. If we're in a marketplace of ideas where out of thousands of possible channels for information I choose the set of the ones I like which is another media that I can consume maybe said dozen sources. You choose yours someone else chooses there is a record in their own preferences and biases and psychology. Now we each live in different bubbles as opposed to back in the day when there are fewer choices. Everyone lived in the same big bubble we all sort of lived in the same world of what's true and what's not now we've each got you know if we've reached out to selection from this huge list of choices we've each got our own in a sense living in our own world of what's true and what's not. And there's a limited overlap between them. So I think there's more people talking past each other than used to be. So we're talking about the concern of all or over plurality of truths that if we don't agree on a set of things that are true that young some level we can just continue to yell at each other because both sides believe they have the truth. What we can't have a debate lesser agree and premises of any argument. And if it's self-selecting or world of facts from different argue and competing informational channels I guess the question is how do we reassemble a single world of truth that we all live in in order to have constructive dialogue. Well it seems to me and that's one of the areas where philosophy can still be incredibly useful to the modern era. That philosophy helps us to weed out those things which are untrue not because they don't match the facts of the world but because they are not sound within their own principles. Those things which are self-contradictory those things which cause logical mis assertions the syllogistic matters. Socratic method are long tested principles by which to try and find some elements of truth. They don't give us an absolute guide to truth but they give us tools to which to try and determine which things we should give any credence to and which things are on their face problematic for their own case and that doesn't require a huge study philosophy where you've got to dig through all the tomes of the great men of the last two millennia. This is actually a fairly easy to get through a list of just contemporary techniques for vetting information. It's unbiased neutral it's all technique focused it's pretty simple critical thinking and I think could really help with this regard of us living on our own little islands of self selected facts and I agree with you no worries them I think it's present further than that that there are definitely some methodologies that we can use and tools that we can grab. But it's to me at least almost as much about the minds or the practice of constantly critically evaluating those things that are around you. That's the tertiary value of exploring and understanding philosophy in my opinion and why I still believe that it's a very valuable education to have even if it's not directly plenty of jobs when you go out in the world. People always get what you can do the philosophy degree. Well it's not what you do with philosophy or having studied philosophy or wasn't it was part yes it's what you learn to do in your day to day life in the background the things that are not the direct focus and discerning what kinds of media are some specialist which kinds are is a key example of something that we can learn a lot about by understanding soundest of arguments and the types of fallacies that get created over time. Sones of this analogy I like to use and somebody asked me what was his philosophy. Well if you go to the gym with weights you see the weight there on the rack. You pick it up and put it down. You've done all this exertion to move this heavy weight and then you put it. Back where you found it out where you left it. You worked on the chair. Now you're putting all this effort and that that weight as it moved anywhere so I guess you have putting it all that work. What did you accomplish the same thing all the platoons and we've been wrestling with these eternal questions for all of humankind I would put it to work from different angles we dig into it and at the end of the day the question still remains the philosophical problem is still there but we're wiser for having made the attempt. Just as you're... /episode/index/show/chaingang/id/3523639

Ep 13: Gamification as a means of Control; Who's Playing Who? 06/01/2015

Ep 12: Epistemology and Virtual Worlds; Is this the Real Life? 05/15/2015

Ep 11: Self Awareness and AI; Do Cylons dream of electric sheep? 05/01/2015

Ep 10: Cyberpunk and Dystopia; Whats to love about what we fear? 04/15/2015

Ep 9: Dune as Nietzschean Fable; Should You Drink the Water of Life? 04/01/2015

Ep 8.5: Muad'Dib and Desire; Why we Love the Quizat Haderach? 04/01/2015

Ep 8: The moral landscape of Breaking Bad; Can one Break Good? 03/15/2015

Ep 7: Batman And the Overman; Can a hero "Rise" above? 03/01/2015

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