Modern WisdomIncels, Afghanistan & Chestfeeding | Modern Wisdom Podcast 360
EVERY SPOKEN WORD
150 min read · 30,042 words- 0:00 – 1:32
Intro
- CWChris Williamson
... a boy comes into school and says, "I want to be referred to as Rebecca. I'm now a girl," and they do not tell the parents that this is something that's, that's happening. I mean, if you can imagine if that was your child that was going into school and you found out that for six months, your child had been living as a four-year-old kid, or a five-year-old kid had been living a double life.
- YSYusef Smith
Well, it's fine because you, you'd find out because Apple would tell you. (laughter)
- CWChris Williamson
Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, welcome back to the show. I am joined by Johnny and Yousef from propanefitness.com. How are you doing?
- YSYusef Smith
Very good, indeed. How are you?
- CWChris Williamson
Very well, thank you. Nice protein shirt, Johnny.
- JWJonny Watson
Thank you. Protein shirt?
- CWChris Williamson
Protein shirt. My protein.
- YSYusef Smith
His protein.
- CWChris Williamson
It is a protein.
- JWJonny Watson
It is my, it is, yeah. It's not your protein.
- CWChris Williamson
My protein.
- YSYusef Smith
It's not my protein.
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah. What were you talking about your Kurdish hairdo, Yousef?
- YSYusef Smith
Oh, yeah. So I have found, uh, if you, if you've never been to a Kurdish barber, you're missing out. Sometimes they, they're Turkish barbers. I think the, the one I'm at is a mixture of Azerbaijan, Turkish, and Iranian, and they always have some top tunes playing, and they give you the, like, you can ask for the full treatment, which is, like, wax buds in your nose and the fire on a string and, like, the hot towel on your head and all that stuff. I just go for the-
- CWChris Williamson
Incense burning in the background.
- YSYusef Smith
The full, full whack.
- CWChris Williamson
Meat and flat pieces of bread on the way out.
- YSYusef Smith
(laughs) What an experience.
- CWChris Williamson
I'd go.
- YSYusef Smith
It just puts, like, the standard barber to shame.
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah.
- 1:32 – 5:34
Kirstie Alley’s Chestfeeding Rant
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah. Uh, so chest feeding. I found this article earlier on, this is, uh, from the Daily Wire. Kirstie Alley blasts trans terms like chest feeding, calling them degrading to women. Actress Kirstie Alley slammed so-called trans inclusive terminology like chest feeding over the weekend, claiming it degrades and nullifies women. It was unclear what sparked Alley's comment, but last week, as the Daily Wire reported, the Academy of Breastfeeding Medicine published new guidelines on lactation-related language. Among the organization's recommendations is replacing the verb breastfeeding with gender-neutral terms like human milk feeding and chest feeding, because they claim not all people who give birth and lactate identify as female. Whilst the vast majority of responses to Alley, including nearly 1,600 likes, uh, 16,000 likes, expressed agreement, she seemed to address the comparatively few critical replies about 15 minutes later. "I'm a little tired of degrading and nullifying women and their abilities," she explained. "Breastfeeding is one of our abilities. It's a beautiful and important ability. Knock off the nullifying of women for the sake of lunatics. Equal li- rights does not equal es- equal esanity." A few minutes after that, she added, "It's our personal responsibility to agree or disagree with concepts. My only point here today is don't let insanity force you to pretend like you agree with the insanity. It's part of the insanity to shame you into agreement." Chest feeding, Yousef.
- YSYusef Smith
This is a clash between two different ci- do you call it civil rights movement? Two different social movements of the, the women's ability to say, "This is our, th- this, this is a, a female anatomy, and this is part of our remit," and others saying, "No, that's a gendered term, and it is not inclusive for transitioning people." So my problem with that is that there is such thing as a male breast, if it's, if it's in the context of a breast cancer or something. But a, a breast is capable of lactating and a chest is not capable of lactating. So to call it chest feeding is, like, uh, until you can have a chest which lactates, I don't see how it, it is a more inclusive term. You can transition and still have a lactating breast. But once it becomes a chest, then you can't. So I'm not really sure what the, what their original point is to naturalize the language.
- JWJonny Watson
Can a, can a breast become a chest? Can a breast cease to be a breast? If you could have-
- YSYusef Smith
I think, I think it's two, a breast can become a chest and vice versa.
- CWChris Williamson
But do you know... So are mammary glands, they're, they're just latent in men, are they? And not used, not being used?
- YSYusef Smith
Yeah. So, you, you know, a chest can, can become a breast if you are a male taking female hormones and you, you can form the-
- CWChris Williamson
And will they lactate?
- YSYusef Smith
... can form the ducts. Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
I had to... I remember-
- JWJonny Watson
So what are the-
- CWChris Williamson
I had a friend in school who was adamant that if you stimulated your nipples for three months straight for a couple of minutes a day, they'd start to lactate as a man. So-
- YSYusef Smith
As a man.
- CWChris Williamson
So he tried, I remember he tried to do it, and he'd sit in class and do it. I don't know where he ended up. I don't know where he is now.
- JWJonny Watson
(laughs)
- YSYusef Smith
That's a risky move, like, just, just to try and prove a point of doing that to yourself.
- CWChris Williamson
Sit in class and just...
- JWJonny Watson
It's not that risky.
- YSYusef Smith
It's a couple.
- JWJonny Watson
It's a couple minutes a day.
- YSYusef Smith
But what if it works? Then you, you're a teenage boy with a, with a lactating breast.
- JWJonny Watson
But your right-
- CWChris Williamson
Chest, a lactating chest, Yousef.
- YSYusef Smith
Sorry. Well...
- JWJonny Watson
Well, no, hold on, 'cause you said there, there is a, uh, uh, if, if a man has breast cancer, that's possible, right?
- YSYusef Smith
Yeah.
- JWJonny Watson
So, so therefore, surely everybody has breasts. As a-
- YSYusef Smith
Everyone has potential for breasts.
- JWJonny Watson
Right.
- CWChris Williamson
Uh-huh. Yeah, you are right with what you say here. There's sort of these conflicting intersectional ideologies going on here, that women want their spaces protected, but at the moment, it would appear that sort of trans rights trump women's rights, so that the women's rights need to be folded in order to accommodate that.
- 5:34 – 11:44
Trans Athletes in Sport
- CWChris Williamson
- YSYusef Smith
Well, so I've, I've just done a video about what is the physiological advantage that trans athletes have in sport. And it's exactly the same thing. It's, um, whether in the interest, i- in the pursuit of fairness versus the pursuit of inclusivity, those are both at odds with each other. And while we, you know, you, you want to be able to grant someone their right to their gender expression, but if that's at the expense of losing fairness in women's sport, or in men's sport in some cases, you, what you've made, what you've essentially got is someone who-... has a, um, a similar background to someone who's, who's had multiple steroid cycles or a, a multi-year exposure to male hormones, and then is competing. It's, uh, the, the point was that subacute testosterone suppression may not fully eliminate the advantage that you have after transitioning.
- CWChris Williamson
'Cause it only needs to be for one year, right? You only need to be at 10 nanomoles per liter for one year, and that's basically like doing a 30-year steroid cycle, cycling off, and then going to compete. I don't know whether you saw that the IOC this weekend said that the 10 nanomoles limit is now gonna be changed because some women are higher and some men are lower.
- YSYusef Smith
Yeah, 'cause it's unreasonably high.
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah, exactly.
- YSYusef Smith
Um, but, you know, there, there's, of course, inclusivity barriers that, that mean, you know, if you're a trans athlete, you face a lot of potential hate on social media and a lot of difficulty in feeling included in, in sport and so on. So it, it's not... I'm not saying that the social struggle is not real, but it's, um, it's, it's about how do you solve that problem? There's, there's multiple constraints and parameters, and to try and match the two is difficult.
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah.
- JWJonny Watson
'Cause you can't even say, "Well, this person has this, uh, like hormonal profile now. Therefore, they should compete here," because it's the history that we can't test for, right? That's really what determines...
- CWChris Williamson
Has anyone done it in powerlifting yet, Johnny? Has there been any trans athletes in powerlifting?
- JWJonny Watson
Not that I'm aware of.
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm.
- YSYusef Smith
There is a, there's a famous one. I can't remember the name. Um, but yeah, very similar.
- JWJonny Watson
All the, all the famous examples I've seen have been in weightlifting, not in powerlifting.
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah, which is... I, I don't really understand why that is. I would have thought, t- to give weightlifters their due, their movements are a little bit more sort of technical. There's, there's more room for, for getting things wrong. So as a sheer expression of power, which would be... there would be bigger disparities between men and women in the sport of powerlifting, I would have thought that that would have shown up in, in a wider margin.
- JWJonny Watson
I'm not, I'm not current enough with the, the current... like, the powerlifting world as it is to, to know for sure.
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm.
- JWJonny Watson
But I think if it, if that is the case, I think probably the reason is that the weightlifting world just has higher... like, you can get to the Olympics, right, basically. Uh, at the moment with powerlifting, you can't. And so, the-
- CWChris Williamson
Why? It just doesn't exist?
- JWJonny Watson
I think... So I think the re- the reason that I've heard is that it's, it's an assisted lift in the sense that if you're doing a squat, you have to have spotters. And I think that's one of the reasons. Again, like, I don't know the ins and outs, but I think that's one of the reasons why it hasn't been accepted as an Olympic sport because you need other people there in order for you to perform. And I think if you think about all the other individual sports, that's not, that's not the case. They're all, like, a- a- an athlete on their own demonstrating their ability, and no one needs to be there to help them.
- CWChris Williamson
Well, I've seen people in the gymnastic double, uh, pole or whatever it's called when they have the two bars. The coach often lifts the gymnast, gymnasts up to get the first bar. I know it's not quite the same, but it's not a million miles off.
- YSYusef Smith
That's a good point.
- JWJonny Watson
I think... So I think they're, they are fighting to try and get powerlifting in the Olympics.
- CWChris Williamson
Have you seen, um, what Zach Tellander has been talking about recently to do with the press out at the top of lifts in pow- uh, in, uh, weightlifting?
- JWJonny Watson
Uh-
- CWChris Williamson
So it's a, it's a no rep if, when you go into the snatch, you catch it with a slight bend and then push out.
- JWJonny Watson
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
Um, and this... he's just been finding lifts from the Olympics where they're obviously really good lifts, and someone's maybe caught it with a tiny little bit of a bend, or maybe somebody's, uh, biomechanics just have that bend in it. And, uh, the judges have red-lighted them for something that just looks like a great lift and there's no advantage. Like, if I gave you the option of pressing something out overhead and catching it bent-armed or straight-armed, like, you're making it harder. They should get, like, double gold for doing that.
- JWJonny Watson
Yeah, I mean, uh, anybody who can, can press, constrict press what they snatch (both laugh) ... or clean and jerk, I, I think deserves, um, recognition for that, not, not a penalty.
- CWChris Williamson
Super total.
- JWJonny Watson
So, yeah. But, uh, th- th- there's these things I imagine in... I imagine if you were to get really into, like, the, the track and field world, there's lots of, like, little wrinkly rules that don't make sense, but-
- 11:44 – 16:00
Jonny’s Covid Experience
- YSYusef Smith
- JWJonny Watson
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
Johnny, you had COVID. What was COVID like?
- JWJonny Watson
Um, well, I mean, it, it's hard to sort of complain about it because ultimately I'm fine. And I know obviously a lot of people aren't or, or weren't fine. But it was, I would say, worse than I expected it to be, to be honest.
- CWChris Williamson
What's that mean?
- JWJonny Watson
Just I, I don't know. Like, like you, you kind of assume, as someone who, like, exercises and kind of takes care of their health and-... I'm not overweight or any of these things. You kind of assume like, "Oh, it'll be a, I'll have a bit of a, a sniffle and then it'll go away." But it, I think it's more the (clears throat) , like, the total just completely feeling wiped for, like, four or five days straight. Um, I, I don't, I, I don't know h- how you two feel about this, but I don't remember, aside from that, the last time I was, like, sick for anything.
- YSYusef Smith
Mm-hmm.
- CWChris Williamson
I haven't been ill since before 2020 because I didn't see anyone for all of last year. Right. I didn't get ill. I have, I literally haven't been sick since then.
- JWJonny Watson
So I think it's probably, it's like temperature, right? I think it's the contrast 'cause I've spoken to other people who seem to have had sort of a similar set of symptoms to me, but then also said like, "Yeah, but I, I get something like that once a year." I'm like, "What?"
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm.
- JWJonny Watson
Like, "What do you mean?" But yeah, I think, like, I suppose it depends on how often you, you get, like, uh, the flu or the, or a cold or anything like that. But when you, um, when you, like, try and train, or try and, like, you, like, monito- try and maximize your sleep. And like, my throat was so sore for a period of time, for, like, two nights in a row where every time I swallowed it was, like, an eight out of 10 pain and it woke me up.
- CWChris Williamson
(laughs)
- JWJonny Watson
So, like, imagine having, like, a dry, like, really dry mouth. And then you, like, you go and get a sip of water and you, and then you swallow. Like, just as you fall asleep, awake again.
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah.
- JWJonny Watson
And so it's, like, this cruel trick of, like, you feel terrible already and then you just have night after night of, like, interrupted sleep and it just spirals and gets worse. But yeah, it, it wasn't just like a, "Oh, I had a bit of a, bit of a cold and felt crap for a day or two." It was, it was, like, a full week, 10 days.
- CWChris Williamson
Helped your training, though, for one day.
- JWJonny Watson
For a, yeah, for a... So the, the day I suspected that I had it, um, I'd... So basically, I went on a stag do. And, uh, much to Yousef and Chris's amusement, I, I was, like, super compliant for all of 2020. Um, (laughs) went on a, went on a stag do to Manchester in a Bierkeller, where the, like, one of the England games was being played. And, um, you, like, sat there in the Bierkeller as everyone's, like, chanting-
- YSYusef Smith
Given how much we love football as well.
- CWChris Williamson
... and h- hugging.
- JWJonny Watson
I love football, yeah. I was, like, I was over the moon to be there. Um, I hate football. Uh, and everyone's chanting and, like, hugging each other. And you're just sat there thinking like, "Ugh, here we go. Here we go." (laughs)
- YSYusef Smith
Come on the Blues. (laughs)
- JWJonny Watson
(laughs) Um, so, like, two or three days after that I thought I, "It's probably still just, sort of, lack of sleep and I probably don't have COVID." So I trained, did a squat single, like, a heavy single on squat. And I measure the bar speed of all my squats. Did this rep and I was like, "Oh my God, that, that is the fastest that has ever moved. Like, of all the reps I've collected, like, thousands of reps, that is the fastest that it's ever been." So I walked out of my garage thinking like, "I'm fine. I definitely don't have COVID." And then the next morning, like, "Oh my God." (laughs)
- CWChris Williamson
When you spoke to your coach, didn't he say that that's, like, a, a previously used training enhancement?
- JWJonny Watson
Yeah. So I was, I was telling him about it. I was like, "Have you heard of anyone else who kind of had this, like, window where, um, as you were sort of dealing with the virus, you kind of, your performance improved?" And he was, he was saying it's like a, like an old technique where they would... I don't know how true this is, but apparently they used to inject flu into strength athletes because there's this window where you kind of super compensate. I can see Yousef just sort of skimming over the-
- CWChris Williamson
The literature, the... (laughs)
- JWJonny Watson
... well, probably evidence that I've seen. Um, there's this period as you're kind of dealing with it, where your performance is, is higher than normal. But then obviously you get the flu.
- CWChris Williamson
(laughs)
- JWJonny Watson
So you've gotta, you've gotta time it right.
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah. If you get that one day early-
- JWJonny Watson
Yeah. If the competition gets delayed-
- 16:00 – 22:21
Manipulating Weight & Powerlifting
- YSYusef Smith
Th- there's some really brutal techniques that, like, the USSR and Russia and, like, uh, some of Europe use to... Like, not, obviously there's the hormone treatment and PEDs and stuff. But there's stuff like this, like injecting someone with a virus or creating an abortion in a athlete. Like, so getting them pregnant and then inducing an abortion to, I th- I think it's to, like, manipulate their weight or something like that. And you-
- CWChris Williamson
Oh my God. What?
- JWJonny Watson
... all these, like, they're just, like, messing with people's physiology just so that they can squeeze out another half percent.
- CWChris Williamson
What does the abortion do?
- YSYusef Smith
I think it was used at, with Judo athletes, presumably to help them make weight. I don't, I don't really understand why.
- CWChris Williamson
That's a heavy weight cut, that, isn't it?
- JWJonny Watson
Mm-hmm.
- CWChris Williamson
I mean, you'd just, you'd-
- YSYusef Smith
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
... you'd, you'd just go on a longer, on a longer deficit.
- JWJonny Watson
I think in-
- YSYusef Smith
Yeah. It just seems like a sledgehammer.
- JWJonny Watson
In, like, the, the powerlifting competitions I've done, like, at the international level, you realize quite quickly that, like, the Russian team, like, that's their job. So you're going up against, like, the, the British team who are sort of paying their, to be there themselves, training in their spare time, have, you know, occasionally get a session in uninterrupted against literally people who not only have coaches who are willing to do things like that, but they're getting paid to do it. So-
- YSYusef Smith
And the population of Russia as well.
- JWJonny Watson
Yeah. (laughs)
- CWChris Williamson
When your, when your coach is making you get an abortion so that you make weight, or inducing, inducing pregnancy and then making you get an abortion just so that you make weight, that's a level of intensity-
- JWJonny Watson
It's too far.
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah, exactly. Well, I mean, you just, the UK, we're, we're not gonna go there.
- JWJonny Watson
Yeah. I mean, I don't think anybody should go there, really. Like, I don't, I don't... Like, where you're from, as a, as an aside-
- CWChris Williamson
This is why the communists are winning though, Johnny-
- JWJonny Watson
(laughs)
- CWChris Williamson
... because they're prepared to take it to those places.
- JWJonny Watson
(laughs) Because whatever it takes.
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah, exactly. That's the mentality that they've got.
- JWJonny Watson
It, well, I mean, th- like, back to your point about, um, like, uh, Olympics in powerlifting. Like, uh, the fact that people are willing to do stuff like that and all you get is a plastic trophy and something around your neck and-
- CWChris Williamson
(laughs)
- JWJonny Watson
... and someone patting you on the back. And like, yeah, yeah, it's fun, but it is just, just powerlifting. You know, there's not, it's not yet a career in peop- the, the people who win the, the IPF World Championships aren't being interviewed on BBC News. You know, it's not-
- CWChris Williamson
Did, um-
- JWJonny Watson
... not quite the same level.
- CWChris Williamson
Did someone pull 1005 kilos this weekend?There was-
- 22:21 – 27:00
Being a Paediatric Doctor
- JWJonny Watson
- CWChris Williamson
Um, what's... You've, you're on a new rotation at Doctoring. What are you doing now, Seth?
- YSYusef Smith
I am on pediatrics. So for anyone-
- CWChris Williamson
Didn't someone, didn't someone once, like some readers of The Sun or something once throw bricks through a pediatric doctor's window because they thought it was something else?
- YSYusef Smith
Yeah. So, so this is a, an interesting kind of North-South thing. I spoke to someone the other day who was like, so he's a registrar and he's a surgical registrar, and he was like, "Oh yeah, I was thinking of doing peds because like it's the kind of thing that like you say in a bar and women love it and they're like, 'Oh, that's great.' I was like, "Really?" He was like, "Yeah, down south, like in the north they just go, 'Peds? What, so you're, you're a pedo?' And you're like, 'No.'" Like, so there's maybe a difference in understanding and perception across the same-
- CWChris Williamson
What's it be like dealing with little kids?
- YSYusef Smith
Oh, it's just chaos 'cause you, like with, with an adult patient like you can ask them a question. They'll like, "Can I have your hand please or feel your pulse?" Whatever. With a kid like they're upset because they're ill and they're screaming and sometimes you're like chasing them around and you have to like look in their tonsils with a, with a big like wooden stick and to try and do that when they're like biting onto it and kicking away and stuff, you, you just, it's just a bit of an uphill battle. So you have to be a lot more opportunistic and kind of play with them a bit and, um, you know, just examine what you can while they're, while they're still allowing you to. And anything that's like say, you know, checking the tonsils, that's gonna make them cry or gag so you have to leave that until the end.
- CWChris Williamson
(laughs)
- YSYusef Smith
You can't just... God. No, um, it reminds me of our friend Julian who was teaching English in China and it was like reception level kids, so like four years old and three, and they gave him no prep. They just said, "Right, here's a plastic watermelon and a plastic fish. Off you go. You've got them all day." And he's like, "Right, okay." Just came into the room, just going, "Hey..." (laughs) toys and they just started crying.... it's like, ugh, this is going to be a long day.
- CWChris Williamson
From what I know, the kids at that age, in reception and year one, it's basically playtime. And there's a transition between year one and two, and then two and three, where the kids have their playtime taken away from them, but they sort of slowly introduce it. So, they wean them off the playtime thing, and they gently say, "Okay, so we need you to sit down on the ca- on the carpet for 15 minutes, and then you can have a little bit of a play area outside." And often, sort of, play and school start to intermingle. But it is weird when you think, like, if you'd done something for five years of your life, 100% of your life and also five years, and then someone came in and said, "That particular modus operandi..." Like, someone came in to you and said, "Jonny, you're no longer allowed to use OmniFocus. Like, you've used it for five years and th- the central core tenet of your life has now been taken away." You'd be like, "I'm, I'm, I'm sad about this." So yeah, they have to fight quite hard, I think.
- YSYusef Smith
Well, the Swedes do... so they just don't do school until seven, do they? And then they outperform the rest of, the rest of us, academically.
- CWChris Williamson
Why do you think that is?
- YSYusef Smith
So, supposedly, the, the first seven years, they just let them play and be kids rather than try and, like, sit them down and make them learn handwriting and stuff. And then by the time they're seven, they're like, "Oh, I've had enough play, playtime. Now I'm ready for some serious work."
- CWChris Williamson
It's like with our football.
- YSYusef Smith
Yeah.
- JWJonny Watson
Isn't... There's also the thing of, like, school start time, that was in the news a while ago, of like, this, they start school too early and kids should be allowed to, like, get more sleep, and that would help, like, shorter hours at school, but more sleep and more rest would accelerate performance.
- CWChris Williamson
They just-
- JWJonny Watson
It's one of those things that doesn't get changed.
- YSYusef Smith
Same in, um-
- CWChris Williamson
Some college in America had managed to reduce road traffic accidents by 25% simply by starting college an hour later, because all of these students were going to bed-
- JWJonny Watson
Crazy.
- CWChris Williamson
... going to, going to bed too late, waking up tired, and then crashing their cars.
- YSYusef Smith
I've got quite a controversial opinion-
- JWJonny Watson
(clears throat)
- YSYusef Smith
... which I'm sure, I'm sure you, you two would agree with this, which is that, you know, a while ago, there was this big thing about offices being sexist because they are set at the temperature that men are comfortable at, but women are too cold-
- CWChris Williamson
Okay.
- YSYusef Smith
... saying that 'cause men's base temperature is slightly higher. And, uh, okay, I mean, yeah, like that makes sense. It's a, it's a, it's a man-centric environment if they've set it around that. But you can't get cold easily, but you can, you can just wear a jumper if you're...
- JWJonny Watson
Mm-hmm.
- YSYusef Smith
Sorry, if you're too hot, you can't, like-
- CWChris Williamson
Cool yourself down as easily. Yeah.
- 27:00 – 42:48
Incels & The Plymouth Shooting
- CWChris Williamson
it? I don't know, man. Like, making everything... This is something I brought up on GB News, on Andrew Doyle's show this weekend, where I was saying like, every situation that occurs-
- YSYusef Smith
(clears throat)
- CWChris Williamson
... is framed as if it's a small manifestation of some underlying huge conspiracy that's going on.
- YSYusef Smith
Yes.
- CWChris Williamson
It's never just... So this, this Plymouth shooting that's happened this weekend is a p- a perfect example. And you have this guy who has posted some stuff online and said that he's, sort of feels he's unattractive to women and kind of on his own, and this has been taken as, uh, what... an individual who has been adopted, like a terrorist group, by the incel community, and this is a manifestation of a cis heteronormative patriarchal construct that now is trying to run rampant around the world. And you're like, well, you're taking away from it the individual's agency here. Like, his mother had contacted the NHS for months and months apparently, saying that he was quite a troubled young guy, and that they thought he had ADHD and was somewhere on the spectrum. And you think, okay, like all of this, everybody's life is so idiosyncratic and peculiar. How can you say that it's due to some underlying conspiracy that all men are a part of, or all women are a part of, or all trans people are a part of? It's not. It's just individuals doing things.
- YSYusef Smith
It's, it's chicken/egg. You've all seen the Family Guy color chart thing. It's, that's kind of got memed for a while, where it's like a picture of Peter Griffin wearing a fez, and it's like, on the top it's like the light-colored skin shades, and it says, like, um, "Nice guy with mental health problems," and then it gets darker and darker and it says, "Terrorist." And it's kind of... that, that's kind of what they've done. That, of course, if there is a online group of people with toxic thoughts and behaviors, of course somebody who is maladaptive, maladjusted and is looking for meaning and some kind of group identity, of course they're going to gravitate to that. Or if they're going to join ISIS or whatever, like it's the, the nearest local cultural group that you can say, "Yes, I, like, I resonate with that." As to whether the group caused the behavior or the behavior just found the group and said, "Yes, that's convenient for me," that's what's more difficult to-
- JWJonny Watson
Yeah.
- YSYusef Smith
... tell.
- JWJonny Watson
It's whether, like, if the community hadn't existed, would the, would the situation have, have occurred? Like, if the person was still as they were, with the same underlying conditions, is, is the idea of the act given to them? But now they're just more receptive to it than the average person. But I-
- CWChris Williamson
So I read a, I read an article from Naama Kates, who has been researching the incel community for years. So for anyone that doesn't know about this, there's a guy called, is it Steven Davison? And, um, yeah, Davison, 22, shot six people, including a, a three-year-old and her father, and then shot his mum and himself. Uh, and this lady who's done a ton of research said, "It's striking just how inaccurate and irresponsible some of the commentary by self-appointed incel experts has been made in u- recent days."
- JWJonny Watson
(clears throat)
- CWChris Williamson
"Take the claim made in The Guardian a day after the tragedy that incels 'actively recruit' young men, recalling the tactics used by extremist groups such as ISIS. I've spoken to dozens of incels for my research, and not one of them has suggested this happens. Overwhelmingly, these young men find the content on their own, which isn't difficult to imagine for young people with internet access. That is not to minimize the potentially toxic effect of a fatalistic, misogynistic echo chamber in which misery and failure are celebrated, or to deny the possibility that some very vulnerable individuals with a predisposition towards violence might come across their community and use it to ascribe their vengeance to a greater purpose. The murder of 10 people by Elliot Rodger in 2014 demonstrated this is possible." But...... the coverage thus far has focused on the incel angle to the exclusion of everything else, and at times, cherry-picked details in a way that feels intellectually dishonest, for if we're going to look at the case of Jake Davison honestly, we're going to have to look at the whole picture. Don't lose sight on the perpetrator and instead blame the entire group. Jake Davison, not Steven Davison.
- YSYusef Smith
Very nicely put. Yeah, e- exactly that. So it's the echo chamber, it's the, the algorithms, it's your search behavior that, like, if you didn't have those tendencies, you wouldn't be searching for those groups. You wouldn't be finding meaning in those kind of communities. So it's, how, how do you pick that apart? There's a really good BBC documentary about incels. I think they took it down from YouTube. I don't know if it's still available, and they find like four or five guys who all identify as incels, but they have different kind of angles and personalities and they follow them through. One of them is very kind of down on himself and has low self-esteem, but doesn't seem to have much kind of hatred towards women, and he's like, "Oh, well, I'm going to try and do looks max," which is some kind of like (laughs) i- incel approach of like, "How do I take, like accept that I am a ugly guy with nothing going for me, but how can I like maximize what I've got?" So he starts lifting weights and taking steroids and like, and then there's someone else who's just like a dork and a bit of a self-identified dork. And he's like, "Oh well, like women aren't interested in me and I'm just gonna accept that and live my life." But then there's another guy who catfishes people, like he really hates women and he sets up, he spends his time like setting up fake profiles on Tinder and Plenty of Fish and stuff, setting up dates with women using like a picture of like a male model at McDonald's, and then he goes in when they're sat waiting for him and he goes like, "Ah."
- CWChris Williamson
And he calls them whores and stuff. Yeah, you've told me that-
- YSYusef Smith
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
... once before.
- YSYusef Smith
He's like, "Oh, you're a slut." Like if it, if it was really me, then you wouldn't, you would never go out on a date with me, but it's only because it was a model and... And the interviewer's like, "Do you think that perhaps the reason that women don't want to go on a date with you is maybe related to your attitude rather than how you look?" He's like, "No, man, it's my jawline, it's my..."
- CWChris Williamson
(laughs)
- YSYusef Smith
... like whatever. Yeah. (sighs)
- JWJonny Watson
I, I didn't know, so I'm going to play like the, I'm gonna play the person who doesn't know what's going on in this conversation.
- CWChris Williamson
(laughs)
- JWJonny Watson
So I didn't know much about incel pre you, like mentioning with my talk about Chris. So it stands for involuntarily celibate, right? Or like that's the...
- CWChris Williamson
Yes. Yes.
- JWJonny Watson
So the, the, the thing that just immediately strikes me as strange when people say like, "I identify as this," is the first word is involuntarily. So like something's happening to somebody and they say, "Oh well, now I'm going to identify as this w-" So presumably the, the culture and a lot of the, like the documentaries and the stuff that is discussed about these people is not simply due to the fact that they are involuntarily celibate. It's the fact that there's a community that's developed-
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah.
- JWJonny Watson
... as a result of that, where people are then doing things that are not related to that situation that are worse. Right?
- CWChris Williamson
It's, they're bound together with this fatalistic narrative. I mean, you could say in other areas of, of life people do this too. There's a deaf community. People didn't choose being deaf.
- JWJonny Watson
(laughs)
- CWChris Williamson
Um, the, the difference is that you have far more control over whether or not you sleep with a woman ab- than whether you get your hearing back. And this is a, I suppose... Th- th- there's a lot going on here. But first off, you can splinter an, uh, an entire group, the incel community, even that down into so many different layers as you've just identified there. And I think that this, uh, Jake Davison guy actually posted on Reddit saying that he disagreed with most of the stuff he was seeing in some of these sort of men's forums because he found it quite toxic and, and not very helpful. There's even-
- JWJonny Watson
Mm-hmm.
- 42:48 – 50:24
Apple’s New Privacy Rules
- YSYusef Smith
massively.
- JWJonny Watson
... these sub-communities?
- YSYusef Smith
In fact, speaking of which, how do you feel about Apple's new move? Have you heard about this? That they are now doing server-side scanning of your images to see if it matches with any child abuse images and, um, and then reporting it to the authorities. And I think it's been under fire, not only because Apple have now stepped in from being private company to law enforcer, which is-... you know, arguably outside of their, their remit. Their counterargument is, "Well, if you're holding it on our servers, we... it's our business to make sure that (laughs) we've not, you've not put dodgy stuff on our servers." But it's the, it's more that it's a slippery slope potentially for... well, if you have the technology in place, you could very much change the database of stuff that you're checking it against to anything that the local government doesn't like.
- JWJonny Watson
I think that the biggest problem with it is like... well, firstly, (clears throat) it feels slightly hypocritical that a lot of the changes in iOS 14 were, "We don't trust Google, Facebook, or any of these other big companies to manage your data. So we're going to allow you to say, 'Well, no, they can't do that.'" But we can't... aside from no longer using an Apple device, we can't opt out of this. And I re- I know like the source reason is right. Like, it's a valid reason of what they're trying to prevent.
- YSYusef Smith
But it's a very, it's a very clever valid reason because it's like, "Oh, you, you're not in favor of this. That must mean that you're pro-child abuse then."
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah.
- YSYusef Smith
It's ...it's hard to-
- JWJonny Watson
The, like, coming from a, like, constantly surfing the edge of the algorithms of these, these big companies from an advertising perspective. Like, the number of things that they... when an at- when an algorithm is trying to make a decision, the number of, like, false positives it spots in something, that's what's most worrying. When it's like, it's up to something to just scan a photo library and if it sees something that it, it deems to be illegal, even if it's com- completely not illegal, it can be reported to the authorities and you've just got to deal with the backlash.
- CWChris Williamson
Didn't you say that it gets passed up to a, a human operator that's going to check first?
- YSYusef Smith
Supposedly. But then th- it's... I mean, the same thing applies with the iMessage, but it doesn't go to a hu-... I think it just goes straight to... So, within iMessage, if you have an iCloud account that's registered as under 12 or under 16, and you send an... like, a picture that could be seen... could be picked up by the neural network as a naked picture, it'll blur out the picture for the recipient and it'll inform the family of the sender.
- CWChris Williamson
You are kidding me.
- YSYusef Smith
So-
- CWChris Williamson
So, if you send a nude at 16 years old...
- YSYusef Smith
It might be 12 or 13, but-
- CWChris Williamson
Okay.
- YSYusef Smith
... but yeah, the point stands-
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah.
- YSYusef Smith
... that, that it will tell your family. So, the, the risk there is that it could be Apple's... it could be the blood on Apple's hands if... let's say it's a Pakistani gay 12 or 13-year-old who... his family do an honor killing because they've been informed that they've sent a nude.
- CWChris Williamson
Shit.
- YSYusef Smith
That's... it's a s- it's a scary potential.
- CWChris Williamson
As soon as you change yourself from being a communicator to being a policer, everything... th- you have to try and plug an awful lot of holes in the bottom of the boat. And doing them individually on a case-by-case basis like this, like, I never thought of that. The equivalent would be probably if you were in an Orthodox Jewish community and they found out that you were homosexual. That's it. Like, you're, you're out-
- JWJonny Watson
It's game over.
- CWChris Williamson
... you're out of... I mean, you're not dead, but you're never going to be allowed back into that community again.
- JWJonny Watson
It's... the other side of it is it's placing a lot of emphasis on, like, the algorithm spotting these things. So, it needs one instance of it, like, what if-
- YSYusef Smith
A false positive.
- JWJonny Watson
Well, well, false positive or, like, maybe it, it, it identifies differently with, like, skin tone, skin color, like, lots of different things, and suddenly one instance isn't picked up and something happens off the back of it. Like, it just needs one failure for the whole thing to be... to fall apart. So it's got to... if they're going to say, like, "This is what we're doing," it needs a 100% capture rate.
- YSYusef Smith
Well, we were doing fine without it. Like-
- JWJonny Watson
(laughs) It's a bit... I, I, I think it, it could... so, like, I don't know how you two feel about it, but I think even though obviously I'm not, I'm not worried about (laughs) them seeing something illegal in my photos, like, I don't really like the idea of it. It's-
- CWChris Williamson
There's-
- JWJonny Watson
... it's a... it's an invasion thing, isn't it? Of like every... they're gonna read and look at everything on my phone.
- 50:24 – 54:14
What’s Happening in Afghanistan?
- CWChris Williamson
have you been looking at this Afghanistan, "Afghanistan" situation? Because I tweeted yesterday saying, I, I don't really know what, like, uh, uh, uh, people complaining about the fact that we've pulled out. Should we have never been there in the first place? Is there an argument that we should have left troops on site? Like, I think 400 and, 400 and something British troops have been killed there since we landed and there's, the e- everybody seems to have an opinion and nobody seems to have a solution.
- YSYusef Smith
We're operating on incomplete information as well. I think many of the big global events over the last 30 years, there's always going to be partial information that's not public and maybe is leaked and released over the next 20 or 30 years by the time it's irrelevant. But yeah, it seems like a kind of, I suppose you have to pull a stop loss at some point and say, "Ugh. You know what? We can't help with this." But then the consequence is that as soon as you do, there's this big, like, the dam breaks and everything floods back and, and we're seeing that in the photos. The, the one you sent before of like, people sat on the, the wing of an airplane or like, the traffic jams or climbing up into the airport.
- CWChris Williamson
Dude, there's a... I can't remember the name of the plane. It's a American military plane, like a C- C-60 or something, like a big just... It's a hangar. It's a huge lorry out the back with nothing in it. And they managed to fit 800 people into one of these compartments out the back.
- YSYusef Smith
Absolute Ryanair style. (laughs)
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah. (laughs) Yeah, it's still better quality than Ryanair. Um, yeah, and then I saw a video of a plane moving down the runway. It didn't look like it was about to take... It wasn't at takeoff speed, but there was people holding onto the wings.
- JWJonny Watson
While it's taking off?
- CWChris Williamson
Well, I don't know if it was... It wasn't at takeoff speed and there was a lot of people running in front of it, but it's-
- YSYusef Smith
Surely you'd die. Surely.
- CWChris Williamson
You're not lasting.
- JWJonny Watson
Yeah, it's not.
- CWChris Williamson
You're not lasting, like-
- JWJonny Watson
If they are done correctly.
- YSYusef Smith
Even if you hang on.
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah. Well, you'd have to have really good... What if you used straps? Because Johnny reckons that straps are cheating.
- YSYusef Smith
(laughs)
- JWJonny Watson
Well, you'd need a strap that went round the wing.
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah, just one of those little-
- JWJonny Watson
So I think if someone's like...
- YSYusef Smith
No, it would be freezing.
- JWJonny Watson
I think they'd run into, like, oxygen, altitude problems, yeah, temperature. And, like, you'd need a lot of chalk. You know, if you're going to use straps.
- CWChris Williamson
You would need a lot of chalk to get, to get-
- YSYusef Smith
Maybe even a belt, to be honest.
- CWChris Williamson
To get grip.
- JWJonny Watson
I don't think the belt would help. (laughs)
- YSYusef Smith
Knee sleeves. (laughs)
- CWChris Williamson
(laughs)
- JWJonny Watson
Yeah, it'd be the guy with knee sleeves who stays on. Everyone else would be like... Should have brought my sleeves.
- CWChris Williamson
Did you see, um... I, I swear it was Biden that tweeted a couple of months ago saying, "This will not be a Last Chopper out of Saigon moment," and someone's quote tweeted it with a photo of a helicopter landing on the top of the US embassy in the middle of Afghanistan to pick some people up and take them away.
- YSYusef Smith
Bloody hell.
- JWJonny Watson
Yeah, I mean, it looks fairly horrendous, doesn't it? Every image, everything that's coming out. But as, as Yusuf says, like, it... How do you form an opinion on something when you only see, like, the, the, the headlines? You see, like, the filtered view of it, don't you?
- 54:14 – 1:02:47
SNP’s Safeguarding Nightmare
- CWChris Williamson
brought up as well on that about the SNP instructing schools that children should be able to decide their gender without parental consent, and that a teacher must comply with that child's wish. Children as young as four can change their names and gender at school without parental consent. Teenagers of opposite sexes can share rooms on residential trips. Likewise, for those who identify as something else, can share a room with others who identify differently. Gender neutral toilets and the SNP have become so obsessed with trans rights that safeguarding is now a nightmare. Um, I mean, my business partner's kids often identify as astronauts in the morning and then train drivers in the afternoon and rocket man before, before dinner, so...
- JWJonny Watson
I think that's it, isn't it? It's like, I, I mean, I can't really remember being that age, but I, I can remember being, like, 17 and still not really feeling that, like, I would trust a 17-year-old version of me to make permanent decision.
- CWChris Williamson
Any decision.
- JWJonny Watson
Yeah. So, I think if there's no... If you can just do whatever you want at that age and there's no, like, guidelines or guard rails, if there's permanent consequences, it's maybe a little bit unfair, I think, on the-
- YSYusef Smith
Well, yeah. Ray Dalio talks about this where, like, the permanence of a decision is...... proportional to how long you should spend on it, and how-
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm.
- YSYusef Smith
... reversible the decision is. But, again, it's, it's, it's this balance between someone's right to gender expression and the potential for that right to be exploited by characters who want to... An- and there isn't an easy solution. Like, the, was there not that guy who went to prison for some kind of series of sexual assaults or rapes or something, and then he said, "I want to go in the women's prison." And then he just continued offending.
- CWChris Williamson
Identified as a woman and then, yeah, moved across. I mean, I don't think that that's a rare, that's a particularly rare story anymore. Obviously, children, th- uh, th- this isn't a permanent consequence, you know? To, to steelman the other side, it's not a permanent consequence to change their gender expression or to change their name and do things like that. But at four years old, allowing the child to do anything. You know, if the child was late to school, the parents would probably be told, but changing their gender expression and their name? And it's like, I, I, I think one of the concerns that some people have is that it indulges and perhaps actually encourages in children something which, at that age, is so confusing and maladaptive that it can put them down paths that's a little bit difficult. So, Andrew Doyle talks a lot. He's a gay man, and he talked about the fact that he didn't do sports. He didn't do football at school. I think he maybe even did sort of dance or ballet or something, and he was really into acting.Like, he would have absolutely been classed as probably a, a, a future female under this particual, uh, pa- particular sort of worldview. And it is kind of a rehabilitated homosexual hatred, in a way, that some of it is that a butch girl or a, a, a female as like a girly bloke, that these can't be seen as someone that might actually be homosexual. It's like, no, you're heterosexual but in the wrong body.
- JWJonny Watson
Yeah.
- YSYusef Smith
But there's not much downside. I, I mean, if, if they're four years old and you say, "Do you wanna, do you wanna stay with the girls or stay with the boys?" Like, I think the- there's not too much of a potential risk. I think when it's 13, 14, like, potentially more of a risk in terms of, like, sexual age. But then at four, like, you know, th- there's an argument to say, like, let, let them experiment. Let them do what they want, 'cause it, you know, if you say to a four-year-old kid, "Do you want a dinosaur for breakfast?" Like-
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah, yeah.
- YSYusef Smith
... "Yeah, I do."
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm.
- YSYusef Smith
But then, equally, as you say, if, if there's a permanent thing, like, would, "Do you wanna shoot the teacher?" Like, "Yes." Like, obviously you don't mean it, but if you allowed them to carry that out, then a few years later, they'd be like, "Oh, I wish I hadn't, wish you hadn't let me shoot that teacher," 'cause-
- JWJonny Watson
But, but even-
- CWChris Williamson
I think there's a diff- th- th- there's a difference between posing the question to them and it, allowing it to naturally arise. And I think, like, as you say, like, if you, if you say, "Do you want to do this?" at four years old, you maybe just don't have the, the information or the life experience to, to evaluate that decision. So, you might just say yes or no, you know? Like, it's hard to know. I can't remember what it's like to be four. Mm.
- JWJonny Watson
I don't imagine very many people can. But yeah, like, if something naturally arises and, like, that's a request, I think it's d- that, that to me anyway feels different to-
- CWChris Williamson
What about not telling the parents?
- JWJonny Watson
... to say... As if they ask them, "Do you want to do this or not?" They say yes or no, and then you go.
- CWChris Williamson
So, a, a, a boy, a boy comes into school and says, "I want to be referred to as Rebecca. I'm now a girl," and they do not tell the parents that this is something that's, that's happening. I mean, if you can imagine if that was your child that was going into school and you found out that for six months your child had been living as a four-year-old kid or a five-year-old kid had been living a double life.
- YSYusef Smith
Well, it's fine, 'cause y- you'd find out, 'cause Apple would tell you.
- CWChris Williamson
(laughs)
- JWJonny Watson
(laughs)
- YSYusef Smith
(laughs) Get a notification from, like, family parental control.
- CWChris Williamson
(laughs) Yeah.
- JWJonny Watson
The school, the school would try not to pass the information on, but they'd have no choice, so-
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah, because your Alexa, the, the Google HomePod would have been listening in and would have sent an alert that your child had changed their iCloud name to Rebecca.
- JWJonny Watson
Yeah, Goo- Google won't know. Like, Google won't be able to see your search history, but Apple will just send a text to the parents, so it's neither here nor there.
- CWChris Williamson
Fine.
- JWJonny Watson
But yeah, it, it seems like a... (sighs) Yeah. (sighs) I would want to know as the parent, but I guess, like, it depends on presumably-
- 1:02:47 – 1:15:58
Technology Eroding Anonymity
- CWChris Williamson
Where does anonymity or where are you guaranteed anonymity and why should it, why should it exist?
- YSYusef Smith
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
Why should the privacy, why should the privacy exist for that? I mean, I had Seth Stephens-Davidowitz on who's a data analyst, and he'd done all of these different correlations to do with Google search history. Uh, and he was able to identify... It was him that was able to find out where COVID cases were going to spike seven days before they did by looking for search hi-, uh, the search history aggregated. So this is totally anonymized. Um, of what people were looking for. Why have I lost my sense of smell? Why am I so hot when I sleep at night?
- YSYusef Smith
(laughs)
- NANarrator
Wow.
- YSYusef Smith
Wow.
- CWChris Williamson
And he was, he was able to predict seven days out where the highest cases were. So that was the quickest route to be able to work out what was going on. He was also able to see, um, locations where there were higher rates of suicide based on some of the search histories, like how, how to deal with depression, um, what to do if you're feeling suicidal. All of these aggregated searches were correlated with high levels of suicidality within a particular location.
- JWJonny Watson
It's when they-
- YSYusef Smith
That's a whole new level, isn't it? Where like the captures, and they can pick up early signs of Parkinson's from the tremor in your mouse. Now, do they report that to the health insurance company? Like, does the insurance company have a right to know before you do? Do they have the right to even tell you because they've diagnosed a problem that you didn't actually go and ask them to?
- JWJonny Watson
But then one side of that, like it's, it's anonymous data, isn't it? It's trends of search terms by volume in Newcastle versus this person has exhibited this behavior. It's a very different... Like, I don't mind, I don't mind my search history being used as, as ways to, like, improve things. But if I'm going to experience, like, because I was a bit shaky with my mouse when I was clicking on the which of these squares have a, have a traffic light in them-
- YSYusef Smith
(laughs) .
- JWJonny Watson
Like, and I'm getting a-
- CWChris Williamson
Your premium goes up from there.
- JWJonny Watson
I'm gonna have mine improve. Yeah, like, I don't know how I feel about that versus the-
- CWChris Williamson
It's weird, isn't it?
- JWJonny Watson
... the aggregated information.
- CWChris Williamson
Because what we're relying on is a level of opaqueness between what the insurance company knows about us and what is actually happening about us. And there is a degree of game playing going on here. Like, if you are at risk for Parkinson's or if you are, have like early Parkinson's, uh, like onset, um, symptoms, then it's probably quite right that the insurance company is supposed to know about it. The fact that the current level of finesse with which they can see your entire sort of medical makeup isn't there, I mean, you know, what, what's the job of the insurance company? Is the job of the insurance company to make premiums based on information that they're given or make premiums based on your health?
- JWJonny Watson
Have, have you guys seen or have we discussed Coded Bias on Netflix?
- CWChris Williamson
No, but I've had an interview with the guy who did some research for it.
- JWJonny Watson
Right. You should watch it, because it, it talks about like... Because it, because ultimately the problem here is there is AI processing this information at large scale, and it's like we're relying on fair processing. We're relying on, like, an algorithm to make a decision that's going to influence like can we get a mortgage, can we get a credit card, what is our insurance costing, based on some things that, like all the way down to how you move your mouse or what you search on Google. And, you know, is it fair for those things? Is it fair for the code to have a bias basically? And how do you police that if something's just being, if something's happening constantly? How do you like... Should a human with emotional bias come in and, and insert their bias on top of the code bias? Or like, how do you manage like... It, it could potentially all be fine or it could potentially all be catastrophic. (laughs)
- CWChris Williamson
Terrible.
- YSYusef Smith
I feel like all technology, like all the precipices of technology that we're approaching now-
- JWJonny Watson
(laughs)
- YSYusef Smith
... are subject to that. Like it could all be great or it could all kill us all.
- CWChris Williamson
Terrible. Yeah. That's a-
- JWJonny Watson
And you've, you've got to make a decision based on no information. (laughs)
- NANarrator
(laughs)
- CWChris Williamson
Just hope for the best. Yeah. Well, I had, I had Stuart Russell on the show, the guy that wrote the book on artificial intelligence, and his most recent one, Human Compatible, is about the control problem. The scariest thing that I learned from that was that the social media content selection algorithms, the ones that literally try to get click, uh, click-throughs and time on site, that's all that they're bothered about, get people on and keep them on. That's all that they were asked to optimize. So what they want is to be better able to predict the preferences of the users. If they can put content in front of them that they're more likely to click on and more likely to stay on, then it has achieved its goal. There's actually two ways that the algorithm, it would appear, there's two ways the algorithm could achieve that. First one is to become better at predicting what the users want. The second one is to manipulate the users' preferences to make them more predictable.
- NANarrator
(laughs)
- CWChris Williamson
And it turns out that social media content feed selection algorithms have been doing the second one a lot more. So when everybody says about, "Oh, you've got this increasing sort of, these extremist views on the internet. Everybody's far left or everybody's far right or everybody's pro this or not that."... and this is because of echo chambers. It's because you have these very sort of siloed communities in which people only hear one point of view. Well, yeah, that's part of it, but another part of it is that the algorithms almost have like a, an email trigger sequence, a several year email trigger sequence that takes somebody that clicks on a thing and then slowly tries to push their preferences. Because if you're out on the extremes, you're a lot more predictable. If you're in the middle, you can flip left or flip right on different conversations. But if you're out on the extremes, it's very easy to see what's going to annoy you, what's going to make you feel like your views are being confirmed. And, um, yeah, finding out that algorithms were manipulating us rather than manipulating the content was probably the scariest thing I learned from that book.
Episode duration: 1:16:59
Install uListen for AI-powered chat & search across the full episode — Get Full Transcript
Transcript of episode xos0DzLCJSI
Get more out of YouTube videos.
High quality summaries for YouTube videos. Accurate transcripts to search & find moments. Powered by ChatGPT & Claude AI.
Add to Chrome