 There we go. I've been not doing the transcript because it chews up my machine or something like that I don't quite understand why but if I'm gonna get off I can just give it a try so You're gonna let it chew up somebody else's machine. Well, I think it happened Well the recording has to be in the cloud right if you're gonna not be here. Yeah, exactly No, I recorded to the cloud I always do and and I now I don't see the the transcript Thing which is very weird, huh? But there we go. Grace, I'm gonna make you host okay, and thank you for offering This is great. I'm like excited to kick out anybody. I don't like I don't think that's ever happened on an OGM call I don't think I've ever had to kick anybody else out, but I don't know Gil's Phantom Took no taker is here. Although if you're not doing the transcript at least the no taker could That's that no taker will in fact have a transcript. That's true Yeah, it does a pretty good job of that. I can share that with people if you want anybody wants to let me know See we've solved the chewing up the computer problem Jerry There we go. I We are gonna head out and go see the the town. So I'm going to let grace and I'll before grace before you start It's with whatever social engineering you'd like to do you have full full rain to do what you'd like So I will I will watch the recording later. Whoa, ha ha ha And so you're in Barcelona. Yeah, exactly Fun, cool. I haven't been here in many years lived here for nine months in 2001 Was here when 9-11 happened? Very strange thing to experience somewhere else Barcelona for a couple of weeks some years ago and said it was the hardest thing you ever did to come back home It's a really really beautiful city. Yeah, nice. Yeah, I just got back from there a couple weeks ago sweet well, I'm off and Thanks, Grace. See y'all Go Alright everybody so welcome to the OGM call. I guess I'm gonna record this. Oh Somehow I'm not the host. I can't it says the host has to give me permission Is there a host? He said he gave me host, but I don't know Carl is the host Carl on her court I don't know why you're the host Carl, but it just looks like now I'm gonna have to be on my best behavior because Carl can kick me out because he's the host I just made you the co-host All right We've got a recording going that's great Awesome, so welcome to the OGM call for December 1st 2022 Today is supposed to be a topic, but no topics came up But a topic did come up on the Google groups, which I wanted to explore which is around Sense-making and the media and how we make sense of things in the media So I want to do a quick round and then a longer round and the quick round that I wanted to start with is This I think is an experience that's happened to many people And so do kind of a quick discussion of that and then maybe do an exercise Which will take a little bit of time out and the question is has it ever happened to you? That you're reading your newspaper your favorite newspaper and Or media outlet, whatever it may be or one that you trust and you read an article About something you really know a lot about So it might be somebody who you know or a company that you actually have insight information about or about food systems If you're class some topic that you know about and you read this article and you know these guys are idiots Like you read the article and you're like these guys got this and this and this and this wrong and Then you turn the page or you go to the next article in the newspaper that you love and they say something about something You know nothing about and you're like this is a great article and you believe what is on that next page So I kind of wanted to hear reflections on that topic of like has that happened to you? And where do you see yourself as possibly having been susceptible to that kind of like? Even though I know that they have dubious facts on page three when I got the page four it was like oh just fine Yeah, go ahead Stacey. Yeah, I'll go first because I think I could be short Where I've experienced that I Hear feedback to you. I don't you're muted Grace. Okay. Oh, yeah I think some other people muted which fixed the problem. Okay. Thank you Where I've actually experienced that has been on live on the live news feed Where I've seen things happen and then I hear them reporting it and that is not what I viewed and how that Then affects the next thing they report is they're no longer credible to me, but that's also how I deal with people and This is an important topic because this is a topic that I think that We really should take a better look at so we could figure out how we can fix it because I think we're all susceptible to In our in our collective sense making we shut off Certain people right away and drink in everything from other people. So I'm glad you brought it up. Thank you Hi everybody In psychology, I learned about a concept called selective exposure Like say just what's something expensive. You'll only expose yourself to information related to that product You'll tend to ignore other opinions. So I think that does play a part in that phenomenon Personally, I have not exactly experienced that but I could imagine scenarios where like maybe confirmation bias where I'm led to believe a certain way based on my experience when I was taught in school and what I've come to believe and Yeah, it's tricky to know And to see when it's challenged for for me to come to terms with what is my belief now due to a challenge Welcome Doug. We're talking about the phenomenon in which you We're talking about the media and the truth in the media and the phenomenon in which sometimes you'll read something in In a publication that you respect Which is false. You know, it's false because it's your area of expertise, but then you when you turn the page Maybe you don't you just believe the next story even though you know that they were wrong on that thing that you're an expert in Okay, go ahead call Hey, um, well the the Seems to be some resonance with like the Dunning-Kruger effect too that you don't And then I've been I brought it up a couple of times and I've been I'm really gonna really want to get some meeting together to talk about the The believing game, but there's also a piece of that's also the dynamic where we need I mean you You don't you yeah, there there's like a systematic way of of Determining whether you should you know the whether you should believe something or not and things it's kind of framed as a Complimentary to the scientific method, which is the doubting game and things so Between the two of those and I'm also interested in what Eric talked about too. If you can post reference to it There's been a deterioration of knowing like Stacy was talking about how we feel about people and It's kind of different how we might feel about an institution like a newspaper or publication and then The institutions have become more and more like individuals in some ways because there's so much freelance writing And stuff like that, but it still has the same headline on the top. Somebody was mentioning Recently this week, you know, Jeff Bezos bought the the Washington Post a few years back And it still has the exact same thing on the top It doesn't say under new ownership and now you kind of wonder like are there certain stories about retail? or about cloud Surfaces that might or might not get in there, right? You don't know. It's it's not in the headline about the ownership And the same thing I remember was talking about in New York Times like that they have a history of being slanted again Like not hiring gay people and now they're very woke and like these changes of ownership or not changes of ownership We don't notice them over time. We think we're reading the same newspaper, but maybe we are and maybe we aren't Uh kill go ahead. Yeah. Good morning So to your original question. Yeah, I have had that experience I've also had the experience of Of discounting everything else they write based on, you know, what I read about something I know about neither of which, you know, both of which are over generalizations, right? But yeah, it's it's Um Seeing coverage of stuff that I know about or that I was directly involved in really, you know, sort of shifted my view of how to look at media I've tried to In a more or less disciplined way try to triangulate a lot I read something I'll go see read other people or read other views on the subject Um, you know, I intentionally seek out contrarian views Or follow the thread of an article quote some people go see who are those people and what's their background What are the things they have written to try to build a larger field? Of shape about what that topic is My my friend Chauncey bell Says that in his mind one of the most important Capacities is to is the capacity to make good assessments of other people's capacity to make assessments It's a little loopy, but if you if you listen it, it's you know, it's it's very powerful It's like everybody is making assessments or interpretations all the time. We all do that. We can't not do that Um, and then how do we listen to how other people do that? And what's behind theirs and what do they bring to the table in terms of their own biases their own experience their own perspectives? and You know and in that process, how do I listen to my own listening? You know my own confirmation bias where I I like eric's phrase about selective exposure. We all do that Uh, so it's intriguing territory and I will I will confess that I'm culpable of being a bad actor in this because I will sometimes I noticed I sometimes will retweet retweet things because I like the headline and I haven't read the article Or um, or I you know retweet things and notice that there is no reference to the claim being made Uh, which is a place where I'm I'm I'm much more disciplined. I'm you know, I'm I'm not inclined to propagate things where someone says something interesting But there's no way to verify Is it true or not or where it comes from or where it's sourced? You know charts that have no no attribution to them and things like that So it's it's a very sloppy game out there and I noticed that I'm swept up and culpable in it and try to be really careful Great question, grace Yeah, it's kind of um another instance, uh evidence of Capitalism gonna muck I mean, here we have all of a sudden Jeff Bezos buying the washington post. Okay What are his politics? You've got the murdox on fox news CNN is losing Um media attention, so they're gonna move to the right You know because they drifted over into the left so, um You know, we like to think about journalism as something that's you know pure um And uh and factual and yet it's drifted over into what I would call, you know Advocacy journalism looking for the facts that justify a political position So, um, that's kind of a phenomenon. It's just so very very present In media today and um, you know the choices we make about what we consume I'm finding myself drifting more and more away from listening Um, you know, it's it's been background noise in my own mind for a long time I mean background noise as I as I go through the day And I'm just saying no, I I um I'd much rather listen to you know, uh um Leonard Cohen And feed my soul in that in that way and then listen to Because that's where that it's it's starting to show up for me Mm-hmm. So, I mean the bottom the bottom line is choose your source that choose your sources wisely Yeah, and I think that's really interesting Um, because I've been listening more to long-form podcasts I just realized I really want to listen to the expert talk about this quite a bit You know and go into it and go in and back and forth with an interviewer who Is either going to ask hard questions or doesn't know anything and is asking naive questions But like see does this person really know and I and I've actually substituted a lot of them I know I've been news for a long-form podcast And and it's quite interesting. It's a very different bias that you get that way And you know, I know that that those of us on the call are all kind of Left leaning whatever that whatever that means All right, um You know, but so so periodically I want to turn on fox news to see what they're saying And and it's just it's just insane I mean, it's just absolutely insane what what what what you hear in those contexts. So Yeah See that's what's interesting to me too. Like that's a very interesting thing Like to listen to something that comes from the other side And say it's insane To me that's an indicator that we're missing something If I can't understand why somebody believes something What am I missing? Because I listen to both sides and they both sound equally insane to me That's why I'm listening to long-form podcasts. Like they both sound insane. I'm like, oh, yeah, that's that's all that's insane um, the other thing that this comes in the context of just to kind of Keep moving the conversation and add more stuff even though I see there's some hands up. I'll get to you in a second but is this comes in the context of um, you know, the takeover of twitter and then This recent post that was in the google group about like how it's horrible that the that twitter is no longer in censoring co vid disinformation and And there's there's been always a long standing news outlets The pro censorship news outlets like it's horrible that twitter is out there It's horrible that people are having secret conversations on signal It's horrible that people can say whatever they want and somebody just commented that the you know, the right to speeches is limited to those who have one and so there's this tension, right like Yeah Yeah, between like how and and I was surprised to hear how many people In this group feel like censorship on twitter has has been a good thing and it's horrible that We're gonna bring back all these people who are banned from twitter I found that very interesting like like steward was saying who's left and who's right. I'm like, oh, I thought we were Free speech advocates on the left. I'm kind of confused now Klaus Stuart you want to say one more? Thank you. Yeah, I just wanted to say one more thing and that's you know, um Having a legal background, um, you know, the idea of first amendment Has always been kind of deep in my soul and yet as I look around and see some of the some of the stuff that's out there Um, you know, both in the media but also in the art world and in the in some of the films that are making It's kind of like, you know um my sense making A mechanism just goes, you know, why are they throwing billions and billions of dollars into making all this junk that people are consuming? um Is that opinion, uh, is that is that assessment gill? Absolutely, it's it's my assessment because some people love that, you know, that all the crap that's out there But you know, it's it's still I will still assert that that's an edge that I think we might, you know, pay attention to at some point in time If I was creating a new world Klaus Yeah, I'm coming back to Karl's comment about the darning gorge effect I think there are there's a great way to to look at Information that is now based on your on your understanding of the of the topic Misleading or downright wrong, but then you have to look at the intentionality behind it, right? um, it's the intention Um, you know, that's just the best they know and they don't see their blind spots They just don't know what the what they don't know um, or Which is which maybe the new york times which maybe the washington post, you know Putting out an article thinking they really know when in fact, you know have blind spots Fox news on the other hand is intentionally wrong, right? It's a propaganda network So they're misleading. There is designed misinformation to lead towards predetermined outcomes, right? We have We have modeling of of viewers based on the socioeconomic backgrounds Maybe know exactly what how they respond to to stimuli So that stimuli is being put out there in order to induce Opinions in order to induce emotional responses. That's a different thing but so for as long as We're dealing with a whether that's a media network or whether that's a conversation in social media LinkedIn Twitter, whatever for as long as we're dealing with someone who is responsive To a question and here not not a not a statement but a question And then and then and then interacts with that. We're good but unfortunately There is just a lot of intentional misleading, you know, and I think we have to divide that between Misinformation that's born out of blind spots and and lack of information or lack of understanding and intentional misleading the purposeful which is which is Overwhelming, you know in our society because the The way that the Americans at the western societies are leading instead of china, you know making edicts or russia We are we are putting out information that in the end of the day has the same impact I want to Just make a comment and like pause for one second on this comment Because this is exactly what i'm pointing to That there's an assumption That the new york times is just making mistakes But fox news is leading you down a path And I don't have evidence At this moment that the new york times is less guilty of that And that's what i've been pointing to in this group Yeah, I mean that's that that's generally true It's not so much what they misreport as to what they don't report on You know, I mean the the gaps in the information that is being made available to the average american consumer Are just horrendous, you know when you take any topic climate change health Political issues, yeah, but it's the absence of discussion the absence of information That an informed citizen would need to have to make to make informed Decisions, you know who to vote for what to vote for and so on And so I agree that you have manipulation on both sides, but in the case of fox news It is active misleading. It's not lacking information. It's providing misinformation You know that that is intentional Leading to leading to people responding, you know in in in very predictable ways. So I see that as a difference I know but I'm telling you That I don't see that I see new york times in washington post doing that exact same behavior and I Don't see people. I don't see you specifically in this moment or a lot of the people here questioning that Like is the new york times doing that and in what realm Might I be able to catch the new york times doing that? Well, well, tell me what would I mean give me an example so I'll give you, you know, the ones that i'm going to pick are going to make me sound very right wing Which is hysterical to me But one example is the lab lake hypothesis which turned out to be apparently pretty true And there was a large media On the left saying this couldn't be This was you know zoological transmission It didn't come from a lab and that is important information because it comes from a laboratory How to treat it is very different The implications for how we're funding those types of laboratories And the right was the only people who were saying hey this lab leak conspiracy. Oh, you know, and if you so much as Opened your mouth And said I think there's something funny about this You you know and and the mainstream media and mostly the left-wing media was pushing this narrative But you know You could also say this was a fuck-of-war kind of issues. I mean in the middle of this turmoil you needed A national strategy on how to combat what was clearly, you know I don't see I don't see any problem With I don't see any problem With knowing the origin of this thing Right, did it come from China or not? I did it come from a Chinese lab that was funded by the United States Has nothing to do with how dangerous the virus is nothing It was a distraction in the middle of trying to formulate a national strategy Now you will but how can you formulate a national strategy when you don't know the origin of it? And you can't have an open scientific conversation about it But even if you're right even if you're right class, this was still the newspapers Making you believe a certain thing that turned out later to be untrue And banning anybody who would speak about it. And so that type of behavior is what you're accusing the right of doing And I'm just saying it's the same behavior It's the same behavior. It's not in my mind. I'm sorry. That's just Okay, cool. Let's hear from that Grace, I don't know what sources you're reading or not reading But I've seen plenty of debate about the lab leak hypothesis I know some people I know there's been an attempt to shut down debate But I've seen plenty of debate in the public media and in the scientific literature Trying to figure out what it's actually a very complicated question. So you're saying it's been shut down I think is is a bit I say it was shut down for an entire year. Look at the dates on those things. Look at the dates Yeah, that's not something I'm going to research But that's the point. That's why I picked that because it is something that people are allowed to debate now It's not like it's allowed now But for a year it was not allowed Well, I don't know for you to say it's both the same Have you ever spent a half hour watching Tucker Carlson? Look, there are people on the left who are as ridiculous as that Have you ever spent a half hour watching Tucker Carlson? I have not spent a half an hour watching Tucker Carlson But I have spent an hour listening to podcasts that I completely disagree with and they are ridiculous I invite you well Tucker Carlson has got a reach that podcasts don't have 30 i think of americans get their news from fox news Spend a half hour there This is not just difference of opinion. This is as claus said a concerted focus strategic highly funded disinformation campaign for political purposes I'm not saying same thing and to say they're both the same thing Look, people say it's both say there's political violence on both sides It's 50 times as many murders from right-wing violence as left-wing violence You can say it's both the same same thing because they both do it, but 50x is a pretty significant difference You know, I think that's fair enough. Look, that's a fair enough thing to say right And Doug sorry, but you can see The first thing you can see is that how sure You are that this is correct and then I'm wrong And I'm not even like saying that I actually believe everything I'm saying I'm just saying looking at how difficult it is to even have this conversation About a world health issue Because that's what that's what the twitter thing was about your now you're allowed scientists are now allowed And anybody is now allowed to debate the health policy on twitter And that was banned until now I don't know. I've seen I've been watching the thing for what is it now two and a half three years I've seen plenty of debate all through if you could if you could post the dates when you think it was blacked out I'll take a look I'll take a look at that. I'm willing to do that. But look, I'm not saying you're wrong. I'm saying my experience is different than yours You say you haven't seen any of it. I say well, I have okay That's not telling you I didn't say I haven't seen it. I said we didn't see it for a year You said I'm sorry if that was incorrect So do we want this conversation? So I'm gonna I'm gonna pass to Doug but but what I'm really trying to point at is like how Certain we are that the media that we're looking at is the good guys And how difficult it is to like Even have that conversation here. We're just supposed to be a very safe place Doug Yeah, so So I sort of I sort of turn the telescope around on this And the thing that one of the one of the pieces that came to mind is there's a a transformation organizational transformation Person that I have a lot of respect for um And there was a guy who came out with a whole new take and twist and turn in that space And And she sort of respond, you know responded to this as new and a shiny new thing And and I looked at it and my comment was Correlation is not causation And he had woven a very nice condom Out of correlations That really had no basis to then leap to It's actually a sorcerer cause it causative kind of thing It was just really completely floating and If there weren't people With an appetite for Tucker Carlson, he wouldn't be in front of the camera and if there weren't people with an appetite for a whole package and gestalt and identity of Being, you know truth centered and values centered and morals centered There wouldn't be a readership for the new york times in the washington post So ultimately For my lens, it's about orientation and attachments and People with orientations and attachments By things that affirm their orientation and attachments And the world and system that we live in is a consumer model It's all about meeting needs and demands of people that want What they want and that can be amazon selling crap or it can be media newspapers Selling points of view that are reflective and affirming For the people that are receiving them And so through that lens It is an equivalency place like it's all the same from a morals standpoint or from a value standpoint There are differences But those are also sort of subjective expression of individual preference and agency and for the people You know drinking from the fox cup You know all the statements about how more righteous and true and and valid the new york times Are is in the washington post as Is as obvious and extremely ridiculous And delusional to them experientially and emotionally looking at you As you're looking at tucker call soon so from a from a An acknowledgement recognition of humans or humans And they do them They're individual orientation and values Determine and drive What they buy you know what needs they have to be affirmed in media and and I think Part of the part of the 1950s naive somewhat delusional holding on to um What's true and what isn't what's fact and what isn't a lot of that Is what's been destroyed Just as a social phenomena There was enough critical mass from The people you know that constructed alternative facts And repeating a lion not long enough makes it a truth For some people which seems to do um That a lot of those tacit Everybody agrees with What's good what's right or what whatever Governs underlying at all I think is gone um so That doesn't negate the validity of the concept of something being good on a on a Moral on an ethical on a social On an empathetic level Versus being bad um being dark You know religions have been in business for thousands of years because of good and evil like that's been their ticket So um I don't I I don't personally believe Feeding the polarities Energetically it maps to a solution It just you know is it adding another another drop to the bucket of one side or another and the the deeper question is Are there ways that that from a Fixing and healing standpoint are there ways we can figure out how to drop below all of that To land on an emotional level in a way that's universal and transcends all these constructed polarities the people Any points in those criticism like tortures is simply compelling the number Anybody else hearing that? I think that's john maybe Okay, so so yeah, so I I think you know my actually my focus Is how you know, what are the things that would cut underneath all of that and that would touch and emotionally energized People to reconnect with what they're feeling In ways that it's around things that could potentially be universal for everybody Like you know the response everybody gets if they look at a puppy or a kitten depending upon whether a cat or a dog person So with that I'll I'll stop so this is Really brings us closer to the conversation that I want to have It's not about whether I'm right or wrong about At what moment the debate came in And it's not whether I'm right or wrong about you know Climate change It's about Where do we stand? When we hear somebody criticize something dear and near to our hearts For example, if I say the new york times is a bunch of liars and they're manipulating your minds Where do we stand on media in general? What does it mean to have? censorship on twitter Or not have censorship on twitter and who are the mediators of that? And given the polarization, which is really what dug is Speaking about how do we not just create safe spaces for very brave people but create like When has it happened to you in this last year since the lockdowns have ended? It's about it's a little less than a year That you've gone to somebody that you had a huge rift with because you were so right about something And said to them, you know what I really want to I still think I'm right but I'd like to hear your perspective And that's not really happening very much to any of us And that's my inquiry Like we we first get really offended that The lone musk took over twitter Then we get really upset that the advertisers left and he wants to charge for it We won't have advertisers feeding us garbage Then we get really offended that it won't censor certain medical information or A bunch of quacks who knows what who's gonna you know? That's dangerous that a bunch of quacks might be on there Like we just first we get offended at an outraged And and and that's really my inquiry like half one was the last time any of us stood back and said hey wait a second Yeah, gill Left unmute if you want to speak you're hanging up and down. I don't know maybe that was a mistake Me in the name of ken homer I would ask you to be clear about who you mean when you say we Because we throw we around in all sorts of different you know different scopes and ranges But I also Not clear grace on what is the discussion you want to have the discussion is What do you like Where are you getting your information and how much do you question it? And where do you stand on censorship? of information And what is the right relationship between mainstream media and social media? And how do we even make sense of something in this post truth? world But it really does start at home like when do I admit i'm wrong? When do I admit i'm wrong? Or or cast doubt on the type of media that I've gotten from me For me curiosity is really important And doubt is really important when I was uh, she's when I was like i'm not 13 or something like that I encountered i.f. Stone. I don't know if people know of him I was a journalist very active in the early 1960s and his what he he started out every morning He would get the New York Times and the Washington Post and several other papers and and comb through them and look for gaps and inconsistencies and omissions And right about you know would offer a different perspective on the news. I mean this was the era in which the Through the efforts of people like him the gulf of tonkin's scam of the united states government was exposed United states claimed that north vietnamese patrol boats Had attacked u.s navy and that was the basis for escalation of vietnam war it never happened And it took some intrepid journalists working on top of mainstream journalists and government Spokespeople to track that down I learned very early on from stone that I couldn't trust everything I read in the newspapers that it took a level of analysis and perspective and mixing of points of views to dig at the truth Because of manipulation. Yeah to some degree collusion to some degree human foibles to a very great degree editorial, you know Bandwidth to another degree But and it was yeah, it was widely believed at the time it happened and it took years to get that you know exposed But you know stone was a very powerful lesson for my formative mind Which is to read critically and to question sources and to triangulate sources Which is in which I talked about before um To your to your point about talking with people with whom I disagree There's a real difference between saying what a jerk you are and saying that's interesting. Why do you think that? And opening up a conversation that is that recognizes that we are human beings with Vastly different experiences and perspectives that are formed out of our experiences You know the families we've been raised in the communities we've been raised in who we hang out with etc And we all have these biases so and I've talked before I've I've you know in the course of The covid wars the climate wars. I've become very dear friends with a guy who voted for crump in 2016 Which only happened because we were introduced by a mutual friend who said you guys would you know You guys have something to talk about and we went into an open conversation rather than a combative conversation and Changed each other's minds on some things agreed to disagree on some things and love each other deeply And so for me that was a little like a little window into something else that's possible on the other hand I couldn't have that kind of conversation with Tucker Carlson Uh who you know or people who are not interested in the conversation but are interested in strategic manipulation of populations for political and financial power And if you doubt that look at how quickly rupert murdoch turned on donald trump You know They're in a different game than the kind of game that we are all in here in this circle of of good people on these weekly calls And so that's part of it also is is you know is me discerning where it's possible to have Real conversation with real people which I agree with you is a much wider arena than we mostly live in We mostly live in our little bubbles and there's a real value to opening up those bubbles And we're in a world with some very dark forces that are not just about differences in perspective But very differences in goals of how human beings should survive on this planet Um It's really essential to distinguish between those A friend of mine said the other day when we were talking about this he said I have no interest in a conversation with lindsay glenn Pointless However a conversation with somebody who voted for winzy graham not pointless That's all Yeah, so to echo what what grace and nail me and put in the Chat and dug had mentioned in order to have that kind of conversation that gill Mentioned with that friend There has to be a level of awareness and an ability to recognize when you're wrong So whatever your opinion Opinion is if you're not the kind of person that can do that that kind of conversation will not be possible And I just want to share something that I wanted to bring to the call anyway And it touches on this in many ways I was on a facebook page and it was um somebody was post it was or he's a writer and it's a very I would say it's a very Moderate kind of page in that there are people that move to the extremes But it's kind of very diverse And they were talking about the the dinner that trump had had with yay and uh, whoever else and Because I noticed somebody said that he he was obviously a republican and he was talking about there are reasonable Republicans So I took that as you know what? Let me try to engage with him, which I haven't really done in quite a while And we did and very quickly he started talking about well, why did Nancy Pelosi Put omar on committee And so I just asked him I said well, can you tell you know, he said how vile and anti-semitic she was and honestly I don't know much about her. I don't think she's anti-semitic and that has made people get mad because we also hear the right wing media So I looked into it a little bit and I asked him. I said, can you I said, can you tell me one quote? She made that was anti-semitic And there was a very very long pause And finally he came back with um a meme that said peace for Palestine And I said well, don't they deserve peace too? At which point he started attacking me And he started saying that it should be on my conscience That i'm creating this hate So I used that as an opportunity to pivot a little bit And I said well, then if you support, you know first, I mean I again, I don't want to draw out the story I went very slowly To draw a connection that he was making Between supporting something and then something leading to violence And then after that connection was clear. I then asked him so if you voted for Trump Do you take responsibility for the amount of violence that increased, you know And he said I told you I don't support Trump I said I didn't ask you if you supported him. I asked you if you voted for him And he said I don't say who I voted for now. It was very clear you voted for him and I told him I said you're being dishonest I said I would bet my life you voted for him in 2016 And while I might not bet my life that you voted for him in 2020 I bet a small fortune and he just got like really enraged and i'm going off on a tangent But this is important This is why I actually brought it wanted to bring it in but the subject was different I finally checked his profile and it turns out he's not a real person And that was concerning For a lot of reasons and what was really interesting and that I was going to share it probably in the free jerry's brain group Because what was really interesting at the end of this whole conversation I had used a phrase And then he mirrored that phrase back to me which was really like the whole thing is interesting But how that ties in When you were talking earlier and there was the disagreement between Why the left media or the center media whatever you want to call it the more responsible media I'm going to call it even though They do enrage me as well There was sort of like A hard line Because they were trying to mitigate the damage that was coming from misinformation And i'm less concerned about Where we draw the lines with um like the whole free speech thing I'm more concerned with finding out whose voice i'm really hearing because How could facebook not know there's all these fake profiles? That should be really easy to figure out and this Whatever it was this person was really trying to fight with me And if anybody would like anybody that's on facebook wants me to tag you in so that you can look at the thread Between me and this person because I actually think it was a very interesting thread that illustrates a lot of things I don't you know, that's why I was bringing it here It's worth talking about But but anyway to get to the original point There were no facts he couldn't give me a fact as to why She was anti-semitic But what I learned is this was really orchestrated by bobart and the right wing And it was like blown out of proportion and the comment she made was it's all about the benjamin's which I would make that we all say things like that. I didn't realize it was an anti-semitic trope I'm jewish He said she didn't realize it. I take her out of her word. She apologized anyway, and she still Was able to still support what she supports you can you can Care about israel and the jewish people and still want peace for palestinians And I cannot tell you how many times i've been called anti-semitic for saying that and I served on the board of the temple So I don't you know, that's the end of my rant Thank you This conversation is really difficult for me, and I know that it's really hard for me to stay neutral in this conversation Grace before you go on i'm sorry Can I just answer what gill put in the thread place? Because he asked why in the world did I engage in deep conversation with not a real person? And for that matter why go deep with a person you don't know So I just want to answer this was a forum where there were a lot of people following a conversation And I was going very it was more about who was watching the conversation And I was giving an opportunity for him to give something factual I wasn't falling into the emotions. I wasn't reacting the way most people react, which drives blows things up That's why he was getting upset because I wasn't falling into the pattern that so many people fell into in 2016 Which I think was the the worst thing that could have happened because that's how we got siloed So my feeling is you have to leave space For people to see who other people are You have to leave space for their thoughts to come out so that you could see who's an idiot who's not The other thing is I don't usually look up who i'm talking to when I saw How he was changing I said let me look and see who this is Once I saw who he is I called him out for oh, I didn't realize you were a troll. I thought you were Seth's friend Carry on, you know that and that was the end of it So I just wanted to answer that Thanks very sorry So I realized that it's really hard for me to stay neutral in the conversation Because I don't think the health authorities did us a favor Through this censorship. I don't think lockdowns proved to reduce the virus I do think they had serious health implications for human beings and educational implications for children And I don't think there was a healthy debate on that at the time of those things were happening And so it's very hard for me to stay neutral on this And for me to really believe this story that It was a good thing that the media Made sure that we all got a unified message For the best of our health and I'm not neutral on that and so You know trying to moderate a conversation around Like what do you believe and what do you not believe? And where did the media steer us along? I happen to be an extremely strong free speech person I'm happy for Twitter to be full of disinformation because I I feel like that's part of healthy debate and I agree with stacey There's a real problem with people who aren't people and how do we identify them and it's been a mess It was a mess before Musk and it's a mess now and there's Misidentification of what is and isn't patrol and what isn't isn't a bot um But yeah, so I apologize for Not being neutral about this You know, I feel very strongly that healthy debate has been Taken away from us Yeah Either dug or gill. I don't know both of you have hands up well Gil if you you want to respond to what grace just said because i'm gonna Zoom out Yeah, let me just go very briefly. Doug. Thank you Um Grace I have no problem at all with you not being neutral. None of us is Uh, but I would ask of you what I you know what I said in my previous comments That if you're going to make claims be prepared to Document them And you've said several times now that there's this blackout of the lab leak hypothesis I've just been on you know, just been browsing while you've been talking I see lots and lots of discussion Uh spanning wide range of dates So ground yours Feel free to make your assertions. Absolutely, but ground them And then we can have that information. It was there was it was it was In the media that I was consuming and I will I will Provide it what I'm saying is that you're coming you you're in this conversation with a chip on your shoulder And that's okay And you have a strongly articulated point of view and that's okay And it's based on on things that you've read and done It would for me it'd be much more fruitful if you came in and said Here, you know in this date range this didn't happen and then we could say well, did it or not? Because we're just left with you making this Minutes to show up and moderate this conversation. Please give me a break. Please give me a break eight minutes before the conversation Nobody had stepped up to oh So please give me a break. I didn't know that I didn't know that and I will happily give you a break on it But I have the sense that you've held this perspective for quite a while Um, and I think we all of us this is part of to your macro question How do we engage in discussion about these things? Let's have our opinions. Yes. Let's be respectful. Yes Let's ground them so that we can unpack things and learn together That's all I'm really I'm sorry I'm really bothered by the chip on the shoulder thing I really am because I think we all kind of feel that there's some sort of bias and I That made me uncomfortable. I have I have to say Yeah, I just have to I'm done. I just needed to release that ahead Doug Yeah, I just wanted to share it's it's not a long story, but um So so I have an energy healer who I love and she's in color And and she had you know, we chit chat and she shared about She was in the process of withdrawing herself from the United States That what we would associate with you what is the us that she was somehow withdrawing from that And and I wear a bunch of hats, but one of them is I'm a lawyer And I was fascinated And I was like, do you have some material on that like could you send me some stuff? And it took a while and she sent me finally got me some links to some sites and to some documents and you know You know, I'm fundamentally a liberal New York Jewish kid, right and I started digging into this and reading this stuff And and went all the way to the bottom And it was breathtaking how The story of it the the pseudo construction of it Had so much There is similitude to reality but with twists and turns with constructs and connections and correlations that I was it was breathtaking I was blown away It was nuanced. It was elaborate. It was deep and It literally created In total A whole alternative United States of America Almost, you know, it's like one of those movies where all of a sudden there's a parallel world that pops into place and it's identical, but it's not identical It was that And it was elaborate and it was complex and it was nuanced And the differences were little trim tabs and you added them all up and at the end of the daisy chain if you Filled out this form and submitted that and did this and did that and whatever you too could effectively quit your Membership your citizenship in that version and you could join this new one and on completion of this review It completely changed My orientation my understanding Of that 30 or 40 percent Fox trunk the Kool-Aid Trump following and how you know How not Quote the deplorables these people were They were taken in And it's misguided But I could see some really bright educated people reading all of this buying all of this and And feeling completely intelligent and reasoned and discerning in doing so and You know my experience these days is like it's all about the questions because If I can understand How somebody is where they are then At least i'm starting from where they are with a full non-judgmental non-colored Appreciation of Why they are how they are where they are with what they're saying As a as a starting place And It took all of the heat out it took all of the judgment stuff out it took all of the My projection out And left me with You know These people are you know, they have a reality Fully dressed fully adorned fully elaborated and grounded in Like just enough verisimilitude stuff to be credible plausible persuasive To somebody who's highly educated pretty bright ethically and morally centered To buy it it's not just uneducated poor you know white people it's not and and That's the world we're in That's the world we're in And and I love stacy's like cherry on the sunday is And now we have bots That are indistinguishable we've hit the turing test right that are indistinguishable for real people with ai engines That can be on a mission to whip you up And we'll whip you up even with subtle twists and turns of concession and changing tactics. They're really smart. They're really capable and Yeah, it's it's It's it's I it had the the answer is in the What we have in common as human beings beings experientially and emotionally That is I think the only orientation we can take for figuring out how to How to cut through all of that so first of all, I definitely there's some really interesting evidence and interesting work by Robert Epstein out of washington Which shows how very subtle changes in your search engine results Will lead you down very different paths of truth I'm also noticing that I'm being held to a very rigorous Standard of the proof that I have to bring and I've never seen anybody else held to that standard in this room and I'm you know I don't appreciate it Just because I have a minority opinion. I'm being held to a higher standard. Is that why I don't why am I being held to a higher standard? I've never heard anybody in this room say before bring your evidence Never our search engines are biased And so when you search for something and don't find it, why are you surprised? But that's the point like that that's exactly the point that Doug makes we're all so fucking sure That we're right and what I'm experiencing Among my peers among my family among everybody is this certainty that they're right and I'm wrong And no curiosity I'm not certain. I'm right I'm certain I'm being manipulated just like all the rest of you But it doesn't seem that anybody else here feels that you know like It just feels like I'm still being held to this standard. Go ahead Michael Yeah, I was just going to say that with the With the absolute truth that that search engines and You know youtube suggestions push us toward Um Extremes of certainty. I mean like I I was I was posting in the chat that I like make a practice of What I referred to was, you know Watching fox news or watching msnbc, but that's not actually what I do. I watch them on youtube And because my world is more of an msnbc world You know my my cohort I Would naturally get more of that would naturally get more, you know late night monologues from colbert and you know kimmel that that skew um liberal and When I make a point of watching some fox stuff Just because I want to know, you know, what what's being said um The thing I mentioned in the chat was that there are there are, you know, little Little non-representative truths seized on more often for outrage purposes It happens a little more often on fox than it does on msnbc, but msnbc does it too Holding up, you know this thing that happened You know with outrage Just the surety of that and the other thing that happens With with youtube when i'm watching that fox stuff is I get pushed toward The smug certainty of you know a ben Shapiro video or a um, I mean, you know, it's it's like the they want The the the way the algorithms are constructed is like, oh You think this not very well made point is interesting. Let me show you somebody who Who's more likely to be persuasive who speaks better In that same mindset and I mean, I think that's really interesting and I think it pushes us out of the The centered I mean, I would say I have stone Style skepticism. I don't know how skeptical. I mean, I have stone didn't live in a time where he had to be skeptical of people who were far to the left of him, but The Centered and I don't mean politically centered though it ends up being politically politically centered centered skepticism about anything anybody is saying And happily living in a world where we have to triangulate to find the truth just the way we would if we were In the wild, you know, I mean it's just like Oh, this indicator says, you know It's getting The weather is going this way, but then this indicator says that how do I like figure out Which route I should take and let me get to some higher ground whatever it is, you know You got to triangulate to figure out what's real. It's not black and white And the way that the attention economy works Is pushing us toward more extreme positions of certainty and I don't I don't think that that is I don't think that's so much in our nature as it is Something that we're being nurtured toward And it sucks first off grace, I I really don't want to cause you any suffering And i'm sorry if i've contributed to that for you so that We're all being manipulated I get that We're all living with very very partial information, which is what humans always do But now in a very complex world With some very powerful big actors You know, I mean people are starting one of the things that i'm noticing in in the feeds that I see Is Is a Is a rising resentment about billionaires And the power they hold and I like like See how Bezos plays the wash and then posts better than I like plays twitter, but I don't like That there are these single guys That it's enormous power and all includes gg ping in that and prudent and others and you know, and it's uh This is a cybernetic as well as a political perspective Ross ashby's law of requisite variety back from whenever that was tells me that you know You can't manage complexity with very narrow bandwidth. You just can't you know, and the and the guy at the top who knows Nothing from the field is making all the decisions and it's a dangerous dangerous situation Whether it's capitalists or competence or fascists, whoever's doing that And end of that round He's the other thing I was going to say on this Um, I I don't mean to be holding you to a higher standard, but you said early on That there was a blackout Of the lab leak hypothesis. I said in my experience. There wasn't I've seen lots of stuff about it You then said there was a year In which there was nothing and I said, can you tell me when? So I don't think that's holding you to a higher standard. I think it's asking you to be clear About your assertion when my lived experience is very different than yours So we have a difference in perception and the only way to get past that is to say let's kind of look behind Uh, what our perceptions are how we form them see what we can learn from that um The new york magazine article you you posted is is helpful um And it tells a slightly different story. I don't read that as a story of blackout, but as a story of uh, you know Self-referential media bias and the mainstream moving into pretty quick lockstep In what was a very terrifying time when people were eager to get quick answers to things and yeah, and uh, Should they have done it that way? Maybe not But it's you know, it's it's it's a bit of a different nuance than where we started and that was helpful to have that I apologize. Um You know for not choosing my world's words more carefully at that time. There were a lot of scientists who are losing their jobs over over stepping out of line And the same was true for like the great barrington declaration And scientists and doctors. There's actually a case. I think it's in the louis Louisiana state A court now about collusion between the federal government and facebook to censor certain materials And people who are losing their jobs over this and saying that they thought lockdowns were a bad idea and and and the fact that there were hundreds of medical professionals and academics who thought that was Not covered. I'll call it not covered well and um, and apparently it appears that there was correspondence between facebook and the biden administration about What would be okay for facebook to publish? Uh, which apparently is is unconstitutional Well, that would that would suck if that's what happened. Um, I'll I'll also just note for the record that Trump kicked a lot of butt of the cc early on and prevented them from acting like scientists early on And you know and they may have just may have you know done serious permanent damage to the cc And and and even trump's behavior at the beginning of his administration and how he spoke about the press And didn't let them into press meetings. I mean these things are really serious um These are all serious Strikes against free speech and then even something like having trump banned from twitter Sends a message to every world leader of every country About who's in power That's not a good thing Even if it was the right move it doesn't send a good message about who gets to decide These are all very strange and I think that's my concern But also it is like and I appreciate like This conversation right like I appreciate being able to say hey, I feel Uncomfortable and I appreciate our ability to apologize to each other. I think that's what brings the conversation forward And creates this ability to say oh wait a second I didn't mean to Yeah, get anybody upset here Yeah, steward I want to say one other thing before steward. Yeah I'm a free speech fundamentalist Um, I'm you know That's where that's where I start And there is no fire Which is what trump did And trump and trump is a mob boss heads a mob family Um, you know lives for a living Should he have the same access that you have? Given the damage It's a pretty difficult question and I I lean toward the side of well, no in extreme cases And a public health emergency is one This war is another kind of extreme case or extreme cases where freedom And it sucks and it's dangerous And it should be very very But that's part of what we have to grapple with I'm steward. Thank you for letting me rant ahead of you I'll stop And I would agree with that and at the same time it's like but who decides right go ahead steward No, no worries So it's really interesting that we're all trying to make sense out of an insane world And and and that's you know, that's kind of just just what we're trying to do here And most of us have a similar Perspective, you know, no doubt most of us were probably excited when the soviet union fell apart We all thought yay Liberal democracy is going to rain and we're going to have a world that makes sense going forward and there won't be You know strongmen just exerting their power or strong people or whatever and you know, here we are 30 years later and you know All the authoritarian power hungry forces are showing up in both political and also in In media ways today And I find myself just you know More and more not no longer able to to to to kind of take it all so seriously Just I just you know, I can't because because you know Um Great example, okay, joe biden Down home joe biden from scranton pennsylvania with all of his pro union stuff. What did he just do? He championed legislation To avert a Strike Against you know the freedom of unions to do what unions do just at a time when when I think union activity is becoming more and more important because the amazing Distance between people at the top of the economic Pyramid and those at the bottom and the fact that real real wages haven't changed since the 1970s so I just I I I find myself more and more not getting exercised Over too many things. I just wanted to throw that out into the Into the mix and also something that I put on chat but just before I left and came back and that was that you know truth You know The truths that we see are so much a function of the belief systems That we have and the belief system we have generated by the You know the lives that we've lived in the foundational backgrounds and the unconscious programming that we're all Subject to imagine if we had a few people on this call that were raised in the ghetto How they would be responding to what we were all saying and and how their perspectives would be so extremely different i.e. There's a way in which We all take media and politics that with some degree of seriousness And people would would would just have a completely different Perspective on that so There's my little rant Go ahead stacey and maybe like could you just start a round of checkouts? yeah, i'm glad steward brought up the word truth because When i've been bringing it up over the past four years i'm always led into this well, what is truth and my point is A person's truth needs to be Through with like all of their truths need to line up for them their own truths So for example this person or bod or whatever that i was talking to His truths weren't even in alignment with what he was saying and for me. That's where we need to focus Because that's How we and I am going to generalize Our job is to catch our own hypotheses and at least if we can focus on Am I being truthful within me and we learn to reflect that and help each other? That's a starting point I and I don't know if any of you have watched the vow on um HBO max it's the story of Have you because I really like to have a call about this because I think it touches on a lot of this very quickly It's um executive. What was it? Yes a executive success program It was that organization which which turned out to Be a cult, but I don't believe it started that way Actually when I first started watching the sessions. I looked it up. I was like, I wonder if this is related to landmark I mean, there were a lot of things that were very there's a lot of truth in that the techniques I Resonated with a lot of them But the red flags are there So if anybody wants to if anybody wants to watch it and have a conversation about it It ties into this because somewhere along the way We stop thinking And I'm more concerned in how do we how do we constantly make sure we're thinking Going through race's original question about we're reading the source that we believe How do we make sure we're still questioning that source that we still believe? And to me, that's where everything starts. So that's my checkout because I actually was able to Talk about the two things that have been on my mind So, thank you Julian would you like to do a check in and check out? What's the checkout Say to wrap up because we're we're coming towards the end. Ah, okay. Well, Eric just replied to me in the chat and I was going to point out. Yeah, been eroded, but that's because When they made the constitution that relied on men of honor, right? And we don't have any of those in our government anymore Men with no honor don't honor the checks and balances that were built into the constitution And that's why I say it wasn't a rigorous protection mechanism Uh, let's see In terms of check in, uh I'm still I was in europe for a few weeks and then I got back and catching up on things And preparing for the next trip, uh, because I have to have a solid proposal to get together Which involves knowledge. Well, what I've been talking about for the last few years, which is knowledge management using experiential technologies based on cognitive science right Is my audio dead? I don't hear anything We could hear you good. I think you stopped speaking and so I was thinking you were ready for us to pass it to the next person Maybe you want to just pass it to the next person when you're complete Well, it was such a dead silence that I didn't think I overwhelmed everybody so much. They couldn't think of anything to say Actually, it's grace grace. It's your mic that is spotty When you start speaking it's often Very very quiet for the rest of us I have noticed that to the call Oh, right. Well, yeah earlier would have been a better time to tell me No, I mean I just put it together that okay, okay Cool, you know, we picked in it just there's sort of a delay when you lean in like that. It's fine Okay So Michael, right Julian, did you have something else to say or no? Okay, Michael, do you want to check out since you were speaking? Sure, um, I'm glad we're having this conversation. I feel like um You know the the the lust for confirmation The confirmation bias that we all have that says um I don't know. I I've noticed lately that As there's um are there are protests in china against repressive You know anti anti-covid mandates, you know that involve I mean, it's just a repressive situation up there, which is much easier for Western liberals to see as right When it's not very different from what some on the right here We're doing but you know That's a repressive regime and so we don't really We don't talk about it the same way. We're more accepting of it and That's just an example of You know, there are places. I mean it also relates to When a mass shooting fits a script that that Makes it really easy to say gun control would have done something about this or when the shooter is a white racist instead of You know a person of color It gets it gets handled different ways in our heads because of our own confirmation biases And i'm willing to question that and just wish that we all were a little bit more It would be a better skeptical place to come for it doesn't change my political views, but I'm I'm just Noticing all the time that I have a hard time With this with self-righteousness on on either side even if I Feel like the people who are have my political point of view are more correct Um, the self-righteousness doesn't help the argument. That's my check out Yeah, I love what you said about the chinese the riots in china and I remember the january 6th riots There was somebody's paper. I think it was in europe. It might have been the new york times though But that wrote about them using the exact same facts, but as if it had been an african country what we would have written And it was very revealing Yeah Who else would like anybody else want to do check out eric stewart gale gale Yeah, um I'm I'm a big fan of skepticism and curiosity That's sort of how I approach this conversation and that includes skepticism about my own beliefs Because I don't I don't always agree with myself Um I'm Um, I think truth is a really difficult word Uh, we use it very casually. Um, but um, you know, there is no truth in science. There's hypotheses Um There's there's a line of that new york magazine article that talked about the false hypothesis Well, there's some false hypothesis or hypotheses are tested. We learn we revise and there's no truth in politics You know, there's there's opinions and judgments exercise and they succeed and they fail and they please people and piss people off There's no answer Um And I'm really wary of both sideism I'm saying that because the world is messy and people screw up to therefore everything's the same and everything's bad and julian with respect, you know, I I like what you said about the constitution and people of honor And when you know when the signers of the declaration pledge their lives their trust their sacred honor They were really serious about that and you know to look at what happened to those signers so there's there's a lot of the history of those of those men who signed that thing And they and their family suffered pretty heavily for their commitment to their beliefs and so To say nobody in government has any sense of honor or commitment to the constitution anymore To me is a pretty broad overstatement Because for all I disagree with joe biden and well the democrats and congress and so forth Looks pretty different to me than how mr. Trump it has folks What with the constitution? so i'm I'm you know very much for criticizing both sides all sides as necessary, but I'm really wary of false of the of the of the everybody does it everything's the same perspective. So I think that loses us The insight that we really need in these times and yeah Definitely gill I would say that pigeonholing is something people love to do and is almost always inappropriate You know, are you left or you right? Are you blue? Are you red and all that? It's like no just about every issue we talk about is a continuum You don't get to say it's this or this and only those two possibilities Yeah, one thing I wanted to disagree with you about And it's complicated, you know Michael talked about biden and the rail strike. I mean, yeah I agree with what you said and you know 600,000 people out of work across the country with this problem, you know, it's like it's None of us would like to be president You know Because you get to make really difficult decisions every day and you will screw up and you will piss people off and just like Even even at the very best Yeah, truly. I'm sorry. You're gonna go on Oh, there were two things that was gonna say there are circumstances where it's possible to say this is wrong And this is right for example the theory of relativity This is not a discussion item theory of gravity is also not a discussion item And then the other thing is that yeah, not everybody in politics has become Lux men of honor not everybody but enough key people and key positions Like that so sense of honor that it creates lots and lots of problems Yeah So does anyone want to say something just to wrap it up? I liked what what eric said in the chat. That was great Does anybody want to fight with me about the theory of relativity? So Oh, I totally do but I don't think that it matters I'll just know that there's a serious relativity and a law of gravity. So we'll pick it up I think like the theory of relativity after gila had his talk in the context of the talk about moral relativism You know, I thought that was a really great thing to bring up. But yeah, eric, do you want to wrap up or I'll just share a quip in the little quip that's popping up in my mind is that Trying to make sense is nonsense That's a perfect perfect wrap that's a great piece of a poetic I think all right I'll just I'll just spin that a little bit eric and it's there's there's no sense in trying to make sense Okay Well, thank you everybody. Thanks for a great conversation as usual. Thank you. Thank you. Thanks grace. Thanks for taking some fire And dish it out and I can take it Bye guys. Bye everybody