Distractible - Humanity Is Bad

Episode Date: December 13, 2021

Bob challenges Mark and Wade to prove that humanity is ultimately good. It doesn’t go too well… Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Good evening, gentle listener, and welcome to Distractible, a Wood Elf production with your hosts, Warlike Wade, Malefic Mark, and Barbaric Bob. This week, the rebel raconteurs pull back the curtain on the hidden horrors in your own homes. Yes, it's time for Humanity is Bad. Please prepare for the augmentation of thy free-floating guilt and enjoy. Hello. What's up y'all? Oh not much. I'm good. You're there with me? Hi. Okay good. Oh yeah. If you don't know by now it doesn't really matter but I'll tell you how this works. This is a podcast where we talk about anything we want. The host

is technically in charge of what we talk about and for some reason there's points. To this day I have not figured out what the system for the points is. It's arbitrary. It's meaningless. What's that thing Drew Carey always said? Show where the points are made up and nope. The show don't matter. Everything's made up and the points don't matter. Yeah that's the one. It's meaningless. What's that thing Drew Carey always said? Show where the points are made up and... Show don't matter.

Everything's made up and the points don't matter. Yeah, that's the one. That's this. We are the whose lines anyway of podcasts. Except it's not necessarily funny. But maybe it's funny. It's better. God, you're really selling this podcast here.

Hey, they're already listening. What do we usually do next? Small talk. Right. right small talk look at the script here i don't know what it's like to be a human so i'm trying to make sure i include all of the requisite parts of this but i live in my office i play video games most of the time i'm an adult what do you guys do with your time video games i uh you know make videos trying to learn korean doing all kinds of self-improvement stuff uh generally being chewing your food yeah i have been chewing my food it has fundamentally changed my life and i am more depressed the more i think

about it damn i have a bombshell of a topic that you're about to have to scramble to make conversation about the topics that i bring are never that good i hope it's eggs what you said scramble and i'm really talking about eggs i'm hungry it's like lunchtime it's like the afternoon for you bro eggs are breakfast or dinner the other thing is breakfast for lunch that's not a thing but brunch that's breakfast and lunch not breakfast or lunch go on i don't even i didn't fine you can have breakfast for lunch yes freaking weirdo okay today's topic are you ready i'm ready are you ready i'm i'm ready it's a real ripper i hate humanity whoa all right people are bad people are selfish people are rude cruel to each other oh wow i don't like it and my challenge to you is to change my mind oh god what if i agree yeah what if we agree

would you like the inspiration for this maybe that will make it a little more clear we've all seen on social media on on reddit their entire subreddits of this, on TikTok, on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, wherever you might look. If you scroll long enough, you'll come across a video. I'll play one out for you because I feel like a lot of people have seen this. There's a very fancy car parked next to the curb and there's an older person standing next to the car

looking kind of tired. It's nighttime, it's the end of a long day. This older person looks like they're exhausted, run down. It's been a hard day. They're sweeping up the trash, presumably in front of their store or their place where they work or whatever, right? Try to finish and go home, get some rest. And as they're standing here, you know, sweeping up things, trying to finish the day's work, the nice car, the window rolls down and a plastic bottle flies out and the person sweeps it up. And then a napkin flies out. Person sweeps it up. Eventually some other way too muscular,

wealthy looking dude emerges in the back of the frame, sees what's happening, walks up to the car, takes the thing of trash that the person has been scooping, sweeping off the sidewalk, dumps it in the window of the fancy car. The guy in the fancy car is outraged, tries to get out. The big buff rescue man slams the door back shut, points at him, fade to black, text reads, there is some good in humanity. I don't believe it. I've seen that video too many times, clearly staged, clearly fake. I challenge you to scour either your own minds or the internet itself to convince me that people aren't terrible, selfish, unsalvageable nightmares that are just bad all around for each other and for the environment and everything.

Okay. That's my challenge. I am going to take it a step further and then I'm going to go even a step further beyond that because I'm already going to assume that humanity has no hope and we are removed from the equation what is the next animal to evolve into a bipedal big-brained creature that deserves to take over the earth horny toad he just had that ready to go horny toad yeah what do you think horny means in this context yeah i was about to ask that. Covered in horns? Can't get it. Spiky protrusions? All right. Likes to fuck? Ah, there it is.

There it is. This is like a dictionary definition of horny. Covered in horns, spiky protrusions, likes to fuck? It probably is in there. You know, there's like italics and bold. There's a special font that exists in the dictionary that you have to read it in that voice. Covered in in horns you know pointy pointy extruders likes to fuck yeah it's like underlined italics bold that's how you have

to read that the first person that found the horny toad he was writing down and doth i found this strange frog had horns love to fuck incredible creature will procure a sample i like to think that it was the same thing, but he actually changed his complete demeanor. It was covered in horns. Seems to be quick on the move. Eats its prey with its tongue. Likes to fuck!

What happened to me? Wasn't prepared for that. This is all in the book, of course, you know. It's written down a little. Likes to fuck! Seemed to have been possessed by a demon. What the hell came over me? This is somehow 100% conveyed through text only.

Seems to have some kind of psychedelic excretion from the surface of his skin. Loves the peen. Goes from using his index finger and his thumb holding the pencil, just like holding it in his whole hand and just writing. It becomes crayon somehow. Likes to fuck. L likes to fuck lies to fuck sure anyway i was gonna go a different direction than that because i actually was having a conversation with amy kind of about this where uh we were talking about how like humans are

kind of messed up in that we have an upper limit of how big our brain can be uh because of how big vaginas are in general and this is connected this is connected this is connected wade this is connected trust me talk to you wade it's connected you had me at vaginas all right cool because you can only birth a baby of such size head before it just doesn't work or kills the baby or kills you you know what i mean you were born i was born and i was i was got him oh i would you have a good point i was at the upper limit no i'm i was just back in cincinnati and my mom every time i come back home tells me the story of how i was born no i'm not joking pants down and it's like you see this let's get in here compare this look at

this photo mark look what you did to me. No, no, no, no No, I but this time I got a very detailed explanation of how I a 10 pound 3 ounce baby Almost killed her with the size of my head and there's an upper limit But I was also talking about this, you know kind of kangaroos got the right idea I don't know if it's all marsupials in general But kangaroos got the right idea because when they have a baby and kangaroos are scary and muscular and weirdly already bipedal. Oh, yeah, we saw them up close and personal. Yeah, but they have a pouch, right?

So they don't give birth to a big old baby. They give quote unquote birth to a small baby that crawls into the pouch and then continues to grow from there. Whereas the head size, you getting me doesn't really have the same upper limit it's like you can raise a baby uh and like when you think about it the whole pouch system like it's always with the mother it frees up the mother's hands you know what if what if if humanity dies out and then another few million years kangaroos take over the world and then suddenly there's an even bigger upper limit to what the brain could be because there's no risk of uh babies dying you know what i mean i'm gonna take what you got a step further okay even further go what if we intentionally start having babies

at like six months and then we just have like a surrogate kangaroo and we put the baby in there for three more months and then we take it back out and raise it okay yeah it's nature's incubation chamber that's not like a solution for people with means i just imagine a neighborhood of high society types you just see how much could a kangaroo cost how much could a kangaroo possibly cost google how much is kangaroo okay yes two thousand dollars females go for three thousand it costs more to just have a baby in general these days you can save all that money at the hospital with the prenatal whatnot get rid of your car kangaroo there are other questions what do kangaroos eat we've hand fed them they eat those weird seed ball things they give you at the desk grass leaves okay well we got a lot of grass and

leaves yeah okay i'll give that to you we americans were obsessed with like grass so you just can't live in california where there's fires you gotta live in a place with some greenery how many kangaroo murders per year less than people murders that we live with those next door oh well that's not what i was looking for over the past 20 years 90 million kangaroos and wallabies have been lawfully killed for commercial purposes oh god no that's not what i was trying to google that's a lot of babies that we could have had that's another point to the whole humans being terrible oh yeah no you guys are really driving it down just be rescuing my opinion of humanity well i mean there's no reason we kind of jump ship from there yeah we don't want to lie to you bob

okay no only 18 deaths from kangaroo, at least in 2015. 18. That's not a lot. No, my neighbors killed more than that in the last week. Yeah. Okay, but that's excluding the idea that we're handing easily damageable human babies over to these kangaroos. That creates a lot of opportunity for mishaps and murders.

You know how you can get probably a good kangaroo cosplay on etsy just dress up the baby the fetus whatever and the kangaroo cosplay put it in the pouch kangaroo treat it like its own okay let's say i accept let's say i accept the kangaroo premise okay is kangaroo society better than human society i mean are they are they better to the earth are they better to each other what does this look like the ecological impact of kangaroos i'm not 100 sure but i i'm willing to guess our coal power plants is a little more damaging than kangaroo society i have heard that kangaroos are assholes but also humans are assholes so what are we really comparing them to if we compare them based on if they are to elevate to a human level then i'd say kangaroos are nowhere near the assholes that humans are you know what i

mean yeah i wonder if marsupials in general because it's not just kangaroos that have patches i think is it the definition i think that's the thing about marsupials yeah they have pouches that kind of idea what's another marsupial isn't a kangaroo uh what are those things called koalas are marsupials aren't they yeah are they yeah okay oh yeah aren't they yeah 100 maybe i don't know we had to leave before we get to see the koalas when we were in australia uh possums are apparently marsupials interesting bandicoots are marsupials i thought that was a video game character crash is a protagonist see the tasmanian devil is a marsupial oh he spits a lot love it dude this is a cool group of animals yeah it, it's pretty cool. They got some cool guys in there.

Marsupials should rule the world. That's pretty cool. That's not bad. I tried to look up what a group of kangaroos is called, and I put like a kangaroo pack, and it turns out all I got was a picture of a can of kangaroo meat. A group of kangaroos is called a f*** of kangaroos. Oh, I saw a mob, a herd, or a troop, but a f*** works.

Kangaroos love to f***. I still call them a f*** of kangaroos oh I saw a mob a herd or a troop but a fuck works kangaroos love to fuck I shall call them a fuck of kangaroos someone just said like holy shit that's a fuck ton of kangaroos and someone was like ah I see ah the kangaroo has a pouch raises its child Reginald what shall we call it when a when a group of kangaroos approach all as one that's a fuck of kangaroos it's a fuck of them so wise all right so not raising my opinion of humanity maybe giving me hope for earth maybe humans will kill ourselves off soon enough that the kangaroo society will have a chance to flourish before the heat death of our solar system i don't know the sun we will be the first species to bring

about our own extinction event it's gonna be great oh wait so i didn't what did huh i think way just said we're gonna be the first species to create our own extinction event oh my god yes absolutely oh yeah that's it humanity can go one two ways. Like we'll we'll kill ourselves long before anything else kills us. And that includes like us, you know, changing environments that we can no longer live in and whatnot. But also just like we have the capability to do it in more than one way, which is terrifying to be able to do it in one way is scary. But to be able to do it in so many different ways is even scarier.

That's going to happen. I'm going to predict the end. All right. I asked for this in a previous podcast episode and you had... I'm listening, Wade. All right. So we all think it's going to be like global warming

or overpopulation. No, here's what it's going to be. Our exploration of space is going to lead us to have some kind of ego and overconfidence. And our solution to global warming and everything else is going to be, well, what if we just

move the earth a little bit further away from the sun and we're going to find a way to tether to earth, the different rockets, and they're going to start to pull us away from the sun a little bit. And then we're just going to keep going and we're going to go past Pluto and Jupiter in that order. Cause that's how planets work. Shut up. And we'll all die.

All right. That's, that's great. And interesting. Would have loved to have that in the previous bunghast episode. Well, you're good to know. Can I probe this a little? Probe me, daddy. Why at any point in the presumably years, decades, centuries that this adjustment might

take place over? Why don't we turn off the jets or disconnect them or something? Eh, foresight. Eh, we kind of lose that over time. Yeah, I guess. I believe you. All right. But back on the topic of like humans being terrible are you

looking are you actually looking for us to convince you against the idea that i mean i'm not optimistic that you can change my opinion yeah but i would love it if you could i just want to know like for the winning of this episode is it essential that we change your mind is that what the basis of the winner is going to be uh that's an aspect of it okay it's an aspect you will get points you will get substantial points if you do change my opinion okay but there are other ways to get points all right i have clearly laid out and will not tell you okay okay okay sounds good all right well if i'm going to look at humanity optimistically i would say we are in a rough transition period right now because the adjustment of humanity is moving from smaller groups or countries and whatever have you to a major globalization right like we're adjusting to

being able to talk to people across the planet at any given moment not just like hearing about them in a school like oh there's this country called korea well you know so on and so forth we can actually just literally log online interact interact with people from Korea. We can fly a plane, you know, so on and so forth. And I think it's a big adjustment. I think people and obviously mindsets are not easily changed immediately. I think there is a huge wave of adaptation. We've seen a lot of changes in the last couple of years, right?

Where bad people in different companies have been called out for doing bad things, sexism, racism racism so on and so forth that is getting cleaned up a bit it's really negative and unnerving to see how many bad people there have been and what they've gotten away with but i think that for younger minds seeing that kind of negativity called out and actually held accountable is good it's a change it's something that we haven't seen we kind of always had i don't know there's this mindset of like whatever good people finish nice guys finish last had the, I don't know, there's this mindset of like, eh, whatever, good people finish, nice guys finish last, and the evil will persevere because no one's going to do that.

Who's going to stop them? But that's not staying true anymore. People that fuck up are being called out for it, and stuff's actually adapting to it. And I think that even though the overall headlines, there's a lot of negativity that we focus on, I do think that's a relatively small aspect of humanity itself. There are a lot of good things that come out of it. Not to toot our horns, but a little bit of a...

Content creators, there's a lot of great content creators out there, not just for entertainment purposes, but the amount of charities that have been highlighted, the amount of people that have been going through a tough time and have found content creators to be an outlet. I mean, I have used it as an outlet to help like deal with stress or stressful times. There are days where I don't have motivation to do anything. It's like, man, what am I gonna do just to get through today? I don't feel like playing a game. I don't feel like talking to anybody. I don't feel like doing a thing. And I'll find something to watch someone to watch that either just gives me a distraction or makes me laugh, so on and so forth. I think there are so many positive changes and innovations coming in science and medicine, so on and so forth

that we can probably figure this whole thing out if we stay on course and the few bad apples out there don't overwhelm the amount of positive waves coming through and that's just the stuff off the top of my head this without doing any real research into this just me looking at things from a realistic standpoint because i don't consider myself optimistic or pessimistic i consider myself pretty real and how i approach things and think about things and i too get caught into the dwelling of seeing the negativity of humanity i've got a lot of people and that i've grown up around and know that uh really make it hard to be optimistic in humanity but from a realistic perspective i think it's relatively balanced however i think

there's a lot more good than bad it's just bad gets the headline sensationalism gets the headlines. What do people want to click on the link where it's like 35th person today adopts puppy the great stories here about you know, the occasional heartwarming story about that. It's like okay, but this is the 35th one that happened today or one guy I don't know eats own foot then shits out full skeleton of velociraptor and it's like what a fucking idiot. That's the story that we're going to read about and it's those stupid failures or criminals or murders those the sensational things we end up seeing about and i think that affects our mindset and puts us into the perspective of humanity sucks because we ignore all of the good because that's just another common thing it's not worth the headline that was very large scale i'm talking about bob the neighbor or like ralph the clerk like you want a specific

person okay listen you want to know what jade's me i don't really put a lot of uh value into like news headlines i read news sources that i find to be accurate to like keep up with things that are happening i like i think i'm above it but i'm sure i'm not things affect me and i'm sure that my like you're talking about my perception is skewed by what people focus on in order to drive clicks and views and stuff. But what really, really, really jades me is in the everyday world, if I go on a trip to the grocery store in a two hour trip where I'm driving to the grocery store, grocery shop and get home, I will see people cut each other off dangerously on the roads in cars. I will see people ignore each other off dangerously on the roads in cars i will see people ignore each other do little rude slights i will see all this stuff where it's like people aren't being evil they're

just being rude they're clearly the same thing though is what i just said to a smaller scale you're no no i'm not to my point yet okay i'm not done all right people are being rude i see all this right and i think to myself like i try and be a nice person like i do my best i can't control what other people do it affects my opinion of them maybe if i know who they are as personally but i try and be a nice person but i do that same shit no matter how hard i try no matter how much i look at a situation and i'm like oh i would have done it differently i'm a much more empathetic person i would never never do that. Yeah, I have and would. I cut people off all the time when I'm driving, probably accidentally or unknowingly because it's, you know, not affecting me. I just really needed to make that exit on the highway or whatever.

I probably, you know, do things in public where I push past someone without thinking. And that person was like, wow, rude. What the hell? We're all going to the same place, buddy. I am those people. I don't know if everyone thinks this, but what jades me is I feel like I look around and I'm like, people can be so mean and petty and rude and small minded. And even worse, people can be so bigoted and hateful towards each other. But I'm not like that. But I am. I don't think I'm like a bigot or a closet, you know, like racist or something.

I really do try to be a good person, but all that stuff that I see in humanity that makes me like question people and feel bad about us as a, as a society, we all do all that same shit. Everyone likes to think they're the hero of their own story. And I think to some people, you probably are the hero to yourself, depending on how self-interested and aware you are. I'm sure you're the hero of your story. You're the protagonist in every situation, but in everyone else's story i'm definitely the antagonist i've been the asshole i've been the rude idiot who's being ignorant or displaying how how much i don't care about them everyone is like that if even i'm like that and i try and be a good person everyone is like that that's what jades me yeah am i a bad person no like i don't think i'm like

a bad person you know in the deep like big state but like i'm a bad person i'm an asshole all the time in everyday life i do stuff all the time is this yeah no you're right is this whole podcast just us to try to help you love yourself bob maybe maybe yeah i tried to help with humanity and you're like no no no no i no, no, no. I suck. Is this to try to tell you how good of a person you are? I mean, that might be worth points. I'm not promising anything, but. Because you are.

You're such a good person. You're such a good person. You're such a good person. Oh, who's a good person? Bob is. Bob's a good person. You're a good person. Oh yes, you are.

You're the best. You're the best person. You're so good. How's that make you feel? best you're the best person you're so good how's that make you feel do you feel better bob you feel better bob no i don't like that at all oh well you must be a bad person that's a bad bob that's a bad person you're bad you're bad you're so bad is that better kind of that at least feels more accurate okay all right let's see well i don't know what you want then i guess I'm curious how you feel about that. About me in general, you know. I mean, so Wade talked about on the macro, right? So I'm looking at the micro scale on a daily basis. That's how I feel. I feel I question my own motives. Am I selfish? Am I good?

Am I bad? Do you guys do that? Am I insane? I mean, I do, but mine comes down to internally. I am very selfish, but I think we all are. I think that the difference comes in actions. I think every decision I want to make, the first thing I always think of is me. What do I want? What do I want to eat? What do I want to do? What do, you know, me, me, me, me, me.

But my decision-making contradicts that a lot. Sometimes what I want to do is X, but I'm like, well, I've not talked to this person in a while, so I'll do Y today, hang out with them. I know they want to do this and make their day So I'll do Y today, hang out with them. I know they want to do this and make their day feel better. They've been going through a rough time or really got to make that phone call. I can only get health insurance renewed, you know, between this time and this time. So I guess I might as well do this today and make sure Molly

and I are covered in case something goes on. There's always the me aspect. And then there's the overcoming that selfish inclination to do what either what I need to do or do what I think is right. Or, you know, I don't want to let this person in. I've been driving on the highway. I've been waiting in this lane going 60 miles in a 65 for the past two minutes. I don't want this person getting in front of me. They should have gotten in when they could. But I'll let them in anyway, because, you know, if that was me, I want someone to let me in. So, all right, here you go. And the inclination, the thought is usually selfish or self-serving at the very least i can be bitter and petty and stuff but in action i generally think i do the right thing i'm sure there are

times where i have to like i'm like oh fuck i forgot to get over i need to go sorry person sorry gotta get in front of you whoops my bad i think i think these are like such like too small scale there's such innocuous things because all those can come down to just an accident i think the real test is like you have imagine you're in a room and you don't know the other two people in there you're in the room there's three people the room you include there's a total of three there's two and plus one you are the one they're the two got it let me get this correct there's three people yeah there's three people in the room not one not one not two but three you are one of those three four is much too many is not in the room. Not one. Not one. Not two. Not two. But three. You are one of those three. Four is much too many. Four is not in the room. The correct number we shall count to will be three.

Got it. So you don't know these other two. You don't know how you got there. There's one guy that gives you a gun and tells you to shoot the other person or he will shoot you. Now like that's an interesting dilemma because like you shoot the person who gave you the gun and try to rescue it. Like do you know who the person is? Now what if he offers you a million dollars to shoot that other person that you don't know like would that change your opinion like these are the indications of like morally good i think there's even like isn't there like a morality test not just like an internet like cosmopolitan test but there's like an actual like scientific moral ethic test or at least there probably should be considering their like morals and ethics classes but just like is that inherently part of the human

experience is trained is it like taught is it from previous experiences you have certain biases towards certain actions and if so if a million dollars won't convince you to shoot that person is there a number that would convince you to shoot that person kind of the whole concept of squid game spoilers maybe scrub that out in case people haven't watched it i haven't watched it bleep it all out bleep all of it out i don't think that's a spoiler that comes out in like the first uh second episode i don't know that's like a premise of the show yeah yeah but just like the concept of like okay like the idea of being a good or bad person can't be boiled down to oh did you put your shopping cart away you know or did you let someone in in traffic it's like i don't think that's a

qualification for a good person because it's not a severe enough test right you gotta get down to the nitty-gritty you gotta break people down well i think it's more of an additive i think doing a lot of small good things adds up over time it's not one individual action it's doing a lot of good over time now your example i think comes down to what was the inherent motivation? If it's survival, then it depends if your survival instinct is higher than like your inclination to not kill. Because in your example, you don't know what the result is. If it's money, sure you do.

If it's like, hey, I'll give you a million bucks to shoot this person. You know, you're getting money for an act. If it comes down to like you're aiming a gun at a person to your left, they're aiming a gun at a person to their left and so on and so forth so ultimately there's a gun aimed at you and it's like and if you're told like if you don't shoot the person on your left the person on your right will shoot you uh yeah it's almost like the boat scene from the what was it batman the dark knight where like there's the two boats the boat of criminals and the boat of civilians they both have a detonator yeah yeah like if you think the other person's gonna blow you up if you don't blow them up then it's not

whether you're a good person it's whether you think like one you're gonna survive if you think the other person's going to blow you up, if you don't blow them up, then it's not whether you're a good person. It's whether you think like one, you're going to survive if you don't pull it. And two, is your life worth more than theirs? I guess is the question. That's a whole, there's a whole lot of different questions there. Yeah. Or do you think that they would actually do that to you? Do you think they're a bad person? It's kind of like the idea. If you are pessimistic about someone else's good intentions and you try to preempt them, does that make you a bad person? If you are a good person and they are a bad person they blow you up was your goodness worth anything you know because not only did you blow up you also lost the lives of all the people on your ship you are inherently responsible but i mean they are responsible

obviously because they did it but it's just like could that weigh on your conscience like these kinds of like situational things of good or bad are just like impossible to reconcile because it's like, it's like a fantastic scenario that none of us will ever be in. The most good or bad that we usually are in is, is someone like in need of help? And am I willing to help them? I think it's two different ways to look at it. I think that there's, can you still be good in an extreme situation versus do you overall just do good from your day-to-day life i guess what you're convincing me of is that i framed my question inaccurately because what yeah what you're talking about mark is like the absolute extreme case testing someone's morality and like

what order are your values in in order of you dying someone else dying the value of money or whatever reward thing like there's an order to your morality everyone values things you know theoretically differently if it was a sliding scale with an infinite number of positions probably no two people have exactly the same sliding settings on their sliders for their life others others lives, a child versus an adult, whatever. But like my, I guess my question is more like what I was getting at. And maybe it's too small for me to say humanity is bad. Is humanity is selfish. The extent to which you are an asshole in public and the things that I was talking about, the, the small things, the non, the non life and death, everyday things that happen where people are,

either are or are not considerate. I guess it has to do with selfishness. And not in like a bad way, like I think I'm the only one who deserves anything. I am selfish. I must, you know, I deserve it all. But like, if you are self-absorbed, self-centered, you're not spending a lot of time and energy

concerned about, is this rude? Am I about to do something that's going to inconvenience the people around me? You're concerned about like, I have to do X thing. I'm going to do it in the most efficient way possible for me because it's convenient for me to do it this way right now. And like, I don't even know if that's right or wrong. There are certainly situations where if someone is selfish and, you know, screws someone else over, hurts someone, denies someone access to something they need, medical, like, sure, there are cases where that's, I think, objectively wrong to have done that. But

is it wrong, I guess? Am I just judgy? Am I just a very empathetic, like outwardly focused person where I'm concerned about how I'm affecting other people? I don't want to be a burden. I don't want to be rude. Is that any more right or wrong than someone who is not concerned if they're rude or inconvenient for other people? They are doing what they need to do because they're a living, breathing person. They have legitimate interests. They're just doing, you know, legally, morally nothing wrong. They're just doing what they need to do going about their day. Is that a difference or is that just me? Am I just a judgy, judgy Jason over here? I mean, you see in others what you see in yourself. Kind of like, are you constantly weighing other people's against your own internal struggles? Because I imagine if everyone's thoughts were broadcast loudly out in the open, we would

not be able to sustain ourselves like as a society because like all the weird, like random bullshitty thoughts along with the self-doubt would be broadcast for everyone to hear. Oh God. Yeah. The horrible thoughts I have about you guys all the time. Yeah. Yeah. Wait for everyone to hear. Oh God, yeah. The horrible thoughts I have about you guys all the time. Yeah. Yeah. Wait for you to hear those.

This is a big philosophical question to me because my focus when I was in college in philosophy was morals and ethics. And the frustration that you all will have will be the same one that I had is that it depends is the answer. It depends on what moral theory you're applying to any given situation.

There are anywhere from like three to eight moral theories that depend on how you look at it. And they all approach things from a different way. Some moral theories, it's all about action and consequence more than intent. So like if you do bad, even if your intention is good or you didn't intend to do bad,

so you cut somebody off, right? And they freak out and they wreck their car. You didn't hit them, but the result of you getting in front of them was the wreck therefore what you did was bad what if your intent was good what if you uh were trying to race to get someone to the hospital and that happened you know it doesn't matter ultimately the result was something bad happened that is one application of moral theory one moral theory is all about intention if you're trying to do good if your intent is good then regardless of result good and then there's more complicated ones right there's utilitarianism which is the greater good

any decision is morally correct if more good comes out of it than bad if the other decision results in more bad happening overall then that is a immoral act so there's a guy strapped on the train on the left there's two people strapped to the train on the right the train's about to hit these two people well you pull the lever you kill one person to save the two lives that's utilitarianism very boiled down to simplicity there's kantian ethics there's so on and so forth there's so many different ways to look at moral decisions and moral theories and apply them to situations that good and bad is very dependent on your approach to the situation most moral theories would say murder is wrong you know

not saying like you know killing someone that might kill a million other people would be not not applying it to that just saying like killing in general with intent to murder someone is probably wrong most moral theories would agree to that but other things it depends i see a lot of different trolleys appearing we have trolley images you guys ever look at the trolley this is the trolley yeah literally uh the trolley problem is the funniest fucking thing i've ever god damn life the trolley one's so fascinating because there's another implication it's killing versus letting die uh which comes down to actually that's a lot more like euthanasia and stuff like some of that spins off of the trolley dilemma killing versus letting die if you actively kill

someone is it worse than letting them die and there's examples of things where it's like oh letting them die is wrong because it results in more suffering versus no killing is wrong because you're actively taking a life so on and so forth it's it's very interesting but so let's try to simplify this really quickly bob i know i'm not doing a good job of explaining any of these moral theories but it really just depends on how what your approach is and what you prioritize because no moral theory is i don't think fully accepted more than another they all end up being situational and a lot of law is based on morals but law is different than morals and ethics it has to be but whether you are good or bad depends on your approach what you did and whether you justify the results the intent so on and so forth and it's just such a complicated question and i cannot give you the answer you

want i am sorry what were you saying about the trolley mark yeah yeah i'm not disinterested in so on and so forth. And it's just such a complicated question and I cannot give you the answer you want. I am sorry. What were you saying about the trolley, Mark? Yeah, yeah. I'm not disinterested in what you said, Wade. I was just curious why Mark thought it was funny to kill people. No, no, no.

It's the trolley problem meme. Have you never explored trolley problem memes? I haven't, actually. I mean, I've seen like trolley problem political cartoons, but I haven't gone down it in a meme sense. I've not seen the meme you've never seen like trolley problem means like the one i just posted there like there's nothing

you do to save the people however the lever you stand next to controls the music playing from the boom box attached to the trolley if you pull it to your left it plays all-star by smash mouth but if you pull it to your right it plays any random anime song you can only pull it once and if you don't pull it it defaults to all-star you cannot kill yourself like that's the trolley problem or like the quantum trolley problem if you do not pull the lever the train will stray on track c if you pull the lever the train will either be on a or b until you observe the train you will not know the effect of pulling the lever and thus is it said to be in a superposition uh mickey's dick smasher. Mickey's dick smasher. Mickey's dick smasher. Mickey's dick- Mickey's dick smasher. Mickey's dick smasher! What?

Wasn't it like- is it like Goofy's vagina stretcher? I don't remember. Oh my god, what the hell is happening? Two roller coasters that collide into each other going down hills. A guy or girl stands here and gets their dick smashed between the two roller coasters. Okay. I think it was like Donald's vagina stretcher. It's like the opposite of Mickey's dick smasher. You have two trains that are like magnetically launched opposite directions.

And then just like... Please don't post the image of that one. I can't find it. Mark, what if you made me Google? I don't know, man. I don't know. What are you talking about? What's happening in here? What are you talking about? What are you talking about? Yeah, I just googled vagina smash and honestly the images are not what I expected. There's no Donald. There's no Donald. There's no Donald anywhere in here. I was told by my friend I'd find Donald in here.

This is just for China! There's some very happy guys here, but no Donald! Ah. Yeah, no, I just- Wait, I got another- I got another, uh, trolley problem. Hedonist trolley problem. The track is headed towards B. If you pull the lever, it'll switch to A, but it won't do the totally sick loop-de-loop. we'll switch day but it won't do the totally sick loop-de-loop yeah no i don't know who's hijacking it for stupid economy or political memes like that's not the point it's just like

anyway i feel like you explained how a person might justify whatever they believe but i don't know if that actually changed my mind at all. Well, yeah, I don't know that I can. I think I represent humanity and I still think I'm bad. Well, have you ever considered the idea of maybe you are? Are you just apathetic, Bob? Is it possible you're not bad? It's just apathy.

Do you intentionally cut people off with a thought like, ah, fuck you. I hope you almost crash as I get in front of you. Or is it more just like, oh shit, I need to get over. Or a lack of, I don't know, just situational awareness. I'm not saying you're not paying attention while driving, but like, you know, maybe your immediate thought at that moment isn't negative when you're cutting somebody off. Or are you traveling through life with a GTA style point score up in the top left corner of your vision and you have to fight the urge to collect as many points as possible. And

then when you see a new mother with a pram pushing across the crosswalk are you just like resisting the temptation for those glorious points and are you ignoring good things that you do are you simply dwelling on like a few negative things and you're like overall therefore that makes me bad because these situations happen and i did x whereas you're ignoring a lot of the things where it's like x was a selfish decision but you actually did y i guess my conclusion about it would be i have good intentions like there is zero percent of the time where i'm trying to be a nahole but even with that as my motivator i know there have been situations where regardless of what i meant what i did in someone else's you know experience what i did to them gave them the visceral reaction of, oh, look at this

asshole. Damn it. Look at this guy. And like, to me, I was just like, ooh, whoops, gotta do whatever. Gotta get over. I'm late. It was pure intentions. I don't think I'm a bad person at heart, but I guess I just, what's that quote? Everybody you meet is fighting a battle that you have no knowledge of, of which you have no knowledge. I don't know, something like that. Like you can never know the context of another person. And I guess I just see so many people being rude and experience myself so many times. I'll just, something will happen. And in my head, I'm like, Oh, why was that so rude? Like it probably wasn't right. It probably was someone who has had the same motivation as me of like, Oh, I'm late. I'm in a hurry. I really need this. I'm not trying to be rude. I just, you know, my child is sick, whatever. But I always think it's negative. And I think

everyone else always thinks it's negative. Like everyone, if you hear someone come home from work and they tell a story about like, Oh, this guy came in. It's never like, yeah, he was, he was so crazy. He was in a rush. He was like asking us if we could hurry up. And like, I just wonder what's going on with him. You know? Like, why is he so stressed out? I hope he's okay. Everyone is like, this guy came in and he would not be me alone he was rushing me he's like it's like he doesn't understand that it takes time to do my job that there are other customers like if everyone assumes the worst everyone just thinks everyone's terrible everyone thinks i'm terrible that i run into and i do the same thing i feel like there's a negative preconception about everything that you experience

in public when there's no logical reason for that well i think there might be i think intrinsically things that go right don't stick with this as much because there's nothing to gain from that whereas in the past you know survival instincts it's like something goes wrong or something is bad and it does stick out so we learn something from it we learn to either avoid that person or that creature or that situation or so on and so forth and it's just like that aspect of us hasn't evolved and changed. And so the negative sticks out to us and it sucks that it does. But you know, I mean, that's again,

why sensational headlines and stuff stick out. It's why I think back to working retail and a lot of the things I remember are the negative things. I have to like think about it. I'd be like, oh man, that was a really fun night. But the first couple of things I think of were that time that that guy

threatened me with a shotgun or that time that that kid threw all the shit on the floor. We had to clean it up or the time I had to clean up a horrible bloody mess in one of the bathrooms like a lot of the negative moments stand out to me and I don't think that's because I'm bad or you know this and that was bad I think that just negativity for some reason jumps out in our minds I think it's an instinctual thing that's hard to you know combat I've got an example that I think might convince you, Bob, of just by comparison of what is good and bad. Humans are bad, but I posit that monkeys are worse. Okay. I went to the zoo once and I was there with, you know, some friends and we were looking at the chimpanzees and we were

watching them and they were just like in their exhibit and they were having a good time. And then this one chimp came over to the window, looked us dead in the eye, kind of looked us up and down, left to right at each of us, reached down behind itself towards its buttocks, shot out a turd, brought it right up to its lip and popped that bad boy right in. And it made us watch. And I know it's probably happened, but I've never encountered that with a human. So in my personal experience, I think that humans can't be that bad because I haven't seen that i'm not saying it hasn't happened but there's worse there's probably much worse so by the the transitive property humanity can't be that bad and therefore you bob if you haven't put shit in your mouth in front of someone else and made them watch i'd say you're

doing all right taking mark's weird approach here looking at a statistic humans are responsible for 437 000 human deaths a year but there is something worse than humans it's not monkeys it's mosquitoes 750 000 deaths a year oh shit so i guess monkeys for mark mosquitoes for statistics dude i hate mosquitoes mosquitoes are the worst dude i know they don't do anything good well just spread diseases so uh i guess uh if we're gonna take the humanity sucks but there's worse out there approach then mosquitoes and monkeys there you go the m&ms of the world the transitive property always wins out you can always get to the bottom of something with the transitive property and you know what you get with humans monkeys and mosquitoes all right oh i see it's because the the first letter of the h m m this and you would read that

as hmm yeah it made me think of back in the day when we did the uh that creature in spore the the start at least you're a mosquito bob feel better about yourself now kind of i guess i guess i don't know i don't know what i thought was going to come of this got a little more serious than i thought but i think we've reached a conclusion you dropped me into moral theory don't take me to moral theory or else i have to i think we've reached a natural end point i think that's going to be it for today's discussion i'm going to pretend to tabulate some points we'll put a sound in that sounds like I'm tabulating things. This actually turned into a real squeaker. It started off, it started off kind of one-sided and then Wade- I know, I was pretty dominant. Wade really threw down a lot of philosophy stuff that made me think and almost made me not hate myself as much as I do. He didn't though. And

then Mark turned it around, the whole monkey situation. we had the nice discussion it's a real squeaker this is a real back of the book point that wade earned i think the winner is wade because he stole it with the never before used point by any of us actually putting knowledge you gained from education to use wade is formally educated in moral theory and philosophy that's a good point that's a good point classically trained and god damn it if you didn't use some of that probably misremembered knowledge today during the podcast i basically showed you the index that's all i was like here's the table of contents of philosophy moral theory that's all i did i have a lot of degree i took the foundation of moral and ethics,

that sort of thing. So I knew that, but I bet that was interesting to people who may not have heard of those things before. And if you found it interesting, you should look them up. Moral theory is very, very fascinating. Moral theory is exhausting, but fascinating. You never get a good answer. There's no such thing as a good answer. Prepare to be dissatisfied. True. But it's fascinating. But valiant effort, Mark. Thank you. You scored a lot of good points. Thank you. I really like you almost had it with the monkeys, but thank you Wade reached deep in the rule book pulled out the old educational application points So yeah, what do you have to say wait? You happy happy Victor? Yeah after today's episode I think what I have gained from this is a pay attention when you're driving you turn signal leave space

Don't be an and uh bug spray mosquitoes will kill us all that's a good point mosquitoes are dangerous man and i guess avoid monkeys if those around you are pretty dangerous too yeah psychologically there's a story of like i don't want to go into it right now but there's a story about someone who had a pet monkey that like ended up like just annihilating their friend and he was an orangutan i heard the monkey's name was it was like a it was like a monkey that was like famous i forgot i cannot remember all the details but this monkey was like famous and was like a town icon was in commercials and stuff and then like one day just like annihilated someone's face and stuff had to be put down it's really sad story makes me agree with

mark next time on distractible that monkey wade can't remember about listeners thank you so much for listening to this entire episode i hope we didn't scare you away from ever listening again i'm sorry i brought up i don't know whatever i brought up morals that's my bad make sure you're subscribed to the podcast make sure you check the little plus you've added it to your whatever on whatever platform you listen it'll tell you every week when there's a new one it's always on monday you could remember but you don't even have to uh you could find mark at markiplier on, you know, YouTube, Twitter, Twitch. You could find Wade.

Travis. The monkey's name was Travis. Travis's house, I guess. I don't know. This is a sad story. Don't look it up. It's a sad story. He's on Twitch.

Minion777. LordMinion777 elsewhere. That's the end. Thanks for indulging me. I still hate myself. Podcast out. I love me.