Distractible - You're Dumb, We're Smart, Here's Why

Episode Date: December 8, 2023

Hear us out. And when we're done, don't say anything. Bob, Mark, and Wade discuss their philosophical opinions on past, present, and future generations. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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whoa what are you listening to this for wait Wait, who's talking? You know you're driving a 2024 Ford Escape with available Alexa built-in, so you can change the music. Oh yeah. Alexa, change station to 99.2. See? Purchase a 2024 Escape ST-Line all-wheel drive with Tech Pack at 3.49% APR for 72 months with down payment. That's just $267 bi-weekly. Cash value of $40,294. Plus, eligible Ford owners get a $1,000 bonus. For details, visit your local Ford store or Ford.ca. Good evening, gentle listener, and welcome to Distractable. This episode, it's big brain time as beloved Bob goes deep and hard

concerning skill sets, socialization, and school. Matchless Mark deconstructs the damage of online onslaught Thank you. Yes, it's time for You're Dumb, We're Smart, Here's Why. Now sit back and prepare to be distracted and enjoy the show. Hello and welcome to another episode of Distractible. I'm your host and I'm so excited about it because I won the last episode because I'm the smartest and the funniest and the prettiest and I have the juiciest lips. That last one may or may not be true, but... No, my lips have been kind of chapped.

It's real dry here. Yeah, mine are very chapped too. Mine are like crispy dry, but we'll get to the bottom of that and many other things, I'm sure, during today's episode where I will be joined by my two contestants and losers of the previous episode, Mark and Wade. I didn't lose, I hosted. Okay, Mark is contestants and losers of the previous episode, Mark and Wade. I didn't lose, I hosted. Okay, Mark is definitely the loser of the previous episode.

Yeah, I would understand that, but I'm defending Wade here. Wade is just sort of in that category with you. He's in the same category as Mark, which means he is a contestant, and which de facto means he's also a loser. Or got caught on my knee mid-celebration. See? Loser activity right there. This is a little antagonistic loser activity right there this is a little antagonistic i feel like this is just uh come on buds come on friends you know it's a

friendly it's a friendly show if you've never seen it before i'm the host i pick the winner i give out points which i don't keep track of and then i arbitrarily pick a winner it's probably gonna be mark war work mark it's hard to whisper an m mark allow you to show my tent of fairness you know can i just say everyone everyone everyone in the subreddit seems to think that we are we are bent against wade and can i just say if you look at the outcomes wade is very even he favors me very slightly i am very even i favor Mark very slightly, but by like a couple wins. Mark favors me just unbelievably aggressively. Mm-hmm.

Yeah. Mark is the one who's against Wade. So who favors me again? Which one of you? Anyway, it's Mark's fault is what I'm saying. Yeah. What? uh anyway it's mark's fault is what i'm saying yeah well so direct all of your mail to uh mark applier at mail dot real world and that'll that'll get that'll find its way to his mailbox like the

mtv show from like the 2000s listen i was trying to come up with a fake address and i realized i don't know what format addresses even come in anymore because i don't i don't use that for mark applier at mark applier dot mark uh but anyway i i have a topic today but before that even come in anymore because I don't use that for anything. Markiplier ad. Markiplier.mark. But anyway, I have a topic today, but before that, any small talk? Oh, it's, you know, it's good. I've been so busy with the movie lately, I got a call

going after some stuff because I was like, you know, locking the show and getting everything finalized and going over things and I had another sprint recently and I get on a call with some of the post people and I'm just like, okay's the crisis what's the crisis and everyone's just like no everything's fine and i look around and i'm like but uh okay here's a contingency if we do this it was like yeah it's fine good contingency and i'm like but i'm gonna have these guys go here and we're all gonna circle back and say he's like man it's

all good and it weirded me out like i'm not gonna lie i was really weirded out what's gonna say was like pot just legalized wherever they are hanging out or like what's yeah everything's actually not fine mark is 100 right everyone just got so high before the call mark is internally just like what's happening. I know there's problems. I accidentally deleted all the footage. Gotta restart. Yeah, well, I have contingency for that because I got like three backups in my own home

and then one offsite. Like I have- One in a lockbox at an undisclosed bank. One buried in a vault next to some radioactive waste. One's on a plane that never lands to refuel, so it's always in the air it's got ac-130s flying up to refuel at mid-flight 24 hours a day in a randomly generated flight path orbiting it's i mean you got to protect you got to protect the the footage

that's you don't get that you you definitely don't get that back yeah yeah 100 it's funny because we're making youtube videos i've so many times in life i've been like i mean i don't even film as much as you guys have but i filmed enough stuff where it's like do i need to keep all of this raw footage for all these things that i have edited into videos and eventually it's like oh well just i don't there's nothing in there all the good stuff's in the edit probably is fine that's inconsequential. That is actually all just bullshit mostly. But the movie stuff is like, there are a lot of people who made that happen and they will

never all be in the same place again at the same time on the same set. It's irreplaceable. I still have almost all of my videos, not the unedited versions, but all of my videos backed up on like my hard drives. Oh yeah. And it's like, I don't know how many terabytes it is. I forget how many terabytes you said the movie was. Mark was like 90 or something.

Right now it's pushing 100. And I think that's more than my career of the last 10 years combined in edited format, which blows my mind and sheer volume. No, don't get me wrong. It's like and don't feel embarrassed. It's more. It was more than mine too. Instantly. All three of us combined.

You do not understand the sheer size of raw video files. Like cinema quality raw video files pumps out video at about a terabyte or a gigabyte a second. Yikes. It's beefy. It's 16 bit video. It's just, it's, it's atrorocious the amount of data that's pumping out of that thing what we should have done is had a film crew following your experience making the movie and then you could be working on the reaction movie of making the movie that's what people were saying is like i should have been recording more because we have bts and and people were going to say the

documentary about making this movie was going to be more popular than making the movie itself. But I recorded only like two instances of me actually editing it or in this process. Honestly, like in Ethan's documentary, his reenaction. Did you guys see it at all? You think? Listen, man, I didn't watch your mom's documentary. Well, you didn't watch his mom's documentary? We did.

We did a whole episode on this and I'm still getting hate for it. It was really good. You should. You should. i know you said that the last time too he did the quiz about the the friend quiz and i was like i didn't watch it he's like oh come on man well i'm a bad friend to ethan so we're in the same we're on the same boat here win it's okay it's okay we're on the bad friend book it's fine it's fine it's fine shout out to brain leak it's his podcast he reenacted this thing in the podcast i could see it i i did see his tour it was good that the thing was about he had to make the tour to do the i almost got a tattoo i wish i mean i never ever getting a tattoo

but he had a guy there who was like you want a tattoo and i was like no but you hesitated you paused for a moment you're like who who was there i think pat was there and got one and but like he didn't eat lunch or dinner that day and he like got woozy while he was getting the tattoo because he was like dehydrated what are we talking about i don't know wait you're a small talk do you this is a random little side note do you remember um so whenever i went to ocean city with uh friends a while back the trip that mandy and i were there for i don't i wasn't there i was there the year before i wasn't there the year you guys were there okay uh but we got henna tattoos but i don't know if you remember

that that word bob uh year a couple years before we did uh an indie pop con this thing where we were doing a charity event and the loser between bob and I, we were leading teams, the losing team, the leader, Bob or I, had to get a henna tattoo if we lost. All day, all weekend, I was promoting this event, walking around the convention, meeting fans. Some of them were like, you know, our age, some were younger. I have a visual of talking to a kid who was probably like, I don't know, between 10 and 12. And I was telling him and his parents about the event. And all weekend, I was calling them hentai tattoos instead of henna. And I remember telling this 10 and 12 and i was telling him and his parents about the event and all weekend i was calling them hentai tattoos instead of henna and i remember telling this 10 to 12 year old kid in front of his parents that between bob and i the loser has to get a hentai tattoo and like his

parents looked a little like i was like i know right that's crazy thinking it meant henna the mom was like oh weird what is that and the dad was like yeah what is that what is that i don't know what that is either so i i remember that and the like the embarrassment that came back once i found out what i had done because i legitimately didn't know there was a difference between those two words it still haunts me it's one of those things that still haunts me to this day like i get the the cringy like i gotta like shake off when i think about it because i remember them looking at me and my reaction of like I know I'm more surprised that both of them knew

instantly what that was well I mean they were parents of a 12 year old they're probably like what 35 I you know what I am curious about that we have we have a we have a wide range of listener demographics here go to the subreddit and maybe this is a bad thing to encourage

don't look it up without looking without cheating just say yes or no if you know what that is without looking and don't look what that is do you know the difference between hentai and hannah or even just what hentai is and if you don't know that's good for you you're you're better off for that probably you're you're just like corrupting the you this it's look bleep it out bleep it out editors that no uh they were gonna look anyway they were gonna look what bob's trying to say is google hentai especially at work yeah no do it on a work computer do it on a government computer anywhere where you know someone's watching because that's

how you get the good stuff right i was just saying um to to last night it's it's crazy that we as people can cast the spell formative memory at any point just instantly and this is you know it's a very irresponsible uh spell to cast and this is irresponsible of you bob that's okay because i won't remember it for reasons we're about to discuss and this is not the topic of the episode I kind of wanted to make it a whole topic, but this is kind of just small talk, really. But I want to talk about it, because I think it's interesting, and I'm curious. We have talked about aphantasia before, which if anyone watching, listening, doesn't know or hasn't seen that, aphantasia is the phenomenon or condition, I guess, where a person like myself, I am a fantastic. I can't envision things in my mind when I'm imagining stuff.

I don't see like a visual image. And there's a whole spectrum between pure blackness all the way to completely vivid, realistic imagery that people are capable of envisioning in their mind's eye and we've talked about that that i'm i'm basically just when i close my eyes to imagine stuff it's like pitch black i got nothing except maybe a little like twinkly it's basically nothing but a thing that is uh becoming more widely researched and type rather tightly associated with aphantasia is a condition I guess or I don't know a state of being

called severely deficient autobiographical memory or SDAM and this is basically because people the theory is one of the working theories is people who have aphantasia because I don't have a very

visual memory, it affects my autobiographical memory in a way where I'm, I struggle to recall my own life events in particular detail. I've been getting, honestly, I've been going on Reddit and websites and places that talk about aphantasia with other people who have it and people who are researching it and stuff. And it's become, it's like a growing topic. And this is something that I think is interesting. When you guys imagine your own lives, your autobiographical memory, do you feel like you're time traveling back? Are you watching a video? Are you reliving it from the first person perspective? Because I'll say when I imagine my own life, it's almost 100% emotional. The things that I do remember very vividly, like I would say,

I remember James's being born. I remember the like 48 hours around that. I remember my wedding day and the stuff around that pretty vividly. The memories that I have are almost completely emotional. I don't see the thing. I don't imagine visual things, but I don't see visual memories either. So it's like, I remember how the hospital smelled. I remember what we ate, Mark, you were in my wedding party before the wedding. And we were like putting our tuxes on and that sort of stuff. Like I remember what happened, but it's emotional. It's how I felt, how something smelled, how whatever, like that sort of thing. How are your

personal memories i'm just super curious well here's here's an example of it because i was just trying to think about it as soon as you said i was in your wedding party i suddenly got like boom like a flash of the church that it or not the church the like the schoolhouse old school convert schoolhouse where the reception was oh yeah it's like a one room schoolhouse yeah and i think i remember the church um yeah i think that was it's a pretty distinct church as well it's like very yeah because it had like the the triangular alcove and and double level above it and then for some reason though i think my memory works in terms of like i'll get a flash of some image from there and then my brain starts to fill in details because now i'm

imagining for some reason i think there were candles the size of like marble pillars like on the sides and i'm like i don't think there were candles that big that's not that far off there might have been large candles there but that's where my large candles yeah my imagination fills it in and exaggerates it so it's like like I will grab on to certain identifying details and then my imagination like scale something up when there was an inconsistent. Like if it was I never paid attention to something in my memory, then my imagination is like I know it qualifies it with certain like details. Like it was big and a candle. Therefore, it's like suddenly it could be pillar sized. So it's there's some exaggerated inaccuracies to my recollection.

You feel like you're watching that as like a camera on the wall. Do you feel like you're seeing through your eyes? How does it feel in terms of experiencing it? It's kind of that thing where it's like, when you said I was in your wedding party, it went that first person, like I remember seeing that. And then it kind of floats around it as I analyze certain things and try to recall certain details because I don't have perfect photographic memory. I can't replay the video where it was, but I do get grabs and instances of imagery that I remember. And then I'll start to float around the space as I try to recall what was there. And I'll try to build the dimensions

of the space that I was in and try to recall that and then that's where things get really loose because I don't have any concrete definitions of the room so that's where things scaling wise can get kind of freaky it's like um for me like a clips highlight video combo it's like I'll have like if I think to my wedding day I can hear see smell like visualize see the sky. I have like a clip. It's like watching a clip of a moment. Like whenever I first saw Molly in her dress and we were getting photos, I remember turning around, seeing her, the emotion, like everything else.

Turning around. Like, yeah, I turned around. There she was. But like, I can play that clip, but then like the video ends and it jumps to a different moment. And then like that little clip ends and it jumps to a different moment and then like that little clip ends and it jumps to a different moment and then like mark said afterward it's like i i kind of start piecing together the whole venue by taking like a whole bunch of like those i don't want to say taking those clips but like after i relive some of them it's like oh yeah

okay now i can picture the the lodge we got married at i can see different things i can whatever the one thing that's weird to me though is there's a there's one moment from our wedding that's not like that significant we were we were leaving it was after everything was over with we were like packing up some of the stuff we had and leaving because we had to be out of there by a certain time and I remember like grabbing I think it was the wagon that our flower girl was in but I don't see that from my first person perspective I see it from a third person perspective where I see like my silhouette grabbing the wagon and like the people around me in that moment which is weird but that's how my brain puts that back in my head is like oh there's a zoomed out like i'm on the second story of this building looking down at wade picking up

a wagon why is that how i see that i don't know but there's always these little snippets of video with sound and smell and everything else attributed to them where I can relive it to some extent. Interesting. But they're still mostly emotional moments with some exceptions. I mean, that wasn't that long ago. But if I go back 15 years, it's the emotional moments that I have those memories of that are vivid. I wouldn't say I say like there's a separate category for the emotional stuff, but really it's it's not terribly emphasized in the memories that I have. Like I remember being very moved by both of your weddings, but if it's not terribly emphasized in the memories that I have. Like I remember being very moved by both of your weddings, but if I recall them, I don't really recall the emotions of the moment. I recall like the physical characteristics of it and like

in kind of slideshow snapshot of different key moments. And then I would have to, again, fill in the details. So like I said, I'm bawling. I'm just like two garden hoses of tears out of my eyes. But the feeling of it isn't really there. Yeah, no, this I would say to anyone out there who finds any of this at all interesting or if you think you might have a Pantasia or whatever. It's a fascinating thing, even if you have a perfectly vivid memory. I think it's fascinating thing to hear about how different people perceive the world and experience stuff. And I was not clear up front. I sort of implied that I have STAM and I don't think I do.

I just had the way that my mind works. I think I have a reasonably good autobiographical memory, but I do think I lose things because I don't have as much detail in my imagination. But like people who have severely deficient autobiographical memory say that it feels almost like they're telling stories about other people when they tell the tell the stories of their own past that they're fully aware that these things happen but they have no memory or like perception of themselves as even being part of it and so it's like a i'm not saying at all that i fall into that category i was gonna say with with the way that you described

like the the bathhouse stories and some of the other stories you've told, like you're the best storyteller I know, I think. It would be mind boggling if you didn't remember them and you told it like that. I think my lack of visual memory allows me a lot of creative liberty in telling those sorts of stories. I think part of the reason my personal stories are so outlandish is because that's probably not a hundred percent accurate recollection of exactly how it was, but what I'm remembering and conveying is how I felt, right? So in the bath house, I felt it was funny. It was kind of scary. And in telling telling the story i pick out details to like convey that but in the it probably is all of my stories are a little more boring and less ridiculous than they

than they are when i tell them in real life i choose to believe the opposite 100 accurate i think that the the key element here is that there is a distinct separation between memory and imagination. And imagination is kind of the key thing for, I'd say, consciousness and the conscious application of thought conjuring. You know what I mean? Memory is actually a very autonomic system. And the recollection of it is tapping into the files, right? So it's like you look back at that time and you try to consciously connect a neuron pathway that goes back to those memories. And you recollection of it is tapping into the files, right? So it's like you look back at that time and you try to consciously connect a neuron pathway that goes back to those memories and you can chase things down. That's why memory is easier when you have associations, even if it's an incredibly complex thing, the more powerful and distinct and weird the association is, this is for

like memorizing vocab or memorizing anything, is the stronger the memory. So it's like you can, it can be difficult to remember a single string of numbers. Like in I was just playing the remake of Super Mario RPG. There's there's a thing where as a child I had trouble remembering. It was like a do re mi fa so la ti do. You know, it was like it was a certain string. But because I know what it is and it's so la mi re do re do rey do rey because i made it as salami redo redo and i can remember that even though it's more complicated and it has different meanings but

because there's a lot of associations there so it's like but imagination i believe is memory is a system that you can't really control but you can control your interface to your memory and the associations you make. So with Bob being able to tell really good stories, it's like he taps into the file system and the file system is there and has the data. And his imagination is the interpretation engine of those things. So he can then conjure it into, that's what I think anyway, I'm not a scientist, but's what i i imagine is the truth this episode is brought to you by tresemme wants silky smooth hair that's still full of natural movement the tresemme keratin smooth weightless collection is your simple solution this new

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What is consciousness? We could have a whole philosophical debate about consciousness. Ah, boo! Oh, the people love the philosophy. They're here for the philosophy, Wade. Some do. No, that wasn't sarcastic. Mark and I mock you relentlessly for it but like the listeners

are almost always like oh wait so philosophical they're fun discussions there is nothing that unlocks parts of your brain more than questioning things you just take as a definition and as a fact when you start breaking down words and meanings into like what they could possibly mean and the fact that nothing's definite it just makes i don know. It feels like it opens up my mind. In all honesty, I do think that is a big thing. And that's kind of like I touched on a little bit in a previous episode when I was talking about like, you know, Gen Z just slapping millennials and then turning around slapping Gen Alpha with the raising kids wrong.

And there's obviously a bigger complex discussion to say about that. But I thought about it in terms of like iPads, right, or stuff like that or entertainment. And it's not necessarily that it's going to completely destroy brains and developments, but it has an impact. Right. Because there is a little less imaginative practice occurring at a developmental time. If it's purely entertainment, it's not going to like make someone just completely deficient as a human being but there is something to be said about boredom as a child and the cultivation of i need to figure out a way to entertain myself in a safe way that answers questions and creates puzzles and creates like the solution engine you know

um but again i'm not a scientist i'm not? But again, I'm not a scientist. I'm not a neuroscientist. I'm not a behavioral scientist. I don't know the answers to that, but I could see a correlation there of you're good at what you practice and you can practice bad habits. You can practice good habits. And there's probably some other results from being so immersed in technology that we don't know what the end result is, good or bad. We can probably see some immediate results, but it's like a lot of things in human behavior we don't know what the end result is, good or bad. We can probably see some immediate results, but it's like a lot of things in human behavior, we don't even fully understand our own brains.

So we're not really going to fully understand the impacts that these things have until it's already happened. Because retroactively studying things versus like consciously watching things is going to be a completely different type of result. You know, it's complex. And that's what i'm saying it's complex and i don't know what i'm talking about but it's interesting to no but you can theorize

i have a lot of theories about the that but this bob's time bob you we can keep talking about this i don't want to shut down a productive conversation i do think it's very interesting to what you're saying mark i think i think it's interesting i guess the the perspective i have on it and like you said not an expert so this doesn't mean anything we're just three guys shitting around but um it the the there's a lot in the older generations now there were a lot of people who bemoaned like gen x and our generation like oh they don't they don't even know how to change a flat tire they they if you put them in the middle of the woods with nothing but a but a knife they couldn't

they don't know how to survive they couldn't start a fire without lighter fluid and a match and it's like those are objectively accurate gripes yep but also are a product of the fact that we live in a world where that's just not a skill set that's as valuable as it used to be it used to be if you were on a road trip, you were driving, you know, from wherever you were to go camping or something and your car broke down and wherever the hell in the middle of Ohio or you were probably kind of a ways from people. You didn't have a cell phone. You needed to be able to change that tire or put the alternator belt back on or whatever. Like you needed that skill because that's where the world that you lived in. We live

in a world where I've never broken my car. I've had shitty cars that broke down repeatedly and I've gotten plenty of flat tires. I've never been more than 10 minutes from like a gas station when I've broken down. And it's 100% possible to be out in the middle of nowhere and need those skills. My life has not put me in that situation. And there are a lot of people like me where like, I'm not like a city person. It's not like I live downtown New York or something. There just is more civilization in more places. And I have a cell phone. If I did break down somewhere where I couldn't immediately find help if I needed it, I could

call someone like no question. I could charge my phone off my car battery. I could call. I could borrow my Mandy's phone. Like there's just so many resources. And I feel like that's where we are with the next generation. Gen Z and Gen Alpha and all the like kids who are coming after our millennial generation are going to live in a world where we're like, you know, they don't even know how social media works. And it's like, well, that in 10 years, maybe that's not the core of their,

you know, social life. Yes, there are some serious issues surrounding kids and social media and self-esteem and mental health issues. But like the world that we grew up in is not the world they're growing up in. And I'm curious what that difference is going to be. What are those skills in the new world where, you know, a Gen Alpha kid might not be able to like pay their own bills except, you know, if it's in an app on their phone or whatever. And like, I know how to write a check and mail it. I did that. But they're not what they're going to be able to do shit i can't even imagine probably and i'm curious what

that is i wonder about how like starting off with a lot of like a lot of kids do have access like their parents phones like almost every kid i see at some point has their parents phones either watching a video or can quickly like at four or five years old navigate to like their favorite like you know game they play on the phone stuff like that i wonder if they're seeing and consuming content that way like whenever we were growing up we didn't have access to that kind of thing so it was like we had tv shows we had early game consoles like game boys and sagas and stuff like that but like there wasn't a youtube comment section there wasn't twitter there wasn't all this stuff i wonder if a lot of their early social interaction is through online means and seeing like the way people talk online or like the

shorthand typing of words like how you think this gonna go and they see stuff like that versus going outside and you know playing with people out there and like that being their mainly their only source of social interaction with other people their age i wonder how that impacts things if it does at all maybe it doesn't but in our brains i think it does right we think if you're living on comment sections the way people treat each other online when they have that social anonymity versus like in person where you have to be like a little bit more like you can't just walk up to somebody in person say i think you're a bitch or you're gonna get decked in the face whereas online you can say virtually whatever you want without much consequence so i do wonder how that changes things i guess i see that kind of in the inverse of how a lot of people i would say what you're talking about is how a lot of people

talk about how technology is damaging oh i don't know if it is right but people like to talk about that like that is an issue and i think it is an issue but like i think that kids growing up on the internet and having a firsthand experience with that is potentially what needs to change for the next generation of social media to be less the way it is right now. I would say it seems like a lot of the vitriol and terrible shit that's online on social media comes from older people, millennials and up. It's how we behave online. And so that dominates how social media works. I don't know if the younger kids are going to let that keep happening. I think younger

generations are not going to be interested in the anonymity of the internet as much as they're going to be interested in how it's useful to them. How can they make it a thing that is like where they do hang out with their friends and it's positive? I don't know that that's going to happen, but I guess I just feel like it's they are growing up with it as whereas we adopted it as, you know, after we were already sort of developed or partially developed. I'm curious if that will change the nature of that type of online interaction. Yeah. I think it's just generally a combination of those two ideas. There's always going to be people that are like, you need to go outside because in every generation, the thing that I want to emphasize is that every generation is not the same like-minded

individual that thinks exactly the same. Millennials have a vast difference of opinion across the entire generation. The same with boomers. They're like, there are tons of people of different mindsets. So even like there are people in newer generations that also are very much like, I don't care about social media, technology, stuff like that, and work actively. I think the difference is it's harder to ignore. Therefore, a smaller percentage will be more, you could call it chronically online. That's

the only term that comes up because online is the only way of life. And when you grow up with that, it does become the only option because you haven't seen any other potential. So the lack of exposure to the potential for alternatives is what creates kind of more like-minded thinking, not that it's entirely there. And I think what's generally going to happen is there's going to be this trend, especially with the way that social media works now in terms of its polarization and extreme opinion. You must adhere to one mindset or you get shouted at by the entire world. It is a very dangerous minefield in terms of social hierarchy in the same way as like, yeah, you can't go up to someone and say like, I hate you and, you know, fuck you and your mother. And,

you know, you could get punched in the face. But there's also like the extreme social isolation of being hated by a thousand people online at any moment for an opinion that you didn't think through of how other people are going to think about. That is just as damaging as a punch to the face. And if in all honesty, some people would prefer to take a punch to the face, then suddenly be hated by thousands of people. I don't know where I'm concluding with this. like a, I always try to consider the perspective of how this is being taken in by other people, because yeah, I don't know if there is like this gap in terms of technology between generations, but I feel like millennials and on kind of have the same baseline. Um, because I grew up with the internet, but I was like early into it because my dad was early into it and computers.

Um, and when the internet came along, like I remember the dial up sound since I was five years old, but it was different. It's a different internet than it is today because the access to, and the things online were different and it was harder to access. So you had to have a little more problem solving to get into it. But at the end of the day, you know,

it wasn't even socially based. So yeah, it is technology is there. It is still vastly different when how old were we when like was myspace the first one i guess we had the aol instant messenger might have been like our first like online social media it's not really media but it is that was around when we were in like junior high high school yeah i would say middle school middle school onward ish so like around 2000 to 2003 sort of time was when that

really blossomed so we definitely still had that whenever we were growing up too it was just a little bit less in our faces because we had to turn off the phones go online and then interact it's not like we could just get our phone out and be on twitter but we still had it okay well and we're severely unqualified to talk about this but but I guess this is making me think about schools and educators these days. When I was in school, cell phones were pretty big. And I was in a wealthy school district. So there were a lot more kids than maybe the average school that had phones

because their parents just bought them one for their birthday or whatever. But that was like, you keep that in your locker or you get it confiscated. And I feel like that's where it was for a long time. When my brother was in school, I think it was basically that same sort of policy. But now it's not ubiquitous, but there are a lot of schools where phones are acknowledged as part of a part of the student body that you can't just get rid of. You can't force them to get rid of. So there's like classrooms where it's like now is not phone time, but there will be time

that is phone time later. If you have one, you can get it out. Or like we're doing an assignment. And if you have a phone, you can Google some information about whatever topic we're learning about today. I'm just curious. Is that going to make I would love to know how that works. And I know we don't know how that works.

But like, do you think that's good? Let's go back back to school let's pull adam sandler and go back to school we'll start from kindergarten no i don't i don't want to do that pass is the question specifically about like phones in well like tech more technology use like when we were in school we still got the spiel of like oh well you won't always have a calculator with you will you yeah well we will won't we yeah they have laptops now, too. You need to know how to look up stuff in books in case you got to use. I don't even know where I would find a book. I can find anything I want on the Internet, but I'm not sure where an encyclopedia is

right now. I know where some libraries are. I mean, I know where a library is, but like, I don't have a library card. I know where the books are. I know where they keep them. Let's go. Oh, yeah. But yeah, like, is that just because you can't get kids off their phones? Or is that a positive development in the way technology is part of life and like teaching

them to use it more responsibly? I don't know. Can you blame them? It's an amazing miracle rectangle. If you showed it to a Victorian child, they would be on their phones in school too like it's like you can't fault them for having the miracle device just like we now i stare at this doom rectangle all the time oh yeah mine's laying in front of me on the thing exactly it's like we're not different everyone's doing this from boomers to us as soon as you get the amazing

miracle device you look at the amazing miracle device because that's what it is. Like it's it's a connection to the entire earth at any time. And the opinion machine is in the entertainment hole. It's it's all of it. So I you can't blame it. You can't blame anyone for looking at this. And just it's kind of I was saying this in a stream, someone a while back was like, what's your opinion on, uh, like, uh, AI, uh, music, like being made

with your voice in it. And I went like, it's about the same as my opinion would be if an asteroid is, is coming to earth. It doesn't matter. There's an asteroid. Like it's, it's, I'm not saying it's the end of the world, but it's like, my opinion has no impact on that asteroid that's flying towards the earth. It's like, I can't opinion away my thoughts on AI or these, what they aren't really AI, but eventually there probably will be ai um it's like i can't opinion my way through that right now opinion doesn't really have any play in it uh when it's happening at a face path faster than i could even act upon it um and so with this is like opinion matters very little when everyone recognizes that this thing is fucking incredible and awesome but

in the biblical sense of awesome where it can also be terrifying wayne hit us with the philosophy of whatever we're talking about quick what moral implications of using technology versus remembering what happened before technology or learning to integrate with technology maybe but make it interesting fuck you first of all anytime a philosophical statement starts with something something moral implications moral implications part of my brain is like oh it's one of these yeah but wait i'm curious what you think from a philosophical from your philosophically inclined perspective is technology technology ruining kids? Is adopting it just letting people enjoy the amazing technology square that everyone, ignoring the obvious socioeconomic issue of not everyone has a cell phone. There's a lot of issues facing people who

can't afford them, families who can't afford them. If you just assume that we will, in some point, we'll live in a world where you get a phone the moment you're born and it's just free because it's powered by advertising anyway. Talk that okay i'm gonna start this from a different perspective to answer your question i i have concerns about the access i know like my sister is a teacher and a lot of her kids have school laptops that the school loans out and the students can use and use whatever have you and that's that's mind-blowing to me we had a computer lab with those old towers that like the entire school shared one lab. If you guys remember, there was like 30 or 40 computers in there and we all had to go

to the lab. We had to like schedule your time in there. Yeah. And now just kids are expected to have like their rental laptops. I worry about school funding. I worry about teacher pay and what we ask of teachers. I worry about how much kids need to know before they start kindergarten, like the amount of knowledge a parent is supposed to instill upon

their kid before they start school is going to keep going up because schools have to cover more and more and more information in the same amount of time because you don't want someone to be in grade school until they're 30. But there's just so much information now that there is to know and learn about and technology is a whole nother facet of that. So I think Mark's right about the media metaphor. It's like, it's coming. It's here. We have to, like, there's no not integrating it. You have to. Kids have to learn how to use technology, how to use technology safely, how to use technology to enhance their lives, the dangers of technology, the sites and links that are bad, how to try to spot those things, how to know whenever you're looking up information that's true versus sources that are people just spewing bullshit, which is another, again, I talk about

this a lot of fun philosophical topic, truth, lies, and bullshit. They're three very different things and bullshit's scarier than lies because there's no reference to truth in bullshit. You're just talking. Being able to look online for that kind of stuff, much less just listen to someone talk about it is so hard. Looking at like, didn didn't we do it was it here that we were talking about like an article that was an ai yeah our podcast episode list a review of our podcast episode list someone looks up distractible and they see that they read it how do they know it's not our podcast unless they go in and do a whole lot more research that no one's going to do this day and age unless they're taught to and stuff so i feel like in schools it's something that has to be integrated and it has to be integrated. Well, my fear isn't

necessarily in the application and use of technology. It's in the fact that I don't know that schools and teachers are given the tools to succeed in doing their jobs as they have historically, plus adding the technological component in. I mean, there's definitely an entire issue surrounding funding a teacher pay and where that is in our country as opposed to a lot of the world i do think it's interesting the the you framed it i guess like now there's a lot of info as opposed to in the past there was less i don't think that's really the case i think there's been a lot of human like there's been a lot of stuff you don't learn in school since before we were in school. The thing about public education is,

and this is more of my opinion than anything else, but like the point is not that you're supposed to learn a lot or you're supposed to learn everything. The point is that as a society, we're supposed to generally select what are the most important skills. And those are what should be focused on in the amount of time you have to get a public education. And I think you're right that those are changing. Media literacy, online literacy, social media usage and literacy are like should definitely be taught in schools. What do you replace for that though that we learned? Like what do you get rid of? The way I see it, there's like two types of things that school teaches you you need to learn like knowledge-based type stuff like

about how the world works i feel like it'd be really helpful if you learned how to maybe file taxes in school or like you take a home ec class and you learn you know you learn how to cook a couple dishes you learn how cooking works you skills like this right like you you get some knowledge about something that's useful practical maybe not very practical that you use in your life or to go to college or whatever. But also the other thing about school is you need to learn how to learn. You need to learn how to think critically, right? It's less important necessarily what you learn. And this is, I think, where, you know, there's, there are still like, you take calculus in high school, you take, you know, you take classes in science, you take science, like physics classes and stuff

full of knowledge that might be useful, but really practically is not very useful to a normal person in their day-to-day lives when they're an adult. There's not a lot of stuff I learned in math classes in high school because of the career choices I've made and where I am in life. I just, like, I don't use the knowledge. But taking those classes taught me how to analyze complicated math problems. It taught me how to think. And you need classes where that is also, like, the thing. And so I don't think there's anything that absolutely needs to be, there may be some

things if I really thought about it, but, like, has to be curriculum because you have to know how it works necessarily. The education has to match with like where society is, where technology is. And I don't think in America, I don't think it does in a lot of places. I think there are a lot of things that our society is currently dealing with, especially online literacy and especially critical thinking. And like you were talking about bullshit versus lies and that sort of stuff that is not really, you know, you're not equipped with the tools to try and parse that and deal with that in the real world in some of the public education that people are getting so i don't know how to fix that but that's like philosophically how i think it should work the one problem i have

is that another thing school prepares you for is finding a job in the real world no it doesn't it gives you an idea you get a taste right it's a sample no no it doesn't it is a sampler of what what different things you can do so like if i didn't have any math classes and i had no idea that math was a thing or how to do math or whatever i would never go out of my way to look for it some people that go into mathematic jobs like we've got a friend our friend jesse uh does math for a living and he tells me some of the problems he does and how in the world to solve it and shit like that it's like jesus so at the very least getting like a pre-algebra a pre-algebra or an algebra i feel like is important because it's like okay well if you get to that point in math maybe you find that

you enjoy it and you know you can pursue something in that if you eliminate a lot of these things to make room then you're getting a smaller and smaller sampler platter of what's out there. And I'm not saying we all have to have spelling classes till we're in sixth grade, but it gets complicated with what do you remove to make room for more things. But I agree with you. The most important things are definitely developing social skills, developing critical thinking and so on and so forth, like you were saying. And I wish philosophy was a mandatory class because I think philosophy did more for opening up my mind than almost anything we did throughout junior high and high school. And I took that in college and it was like one philosophy class changed my entire outlook

on how I approached my future. So it's so complicated to figure out where you change things up, but we do have to adapt. Like you're saying, I just don't know how you put that on a teacher to know how to do it. So there is this kind of mindset of learning to learn. Like you're saying, I just don't know how you put that on a teacher to know how to do it. So there is this kind of mindset of learning to learn. And I agree with it fully. Like I think people should learn to learn, but the problem is people learn to learn in different ways. And I also, I and many people in my generation are partially responsible for this thought process that school is unimportant. I'm not saying you guys are, I'm saying me specifically because I've dropped out of college and I have said many times like, yeah, you don't necessarily need a college education anymore, has maybe perpetuated the idea that education in general is not important. And false confidence is the death of so much ambition, because if you

think that you're competent in something and, but you're not, you wouldn't even know that you weren't. Uh, so there's kind of a fine line between learning to learn, uh, self-discovery through philosophy or whatever it is. And the false confidence that you have that because no one is more confident in, in their surety of the universe than probably a teenager is. And no one is at more risk of falling into the ego trap of that than a teenager is. And there also is a very common trap of what you were saying, Wade, and I'm not saying this is you, but it's like there's a common joke of philosophy majors in Philosophy 101 that want to diagnose everybody and think that they know the universe like that also is a fallacy in and of itself uh to fall into and i'm not saying

that's what you're saying and i'm not saying anything about that it's just such a more complex issue that can come from so many different places and the the what it needs is like years of research and to reorganize the entire system of school in general, because I think that people are recognizing that school as it is today was started because they needed people to fill a very specific role of office worker that was necessary in that time. They needed people to be data and analytic machines that when computers came around, that fundamental unit of human was not as necessary. And so it did adapt and human and life skills were always part of it. But in the end, like the mathematical basis, geometric basis, the typing basis or the writing, the handwriting basis more specifically, and the cursive basis was all to emphasize this kind of like data processing worker unit. But a lot of the holdovers that we have are from those days of those fundamental things. And there hasn't been enough research into how to teach kids how to learn to learn. And I think like there is probably an entire upheaval

in the educational system that needs to take place, because now when you have tools that allow people to find knowledge so now when you have tools that allow people to find knowledge so easily especially and knowledge that could be wrong with chat gpt but that'll get better i know it will and to think that it won't is is also like not good thinking um so we gotta like adapt and adapt quickly because again like the meteor it's it's common no matter what uh opinions don't matter but action does and like standing around uh to look at the meteor as it's falling is difficult i'm not saying i know the answer uh but the answer is definitely not one thing i want to touch on the point about the philosophers

which again i know you're not accusing me but the thing i got up from philosophy is i was the know-it-all teenager that you're talking about i was a really really good student i knew that i was going to be a successful lawyer and a judge if I wanted to be. Like, I knew this. I knew that. And whether we share them or not, we all have our beliefs and thoughts on big time issues like death penalty, abortion, so on and so forth. And I had my views in my head and I knew and I knew what was right.

I knew it was wrong and I knew all this stuff. What philosophy did for me was it showed me that I didn't know anything. And I think it helps you understand why you have some of the opinions and beliefs and thoughts that you do, but it allows you to open your mind to the possibility that you're wrong. That is something that is a crucial skill to learn,

especially when you're a teenager, is to understand that even though you think you're right, you believe you're right, and you don't wanna hear anything otherwise, learning that you can be wrong about anything and everything, I think is very important. I think that allows you to communicate better because it allows you to actually listen to somebody else when they talk to you.

If you go into a conversation thinking you are right, whether it's in a relationship, a friendship, mom and son, whatever it is, and you just think you're right, you are not going to be open to listening to the other person's point of view. You'll just kind of like, yeah, yeah, yeah you just think you're right, you are not going to be open to listening to the other person's point of view. You'll just kind of like, yeah, yeah, yeah, here's why I'm right. Whereas if you truly understand that you don't have all the information ever, and you hear somebody else giving you their perspective, even if you still disagree in the end, you can still grab useful nuggets of information from what they presented to you. And I think philosophy opening your mind like that is a crucial thing that a lot of people miss out on because everyone is just so dad said this,

therefore that. I agree partially. I actually do think that there is value in self-confidence and believing that you're right. I like I'm not saying you're not saying that, but I believe that going into every conversation and argument or debate, thinking that you might be wrong is also not the right answer because there needs to be some basis some rock for which you to stand on before you go in anything or else you are too susceptible to other people's opinions if you go into everything thinking well there's shades of gray to it right like you can go in and that's what i'm trying to say you can go in 95 sure that you're right or being like you know you know that 95 of what you're saying is accurate but there's some room of like, oh, okay, that's interesting.

That brings another, like, I still think I'm right, but the way you presented that, maybe I'll rethink this aspect of it or maybe there's just more information to be had. But overall, I'm still like, it doesn't mean you're always wrong about things. It's just, it leaves you open to taking in more ideas and more thoughts, even if you end up not agreeing with them. And you might be right 90% of the time. Sure, you can have that confidence, but there's still that one time that someone brings something to the table that you might not have listened to if you weren't open to listening. Yeah. And I think that's the most important thing is like being willing to listen to other people.

However, I also say there are some people in the world that are not worthy of listening to. There are some people in the world that you absolutely actively shouldn't listen to because their thoughts are pervasive and dangerous. But you learn to see those because you can tell how a person is communicating once you've understood that. And you can see whenever someone's referencing a real grounded reality theory, fact, whatever have you, versus someone that is bullshitting when you have those tools, which is another part of learning that. Yeah, exactly. And it's a very complex system because obviously, how do you know if someone's

opinions are dangerous and self-confidence can be overbearing and you can think that you're right and don't have to listen to because everyone around you is evil. And that also is a balance. There's so many people out there that are like so confident in what they do and so assure of themselves. And that's kind of what social media helps perpetuate is these echo chambers of righteousness and the echo chambers of everyone else who does not think like this is wrong. And that's how the ostracization system in social media where suddenly thousands of people can disagree with you.

That's why you'll see so many tweets and and posts that always have a qualifying statement that's like if the common thing is like some celebrity did something wrong or some celebrity is like annoying or wore the wrong shirt someone will say like now i don't like them surely i think we can all agree but that wasn't so bad i see that all the time the qualifying statements of like social acceptance. And so the the the debate, however, is more difficult because you're not debating with one person. You're debating with the entire world at all times. I mean, you're exchanging information in ways that human nature was never prepared to handle,

but also is largely irrelevant because the value placed on those Internet based social interactions are actually not as valuable as they seem in terms of numerical like accuracy a thousand to one seems bad but on the internet it's like it actually isn't because they don't know you and aren't willing to know you in most circumstances this reminds me of a quote there's i forget exactly how it goes i'm paraphrasing but it goes something like there's few things more dangerous than the confident fool and few things more tragic than the insecure genius well i think we can agree that all three of us are one of those two things the real predicament is that i need to pick a winner out all of this well the winner has is clearly the person who's right wait that means it's him and you're throwing your opinion in with theirs i fully endorse whoever i choose as the winner but i i do i do feel like i also want to disclaim we're basically just talking

that this is the most cliche podcast shit ever but this is a discussion and i if you draw any conclusion from this draw the conclusion that we don't know what we're talking about these are all very opinion-based things and they may or may not apply very well to your life. I think the most important part of this discussion, because I'm sure there are people out there, educators out there, philosophers who are hearing us talk and are just like gouging their own eyes out because they're like, no, no, because they've spent their entire life researching or thinking about this thing. That's very possible that, you know, better than we do. Talk about it talk to people about it ask questions

i'm 95 confident that they're an idiot and their degree was worthless and they skated through school because they their pappy knew someone probably cheated on all their exams i think cheating in terms of school in terms of school is actually a problem-solving skill builder. Okay, well, you know what, Mark? You just solved my problem. Up until that exact moment right there, I was thinking I was going to make Mark the winner until he literally endorsed cheating to pass school. I'm not saying that's like...

And I feel like I have to say that Distractible does not endorse cheating. Don't cheat on your test kids. Learn the material, even if it doesn't feel applicable. that's like and i feel like i have to say that distractible does not endorse cheating don't cheat on your test kids learn the material even if it doesn't feel applicable i've learned more material trying to cheat than i ever did doing homework that's because you didn't do homework i know i know cheating things was my homework because he's such a morally pure and superior being and does not endorse cheating, today's winner is Wade. Morally superior, I don't know about that, but thank you. I'll take the win.

I won't question it. All right, all right. You're not morally superior. You're morally equivalent. Thank you. You're greater than or equal to us morally. How about that? I'll take it.

Mark, I don't know what you're so salty about. What you just said, you took the win and why would you? I don't know why you're so salty about. What you just said! You took the win! I don't know why you're so salty. It's fine, Mark. Just listen to my winner's speech in a minute and copy it so you can say it next episode that you win. Alright, okay. Cool. Yeah, no, Mark, you know what you should have done? You should have wrote more of the answers

on the back of your hand so you could have... I should have wrote them? Maybe you should have cheated in school, Mark. I didn't cheat in school, Mark. I just didn't learn. Okay? Congratulations to Wade. Do you have a winner's speech, Mr. Philosopher? school mark i didn't cheat in school mark i just didn't learn okay uh congratulations to wade uh you have a winner speech mr philosopher i think what bob was saying about us not knowing everything is very important however i do think that starting a conversation is and this is a conversation starter and i think it is always healthy whenever you're willing to have educated and like calm

debates with people don't go into a debate being forceful and being like belligerent about it. If you truly communicate and listen, even if you end up being right, know you're right, think you're right, whatever, still humor the person because every now and then you'll find a nugget of information or something that will be helpful. Or maybe you'll learn that you are in fact wrong or that you just don't know. Keep an open mind and stay civil. You'll be surprised how far that might get you. Mark, give the opposite speech for your loser speech. I think what Bob was saying about us not knowing everything is utter horseshit. I think that when you go into a debate, you should

come armed to the teeth with secret knives stashed in your back folds of your mind to pull out and wrench into their medulla oblongata at every moment everyone's wrong you're right and don't let anyone convince you otherwise all right this is actually kind of counter to my entire philosophy so i'm gonna back up a few steps here i thought you're about to get to the point where like and if they keep disagreeing with you start insulting them as a person their appearance their thoughts their family really rip into them. No, well, because my actual basis is I, no one is a bigger critic of me than myself. And, and that's how it always is going to be in evaluating my own self-worth has been a lifelong battle. And I think for all of us, it's a battle that some of us don't win and it's a complicated

battle. And so for me, it's I always want to encourage people to have an open mind about things and be willing to learn, but also be willing to learn more about yourself. There's so many other things in the world to pay attention to, but there's only one you that you will ever have as a constant companion inside your own head. There is a kind of mental toughness that you can build up by having self-assurance. Having ego is not an easy thing. Having self-confidence is a very difficult thing, and it's a discipline that takes a long time to learn and a long time to wrestle with. And it can be your greatest armor in those times of adversity when you are not sure of yourself by having the mental discipline to build up that strength of self-confidence while still not falling into the trap of full on ego

all the time. It's a tightrope, but life sometimes can be that balance between so many things. There might not be just black and white, but i promise you the gray area is much smaller than we think it is uh it's a very narrow path to walk like and have that full sense of healthy balance and there's no right answer of where that is but it's i think it's a series of repeating gray lines with white and black in between um as opposed to just like a big swath of of gray um anyway that's my actual thoughts. I think there's a big difference between having confidence, which is a good thing to have, and having bravado or false confidence that you portray to act like you're something that

you're not or know something you don't. Yeah, I agree. That is the end of the episode. You can find Mark at Markiplier, Wade at LordMinion777 or Minion777. I am MySkirm. Come for us to educate us in the subreddit, because I'm sure you will. Come for us!

We're here to have a discussion. We're here to hear you out and then insult you personally when we don't like what you have to say about our opinions. But more importantly, be nice to each other. Be open. Listen. Be willing to have your mind changed.

Lots of good points today, boys. Not exactly the episode I thought we were going to have, have but i like it uh wait you're hosting the next one congratulations mark we suck podcast out