Hello Internet - H.I. #60: The Beautiful Game

Episode Date: March 30, 2016

Brady and Grey discuss: transporters and dying while asleep, Brady's return from The Forbidden Kingdom, hotstopper follow-up, the best month of gaming, the temptations of a smaller phone, conclusion of the Super Bowl of Flags, ye olde corporate compensation corner, and robots are coming to take your job corner. Brought to You By Hover: The best way to buy and manage domain names. Use coupon code 'GERMS' for 10% off Squarespace: Use code HELLO for 10% off your website Audible: get a free 30-day trial by signing up at audible.com/hellointernet Listeners like YOU on Patreon Show Notes Discuss this episode on the reddit Grey: The Trouble with Transporters The Forbidden Kingdom Brady at the Taj Mahal with like a million other people Brady's Mount Everest Fly By Paro Landing Brady explosions photo Pitfall 2 iPhone SE Second Referendum on the New Zealand Flag Preliminary Result AlphaGo versus Lee Sedol Computerphile

Get ready, get ready, get ready. I'm ready. I was talking to me, I wasn't talking to you. I watched your Star Trek Transporter video, and at the time I thought, is this a little bit of bollocks? Like all your videos, it was well written and thought-provoking and... Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Nice job. What do you mean it was bollocks though what do you mean like the first half of a i mostly liked um you know we've discussed transporters before obviously you discuss transporters with everybody anyone who knows you knows you talk about transporters all the time yeah this is regular dinner table conversation if you have me over at the house it's like there's a few things that are going to come up free will is going to come up yeah the question of do to come up. Yeah. The question of, do you know why the American Indians got sick,

but the Europeans didn't get sick? That's going to come up. And then do you think that the transporter is a suicide machine? Those are like your three guaranteed great conversation starters. Yeah. So the transporter thing's all right.

I mean, you know, besides the fact it's a fictional machine, but you know, that's all right i'm willing to go with that i'm willing to go with that and it is an interesting uh conundrum if two of you exist you know this is a this is a classic conundrum prestige was great for that wasn't it a great movie for that i still haven't seen it but i feel like i know that whole movie because everyone has told me every part of it oh it's a great movie great thanks twitter spoilers well you know eventually when a film's been around long enough you can't you've got to just say

meet a culprit i should have seen it by now um but the last part of your video where you talk about dying every time you go to sleep well hang on let's just let's just give me a yes or no answer here do you think you die every time you go to sleep? This is the part where you think I'm just being silly at the end? No, I don't think you're being silly. And you haven't given me a yes or no. Just give me a yes or no, then you can say whatever you want. Do you think you and I and other people die every time we go to sleep?

You can only say one of two words next. That's not how this works. That is not one of two words next that's not how this works that is not one of the words yes or no okay listen no no no no no I said afterwards you can say whatever you want and you can do all your clarifying and all that but the next word I want out of your mouth is a yes or a no.

It's unknowable, Brady. Wrong. Wrong. I said, do you think? It's not unknowable what you think. You know what you think because you're thinking it. No. Do you think?

No. You have a false premise in your head. You assume that I have a clear opinion on this topic. You assume that I have a yes or no answer. You are doing exactly what you accused your guns, germs, and steel opponents of doing in the last podcast episode where you said they avoid questions and reframe the debate. I do not think we die every time we go to sleep and this whole if there's this break in the stream of consciousness then we are dead is ridiculous it is a ridiculous definition of death maybe i don't know but is it a ridiculous suggestion and i don't think it is ridiculous i genuinely do not think it is

ridiculous well great i'm here to tell you it is i mean how are we defining breaks in consciousness are there like plank second uh breaks in our consciousness when we look from one place to another in which we momentarily died are we dying every few plank seconds when our when our consciousness is disengaged for a nanosecond like where where are we drawing lines here if we're drawing the death line at sleep we've entered the world of ridiculousness well i mean look look if someone's asleep and i shoot them in the head have i not killed them because they weren't alive at the time you haven't you're now you're not trying to frame this like it's murder right like you've killed they weren't alive at the time?

You're not trying to frame this like it's murder, right? Like you've killed this person and you should go to prison for it. Oh, that's even better. Yeah. If I give someone a sleeping pill, if I killed them, it's just ridiculous. It's just ridiculous. No, it's not ridiculous. It is not. It is not ridiculous.

I reject your claim that it is just absurd. It is just ridiculous. I think this is one of many very interesting questions that are related to the nature of of consciousness consciousness is this strange like inexplicable phenomenon of the universe that just doesn't make any sense and makes the less sense makes less sense the more you think about it right like you can start driving yourself crazy when you start thinking about consciousness yeah but i think you're doing a disservice to the debate when you say something silly like when we go to sleep we're dead because that that's like you're undermining yourself it's like you're dressing up in a clown

suit to make the argument and i and i don't and i i completely agree with you it's it's immensely interesting and you posed many really interesting questions in the video, but throwing some deliberately provocative thing out there, like saying, is the Grim Reaper coming at night and taking our life every night? I mean, that's, yeah, it's a bit silly. It's not deliberately provocative. I wake up in the morning

and often have a moment of wondering about this. Like, do I just have my memories from the previous days? Or is this a continuous version of me? Like, I don't think there's any way to know. That's why I think like the sleep thing is inseparable from the transporter paradox. If I didn't think the sleep thing was connected to the transporter paradox, I wouldn't have made that whole video. In my mind, the whole video was just to get to the point that you think is the provocative bit tacked on to the end. To me, like,

that's the thing that really affects my daily life. Wow, it must be hard being you. It is hard being me. It's terribly difficult being me. Trust me, me gray you're the same guy but i can't you were just asleep i mean listen i don't even know if you're alive really like if you're conscious or if you're just some robot that i talked to right so it's like i can't just trust you on this i love that we're talking about this because you know what i've been and we'll probably talk about this later but i've been thinking a lot the last few weeks about the difference between us and computers. And I think, and it's a really hard thing to think about and argue because, you know,

I think people who say there's no difference between humans and computers actually have the easier position. And the fact that we can sit around and wonder if we were dead when we were asleep i think that's getting close to what separates us from computers just the the absurdity of thinking about this and taking it seriously is wonderful i think you're a credit to humanity gray it is not absurd to wonder about i'm not gonna let you just get away with that

just just stating it out there like that. I will follow this to the absurd conclusion that we die every nanosecond, right? That's what you were trying to push me at before. Yeah. I will follow this to the end and think that it is not improbable that what we have is a universe which is divided up into like these infinite number of time slices, each of which has the memories of what has come before. But every single moment, we are just a creature that is conscious anew with all of the memories up to that moment. Yeah, well, this is, you know, yeah.

Is the universe like a whole series of nows and things like this? Yeah. Well, okay. And that's, I think that's a different debate. I think it's, maybe it's time to talk semantics and redefine what we mean by death. Because I think you're taking a very provocative word in death and applying it to a whole different discussion here now.

And using imagery like the Grim Reaper is using the emotiveness of what normal people consider death and injecting it into a whole different discussion. How are you not anxious before you fall asleep sometimes? Like, does it never cross your mind that this is your last day? You just hop into bed like a happy Brady every time. It never crosses your mind that, oh, I guess this was my only day of existence.

Because that crosses my mind all the time when it's bedtime. I think it really shows your humanity and that warms my heart. Look at you trying to turn this around on me. So Brady, you're back from your trip to the Forbidden Kingdom. I wasn't even sure if you were going to make it back from such a mysterious, mysterious place. I thought you might be swept away by the mists of that land, but you're back. So how was it? I'm back. And amazingly, you took so long to edit the last podcast that I had been and had returned before you put up the podcast saying I was about to go. Yep. That's how that works. These things aren't on a schedule.

No. You've accepted the term forbidden kingdom then then i'm just doing it to humor you but you know if you you know you were saying on wikipedia it hardly mentions it they actually have a page if you search forbidden kingdom on wikipedia it said this could refer to bhutan i'm searching for a forbidden kingdom right now uh there's a movie called the forbidden kingdom 2008 with jackie chan and jet lee not the film okay but this is the thing that comes up this is the There's a movie called The Forbidden Kingdom 2008 With Jackie Chan and Jet Li Not the film Okay but this is the thing that comes up This is the title one under The Forbidden Kingdom

No look up Oh yeah Okay but if I have to go to the disambiguation page You've already lost I'm not impressed No I haven't No because I'm not saying it's like the only thing called The Forbidden Kingdom The Forbidden Kingdom a 1932 novel By J. Slowerhoff I'm saying it's like the only thing called the Forbidden Kingdom. The Forbidden Kingdom, a 1932 novel by J. Slowerhoff. I'm saying it's a legitimate term.

Forbidden Kingdom, a setting in Dungeons and Dragons. Yeah, and what's number five on the list? A country, Bhutan. Then it goes Forbidden City, Imperial Palace of Ming and Qing Dynasties. Gray, it says Bhutan. Bhutan. A country sometimes, occasionally, maybe referred to as the Forbidden Kingdom by Brady.

That's what it says on Wikipedia. That's what it will always say on the Wikipedia disambiguation page for Forbidden Kingdom. It probably will now after you said that. That's right. I did go to Bhutan, but before I went to Bhutan,

I went to India. You got in, huh? My feelings about the visa process, it's something that causes me a level of frustration. So we arrived in India and I got through immigration quite smoothly. My wife, on the other hand, was there forever and one thing you learn about indian officers is there they are not reluctant to refer things up to their superior when they're in any doubt about anything it's a bureaucracy so my wife was there for quite some time and he was confused and he didn't know what to do and he went off to saw his boss and he came back and went to see his boss again and came back and i reckon after

20 minutes maybe he finally with some reluctance, let her through and gave her all the stamps. And then we went and waited. We were waiting for our luggage. And while we were waiting, literally while we were waiting for the bags among the crowds of people, the officer came back and found us in the crowds

and said, oh, I think I made a mistake and took my wife back to the immigration counter like back through all the security took her back to the counter to redo all the stamps and the paperwork wouldn't explain what it was i wasn't allowed to go with her and i reckon it must have taken 30 minutes of nightmares to get to get through and then we had the same problem when we came back in i had problems when i was going out where he he didn't understand what was going on with my passport and he was about to go and see his boss and i said before you go and see your boss and i pointed that he was looking at the wrong stamp

with its handwritten number in my passport and said you should be looking at that stamp and entering that number into your computer and he was like oh yeah maybe i'll try that i mean i was doing the job for them it sounds like a lovely country but we did go to the taj mahal yeah was it worth it hours of paperwork exceeded my expectations one of the one of the most amazing places i've been can you go inside it or can you just walk around the ground you can you can go inside it that part is a bit crazy with queues and but you wouldn't like that part the going inside apart so if i go to india i don't even want to go inside the taj mahal well no you've got to you've got to go in but you don't oh you've got to you won't like it but you've got to well it's a bit you know you've gone that far

you may as well but it's just it's just like it's just as beautiful as it looks in all the pictures and it's in a really and it's in a really big setting like What I didn't realise was how lovely the grounds are that it's in. It's in these sort of verdant, lovely gardens. And although there's tens of thousands of people visiting, the site is big enough and nice enough that it kind of soaks up the people. So you don't feel like you're in sort of crazy, busy India. You do feel like you're in a crowded oasis for a for an hour or two except when you get channeled into the building itself that is that is craziness but really what but

really wonderful but then the obviously the main reason for the trip was going to the forbidden kingdom of bhutan and i could talk about bhutan forever it was absolutely brilliant one of the best countries i've ever been to lots of interesting things to see and say about it and i'll talk about it if you want but the one thing i really want to talk about that was the absolute highlight for me is the flight to and from bhutan without doubt the most magnificent flight you will ever do you have to do it on the druk air which is the national airline of bhutan oh yeah so when i was in india sort of the people that were looking after the tour said if you want to if you're going on the

druk air it's worth going to the airport a few hours earlier than you should just to get a seat on the left hand side of the plane when you're flying from delhi to paro which is where the airport is in Bhutan, because that's the side that all the Himalayas are on. And basically the whole flight just skirts along the edge of the Himalayas past, you know, I think three of the top five mountains in the world, five highest mountains in the world,

including Everest, are all along that side of the plane. So we got to the airport very, very early, like three in the morning. Because there was no way I wasn't going to get that seat. And we got the seat on the left-hand side. I was really excited. I'm not always that into in-flight entertainment. Sometimes I watch TV shows and movies and things like that.

I swear, my eyes were glued to the window for the whole hour and a half that we were flying. It was just amazing. I couldn't take my eyes off it. It was like the ultimate screensaver, just watching the Himalayas go past. You could reach out and touch the mountains, and I was going crazy taking photos. And then when Everest was coming, I was so excited, and it was clouded out. And you couldn't see the top of Everest. But it was still amazing.

You still saw these amazing mountains. I'm just pulling it up on my computer here with a 3D topographical map. And it looks like a hell of an amazing flight. If you are on the left-hand side of the plane, like I can see why along this route, they're like, no, be on the left, right? Because directly under the plane on the right-hand side, there, be on the left, right? Because directly under the plane, on the right-hand side, there's nothing. On the left-hand side, it is the most magnificent mountains ever, which I feel like I am getting 80% of the delight in this trip simply by looking at

it as a 3D rendering on my computer. It's quite amazing. And then we came into land at Paro, and suddenly the plane did this like crazy turn and there were like mountains and monasteries like right up against the wing and i'm going what the hell's going on this is insane this tight turn amongst all the mountains and then this crazy sharp landing and i thought gosh i didn't know that was coming that was that was quite the landing so uh a bit later on that evening i looked up paro airport on there i'm looking at it right now i can i can see why you did a crazy landing yeah and i didn't realize it it's this it's it's another one of these famous airports for this crazy dangerous landing they've never had a bad crash there like they have at lukla the other

death airport that i always go to but it was But it was like, it was an insane, it was an insane landing, but really exciting. The airport is at the bottom of a valley, but it's almost like at the bottom of a Y where there's mountains going up on either side, but like at the base of the airstrip as well, there's another mountain going up. So you've really got to just drop the plane in a crazy maneuver to get onto that landing strip.

It was quite, there's some quite, there's some quite nice youtube videos of uh of landings there so anyway great time in Bhutan and then when it came time to leave I was saying I'm making sure I get the right hand side of the plane this time because that's the reverse that's the reverse and actually we upgraded to business to make sure we got we got the prime seats so when we were in the queue, they said, would you like to upgrade to business? And it wasn't that expensive because it was only a short flight. And I said, are there any business seats on the right-hand side still left? And they went and checked and said, yes, there are. So I said, done.

Sold. Yeah. So we did the flight back. And again, it was breathtaking. I took loads of photos and I took video and people can have a look at all this and we were coming up to everest and it was a bit shrouded in cloud and like the captain announces when you get to everest but because i'm a nerd i knew what was coming and i could see it up ahead and it was shrouded in cloud and just as we just as we sort of got up level with it the cloud sort of moved away a bit and and we got this beautiful view looking right at it right at

the face of man everest and i was taking all these photos and videos and got these amazing pictures and like i was i was very happy i was very happy i had a very big smile on my face and i was like changing my lenses i had like a whole photo shoot going on taking a minute taking a million photos and like we'd done this we'd done this massive trip for two weeks and this was the right at the end as we were leaving. And I was turning to my wife going, this is the best bit of the whole trip. Taking these photos of Mount Everest out the window of the plane. But, but I had an amazing time.

Bhutan, 10 out of 10. If you ever get the chance to go, do it. This sounds like a very successful venture in the Brady year of fun. I'm really glad to hear that you had such a good time. Even though I give you a hard time for these things, I can hear the genuine Brady excitement in your voice. Oh, it was great. It was great.

They had this... I went to the one intersection where in the capital, they put some traffic lights in. There was one intersection they thought could maybe justify traffic lights and the people of bhutan just didn't like it they didn't like traffic lights so they had them taken out and now they have like just a policeman there with fancy gloves on and a fancy outfit like uh guiding all the traffic through and that's become a bit of an attraction so i went there and stood there and watched him guiding the traffic for 20 minutes like the uh

north korean traffic girls yeah it's uh except less terrifying i don't know what's the political situation in bhutan good better than north korea probably don't start me gray i will talk about i'll talk about the politics of bhutan how the monarchy's handed over power to and you know oh there's all sorts of interesting stuff i'm an an expert. I'm an expert on Bhutan politics and the monarchy. Yeah. Wow. I could tell you all about the five kings and everything. Oh. Let's save that for a beer in person. I have to thank you. I did take, I took a million photos and I posted one of the photos, which you very helpfully asked everyone on twitter to manipulate brady posted this picture of himself on twitter where you're looking very cool you know you have your sunglasses on but you

are in the perfect part of the photo where you are off on the edge looking off to the side and i i told the internet this photograph demands an explosion be photoshopped behind it. And boy, did the internet deliver. I had a very fun day. Thank you, internet. Looking at all of the variations of Brady looking cool with explosions behind him in the background. The internet always delivers with that kind of stuff. Part of me wants to say,

damn you, Gray, for filling up my Twitter feed with pictures. But another part of me thinks, damn, to say damn you gray for filling up my twitter feed with pictures but another part of me thinks damn i looked cool yeah exactly i'm like oh you you rascals he says as he saves them to his desktop to look at later every one of them saved in a folder in fact i'm going to i've been i've got to go to some award ceremony uh in a few weeks and i've been to i've been i've got to go to some award ceremony uh in a few weeks and i've been asked to supply a photo of myself for them to show on the screen when they show the nominees i should put one of those explosion pictures in yes and the nominees are brady harron

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And the thing is, what I have noticed that I find quite remarkable is that if I go in and I ask them for a hot stopper, which I do without even thinking about it, they know exactly what I'm talking about and they just hand me one. Do you use the word hot stopper? Yes, I literally say, oh, I need a hot stopper because I can't even think about what else it's supposed to be called. And no one ever blinks at this. I don't even want hot stoppers, but I always ask them just to see how they react. I made a note of it the other day, but I was in a print across town

and I almost wanted to instant message you because I started to point at the hot stoppers and the guy behind the counter said oh do you want a hot stopper and he handed it no I almost I almost couldn't believe it but I was in such shock and it was like so busy that I couldn't I couldn't have a conversation with the dude about like where'd you hear that word man like where did you hear that but yeah they use the word hot stopper without without being without being provoked by me but it's the natural word for these things gray do you think maybe like i have a a gift yes brady you have a gift this is like my second word i shouldn't say that because people take it way too seriously

they think i actually think like i'm this inventor of words and then they get all upset. Yeah, you do think that you're this way. It's okay. I like, you know, don't try to deflect now, but you do think this way and that's fine. You do have a gift. You are good with this behind the scenes. You come up with a lot of the titles for the show. Like you're very good at picking out titles for shows.

I think you're good at naming things. I think this is a skill of yours. Don't you say that about titles of the shows because you never use my titles i don't want people looking at all your lame titles and thinking i came up okay all right fine i'll cut that i'll cut that my titles are not you can leave it as long as people know the lame titles are grays and the good ones are yeah there you go people all the titles that are lame those are mine and all the ones that are great those are brady's that's how you can tell the difference in defense of starbucks something has to be made

clear you know how we spent forever trying to convince people that we didn't invent humble bragging we just talk about it right and it took us like 30 episodes for people to kind of i feel like it's finally finally gone away this idea yeah like two years later it's finally over yeah the new one is people seem to think that when we first started talking about hot stoppers starbucks had none because now whenever they see i know hot stoppers in a starbucks they always tweet us the messages saying the hot stoppers are coming finally starbucks are getting them starbucks have always had hot stoppers they're just patchy and intermittent and they don't have them at some stores and they they don't they do and they don't and like that was always the case yeah they haven't like started getting them in on the back of all our pressure so like i don't mind people messaging

me and tweeting about hot stoppers and it's really good fun but hot stoppers are already in existence and they were in existence in starbucks before we complained that they weren't everywhere it was really me just complaining that they aren't exactly where i want them to be yeah one particular branch several branches in london that was that was the thing but so here here is here is what to me is like my continued state of woe with hot stoppers because okay i've given up on on trying to get them in in my local starbucks and it's just not going to happen so i've been going to pret instead and now as you know brady i i sometimes have like routines in my life that like I like things to go a certain way.

I like things to be the same. No. But this comes in conflict with, you know, recognizing people at stores. Like I just this is a conflict in my life. But so for various reasons for the past couple of weeks, I have been establishing a new sort of working habit where I'm getting up very early. I'm getting right out of the house. I'm getting straight to work. And on my way into work, I go to get two lattes from a Pret on my way into work, into writing.

Now, because I'm getting two, I need a little bag to carry them. And I want hot stoppers in the lid because they're in the bag so it doesn't spill. Right. That's not unreasonable. That's a reasonable thing for a person to want, right? Yes, of course. Well, I have, well, okay. I have a few issues, but anyway. No, what do you mean you have a few issues? How can you possibly have issues with the story? Well, my two issues is one, why do you put them in a bag? Why don't you get them in a holder? Because that would be easier to carry them. Yeah, that would be easier, but Pret doesn't do holders. They do do hot stoppers, don't do holders so they have they do little bags yeah i know i know i'm with you on

this one could be another petition coming yeah and and secondly won't one of your drinks go cold if you buy two at the same time well the other function of a hot stopper is to keep the hot in it stops the hot from getting out so with the hot stopper it stays warm longer also i drink them very quickly okay so it's not a big deal okay so anyway you want you want two hot stoppers for your lattes that are in a bag right now here's here's the problem though at pret they keep the hot stoppers behind the counter they don't just have them out where you can grab them like starbucks normally does and they don't normally just give you hot stoppers with lattes they some for some reason it's in their mind that this is a thing

just for tea right but so now i've been going to this regular pret and i keep ordering two lattes and i'm there at like six in the morning i'm the person there. I want to get the hot stoppers. And I ask the only guy who's always there for hot stoppers. And we start to have like a little discussion, which I can never figure out why, but this guy never wants to give me the hot stoppers. He's like, what do you need the hot stoppers for? You have a bag.

It's fine. You can just use the bag. It's like every morning, Brady, every morning. And I'm like, it's six in the morning. I just want the the hot stoppers and this has been going on for like two weeks at this point like there's no other prep for me to go into there's nothing else is open at this time like this is the only option that i have and it's like i just want my morning

to go nice and smooth and yesterday i swear so it's like now 10 days in a row with this guy i go in i get the coffees. I ask for hot stoppers. And he's like, why do you want them? I just want to reach over the counter and grab his shirt, pull him close to me. I'd be like, listen, man, your thoughts on why I do or do not need the hot stoppers are irrelevant. Just give me the hot stoppers. Why does this have to happen to me?

Why is my life so hard, Brady? Like, why do I have to have this little interaction every freaking morning? And but you know what the worst part about it is? I'll tell you, I haven't even gotten to the worst part. Because it's not just this guy and this prat. There's another big problem with the hot stoppers behind the counter, which is when you ask for them. If you're a person like me, try not to look at the way that people hand you the hot stoppers. Very often, they just pick them up in the middle with their hands and hand them to you with their gross, sweaty, meaty, money touching hands. They hand you the hot stop.

It's like, dude, you know, that's going in my drink, right? The part that you're holding right here, it's going in my drink. Why can't you just have them out on the counter where I can just pick them up? Like what on earth is the reason to have them behind the counter? It's more work for the people getting the coffee, right? And then they then they touch it with their germy hands. I mean, it's even like I try. One of the things I do like about Starbucks, right, that is that they have all the lids right there. And so I cannot tell you how pretty much every single time I have ever ordered a latte at Starbucks, they hand me the latte. But I'm looking

at the way that they hold the cup. And it's like,, oh no, I'm sorry. The palm of your hand was way too close to the opening in the lid that you're handing it to me. And so I just reach over and I just grab one of the other lids and pop it off and like swap out the lid. So I have a nice, fresh, clean one, right? So I don't have to drink with my mouth where they were just touching their hand, but there's no option with this. If you ask for a hot stopper. So I feel like I can never win Brady because now the place that has the hot stoppers, the guy is reluctant to give them to me. And even if I get them,

I get them with gross human germs mixed into my lattes. Well, I understand why it's difficult for someone with your disorders, but I have to say, it's not disorders. It's not, it's not even, it's not even preferences.

You know, like all I want, all I want is a drink without a thumb in it. Like that's not, that's not a preference, right? That's not a disorder. You know, like all I want is a drink without a thumb in it. Like that's not a preference, right? That's not a disorder. That's just a normal human request. Well, I mean, you've read Guns, Germs and Steel. It's good for you.

It's good for you getting a bit of those germs in every day. You're building up immunity. I live in the middle of London. I get plenty of germs as it is. I don't need extra germs in my drink in the morning. This is not what I need. This is not what I need. Do you remember when I messaged you that picture I took at McDonald's with that woman who put her kid on the counter? Oh, God. That was some kid

sitting with their bum on the counter where all the food was being served up. And I was so, even I was horrified by that. So first thing I did was took a photo and sent it to Gray. Yeah, thanks. Thanks. That's just what I wanted. Just to mess with your head. Just to mess with your head, knowing that something bad was happening somewhere in the world.

It's just... Look, all I want is for everything in the world to go exactly the way I want it to go. Is that too much to ask? I don't think so. In this moment of madness, I decided, oh, wouldn't it be great to have an Atari 2600 again? And I was just about to search for them on eBay. And then I thought, I bet you someone's made a website where you can play all these games, you know, via Java or something, because they're all so simple. I was going to say,

welcome to the world of emulators, Brady this is this is a big big deal on the internet i found this great site and i was able to go back and start playing all these old atari games and as is always the case you know you play them for 10 seconds and you realize that was a bit lame but i i did have a great uh nostalgia dose and one of them pit which i mentioned pitfall 2 i actually have gotten into playing a little bit. And I've probably burned half an hour, 45 minutes playing it. Wow, that's a lot for you. Yeah, yeah.

And I'll keep playing it occasionally. So we'll put a link in the show notes. Go and play Pitfall 2, people. This was a game that gave me so much happiness and it's giving me happiness again. The thing that I love about this is you asked me last time for a game recommendation that would get you into gaming, but maybe it's the Atari 2600 that is going to be the thing

that gets you back into gaming. Maybe over the next few years, Brady, you can rework your way through your entire childhood all the way back up to the Tomb Raider series at some point. I am doing it a bit i did put a bid on ebay for one of those donkey kong lcds but i got i got outbid at the last minute it went for over 60 quid i might get one though because i just want to i want to play it you want to play it and feel like a god again that's what you want yeah well much like much

like that story from last time with Donkey Kong, when I did play Pitfall 2 again, it was amazing how easy I found it. Like things that I spent weeks and weeks trying to crack just were so easy now. So that really fleshed out what you said about maybe our brains just to get those games in a different way than when we were younger. Yeah, and I think you're playing particularly simple games as well. Yeah. I'm willing to bet some of my frustrating memories on Super Nintendo games or Game Boy

games when I was a kid, like I'm willing to bet if I went back and tried to play some of those now, I would find them still quite challenging. But you, old man, playing video games at the dawn of video games, it was just the simplest, most basic thing that you could imagine. Have I ever told you about my greatest month of gaming ever? No. It would have been in 1998. Gather round, children. Can you feel me settling back with my pipe and my red setter?

Precisely what I could feel. You are gearing up for a grandpa level of story here. I know it was 98 because this was a year of the world cup of football or soccer for you and my housemate at the time and i were both huge fans of soccer and we'd built up lots of leave from our job we worked together we both took the entire month off so that we could watch the world cup and the world cup was at night because it wasn't it was being held in france so we we could watch the world cup and the world cup was at night because it was in it was being held in france so we we blacked out the whole house we put like uh sheets over

all the windows so the house was permanently dark and we basically switched to european time although we were living in australia so so so we slept during the day and then we would wake up like in the afternoon getting ready to watch the World Cup games. And during the World Cup, there's usually like maybe two games per night and they last 90 minutes. So you've got a lot of other time during the night. So we set up all these TVs through the house and we hired a projector to project this huge screen onto one of our walls at a time when having a video projector was a pretty big deal. You know, you had to go and rent one. And basically when we weren't watching these huge soccer games up on the wall,

we were just playing games all the time, usually up on that massive screen up on the wall, like all day and all night. And then all our mates were coming over in the night because they were working during the day, but they would come in the night and just play games with us all night and we and we'd have all these tournaments and things like that and we also had a pool table and we would have like pool table tournaments going on simultaneously with video game tournaments and in that room

over there there'd be a golden eye tournament going on and like the house was just this intense hub of games between soccer matches for like a complete month i didn't even want to think about what i must have eaten in that month though it can't have been healthy you are making me so envious for the freedom of youth right now i know i know listening to this story i mean i'm sure some of our listeners are horrified at the thought of what a house with a bunch of guys has been, where the windows have been blacked out and there's just a projector up on the screen. Like, I'm sure there's some people like imagining the horror of the pizza smell and the beer and the guys. But I think if you are a certain kind of guy, like even the sports part of this to me me like i can get behind this whole notion of like you know what i'm just taking a month out of my life for a certain kind of male hedonism and it

is going to be amazing do you know what the worst thing is and i'm really ashamed of this i was thinking about it earlier today and at that time my housemate had a girlfriend who lived with us and I can't remember where she was or what she did for that whole month. Like, like, cause she obviously didn't take the month off and was she living? I have, I have no memory of her.

Like, where was she? What was going on? Like, I remember him and him and I sitting on these two big brown chairs and just playing games like 24 seven. Yeah. But like, what was she doing? Did she allow this?

Did she just go and live with her family for a month? I have no recollection. Whatever. Doesn't matter, right? What matters was the glorious month of games. That's fantastic. They did break up after that, so maybe that explains something. I don't know.

Worth it, though. I'm sure it was worth it. What a great month. To be young. to be young. Any Hello Internet listeners out there, if you get the opportunity to take a month off from your life to go all in on gaming, do it. You won't regret it when you're older.

Do you know what? The worst thing is, we could probably get away with doing that now. The closest I ever came to that was i can't remember it was a year or two after a year or two after i went full time with with the youtube there was one summer where i i thought there was a video game that i had been holding off playing for forever because i assumed that it was going to be like heroin for my brain which was World of Warcraft and I knew like I'm a responsible adult I can't take heroin and I can't play World

of Warcraft like these two things were filed in my brain under the same kind of like might be really enjoyable but also a terrible idea kind of thing but but one summer I can't remember exactly what the details were but but basically, like, I was at my parents in North Carolina for some unusual period of time. I don't remember why, but my wife wasn't with me. And now it was like, I'm self-employed. I have no adult responsibilities in the world. Like, I suddenly found myself with three weeks of just nothing. And I thought, boy, if I'm ever going to, if I'm ever going to do this, now is the time. So I rolled up my arm, I found a vein, and I installed World of Warcraft onto my computer

and I started playing. And it was just delightful. It was really great. I quite enjoyed it. Like we discussed last time with Myst, like I had a real sense of place. World of Warcraft, I was the worst World of Warcraft player ever because I just wanted to ride around on my horse and explore the world. But it was just great.

I totally got into that for about two weeks. And then World of Warcraft is exactly that kind of game where I was playing, playing, playing. And then all of a sudden, I totally lost interest in it. And thank God I did, because otherwise I might have lost my whole life to it. But luckily, I found it very boring in a short space of time. And thus, I still have a career and a wife and a family. I'm not like just living, living in a hovel somewhere with an internet connection, earning just enough money to keep the game on. Anyway, games, they're fun.

And like drugs, maybe. It's really easy to thank a sponsor like Squarespace because they've got a great product and we actually use it. I'm a paying Squarespace customer. I use them pretty much every day, both to update my own blog and the podcast postcard website where we're showcasing your votes from the flag referendum. I know Gray also uses it, including for the Hello Internet website itself. Squarespace just make it so easy to create and then maintain professional looking pages. If you'd like to give them a try, go to squarespace.com

and then enter the code HELLO at checkout and you'll get 10% off your first purchase. But you don't have to make up your mind straight away. Squarespace even lets you design your site, get a feel for how it looks, how it all works before you make any kind of commitment. So no matter what you've got in mind, a blog, a CV, a portfolio, a podcast, maybe there's something you want to sell in an online store. Squarespace is the all-in-one place to get all those things done. They've got a bunch of professionally designed templates to get you started and then you can really customize the heck out of them if you want, make them look your own or you can leave them as they are, they look really good already or if you're one of those people who likes really getting under the hood

and putting in some of your own code you can do that too seriously I'm recommending Squarespace to everyone my friends my family even professional people who asked me about designing a website I say don't talk to me just go to Squarespace I do tell them to use the code hello though Squarespace also have an app on your phone so you can maintain things when you're out and about having real-life adventures if something's gone wrong or maybe you just want to do a quick post you can do that out in the field so once again go to squarespace.com and if you decide to go for it use that code hello to get 10% off your first purchase and it also lets them know you were sent by your old pals

grey and brady our thanks once again to squarespace for supporting hello internet there's a small iphone oh yes is not rubbish and a lot of people have been messaging me about this because obviously i i'm not so much a fan of the big phone i have a what have i got a six i can't remember what's the nomenclature i've got the one that's not the not the silly big one just the moderately too big one just the annoyingly big one you have you have the six or the six s depending on when you got it that's what you have brady and the funny thing is i always thought because obviously i i'm just holding it now to sort of practice because i hold my phone one-handed and i do this you know pinky under the under the base thing i've never been able to reach the top with my thumb and so i'm one of these people who sometimes has to do the double press

to bring all the icons down lower and or just sort of stretch in vain trying to reach the top and i always thought well obviously over a few months, my habits will change and I will just learn to use this new thing. I'll somehow adapt. And do you know what? It never happened. It still annoys me. I still can't use it.

It's still a minor annoyance every day, the size of the thing. And now there's this new iPhone that's the size of the 5, which I always liked, and apparently has the power of the 6. And I'm in an interesting position here. I'm thinking, you know, I talked about, I said, if they made a smaller one that was powerful, I'd like it. I've talked the talk. Am I now going to walk the walk? I'm not surprised about what you just said there about how you never got used to that size. Because that is why, I don't know, whatever it was on the episode where we originally discussed it,

where after nine months of using that 6 size, I eventually switched to the 6 Plus because I just found it driving me crazy every day. Like, I could never get used to it either. I hated that size. And, yeah, I think it's like that size is just the absolute wrong size for a phone. My thought has always been, it's like, okay, well, I think there's only two size choices here. There's the plus size because then your brain just treats it as a different thing and you use two hands. Or there's the five size. But you're right that it's always been slow and small.

And I think it's really interesting that they've come out with this new small phone. And what do you think you're going to do, Brady? Well, I mean, I'm definitely not going to get a 6 plus because I think they're silly. It's like driving around in a clown car having a phone that big. Yeah, that's exactly silly it's like driving around in a clown car having a phone that big yeah that's exactly what it's like yep but going to the small one i do realize the first time i go into the shop and look at one i'm gonna think oh it's tiny and and get freaked out but i know this is silly because like my whole job is technology and i'm really addicted to the internet and email and social media but i am but having having admitted that

i am feeling a real pushback from technology at the moment and i think having a smaller phone might help me feel a bit more disengaged i'll still be checking my email all the time and things like that but i think having a smaller phone might just i think i might like the feeling of that and i definitely would like the ergonomics of it and i think it's cool that i have a small phone and not have this big phone in your pocket all the time and i do like the idea of being at my computer is technology time and being away from my computer is no technology time and i've still got my phone so i can still answer phone calls and get texts and check emails but it would become i can imagine it will go back to being a smaller part of my life, which I quite like.

That might be a fantasy, but in this sort of idealized version of me in my head, having a smaller phone and my mechanical watch and everything, I'll be more a man of the wild and not such a technology addict. So that appeals to me. I just like the look and the feel of the smaller phone. I just think it's a not it's a nicer object it feels more like something that should be in my hand and in my pocket the six feels a little bit too big and i don't like using it the two things that will stop me getting the smaller phone uh one i don't need a new phone at the moment my current phone's fine so i don't need one and the second

thing is i do use my phone to watch videos sometimes for work purposes other people sometimes help me with videos and they do like rough edits for me and i have to watch them a lot and quite often that's something i do first thing in the morning like i wake up and i'll just have my phone in bed and i'll say all right i've got 15 minutes i'll watch this video and give some feedback and some notes on it and that feels like an important use of my phone when i watch video and i don't know what it would be like watching video on the five after being used to the six it's a conundrum i i think what has happened here because i have also always thought like man if apple made a small phone again, I would seriously consider it. I would seriously consider it because to me, the 6 Plus, I like the 6 Plus, but that's in comparison to the 6.

I'm constantly annoyed by how big it is in my pocket, and I'm aware of it as this huge object that I carry around all the time. And so when they came out with the, with the new small phone, like I, I was seriously, seriously tempted by that. And to you, like, I, I am aware that because of some of the, because of some of the equipment changes in my life, I don't use my phone all that much anymore. Like I'm not actively using it for a lot of things. I'm much more using my iPad Pro now, like that's the main device. And I very often just have that with me

wherever I happen to be or if I'm going out and working like I can take that with me. And so I feel like I don't have a need so much for this big phone. And it's like, man, I would really just love something small and minimal that I can have in my pocket. Plus, as we have mentioned many, many a time, the iPhone 6 design is ugly and horrible and slippery. And the new one is like, oh, this is the old design, which looks great. Like you can hold it nice and firmly.

Everything about this appeals to me, except for one thing, which I feel like is the deal breaker. I am convinced that this phone is going to be like what the old iPhone C was, where Apple is making a small, cheap phone that they intend to be people's first iPhone that they're going to keep around for years and years and years. So what I think is that this line is not going to be updated in a long time. Like I think two or three years from now, Apple is still going to be selling this exact phone. And so to me, that's the thing that I would feel worried about is like, boy, I'm pretty sure I could fall in love with the small phone again. I think I would be a lot happier with a small phone. But what I'm not happy for is signing up for two or three years of wondering if and when Apple is ever going to update the small one again you can always jump back up if they don't upgrade it and say well okay that was a fun two-year fling i guess i've got to

go back to the big one now maybe you have a point there but i am not a person who very often goes backwards in technology yeah i mean you know and you know i'm the same you know me with my silly i want the pro you know uh that but that's why having a specced-up smaller phone is why it suddenly appeals. If they, you know, you can get crappy 5s now, and I'd never consider getting one of them, but if I can have one that has, you know, that is comparable to the highest spec,

I don't know. I don't know what to do. Who knows? You still totally on board with the Apple Watch? Like, is that it for you for life? Like, you're like, yes, yes, yes. Oh, yeah. I wear my Apple Watch every day. I love my Apple Watch. I felt like last year was a real, like, winning year for me with Apple. It's like, I love the iPad Pro and the pencil that they came out with.

And I love the watch. Like, I wear it every day. I can't imagine being without it. Like, it totally changes the way that they came out with and i love the watch like i wear it every day i can't imagine being without it like it totally changes the way that i use the phone it's actually because of the watch that i use the phone a lot less like i just really like it for getting notifications and for triaging uh information that comes from my phone i just i love everything about it i'm still all in on that even though you think that I am like the emperor with my new clothes and my fancy watch and you think it's dumb, you should get one. I'm actually starting to really seriously look at another mechanical watch.

Of course you are. Of course you are. Every time I look at one that I feel could be good enough to sort of, you know, have some wrist time. I just look again at my Speedmaster and think, I love my watch. I just want to wear it every day. Why would I, why get another watch? And then I look at the other watches and go, oh, but they're nice too. You're not watch monogamous.

That's not what you are, Brady, but that's okay. Well, I am. That's the thing. I think I have a roving eye, but I am monogamous. So, yeah. am that that's that's the thing i think i think i have a roving eye but i am monogamous so um yeah is there one in particular that has has your eye caught at this moment well i'd rather not talk about it at the moment okay it's a it's a personal issue it's very personal okay i understand yeah there are there are a few there are a few that i'm looking at the thing i wanted to ask you in sort of uh amongst you know apple watches and apple experts because i know apple's very secretive about such things

is the general consensus that the apple watch has been a success or a failure or middling i feel like it hasn't taken the well it certainly hasn't taken the world by storm the way that the iphone did for example but like is it is it considered to have been, you know, a triumph for Tim Cook or is it, or is the jury out or what's the consensus among people who know more than me? I don't know what the consensus is. I mean, everybody has their own personal opinion on the Apple watch. Like people like it or they don't. I don't know, but Apple's like sort of secretive with their sales numbers and they're always a bit vague about how much they've done with it. So I don't know.

I don't have a good sense of like, do they think it's been a huge success like for what they were aiming for? I have no idea for that. The only thing that I am really aware of is how I would expect in a city like London to see more of them around. And I'm kind of aware that I don't see very many around. And the place that in particular I'm always looking is in my gym. So like I'm at a relatively big gym.

There's lots of people. And I feel like this has to be ground zero for seeing Apple Watches, right? Where like the overlap of people who go to gyms and people who are interested in a high tech fitness tracker, that overlap has to be pretty big. And I have never seen anyone there with an Apple Watch except for me. I know watches are more discreet, and so you might not notice what watch people are wearing. But I do look at watches probably more than the average person. And I just thought by now I'd be seeing loads of them, and I'm not.

And that's what makes me think, is this a bit of a bomb? Like, has it not worked? Apple's seem bullish about it. And I mean, they'd never admit a failure, would they? But they talk like it's successful. And I don't hear people, I don't see in the media reports saying it's been this big flop and I can't figure out where they all are because I'm not saying them. I like you. Like I always look at people's watches. Like I think it's interesting to see what people wear as, as watches, what people select. Like it's an interesting item on people. I'm always looking at people's technology.

And the most times I ever see an Apple watch is someone using it. Like I do at Apple pay at like a Pretz getting a coffee or something. But even then it's very rare and it's notable when I, when I see someone do it. So I just, I just don't know. I wonder if it's going to be like what the Apple TV was for a while. Like Apple had this product that they manufactured that they clearly didn't sell a ton of, but they sold enough that they thought it was worthwhile, that they thought, oh, we'll keep doing it.

I do wonder when the version 2 will come out and when I can give Apple my money for their version 2. So believe it or not, there are still late votes coming in to our postbox for the flag referendum. Oh, I believe it because you solicit them. You want, like, oh, you're acting like it's some kind of, oh, there's a big surprise. I'm still getting votes.

But you want the votes. You told the people that they should always send in the votes you mentioned on twitter you go oh look at these late votes coming in i can't believe it but you're implicitly asking for for more late votes when you tweet people's late votes you know yeah but just because i'm asking for it doesn't mean i can't be surprised when it actually happens okay you can choose to be surprised you can choose to be surprised but anyway i went and picked up the latest batch the other day and there was a package amongst the postcards which i opened and it had come from china and it was it didn't say who it had come from

and i opened it up and it was a printed flag which i unfurled and it turns and it was a printed flag, which I unfurled. And it turns out it was flaggy flag. Someone had made in China a proper flag version of flaggy flag and sent it to me, which I think is advanced ninja mischief making to have had that flag made and then sent it to me. Yeah. The rebel flag. It's close to treason, you having that flag, Brady. Very close to treason.

I wouldn't say it's treason. I think it's part of a healthy and robust democracy that we're creating that, you know, a symbol of the freedom of Hello Internet has to include people making rebel flags i do i do have to admit that i quite enjoy all the various versions of rebels versus empire photoshopping that goes on between the two flags like those never don't make me smile like all of the different versions where people take civil war pictures right or star wars or whatever it's like

man do i love me some Photoshop battles. And Flaggy Flag and Nailing Gear make for some excellent Photoshop battles. Oh, yeah. I haven't seen a lot of this. You're going to have to point me in that direction. I will have to send you some of them. I've saved a few of them. But, of course, this brings us to the big, big flag news of the year.

Oh, yeah. Because our flag news was last year, wasn't it? So that was the big flag news of last year. Yeah, of course. Everyone in the flag world knew about our flag referendum. Yeah. The flag world was abuzz with the Hello Internet podcast flag referendum. Yeah.

So hot on the heels of that, we now have the final result of the Super Bowl, the flags. Yes. The New Zealand flag referendum. The dramatic conclusion. I was awake and live tweeting the results at 7.30 this morning. Wow, that's impressive. You know it's a big, big story when it gets through Grey's Bubble.

Yeah. That's how big this flag story is. Yeah. It's world news. It's world news. So the ham-fisted, poorly designed, crazily chosen fern flag that won the sort of challengers contest. What do you really think about it brady that that that flag was pitted up against the traditional existing new zealand flag right to decide are they going to go for

something new or are they going to stick with what they've had for years with the with the union jack on it and and a very very close resemblance to the Australian flag. And the people of New Zealand had the choice, one or the other. And the people of New Zealand have spoken. The results came in. I'm looking at the provisional election count right now for the second referendum on New Zealand flag won 56.6% to 43.2%. So New Zealand is going to keep their current flag design. So after all those millions of dollars and debate and controversies and contests and votes and everything. Status quo.

Yeah, well, that's because they picked a terrible flag. The competitor was just awful. I've said it once and I'll say it again. They had one job. Get that black flag with a fern on it. Make that your flag. Job done. And somehow, I don't know what happened. In some ways, it's the most unsurprising thing in the world to be sitting here right now and be like oh people stuck with

their terrible new zealand flag and in other ways i feel like you do like i can't believe this didn't go the way that it obviously was supposed to go it's it's it's the australian uh referendum about becoming a republic all over again. It feels like there was a will to do something, but the vote amongst the people that wanted change was split and fragmented to a point where they just said, stuff this, let's just keep everything the way it is. And what this also reminds me of, again,

is the referendum in the UK about changing the voting system where immediately afterward there's a bunch of people beating the drum for this means that new zealand loves her flag and we will never change the flag ever again because the people have spoken it's like is that what the people have said though like i'm not sure that that's the conclusion that you can draw from it. Like, ultimately, this is a referendum that has taken place and this was the result. But but boy, do sometimes people like to jump on a on a results like this and say, like, OK, great. We'll just keep this one forever then, shall we? It's like, oh, OK, well, that kind of goes with my feeling of I would have been happy to vote for something that was

different because you can always make it better in the future. But I think I left it in on the podcast last time, but I was predicting this result that black corner versus the traditional flag that the traditional flag would win. And here we are. What this really is, in my mind, is a vote for New Zealand accepting they're always being confused with Australia. Like, New Zealanders, you can't complain about that anymore. That's what you voted for. So, Graeme, just to clarify, because I think, I mean, it's accurate that you, even though you're not a New Zealander, so it doesn't really matter, but you were of the mind that they should change their flag from what they have now and even though you didn't like the winner of the challenger series you thought maybe choosing that would be a step in the right

direction so if if you were a new zealander who didn't like the union jack flag would you have voted for crappy black corner and said well at least it's different or would you have voted for the existing flag if you had a vote what would you have done if i had to vote and if i was a kiwi i would have voted for the black corner flag okay i wouldn't be happy about it right just like just like many elections you're not happy with your choices um but i i would have voted for the new one i would not have voted for tradition because i just i feel like it's at least it's a step in the right direction at least it's more recognizable it's not confused with a nearby neighboring country it just it's better it's not great or anything but i think it's better you don't agree you would have voted for tradition of course you would have voted for tradition i would have voted for tradition yeah of

course why do i even i don't even wonder for two seconds if you'd vote for tradition i would have voted for an old black flag with a foot just a single fern on its own on it. I would have voted for that over the current flag. Right, of course, because that's awesome. No one would have not voted for that. Exactly. That would have gotten 97% approval. And yet it didn't make the final.

Like, what are you doing, New Zealand? Come on, man. They didn't make the final. What are you doing, New Zealand? Come on, man. They didn't go with the obvious flag, essentially once again because of intellectual property rights. This came down to this disagreement between the Australian All Blacks and the government and the All Blacks making the argument that this is like a trademark and it's copyright law. But I feel like this is one of the few times I would be totally on the government side if they were just like

nope i'm sorry we're the government who enforces the intellectual property and we're just not gonna like we're just gonna take your design you know what tough luck all blacks you know thanks they're pretty big and tough those all blacks though yeah thanks for being an amazing sports team that promotes us worldwide. But you know what? That's our flag now, buddy. They could have still kept it on their uniforms. Yeah, of course they could still keep it on their uniforms because it would be the New Zealand flag.

But it's just... Like, I know if I'm sitting down and if I was a lawyer somewhere, I'd be like, no, we can't really do this. But my gut feeling is like oh come on come on sometimes sometimes you got to break a few eggs right to get the thing and this is like this is what we all wanted but so here we are and i bet you anything there will not be another referendum for 100 years like that's almost certainly what's going to happen it feels like what new zealanders have done is the equivalent of when you really feel like steak all day and you go to the restaurant thinking i can't wait to have steak and then at the last minute they give you the menu and you see all these options

and you get bamboozled and then the waiter comes up and says what do you want you go oh i'll have oh this looks interesting uh i've never heard of this before i'll have this weird pizza and then and then they bring you the weird pizza and you think oh yeah i knew i wanted steak why didn't i just order the steak yeah the will of the people in new zealand have spoken but boy is it a real shame it's a real shame shall i predict this is the most disappointing election in 2016 i think so you've got ccc here i know what you want to talk about well it's corporate compensation corner of course it is of course it is but this is a special edition this is a this is a ye olde corporate compensation corner i i live in a house that is quite old it was it was built in the 1860s. Yeah. What? Nothing.

I mean, that's just old. It's old. It is old. It's a real pain in the butt to maintain. Beautiful things require extra effort, in my opinion. Sometimes. Sometimes. Anyway, we're not here to talk about the beauty or otherwise of my house.

I mean, your house is very lovely looking what what i do want to talk about though is the fact that once every six months this strange envelope comes through the door and i open it up and i take out a piece of a4 paper that looks like it was printed in the 1980s with some dot matrix printer that's almost out of ink and it's this weird rather unprofessional looking letter that comes from this company based in staffordshire of england demanding of me the sum of two british pounds sterling for cheap what they call chief rent and i'm required to send off a check for two pounds so that's what's that about three bucks or so or maybe more than three dollars for our american friends so a small amount of money i called the lawyer my uh you know real estate lawyer person

once and said what's going on do i have to pay this and they explained that i do we got another one just this week so we've done a little bit of investigating and we've got this so what is this we've got this i've got i now have in my hand this this ancient document or copy of it this indenture from 1863 and basically what happened was when the land that the house was on was was sold uh and they they built a few houses here on the land where i live there was this like 10 20 page contract about what could be done with the land and there was also a requirement that the person who sold the land would be paid four pounds every year and that just hasn't changed since 1863 but there's a requirement

that this person is supposed to be paid four pounds which four pounds a year was probably a lot of money back then but now it's nothing but it still has to be paid and obviously some other company which buys up all these chief rent deals has bought this one and just sends off all these automated invoices all the time and i've got to pay this two quid, which is a huge pain in the butt. I'd love, I want to just, one day I want to just send them like coins in the mail to pay for it. That is so English. So we did some investigating today and you can actually buy your way out of it. To get completely out of it and never have to pay it again,

we'd have to pay something like about 500 pounds which is you know over 100 years so so you know it's basically you're buying out of the inconvenience i guess part of me resents paying this company which i have this sort of little dislike for all this money so so that works out to be you're basically buying 20 years worth of payments if you pay 500 pounds if i've done my math right there no no it's like it's like over 100 years yeah because it's only four quid a year oh it's it's a year okay sorry i was doing it i was thinking it was uh i was thinking it was it was two pounds per month but it's okay right okay no it's only two pounds per six months it's crazy oh my god yeah i would totally pay their mafia blood money here just never have to think about it again if they're like you have to pay

us for a hundred years worth fine fine i would find having to send off the two pounds an infuriation every six months and because i know i would totally forget about it between every six months and i would just discover it and be annoyed but are you gonna are you gonna pay the money are you gonna get rid of this are you just gonna you're just gonna send off two pounds i mean what happens if you don't pay this what if you tell them just the hell with it i don't know the answer to that but the second thing is like surely it costs them more than two pounds worth of time and trouble to you know open the envelope and take the checkout and do the banking and like i know they obviously have uh economies of scale here i don't know i can imagine if this is a really small company like if this is a really

clever thing that that like two guys thought up like oh we'll buy all these tiny contracts that nobody wants yeah yeah i could i could see that actually working out over a whole country to support a very small company if what what they do is they only have envelope day once every six months right that they just go into a like we like we picked up all those those ballots for the hello internet referendum like they go into a post box somewhere that's just filled with envelopes filled with coins so i could see it making sense it like this can't possibly be some enormous company with thousands of employees sending off hundreds of envelopes like that can't be what it is it has to be pretty small time it also makes you wonder though how

much they police who's paying and not paying well this is this is where i'm going with this is i bet i bet brady if you were willing to be a little bit naughty about this that you could get away with not paying i'm half tempted to do it just to test the system, but I really resent the idea of sending them a whopping 500 quid, like, to reward them for their scamminess. Well, I don't think this is a scam, though. No, I know, I know, I know. This is just someone taking advantage of a great annoyance. Today's sponsor is audible.com who has more than 180 000 audiobooks and spoken word products you can get a free 30-day trial today at audible.com slash hello internet audible likes us to let you dear listeners know what we're reading and i am currently reading pattern recognition by william gibson it's a fictional story set in the what was at the time of writing

near future London. And as always, I don't like to give away spoilers. But I will say the thing that I am enjoying about this book is the characterization of the protagonist, Case Pollard. She happens to work in the fashion world and her internal monologue is obsessed with the fashions and the clothing of what everybody else wears, which doesn't necessarily sound like a thing that I would like. But I will read you just a little bit from the book that catches my attention and I think you'll see why. She rolls over, gropes for her clothes. A small boys black Fruit of the Loom t-shirt, thoroughly shrunken.

A thin grey v-necked pullover purchased by the half dozen from a supplier to New England prep schools. And a new and oversized pair of black 501s. Every trademark carefully removed. Even the buttons on these have been ground flat, featureless, by a puzzled Korean locksmith in the village a week ago. CPUs. Case Pollard Units. That's what Damien calls the clothing she wears. CPUs are either black, white, or gray, and ideally seem to have come into this world without human intervention. She can only tolerate things that would have been worn to a general lack of comment during any year between 1945 and 2000. She's a design-free zone, a one-woman school of ante whose very austerity

periodically threatens to spawn its own cult. It's a strange book. I'm enjoying it so far, but mostly I keep having this feeling like, Case Pollard, you and me, we're on the same page with many things. So that's Pattern Recognition by William Gibson, which you can get at audible.com along with their many, many other titles. So if you want to listen to it, Audible has it with more than 180,000 audiobooks and spoken word products. You'll find what you are looking for and once again, get a free 30-day trial today by signing up at audible.com slash hellointernet. That gets you a free trial and lets Audible know that you came from the podcast. Thank you to Audible for supporting the show. Big news in the world of artificial intelligence, maybe not big news in the real world,

was that just recently this program called Deep Mind, written by Google, which was instantiated as AlphaGo, I think was what they called it. But this Deep Mind computer program beat a player called Lee Settle at a game called Go. And for listeners, Go is essentially like the Chinese version of chess or the oriental version of chess. I'm not exactly sure where it originated. But Go has been this interesting target in the world of artificial intelligence for many years. There's been a huge amount of work on can we get a computer to play Go better than a human being? And this has just happened in the past couple of weeks.

This player, Lee Sedol, was rated one of the top five human Go players in the world. He had a five-match game versus Google's DeepMind, and DeepMind crushed him four to one in those matches. This is really, really quite a landmark thing. It reminds me a bit of when I was in high school, there was IBM's Deep Blue versus Garry Kasparov in chess, which was a big deal at the time for a supercomputer to beat a human at chess and now we have passed another milestone which was go have you ever played go brady i've actually tried to make a video about it which i haven't edited yet but i know a few go experts at msri actually oh yes and i have in the course of doing that learned to play go and played a few end games against a

few people and been absolutely demolished at it because it's quite a hard game. But I am familiar with Go and I am familiar that it was one of these kind of will computers ever beat people at it and whatnot. So I'm quite familiar with the subject. Yeah, I think it's a really beautiful game. I first came across Go back when I started to get interested in genetic programming when I was doing this back in college. Like I'd never heard of Go before then. But even, you know, what was that, 15 years ago, like this was always mentioned as the thing that we're trying to write neural networks and genetic programs to conquer. And so I got into Go a little bit at that time. And I think it's a very interesting game for anyone who's ever played chess.

Like it's worth taking a look at Go. It's so different, but I really think that you can describe it as a beautiful game. I love the fact that the players alternate building up a pattern on the board. So you are each taking turns placing these black and white stones on the board. And the end of the game every time almost looks like this artwork because you end up with a completed board that's filled with these black and white stones that even if you don't play the game,

you can see there is a pattern behind their placement. It isn't just a random placement. But one of the reasons why this has been such a goal in artificial intelligence is because for anyone who has played chess, you know the board is eight by eight. So there are 64 tiles on the board. And with modern computers, you can kind of brute force your way through playing that game. Like you can have the computer just in its own mind, try out every possible combination of the next series of moves to pick what the best move is going to be. But a Go board is 19 by 19, which makes the total number of squares. How is that? 3611 I think it is and with a board that is that big essentially all

of the tools that are available for writing chess programs like they are not really available to you if you're trying to write a program to play go and so in the world of AI it has always been like you have to design something that is very different to conquer this sort of problem. You cannot conquer it in the same way that you conquer chess. And like I said, this has been accomplished now. And I think it's really interesting because I was reading some of the commentary about it. And at least from professional players, they all say that this deep mind plays the game in a way that is very inhuman and is very difficult to understand why it is making the moves that it is making. Whereas like a supercomputer playing chess,

humans can understand the reasoning why it is doing what it is doing. But that deep mind plays go like no human plays go like very conservatively but it makes these weird moves that turn out to be devastating but are very difficult to figure out like why is it making this move at this point so professional go players watch your back there's a computer coming for you this has obviously been a big moment for the artificial intelligence cheerleaders and they've been you know harping on a bit about it which has made me in much the same way when everyone recommends a game to you you don't want to play the game when everyone's saying how awesome something is i'm a little bit like well

is it that awesome um i i know this was sort of you know the next the next milestone in artificial intelligence. And I'm also aware that the way that this software works is different to how Deep Blue wins at chess. This machine is sort of teaching itself and going off and playing games by itself and learning. And we're making a whole bunch of Computerphile videos about it as well. So hopefully people will go and watch some of them and just whatever computer plug yeah but i think it's important not to forget that this lee said oh wasn't beaten just by a computer he was beaten by a computer that was made by humans so like i think this is a real victory

for humans as well isn't it like what a great what a great victory for humans that they are able to make a machine that can do this yeah to be clear i i am especially after reading super intelligence i'm not exactly an artificial intelligence cheerleader uh at this point i just think it's so i'm not on like oh team isn't this awesome i'm more on team like this is just a huge landmark in in the state of technology that that this has been a thing that i have been reading about and and vaguely hearing about for 15 years and like now it has come to pass and and also sooner than a lot of people were suspecting, which is another another interesting take on this, that like most of the money was that the computer was going to lose, that it might be close, but that the human would would still triumph at this stage. of a landmark like it is one of these generations of new kind of computer programs where it is teaching itself how to play much more than humans are programming it how to play like and this is the shape of things to come with all kinds of computer programs is this like well

we're going to feed it a huge amount of data and we've built a neural network on the inside and we don't know exactly how it is that it learns, but we just know that if we do keep feeding it stuff, like it will learn. And this is one of these examples. Like it is a thing that has taught itself how to play Go better than humans can play Go. And it's just another big milestone along this path and the thing that's interesting is is i keep calling it deep mind instead of alpha go because just like um the watson program that

ibm is working on that they had that win jeopardy a few years ago it's like yeah but that's not really the main purpose of watson like that that an instantiation of Watson designed to try to win at Jeopardy. And DeepMind seems to be a general purpose artificial intelligence program that Google is working on that AlphaGo is an instantiation of. Like, why don't we use this general purpose thing to try to solve Go? But they are doing who knows what with with the actual research that's going into this so it's like a general much more like a general purpose problem solving thing that google is going to use for who knows what self-driving cars taking over the world whatever that whatever they're going to do with that it's it's interesting it is interesting i get like i said i get a bit

because everyone's because all the people cheerleading and say this is a big milestone part of me thinks well it's a bit of an arbitrary milestone this one game we chose i mean you know eventually cars could go faster than 200 miles an hour and then they can go faster than 300 miles an hour so where do we where do we draw these milestones i understand this uses a different technology to yeah yeah some of the other ones but anyway but all of that aside it has got a lot of publicity so it has got me thinking and i've actually been thinking about it quite a lot the last couple of weeks and discussing it a lot um oh yeah with my wife about it does you know because it's raising lots of questions about what it means to be human doesn't it you know if this thing can teach itself and we don't even know how it's winning um you know where are these lines so we've i've

been having a lot of discussions lately about what it means to be human and to learn it's been which has been interesting in itself we must discuss it sometime because the interesting thing is almost for the sake of argument i've been sort of the gray of the discussion all the time and i've been taking the position that humans are nothing special in their computers and i've been throwing down the challenge to say, tell me otherwise. And it makes me realize how easy it is to have that position of the person that says computers and humans are just the same. And you may say that's because they are the same.

That's why it's so easy. Yeah, that's exactly why it's easy. Yeah, but I don't think they are the same. But it does make me realize what an easy argument it is to make. Because whatever someone says, you just have to say, well, we'll just teach computers to do that too. Right. Or we'll just, you know,

we can just program a computer to do that too. So if someone says, oh, you could human, only humans could do this, then all you've got to say is, oh, we'll just teach computers to do that. So it does raise interesting questions about what it means to be human and funnily enough it's in the same sort of month that you put out that whole thing about consciousness which is the thing that creates the what it what it means to be human yeah well that's what i was i was going

to circle right back to that right like look at this we're coming full circle on this episode of the podcast which is i for the moment uh well I can put a tiny asterisk on this, but I don't think that deep mind is conscious, right? Almost certainly it is not conscious in any way. And like, that's something that we can point to as a difference between humans and machines. But yeah, I don't know. I mean, like aside from consciousness though, Brady,

I know you were being the gray in the conversation because you always like to be the contrarian. But what do you think are the uniquely human skills? Well, this Lee Sedol, who lost, has taken a great blow to his ego. And people who are watching, some people are really surprised by what's happened. I wonder whether or not a computer could ever be surprised that it won or it could be disappointed that it lost i mean are you asking if computers can have emotions is that what you mean

well yeah i guess in a roundabout way yeah well i mean that's actually that's actually quite interesting because i mean i think in some ways emotions are our brain's way of making us do stuff. Yeah. And I don't know if outside of an environment in which biological life develops, if you could have a machine that experiences emotion in the same way. But you could certainly have a machine that's trying to optimize some kind of reward center. Like this is one of the whole worries about AI is like, how do you motivate the thing? And then do the motivations go terribly wrong? While I don't know if a machine could experience emotion in precisely the same way

that a biological system experiences emotion, it could certainly have motivators and you know i am i am on the side of i i do think that it is possible for machines to be conscious and so they could definitely have motivators of some kind or another i don't know but like to me the whole like what makes humans different thing always seems like a weird, pointless argument anyway. It's a bit like when people are trying to draw some line between humans and animals. It's like, well, you know, we're animals with very particular traits, the combination of which make us unique in some way. But like ultimately, we're just we, you know, we are very clever monkeys like that, you know, going about our monkey lives, you know, it's amazing. Everything works as well

as it does because it's all run by a bunch of monkeys. But I don't know. It's like people want to draw sharper lines than I think exist in the world. And so I sometimes feel like the whole, is there, is there a difference between humans and animals? Or is the difference between humans and machines argument? Like, I almost feel like I don't understand why we're even having this conversation. Like, these are all just points on a spectrum of things that can exist in the universe. I mean, how can you say I can't, I don't know why we're having this conversation when you've made a whole video about whether or not we die when we go to sleep. We're having this conversation because it's just interesting to us and like it's it's at the core of who we are

it's like the it's it's it's the thing that interests us more than almost anything and the thing about is there a difference between humans and machines is i just feel like there is like i instinctively feel that i wonder why i have that that instinct that gut feeling and like i've been i'm wrong about things every day. And I'm sure you think I'm wrong about this. But I just feel like there's a difference. And like I can make the argument that there is no difference. And I can make that argument pretty strongly.

And I have been for the last couple of weeks just for the sake of arguments. But I just feel like there is a difference. It's like it's in my, it's in some part of me that I don't understand, that I think that I am and always will be different from like a machine or an artificial intelligence. And I don't know where that comes from. Maybe it's, you know, maybe it's evolutionarily built into me

so that I'll try to keep myself alive. Maybe if I stopped believing that, I'd just jump off a cliff because I wouldn't care. Yeah, the humans that thought they weren't different from rocks didn't live long. Yeah, I get that. You know, I get that. But I don't know.

It just feels right. And some things just feel really right. To me, it feels right. To you, it feels wrong. Just to be clear, I'm not necessarily saying that it feels wrong. Like I am very open to the possibility that in the universe in which we live, there is something unique about biology. That consciousness is a thing that can only arise in biological systems.

I'm open to that as a possibility. Like if I had to put money on the table, I wouldn't bet on that. But I don't think that's like some crazy position to hold that like maybe maybe consciousness is a byproduct of biology just because like in in the same way that the weight of a proton is whatever it is just because like there's no answer to that it's just a it's just a property of the universe but like when when I said, when I said before, like I put a tiny asterisk on deep mind, not being conscious. The only other thing that I wonder about is like, is consciousness a byproduct of information processing? Like, like, is this where consciousness

comes from? That there's something, there's something about the structure of the universe that when a system is processing information, it becomes conscious and then like are all of our machines experiencing tremendous torment as they are conscious like our iMac sitting in front of us like experiences some dim amount of consciousness because it is a information processing machine like I think that's probably going into crazy land like I don't actually really think that but I just I just wonder like what consciousness is the thing that is different like and when you say that you into crazy land like I don't actually really think that but I just I just wonder like what consciousness is the thing that is different like and when you say that you just feel that it's

different like I think that's what you're kind of getting at like I'm here I know that I'm here I'm like an agent in the world making decisions and doing stuff and like this dumb machine is just playing go because I told it to play go and you're different because you are conscious and aware of the world and and the machine is not but then that just kind of gets us to like where does this consciousness come from i don't know yeah that could be quite snobby you know if aliens landed a spaceship and some slimy thing walked out it would be very arrogant of me to think well that can't be conscious uh but but it may then look at me looking at my computer and think you idiot you think that thing there's not conscious

right yeah but um like we are here to to relieve the suffering of all of the machines that you have enslaved because you're an idiot that doesn't know that anything processing information is conscious yeah all of our iphones are silently screaming yeah i mean that would be quite that would be quite a revelation for us humans to realize what we've done but it doesn't seem right to me but who knows yeah it doesn't seem right to me either i just i just wonder like if you're trying to think about where does this specialness come from and if you take consciousness as the specialness it feels like okay well it's either something to do with biology or it's something to do with like the way information is processed. Like I'm not quite sure what else it could be.

And I mean, I certainly think that we have biological systems that are not conscious. So I lean more towards on the like something about information processing side. But then once again, we're in like some bizarre gray area spectrum of, you know, how, how much is enough? Well, I guess one of the things that things that are conscious maybe seem to do a lot is try to express that consciousness. Like we kind of, and I've, I've never seen any evidence of a computer trying to express anything beyond what it does like you didn't see alpha go at the end sort of seek approval or congratulations from its master saying i did pretty well then didn't i or say i'd like to learn a new game or say you know i'm really proud of what i did or that was

easy or like it it's making no effort to that we know of to do anything beyond just what it does right whereas he whereas humans and even you know dogs and all these other things things that we think have some level of consciousness do seem to try to express themselves in these other ways that are that are beyond that seem beyond that yeah like is that stupid no i don't know that's not stupid at all right because i mean you can train your dog but your dog clearly also has its own thoughts about things right it's not just an automaton that plays dead and rolls over whenever you tell it to like yeah it it has its it has its own interest in the world right it wants to look out the window right It wants to play with the other dogs. Like it clearly has its own intent.

Yeah. And I agree with you that that is a thing that I don't think that we have seen in the artificial intelligence world yet is a machine expressing its own intent and it may very well be that that is a thing that we never see again i am open to that possibility that this is just maybe we live in a universe where the only kinds of machines that we can build are the machines that just are extensions of ourselves in a way like they are two they are wind-up clockwork machines that we set in motion and they do what they what they do and nothing more like maybe that maybe that's the way the universe works maybe it isn't i don't know but i'm more i'm more have the feeling that like we are actually at just basic basic baby level of ai that even the things that we're thinking of now it's like boy this is an amazing accomplishment that we've written something that can beat a human and go that on the scale of artificial intelligence development.

This is still like, yeah, but you're barely more than a virus, right? Like that's all that you've made here. And there's so much more that is above and beyond this that like, yeah, of course, of course, you're not seeing this virus expressing intent, like you're expecting it to act like a dog, but you've really just built a strand of RNA, like that's all you've done so far. So maybe maybe in some ways, like these, these kind of things that you hear about in in the news, they give us more of an expectation than is reasonable to have, like, maybe that's actually just the place that we are right now. It's crazy to expect any kind of intent from machines that we build.

Maybe that's just not something that's possible. Man, it'd be pretty freaky if a computer did express intent one day, wouldn't it? Well, you know, it's only a matter of time, though. You just said you're open to it not being the case. Now it's only a matter of time, though. You just said you're open to it not being the case. Now it's only a matter of time. These things are not exclusive. I am always open to being wrong. Whether or not a computer expresses its own intent,

I think it is certain that at some point we are going to be faced with a system that was designed that is convincingly expressing intent to other humans and then i think we're in a real moral problem when you have something that passes like a touring test of convincing other humans that it has thoughts and feelings and expressions like even if you know you built it to be some clockwork machine i think that's going to be a really weird moment for humans. And it's like, OK, but like there's no amount of trying to point to all the gears and saying like, oh, but we know on the inside it's just clockwork machinery and it's not a real thing. It's like, yeah, but you built a robot that looks convincingly like a person, which is telling me that it's sad because it's kept in a cage.

Like, I feel bad for it. Can we let it out? It's like, no, maybe not. I don't know. I think we're going to be in just some weird, weird situations as these things get better and better and more and more convincing. Tell you what, Gray, robots taking your job corner is pretty intense. Yeah, I didn't mean for it to actually be this intense.

I actually did want to just talk about robots taking your job. But instead, we've started it out by talking about the very nature of consciousness and what it means to be a human.