Within Reason - 1.75m QnA - Triangles, Getting Owned by GodLogic, and Douglas Adams' Puddle

Episode Date: December 19, 2025

Timestamps0:00 - 1,778,795 Q&A0:24 - How Are You?5:12 - If You Could Choose Your Date of Birth, When Would It Be?9:36 - Survival Tips From Bear Grylls?10:21 - How Do You Remember so Much Stuff?15:24 - What is Your Dream Podcast?17:01 - Doesn’t Consciousness Just… Emerge?29:26 - If You Clean a Vaccum, Are You a Vaccum Cleaner?35:41 - Is Water Wet?37:26 - How Many Holes Are In a Straw?40:55 - Is a Hot Dog a Sandwich?42:28 - Do You Edit Everything By Yourself?43:23 - What Would It Be Like to Observe a Contradiction?43:33 - Which Philosophical Concepts are Often Misunderstood?50:29 - When I Changed My Mind Mid-Debate01:01:49 - Would You Tour?

1.75 million subscribers. It will be more than that now. It will be more than that when this video goes out too, but it is all arbitrary, isn't it? Our base 10 number system. 0.75 as a milestone. You know what? I've changed my mind. This is a 1.778-795 million subscriber Q&A. Welcome, everyone. First question, how are you? Well, thank you. I'm doing fine. I'm doing well. I'm pretty tired. It's been quite full on recently. But this week has been a particular moment of gratitude and reflection for me because a lot happened. So about a week ago at the time of filming, I uploaded a video about how I'm not secretly becoming a Christian, despite what TikTok might have you believe. It got about a million views in roughly 24 hours, which I think is the first time that's ever happened on this channel. So that was pretty cool. Also last week, the footage from a panel I was on was released on YouTube. It was hosted by Professor Brian Cox, which if you'd have told me five years ago, ten years ago, that I'd even get to meet someone

like Brian Cox, I would have been incredibly excited, and there I was on stage with him. Turns out he actually didn't really like my philosophical worldview very much. Never meet your heroes, I suppose, but I had a wonderful time, and it was just a really cool thing to be invited to. The day after that, an interview I did with Big Think got released. And again, Big Think is a channel that I've been watching unknowingly at times for probably about a decade, just these videos with the white background. I didn't even know that there was this company called Big Think probably five, ten years ago, but I'd seen their videos. And because that went out the very next day, it kind of made me step back for a minute and think, a panel with Brian Cox, a video with a million

views, an interview with Big Think, this is actually pretty weird and pretty incredible. And of course, again, the very next day, I released the first clip from my podcast with Michael Stevens from Vsource. I get to interview a lot of really cool people on this channel, and I'm always grateful and excited when people say yes. This was a special one to me. I mean, who among us who spent any time on YouTube growing up didn't binge watch Vsource? And there he was, sat right in front of me, and it was one of those moments which, because I kind of prepared for it, I knew that it was coming up. When he walked in the room, I thought, yeah, cool, hey, nice to meet you, man, let's do the interview. And it's only afterwards, once we wrapped up and he left, that I thought to myself,

you know, that was V-source. I also just recently did my first ever live show in London. It was with my friend, John Nelson. There was no script. We didn't have, like, a show to perform. We just had a conversation on stage, a bit like the kind of thing we might have done over dinner anyway. And yet people bought tickets, showed up in the evening, sat down in the chairs, and spent that time together with us. And it was awesome. It was so much fun. So much fun, in fact, that we're taking that show on tour. I think the tickets should be on sale by the time this video goes out. So I'll put the dates on screen. A link is in the description. So if you want to come and see us, talk about God and religion and consciousness and all kinds of philosophy. Anything you like, really, because there will be an

extensive Q&A period as well. A link is in the description. This question isn't like a covert ad read, by the way. I genuinely just thought of that on the spot. But it's just one of the many cool things that's happening. More stuff is happening too. We haven't released the Hank Green episode yet, which I can talk about because I think that's going out first. So basically, lots of really cool stuff is happening in quite a short period of time. And I suppose because it's all happening quite quickly, I haven't really taken the time that I should to sort of sit down and just think about how grateful I am. And there are a few moments where I've sort of been working on something and I've gone off and gotten distracted and I've come back and I've seen like, yeah, like Vsauce's face on

my screen or something and thought, oh yeah, right, we're doing that, aren't we? But after the fact, when it's all done and we've put it out, and I'm just looking at the comments of people who are broadly, it seems, enjoying this content, I just couldn't be more grateful. So you asked how I'm doing and I'm doing well. Like, it's stressful. There's a lot of moving parts. There's a lot of admin, a lot of travel, a lot of organization, a lot of editing, a lot of creative decisions to be made. There's all kinds of stuff going on. But, you know, a lot of people in the world are way more stressed than I could possibly be by jobs that they don't love doing. So I don't mean to say that to complain. I just mean to say that, yeah, like anybody, good days, bad days, but on the whole,

things are going really well, and I'm extremely grateful for it. And I also see it as a responsibility. I've got this kind of duty to make stuff that's worthwhile. I've been given this really cool opportunity to speak to cool people and a platform and people who tune into my episodes. So it really kind of drives me to try to make quality content. So hopefully that is what I will do and you will be the judge of that. There's one thing I know about YouTube commenters. It's that they will be the judge of things. If you had to choose your date of birth, when would it be? I would choose the 27th of March 1999. That's the date I was actually born on in the real world. And the reason for that is because I kind of don't think I could have been born on a different day. And I don't

just mean practically, of course, I can't turn back time. But I mean, when we think about what it would mean to be born at a different time period, I want to ask how that comes about. Because, you know, it obviously had to be my particular two parents in that particular moment who, well, shall we say, brought me about. Like, even if it were the same people, but a month or two later, it just would have been a different child that was born. It would have been like a different sperm cell. And so it wouldn't have been me, at least not the me that's alive today. So if you think of it in terms of like, well, would you rather your parents conceived you 50 years before they did, then you're kind of really asking, would you rather not have existed at all and somebody else existed in your

place as the child of your parents who was born 50 years ago? And the answer to that, for me at least, is no. Like the only way to make sure that it was me would be to make sure that it's the same sperm and egg cell. So I suppose you'd have to take my parents and put them in a time machine. In that case, I want to say two things. Firstly, I don't think that backwards time travel is possible. But look, I'm just being a pedant now, aren't I? I know what you're asking, which is like which time period would I like to have lived in. And that's impossible to say, because on the one hand, it's that typical thing, isn't it? It's like, oh man, I'd love to have seen like, Paris in the 60s and then people remind you that life actually wasn't that great for a lot of people back then and we're kind of remembering only the good stuff in that context. But yeah, like that would be cool to see. Similarly, like Victorian London, I would love to spend some time in Victorian London. But to be trapped there forever, I think after some time the smell of the sewage rotting in the street because of the lack of a sewage system,

might kind of get to me, the rampant disease, the lack of technological innovation that I've come to be used to, I'm not sure that that would actually satisfy me for very long. Having said that, I do think that we've undergone a genuinely qualitative shift in like quality of life since the invention of the internet and social media in particular. And I think that quality of life has decreased, at least in the sense of people being addicted to their phones. We have these sort of algorithms that govern our lives such that nobody I know, I think, would say, yeah, you know what, I'm happy about the amount of time I spend on my phone. I think when I consider my relationship to Instagram or TikTok, it's perfect. It's about what I want it to be. And so, of course,

a lot of people try to just give up using social media, but the problem is that it's not that you need to give up social media. It's that everybody around you needs to give up social media. Because like if you're, say, a university student, no one's posting on like the bulletin in the common room. They're posting on a Facebook page or an Instagram page or a WhatsApp group or whatever it is the kids use these days. And so you are just going to miss out. So for me, I'm kind of happy in my rough time period because things are always worse historically than you think they are. And if you lived in a historical time period, it might not take you that long to find that out. However, I don't want this social media stuff.

So maybe I would pick like the 80s or 90s or something like that. So maybe I would be born in like the 60s or 70s, maybe. I'm not sure. But then, to be honest, I was just talking truthfully about how grateful I am to be doing the job that I'm doing, which I see is quite unique. I mean, there have been people who have talked about philosophy in history and there have been people who do interviews and stuff. but this sort of world of podcasting and particularly like philosophical podcasting and YouTube.

It's like quite unique. You know, there aren't that many people doing it. And I really enjoy it. And obviously, that's not a job that I could do in any other time period. So, yeah, I'm sticking with the 27th of March 1999. Greatest Survival Tip you received from Bear Grills. He did actually walk on to set. And I say set like we weren't filming at his house.

but we had set up a bunch of cameras and stuff in like this outhousey type area. And he walked on and he lit a fire. And I thought that was pretty cool. We didn't get it on camera, unfortunately. But he was kind of teaching me the best way to light a fire. I did, of course, immediately forget what he said. So I don't think I can count that. So instead, he taught me how to survive a torrent of comments from Christians

saying that they think I'm about to become a Christian and atheists thinking that I'm trying to grift for Christianity. He taught me how to survive that. How do you learn and memorize information? The honest truth, I think, is that I don't. I do have quite a good memory for things like quotes. I think I can recite things in my exams at school and university. It was a really useful trick.

It was a bit of a sort of novelty. I could quote passages at length from memory. And then, of course, COVID struck, and all of the final exams were open book on a computer where you were allowed to use whatever resources you liked. And so, yeah, kind of got undercut a bit there. But generally speaking, I do sometimes get asked about this and I can understand why it might seem like I've got a good memory. But remember that when I've got a project, particularly a big project, like a debate or something, I've been preparing for that debate in the same way that you might study for an exam. Like, if I came up to you after you just sat an exam on a subject you'd been studying for months and I asked you some questions, I might think, wow, this guy's got a pretty good memory on him.

Not really. You've just been laser focused on that topic quite recently. And I bet that if I asked you the same questions in, say, a year, two years, five years, 10 years, certainly, you'd probably forgotten most of it. I mean, sometimes when I look back on my own debates and podcasts, I hear myself say something. And I'm like, huh, yeah, that's interesting. wouldn't have thought of that. And that's just because I was wrapped up in that world at the time. The thing is, of course, some of it does stick. And the reason for that, I think, is because I have

absolutely no problem repeating myself all the time. Like, you might notice if you watch my podcasts regularly, then kind of always bringing up the same stuff, at least around the same time. Like, I might keep talking about the Gnostic Gospels or keep talking about panpsychism or something. And that never lasts forever. It's usually because I'm particularly, interested in that kind of thing at the time. And if it's something that's important enough, like a historical event or an idea or something, that it keeps coming to mind in these interviews, then I'll keep saying it. And you kind of learn by repetition and recall. And so I think I just remember the stuff that's most useful, because that's the stuff that comes up when I repeat

myself in podcasts, when I'm throwing out the same idea to different people to see what they think about it. So I think the appearance of good memory comes from a mixture of literally catching me at my best moment where I've been absorbed in that particular topic for like the past few weeks. And the fact that the topics I seem to be able to pull to memory are just the ones that keep coming up in various contexts, which probably means they're more important and sort of strike you more as a listener. But I don't know. Maybe I have just got a good memory. I've never tested it or anything. Weirdly, I've got like a terrible memory for many other things. I don't remember birthdays. I don't remember names. I'm quite good with face.

but like remembering things that people have said to me or things that I've been like asked to do I'm really bad at that kind of stuff. However, I seem to remember like this time when I was with a friend and it became clear that I'd forgotten when his birthday was. Like I couldn't tell him when his birthday was. And he was like, hey man, we're friends. You can't remember my birthday? And I said, look, ask me about any of your views like on anything. Ask me about the most specific philosophical area of your interest. If we've ever spoken about it in any context, I'll remember what your view was. And he asked me a question and I got it right.

Because, yeah, I've got a good memory for the stuff that I'm interested in. And birthdays, you know, birthdays are great and I think it's actually a sign of respect to like make an effort to remember people's birthdays. So I do try to do that. But it's not like when someone tells me for the first time that their birthday. is on the 24th of January that that's just going to like stick in my mind as a really important piece of information unless I make an effort to. So I think that the memory that I naturally have that might be any good is excitement over ideas that jump out at me. And memory for things that actually matter to people like birthdays, I'm quite bad with and I have to make a bit of an

effort to try to remember them. I actually once went to a friend's house for a poker game and there were not that many people there. You know, there's like what, six, seven people. Oh, shit. Oh, no. I did the thing. Okay, you're going to accuse me of engagement farming. No, don't comment. Don't mention it. It was a genuine accident. Okay. There were between, I would say, approximately four and eight people at this gathering. And I met someone like upstairs. I walked into the house. And I said, hey, I don't think we've met. My name's Alex. And the guy was like, yeah, hey, my name's Peter, whatever his name was. Then I went to get like a snack or something. And then I went downstairs where, the table was actually set up and there was a guy sat at the table and I said, hey man, I don't think we've met. My name's Alex. And he said, yeah, my name's Peter. We just met upstairs. And it's not like this was a big party or something. He was maybe one of about three people that I met that night. So yeah, I kind of have to just reject the grammar of your question, I suppose. You've been on a lot of different podcasts recently like Tommy Initz and Mattan Evans. What's a dream podcast to go on

of the ones you've not added to your gauntlet. Interesting question. You know, I love speaking with people, and it's really cool when someone who's got, like, a big audience in a totally different field wants to speak with me, because it's always just great fun. Like, speaking with Tommy and Jack, it was just great fun. These guys, oftentimes they'll say things like,

I mean, people who aren't into philosophy, I suppose. They'll say things like, you know, oh, like this is going to be a big episode, and we're going to use our brains and this is going to sound like a stupid question and stuff. And then they come out and just ask some of the most interesting and pertinent questions that I have ever been asked on a podcast. And I just know for a fact as well that this is going to go out to new people who otherwise wouldn't have seen this material.

And people have come up to me on the street and said really specific things. Like they've said to me, hey, you're that guy from the Joe Weller podcast. Or the other day someone came up to me at the train station and was like, hey, I saw you on Finn versus the internet. And I think that's cool, because it makes me realize that these people would never have listened to a word I said if I didn't go on those shows. So as for other shows, like, I'm not really sure, because to be honest, a lot of the time I don't even know that these things exist until they reach out to me. But, I mean, one that comes to mind is Logan Poole's podcast, because that's pretty big, as far as I can tell. And he's had, like, Cliff and Stuart Kineckley on.

And I saw a clip of him the other day with Neil deGrasse Tyson, and they were, like, talking about God. And it seems that Logan's been kind of influenced by some of what the Kineckley said. So be cool to go on there, I suppose. Re-consciousness isn't the line, if you were to open my brain, you wouldn't see the triangle I'd visualized with my eyes closed, essentially operating on similar conditions as, if I smash open my phone, I wouldn't see YouTube lurking inside. Don't we agree that YouTube and Instagram

aren't operating outside the physical realm in some spiritual space? We recognize that these are emergent from physical components. Why do we accept consciousness? It's a great question. And what we're getting at here is the concept of emergence, like you say, the idea that consciousness is something which just comes about when you put physical materials together in the right kind of way, in a way that maybe we don't fully understand. But it kind of grows out of this arrangement of matter. And the first thought that people might have to that is that doesn't make very much sense. How could we put a bunch of atoms together and get something like the experience of fear? That just doesn't. doesn't seem to add up. But, you know, a lot of people say this is easy. This is just like what's happening with a computer. A computer is just a series of zeros and ones in like a box, right? And then you plug it into a screen and it shows you a pretty image. You're looking at a pretty image right now of my face. And this is something which has emerged from zeros and

ones inside of your phone or your computer. You're not actually looking at my face right now. You're looking at zeros and ones. But you're not literally looking at zeros and ones, right? you're looking at something which kind of grows out of it. And so I often ask people, if consciousness is just material, if consciousness is just, you know, whatever's in your brain, then when I close my eyes and picture a triangle, and it's like, right there, I can see it, there are true facts about it. It doesn't have four sides, for example. And so it's like a thing in some regard. I kind of want to ask like, where is that triangle? And the materialist might say, the triangle's in your head. It's just brain activity. And so I always ask people, well, if I opened up the brain, would I find

like a triangle in there? And it's not a sort of perfectly philosophically designed question, but it gets across what I'm trying to say, which is that it seems weird to suggest that the triangle I'm talking about is literally the same thing as the neurons firing. So why can't we just say like, look, here's a triangle. It's on screen. At least it is if my editor, Alex, is doing his job. And you could ask, you know, where is that triangle? Well, it's kind of, you know, it's in the computer, I suppose. It's like in the phone that you're looking at this picture on or on the computer or whatever. But like, you know, the computer's just zeros and ones. So the triangle has emerged from zeros and ones. And that's all consciousness is doing. And the same is true of

YouTube, Instagram. You know, these things are sort of presenting themselves as emergent properties of more zeros and ones. But to me, this just doesn't work. as an analogy, because the thing that's weird about the triangle is that there's no screen on which it's being presented. It's as if you had a computer that wasn't plugged into a screen, and yet still there was somehow, in some sense, a triangle, like kind of not in the computer, right, because the computer's just zeros and ones, not projected on a screen for somebody else to come and look at, but just somehow present there. But if it's not in the sort of physical makeup, if the triangle isn't in the computer ship or something, and there's

also no computer screen, so there's no triangle on the computer screen, where would that triangle be? Where could that triangle be? Like, you are just closing your eyes, and the triangle is just presenting itself right there to you. There is no screen that it's plugged into. So I don't think it's a suitable analogy. And there is also a kind of wider problem with this that I think people don't pay attention to, which is that when we have this problem of consciousness, well, do we get conscious experience, which seems kind of immaterial? I mean, you know, that triangle in your head, how much does it weigh? It seems like a weird question to ask. But, you know, we're materialists. You know, we believe that the world is made out of stuff. So how do we square

this? And people just say, yeah, consciousness is emergent of the brain. And then they give an example. They're like, oh, it's just like, you know, an image on a screen emerging from the computer, or it's just like temperature emerging from atoms. I mean, think about the fact that individual atoms are not hot or cold, but if you put them together and they vibrate in a particular way, you get this emergent property of heat, of temperature. Another example is the wetness of water. Individual molecules of water are not wet, but if you put them all together, you get this emergent quality of wetness. And so people don't tend to actually explain like how this process of emergence is supposed to work, in particular with regards to consciousness,

but they just say, well, it must be a bit like these other things, which don't seem to be a mystery to us. But here's the thing that no one seems to notice. All of those other examples of emergence that we're comparing consciousness to presuppose the existence of consciousness and rely upon conscious experiences. So take the computer, for example. Yeah, there's a triangle on the which emerges from the computer, as long as there's someone to see the triangle, right? Like, it's something that presents itself to a viewer. You're looking at the triangle. Okay, what about temperature?

Well, you've got a bunch of atoms that are vibrating, and none of those individual atoms have this thing called temperature, but if you put them together, what do you get? Well, if you take any conscious experience out of the equation, you've just got a big physical object that's vibrating at a particular rate, or at least it's atoms of vibrating at a particular rate. Okay, so, you know, what's interesting about that? Well, the thing that's interesting is there's this other quality that emerges called temperature. Well, what's temperature? If you just define temperature as like the average atomic vibration across a particular space or something, then nothing emerges because, yeah, like individual atoms have an

average vibration over a particular space. No, no, no, but there's this extra thing. Ah, it's, well, it's the experience that you have when you touch a hot thing. It's a single heat. It's a thing called cold. And those things, yeah, they're not there in the sort of atomic makeup of the thing that we're looking at, but they're also phenomenological. They're ways in which we interact with objects. Like, think of that computer, right? Okay, I'm going to put a triangle, or Alex is going to put a triangle again on the screen, right? So you're looking at a triangle right now. You're not really. You're looking at kind of photons that have been emitted from a screen. You're looking at like wavelengths of light that are hitting your eye and being

converted and translated into this image of a triangle. Okay, cool. So if you weren't there to look at the triangle, those wavelengths and those photons would still kind of be there. But I could describe everything that's there in scientific terms. I could just use physics. I could talk about the electricity of the device. I could talk about the way that screens work. I could talk about the emission of photons into the air and all of that kind of stuff, the thing that makes it interesting is that your brain is interpreting that as a triangle. And yeah, when it does that, there's this like new thing that's emerged that can't just be explained in terms of zeros and ones and the sort of atomic structure of electric devices and photons being emitted from screens and

stuff. But the interesting thing that can't be described in those terms, the thing that's actually emerged, in other words, that's like different from the fundamental stuff, is an experience. It's you seeing the triangle. So yeah, imagine like you just had a computer that was not plugged into a screen and I told you, there's a triangle in that computer. And you said, what do you mean? I don't mean like, oh, there's, you know, some data on the computer. There's like a hard drive which if you plug it in, there's some information that will represent itself as a triangle on a screen. I mean, like, right now, there is in some real sense, like a triangle with three sides in that computer. It kind of be like, what do you mean?

You might say, oh, I think I see what you're saying. You're telling me that there are zeros and ones on this computer, which when plugged into a screen will produce this image of a triangle on the screen, right? And I say, no, no, no, the triangle itself is just like there in the computer. That would just be a really strange thing to say. And it would seem untrue. It seemed like it couldn't be true. And that is what it is like to close your eyes and imagine a triangle. There's no screen on which I'm projecting that image.

It's all internal. I mean, the questioner talks about YouTube, for example. If I download a YouTube video onto this phone and then say I like break the phone so that the screen doesn't work, I can't sort of tap it anymore. I can't even get into it. And I say, there's a YouTube video saved on this phone. That would be true, right? And you would know what I mean. Like there is a hard drive or an SSD in this phone on which is stored the information of that YouTube video. But I want to be really specific here. It's not that I've got a YouTube video in my hands. What I've got is a hard drive with information which when plugged into a screen will display the thing that I am calling. a YouTube video. But the video itself, like the imagery, the color pattern, that kind of stuff, is not literally inside of this phone right now. It's something that gets projected by the phone when I plug it into the screen. And so, yeah, you would say, well, of course you're not going to find the YouTube video like literally inside of the phone. No, no, no, it's something that kind

of emerges like when you plug it into the screen and turn the screen on. And the screen like accesses that information and presents it as like a pixelated image. and that's when you get what you call a YouTube video. But imagine I said, no, no, the YouTube video itself, like the thing you call the YouTube video, the pixelated image, you know, of a particular sort of size and resolution is like literally inside of this phone right now.

That kind of just doesn't make any sense to me. And similarly, the idea that a triangle can exist in the same way in my head just doesn't really make very much sense to me. And yet, there it is, that pesky little triangle, it just won't go away, and that just gives me a lot of pause. And it's interesting.

When I talk about this, I find that like half the people I'm speaking to are like, yeah, that is really weird and cool and interesting. And half the people are like, what are you talking about, man? It's just like atoms in your brain. And so maybe you just think that I'm going crazy or something. But the thing I really just want to drill down on and make clear is that when I say the triangle is not in your brain, I don't mean to say that there isn't like neural activity, which is correlated with my experience of the triangle, that's there.

If I open up your brain, I will see neurons firing in a particular way. I may even be able to prod your brain in a particular way to make you experience a triangle, right? If I knew enough about brain chemistry, I could make the right neurons fire such that you go, whoa, I just saw a triangle. Even then, the neurons that I am like, you know, pushing along are not the same thing as the triangle that you've just experienced. They're correlated, and for some reason that we don't fully understand, or I would say even remotely understand, that neural activity is correlated and seems to somehow bring about that experience. But it's not the same thing as the experience. Just as every time I clap my hands, there's a sound, and it seems to be that my hands cause

the sound to occur. Me clapping my hands is not the same thing as the sound that sort of vibrates across the room. It's not the same thing as it. It might cause it. And of course, in this case, we understand how it causes it. But it's not the same thing. So yeah, you can fully explain all of the brain activity that goes along with, correlates with, maybe even somehow causes conscious experience. But that doesn't make them the same thing. And I'm seeing a triangle. I'm not seeing a bunch of neurons firing. That might be what's really going on in my brain, but that's not what I'm seeing in my head. So please, somebody, anybody, tell me where this triangle is. I'm going. getting quite desperate, a $50 reward for anyone who can find the damn triangle. If you clean the vacuum cleaner, doesn't that make you the vacuum cleaner? Yes, and I think in a way that can sometimes be quite philosophically relevant. This is essentially an example of equivocation, sort of taking two words that sound like they mean the same thing, but don't mean the same thing. You know, like the word bat is a classic example of this. If I were at a baseball game and somebody told me

go and grab a bat so you can hit the bull, and I came back with this small winged mammal and sort of got in position, obviously something has gone wrong there. And that might seem kind of trivial and obvious, and in that case it is, but more subtle versions of this exact mistake can show up all the time in philosophical arguments, political arguments, all kinds of disagreements that people have. Because, you know, two people might be debating about the economy and they don't quite mean the same thing by that word. Or maybe people are debating about the government. And one of them's really kind of talking about the legislative branch and one of them's really kind of talking about the judiciary. But they're using the same word. And so a lot of

the philosophical or political confusion that comes about is not down to any genuine disagreement, but just over having different definitions of the same word. not realizing it. I mean, a modern classic of this is Linus from Linus Tech Tips, who a few years ago, I think, was on a podcast and talked about how in his old videos, he used to casually say the hard R. And his co-host is like, hack the holidays with the PC holiday insiders report. Try this PC porquetta. Crackling, craveworthy. You're going to eat that? Who are you? I'm the voice for the next ad, car commercial. But I noticed that show-stopping roast.

and help yourself. Mmm, designed for indulgence. Precision crafted to navigate every corner of my mouth, all for just $18. Okay, okay. Try the season's hottest flavors from the PC Holiday Insiders Report. Please feast responsibly.

What? Casual use of the hard R. Oh, really? It's jarring. Yeah, it's jarring now. Casual use of hard R. Yeah. Like, I'm not going to, I'm not going to deny.

that I dropped my fair share of hard ars back then because we didn't even the term hard R didn't even exist we didn't think about it and it turns out that Linus thought that that meant something else are you talking like N word hard R what no okay I'm pretty sure that's how people use that term no I think so N word what are you guys talking about am I mistaken I think so no the one the one the one one with the, like, for, like, mental disability. I'm pretty sure people use hard R in a very different way than you just used it. But you can also imagine somebody like having an argument about whether it was okay to use a

particular word, and they might just like not realize that they're not talking about the same thing. So to illustrate how this can be a problem in philosophy, here's an argument for you. Premise 1. Nothing is brighter than the brightest star in the universe. Premise 2. A torch is brighter than nothing. Conclusion, therefore, a torch is brighter than the brightest star in the universe. Now, you should be able to immediately spot the problem with this, but it might take you a second at least to really actually pin down what's exactly gone wrong here. Well, it's the word nothing. And there's been specifically an equivocation on the word nothing. It's being used in two different senses in the same context. But the reason I'm giving these obvious examples is because, there are less obvious versions of this. When people are talking about God, for example, do you think they have any idea what they mean by that word? Oh, well, I mean an omnipotent, omniscient, all-loving creator of the universe. Like, okay, but maybe the person you're talking to is thinking of like the Greco-Roman pantheon of limited gods. Are you talking about the same

thing? No, you're definitely not. Maybe you're talking to a scientist who is kind of more talking about like whatever caused the universe. He doesn't really care if it's like all loving or whatever. That's got nothing to do with creating the universe and setting the laws of physics in motion. So he's kind of talking about a totally different thing as well. And then maybe you've got the sort of classical theologian over there who believes that God is fundamentally simple and that sort of he's just the same thing as love and truth and beauty and isn't thinking of it in those analytical terms of like the triumny god or whatever. And so you've got to bunch of different people kind of just talking about completely different things, but maybe

not realizing it when they all get together to discuss whether God exists. So, for example, when David Bentley Hart wrote The Experience of God, which is a fantastic book, by the way, he talks about Richard Dawkins and how Dawkins is like attacking this God character, but really the kind of God that Dawkins is talking about, this sort of creative, malevolent, agent that kind of sets the material world in order and seems to be this complex entity is more of a description of what Bentley Hart calls the demiurge than the god that at least Bentley Hart believes in. Now, you can agree with him about this or not, but it led him to say, I think, kind of famously, that Dawkins and people like him have never written a word about God, which is like a pretty

radical thing to say about maybe the most famous atheist alive who wrote a book called the God delusion. But of course, what David Bentley Hart is arguing is that, yeah, Dawkins has written about this character that he's calling God, but the thing that everyone else is calling God throughout like all a philosophical history is just not that thing. It's a bit like Dawkins has shown up to the baseball game with a winged mammal and is now complaining about how terrible the sport is. So yeah, if you clean the vacuum cleaner, you do indeed become the vacuum cleaner. But this is one among many reasons, I think, why we in England prefer the word Hoover. And if we render this into proper English, it reads,

If you clean the Hoover, doesn't that make you the Hoover cleaner? And the answer is trivially, yes. So let that be a lesson that whenever we can, let's figure out exactly what we mean by the words that we're using, and then we can argue about them. Because otherwise, we're all just wasting our time. The classics, okay, is water wet? I don't think so. I think water makes things wet.

I think broadly speaking, if something is wet, it's got water on it. But there is a problem with this view, which is that if I kind of take a big volume of water, you could kind of say of the water that's in the middle that it's got water on it, right? because it's like surrounded by the rest of the water. So maybe that water in the middle is wet. And another problem is that if we define water as just the molecule H2O, and if I took like an individual H2O molecule and put it on an object, I kind of don't want to say that that object becomes wet.

But you know, the dictionary definition of wet that comes up is covered or saturated with water or another liquid. So like I think if you want to say water is wet, you kind of have to say that if you've got a bunch of water say in a glass then the water in the middle of the glass is wet because it's surrounded by water

but the water on the surface and the water at the edge is not wet because well I suppose it's kind of covered by water on one of its sides maybe yeah maybe it is wet but then you would also have to say that individual molecules of water

not only make things wet but are also wet themselves because you know they're in there and they're surrounded by water they've got water on them in fact you'd have to say that like any molecule that you put inside of that glass would become wet, which I kind of don't want to say that either. But I think, no, I think the only like practicable definition of wet that

makes sense is to say that something becomes wet when it's got a liquid on it. It's not a property of the liquid itself. How many holes in a straw? I'm tempted to say zero for a few reasons. One is that holes don't exist. They're kind of the privation of a thing, but that might be a little bit too easy. I mean, yeah, like if I've got some kind of object and there's a big gap in the middle, it's not that the gap exists. It's that there's this object that exists around the gap, making that gap sort of seem kind of conspicuous to us. But it's not like a thing in the world. You can't touch it. It doesn't weigh anything. In fact, there's your answer for the materialist, If you are a materialist, then you believe that everything which exists is made out of matter.

A hole is not made out of matter. Therefore, a hole does not exist. And if there is no such thing as a whole, that means that there are no holes in the universe, including in any straws. So the answer to the question is zero. There are no holes in a straw. But then, of course, you would also have to say that there are no such thing as, say, red straws, wouldn't you? Because you materialists, you just can't tell me what redness is. And they were talking to certainly be no straws with any triangles on them. Seriously, please, somebody tell me where the triangles are. Okay, we're going to consult our friend the dictionary again. Whole definition, a hollow place in a solid body or surface. I think hollow is a bit too vague there. Let's try

Cambridge. Whole, an empty space in an object, usually with an opening to the object's surface or an opening that goes completely through an object? Okay. Actually, yeah, maybe this doesn't need to be so hard. On this definition, a straw has one hole. Of course, you know, with the caveat that holes aren't things, they are like sort of defined in terms of them like lacking any material substance, as long as we can talk about that as a thing. There's one hole in a straw, right? This definition has given us two options. It usually either has like, an opening to the surface of the object, or, notice the word, or an opening that goes completely through an object. So if you take a straw, it's got an opening that goes completely

through the object. So it's got one hole. But then the question is always, oh, but what if I close off one of those sort of sides? If it's only got one hole and I close off the side, how many holes has it got now? And the problem is you still kind of want to say it's got a hole, but that would mean that one hole minus one hole is still one hole. Well, yeah, because you've just changed it from one kind of hole to another. Now it's the kind of hole that's sort of, it's this sort of singular object that has an opening at the top, and you've created the kind of hole, which is the first part of this definition, with an opening to the object's surface. And if you lift off your finger again, you've just reverted it to the other kind

of hole with an opening that goes completely through an object. So in both cases, there's one hole. It's just a different kind of hole. But of course, for me, like, you know, the question only gets worse when you realize that not only to holes not exist, straws don't exist either, because, of course, meriological nihilism is true. So how many holes are in a straw? You're just like talking about nothing except concepts of your own imagination. And the great thing about your imagination is that you are the singular liege lord over it. You have complete authority to imagine whatever you like.

So these concepts of hole and straw, are up to you to devise and use as you see fit. Is a hot dog a sandwich? I don't know, man. Is a jaffer cake a cake? You remember that legal, like, court case that went down where, I don't know what was going on. Someone was being, like, sued or something, because they were calling jaffer cakes, when really they're like biscuits.

Yeah, okay, so in the UK in 1991, there was a dispute because of that. It all comes down to tax, doesn't it? cakes are not taxed and chocolate-covered biscuits are standard rated when it comes to VAT. And so, obviously, McVitties, who produced Jaffa Cakes, want to argue that they're cakes. And I think they won in the end. So legally, in the United Kingdom, Jaffa Cakes are cakes. Why? I think it was because it was determined that if you leave a cake out, like on a table or something,

then it will eventually go hard. If you leave a biscuit out, then it will go so. soft. And because jaffa cakes go hard, they must be cakes. But of course, like, this is all just made up. It's completely made up. There's no such thing as a jaffer cake. There's no such thing as a hot dog or a sandwich. It's all just up here. And if you don't know what I'm talking about or why I would say such a seemingly absurd thing, I do actually think that's true. skip back about 500,000 subscribers to my 1.25 million subscriber Q&A, where I discuss this idea called myriological nihilism and tell you why I think that objects do not exist.

Do you edit by yourself? No, I don't. At least not my podcast. I still edit all of my video essays, like anything that's not a podcast, because usually they're like unscripted or it's like a response, and when I'm editing it, I'll chop things out. I'll reorder things. I need to like splice things in. There's too much like editorial decision making going on to outsource that. Even to someone who was like an expert in the channel or something. It's just something you kind of have to do yourself. But podcasts, I have my wonderful editor, Alex, who does all kinds of things for me, including really high tech and intensive graphics like these that he's putting on screen right now. Or like if I asked him to like rotoscope me out frame by frame because I don't have a green screen. so that I can change the background like he's doing right now. I mean, it takes ages, but the guy's just a warrior, and he gets the job done.

So you'll see the fruits of it when this video comes out. What do you think it would be like to observe a genuine slash true contradiction? Would it resemble anything like the Penrose stairs? Yes and no. Which philosophical concepts often get misunderstood or misinterpreted? You know what? There's something specific that comes to mind here, because I just recorded an episode that may not have come out.

yet, so I won't say with who. But we were talking about the fine-tuning argument for the existence of God, right? And the fine-tuning argument is this observation that the universe abides by physical laws that involve really specific constants. These are things like the strength of gravity, the strength of the strong and weak nuclear forces, the expansion rate of the universe, the curvature of space time, these kinds of qualities, which if you change them even a tiny, tiny amount, the whole universe, as we know it, just like couldn't exist. If gravity were a tiny bit weaker, then when the Big Bang happened, everything would have just flown apart and like atoms wouldn't have been able to form. If gravity were a little bit

stronger, then the whole universe would just collapse in on itself. And there are numerous constants like this, which have to be precisely balanced in order for the universe to exist. Now, I'm not convinced that this is good reason to believe in the existence of God, per se. It might like a good reason. I take that back. But, you know, it's not like a conclusive argument or anything. Many people point to it as, you know, the most challenging argument or whatever. But the thing that I want to talk about here is a really common response. I see people like putting in the comments whenever I talk about fine tuning. So after the novelist Douglas Adams died, there was a posthumous publication of some of his writings. And I think this is where it comes from. But Douglas Adams is always

quoted as saying, this is rather as if you imagine a puddle waking up one morning and thinking, This is an interesting world I find myself in. An interesting hole I find myself in. Fits me rather neatly, doesn't it? In fact, it fits me staggeringly well. It must have been made to have me in it. Because, yeah, when we look at a puddle, it might seem to us that the shape of the puddle is kind of perfectly designed for the shape of the water that sat inside of it. And clearly, we would be making a mistake if we did that, because it's the other way around. The water has just like filled the space created by the whole. So when people talk about the fine tuning of the universe, sometimes they mean something like, you know, the earth is the perfect distance from the sun to allow us to live

and survive. And they might say, oh, you know, this is a good reason to believe in God. And people bring up this kind of observation. They say, no, no, it's not that the sun and the earth were designed to bring about life. It's that life has evolved in a universe of a particular set of conditions. Like there are billions of planets that are not the perfect distance from their stars to provide life, and so they don't provide life. And of course, the one that happens to be in the correct position, and therefore happens to produce life, is going to be the one that we're going to, like, observe. And it's the same thing with biological complexity. For a long time, people looked at plant life and animals, and indeed, the complexity of human beings, like the nature

of the eye and things like that, and said, these are so intricate, they must have been designed. But again, like the puddle, just filling the whole of its environment, evolution by natural selection tells us that the complexity of the eye is actually just a result of the environmental conditions that these organisms find themselves in. And so, yeah, in those situations, Douglas Adams' puddle analogy is quite a clever and funny retort. It's a useful analogy to show where the thinking is going wrong. But when we're talking about the strong version of the fine-tuning argument, So not about like the distance of the Earth from the Sun in a universe of billions of planets, but like the constants that dictate the very fabric of the universe itself, such that if they were any

different, like atoms couldn't form. This is not the kind of thing that can be explained away by saying like, oh, well, you know, the universe just sort of evolved in a particular way and like, you know, had it been different, then we would just observe a different universe and we'd go, oh, look how finely tuned it is. Like, no, there might be some kind of universe, but there would be no molecules, there would be no planets or stars, there'd certainly be no us to observe it. And so then you might say, well, okay, but if it had been like that, then we just wouldn't be here to observe it. So, of course, if we're observing something, we're going to be observing a world in which things are finely tuned for our existence. That's no mystery.

But the problem is the probability of that occurring by chance is just so unfathomably small that saying, well, if it had gone another way, we just wouldn't be here to observe it. doesn't do away with the mystery. A common example given to illustrate this point is to imagine that you were being executed by an expert firing squad. And suppose there are like a thousand men with rifles, all experts who are trained on you with the intention of killing you. And then they all pull the trigger and you're still alive. And in fact, when you turn around, you see that the bullet holes in the wall behind you have perfectly traced out the outline of your body where you were stood. And somebody says, that is extraordinary. These exceptionally talented marksmen must have done that on purpose. And you say, no, no, no, I think it was just chance. They all just

missed by chance and just happened to miss me in this unfathomably unlikely pattern that perfectly traces out my body. When somebody then says to you, do you realize how unlikely that is? Like, there's just no way that that's what's happened. If you said, well, of course that's what's happened. And it's no mystery because, you know, if they'd have hit me, then I wouldn't be here to observe this crazy mystery. That would not be enough to explain the problem of the unfathomably unlikely occurrence of what we've just witnessed. And the chances that the constants of the universe would just happen to line up with exactly what's needed to produce the world as we see it are even more unlikely, like by orders of magnitude than that those 500 expertly trained marksmen should all miss. you and perfectly trace out your body. So when we're talking about biological complexity or like the distance of the earth from the sun, then Douglas Adams' puddle analogy is quite useful and

quite fun. But when we're talking about the finely tuned constants of the universe, in the face of this mystery, saying something like, yeah, but that's just like how a puddle fits the shape that it finds itself in, just doesn't even come close to cutting it. Now, of course, this isn't to say that the fine-tuning argument works. There are all kinds of other responses. Some people think, that there is a multiverse, which kind of does the same thing as having all of those billions of planets. Like, yeah, one of those universes is going to be finely tuned. Some people believe that there might be some necessary reason, why the constants have to be the way they are. There are options for the atheist here. My only point in all of this is to answer the question, which asks which

philosophical concepts often get misunderstood or misinterpreted. And in the context of fine-tuning, I just see this puddle thing coming up way too much. When you debate, are you always 100% locked into your position? Or do you sometimes change your mind because of a good argument from the other person? Well, officially, of course, I'm always open to having my mind changed. I do think it's quite unlikely, though, that if I accepted a debate on like a big question, say, does God exist or are the Gospels reliable or something, that I would change my mind about the whole motion right there and then at that event.

It could happen one day. And in fact, I always thought that if I were to convert to Christianity or something one day, the way I'd like to announce it would be to accept a debate on the motion of Christianity being true, show up, have the other speaker give their opening statement for like 20 minutes, and then get up and just go like, yeah, no, you know what? Fair enough. But I think, yeah, that's probably quite unlikely. On the particulars, however, like particular arguments within a debate, I tried to change my mind all the time. And if somebody makes a good point in a debate, I try to grant it. And there is one example of this that comes to mind. Sometimes, I think it was like a year ago, I did a debate with David Wood on whether Jesus claimed to be God. And look, trying not to get too complicated here, I don't think that Jesus claims to be God, even as he's presented in the Gospels. I don't think there's anything he does in the Gospels, which are him claiming to be God in either his words or his deeds. Now that's a big topic and it upsets a lot of Christians actually, but that's why I decided to accept this debate with David Wood on that subject. There's a point in this debate where I'm talking about a character in the Old Testament called the Angel of Yahweh. And without trying to get too into this, the angel of Yahweh in the Old Testament is sometimes kind of equivocated with Yahweh or God himself. So it seems that the angel of Yahweh kind of is the same thing as Yahweh, which is a little bit weird. And some Christians interpret this as the angel of

Yahweh being Jesus, who is also God, but he's kind of separate at the same time. That's why he's the angel of Yahweh, but why the Old Testament kind of talks as if they're the same character. Now, there's this brief moment where I'm trying to say that whoever wrote the book of Hebrews in the New Testament probably didn't think that Jesus was the angel of Yahweh. Why? Because in the first chapter of Hebrews, the author writes that in these last days, God has spoken to us through his son. And I say, it'd be a weird thing for him to say if he thought that Jesus had spoken to Moses all that time ago as the Angel of Yahweh. The fact that the author of Hebrews says that Jesus has sort of come to us in recent times implies that he doesn't think Jesus was there with

Moses. So fast forward to the Q&A period when a YouTuber called God Logic gets up. and he asks me a question. At Fandual Casino, you get even more ways to play. Dive into new and exciting games. And all of your favorite casino classics, like slots, table games, and arcade games. Get more on Fandual Casino. Download the app today.

Please play responsibly 19 plus and physically located in Ontario. If you have questions or concerned about your gambling or the gambling of someone close to you, please contact Connects Ontario at 1866-531-2-6-600 to speak to an advisor free of charge. You mentioned in Hebrews 1 where, you know, God is speaking, you know, God spoke to our, you know, through prophets. Now he speaks to us through his son and you're saying, where was Jesus then, you know, back then? He should have been active.

And so, you know, regarding Hebrews, I just want to read you this and get your thoughts on this. Okay, it's Hebrews 11. Regarding Moses, it says, by faith, Moses, and now I'm going to just skip down to 25 and 26 for time. choosing rather to be mistreated with the people of God than to enjoy the fleeting pleasures of sin, he considered the reproach of Christ greater wealth than the treasures of Egypt, for he was looking to the reward. So how is it that Moses can be considering Christ's disapproval if Christ wasn't around for him to disapprove?

And I was like, good point. Yeah, in fairness, why would the author of Hebrews place Christ in the time of Moses if he didn't think that Jesus was around back then. And I was like, you know, I'm not sure that this means that the author thinks Jesus is the angel of Yahweh specifically, but it's probably presenting him as God. And I'm essentially like, yeah, fair enough, good point. Yeah, that is a great question. So Christ there, he regarded disgrace for the sake of Christ as a greater value than the treasure of Egypt because he was looking ahead to his reward.

Now, that's something which I think, yeah, I think it's a good point. I mean, of course, I can offer a Christological interpretation of this, which sort of says that Christ is promised as the Redeemer of mankind, and we're looking at this in retro, where is he gone? Oh, there you are. And we're looking at just dropped it and left. And I suppose we're looking at this in retrospect, and he regarded disgrace for the sake of Christ.

Yeah, I do think that in this instance, Hebrews, is probably presenting Jesus as, I don't know about the angel of Yahweh, but certainly we're looking at a high Christology in Hebrews, yeah. So close. Because the only point in discussion here is whether the author of the book of Hebrews thinks that Jesus is the angel of Yahweh. If the author of Hebrews does think that Jesus is the angel of Yahweh, cool. That doesn't mean that Jesus claims to be God in the Gospels. It doesn't mean that the angel of Yahweh was Jesus.

It doesn't mean that the authors of the Old Testament think that the... angel of Yahweh is like, you know, the second person of the Trinity or whatever. But, like, with those caveats, it's still worth saying, yeah, it's just, it's a good point. So I say to God logic, Avery, I think his name is, I say, yeah, on this point of the author of Hebrews, thinking that Jesus isn't the same thing as the angel of Yahweh, yeah, I think that that's a, that's a good retort, like good point. And the thing is, right, like, I understand, and I knew as soon as that happened, that people are going to like clip that up and put it online. and be like, you know, Alex gets destroyed and stuff.

And yeah, fair enough, it's the internet. But I kept seeing clips come up with titles like, you know, like God logic gets Alex O'Connor to admit that Jesus was God. Or like, you know, how this Christian YouTuber destroyed this atheist's entire position. And I'm like, hold on a second. This is on quite a particular point, which I was happy in the moment to just say, yeah, good point. Like if that had been me conceding the entire debate, I think it would have been a bit more of a dramatic moment. But it wasn't. I was just saying, yeah, you've made a good rebuttal to a point that I made, and I think that's fair enough. And yet people keep posting

this clip and titling it in such a way as if I've like granted the entire argument, when it's actually on a relatively minor, as far as I see it, but still interesting, point of like biblical scholarship. But yeah, there's a specific example for you. of a moment in a debate live on stage on camera where I just changed my mind and grant that somebody made a good point. For what it's worth, by the way, since that moment, I thought about it some more and I left, I think, quite a lengthy comment under God Logic's video about this question where I sort of try to respond in the way that I wish I'd have been able to do on stage. But at least in that moment, like, yeah, good point, man. But what's annoying is that

Because this is single-handedly, like, the biggest clip of me getting owned on the internet. Like, I see it come up on my feed, and it's got some crazy title, like, Atheist admits Jesus is God. I didn't, by the way. And, like, my own friends are liking the real. Like, my Christian friends have liked the real. It's really annoying. The thing that's most annoying about it is that it kind of puts me off doing that, right? Because the next time I'm in a debate, and somebody makes a good point.

point and I want to say, huh, yeah, yeah, good point, man. I'm not going to want to say that now because I'm thinking, if I say that, it's going to find its way onto YouTube and people are going to say that I've, like, conceded the whole debate, and my Christian friends are going to be liking it on Instagram. No, I mean, hopefully I still will, as and when that occurs, because, you know, if someone expects to go through their entire career, a public career way or, like, on stage, debating, intricate and complicated topics and never once have to change your mind on stage or concede that someone makes a good point, then, like, you know, that person is deluding themselves. That is bound to happen. As long as you're being honest, of course, you don't have

to concede anything if you're just going to sort of put your foot down the matter what. But I like to think that when a good point is made, I will say it's a good point. And so, yeah, those clips kind of annoyed me a bit, because it would be one thing if it was just a bit of an embarrassing moment. And I get it, yeah, I'm sort of sort of a bit taken aback and stumbling a bit, and it's not my most eloquent of moments. But it's not like the point itself is this sort of debate-altering moment. And I kind of wish we lived in a world, if I can get utopian for a moment, where somebody makes a point, somebody says, good point, and everybody says, wow, that's really nice. And isn't that why we're all here. Isn't that ostensibly why we've gotten together to put two people on stage

and take questions so that we can share ideas with each other? But no, of course, it has to become like atheist destroyed by a Christian YouTuber. Fine, but just beware of how that might put people off in the future trying to grant when they might be wrong about something. Like, you know, if God logic had gotten up and said, here's an example in the Gospels of Jesus saying something doesn't this prove that he's God? And I went like, huh, yeah, actually maybe it does. Yeah, that would be pretty spectacular

because that would be me like saying that I think I might be wrong about the thing we're there to discuss. But if it's on a kind of tangential or not quite tangential, but supporting piece of evidence that doesn't make or break the whole case, but it's just like one piece of the puzzle,

then I just don't think it should be as big of a deal for somebody to grant that they might be wrong about something. I also get that I was in a room full of Christians, right? So you can, like, you can, like, hear the excitement when I grant the point, the way that they all sort of start clapping. I do think that in this instance, Hebrews is probably presenting Jesus as, I don't know about the angel of Yahweh, but certainly we're looking at a high Christology in Hebrews, yeah. So close.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, I see what you're saying. All right, let's go to the next question, because we want to go to me. He's so close, guys. But I have no, for what it's worth, I have no problem saying that Hebrews has a high Christology. That's not, that's kind of, that's kind of not an issue to me. But I think it is interesting to suggest that as a retort to the idea of the angel of Yahweh being Jesus, I think that is an excellent point, yeah. That's fine. You know, yeah, cool.

Somebody made a good point. And the atheist got humbled on stage. And that's totally fine. but I just wish people wouldn't make more of it than it was and that we could, I suppose, normalize a culture of granting points when you think they've been made well. Would you ever tour to do like speeches? Well, funny, you should mention that.

Speaking of showing up and asking a question and trying to tell me that I'm wrong about something and me hopefully granting it if you make a good point, here's your opportunity. Tour dates on screen, link in the description. I'll see you there.