An attempt by two students to understand the world and reality, in the form of long-form, structured conversation. Run by Henry and Yuta, students at Reed College.
Henry is joined by Alex (a returning friend and guest) to discuss the recent situation developing among 'alternative news media' around the use of Ivermectin as a prophylaxis and treatment for COVID-19. We go through a summary of the last 6 months (all during the pandemic) and give our thoughts on each development and the social implications. Before this span of time, Henry and Alex had both been casual listeners of Bret Weinstein's "DarkHorse Podcast," which especially attracted interest when Bret stood his ground on the plausibility of the lab-leak hypothesis (for the origin of SARS-CoV-2). Since then, DarkHorse has been Bret's main way to discuss his opinions and arguments for the effectiveness of Ivermectin as a prophylaxis and treatment for COVID-19. This stance is at the center of a huge controversy in the US surrounding vaccine hesitancy (as well as other related controversies that Bret attempts to avoid though is dragged in unwillingly regardless). This long episode attempts to detail most of the important points about the controversy: the arguments Bret and his supporters have given, the arguments his opponents have given, and some broader reactions. Overall, Alex and Henry are very skeptical about Bret's conclusions from his arguments, guests, and cited data, but don't have a good diagnosis of why Bret is not yielding his stance even as it seems to become less tenable over time.
i_dont_get_it.https://goodjudgment.comSuperforecasting: The Art and Science of Prediction r/metagnosis
The Bit Short: Inside Crypto's Doomsday MachineTether Ltd.BitcoinEthereumCardano r/metagnosis
Seen P. Senses of Humor as Political Virtues [lib] Community: r/metagnosisSend us feedback at MetagnosisPodcast@gmail.com
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In a ranging discussion we talk about the significance of the number of political parties in a country, make 2020 election predictions and talk about The Prince by Machiavelli.
"Robbie" by Isaac Asimov"I, Robot" anthology by Isaac Asimov Send us feedback at MetagnosisPodcast@gmail.com
Charlie KaufmanMovies:Being John Malkovich (1999)Adaptation (2003)Synecdoche, New York (2008)I'm Thinking of Ending Things (2020) Send us feedback at MetagnosisPodcast@gmail.com
"On Truth and Lie in an Extra-Moral Sense" by Friedrich Nietzsche [jstor] [html] [pdf] [wiki]"Nietzsche on Truth and Skepticism" - The Partially Examined Life [podcast]"A Brief Guide To Nietzsche’s On Truth and Lie in the Extra-Moral Sense" by Wes Alwan [pdf]"Truth and Lies in a Genealogical Sense: Tracing Friedrich Nietzsche’s Discussion of Truth through his Life (by Considering Two of his Texts)" by The Gemsbok [html] Send us feedback at MetagnosisPodcast@gmail.com
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The Correspondence Theory of TruthThe Pragmatic Theory of TruthAletheia (Greek for "truth" or "unconcealedness")Martin Heidegger on Aletheia as UnconcealmentMaking Sense - What is True? (Podcast with Sam Harris and Jordan Peterson)
This is an unplanned and unedited conversation between Henry and Yuta. Like a lot of long conversations it's very rambly and filled with lots of different topics. We talk about Mike Tyson, grading in university, bizarre social phenomena at Reed College, the "meta" video games 'The Stanley Parable' and 'The Beginner's Guide' both from developer Davey Wreden, and the self-referential movie 'Adaptation' by Charlie Kaufman.
[Metagnosis] The Art of Comedy (feat. Aditya)Sample of Ben Shapiro videos:Ben Shapiro: 8 Tips on How to DebateBen Shapiro Responds to Abortion ClaimsBen Shapiro: Jason Collins not a heroBen Shapiro SMACKS DOWN Black Lives Matter: "It has nothing to do with race."Ben Shapiro: US commentator clashes with BBC's Andrew Neil - BBC NewsBen Shapiro DESTROYS Transgenderism And Pro-Abortion ArgumentsJoe Rogan and Ben Shapiro on the Current State of Race in AmericaA criticism of Ben Shapiro that we watched beforehand:Perhaps Ben Shapiro Shouldn't Be Taken Seriously By Anyone About Anything - SOME MORE NEWS
Consequentialism UtilitarianismRule UtilitarianismDeontologyImmanuel KantKantian Ethics, an example of a deontological theory.Categorical imperative, Kant'sDeontological ethicsMetaethicsNihilismConstructivismRealism[podcast] Russ Shafer-Landau on the Reality of Morality
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Send us feedback at MetagnosisPodcast@gmail.com.Open Borders: The Science and Ethics of Immigration by Bryan Caplan.
r/geopoliticsOur previous conversation with Alex on Synthetic Biology - Promises and Threats.Send us feedback at MetagnosisPodcast@gmail.com.
@KanyeWest@ElonMuskSend us feedback at MetagnosisPodcast@gmail.com.
The Atlantic - The Surprising Revolt at the Most Liberal College in the Country.The Economist - Arguments over free speech on campus are not left v right.Video - Protestor's Interrupt ClassSend us feedback at MetagnosisPodcast@gmail.com.
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United States of America (USA) (in case you haven't heard)
Persona (1966) directed by Ingmar Bergman.Mulholland Drive (2001) directed by David Lynch.Clouds of Sils Maria (2014) directed by Olivier Assayas.Three Women (1977) directed by Robert Altman.
There is a dimension of programming language design with imperative programs on one side and declarative programs on the other. This dimension corresponds to that across telling a computer how to get a result versus what result to get, where imperative languages embody the former and declarative languages the latter. Effect -- the impacts programs have on outer, implicit contents (e.g. writing to memory, printing "hello world" to the console) -- are intuitive in the imperative but frustrating in the declarative framework. Henry's thesis builds up a way to implement imperative-styled effects in a completely pure declarative language.Henry's thesis on GitHub.Lisp programming language.
Testimony on Portland's George Floyd protests by Henry Blanchette.How to Make this Moment the Turning Point for Real Changeby Barack Obama
The Moral Character of Cryptographic Work by Philip Rogaway.Send us feedback at MetagnosisPodcast@gmail.com.
Why is it that people feel the need to express their disagreement? - blog post by Yuta.Send us feedback at MetagnosisPodcast@gmail.com.
Architecture - blog post by Yuta.Send us feedback at MetagnosisPodcast@gmail.com.
Donald J Trump.Send us feedback at MetagnosisPodcast@gmail.com. Join our community at: https://www.reddit.com/r/Metagnosis/.
The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith.Send us feedback at MetagnosisPodcast@gmail.com. [Transcript by Bob, our AWS robot secretary][0:00:13] Yuta: Okay, So this week, we read beginning of Adam Smith's The Wealth of Nations. And we only read about 5 to 7 chapters. But I found this personally. Very, I thought it was great. I was very entertained. And I think I learned a lot even though it's very old and its at the beginning of a long tradition of economics. But I thought it held up. Really well,[0:00:48] Henry: do you remember what year it was[0:00:51] Yuta: 1776? OK, it's just kind of crazy. Yeah, it's the year of the Declaration of Independence, and I think it's the year critique of pure reason came out. So, oh, around that time? Around that time, I think. I might be thinking of a different book but it's around that. Came out right after, anyways, yeah. So I thought we would talk about the 1st two parts of what we read, which I would divide into basically an explanation of how markets and specialization work and how that creates wealth and the second part is going to be about what money is and, how labour on wealth relates to money or commodities.[0:02:00] Henry: it's kind of about how value works in the market, right?[0:02:03] Yuta: Yeah. Yeah. So, first, just to summarize it really quickly. I think it was basically, you know, we just talked about intro economics classes, but it was basically what you would get in an intro economics class. Now I think I was really surprised by how modern it was, and the writing was also, like, very readable. I really appreciated that. It's kind of rare for something, so old, but yes. So it explained that, you know. Okay, so one example I really liked was that in, like, poor tribes, basically, everyone is employed in a way because everybody is useful. Everybody has a way where they can contribute. But in wealthier countries, a lot of people are totally unemployed. And a lot of people who don't work at all like consumed 10 times more than people that work a lot. so it kind of it's kind of a weird situation, but yeah, it works out that way because of, he says specialization. I guess there's a lot of ways to go at this. But this is one way. With specialization, someone can focus on one task and get very good at that. And then through the chain of production, you can focus on your own task and create basically much more than, you would be able to on your own. So he has very concrete examples, which I really appreciated. His biggest example was with pins where he says, he actually described really in detail, the production of pins and it kind of surprised me. It's kind of, you know, trivial in a way. But I know it was told in a compelling way. and yeah, he very convincingly shows how factories can be so much more productive than a single person. I think in his example of something like 200 times or something on that massive scale[0:04:28] Henry: and even at that time before we have, you know, factories that we think of today assembly lines and things like that.[0:04:36] Yuta: yeah, not even talking about robots. They're competing. I think this is just people laboring but organizing that in different ways, not having massive returns,[0:04:50] Henry: and I think that just to recognize a point you made. It's a common theme throughout the book that he brings up lots of concrete examples of each of the concepts that he talks about. And if you are familiar with the idea, then it's sort of a little bit redundant. But it's super useful for learning and getting to know exactly what he's talking about.[0:05:13] Yuta: Yeah, so, yeah, I was going to bring up it reminds me it was very redundant to me. I felt like and also, I think, to a lot of people, like for someone who I mean, I think intro economics classes kind of are pretty redundant for a lot of people. I mean, if you read the newspaper and you kind of understand how trade works, things like that, it's not a lot of new concepts, but yeah, I guess it was also interesting. Interesting to see how this would be thought through from a perspective where it's not obvious he's, you know, probably most of the reason it's obvious to us now is because, Adam Smith and people like that discovered this, and it's kind of filtered down to everyone. Basically,[0:06:14] Henry: Yeah. I mean, this is not really a work of science, per se. It's I wouldn't know exactly how to describe the genre, but he's going through and he's giving an explanation of these things that are so commonplace that most people involved would already have some sort of intuition about, you know, their place within the system. But what he's bringing together is an overall explanation that accounts for the way that everything is already set up.[0:06:43] Yuta: Yeah. So I thought it was science because, he poses a theory about how society works. And then it's, you know, it's falsifiable? you can make predictions about specialization. His predictions would be like a country with more specialization has more wealth. Someone thought that, and then he you know, he has the empirical data that he looks at. So it is theory. So, yes. So what made you think that it isn't science?[0:07:22] Henry: okay. Yeah. Maybe it was a little bit too strong in claiming that it isn't a scientific work. I don't think that it practices the rigor that we would expect from social science in the time that we are talking about now. Yeah, but it was probably a very good work of social science at the time, for sure.[0:07:43] Yuta: Yeah, yeah, yeah, I totally agree. It doesn't resemble like a modern economics paper.[0:07:49] Henry: Yeah. I mean, not that I expected there to be a modern economics papers there. Yeah, so I guess that in terms of the standards of science today, it wouldn't be considered science. But at the time, yes, it would be a good work of science.[0:08:03] Yuta: I think it would. I don't know. I think it's still a work of science, but it's just that economics has adopted heavily mathematical formal methods. And Adam Smith didn't, which I mean, that's something. I mean, maybe in the rest of the look, more of it comes in. But it wasn't obvious to me that it would be like this. I thought maybe it would be have more formal work, but, not that that's a criticism.[0:08:35] Henry: Yes. And that's an interesting point.[0:08:38] Yuta: And it does make sense that it is less formal. Yeah, it is kind of less scientific, in a way it's more philosophical. Yeah, I get your point. Yeah, because you know, he is a philosopher and it's not like there was this long established tradition of economics. He's kind of creating the field largely so, I mean, that's how I see what the role of philosophers as being. It's looking at new aspects of reality that haven't been explored in a rigorous way and then creating the methodology to be able to that. And so that's definitely a philosophical process. Yeah, it's not a scientific process. You need a methodology to do science, you need to come up with the methodologies. At this primitive stage, it's more philosophical.[0:09:38] Henry: Yeah, I guess this goes beyond our original motivations for talking about this. Yeah, that is an interesting point. And putting this in the context of, like, how exactly should you read this? You're not looking for like, oh, he had this experiment that he observed where these people were trading these things or using this thing is money. But it turns out we found this evidence that it isn't exactly the way he said it was. So therefore his theory is wrong. Like that's not how you should be reading this[0:10:07] Yuta: Yeah, and I mean, so far, I think he's, he's been born out pretty right about, you know, this first part that we've been we've been talking about and I think it makes sense to talk about most of the aspects a little bit because it's, you know, the, of the founding of discipline. But yeah, we can talk about the more another time.[0:10:37] Henry: Yeah, I also want to say, so maybe getting back onto the core material. You were mentioning how first he observes that in a poor tribe, right was the example. But everyone is basically employed end in that way. Everyone is not completely self sufficient, is pretty self sufficient. They can get their own food and they maintain their own shelter, and they get whatever the resources they need directly. They don't rely on other people for necessary. Resource is. But one of the aspects of this is that if you weren't self sufficient, not only would you not be employed that you would be dead like it's not really a matter of the everyone decides to be employed. It's more that you can't not be employed.[0:11:29] Yuta: I think we'll Another thing is even went in communities that are highly interdependent, like poor communities that are highly interdependent. I think everyone is still employed just because it's easy to be useful in a city where, I guess, more There isn't, like, a huge inequality in the returns to labour. Something we thought.[0:12:00] Henry: Yeah, this is another point that he brought up it. Was that all right? Uh huh. It was, according to his observations, it doesn't seem that people very and natural talent Teoh a very significant degree, or at least not to a significant degree in comparison to the ah possible differences and returns the labour that adults seem to have. No. And the explanation for this is that are the justification for how this could be the case, while still there is such a discrepancy in return. So labor is that in fact, under certain circumstances, specialization being allowed will allow you to provide much more value than if you weren't specialized.[0:12:48] Yuta: Yeah, so yeah. So how that would apply to the poor tried, I think, is even if people are you know, their specialized like it's the tribe where you know, you have the hunters, and then you have They're gathers. You have people tending to the food, growing crops and people hunting like that's specialization, But they're still going to be poor, and it's still going to be very high, great or ratio of people that are doing useful work. So it's not, just being, you know, self sufficient, even like kind of interdependent societies can be poor. Ah, and have high employment.[0:13:43] Henry: I think there's a difference between interdependence and ah specialization because you ca NBI interdependent and still not be specialized. You conduce a lot of different tasks, but not all the tasks. So I guess that maybe what it is is that we're creating a false dichotomy between no specialization and being specialized. It's more where along the scale of specialization is allowed in your society.[0:14:12] Yuta: Yeah, Okay. And I would definitely yeah, the tribes air less specialized,[0:14:21] Henry: right? Yeah. It's not that they have no special visions, just that they're less specialized. And that has something to do with the reason that they're not as productive.[0:14:31] Yuta: Yeah. Yeah, let's exactly. And that's yeah, to move ahead. Yeah, that's yeah. Basically this point here. I think that the more you specialized, you can, kind of a choir mastery in this very specific thing because you're doing it, you know, for hours, every day and even begin to invent tools to, help with that. And yeah, I mean, his explanations. I really liked one of them here. They're so concrete. When here is about a boy, he seems to say it was an actual home boy, but it's boy like to play with his friends a lot. And so his job was to like this play fellows. Yeah, his I don't even know what this was. But some something with a furnace. You know, I I don't know e I live in the person chain. I have worked in, whatever factory, but so he had some task to do other furnace. And then he figured out a way to, like, open the furnace or something if he attached to rope to it to another part of the contraption. And then So he did that. And then he went out, went to play with his friends, So yeah. Adam Smith. Yeah, besides status as an example of, I guess ingenuity, and someone having with specialized task, allowing for, more productivity. All right. Yeah. And it's although it's not more productivity if you're just playing, if you show someone your invention them, that's definitely very useful,[0:16:17] Henry: right? So he describes. This is an example of specialization where it's not that your specialized in doing a particular form of like, the work that needs to be done to produce the thing. It's that there's a specialization in other directions as well. And I think that he calls this class of people philosophers right. There's a quote I highlighted. Many improvements have been made by the ingenuity of the makers of the machines when to make them became the business of a peculiar trade and some by that of those who are called philosophers or menace speculation, whose trade is not to do anything but to observe everything and who, upon that account, are often capable of combining together the powers of the most distant into similar objects in their progress of society. Philosophy or speculation becomes, like every other employment, the principal, our soul, trade and and occupation of a particular class of citizens. And that was one sentence.[0:17:14] Yuta: Yeah, and, of course, Smith Bottoms of himself. I mean, he was a philosopher going on and on an economist[0:17:23] Henry: e. Well, I think that I sort of read this as, ah, he calls them philosophers. But maybe today we would call them academics, scientists and philosophers.[0:17:36] Yuta: Oh, I thought he meant philosophers in particular. But[0:17:40] Henry: But, I mean, if he was looking at, like, if he was to, you know, come to the 21st century, I think that he would identify those people as what he meant by philosophers as well. Do you[0:17:51] Yuta: think? I don't know. I mean, well, Adam Smith in particular was a false for, you know, as we would think of a false for right. But yeah, maybe. Yeah, I didn't. Yeah, Mom, What I read isn't telling me, but it's but yeah, I think you meant probably philosophers. And you could maybe in include some of what scientists do inside of that. But it seemed like you meant fosters. Just be. Is he talked about them being, kind of most associated with ah, ideas in abstraction. He says he kind of has Ah, He takes the Shawna from when? he says that people are like you mentioned, you know, broadly similar in talent. But once they kind of specialized, they can convince themselves, Like philosophers convinced themselves that they're just, like, totally different than it. Just like a different kind of, you know, being force. yeah. You know, that would be an interesting thing to look into. How? And I'm also interested in how yeah, when people started thinking of themselves as economics Oh, muscle. I mean, like, why did he write this book? Like, you know, his previous work was pretty well received. Was about, you know, on the sentiments off moles. There's something thought look on that very straightforwardly philosophy and mean. I mean, it's in that tradition on directly sites fosters when he writes this thing, it is about, wealth.[0:19:54] Henry: Yeah, I guess I I see. It just sort of him musing about like, these are a ton of things that I've been thinking about, and it actually fits together pretty well. So I'm gonna write this book about it like it's a very it's a neat thing, cause it's, you know, written in the style of the sort of philosophical texts of the time that air read a lot in false E, But it's about, like, you know, the real world. Very normal things that happened rather than very up shark things.[0:20:29] Yuta: Yeah, there is. Yeah, there's like like we talked about that level of abstraction, but he always like, and he usually having starts with the abstract statements, like, you know, specialization brings wealth. But then he uses the extremely concrete examples. Well, which makes it beyond that part is very different from philosophy. Yeah, maybe his fall self goal of training paid off. I'm son. Yeah, I think that was a good point. It's definitely structured in the way that there, Yeah, that philosophical works were Yeah, like, Yeah, a lot. Like, David Hume.[0:21:10] Henry: Brian? Yeah. Exactly. Also[0:21:11] Yuta: as old since yeah, as always. You know Smith earlier where[0:21:16] Henry: I think they both have Hume and Smith, both of Scottish ancestry as well.[0:21:21] Yuta: Yeah, I think. Yeah. I think they're both in in Scotland for the most part. And then Anna Smith studied at Oxford, but yeah, I think they were in the same basically group of people[0:21:33] Henry: uses Scotland for a lot of examples. Really funny. you[0:21:38] Yuta: also England, England. Like the shining? yeah,[0:21:43] Henry: all right. Yeah. All their confusing names for different amounts of money. Anyway, so Okay, this So this first section is about Ah, what was your delineation of it? Again?[0:22:01] Yuta: It's about specialisation or how wealth is created through specialization, right? It's 11 Other point is I'm He says that specialisation is, biggest in manufacturing and that agriculture is kind of similarly productive. Basically everywhere.[0:22:24] Henry: Oh, yeah, that was I didn't really understand exactly what the purpose of thought section was. Yeah, So he says that it doesn't really matter where you drive your culture. It's not gonna be any more efficient in different locations.[0:22:38] Yuta: Yeah, And he says, like wealthier countries put more resources into their agriculture. But like, per unit of resource, more labor, if they're not any more efficient than in a poor country.[0:22:54] Henry: Right? And you were first back to this later actually to say that certain agricultural products are good, stable values to measure things by but also in regards to this point. Hey, does talk about it in terms of specialization, which I think is like the way that you would think of a specialization. Is that its different people deciding to focus on particular kinds of work rather than doing many different kinds of work. But he also, relates this really closely to I think this is a good insight to specialization of time, in place as well. But, ah, he refers a lot to opening not necessarily global, but a larger marketplace so that you can have certain areas that are better doing certain things, Ah, to do those things there and then you can transport it over to another place. And as long as the transportation is ah, you know, not as costly as the efficiency gain. Then it's, ah, role. Better to do in that other location.[0:24:02] Yuta: Yeah, Yeah. This geography plays a large role in his explanation in other places as well. Like he identifies that cities in the coast and then just, the wealthy regions in general tend to be along coasts or along like a a river. That, is very good for transportation on, right? Yeah, he says, Yeah, that's because if you, well, if there, then you can transport your wares to a lot of different places and convert it to things that are useful to you. Weaken specialize more basically BZ Evo access to a wire market,[0:24:45] Henry: right? Exactly. So it's and more Special Edition leads to more efficiency. More wealth?[0:24:51] Yuta: Yeah, I think the word eases. It's like the extent of the market is greater in those areas. Yeah, you're able to sell toe wide range of people is if you like, live in China. Yeah. Yeah. So if you live in the middle of a country and you don't have access to ports, then if you make you know 10 million pins, then you have no no one to sell them to. It's it's kind of pointless to make that many pins. So you have to kind of make a few pins, maybe to say you can sell to your town. But then you have to spend your time on other stuff if you want to be as productive as you can and then you're specializing specialising less. So, yeah, everyone's were[0:25:38] Henry: soft overall, right? Right. Yeah, that's the That's a major theme of specialization is that it's ah, very collaborative effort. Specialization is not to help certain people of the expense of others. It actually will make everyone better involved. Our every everyone will be a better off who's involved in the specialization, you know, game.[0:26:00] Yuta: Just about a month. Yeah, he talks about it's collaboration, but it's based on ah, self interest. Everyone's working based on self interest without at this point, I feel like this. I mean, this is kind of reveal, right? But yeah, it's, but it's like, surprisingly, I think a lot of people don't. Yeah, they don't like this idea or agree with it. What was just kind of always spice to me it because I think it's almost like a political topic now, but I think it's something that's empirically correct. So it should. It should be me on debate.[0:26:46] Henry: Well, in terms of the modern contacts. First of all, here's a quote that, you know, we can't not to say. Ah, but man has almost constant occasion for the help of his brother, and and it is in vain for him to expect it to be there. But by their benevolence on Lee, it will be more likely to prevail if he can interest their self love in his favor and true them that it is for their own advantage to do for him what he requires of them. And then there's the quote about the Baker is a little and the junior that's really famous. Yeah, it is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own self interest. We address ourselves not to their humility but to their self love and never talk of them of our own necessities. But if their advantages and what I was so yeah, those were good coats. But what I was going to say is that, I think that in the modern context, it's it's interesting to think about this as I was reading, because he gives all these examples and it's sort of like trying to justify, ah, specialization and you know, lots of other things that will get you. But it's so weird because we just take it really for granted in modern society, like you just take it for granted that you can go to the score to get food, and you don't want to make your own food like let's just I couldn't have ever amounted to any other way it would. It just seems ah, like completely different life to have to grow your own food, you know? Yeah. And for[0:28:27] Yuta: for him, that's also the truth, right? Oh,[0:28:31] Henry: yeah. He's living in a society that I don't know exactly where he's living at the time, but there is also this specialization already, but yeah, I couldn't imagine, like only being able to get food from my town. Are you something even?[0:28:49] Yuta: Yeah, that. I mean, that would mean you're living in a basically try, bring like like, there's a few in in the Congo or something,[0:28:59] Henry: right? Yeah, ya. But when you talk about the sort of political arguments that are happening, I almost wonder if it's that it's become such a baseline toe have all of the structures of specialization that the arguments are about very minor differences. But since everyone just accepts the baseline, they've seen relatively large,[0:29:26] Yuta: I think. Among economists, that's definitely I think the case. I think pretty much every minute stuff just yeah, I think that any economist will say, kind of this specialization and markets are do a pretty good job of, Verity of things on. Then they'll argue about, you know, some of the limitations of markets. But I think in the general public, the general polkas in anywhere near at that point. But yeah, that's Simmons. Another discussion. True? Yeah. Okay. Ah, but but you do hear you know all the time about you know, the invisible hand. People just like take downs of the invisible hand of the market or people or kind of greed and selfishness being just basically bad things that are basically bad for people without any acknowledgement of some of its benefits at times.[0:30:37] Henry: Yeah, I agree. But it also seems justice intuitive that people do expect to be compensated for their efforts like they'll argue about, Ah, you know, being nice and not being selfish when it's about things that are, like, special. But when it comes to going to work, you're like, yeah, I want to get better pay check if I can. Like, I don't feel bad about that.[0:31:05] Yuta: I'm and have anything. Some of these people. Okay. Okay.[0:31:11] Henry: Yeah, maybe. Maybe we're talking about different groups, but it seems some majority of people are sort of on board with the whole, like exchanging labor for money and that sort of[0:31:21] Yuta: thing. Yeah. I mean, yeah, perspective. This very messed up from being a crazy liberal arts college. Okay, of anyways, so should we talk about the second part?[0:31:39] Henry: Yeah, yeah, let's do that.[0:31:42] Yuta: Yeah. So the second part, he goes on to talk about what basically went wealth is and how it's transferred between people and the form that it's transferred between people, which is basically commodities on. Then eventually money. And he identifies of money like the value of money. It's kind of it's an interesting question. Like what? How does money have value when it's so what? He and then fights this, that the value behind money is the labor that goes into the goods. So when you buy, I guess[0:32:27] Henry: I think that's the value of the goods, right?[0:32:32] Yuta: well, it's the value of the currency as well, he says. It's It's the value of the labor that goes into producing the goods that your purchasing[0:32:46] Henry: well, that's the value of the goods. But how do you determine how much the value of the currency is[0:32:53] Yuta: by how much something costs? And then,[0:32:56] Henry: well, that's what we're trying to determine. How much How much does a loaf of bread cost in terms[0:33:01] Yuta: of literacy? So let's say it's $10. I think Adam Smith would say, Ah, the bread costs $10 because it took $10 of labour to produce the bread.[0:33:20] Henry: Ah, well, maybe you were starting a different places. I'm thinking of like, imagine we didn't have money or we didn't have a centralized system of money. Then how do we get from that to having money?[0:33:32] Yuta: Okay, I guess Weekend, that's a better place to start. So[0:33:36] Henry: we don't have dollars to reference. We just have lives of bread and, you know, other commodities.[0:33:45] Yuta: well, yeah, well, in that kiss, yeah, it's I mean, trade is a lot harder. Obviously the most. The easiest way to do it would be to trade another loaf of bread. but then he talks about oxen. Became the next kind of one of the first forms of money. Basically, right. Homer talked about people's armor being valued in terms of money. Someone had, in terms of oxen. I mean, someone had armor worth 10 oxen 100 oxen. Yeah.[0:34:27] Henry: See, you measure things in terms of oxen.[0:34:29] Yuta: Yeah, because I s oxen were useful to everyone. So you didn't. Yeah, I kind of have to, yeah. Come up with some artificial. Yeah,[0:34:44] Henry: it was basically a Barner because you're bartering with something that actually has the value that you're trying to get. Like, intrinsically. Yeah, the difference is that since everyone uses oxen, it's sort of fungible You can you can use as an intermediary value you don't toe like, expect the person that you're gonna be trading to yuta have to want the thing you have already. Yeah, yuta, they will.[0:35:09] Yuta: Yeah. So commodity is something that's basically interchangeable, right? So yeah, basically, oxygen became a commodity which Yeah, it's kind of halfway to a currency, as I see.[0:35:24] Henry: Yeah, they were proto currency[0:35:28] Yuta: on young and from there, yeah, you eventually get to Hey, talks about precious metals have always been very popular. Ah, forms of currency because, says most important beacon split them apart. And then you can also put them back together without altering their value. Easy. Can you refuse the metals? Melton in season[0:35:56] Henry: and they have a really scarcity as well. It's not easy to counterfeit it.[0:36:01] Yuta: Yeah, and then this goes to my original point where talks about when the gold mines in America were discovered over. Uh oh, but I[0:36:12] Henry: just was still happening at the time.[0:36:15] Yuta: Yeah. Yeah, that And let's Yes, 70 76. Yeah, that's where reading[0:36:23] Henry: you and always California. Yeah.[0:36:27] Yuta: Which? I don't think it's happened at this at this point. Yeah, yeah, I'm pretty sure. I think this happens way. But anyways, he says the value of gold in Europe went down to 1/3 of its virginal value because the amount of labor required to produce gold became dramatically less after, the gold mines were discovered because it's easy to find gold and dig it out. And if you have, you know, a scarcity in in nature than you have to work a lot harder to get smaller amounts,[0:37:06] Henry: isn't I think this is. He doesn't mention it in here. But there's another similar story of when Spain was conquering South America. They found a bunch of gold mines there as well, and also got a lot of gold from the Incas and the Aztecs and all that. And they brought all the gold back to Seo hand It was it was, uh,[0:37:29] Yuta: around with. There wasn't original point. yeah. OK, so that wasn't[0:37:35] Henry: even worth it to bring it back to Spain because it was so deep about devalued by having so much.[0:37:43] Yuta: yeah. So that was my point about, you know, labour being force for Adam Smith, the value behind currency of the OCR. Different meeting, you know?[0:37:57] Henry: Oh, yeah, I I agree with that. Yeah,[0:38:00] Yuta: OK. Do you agree with Smith?[0:38:05] Henry: Do I agree that labour is what is money value? Yeah. Ah, yes. But I think that it might over simplify it to say it like that because it's not. It's not the labor. Ah, to be able to make something like that. It's more that the labour required to actually produce a valid one. So, for example, he describes how gold coins were given and silver coins were given stamps of approval by some centralized authority in order to show that, you know, it's ah has the right amount of the metal in it. So it actually I was able to require that much labor to create something I thought, but you could, in theory, counterfeit it by not putting as much labor in it, but still getting a stamp. So there's a little bit of marginal room for, problems with that. But[0:39:10] Yuta: I think that's a little counterfeit. Money is a little different. I think that's saying this is like the kind of currency where there is value to it, but you're kind of I'm faking it. And, like the labor that Smith is talking about, isn't the labor that goes into stamping right? It's it's labor that goes into what you can purchase with it.[0:39:36] Henry: Well, I think that to an extent. Actually, it is the labor that goes into stamping it. It's not the labor of like, actually, you know, taking a stamp and doing that. It's the labor of doing that, validly getting a valid[0:39:48] Yuta: Samp. wait, what's what's not labour?[0:39:54] Henry: Well, it's hard to do that t get a valid stamp. You have to go through some process.[0:40:01] Yuta: But why? Why would that give something? Value it?[0:40:05] Henry: Well, here's here's what I imagine is like Imagine there's 100 gold coins, but only half of them have stamps of approval, right? You know, then only the gold coins was stamps of, well, the gold coins with stance approval have a certain value. And the gold coins without the sensor approval have a lesser value.[0:40:25] Yuta: I don't I don't think so. Because, like, if I just if I got some locks and puts in stamps on them, they wouldn't have value. I mean,[0:40:35] Henry: right, right. Because it's not the value of getting your own stamp on the coin. It's the value of getting a certain valid sample on the coin. And that is limited. Like, let's say they only allowed some 50 stamps. Then it's gonna be really hard to get another stamp.[0:40:56] Yuta: Okay, this is funny, because I actually disagree with Adam Smith. Okay, I also disagree with you, uh,[0:41:05] Henry: might be stretching the term of, like, what? Labour is the flying to here. But what what were you gonna say?[0:41:14] Yuta: And also you're disagreeing with Adam Smith. Ah, yeah, your your, So I guess, Yeah. I mean, I can go with that example. Maybe I get a bunch of people, and we agreed Teoh, you know, agree on a stamp to put on rocks, and then we put them on, you know, a limited number of rocks on 10 rocks not still make those rocks valuable. There's be something behind it. Give value to those rocks. Yes, this is Yeah, This sounds very philosophical. Maybe maybe this[0:41:54] Henry: Well, so what we're talking about by value here is the value of the things that you can trade for. Ah, the rocks, right? Or the labor that goes into the things you can trade the rocks[0:42:05] Yuta: worth. I think that's the question. It's why do why does Currency of Valium? Well, if[0:42:12] Henry: it does have value, that would be the value. Right?[0:42:15] Yuta: Well, that's one answer to the question, but that's kind of assuming an answer already.[0:42:20] Henry: So this is why I think so. I I definitely am stretching it. I didn't reed this anywhere in his book, but going to your example with rocks, right? I think that the reason that your rocks no one would accept them like you would be able to trade them for anything is because it's too easy to create a counterfeit rock. It takes a very little labor Teoh counterfeit one of the rocks[0:42:48] Yuta: in my exit. On my next example, I would I had assigned with the community of people to only recognize this particular stamp, and I'll just say, you know, you can't counterfeit. There's only 10 of the rocks. It's a limited spy.[0:43:05] Henry: Yeah, but you don't know where old 10 rocks are it every time, right? Every[0:43:09] Yuta: time I try to rock some that you do.[0:43:12] Henry: Okay. Well, then I guess that it's really hard to counterfeit because you know where all the rocks are. So it's impossible. So that's about[0:43:21] Yuta: it. That's the set up of the new. So do they have value?[0:43:26] Henry: I think that they would have more value than if they were counterfeit. Herbal? Yes.[0:43:32] Yuta: Why? But they wouldn't like the rocks there. Still useless like nobody want. Right? Why would anyone, yeah, take anything[0:43:46] Henry: for the rocks? Because they have guaranteed scarcity. it's just like how we use dollars, right? The dollar is, you know, doesn't take a lot of material to make a dollar,[0:44:01] Yuta: but there's a lot of things that are scarce but that are worthless. Give me an example. okay. I mean, I could make ah painting a really shitty pain you, and there's only one of them, but it's worthless. Give to anyone but me.[0:44:25] Henry: Well, they might be easy to counterfeit that painting because no one you know, paying attention to your painting so no one's keeping track of where it is and all that only, gosh, paintings are very valuable, and there's a lot of effort put into making sure that you don't have a counterfeit. So that's part of why they have value. If no one could tell which the counterfeit was, then they wouldn't have as much value.[0:44:54] Yuta: It's not OK if paintings were counter for the ball, but they would have less value by. It's not the fact that they're scarce. That makes them valuable. Is I could I mean, I think you you also changed my scenario to I mean, I could just say in my scenario, my painting is not gonna credible. You know? I put it online and it's yeah, whatever. Whatever I put in a bank vault, whatever. so you know, I think it makes it valuable. It wouldn't be valuable. Would still be junk. I[0:45:38] Henry: do get the intuition you're going for, and I'm trying to think of how you would justify the other side. yeah.[0:45:46] Yuta: Let me Come on. The other side could just not have a[0:45:52] Henry: I think, though, that there is something to this, that scarcity is an important part of why certain money has value.[0:46:01] Yuta: No, I I agree. If something isn't scare, Senate can't serve as a store of value. But I don't think that's, uh okay.[0:46:11] Henry: But it's not sufficient to make something valuable.[0:46:14] Yuta: Yeah, and it's almost besides the point I want to say, and I think Smith Yeah, maybe off off reed closer. See what he would say? But if he does it, and five, the labour or the value with the labor.[0:46:34] Henry: Yeah, I think you're right. Ah, that one of the so. Another reason that would sorry. Another factor in determining the value of your painting is how much effort went into Or you know, how much labor went into the creation of the painting, right? And if it didn't really take much effort like you're not a good painter and you didn't spend your entire life on this painting, then[0:46:56] Yuta: I mean, honestly, if I spent 100 hours on a painting, I think it would still be pretty much worthless on the market.[0:47:05] Henry: Well, right, because you're about painter, it's labour's equally valuable. Right?[0:47:12] Yuta: Okay. It's okay. so, yeah, all Aiken explain Smith for for the listeners a little bit on this point where he says, Yeah, it's not just, you know, the number of hours that you put in that is the value behind currency. Uh huh. Okay. yeah, he says, it's labour, but you have to take into account the number of years that you want that went into learning the skill to produce labor and yourself taking to count the intensity of labor. So, like 10 hours of hard work could be more labour than 20 hours of lazy work or someone with 10 years of experience could, used more labour in in an hour that in someone with no experience in towers, eso and this I think, Yeah, I'm Is that Do you agree with that? Um,[0:48:19] Henry: yeah, yeah, that's what I was thinking about. So yeah, I think, but that's how you can differentiate labor. And it's so it's not just the exact thing that you did. It's everything that was required to come to that point that you could do that.[0:48:36] Yuta: Yeah, And I think you made a comment along these lines, but I think this is I mean handing. He massively stretched the definition of labor here. I did not good. Yeah. So this is one of my points of disagreement with him, Which by, by the way, it's totally I mean, I think this was so great of work so far, and I'm gonna definitely reed the whole thing, so I don't mean it's not still see a gotcha. You know, 300 years, I e hopefully reason made progress. That's yeah, it's not impressive at all. You just disagree, but, uh yeah, I do disagree on this point. and this kind of young it kind of starts up this point were he stretches the definition of labor so much that it basically to me, I think he acquits it with value, Basically, because he doesn't If you just talk to like a regular person, Labour is, you know, the amount of effort you put into stuff basically or the amount of work. And if, yeah, if someone with 10 years of experience does just some highly specialize thing, I don't know. To me, that doesn't seem like, a lot of labor went into the exact[0:50:05] Henry: like, if you're a Web designer and you goto work and you sit and watch you two for eight hours, and then Stanton our programming then that's not a lot of labor, even though you're paid a ton of money. Yeah,[0:50:17] Yuta: so, Yeah. Good example. Yes. A Smith would say that person put in. Let's say they make, $150,000 a year and morning working, you know, at a grocery store. Full time makes, let's say, 30,000. Ah, year, Smith would say, My reading is the programmer put in five times more labour than the grocery store clerk?[0:50:46] Henry: Roughly. Yeah. I mean, there are other factors that go into determining your salary as well, but that is one of the major ones.[0:50:54] Yuta: Well, I wouldn't Smith say. I mean, that is what span currency. But then anyways, yes. So he would identify it. Obviously not with, like, the physical labor, which is, I think, kind of what you would normally think of Labour's mean, But he would have been fired with instead. kind of. The programmer spent many years in school learning to program Probably yes, pro four years in college for most rumors, something that I'm not maybe a couple years of experience. while this clerk didn't put in and then So if you have all those up labour of the parameters five times more than the labour of the grocery store clerk[0:51:46] Henry: yeah, that is that is an interesting observation. I I think you're right that Ah, he is equating labor and value. But I I wonder if this is a mistake, though I maybe he intends to do that. And he's trying to show that what we think of us Labour really should be encompassing. What we refer to is value.[0:52:13] Yuta: I I think he's trying to do that. But I think it is confused because he's trying to explain, You know, with book is the wealth of nations. It's trying explain, like, what is it behind? Yeah, currency that has value. Like why do people, care about accumulating these, bits of currency? it's not obvious that, you know, I mean, for a long time, currencies didn't have value yet to actually barter. And so there's something behind it. It's and then he's saying, It's the labor, so that that seems to me. It's like if you say labor, is what gives things, value it. I think it's a specific answer, you know, a clear answer. And then, if you kind of conflate labor with value than it's almost like you're not answering the question at all,[0:53:16] Henry: you might even call his. You might even calls approach a labour theory of value. So yeah, just completely not the lever theory of value.[0:53:29] Yuta: No, it is. I think that's that's when it's going, Yeah, where is going to go next? That actually saw a super spies? Because in a class refreshing, your yeah, I read a lot of capital by Karl Marx, and eating Tree starts off. Basically, this is almost the same exact way, except he starts with, Ah, currency and labour are and value instead of I'll Smith starts with specialization all the time. They're pretty similar. And then, yeah, in my understanding from three years ago, this is, the same argument that Karl Marx gave. He even has the same examples. Basically, I think he made a views diamonds instead of gold. But I think he probably talked about gold to But how? Diamonds are very hard to get. You have to like they're in after our something. And then just people spend. It's like he kind of describes how hard it is to mine diamonds. And he says, That's why diamonds are very valuable on bits. Eso it's the labor. That's the store for the what backs value behind no currency and capital and young. I mean, from there it goes, you know, Ah ha, you is the same argument, which really surprised me. I mean, when I read Marx is book, it just It was just, like, totally ridiculous to me,[0:55:16] Henry: huh? But now that it says it now, it's fine. No, no, I e no. Well, I think, though, so[0:55:26] Yuta: Oh, Adam Smith came way before marks, If I remember correctly, so I mean and I'm pretty sure marks. Yeah. You know, he had the benefit of hindsight a little bit[0:55:38] Henry: to to that. Ah, this is just a tangential point. But this marks. Do you think he also is talking about it in the sense of that, certain labor can be differentiated like some labor is more valuable than other labor.[0:55:56] Yuta: Yeah, he, talks about specialization. I remember that specifically and then talks about Yeah, kind of. And he wrote this 18 67 came out Capital. See, he has almost 100 years on up on Smith. So I think there's more, you know, special efficient at this point. I can't Yeah, I can't remember exactly. I'll look into it. exactly how he explains the differences in the value of labour for, like, information workers. Basically[0:56:39] Henry: Well, what? I always interpreted the Marxist for you to be. But maybe I don't have a clear view, as I thought is that, it doesn't matter what people want. It's not turned by the market how valuable your thing is. It's just determined by how much effort you put into making. The thing that's about valuable it is, and you don't seem too problematic with that is that then all labor is basically of the same value because it's just the same amount of effort there are. You know, it's measured in amount of effort you put into it, but clearly I think that what ah Smith is trying to villainy between different labour's that have different value is some labor is more valuable if it's mawr demanded. Like if more people want it,[0:57:33] Yuta: well, I don't think I mean, I agreed up to that last point. I don't He doesn't bring in whether people want the commodities so far in the book. I think he says, unifies value with labor, and I think he's the same with marks on that point.[0:57:58] Henry: Maybe they differentiate later than I. I guess I would have to read it again. But I interpreted as, that's part of what he meant by not all labour has the same Ah, like, you know, great value. Some labour's worth twice as much of the labour for certain reasons.[0:58:20] Yuta: Yeah. Okay. All of godson quotes[0:58:25] Henry: about reed weaken. Okay, You wanna say some puts?[0:58:32] Yuta: okay, here it is, the real price of everything. What? Everything really costs to the man who wants to acquire it is the toil and trouble of acquiring it. right. The value of any commodity, therefore, to the person who possesses it and who means not user consumed himself. But to exchange it for other commodities is equal to the quantity of labour which enables him to purchase or command labor. Therefore, is the real measure of the exchangeable value of all commodities. Yeah, and that just seems like pure labor theory of value. Mm. Thank you. Yeah. And I agree with your impression of marks. I think that is what Marx says. And I also think that's what it says. Okay.[0:59:36] Henry: Okay. Yeah, I e think I'm coming to a better idea now. Yeah, I think the differentiation comes later. They do agree that labour is the basis for value, but and, you know, it will come most later where they disagree about some things[0:59:51] Yuta: and also like the beginning part. I think I don't think like Marx understood much of what Smith was saying. First part about specialization from what I remember, and it's kind of weird abuse to me. It seems like if he specialized, it allows you to, Even if he put in the same amount of work, it allows you to be wildly more productive and, you know, better compensated as a result because of you know, how your labor is organized and yeah, I thought the first the entire point of the first few chapters was that how you organized labor can, you know, increase the productivity of a group of people by 102 100 times. And to me, That's just those all seem, like arguments against the labor theory of value. It, you know, taken Teoh, if you just extend those arguments out a little bit. So, you know, I think clearly the first part of that book is very much, not like Marks. And yeah, it was a little confusing to me. Not that second part. Yeah, it seems to me to be in opposition with first part.[1:01:15] Henry: Ah, I guess that so in the same way that having put effort into a skill say, right man will increase the the amounts of labour you're capable doing and given time, I think that he would also say that by being in a some organizational structure that will also increase the amount of value or the amount of labor that you're able to dio here. I can see kind of your original point, which is that he's kind of using labour in a weird way.[1:01:51] Yuta: Yeah, And you're of Freudian slip.[1:01:54] Henry: Yeah, I know. Yeah, yeah. So they're doing the same, like, you know, they're putting in the same Maybe effort and value are better. Words sees. Yeah, So they put the same effort. Uh oh, that's are, you know, I I know. But[1:02:10] Yuta: even less true effort just seems more, clear. We not value. but yeah, yeah, it does seem like Adam Smith's idea of labor or definition of labour becomes very tortured at this point where you would identify just busy specialized. Let's say he's one of those examples like, Let's say, someone makes was a pin maker said he made pins for 10 hours a day and he produced 100 pins. Well, it's I'm all Smith, I think uses 20 pins a day something. What is it? You know, it's a lot of work to participant, and you want to read about that. And so you didn't read the book, and then he joins the factory and then with 10 other people. Let's say he brute. He produces £5000 a day. altogether. Yeah, You? Yeah. So yeah. Hey, became dramatically more productive. And I guess Smith would say he put in more labour into it, but e did not find out with education. Really? the I mean, maybe you needed a little bit of training, but not much. And also, if you just took the counterfactual of whether you go into the factory or on your own. You know, the amount of flirting you need to go on your own is lot closure. but yeah, so I mean, yeah, that definition of flavor where the person working in the factory puts in, you know, 100 times more labour, whatever or whatever numbers is kind of tortured definition of flavor from[1:04:03] Henry: the way that you phrase it is a little difficult. I think it may be. Here's ah way you could say is that hey, puts in it requires more labour of him.[1:04:18] Yuta: Yeah, that I mean, that doesn't seem true.[1:04:22] Henry: Well, I guess that the intuition is that he's putting in the same amount of effort, right? It requires the same on effort on his part. Just in that, those 10 hours what he's doing, he's putting, you know, the same amount of calories towards You don't work. Yeah, try it left. So in that sense, he's not doing anything extra. So what would you call it that is increasing when he's working in the factory?[1:04:50] Yuta: His spot activity, I mean well, that we can all agree on, like Smith and me and you[1:04:58] Henry: so maybe is it that he's conflating effort and productivity,[1:05:05] Yuta: which is the same as conflating labor and ah, value.[1:05:10] Henry: Yeah. Okay, I see your 0.1.[1:05:15] Yuta: Yeah, but then Okay. So[1:05:17] Henry: I think, though, that it's not so suffered because I think that you could conceive like it's possible to conceive of effort and productivity in a unitary concept concept. It's sort of just has those two things as factors.[1:05:36] Yuta: wait. What? Ok, so what? Even this effort. And then I didn't understand your point.[1:05:44] Henry: So I would say that I'm just kind of coming up with us, but I'm trying to work along with how you're describing it. So effort would be the amount of actual physical actions you have to dio in order to complete size. We were actually mean. Yeah, sure. I'm avoiding a labor just because he uses it differently and I don't want to be like this. And then productivity would be the actual results of your actions.[1:06:17] Yuta: I Okay, I agree with that on. Yeah,[1:06:24] Henry: I did hide this sort of a Did you can have this sort of unitary concept. Call it labor, which is something of a combination of the amount of effort and the amount of things you produce per effort.[1:06:40] Yuta: I don't understand what e I mean. Okay, but that's ridiculous.[1:06:47] Henry: Well, so imagine I think of it this way. So imagine you're driving your car, right? Your car is going to go at a specific speed. Let's call it, you know, the speed of the car and you're gonna be driving for a certain amount of time. Let's call that the duration of the drive. Then you can have a concept of Thea Mount of Distance you drove, which is going to be determined by the multiplication of the this, the length of time that you drove and the speed at which you drove. So there's no like, you know, it's all intuitive, so maybe you could have in the same case. Ah, your effort on your productivity is theme, amount of stuff he produced per effort that you put in. And then the results of that is your labor.[1:07:41] Yuta: I think I think we should move on, OK, I mean, let's even let's just be having less and less intuitive. I mean, why, Yeah, that's not really very I mean, you can make up some new concept, but but it's not labour.[1:07:59] Henry: Yeah, I get what you're saying. I think I just kind of, you know, I went along with his trajectory and took it A Z was talking about it, but I agree that it he could have done this better. And he's making a conceptual error to complete those concepts.[1:08:19] Yuta: Yeah, I mean, I definitely I guess I get the idea that, you know, we shouldn't It should be our first move to go with Oh, he's wrong But, yeah, just those defenses I don't agree with.[1:08:35] Henry: So do you think we could just have a Labour prime and say That's what he's talking about? Or do you think he's actually saying something false about labour problem? Even[1:08:43] Yuta: I think he's saying something forth,[1:08:47] Henry: and that's because, what he describes his labor isn't actually what value is,[1:08:56] Yuta: Well, he says Labour. Yeah, exactly. I mean, he says Labour's behind the value of commodities. You know, the quote red so that pretty much exactly. And I think that's wrong. And of course, yuta Cement by Labour, he meant something else than he could be right. But I mean, Labour's labor, you can't just make up your own definitions of words and then be right.[1:09:20] Henry: Yeah. So I guess then, Ah, it could be that were either disagreeing with his definition of labor or were disagreeing with some claim about labor.[1:09:35] Yuta: well,[1:09:37] Henry: so this is back to the definitions are going feeling We're gonna bring this up every single time. E[1:09:44] Yuta: guess it gets a little, you know, model.[1:09:47] Henry: And I find the argument of the definition obviously to be an interesting. So I just sort of accepted that the way he's using it. That's what we're talking about when we're talking about labor[1:09:57] Yuta: way. But that's not way. Oh, no. I just gets even more confusing. The lamer is a word,[1:10:03] Henry: you know, E Yeah, I know. But I find that easier to do when I was reading rather than replace Labour was something else. Every time I thought.[1:10:15] Yuta: I guess you okay, if yeah, maybe this is This makes it clear. if he's right about if he has the right definition flavor, then I would say he's wrong about, you know, equating labor and value. But if he has the right definition or it only have you Yeah. Made up definition than he's right. But also he's not saying anything. I mean, he's not explaining what the value of commodities drives from,[1:10:52] Henry: I guess I might subtly disagree, but that's fine. We can move on.[1:10:57] Yuta: Yeah, but he's an explanation of the value of commodities. Is I'm I mean, if it's a circular definition, that doesn't help, right? You want to bring in something new, that grounds value, and that has some explanatory value. So Labour feels like it. It would, and it would if it were true. But[1:11:21] Henry: right as you're saying, like he's using this word labor as if it was some other concept that he's bringing into the picture. But actually, he's just redefining value to be or redefining Labour to be value. Yeah, and so nothing actually was explained.[1:11:37] Yuta: Yeah, I'm definitely going to read the rest of this, so maybe it'll make things more clear on.[1:11:44] Henry: I got a sense from what we read so far that he was actually talking about something, and that thing, I assumed, was what he meant by labor. Eso. That's why I didn't have as much of a problem with it. But I can see use your position being different.[1:12:02] Yuta: Yeah. Also, I don't know to me. Yeah, the first part. The logical. It's so weird because the first part to me, it just seems like an art. An explanation of why labour isn't what gives value to wealthy society.[1:12:23] Henry: Oh, yeah? And then you completely floats it on time.[1:12:26] Yuta: Yeah. Just example about the poor tribes. Like even. You know, he explicitly says, Like, in poor times, everyone is basically fully employed In rich societies, lots of people are unemployed. but how can that be? I'm in straightforwardly. His explanation seems to explain why. You know, societies with less labor, are wealthier and ideas with basically everyone laboring full time the victim, but yeah. Weaken. We've been circling around this point.[1:13:08] Henry: Yeah. So we've talked about money and we started talking about labour. Is there anything I'll see when it's ah, odd?[1:13:23] Yuta: I think we covered the first. Yeah, the two parts that I am wanted to cover. yeah, I had something, but I've forgetting. Do you have anything final? Teoh?[1:13:42] Henry: There was a section on where he talks about how prices are determined. Do you? Did you go to that part?[1:13:51] Yuta: I don't think so.[1:13:52] Henry: Okay. Yeah. Then Weaken Weaken To do that next time. Yeah, but maybe I could just bring him one last thing about the money Example. So I was trying to get to something, and I want to see what you think of it. so this was the thought experiment is that you have 100 gold coins and 50 of them are stamped right, you know, And it's been decreed by the authority. The only 50 of them are gonna be stamped, but they're not, you know, kept track of it all every moment. So it's possible to counterfeit it if you're able to somehow get a sample. But the factor that I want to consider changing is how much or how hard is it to get a counterfeit stamp? I think that if it's really hard, like, practically impossible, then it would be relatively easy and straightforward to use those stamped gold coins as currency. But if it was basically a Z Z is coming up with your own stamp in your house and that would get you a valid looking stamp, then I think it would be impossible to use them as currency or at least they would be severely devalued. Yeah, so I think that well, it might not be the only factor. I think that it's a very important factor for determining the value of a currency is how easy it is counterfeit.[1:15:22] Yuta: yeah. I mean, I think I agree. I would phrase that as it's an important doctor for allowing something to be a currency, Yeah, but yeah, I think where we are basically making the same point.[1:15:41] Henry: But I think what's interesting about it, which will get to I think what you were trying to say is thought, the purpose of having the stamps in the first place was not to somehow, you know, create it as a currency like there wasn't a concept of thought. Even the purpose was to guarantee that that particular coin had been weighed and measured toe contain a certain amount of the metal inside. Right, That was a 1,000,000 stamp. The stamp was not just an empty signal, like we have allowed this many gold coins like I oppose in my experiment. Ah, but it was, ah, measure of how much actual metal was inside of it. Of a certain you know, purity. Ah, so that while you're trading, you don't have to check that yourself. Yeah. So the real value of the stamp is a convenience E, but it didn't actually, the the Salafist the Value of the stamp the purpose of this stamp. But the value of the currency is still in the metal itself and the labour took to create that matter.[1:16:52] Yuta: I think that Yeah, this is Remember what I was going to bring up? And it's It's about this kind of, so, yeah, where do we think value comes from? I think this is a good final topic. And because it's about what Smith wrote about Banana and explaining what he said. So you So you're saying that the value is in the metal, but not in the stand? Yes. All right.[1:17:22] Henry: Yes. I'm sort of trying to disprove my original thought experiment what was wrong with it.[1:17:27] Yuta: And you're also disagreeing with Adam Smith. B is here and fights the value with labour. Oh, really? Into what you can obtain with the currency.[1:17:41] Henry: well, I thought he I thought I was agreeing with him on this point at least, which was that the value of the currency is the amount of labor that went into producing the metal that goes in the currency.[1:17:53] Yuta: Oh, so wait. Oh, I can I thought, by the values in the metal I thought you meant in the physical metal. No. Oh, so it's OK, OK, that sounds like it's not in the metal. It's an the labor that went into Yeah, I[1:18:13] Henry: guess. I mean, the value of the metal meaning the labour took to get that medal[1:18:19] Yuta: okay on this supplies for everything like[1:18:23] Henry: right. But in certain defined Yeah, like he refers the Scotland again. They would trade and nails, sometimes as currency.[1:18:34] Yuta: But then the[1:18:35] Henry: purpose of it was that it took some labour in order to create the currency and that determines the value of the currency. And you can trade that around Ah, based on the value of labor that went into the currency for other labor.[1:18:50] Yuta: Okay, this is a little bit different from Smith because he makes the distinction, but it's the value of the things you can obtain with the commodity. That's the value of the quantity. And you're saying it's it's the value of or its labor that went into obtaining the actual currency. That's the value of the currency.[1:19:15] Henry: Yeah. Overall, Yes. So that would also incorporate counterfeiting.[1:19:21] Yuta: So but then what if you use something like, what's a seashells? Air. Very Ah, easy to obtain initially. But they're in the limited supply. So there a good commodity, then what? But then, you know, they're rare, so they become extremely valuable. How couldn't you? In that case, he couldn't identify the value of the commodity with labor. Right when[1:19:55] Henry: you say commodity or you're referring to the seashell. Yeah, I think I think you would. I think that because it's a rare it's harder and harder to find new seashells. So requires more labour.[1:20:14] Yuta: yeah. Okay, um[1:20:18] Henry: and because that it's harder to find new seashells, you can make it more expensive to get existing seashells and therefore the existing C cells have more value.[1:20:31] Yuta: Yeah, I guess. I mean, I agree that it went become harder and harder to get, you know, more seashells as they become more scarce. But I think that's not where the value comes from because I mean again, this is just the same point. But just be something is scarce. Doesn't make it valuable.[1:20:53] Henry: Yeah, I guess we haven't really addressed that. I think I need to think about that more. I'm not really putting a lot of good content into interesting that more just random rent rambling, but[1:21:06] Yuta: because there are a lot of hard to obtain things that are worthless,[1:21:11] Henry: right? Exactly. Lots of unique artwork that is not worth anything. Yeah, but in terms of the social thing, I actually I like the way of thinking about this, That so it's think of it in terms of, ah, game that you want to get a seashell, right? You have two options. You can either go and look for a seashell, which is gonna take some amount of effort, or you can buy a social by, you know, trading in some way. So let's say you have another thing that's worth amount like that. You put some effort into getting so you can trade that for a special right. So then you will decide what to do based on how hard it is to find Ah, seashell, and how easy it is or how much labor you know, labor value. It costs to buy a seashell. But it turns out that people selling she sells know how much labor it takes to find a new seasonal. So what they'll do is they will make their seashells as's close to that price as possible. And therefore the seashells have that price. Well,[1:22:26] Yuta: if they didn't have the price, they wouldn't bother to find he[1:22:30] Henry: sells right. Well, if they were price lower than a ah, if they were priced lower than it costs to go find a seashell in terms of labour vaccine, then you would prefer to buy seashells rather than go look for new ones. Right? So they can jack up the price all the way to exactly how much labor costs to go find a new one and they'll get the maximout out of their seashell.[1:22:58] Yuta: Wait, wait. I wouldn't, but okay, if the price of the sea shell for the seller is the price to obtain them and it wouldn't be worth them, they wouldn't make a profit. So it wouldn't be worth the time to find seashells, right? Like the value the money that you get from selling the seashell would have to be higher than the value he spent on obtaining official that's the Prophet[1:23:30] Henry: E. I guess that since it's a currency, you shouldn't be really profiting off of it. I think that it would be a pretty matched market,[1:23:42] Yuta: but not proof. Wall. But then, if it's perfectly not so, then you wouldn't get any new seashells we could. OK, we could do this in terms of Bitcoin lately.[1:23:55] Henry: I mean, that's kind of what we've been talking around the whole time. Yeah,[1:23:59] Yuta: I guess it is kind of like an idealized It's like, Yeah, the platonic ideal of currency. Basically, Yeah. So great. Yeah. Yes. as long as the internet exists So I guess you don't even need the Internet. Probably, But, and he was[1:24:23] Henry: don't need the internet in orderto half that coin. But you do need it in order to mind. Bitcoin.[1:24:28] Yuta: Yeah, Yeah. so late? Yeah, When does someone mine the quee
The Judgment by Franz KafkaSend us feedback at MetagnosisPodcast@gmail.com TranscriptYuta 00:14 Okay. So this week we readYuta 00:17 the judgment by Kafka and for me, I had read this work before and I like Kafka so it was a fun chance to go back to it again. And I tried to upload a reading of it as well, but I would recommend you read it if at all possible. So this time I actually got an interpretation of the story as I was reading it and listening to the reading of it. And I hadn't really, like I've read this many times, like over many years, like maybe over six years. And yeah. I, I never really understood the story, but I really enjoyed the story from the first time that I read it and it's, I got like a very mysterious feeling from it, I guess. I don't know. It gave me a, some kind of experience that I really enjoyed.Yuta 01:25 And then the ending of course also kind of was shocking to me but I couldn't really explain it. But this time, so I'll just say what I thought this time, which was, it seems to me like the narrator is basically, or the story is basically conveying what it's like to have a father who's very domineering and, kind of abusive although not physically, and then kind of the dynamics that are involved in a very kind of close and intimate but, but like totally domineering kind of like gaslighting relationship. So I think that's what it, conveyed. That's what it portrayed. And that kind of explains to me a lot of the mysterious characteristics of the story. Because a lot of things just kind of don't make sense. Like at the end, the father, you know, I sentence you to death by drowning and then, you know, the character goes to drown himself. But I think, you know, those things can be explained because they're kind of the first person perspective of the character. And I think there's an element to those kinds of relationships where it kind of messes with your sense of reality. I mean, that's what gaslighting is, right? So, yeah, that's my theory. But how did you react to this story?Henry 03:10 well first I guess I'll just say why I also enjoyed it. Yeah, I think I enjoyed it for similar reasons. This is the most recently, this is the first time that I've read the story. I've read some other things by Kafka but not this one. Apparently it's one of his more famous works. Well, that's interesting. But yeah, it's a very closed story. It's very focused on a certain circumstance and there's not a lot going on. It's just this interaction between these two people and it's mysterious because you get a sense of the two people. Like you feel like, you know them in some way? You can predict what they're going to do, how they're going to feel about certain things, but especially at the end. But, little parts throughout the story as well, there are twists that while they are unexpected in the sense that they go against the grain of how you feel, you've learned the characters, they also feel natural.Henry 04:18 They also make sense in retrospect. I think that would be the way that I would explain it. It doesn't feel like the story broke, but it seemed like the story broke at the time. And so I thought it was an interesting story and it definitely is, it feels like there's some deep meaning to it or some deep expression that it's trying to expose. So that's why it's interesting to talk about it. I definitely didn't come away with a cohesive theory. I definitely just found it interesting to think about in lots of different ways, but I'm sure there is a cohesive theory to come away with. And what strikes me about your theory is that it seems very specific. It seems almost like you're taking the story literally. It is in particular about a relationship between, I guess, a child who's an adult and their aging parent and maybe even more specifically a father and his son.Yuta 05:26 Yeah, I guess it is very literal and maybe it's kind of the conclusion most people would come away with the first time they read it.Henry 05:35 Well, it's almost just a description of what happened, right. It's the friction between a father and his son, in this aging stage of the father's life, that he's dependent on his child.Yuta 05:46 Well, so the first times I read it and I heard this on my own, then I also read it in a class and then afterwards as well. Right? Yeah. And every time that I read it, to me, it didn't really make sense. Like I couldn't explain all of the kind of mysterious, you know, stylistic aspects of the story. Basically. Like, you know, in the beginning there was also like a huge chunk of the book is about his friend in some country and then it shifts to the, you know, the father and it's like the first part didn't even matter to the story. And then, yeah, just the conversation with the father is so weird. I don't, it's, I don't think it's like a straight forward yeah. A straight forward conversation between a father and a son. That would happen normally. maybe I'm wrong, but it, yeah. So for me, I didn't, yeah, I didn't have this interpretation until now. I maybe, yeah, I don't know. I guess it's maybe a little bit different because I think it is trying to depict something that's Mmm. I guess, yeah. Stranger. Mmm. Because it's kind of trying to tell the story from the perspective of the person who is being kind of dominated. And in that way it's different from just telling a story about an abusive relationship from, you know, a third person perspective. Mm. Well it has like a warped sense of reality, you know, it's nightmarish and the kind of shifts between the topics from the friend rod, it just kind of doesn't make sense. But I think that kind of could be a depiction of a altered state of mind.Henry 08:05 That's a good word for it. Yeah. It's nightmarish. It almost like the story just feels like a nightmare. It's the exact sort of timeframe as well. Yeah. It's something that you would, you know, he jumps into the river and then he wakes up. Right. You could totally see that being a game. maybe, yeah.Yuta 08:24 The logic to it is nightmarish. It's, yeah, there isn't really, it's, yeah, it's very weird.Henry 08:33 Going along with what you were saying about, describing this from the perspective of someone who is the underling and this abusive or domineering relationship. the first part of the story is about him describing his relationship, this sort of strange relationship to his friend who's abroad, who he wants to move back home but knows won't. Right. And they have a sort of not super close relationship, but they're still friends after a long time. So they're somewhat familiar with each other. what do you think the significance of all of that is? I guess one way to take it would be that there is some metaphorical significance to the specifics of that story or perhaps the point of bringing it up was just to show how it all gets dismissed away when the father comes into the picture.Yuta 09:31 Yeah. yeah, I couldn't totally, yeah, I don't totally understand or have a theory about that part of the story. but yeah, I think my theory would imply that, yeah, it is basically in consequential. Yeah. So in the second option when you went out.Henry 09:54 Okay. I guess. So here's the way that I would, or that I am inclined to say it is that what I thought was really interesting about that turn when the father is introduced is that when we're describing or when we're hearing the story about the friend and he, he tells us about how he writes to his friend and he is getting married and he seems to be doing pretty well for himself. Like he's moving out in life and he seems very modest and he also seems weirdly focused on this friend. Like what, why does he even keep in touch with them? That doesn't seem like they have any sort of special relationship other than they happen to know each other. And it also doesn't seem like the friend is very communicative. Mmm. And my sense of this was that when he was describing his life at that point, he was describing sort of a fantasy of how he wanted his life to be. And he kept trying to put down his friend's situation, although not explicitly, he was trying to put it down and make it seem like, yeah, that's not actually what I would want to do. I, I'm fine staying here and doing things here. But then we, we get another picture on his reality living at home, which is, is the relationship with his father. So then it comes crashing down the sort of fantasy view of his successful life at home to the point where he's driven to suicide by his father, by the end.Yuta 11:29 Uh huh.Henry 11:30 So I think that there's an implicate or perhaps there's an implication that he's actually envious of his friend. He just can't say it explicitly. You'd rather get out of his house, out of his home, away from his father.Yuta 11:46 Yeah. But that seems right. And yeah, you get the sense that he's, you know, he complains about his friend a lot and he's kind of obsessed with his friend in the beginning of the story and they're barely even friends. Like, yes, I think it says they were just acquaintances before he moved abroad and then they kind of started writing to each other more. So it's, yeah, kind of this weird interests that the, the Gregor develops. and this person. Yeah. So it seems like just kind of this, his straightforward, Mmm. Ex explanations or comments about his friend. Don't fully explain why he has those thoughts.Henry 12:39 It's a really well crafted, section as well cause it seems almost like an uninteresting story, but the way that it's written and so, ambiguous and, you know, questioning, it's really fun to read.Yuta 12:54 Did you, do you think the friend exists?Henry 12:57 Oh yeah. So that's, that's one of the twists is that the father says, Oh, your friend doesn't even exist. But also that I've been telling him to not read your letters. So obviously there's a little bit of a conflict there, but Mmm. I honestly don't think it's important whether or not he really exists. I don't think that he's of significance in that way. but my guess would be that he probably does exist. Yeah.Yuta 13:33 Yeah. I think, yeah. So reading the story, I also, like many times it kind of, it makes me think back, especially at the very, at the start of, the conversation with the father and, and Gregor where the father kind of implies that the friend doesn't exist. It's like, Oh, maybe he doesn't exist. I'm reading it. It feels like, and then I have to kind of think back to the story and, you know, consider the possibility that the friend didn't exist. And I think that's maybe also another reason that this story makes me think it is about, or it is trying to depict, you know, the psychological state of being I, gasoline is such a cool word now, but something like that that kind of state on because, and it's also really interesting because it kind of induces the same state and not us as the readers because we're also like, you know, it's not, it could tell a straight forward, you know, obese story where the facts are clear, but, and that's, that's how most narratives would go. even most first person narratives. Mmm. Yeah. There's an aspect to it where the reader can kind of tell what's going on. but this were put almost in the same position that Gregory's and, and, yeah. So I think it's kind of a little bit left up to the air, whether the friend exists, it seems like he probably does and the father is messing within. But, yeah, I, I enjoyed the kind of the conflict that that created.Henry 15:33 Yeah. It makes you want to go back and read the first part. You're like, wait a second, I need to go see if there was a hint that I miss.Yuta 15:41 Yeah. And this is like the kind of the crazy thing about, what he's depicting, right. Just the fact that one person could be so domineering that he can, I guess, mess with someone's sense of reality. And I should say, by the way, disclaimer that I have read Kafka wrote a letter to his father, which is, you know, actually super famous. and so that kind of, I definitely recommend reading that as well. And, but probably sports, this theory. so yeah, that might've influenced it. but yeah, that's basically Kafka is, writing to his father. Kafka is all grown up already about and he's kind of complaining about his childhood basically and how domineering his father was. And then he gave it to his mom. He gave the letter to his mom for his mom to give to his father, but then his mom never gave it to his father.Henry 16:56 Well huh.Yuta 16:58 That's weird. Yeah. And it's, it's a very long, very classically Kafka a very well written. Very interesting. Well,Henry 17:10 well, so very whiny. Do you think that the mother also read it and that's why they didn't give it to the father?Yuta 17:18 Yeah, I imagine so. You know, I'm sure she would've given it to him if it was nothing. Oh, that is an interesting thing. Yeah. It makes you think to Kafka like actually want it to get to his father because why wouldn't you give it to his mom?Henry 17:39 Yeah. I don't know. Did he write? So did he write this story before or after he wrote that letter?Yuta 17:49 I think before and yeah, so some other contexts is that this is his first work that he's, he wrote a fiction ever I think. And the story is that he kind of got into like a few state one night and just madly wrote down the entire story in one sitting. Yeah.Henry 18:11 That's really interesting.Yuta 18:13 Yeah, that's, that's the context that I know of.Henry 18:19 Well that's lots of mystery surrounding the story, so.Yuta 18:25 Hmm.Henry 18:26 Yeah. I wonder if he is trying to express something that he experienced himself, at least, you know, the mental state of it, not the particular happenstancesYuta 18:40 yeah. Or maybe, yeah. Maybe even the particulars.Henry 18:45 Yeah. I wonder. I have a feeling, probably not.Yuta 18:54 Yeah, that's the extent of my, reading I guess the metamorphosis also. as a very similar theme about the father and the son.Henry 19:10 Hmm. That's true. Yeah. Except I guess it's a bit of a reverse relationship in that one.Yuta 19:21 What, how, how so?Henry 19:23 Well, this one, the father. Oh yeah.Yuta 19:28 well in the metamorphosis, the sun is like the bug and the father's the, I'm in the father, the one that's trying to get rid of him. Right?Henry 19:39 Yeah. But I mean in, and the metaphor Morphosis he is, the bug is dependent on his father and that's the way that he's controlling. But in this story, the father is dependent on the son. I guess that's what I meant by reversed.Yuta 19:58 Oh, I thought I didn't think that's the case at all because isn't, I mean just everything we talked about, about, the mental state of the, of Gregory being, you know, kind of deteriorated obviously. And then like the last scene is his father commanding him to drown himself. And he does that almost seems to suggest that Gregory has no agency on all that. He doesn't even, he doesn't even have control over his own mind that his father is completely dominating him.Henry 20:36 I agree with that. I mean, dependent for like, your lifestyle, like your health. That's what I meant.Yuta 20:48 But I agree that in both stories, the father's controlling the son. So that is an interesting parallel. I bet there is significance to that too. Kafka zone life it sounds like. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, yeah. I don't know. I think, I don't think the economic relationship is the core to the story. Yeah. Hmm. Which would make them similar. Well, it seemed like, when the father was introduced, th this might not be super interesting. When the father was introduced though, he was basically revealed to be pretty sickly and the son was taking care of him. Right. Trying to keep them healthy. Yeah. So that's what I got the impression from. But, but I, I don't, that doesn't seem like to be a very interesting difference. The, the focus is on the domineering relationship and that's the same.Yuta 21:54 Yeah. Well, the fact that it's Mmm. But the father is kind of financially and practically dependent I think kind of adds to the, you know, how impressive his power over his son is. Right? Yeah. Because the son definitely feels responsible for his father. Yeah. But you know, it's easy to dominate someone if you have all the financial and, and practical power. But in this case, the father is almost even more dominating because yes, there's like, there's nothing behind, his total domination of, of Gergor. not nothing like economic growth or anything like that. It's just he's this legal Nan who's totally dependent, but Gregory, he's kind of, yeah, everything. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. It's a, it's definitely a strange mental position to be in because you could imagine another, person could be in that position and think, okay, I'm just done with my father. I'm moving out. Sorry. That could be another position you take. But it's clear that in this case I saw that even an option for Gregor, he's completely mentally being controlled or he, he feels as if he doesn't have any willpower, to change the situation at all. Yeah. I guess kind of as readers, there is basically what you were saying. Yeah. We have kind of, it's in perspective.Yuta 23:45Henry 23:46 you're cutting out. Oh, sorry. I think you're cutting out.Yuta 23:51 I can't, Oh, you cut out also from my side, huh? Oh, okay.Henry 24:00 It seems like it's back though.Yuta 24:02 Yeah. So I think, repeat what you were saying. Oh. So from our perspective, we can tell that the but the father is this week a sickly, you know, dependent old man. And that is kind of a neutral perspective that we get that we're able to tell that whereas Greg or seems to be like a godly power to this person.Henry 24:42 Yeah. And that's what's kind of unsettling is that it's not really explained why that is. It just is made clear through the circumstances.Yuta 24:54 Yeah. The explanation is, I guess the story of his childhood, right? Something, something along. Yeah. That's not an explanation, but it's in there somewhere I think.Henry 25:12 Yeah. I don't remember that part super clearly, but I remember what you're talking about.Yuta 25:16 Well, it's not, it's not part of the story, but it's just speculation. Like how would this kind of relationship arise?Henry 25:23 Oh, that's what you mean. Yeah. I thought you were having to sing a part of the story. Yeah. I mean there must be some history behind this. Of course. Yeah. Or this is just an abstract scenario and there isn't a particular history to this relationship, butYuta 25:40 warm history doesn't necessarily mean childhood. That's true.Henry 25:49 Huh. But as I stand now, it seems like I have a pretty interesting viewpoint on what the story is talking about without knowing that detail.Yuta 26:01 Mmm. Well all in all I'll say it first of all, like I have no, I just tried it out a theory, but I have, I don't think I figured it out. Mmm. But yeah. Yeah. I, I don't know. Well that's a good place to end, I think.Henry 26:27 Well, in this episode of something a little unique, which is a reading of a story that I wrote in middle school called consequence, the story has a similarities to judgement in terms of theme and Tanner. So I think it'll be interestingSpeaker 3 26:44 to see in comparison to the other story. I actually hadn't heard of judgement before Yuta told me about it, but when he read the story, he saw the parallels immediately. John handed the lengthy contract to his client, mr Joffrey. As for read the document, making sure not skip the suspiciously small print. John reflected on the earlier events of the day. Soon after his breakfast around 10 o'clock John's boss had called him, asking him to rush over to the house. Mr Joffrey was trying to buy. John was dismayed for he planned to pull off his devious plan. That morning through the middle part of the day, John had argued half-heartedly with mr Joffrey about the price of the house. It's foundries and insurance contracts. Now, after receiving the final scripted paper from mr Joffrey's stubborn, bulky hands, John filed it in a slick suitcase. He walked out the door waving a tired goodbye to draw free, who was wearing a black suit and a red tie and flopped into the leather seat of his car.Speaker 3 27:51 With the sunsetting of the scene, John pulled his blue sports car in the parking lot outside of the local Shasta view bank. Shasta view was a small suburban town, knew that Lake Shasta resort. John had lived in this town for many years after he moved from Sacramento for the better real estate job, you figured fingered the USB and wires in the zipper pocket of his black jacket. As he stepped out of the car. You walked past the glass entrance doors without going through them and made his way to the two ATM machines that were on the wall at the bank outside. John turned his head back and forth. Wehrly searching for witnesses in the dark of the night and when seeing none, he took out the flash drive. He carefully unraveled the wires around it. When John was done, he realized how exhausted and nervous he was.Speaker 3 28:41 Never done anything like this before, anything against the law and now he was, the benefit was too good and the chances of him getting copper slim if he was careful. But then again, Mr. Williams, a deep voice. Bellowed John old buddy. Where are you been? Greg Davis pushing the heavy glass doors open and heading for John. Had been one of John's friends ever since he moved to Shasta view John Golden Gill and hit his tools at the side of his friend. Hi Greg. How are the stocks today? John asked Greg, knowing his interest, answering my bidding. Greg joked then changed attitude. He asked you look like you've run a marathon, John. No. Why don't you come over to my place tonight. We'll have a few drinks and watch the game. Okay, I'll be there. That's also awfully nice of you, John consented, but with the tone in his voice that bid, Greg gone.Speaker 3 29:37 Sure. Just finish your deposit. Greg looked at before leaving noting the implied message, but before Greg got home, John had already committed the crime by inserting the wires under one of the keys of the ATM. He ran the program from the USB into it, making it feed him $500,000 John stuffed it in his second empty suitcase and laughed as he drove it away around the corner of where the ATM was. He saw a man that Don black and had white hair and his guiltiness. John denied himself that the man had seen the offense. The man's name was Lark. Lark was always looking for opportunities like this, whether they were morally straight or not. Use this opportunity to blackmail John for yet another illegal purpose. Murder. John opened the front door of his house. This house was blue, but the paint was fading and it was darkened by the elements.Speaker 3 30:33 The front door was Brown and it was still Brown when he walked in his house because he had just given it a coat of paint. The other day, John lifted off his coat and hot and set them on the bench inside the foyer of the house. He was tired. He wanted to sleep, so he headed for his bedroom. The home team and also the team he and Greg were rooting for. I lost in the baseball game as they had watched. John was slightly disappointed, but shrugged it off. It was only a game. John walked into his bedroom and looked out at the view over the pond and an open space. Sometimes he would walk to the pond and look at his reflection when things weren't going well or he disappointed something crucial. He sat on his bed, still gazing of the dark outside or it was close to midnight.Speaker 3 31:16 When he heard the door creak open slowly behind him. John swung himself around to see a tall elderly middle aged man standing in the doorway to his bedroom. Who had his eyes wide open. He had white hair and was wearing all black and John remembered this man. This man was the man. John had seen her on the corner of the bank. He'd robbed. John gasped, horrified, and the man greeted him with a wide smile. Greetings, John. He paused. I don't think you know who I am. I am Lark and I might soon become your greatest nightmare. I know this because I've met and dealt with people in the way. I'm going to deal with you, but don't worry. I'm sure you won't turn out like them if you just comply and do everything correctly, you'll be able to forget about all this. In a while, John replied, feeling frightened and caught.Speaker 3 32:06 You're going to blackmail me, sir. I know that I've committed a sin and now I'm going to pay. Take it all, all 500,000 of it. It is curse to me now, but it's kind of you, but I have a deal. Continued Lark. Give me only 100 grand and kill this man and said Larken and John, a curious picture. It was banned with blonde hair and wearing a sport shirt and gray shorts under the detailed picture was the name Hank Adams and also information about him. When John looked up from the document, the infiltrator was gone. What should I do? Thought John, you couldn't call the police or LARC would reveal his crime. Instead of only losing a hundred thousand, he would lose all of it plus fines and it would probably have to go to jail and that meant his boss would fire him. John thought, well, I'll see what happens in the side.Speaker 3 32:54 Later he laid down on his bed before even getting undressed and fell asleep for the next few days. John was absentminded about everything. He didn't answer questions while looking at people. He sometimes send in conversations without a reason. His friend Greg was getting slightly annoyed, but he was also sympathetic. John, what's the matter? Greg asked his friend while they tracked to Greg's office building. I, I'm just tired. John mumbled not even looking at Greg as the cross, the busy urban street of Shasta Lake city, a bustling city. And you're like, that's what you've been saying for the whole week, John, you act like a blank page. Just tell me what's on your mind. I'm your friend. You make me feel tuned up. John just kept walking though almost as if he hadn't been listening to Greg. John had been thinking about the night. That was a few nights from then, that hoard night lurk had come to his room.Speaker 3 33:52 John didn't know what to feel a powerful, unique and unnerving situation such as this one had never entered his life before you wanted to give up, but he was afraid of the consequences of being the villain. But if he didn't do a sarcastic, he would certainly reveal his undertaking and get him into a distressful trouble with the law he knew was completely guilty. And John, watch out. Greg, lunch at John as he stepped into the street of the corner of the road across the office building stood. John felt a sort of selflessness as he claps in a Greg's arms behind him. It was holed away from the curb. What are you thinking Greg on the ground? You're a man who saw me, John and an ignorant fool and you're going to be collecting me also. This is that. Goodbye. Great stress the ladder. Two words as if to force them in John's confused consciousness as he marched away, John lay on the ground and then he sat on his all those and shook his head.Speaker 3 34:48 He straightened his blue striped tie and walk to work from there, feeling sad and helpless as he stated at the sidewalk. He bumped into some people as he walked past them because he couldn't see properly, but it didn't care. There was nothing he could do. The spirit took too much of a blow from all that had happened to him and John knew that he would kill Hank no matter who he was thinking in a way that made it seem as if strangling him to the floor and fleeing away from the morbid scene would repair his own fractured existence.Speaker 0 35:18 Okay.Speaker 3 35:20 It was late, dark, and cold. The night that John pulled into his driveway, the meeting he had with the associates in Boston, the city that day had gone on past the scheduled time. The real estate company who worked for her decided to buy a big chunk of land near the Lake Shasta resort. The resorts owner was planning to buy the estate from them and expand their premises. They would use the land for more accommodating buildings. And another thing that happened at the meeting, John learned who Hank was and gardens was the owner of the Lake Shasta resort and can be planning to buy the land the John's company had bought. At first they promised that they would build the buildings there for Hank for an extra sum of money. Of course, and Hank couldn't refuse the offer for it was the only imperfect spot to expand and he had not gotten it before John's business, but John wasn't thinking about that. Now he was tired, tired, and he was starting to get anxious to see what might resolve from the back layers. Dealer.Speaker 3 36:17 You thought though, maybe he's been caught. I don't have to think about the same way, but John was wrong. John said a suitcase down on the counter before his kitchen. It wasn't married. He had just huddled away, wrapped up in his own life and never thought about it. John took the different papers and notes that had been accumulating at his office and filed them in folders that were in a jar near the wall of the kitchen. That's where the screen door open behind him. John knew it was dark before he even turned around. Who else could it have been? Then he spoke to lurk, grieved, hello, what is it? But before he had finished, Lark was already starting to talk. Talk to John. John, I want to talk about our arrangement and Hank, I suppose you found out about him by now. He's going to be in his office tomorrow night alone.Speaker 3 37:10 I want you to meet me at the Plaza at 9:00 PM tomorrow with no police friends, nothing. You be there and I won't tell the world you're a little secret. Do you understand? John looped Lark up and down. He was wearing high black boots, dark coat, and a knitted black beanie. His eyes glared at him permanently through the conversation and John answered him. Yes, good Lord. Grint is unnaturally large smile. I will see you there. And then afterward, all of you, all for you and for me. Stop lurked out. Lurk stepped out of the screen doorway and ran through the woods behind John's house until he was well site. John went to sleep that night with many unexplainable thoughts, dreams, nightmares and emotions, but he remembered Matt o'clock in the town Plaza the next day, rushed by for John and he dreaded every accelerated moment of it. John had no work to do well he did, but he didn't move from his bed. The shelter, John, like the world would end for him that night if he complied with Lark, but if he didn't, he would have to live with everything that he had done for the rest of his nightmarish life. It was the end of a nightmare for life for John.Speaker 3 38:28 You thought of suicide, but that didn't seem to reflect his character. John wanted to go to the situation and embrace everything that was projected about him. John would not be a coward. He would be a homicidal criminal.Speaker 3 38:44 It was eight 40 before John could put all of his thoughts together. Why does Mark want me to kill Hank? What is, yeah, that's so valuable. Why does this have to happen to me? He trudged to his Dole topless car and drove the 10 minute journey to the nearly empty Plaza. As he arrived, he saw lurk leaning against the shadowy tree. Lurk didn't know it was John's car, but there were crowds of people around and lights to Luminate the scene. It would not just be killing lurk, but running into him by running into him, but also who'd be convicted of it and he would damage his car. John decided not to. John walked from his car to Lark and the light of the streetlights and was greeted stuff into my car. John, let's go. Lurk motion. John. In the back of his car. There was a metal separator between the backseat were drawn, sat in the driver's seat where LARC was so we couldn't get to work during the drive.Speaker 3 39:37 LARC steps in the car and pulled a pistol from his pocket. Even in the dark. John can see the menacing sentence are screwed on the end. John's face turned white at the side of a weapon like propped it up on something in dashboard. He just said a few times I spoke to John. See this strong Lark ass as he pointed at the gun. This is pointed straight at you and I can fire it while I'm driving with a switch. Don't try anything very. You'll have a hole through your head before you can think twice. Got it. But before John could respond, like push the gas and sent them through the night wasn't long before they arrived at the tall office building.Speaker 3 40:11 John and Mark stood together at the bottom of the building. John having LARCs weapon in his back. Lurk then handed John an oversized gun shaped object. Shoot this at the top story and then faceted to it with this harness. Learn quartered. As John's caught the dangling harness, he had tossed him following instructions. John fired the device and saw a black line soar through the air and hot shot at something at the top of the coast building. You'd attach the line to his harness after putting it on and push the button on the side of the gun. I pulled them up faster than John preferred. Along the edge of the wall of the building. They became colder and gentlemen, Donald Lark. As he walked up the wall, Mark wasn't too small from John's perspective. When he reached the top, you could see that Lark was looking away for other people that might come by.Speaker 3 40:57 You took off the roof that was fastened to his harness and dropped it into the balcony under him. This was the room that Lark had indicated there was no one on the balcony, but there was a light on the inside in chairs and glass table. Thank you. Must be inside. John looked down at his harness and saw a bundle of red wire. John thought this must be what Lark wanted him to strangle Hank with. Then he thought again of the things that lurk had done to assemble this, a sudden hatred flew through his body and he could only think of one thing to appease it. Violence, specifically LARC stuff without really thinking like stepped over to the glass table that was resting on the balcony. He keeps it up and it and sent it hurling. Donald Lark, John can believe what he was doing. All the chances that it could fail. The wind could blow it. He could so easily mess, but now it hit with a satisfactory crack on Lark. Sorry, head John couldn't really remember what happened after that, but he felt a heavy hand on his back. It must've been Hanks and he fell unconscious after that. He was questioned by the police and he confessed to everything. His trial sent him to prison for a sentence that isn't remembered. He died in prison. It isn't known why, but it is proposed that he died of a violent and unstable set of emotions and a loss of will to live.
A reading of Kafka's short story in English translation.
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Optimal Taxation in Theory and Practice by Mankiw, et al.Send us feedback at MetagnosisPodcast@gmail.com. Join our community at: https://www.reddit.com/r/Metagnosis/.
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Antonin Scalia - A Matter of Interpretation: Federal Courts and the New Law.Send us feedback at MetagnosisPodcast@gmail.com. Join our community at: https://www.reddit.com/r/Metagnosis/. [The following is a mediocre transcript.]Yuta 0:16 So this time we are reading a text by Scalia, a short text, and it's in the book called a matter of interpretation by Scalia. And in the book he explains his general legal philosophy, I would say, in an accessible way, I would say. And so I'll just quickly outline his argument, which is, he starts off with talking about the common law and how law students are taught the law through reading about these cases and then thinking about what a judge would say. Based on these cases, and when the judge what they would decide as a judge, and then talks about how laws kind of built up through these decisions by judges, and thenHenry 1:10 yeah, I think you're probably going through this quickly. But this is a thing that I think a lot of people are not super familiar with. So it might be useful to explain it a little bit. So what is common law when you talk about that?Yuta 1:23 Yeah, I didn't know much about this subject before reading about it. So I think what he's saying is that common law is the law that gets built up through the history of judges citing cases, so it's not like a law that was signed by some Parliament or something like that.Henry 1:47 It's decided by precedent.Yuta 1:50 Yeah.Henry 1:52 And precedent is continually refined over time. And essentially, the laws coming from the minds of the judges.Yuta 2:02 Yeah. And he writes about I have a quote about this. And he's writing about the way that common law was built up in England, and he says "all of this would be an unqualified good, were it not for a trend in government that has developed in recent centuries called democracy." Henry 2:24 Yes, that's a great line. This is Yuta 2:26 Yeah, this is his basic argument, which is things like statutes, which are laws, I guess, that are written by Congress, aren't like the common law. And they're supposed to reflect, you know, the will of the people in a way. And so it's not up for the judges to decide what the law is. It's up to the judges to just interpret what the law is. And yeah, he talks about maybe the training of people in law schools is a little opposed to how they should be interpreting the law in some other contexts, Henry 3:12 because the education in law school starts off with an analysis of this case law, the common law, Yuta 3:21 yeah, says like most classes in the first year, not based on this method, Henry 3:25 as opposed to interpretive law where you're reading side of the Constitution or something like that, a legal document that needs to be maintained. Yeah. Yuta 3:48 So he describes the opposing view as the view that prioritizes the intent of person who makes laws. So he says like, in a lot of cases, lawyers will. When they go in front of the Supreme Court, they'll talk about the history of how the legislating legislation came to be and kind of what the congressman at the time intended and kind of the debates that they had while making the law, and he says that that should not be what decides the interpretation of law. And says, like what should be prioritized is the letter of the law. And he distinguishes two kinds of intent. He says, like the subjective intent is what people think the law givers intended. And he says he objectified intent is kind of the intent that you that a reasonable person would gather from reading the texts of law. So just the text of law, Henry 4:55 right. And I think that people listening as well here will be like, well, what is a reasonable person? mean, and I think that that's up for debate. But that's a concept that is not, you know, strictly defined in legal terms. Yuta 5:09 Yeah. And in a lot of cases, it's pretty obvious what a reasonable person would breed. But yeah, in some cases useful. You have to decide maybe No, no. Henry 5:20 But there is a I think that this is an interesting split. That is relevant, because there are some arguments that end up saying, well, then everyone is textualist by this definition, but I think the the interesting split is between how you justify your interpretation of the law, because on the one hand, it doesn't matter at all what a reasonable person thinks. So you wouldn't argue about what a reasonable person is. On one side, you're just saying, What did the person who wrote the law, man, it doesn't matter if they're reasonable or not? And you might think, like, well, they meant it in a certain way. That applies very differently now. They did when they wrote it, for example, whereas deduction aside is saying, but it has to be up to a reasonable person in general. Yuta 6:09 way. Okay. The way you phrase that I don't maybe I disagreed with some parts of it. But I'll lay out what Scalia said first, Henry 6:16 so we're clear we can get to more of our talking about it later. Yeah. So, Yuta 6:22 um, one of the comments he makes is that there is no the intent of the law maker because there's no law maker. Like if you receive a letter from someone, there's a writer, and there's an intent behind it. But if it's a lot, you know, there's like, now there's thousands of people involved. Most congressmen don't even read the legislation. Maybe member some members of the committee have heard summaries of the legislation at best, it sounds like and then the votes kind of are usually split. It's usually Not unanimous and so it's he says it doesn't make a lot of sense to say there's one intention. And he Yeah, kind of says there's basically no subjective intent. Henry 7:14 I think that's a good word to use to distinguish it. There's the subjective attend. And then there's the reasonable intent, or what did you call it? Yuta 7:21 objectified and objectifies that is our he that's his word. Henry 7:25 Yeah. He gives us a dialogue as an example of the sort of ambiguity of intent that is occurring in the legislative process. And it ends with this quote by Mr. Armstrong, it's Mr. I'm sorry, Mr. Dahle, talking about a or a congressman and someone working with them talking about this bill that's being proposed. And it ends with us. Mr. President, the reason I raised this issue is not perhaps apparent on the surface, and let me just say it, the report itself is not considered by the Committee on Finance. It was not subject to amendment by the Committee on Finance. It is not subject to amendment now by the Senate. If there were matter within this document, which was disagreed to by the Senator from Colorado, or even by a majority of all senators, there would be no way for us to change the report. I could not offer an amendment tonight to amend the committee report. For any jurist, administrator, bureaucrat, tax practitioner, or other who might chanced upon the written record of this proceeding. Let me just make this point that this is not the law. It was not voted on. It is not subject to amendment, and we should discipline ourselves to the task of expressing congressional intent in the statute. So just one person in this process complaining about how almost no one knows anything about the the contents of this document, and the people that do know only know very sparse parts. Yeah, and there was little way for them to change any part of the document or to interpret it or do anything. Yuta 9:04 The machine funny. You're just writing that down. Henry 9:08 Oh, yeah, since this was transcripted. But the point is just that. Yeah, it's a there's not just one person behind this that knows what it was meant to be written. Yeah. Yuta 9:20 Hopefully the lawn doesn't abolish America. Henry 9:24 Right. But then the the result, obviously, is that this, you know, written piece that was pure occurred in some way becomes the law of the land. Yeah. Yuta 9:34 So let's do an example. I'll just go through an example quickly, which is the gun example. Oh, yeah, this one. So he says that there was some statute that banned the use of gun or I think had harsh penalties for using a gun during drug transaction Henry 9:58 and drug trafficking. The use of firearm. Yuta 10:01 Yeah. The and he wrote a dissent on that case, because the majority decided that a gun was being used in a case where the gun was used to barter for drugs. And Scalia says reasonable person would read the use of a firearm as meaning the use of a firearm as a weapon, not as a, you know, as the bartering tool. Henry 10:28 Yeah, this was this was the specific circumstance just so that we're talking about the same thing. The statute at issue provided for an increased jail term if, during and in relation to a drug trafficking crime. The defendant, quote, uses a firearm, unquote. The defendant in this case had sought to purchase the quantity of cocaine. And what he offered to give in exchange for the cocaine was an unloaded firearm, which you showed to the drug seller. The court had the court held I forgot to say The defendant was subject to an increased penalty because he had, quote, used a firearm during and in relation to a drug trafficking crime. Unquote. Yuta 11:09 Yep. Henry 11:10 Which he dissented to this case, but it was majority he lost it. Yeah. Now on Yuta 11:17 I think the thing that struck me reading this is I thought the writing was so good. And I read this for cost. And I'm like the best writing and Fred, for a class, just terms of the style of the of the prose, and it's just very nice to read. That's why I think we're quoting it more than we've quoted anything else. Yeah, I have one more. Quote, well, maybe a couple more above it. Here's one. Henry 11:46 Well, do we want to mention the significance of this example? Yuta 11:51 I think I explained it. He says that the guns are reasonable person would read the law as banning the use of guns as a weapon, firearms this weapon, right? Henry 12:08 whereas it was not literally written within the law and maybe wasn't intended by the person who wrote. Yuta 12:17 Who knows? Yeah, although he says that that part is irrelevant, Henry 12:24 right. So he's already put himself on the side of saying the tax matters. And now he's trying to say the tax matters, but in terms of a reasonable person's interpretation, not literally to the letter of the law. Yuta 12:38 Yeah. Oh accord about that, as a tech should not be construed strictly and it should not be concerned leniently, it should be construed reasonably to contain all that it fairly means. Henry 12:48 Right? Right. And this is definitely a really tricky subject. Because, you know, how do you know what is too lenient and what is too strict? Yuta 12:58 Yeah. Oh, We'll get to that. Sure. Yeah. All good selection. Okay, another quote before. He says a society that adopts a bill of rights is skeptical of that evolving standards of decency always Mark progress, and the societies always mature, as opposed to rot. Yeah, so he's just arguing against the the tendency to read. I guess more into the law then. is in the law. Yeah. Henry 13:41 Right. So the two sides, the two tendencies are there to just to read the law very strictly and not allow for any sort of deviation in meaning, even if it's reasonable, and then the other side of being reading too much into law, so now it doesn't really have that. Have any reasonable attachment to what was written? Yuta 14:03 Yeah. Okay. Should I talk about the tribe? Oh, Henry 14:10 yeah. Yuta 14:11 So I saw I read a response that Lawrence tribe, a really famous law professor at Harvard, wrote to Scalia. Henry 14:21 Yeah, so the format of this book is that the first essay is Scalia's, you know, main thesis. And then there's a couple responses including this one. Yuta 14:30 Yeah. And we're not gonna really talk about it much other than this one point. Yes. Go, I guess some goes to this point, we think. And so tribes argument is that he agrees that we should focus on the text of the law. But he's saying we don't know how to read the text because it sounds like the text gives you instructions on how to read it and how to read itself. And so Scalia says he should read the text as a reasonable person would interpret it. And tribe says, well, it's not really clear how you should read it. He can't say that because the constitution doesn't say Henry 15:19 it doesn't say read this as if a reasonable person was interpreting it doesn't say that in the Constitution. Yuta 15:25 Yeah, and then Henry 15:29 Okay, so this is conclusion, all observations. Okay. Yuta 15:38 So okay, the quote is from tribe. There's certainly nothing in the text itself that proclaims the Constitution's text to be the sole or ultimate point of reference. And even if it were, such a self referential proclamation would raise the problem of infinite regress. Oh, no. Yeah, yeah, I thought this was so funny. Henry 16:08 Yeah, it just doesn't really make any sense. But I think that it gives a little context to who exactly Scalia is arguing against in terms of alternative approaches to interpreting the law. Yeah. And Yuta 16:22 in a footnote here, he cites girdle. Which we think I mean, we both really like that book. Unknown Speaker 16:31 But Yuta 16:32 I think it's a ridiculous book. It's just totally irrelevant. I mean, we've read the book, and it's totally irrelevant. I mean, you can you don't even have to look at the citation. I mean, this quote, that, even if the constitution proclaimed how it should be read, even if that were the case, such as self referential pregnancy provocation, raise the problem of infinite regress. Yeah, that's crazy. Henry 17:03 Cuz, like, talking about Yeah, me talking to you right now like I didn't tell you how to read what I'm saying. So it's an infinite regress if I told you how to read what I'm saying. Yeah, Yuta 17:14 like if you asked me to pass you this bottle of water. It's like, I don't know what you meant by that since he didn't tell me how to interpret your words. Maybe, maybe by those words, you meant I should throw the water in your face. It's true. Henry 17:31 That is a possible interview. Yeah, you Yuta 17:33 didn't know. Or maybe it's just like, you didn't tell me to use English. So you were just like, shouting random. Sounds me? Yep. The Constitution doesn't say that. You should read this as an English person. Yeah, speaking person. Yeah. Okay, well, maybe we're not being totally fair, but I'm just Well, I think Has the argument that the constitution isn't clear about how it should be read. And so it's more open to interpretation. That is tribes argument. And that's a little fair. But and he did quote him directly and I think, I don't know it's, well, it sounds crazy, but I think I know this is just the only way I can think of to read the infinite regress thing. So, Henry 18:27 yeah, it's pretty funny. It's good to bring it up. But in the context of Scalia's original argument, I think that he is addressing what Scully is trying to talk about, which is that there doesn't seem to be a definitive way to read the Constitution. You know, there are multiple interpretations that are considered legitimate, you know, so how do you resolve that? And and Scalia's point is that, well, we need to think about it in this way in terms of a reasonable person's approach. But tribes seems to be pointing out like, Well, why is that the right way to do it? You could just pick anyway. And it would be just as justified. Yuta 19:08 Yeah, I guess I think he'd be. I mean, he would say he should read as a reasonable person. I agree. But it's just unclear what the reason person would read. Henry 19:18 Okay. And now, I haven't read the rest of tribes. Yuta 19:20 Yeah. Because I mean, nobody would argue he should read it reasonably, in a way. But he's, he's arguing against Scalia's interpretation of how a reasonable person would read it. But so Henry 19:32 yeah, so that's another way to argue about schooling, which is that Scalia is gonna have certain decisions about what he thinks a reasonable person would say. But people can disagree on that. But I think that the first point to get is to agree that we should be judging us in terms of how a reasonable person would interpret it. Yuta 19:53 And I think tribes definition definitely is more expansive, and it seems no more Yeah, I think liberals tend to be on that side of kind of expanding rights more than what you wouldn't kind of read into the actual texts of law. Um, Henry 20:15 yeah, Scalia does make a point about this a little later. But yeah, we can get to that. Yuta 20:19 So I'm glad I read this response to this reading Scalia. He's kind of arguing against people who, you know, we aren't really in this community of legal people. So he's kind of arguments people whose arguments we have that he's not directly citing usually. And but then you read tribe, and you kind of see what he means by a reasonable interpretation means that you don't read it in a way where he would come up with the problem of infinite regress. Unknown Speaker 20:53 That is not a reasonable human interpretation. Well, Scalia didn't write Henry 20:57 his original essay. How to interpreted. So that is fine way. Yuta 21:06 Oh, yeah, he didn't write that. We shouldn't read his text the way a reasonable person. Henry 21:13 Yeah. So he was just interpreting a different way. Yeah. Yuta 21:17 It's like very clear. So yeah, if you're coming up with infringer as you're breeding it way too closely, Henry 21:26 I guess. Well, it's kind of hard to say you'd have to ask. Yeah. Yuta 21:33 But yeah, maybe I'm like infinite regress maybe like you meant that in some way. Or it doesn't mean infinite regress like back then it could be reasonable, obviously, like, if he meant something, but then he cites girdle Escher, Bach, so we know exactly what he meant by infinite regress. We won't read the book. Yeah. Henry 21:56 I mean, there is Yeah, it just like, Oh, it's I mentioned the words infinite regress. Unknown Speaker 22:04 So I'm gonna reference this book. This is a very cool topic that we both really like. But Henry 22:13 yeah. I mean, I do see the literal way you could take it that leads to infinite regress, which is? Well, if I tell you how to interpret it, you have to already have presumed a certain way to interpret it to get that message from me telling you how to interpret it. Yeah. So there is a very literal way in which you could take that, yeah, that is not how any legal document or any document ever is written, or REL will use when you get to the part that the text refers to itself. You read it like a reason person would read it like, you know, right. I think that's what Scalia is trying to point out, at least on interpreting his entire point. And how I'm trying to condense it to this part is that he's not proposing an entirely new way to interpret legal documents or in particular the Constitution. He's trying to refine what people understand as the right way already to interpret these documents and formalizing that in terms of like, a reasonable person would interpret it this way. So if you disagree with me on what a reasonable person would interpret it, then we're still on the same page about how to judge it. But if you don't think it even has to do with what reasonable people think, then you're on a completely different way of interpreting documents in general. Yuta 23:28 Yeah, I mean, I do think tribe would be okay with the description of the Constitution should be read as a reasonable person read it, but but just just be really expansive about you know, the reasonable person. And honest like, so I followed Lawrence travel and Twitter and Oh, right. He, I think he's kind of something's happened to him. So but I'm sure he was like very bright when he wrote This, though the one. Yeah, it's just the one Twitter thing I remember from him is that he shared an article about Ted Cruz being this being like a pathetic person sucking up to Trump. It was like a hit piece on Ted Cruz. And then Ted Cruz quoted the tweet, and he said, or he quoted someone else who, like had a article of the tweet or something. And then he wrote, I tried to message you, but you blocked me. You were a law professor at Harvard, and I respected you at the time. Like, there's like nothing more perfect than the fact that you blocked me and show like, how close minded you are. Henry 24:50 Yeah, that's great when you have public and private to each. Yuta 24:55 Yeah, totally irrelevant. side. Henry 25:01 Yes. Now you know our Yuta 25:04 introduction. Yeah, that's my character talk on. Yeah. What if? Yeah, let's hire him. Now I'm thinking of infinite regress in random places in Henry 25:20 one way. Or did its, you know, tweet quote itself. You, when we first mentioned this topic, we seem to have slightly different interpretations of Scalia. I think that we we resolve that a little bit, but do you want to outline how you read Scully and what you disagree with? Yuta 25:37 I think, um, yeah, I don't know. Yeah, I don't know if we solve the disagreement, but I think um, I heard you as saying that. Scalia kind of resolved how text should be read and that the debate is over, I guess, and I thought, kind of the debates are gonna happen. between people who think, who disagree on what how a reasonable person would read this specific law. And so I think it's, it doesn't totally, I basically I read the text as kind of giving a broad argument, but it doesn't totally resolve the specifics and kind of what makes it compelling. The fact that it's not ultra specific. Henry 26:25 I agree with that. I think that we're on the same page. And I think that, you know, the common phrases, you know, reasonable people can disagree. Yeah. And while that might, this is more of a meta point, which is like, reasonable people can disagree on how to interpret things. You think that that's sort of the result. So if there was only one reasonable way? Okay, yeah, the debate would be over, but there does seem to be multiple reasonable ways to interpret legal documents. Yuta 26:58 Yeah. I think The people he really disagrees strongly with are people who actually do have like a strong moral stance on the issue at hand. And then they'll say, Oh, this text wrote, maybe, for example, cruel and unusual punishment. He talks about this a little, and oh, cruel and unusual. That means now we know that that means capital punishment. Capital punishment is cruel and unusual as we found out. But then Scalia says, well, in texts in the Constitution, it actually mentions capital punishment. And it doesn't mention that capital punishment is cruel and unusual. So like, you can see that clearly they meant that capital punishment is not cruel, unusual. And so capital punishment is fine, or it's legal and and then he says there's a lot of people who argue that punishment should be is outlawed by the Constitution. Because it's quite unusual, and I think, yeah, he's saying like, he read the letter of law, using the meanings of the words and the meaning of law, as it would have been interpreted when the law was written, then the reasonable interpretation would be that capital punishment is not cruel and unusual. And Henry 28:22 then when you say the interpretation, you mean the objective interpretation? Yuta 28:28 He calls Yeah, the intent to say that criminal is not cruel, unusual. He calls that the object if I didn't turn right along. Yeah, that's a kind of a made up intent is usually people have intentions not text, but right. It's kind of kind of coming up with what a reasonable person would write if they wrote Yeah, Henry 28:52 and it still leaves open the question of what thought I've justified a ton is obviously but yeah, yeah. I think that the the tricky part about punishment, I think it's pretty clear that they meant that capital punishment is not right, right. Yeah. And I think that what he is arguing and just to reinforce your point is that he wants to prevent these law judgers to become law givers. He doesn't want the judge to try to interpret into the law, what it should mean, what an intelligent person should have meant when they wrote this thing. Yeah. Yuta 29:32 And I think he, the people he most disagrees with our people who, yeah, basically, they think crucial. They feel strongly that it means capital punishment, and because of that, they vote for that or vote for that in the supreme court as as their interpretation, but I think it's like it'll be very rare. What you'll find someone actually articulating that view that this is, I feel like capital punishment is bad, therefore I'm going to vote this way. But I think it's kind of implied that some people might, in their behavior act in that way, even if they don't articulate. But I think if someone actually defended that viewpoint that would be shut down pretty easily. But he's kind of implying that even people who maybe agree with them that the tech should be the tech should be read recently, might not behave as if they actually believe that. Henry 30:35 Right? Maybe this summarize your point, it's that almost everyone would proclaim that the reason they think the law should be interpreted in this way is because that's a reasonable interpretation. But the facts might be that not everyone actually, is legitimately using that reasoning correctly. But when you argue that cruel for Like, I think that using this example is good. When you argue that cruel and unusual punishment applies to the capital punishment, then you're saying that a reasonable person would have judged capital punishment to be cruel and unusual. But even if you're giving that as your reason, and it is clear, that's not the case, because in other parts of the Constitution, it doesn't make that judgment. So you're reading into what cruel and unusual is based on what you think it should mean, in this context, rather than what you think it actually means. Yuta 31:43 Or to them to the lawmakers. But yeah, I mean, I'm unclear some versions of the argument but or maybe better. Maybe you like if the constitution had written cruel and unusual punishment is punishment that is very painful. Basically, they have like, all these examples of things that are painful and outlawed, and then they say, capital punishment is painless. And then we find out 100 years later that it's actually way more painful than any of the things I mentioned, that are painful and therefore cruel and evil. Right now, maybe, maybe, you know, there's some American there. Maybe it's a version of that argument that people on that side want to make. Right. I disagree. I don't think Bill law says that kind of a punishment is cruel, unusual. Henry 32:34 So there are certainly cases which it could go the other way. But I think that the point is that, regardless, you're still using the same standard that Scully is proposing in order to make that judgment. Whereas seems like the argument about cruel and unusual punishment is not abiding by that standard of judgment. Yuta 32:54 Well, I think you'd be hard pressed to find someone who just explicitly disagrees with Scalia. Do you recognize the textualist approach? As he defines it? But Henry 33:05 yeah, it's just yeah, this is the difficult part, which is that any disagreement about the matter of fact, can always be phrased in terms of a disagreement about what a reasonable person would think. As long as you're not admitting that your interpretation is not reasonable, and you just want to change the thing to be what you want it to be, then you can all as long as you don't want to explicitly admit that you can phrase your argument as well. I just think that a reasonable person thinks less. Yeah, you never are gonna get people that explicitly disagree with Scalia. But in disagreeing with him, say on certain judgments, you could still make the case that they're not being reasonable. That's fine. Yeah. Yuta 33:50 Definitely in like society, maybe there's millions of people who if you ask, they would actually they would take like the caricature and tie it textualist position that is totally indefensible, which is like, oh, gay marriage is a good thing. So the Supreme Court should vote for gay marriage, or knockout punch, and it's bad. So the supreme court or abortion is good. So the Supreme Court should support it. But just to be very clear Henry 34:18 here, I think we could easily get into bad territory, which is we're not saying that the Supreme Court shouldn't vote for, you know, gay marriage because gay marriage is good. We're just saying that that shouldn't be the reason that they decide the law is because it's moral. They should decide the law based on what the law actually is. Yuta 34:40 Yeah. Henry 34:42 Well, if the laws immoral, they shouldn't be the ones changing the law. Yuta 34:48 Yeah, I mean, just as if you just as a judge, I would think it would be hard to fun you know, the idea that like the argument game, response, I should vote for gay marriage. But I think if you ask regular people like you would find plenty of examples. But yeah, on the Supreme Court or among lawyers, you probably wouldn't find people who would explicitly endorse that position. Henry 35:18 I think this is a So the interesting part of this to me, in this section that we're talking about is that when you ask a common person, you know, I mean, we've already done this in that country, but you know, should gay marriage be legal? Right. When you ask them that, I think that you're asking them a sort of a counterfactual question, like a possibility question. It's like, you know, in if you were choosing between possible worlds, one where gay marriage is legal and one word isn't legal, then which one would you choose? And they would say, well, let's say you know, I choose the one where gay marriage is legal because I think gay marriage should be allowed. Because of my moral views, and I would agree with that. And then when you ask the Supreme Court Justice, should gay marriage be legal? Well, they're going to interpret that, I think as a different question, because it's not a matter of changing which world we're in. It's a matter of given the world we are. And does the law facts say that gay marriage is allowed or not? Yuta 36:21 Right? Yeah. Henry 36:22 And it might be that it's not allowed. And that is a bad decision. And that shouldn't be maintained in terms of legislature in terms of policy. But it's not up for the justice to decide whether or not to uphold the law based on that. I think that you actually have a good point about this, which is that if the just if the judges did decide to change laws based on what they thought should be the law, then that never offers an opportunity to the legislature to actually change bad laws and make good ones. Yuta 36:57 Yeah, there would be no incentive to or no pressure To change the law, there's if it wouldn't make a practical difference. And also think just the infrastructure works in a way where, you know, people do their jobs, lawmakers make laws and the president, the executive branch enforces them. Legislative Branch interprets them. And it's just the function the system works well as it's designed. And it works less well, if people don't carry out their functions, even if, you know, in that specific instance, they would make things better. Like, you know, on a lot of these social issues, I think still overall in the long term, you know, hopefully, America has been around three engineers under this constitution. And hopefully, it'll be around for hundreds of years more and I think for the long term, it works best if we have a law govern society. Henry 37:55 Oh, well, I mean, I don't know anyone who's or I don't think a lot of people are you gonna saw it. Yuta 38:00 Well, I think that's what we're implying is the counter argument. A society governed by the what judges think the law should be instead of pylons. Henry 38:11 Oh, okay. Okay. But I mean, I would, I guess that just law govern is a general term that I would think would apply to both. But I get what you mean. So one where the law is held up as a matter of precedent, whereas the other circumstance where it's just decided case by case based on what should Yuta 38:30 be decided on precedent, either precedent is like what judges decided in the past, and that should play a role. But if the president goes against the letter of the law, then I think you should write in a Henry 38:43 letter of law. It should be according to the written law, not according to judges, decisions about what the law should be. Yuta 38:51 Yeah, I mean, that can play a role and that's helpful, but like, you know, this Dred Scott decision was reversed. Yeah, decisions got reversed, Henry 38:57 right. But but Yuta 38:59 by the way, yeah, I think Dred Scott decision, Scalia says, cited the 10th. amendment or the amendment about I forget what it's called. Remember? No. It's an amendment that kind of give has been used often to expand the power of the government through interpreting the law. And Scalia says that was improper. So in many cases, he's kind of not on. He argues that trumping the constitution strictly would have led to more social progress in in the immediate sense. He's also right right voted for allowing for categorizing like flag burning and stuff like that as free speech, and I think he voted against some other people on the Supreme Court. So it's not, which you wouldn't expect to consider would have to do that. So it's like not, not super, you can't totally predict what side he would come on based on based off of Indian conservative conservative for whatever.
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Send us feedback at MetagnosisPodcast@gmail.com. Transcript:Yuta 00:15 Okay. So today we're going to talk about the naming of our podcast, which happened months ago, but we thought we would do a follow up to the episode where we talked about, trying to come up with the name of our podcast and ultimately did not come up with name during that time. Yes. That was our trailer episode. Yeah. Go back and watch that first for context. So this one, so the name is Metagnosis and, one more time. Metagnosis. Okay. Yeah, I think we've got it. And I think we got to the idea of using the word gnosis first. And I think that's just the word that came to mind at some point, I think for me, and it meant knowledge in Greek originally, apparently. but I think it's more associated with a kind of spiritual knowledge or knowledge of the gods or, yeah, that kind of esoteric knowledge. Yeah, that's a good word. Esoteric knowledge. Yeah. Special knowledge. I think in Gnosticism it was like knowledge of, yeah. The situation that you're in spiritually where, I think the gods are evil and that one or Yahweh is evil. And then,Henry 01:46 right. So we should explain just briefly what Gnosticism is. So the root word is gnosis and then Gnosticism is sort of a religion based around gnosis in some way.Yuta 02:01 Yeah. That's what I gather from my limited understanding,Henry 02:05 but we have a very superficial understanding, yeah,Yuta 02:12 that's in reference to this. Yeah. This is not one of our main interests.Henry 02:18 the name sounded cool. Anyways, we have an intended meaning behind why we chose the name and it fulfills some of the goals that we wanted our name to fulfill. So even though we don't know everything about the origins of the word there are some things we picked out that are relevant. So going back to Gnosticism, it's focusing on, this sort of, or how I understand it is that it's focused on an idea of the human soul or human knowledge to be divine in nature and in opposition to, not as a contradiction but in sort of battle with, traditional gods. Like for example, the Abrahamic God. So humans are like a divine source in themselves.Yuta 03:14 They don't get it from God. How is this the inspiration for the name? No, I'm just saying what I understand of Gnosticism. I'm not saying this is the, what our podcast name means. I'm just saying this is because we're divine beings. Well, I think that I'm going, or leaking. I mean, basically, yeah, that was, that had nothing to do with the name. But I do have some idea of how this plays into what I'm thinking of our name.Henry 03:46 how so? Well, first let's say, well I guess, and then there's one other word I wanted to mention, which was agnosticism. And this is obviously, an antonym using the, a prefix, but, meaning that it's usually used for is having, a neutral opinion on God's existence. But I think maybe more strictly etymologically it means, not having knowledge of divinity. So in opposition to Gnosticism, which while being sort of a cultish, supernatural sort of belief system at the core, that's, that's what it's getting at is a understanding of your divine nature, right? Or is that how you understand it too? Yeah. Okay. And then what I was going to say and playing into how our name is significant. so the name is Metagnosis, which Metta being a sort of overused prefixed but actually turned out to be pretty good for our name is, sort of meanings about. So rather than being gnosis itself, it's about gnosis. So maybe about knowledge. And I think that, the fact that we are not experts, so we're not appealing, so much to some sort of, gathered knowledge from specific fields or we've done lots of research. We're trying to extract knowledge from the conversation. we're trying to understand it through our own natures and not just by appealing to, well, you know, this was some, authority that says this, and I am, experienced enough in a subject in order to make that claim.Yuta 05:47 Yeah. I agree with all that. And I saw that too. And I think maybe another reason I like the name or that I want to choose nameSpeaker 0 06:00 isYuta 06:02 yeah, maybe, maybe it's kind of related, but yeah, I wanted, we didn't name the podcast, just knowledge or something like that or think, thinking Thinkery or something like that. And I thought that was a potential name. Yeah. Yeah. Kind of thinking related names, but what I wanted gnosis more because it, yeah. Because it has this connotation of being about something, you know, a little deeper and more important. And obviously we weren't going to do like a religious podcast, so it's not called gnosis. So that's, that's why we modified it to Metagnosis. But, yeah, even though it's, it's not a spiritual font guests, I, thought it would be good to have some reminder of having, you know, some kind of deeper goal beyond just gathering facts and thinking and maybe, you know, trying to obtain some kind of a more holistic understanding, something like that. Henry 07:06 Yeah. A way I put it as well is that a lot of podcasts that I listened to that are sort of, you know, knowledge or specialty focused podcasts, they're sort of this person who's more or less an expert in some field interviews and other person who's an expert either in that field or some tangentially related field. And they have sort of an in depth interview where they're asking questions and getting answers, right? So it's like, well, here's the question. And then the interviewee goes, Oh, well here's the answer. Right? And there might be a little bit of back and forth trying to figure out what the answer specifically means. Maybe to a layman, but in general it's more just like, Oh, well, you know, here's the result. Right? And through listening to the podcast, you feel like you learned something cause you're like, Oh, I didn't know that before.Henry 07:56 Now I know something from a reputable source or at least, you know, in some way I trust the person that they solve it. But in our podcast, I don't really, expect people to trust that we are like, you know, good arbiters of, like professional research or in depth experience. So it's more that we're trying to talk about the gathering of knowledge rather than doing that knowledge gathering ourselves. Or at least that's what I find ourselves doing a lot, which falls in line with kind of maybe, I don't know if a chicken before the egg, whether the, the name influenced our decisions and going forward to the podcast or if the name is more of a reflection. Oh, it's, it's both for sure. Oh yeah, yeah,Yuta 08:49 yeah. I think, yeah, what that about knowledge means is a lot can be unclearHenry 08:56 and not articulate, but, but I agree. Yeah. You read that it is isn't very clearly defined and I think that's intentional. We're not wanting to restrict ourselves too much. Okay. I think we explained it all. It's, yeah, that's all there is to it. There's something else. Great shortest podcast ever.
Send us feedback at MetagnosisPodcast@gmail.com. Join our community at: https://www.reddit.com/r/Metagnosis/. Transcript:Yuta:00:04 And we begin. Okay. So this podcast episode will be a little different. I thought I would interview Henry about his classes and see how his classes tie into his, his other interests and his overall plans. So, yeah. What classes did he take this past semester, which would be for listeners a fall of 20, 19? Henry:00:35 Yes. And this would be my second to last semester in college. So senior year first semester. So I took four classes, one of them being my thesis project. So our college, we do a thesis in our senior year, which lasts for the entire year. And it's a kind of research projects on a topic of our choice relating to our major. And the other three classes I took were in three different subjects though. They're all related to my interests. I'm pretty much done with my requirement classes. The first one was modern philosophy. So actually Yuta and I were in this class together and it was on the topic of philosophy, major figures in philosophy, namely four major figures in the last couple hundred years, starting the so-called modern period in philosophy. Yeah, that's really early, modern, modern. Yeah. So starting basically with Descartes even though it's called modern philosophy. Yeah. I guess that the terminology is not super descriptive outside of the field, but it's just that time period is called modern and it will forever be called modern even though it's not contemporary. But yeah, so that was one and I had that starting eight 30 in the morning, so pretty early class, but still very good. We have some interesting stories about the professor of that class. Henry:02:32 Yuta has had more experience with him than I though. My next class was programming languages and this was a class on different paradigms of programming languages that have been developed over the past 50, 60 years. And we kinda go through most of the very theoretical foundations for programming languages, not so much the modern software engineering stuff. And that's really related to my specific research interests. So I really enjoyed that class. And then my final class excluding thesis is called topics in algebra. But the specific topic that we focus on was called quadratic forms. And these are just very simply, they're algebraic expressions that have degree to, so something like X squared plus Y squared plus Z squared was an example of a quadratic form in three variables. And apparently quadratic f orms are used almost everywhere in mathematics and also in sort of applied mathematics. Henry:03:59 So there's a ton of material to look at in that class. And it was a sort of upper level mathematics course. So it was pretty difficult and very sort of rushed presentation. The teacher was basically writing the textbook as we were going through it actively teaching that. Huh? Who was teaching that? Kyle Ormsby, which I've had a, I've had a class two or classes with him before and I worked with him one summer, so I have a bit of experience with him. He was a really great teacher and it was really nice to get a sort of high level introduction to mathematics as it's done in some active research fields. But I definitely am not like an expert mathematics students. So it was mostly just a challenge for me to be involved in that class. So I I enjoyed being challenged a little bit outside of my normal research stuff. Henry:05:12 Yeah. Well that's cool. I think your classes during the semester like represented your interests well in a broad way is you have a philosophy of math and computer science and then independent research. Yeah. Basically those are the three fields that I've taken all my classes in for Hume and then two economics classes, all my classes in philosophy, math and computer science. Wow, that's crazy. Yeah. I've been very focused I guess most, at least my impression is that most people take like something else for their X group X requirement or something like that, but I just completely focused on philosophy for all my extra classes. Yeah. I think a lot of people they, they just take a lot of classes, just not even for requirements. They just take like random classes and in different departments, but actually my classes, they're also very narrow. It's, it's funny how read, you know, they want you to have a liberal arts education, but also their requirements are so flexible that you can really get away with being very narrow. It's true. It's definitely not the most flexible of like C Brown college. I mean that's just no shusher at all. Right. So that's pretty exceptional. But yeah, it definitely gives you freedom when it comes to a sort of extra requirements. They give you a lot of room within the groups, at least with the requirements that we have. I know that they've changed a little bit, but I don't know much about the new requirements. Yuta:06:56 Yeah. Henry:06:57 And they also only require you to take like two classes in to fulfill an entire group so you can really get away with focusing a lot in specific groups without taking too many. And other groups. For example, I only took two economics classes for anything outside of the three groups that I mentioned. So that was my entire social science. I guess I did take physics, but that was required for math in general. Yuta:07:30 Yeah, yeah, yeah. All right. Yeah, I mean, yeah, that's similar to, Henry:07:38 And of course everyone takes the humanities class their first year. Yuta:07:42 Yeah. Henry:07:45 Wow. Yeah. Wow. So, yeah, you didn't have to take a ton, but actually I mean philosophy is kind of like a liberal arts field just on its own. Like that's true. No, I think I'm like with like math or something, there's like a wide diversity and in the classes that you can take. Yes, very much so. I've taken so from sort of metaphysics to philosophy of science, so there's a lot of variety within that range. Yeah. And then modern philosophies. Yeah. Yeah. Wonderful. So we, it seemed to be focused more on the metaphysics, at least with what we did. Yuta:08:35 Huh. Henry:08:37 Well there is some, yeah, that's true. There were some of the smallest she at the end. Yeah, that's, that's true. Yeah. Yeah. Unsatisfaction so what, what was so was your most intense class? The algebra class? Yuta:08:57 Yeah, definitely. It wasn't so much that the, Henry:09:01 I actually did really well on all the homework and stuff cause I just put a lot of time into it. Basically all of my time. My other classes didn't really require much in the way of out of class work. But I had a lot of homework for algebra but just the material is very difficult, so it took a lot of effort. That's why it was difficult. Yuta:09:28 Did you work a lot with, I mean okay. I'm still figuring out how to do podcasting because I know you were working with someone we know mutually. Did you work a lot with classmates for that class? Oh, I see what you mean. For that Henry:09:54 Class in particular, I actually did much more work with classmates than I usually do. I usually do homework by myself for classes for basically every other class. But that one but in that class I actually appreciated it because there were only about maybe 10 people in the class by the end. So basically everyone in the class could work together and it was an entire group and that was cool, especially since there happened to be a lot of typos in a few things. So it was nice to catch those quickly when other people found them. But in general, I don't usually work with other people, but for that class I found it useful because there were a lot of new definitions and concepts that I didn't really have a lot of intuition with. And most of the other students were math majors, so they had a bit more context and it was nice to ask questions Yuta:10:56 And stuff like that. Yeah. Where were they? All math majors? I think so. Yeah. There might've been one other person that was like a physics major or something, but I don't know who, but I was definitely the only computer science major. Yeah. Okay. So that's interesting. So how, like how does math fit into your other interests? Like how did you get into it and do you plan on like keeping on pursuing it and yeah. How does, how do you think of that as fitting into everything else? Yeah, that's a good question. I think that I, I'm definitely really interested by mathematics in general. So Henry:11:42 Not really any particular part of mathematics has drawn me in terms of like wanting to, you know, major in it or something like that. So that's why I'm not a mathematics specifically. Computer science is definitely always been my primary interest, but I think that mathematics in the pure form has been just a really great way to gain skill working with abstract systems. I think of it sort of like math is a less strict version of theoretical computer science. It's like doing computer science, both less constraints. You don't have to worry about the real computer or how you would accomplish the things that you're trying to represent. It's all just a matter of can you write it down. So that's how I view my sort of interests relationship to mathematics. But in general, I've just liked to take a bunch of mathematics courses because I guess I'm, I'm, I'm decently good at it and also it just is really interesting and keeps my attention. Henry:12:59 Most other classes, sorry, I keep cutting you off, but sometimes like I've audited a few classes just by sitting in for like the first week or two just to see what it's like. And most of the time it's been less than interesting enough to want to actually take the class or take a cost, not fueled in the future. It's just a very different level of, I would say rigor, but it's not necessarily rigor, it's more just clarity, I guess. Yeah. Okay. So when you talked about not being less concerned, is that also related to rigor for you? So what do you say that it's less rigorous than your work in computer science? I would say yes, but not for that reason. I think that computer science is more rigorous in general, just because you can actually test the things that you are trying to show. Henry:14:05 You can actually, you know, put it on a computer and then if it works, it works. If it doesn't work, then it doesn't work. Whereas in mathematics, you can kind of change the rules whenever you want and however you want to get what you want to work. But it'll just change your result. So if you're looking for something really, really specific than sure, it's just a, it's another version of, okay, rather than working with a computer, you're just working with something that's like a computer, but it's just completely abstract. But in terms of my work, I think that the, so there's a specific, there's a specific field in theoretical computer science called type theory and it's a sort of a new foundation, relatively new for thinking in theoretical terms about mathematical concepts. So it's an alternative to set theory where it's not in opposition to set theory. Henry:15:13 For example, you can write sets in terms of types, but it is just a completely different domain. That's more relevant to how computers work specifically. And I think that working in type theory, you just have a lot more constraints in how you can do things and the very small steps that you have to explicitly take rather than in mathematics. You can sorta just say, you know, well let there exists X such that, you know, whatever you want is true. Whereas you have to actually construct things in a computer science realm. So there are of course, ways you can represent this in mathematics, but it's just not at all as common or I think that the term that might be more familiar is constructive, constructive mathematics versus non Intuitionist stick. Okay. So, okay. I can't pretend to engage on the mathematical level, but where does type theory come from historically? Henry:16:22 Well, this is a great story actually. Last year of maybe I won't go off topic too much. Okay. So type theory as it sort of prototypical idea was formed by Stuart Russell in order to solve something, namely called the Russell's paradox, which was that there were certain statements that you could write in a theoretical world that weren't decidable is what it ended up being called. So you couldn't prove it to be true or false. And this was a problem because it meant that mathematics wasn't so-called complete. You couldn't decide every problem. And girdle later showed that if it tried to be complete, then it wouldn't be consistent. And consistency is more important than completeness. So they never made that trade off and type theory was introduced in order to not necessarily circumvent this problem, but to make it more foundational to the system. Henry:17:45 And the way that it worked is that rather than letting things be arbitrarily self-referential, you had to make things hierarchical. So for example, if you said that acts as a set that contains all sets, then in a set theoretical context, X contains itself because X as a set, but in a type theoretical context, you're not allowed to write that statement because you're not allowed to reference something on the same sort of level. You can only reference things that are a lower level than you are. So if acts as a set that contains all sets, well actually acts as considered to be a sort of large set, meaning that it's bigger than every small set. So there has to be this hierarchy and eventually this gets formal is more in category theory. So there isn't actually a set that contains all sets because sets don't have hierarchies like that. Henry:18:57 But in category theory, there is a category that contains all categories and it is called a categorically large category, whereas the categories that contains are small categories. And I wouldn't be able to go into the details of all of that is just an interesting field. But that's how the formulation of type theory was originally proposed. And later on it turned out that you could use type theory to represent computations from a completely different perspective. So in a computer it's just been sort of developed completely in a different context that you have memory in your computer, say a bunch of bits, but you don't want to just have bits. You want to include things like words and emails and images, but you can't, you know, put an image into your computer. It, they're just different kinds of things. So instead of what you do is you tell the computer to read some number of bits as a different type of information, namely an image type or an integer type or a Boolean type. Henry:20:20 And by designating how to interpret the raw information in your computer, you got these types that you could work with in a sort of abstract sense. But people have since developed these programming languages and type systems that go beyond anything that people even imagined being useful inside of actual computers. They were just completely systems that ended up being formally equivalent to this notion of types in the, the sense I was mentioning before Stuart Russell's type theory. Yeah. And there's been sort of a merger in the recent past of research that those have just become the same thing. So they're not really recognized as different even though they have different origins. Yuta:21:16 Okay. So stepping back with all that, that's interesting how a philosopher just came in. Yeah. Discussion. Yeah. And I mean, it's really interesting how it all came about. It just, it started from a simple sort of duct tape fix, like, Oh, we have this paradox. Okay, we'll just make it so you can't say the paradox. But it turned out to be a really interesting system. The HUD really practical consequences. Yeah. And, yeah, even though I think we started on that topic through I forget exactly through computer science, but yeah, you're asking me about how mathematics relates to my main interest. Oh, right, right. Yeah. Henry:22:15 And type theory is it's not popular within mathematical research. It's actually really just in computer science. Henry:22:28 So I guess that they just look very similar. Like you work with type theory and normal mathematics in a very similar way. That's, it's like a, it's almost as if it was just another kind of mathematics. Yuta:22:45 Okay. Yeah, that's, that's an another interesting intersection. Okay. So moving on to your philosophy class, what do you think of your modern philosophy class or our class I should say? Oh yes. What do I Henry:23:06 Well, I've heard of all the philosophers that we read, so just to be specific, the four philosophers that we read sections of, I think that the only one we read really comprehensively was Descartes. We read his entire meditations and then a few other essays by him. But so there was the cart, then there was live nuts, then spinosa and finally lock not in that order. I think it was, we did spinosa and then live bets and then lock. So yeah. Yeah. But so yeah, I'd heard all of all of them, but I definitely was not very familiar with the latter three. It was really interesting, I thought to read more of [inaudible] because I've read parts of his methodology, which is I think considered one of his sort of canonical works. But I never had gotten a full context or his ideas within, especially him writing to other philosophers at the time. Henry:24:25 So it was really interesting. We read a lot of essays that he wrote in response and in sort of back and forth with a few other philosophers that's had very different opinions than him on seemingly the most abstract issues. And while he was a Christian lameness was, he didn't really bring that a lot into, I thought his most important arguments. So I thought it was really interesting how he was able to make seemingly like on the same level of not traditional theology stuff that spinosa was a spouting. And for the unknowing listener spinosa was a atheist, or at least he claimed not to be an atheist, but really everyone thought he was. But loneliness sorta like the God of live nuts is not what you would think of as, you know, the God who is, I don't know what the theology is, but you know, Jesus's father I guess is just like nothing at all like that really. Henry:25:44 But I found, he says I didn't spit right, so I don't have to go in there and make dislocations. And he definitely was a theologian as well. He wrote a lot about religion, but somehow it just really did not seem to leak very much into his main philosophy arguments. So I'm sure there's a lot to go into there. But of the three or sorry, of the, yeah, so of spinosa live Leipnetz and Descartes. I went into it knowing a lot about Descartes and having read a lot by him in previous classes with Mark, which is a professor, but I came out of it really having a new respect for live nuts. I thought his ideas were really impressive in detail and it was tricky because a lot of his arguments were not so clear. They were less clear than spinosa and Descartes. I think the of the three spinners a and w the Kurt wrote the most explicitly, I would say, but for some reason I just really understood live ideas way more intuitively. Yuta:27:04 That's funny. And his ideas are by far like they're the most out there. They're just crazy. Yeah. Even that's funny. Spinosa Henry:27:15 Well, his ideas are very radical in a way. They're very simple to state, so it's not hard to miss. It's not hard to understand what he's saying. Whereas with Descartes or sorry, with lime nuts, it's not only really hard to understand what he's saying, but it's also really hard to really conceive of what it would mean. It's super weird. Yeah. Yeah. Maybe just as a taste of an example of this, he has this idea that well there's a sort of fundamental concept it seems in modern philosophy called substance and substance is this well substrate for things that exist. So if something exists, then it is somehow either a part of or is a substance. It's kind of like this medium for existence and laminates looks into the world and sees there are different substances and thinks that in my reading at least, but they're all just different perspectives on the same world. They are like mirrors that reflect everything yet are different and they're all different perspectives of God. So God is the one who looks at the world in different ways and each way corresponding to a substance. And it would be tricky to pinpoint down a lot of examples of what counts as a substance, whereas other things are just sort of parts of substances. But maybe an example would, the most canonical example would just be that a person is a substance. So that includes their body and their soul. Yuta:29:12 Yeah. I thought you were going to go into monads but we don't need to. Yeah, I think that would just take Henry:29:21 Too long to explain. But monads are another concept that he's famous for. Yuta:29:27 Yeah. If you thought substances were out there, there's nothing like, okay. Yeah. Henry:29:34 Like just to say one thing about non ads though, it's so interesting how he's, it seems like there's not really a lot to explain there. Like it's just, okay, well there are physical substances and you can break them apart, so there must be some atomic components to physical substances, but it's just he, he just explains how, how you could have that in such a complex way that involves all of these interlocking pieces. You true Unity's and primal and keys, all these things that sort of fit together perfectly into these little round balls that he calls moons. Henry:30:20 I think the weirdest part is that they're all, they like reflect the entire universe as well, but I never got the intuition well, it kind of just, okay. I just kind of understand like the individual ideas and what he believed and then I don't, I don't see how they fit together for one person. Yeah. It's maybe for someone listening it sort of just doesn't make any sense at all. Like probably this is probably not the best conversation at this point. There is a fairly simple synopsis of it, which is just that if the substance has a nature where it's like fully specified by its nature, so everything that is true of the substance is in its nature, then every interaction that that substance has with any other substance is also in its nature. So following from that, if there's some something in another substances nature, then it also is a part of every other substances nature as a interaction with those substances. Henry:31:39 I'm probably using interaction a little bit incorrectly in how alignments would think of it, but, but that's like the most simple way I explain it. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Yeah, I agree. All right. So let's go on to your third class programming languages, which yes, we've already talked about computer science a lot just because of your math class. But yeah. So this is this topic are you, you're thinking of doing it in the future as well, did he say? Yeah. Yeah. So this is probably the thing that I would want to do research on as part of my PhD or some, some other research thing in the future. Yeah. Is this field, it seems less connected to math than like other ideas that you were talking Yuta:32:40 About with type theory? Is that the case? Speaker 3: 32:48 Well Henry:32:50 I would say yes, but there are some applications that are related to math. For example, there's this big effort now well I say big, but more like big relative to just any specific math thing. But of formalizing mathematical proofs inside of computers. So what does that mean? It means you have this paper, like a math paper that proves a theorem S but you want to write it in such a way that a computer could go through and check every logical step of the proof. And then when it gets to the end or to some error in the middle of the proof, then it'll tell you what went wrong or that the proof is completely verified. So that's a very math related thing. Although I think that most of the applications will not end up being used for, you know, completely random un-useful math terms. It'll bore and be used for like, you know, proving that a bank account is not gonna have negative money in it. So that's, that's something that's very sort of logic slash math related. Yuta:34:11 Yeah. That's cool. Yeah. I asked because with type theory and we were talking about before, it's hard to even tell if it's like computer science or math or logic. Yeah, yeah. Logic and logic itself. I mean that's an independent field as well. That's true. Yeah. I think it is. Speaker 3: 34:34 I'm in PR, well Henry:34:39 In the actual formulation of type theory, it's most similar to math, but they're very different communities. Yuta:34:46 Yeah. And then its origins are in like larger. Henry:34:52 Yeah. Yeah. Philosophical, logical very like non math. Yuta:35:01 Yeah. No number is there. Yeah. Okay. So the last topic is your thesis. What, what's your thesis topic? Yes. Henry:35:17 Well I can, let me just say one thing about the programming languages class though, which is that I think that it sums up a lot of why I went to Reed for computer science because I would have to have a pretty good reason because read doesn't, or at least when I first enrolled in Reed didn't even have a computer science department and wasn't really particularly strong in computer science in any visible way. But what I really wanted to go to Reed to do was to get a more sort of intellectual, mathematical perspective on computer science. I didn't want to just go to Berkeley and take like iOS development class, which I think is a popular pathway for people going into computer science, especially now that, you know, it's getting way more popular and demand is increasing really fast. So there's a lot of opportunities to do that sort of thing and not so many opportunities to do, I think what Reed offers. Henry:36:27 And I think that the programming languages classes, like a really good apitomy of that side of computer science. So there's that. And transitioning into my thesis topic, which is also related to programming languages. I think that there's a lot of, so what do I, what am I doing in my thesis, I'm mostly doing a lot of research and then I'm writing a, an exposition on a sort of survey of what has been done in a particular line of research. And then I'm going to, this semester I'm going to write a program that manifests a few things that I found in the research. The hasn't been implemented before with a few, you know, unique things that I'm developing. Obviously it's never going to be used anywhere else than just in my thesis because I'm not in a position to make good software or to make it work with anything else that people would want it to be useful for. Henry:37:43 But the main purpose is just to learn about this particular field of research and to get a little bit of experience working with experimental code. So what exactly is the topic? Well, I was talking about type theory before and what the type there is really good for his reasoning about logic that's being performed on your computer. So in other words, heating up your CPU. But it's not really useful for reasoning about, you know, sending emails or getting messages from servers or having computers communicate or do things in the real world in general because all of that has really messy interactions with, you know, like connections and things that are outside of the scope of formal specification. You wouldn't be able to write a program that like simulates the entire physical interaction of you pressing a computer key or anything like that. Henry:39:00 But that's really what program or does it really, well, a lot of modern software is useful for is automating interactions with the real world. So there needs to be this bridge between those two sides of one being completely formal and the other side being much more messy but useful. And this is commonly referred to in the computer science literature as effects or side effects. So it's things that your program does that are not fully specified in the program itself. And my research project is to look through the history of people formerly reasoning about facts and trying to introduce in some ways a ways to prove or to specify how fax should work for the most classic example is non-determinism. So if you want to have your program have like a random number generator in it, then by definition you can't formally prove, you know what it's going to do based on the number generator because it's going to be different every time you run the program. Henry:40:21 But you can in a way simulate that non-determinism by having the code branch every time it gets to a, say random number output so that you can compute what would happen on every single pathway. And then at the end you can in some way combine all the results and get some formal result that's completely deterministic, but models determinism. So that's just one example. But there are lots of other things that are examples of the facts. And the approach of this research is to take it completely abstractly. So any sort of effect and then how to reason about abstract effects in that way. Henry:41:12 So how does submitting code for thesis work? Yeah, so I actually, I don't know what the formal procedure is. I doubt there is one. I think that it's mostly just you have some code and then you, it somehow probably not typed up but you include a link to it or something like that. And it might be reviewed by a few professors, but what you're really going to be well not graded on but where you're really going to be analyzed by the professors that are going to review your thesis I think is just on what you have written in the actual thesis. So I won't have the actual program typed up in the thesis, but it'll have an explanation of what it does and what the results are. Yuta:42:08 Okay. That's cool. Henry:42:10 But I don't think there's really a precedent because this will be like the second year of there even being, Yuta:42:18 What's your programming in them? Yeah. Okay. I have, I think we can wrap this up soon. I have a final question. Overall question is about who am I voting for in holding 20. Oh yeah. Who are you voting for? I knew that was going to be the question. Yeah. okay. The question is, so looking at these classes modern philosophy program languages and topics in algebra and then your thesis research, how much of it so you were planning to go to graduate school next year. How much of it do you plan to keep doing? You know, in a continuous way and I guess fossil, it would be kind of the one that that's most uncertain, but yeah. How do you see it continuing into the future for you? Speaker 3: 43:23 Mmm, Henry:43:25 I don't have a very concrete plan, but I imagine that in the books that I read and the content that I consume online, it'll stay pretty relevant to math and philosophy alongside computer science, obviously. So in that way, I think I'll definitely still be connected in the sort of intellectual space. But in terms of maybe formal classes and things like that, I really don't know what the opportunities for that will be like in graduate school. I imagine that say.
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