Swords, Sorcery, and Socialism - Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?

Episode Date: March 5, 2022

Our first dive into the works of Philip K Dick. We talk about emptiness, empathy, and how it all comes down to simulacrums of real life. Also, Darius remembers the name of a philosopher.patreon.com/swordsandsocialismFollow the show @SwordsNSocPodEmail us at [e-mail]: @Himbo_AnarchistKetho: @StupidPuma69 patreon.com/swordsandsocialismEmail: [e-mail] The Show: @SwordsNSocPodAsha: @Herbo_AnarchistKetho: @MusicalPuma69

🎵 Bro. Are you fucking real, man? Come on. swords sorcery and socialism podcast about the themes and politics hiding in our genre fiction and sometimes not hiding as is the case today um as always i am darius and with me is my co-host how's it going katha it's going good as i said you know our our little intro tag we talk about the themes in politics that hide inside of our stories sometimes they don't hide uh such as the case is when you have an author of the stylings and quality of one philip k dick and his sort of most famous the most well-known story do androids dream of electric sheep better uh better known by some people as the book that was adapted into the movie

blade runner which is just absurd to me like i i get that they that they just didn't want to use a title like this uh but also blade runner is the title of a completely different book um that actually exists yeah but it sounds cool it sounds cool but it's like wait is this an adaptation what i don't know what ridley scott was thinking to be But it's like, wait, is this an adaptation? What? I don't know what Ridley Scott was thinking, to be fair. It's Ridley Scott. No one knows what he's thinking.

No one knows what he's thinking. Ever. Well, all I can say is that he was thinking good things because the movie kicks ass. However. Yes. We're not here to talk. Yeah. Top two Ridley Scott movies.

Top three. We're unfortunately not here to talk about Ridley Scott this time. If you want us to talk about Ridley Scott, sign up for the Patreon. We'll talk about Ridley Scott in a bonus episode. Maybe. However, today we're talking about the actual book, Drandred's Dream of Electric Sheep.

That was published in 1968. First off, why are we talking about, why did we pick this one right now? Like, I think you were the one that suggested this one. Why did you suggest this one to read right now? Well, it's been a couple weeks since all that announcement about Elon Musk's Neuralink and all this other nonsense. And then the fiasco with the ap apes that they put the neural links into all dying for the most part um yeah in some horrific refutation of the annoyed engineering student who doesn't want to take the ethics class that he has to take yeah i remember seeing a tweet

going around that was like it was like a tweet – like the headline of an article that was like, why STEM majors should take an ethics class. Yeah, unfortunately, an ethics class doesn't fix someone as dumb as Elon Musk. No. Also, that is – it's also the – I think the second title of this book is why STEM people should take ethics. of this book is why stem people should take ethics of honestly most philip k dick novels you could like recall the man had a lane okay it's not total recall sorry i could remember it for you wholesale better notice total recall better notice total recall i think that's the thing about pkd is all of his titles are absurd all of his i have right in front of me what i think might be his most insane title which is the three stigmata of palmer

eldritch it's a book about drugs because uh philip k dick did a lot of all of his books are about drugs um anyway why did so you you you we had this new story come out about Neuralink and the dead monkeys and that inspired you to say maybe we should cover this right now yeah I was like you know what because I read the thing and then I popped out and made a statement that the most heartbreaking scene in this novel is when spoilers the goat dies oh yeah obviously the two most heartbreaking scenes are the goat

and finding out the goat's dead and the androids killing the spider. Oh, yeah. Yeah, the most upsetting things that happen in this entire book. And that's, it's like Voight-Kampff tests are being done on us. It's almost like he did that on purpose. On purpose. I mean, yeah, he's literally Voight-Kampffing you like in the novel by like forcing you

to have an emotional reaction to the animals being killed in front of you in the story. Like I, I would struggle to necessarily say that he did it entirely intentionally, but I wouldn't be surprised if he did. I, I think, I think he kind of intentionally, especially with the spider, he intentionally draws out the cruelty of the act and then Isidore's reactions to it also make you feel worse.

Isidore, the single saddest character in this entire story. The saddest character in this entire story. saddest character this entire story the only one that you probably feel a distinct amount of empathy for the only one who objectively doesn't do anything bad yeah well i mean technically uh deckard's wife also does not do anything that's true but she's barely in the book she's barely in the book um of characters she just sits around at home and and dials in depression again she's a depressed housewife because she chooses to be depressed well i think she well she would be depressed she would be depressed anyway

yes absolutely the only reason she's not depressed is because she has a neural link uh yes she has a neural link and and yeah the the tweet essentially i posted on was a tweet that said something along the lines of uh this company it was like yay we made the the time twister from famous novel do not make the time twister because the thing that you've already mentioned and the thing that we're that will probably bring up a lot is that it's this is philip k dick which in a in a field of fiction which isn't very subtle um he is one of the least subtle yeah his his whole mo is here's a shitty thing that could be coming down the pipe what if we don't do the shitty thing that i can tell you is coming and then every single company from tesla to whatever the hell you call all the peter teals

companies are just like we've done the thing the rosin corporation is essentially the blueprint for things that will become stuff like wayland y-Yutani, Umbrella Corp. Every evil corporation you can think of in your video games all come from the Rosens. Like all of them. I'm sure there were other massive evil conglomerate corporations and stuff previous. But this is the big one that people are referencing. Because they're not even depicted in the novel as the villains necessarily but they are always in the background and you're always kind of aware that this is their

fault yeah i mean deckard pretty clearly thinks it's their fault oh yeah yeah he does but you know it's it's not um he's not fighting against the rosin corporation he can't really fight against the rosin corporation he just does his job which is to kill androids that have escaped in the process he's you know realizing just how much of this is the rosin corporation's fault, including the death of his goat. Yes. All being direct, direct causal, having direct causal links to the Rosin Corporation. Is that how, is that, see, my audio book pronounced it Rosen the whole time.

Rosen. I, listen, I've only ever read it. I tried to find an audio book of it, but for some reason, the only audio book I could find of it available at any library was a dramatized novelization of the Blade Runner film. Interesting. I just stole it. That or they literally were marketing this book as a book called Blade Runner. were marketing this book as a book called Blade Runner. Yeah.

So even the audio book said, because Blade Runner formally published under the name, do Android's dream of electric sheep. That's a better name for this book than Blade Runner. Blade Runner is never even, even the audio book, like set calls it Blade Runner and then says that it's based. It comes from the novel do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? That's not what we're here to complain about normally.

Those are just my personal complaints. We're here to talk about this complex sort of philosophical question that Philip K. Dick poses to us, which is what if robot was person? Now what? Oh, now what? Yeah, so Ketho, now what? Yeah. You're the smart one. A robot's kind of a person, maybe.

So now what? The thing that I find super interesting about this book that I think a lot of people would miss if they've only ever watched the film is the film very clearly just tries to make you empathize with the androids. Like this, that's the whole point of the film. By the end, that's the whole point of the speech at the end that everyone remembers. We'll take the time out. Yes, the speech kicks ass. Yes, we know

it was improvised on the basically on the spot by rucker howard yes oh i didn't realize that yeah he the robot what uh he wasn't supposed to give a speech and rucker howard was like that doesn't make sense it feels like he would have something to say and so then he just like wrote his own little speech so again that's really cool That also doesn't happen in this book. Yeah. So like the main point of that film is to empathize with the androids. In this one, I don't know how much you really empathize with the androids, first of all. But the point isn't necessarily, oh, are androids people so much as what makes people any different yeah i i think before you continue

i do think that that is sort of the key difference in what the message is between the book and then the movie the movie is very much robots can be people too and And you should feel, and you should feel bad about it where the book, I, if you ask, like, if you ask, you know, Philip K. Dick's sort of, you know, imaginary narrator for this book, they would tell you that androids aren't people. Like it's pretty clear throughout the book that the androids aren't people and they don't try that hard. They don't try that hard to make you think that they are, they go out of their way to remind you that they're not. And like you said, the point of the book is to use the androids as a lens through which to view what makes people people.

Yeah. Not are the androids people. Because the whole device of the androids isn't as a, oh, these robots are living and they're like actually alive. as a oh these robots are living and they're like actually alive the whole point of them is to be this supposedly empathy-less thing to judge to kind of contrast the characters in the book with and you get we'll get you know more deeply into individual characters over time the first one that springs to my mind is someone like phil resch who is kind of sadistic and kind of a psychopath when you when you sit down and actually look at it well it's proposed uh near the beginning when deckard goes to the rosencorp when he's like getting ready to give the test to Rachel. They proposed to him.

They're like, well, what if you just had a person who didn't have empathy? Then you could fuck it up and accidentally label a person an android. Of course, that gets dismissed by Deckard because he tests Rachel and actually figures out that she is an android. But then later in the book, you get Resh, who is basically a person who could almost fail the voight-kampff test he doesn't but he almost could but he almost could it's just super bizarre that you end up in the situation where um he didn't fail the test but you're aware that that this this person shows very little empathy in general. The only thing that the Voight-Kampff test tests for. Yeah, is empathy.

Is empathy. Which, again, it will get on, we can talk about later, is such an important thing that it's basically also the entire religion is feeling empathy. Yeah, through the little empathy boxes. Through an empathy box with the prophet Mercer. But we won't talk about him yet. But I think that that's obviously pretty clearly the key of the book here is like this debate between using the robots as a lens through which to view human empathy and like the importance of it and how you handle someone who doesn't have it.

And it also does take off its way to remind you that the robot, the androids absolutely do not oh yeah they do not absolutely do not even like the the textbook example of this situation is the scene with the spider and um yeah it's i mean here's the thing i hate spiders i hate them i hate them sorry to all of our listeners who are like oh spiders are our friends i don't care yes i don't want them within 500 feet of me i don't want to see one i don't want to think that they exist i'm gonna i know they are a place i'm gonna replace you with the spider co-host cool go ahead i'm sure he'd be great um i just don't ever want to meet him pkd goes out of his way to make sure that you feel extremely empathetic towards the spider as it is being tortured to death he sure does and in this world and this

is another major difference between the book and the film like most living animals are dead because this novel unlike the film is a post-apocalyptic novel. This is a post-nuclear war novel. And this is apparent throughout the whole book because there's just significantly less people than you would expect in a big city. There is so much empty space. I think that is actually, and I hate to continually do the like book versus the movie comparison, but I think it's important here because some of the themes that we're focusing

on are the ones that the movie leaves out completely. And emptiness, I think is one of the big themes that the movie doesn't touch on at all. Like the first, like two first few chapters of this book before you even get to empathy are entirely about emptiness. It's the emptiness that his wife feels. It's the emptiness that he feels and the emptiness that Isidore feels. Right. Like because a lot of the opening chapters are about the fact that literally every everyone is either dead or emigrated. All the animals are dead.

that literally everyone is either dead or emigrated. All the animals are dead. It's the whole point of them having animals is because you're proving your empathy by keeping a living thing alive. And so this emptiness of the city that they live in is an important point, as opposed to the movie where he's just running around. I know it's San Francisco,

but it might as well be Neo-Tokyo or whatever you want to call it, because there's people everywhere. You can crash into a goddamn noodle shop. But yeah, it's distinctly empty. Like, almost painfully empty. Clearly is painful for some of the characters. Yeah.

The empathy box is a weird attempt at getting the people who are left to like reconnect with each other because there's no way to have at least in this version of events there's apparently not many ways to have a sense of community in a community that is either emigrating or dying into non-existence so especially when you're someone like isidore who is plainly the most empathetic character in the book not just because he is the most empathetic himself but also because like he's probably the most deserving of said empathy is because he's he's essentially a mutant like he's effectively a like he's been irradiated into unintelligence, essentially. Yes.

Lower cognitive function because of radiation. That does bring me to the one little thing about the lead codpiece. That is very funny. I wish the movie had made Harrison Ford wear a giant lead codpiece. It's, that's, it's so funny. It's, I think that's, that something that pk dick does a lot he just the absurdity is the humor because he like you can tell that he's doing that sort of thing on purpose and and whatever humor comes out of his stories is entirely due to the absurdity of the situation um yeah yeah yeah uh and he designs it that way and this um you know this

leads into with those themes of emptiness through like the empathy box or through um i think more like plainly through the mood organ being used to kind of fill empty emotions yeah to fill that emptiness um and yeah like you said the first just the first couple chapters just that's everything in those chapters you have the mood organ that fills the space in those chapters you have the uh empathy box that does you have the uh you have friendly show you have the buster friendly show you have isador turning the tv off and then back on again and then meeting an android meeting the first android even though he doesn't know it's an android yeah we're like it's still him attempting to fill the emptiness like he doesn't even have a gift to give her he just grabs a block of margarine yeah but he's like but he

does because he's like oh what did people used to do back when you had neighbors you would give them a gift so what what can i give uh this margarine i guess the other thing is isidore actually um i think sort of references emptiness in a weird way when he's talking to i forget the name of that android i forget which one that one is um the first girl the girl that's there when he talks about i forget what's his word for for junk you know i'm talking about yeah where he has a whole little speech he gives her about the fact that if you leave the apartments empty on their own they begin to fill with junk because the junk self replicates. And I think it's, I think going off this conversation about emptiness, I think in his obviously somewhat differently functioning brain, it's a way for him to like make the emptiness of the empty apartment building not feel so empty. You know what I mean?

It's like almost a physical representation of filling the space is he just imagines that every apartment with junk in it the junk replicates you know what i mean like it's it's kipple by the way kipple right the kipple he's talking about the kipple because it's the only way he can cope with the fact that everything around him is completely empty and so he's like fighting the entropy of emptiness by like telling himself that the apartments fill with kipple on their own there's a line in here that i underlined and so i don't usually write up my books but every now and then i underline lines that i particularly like and i i underlined this the first time i read it um and i think it

actually says a lot about the situation right now he lived alone in this deteriorating blind building of a thousand uninhabited apartments which like all its counterparts fell day by day into greater and tropic ruin that's the entire setting of this book is decaying buildings and the few people that are left living sometimes huge gulfs of space between one another and less and less concentrated even even less concentrated than that the further out from city center you get to the point where Isidore is essentially living in the suburbs almost and he's living in an apartment building and he's the only one in the entire apartment building of hundreds of apartments by himself and the movie tries to kind of do that with the apartments that the

final confrontation kind of happens in but in the movie it's just that it's just that. It's just that location that's like that. Yeah. It's like in this, it's the whole of Earth pretty much that's like that. Yeah, they're living in one of the more populated places in San Francisco. And still, even the apartment that Rick and his wife live in, when she turns off the radio, when she turns off the TV, there's no one close by enough for her to be able to hear them. It's just silence.

And there's other people that live in that apartment building. They have a neighbor. They've got a couple, they've got a few neighbors. They have a few neighbors, but it's still, it's still, instead of like one in 100, it's now like, oh, maybe there's 50 apartments and there's 10 people here. It's still it's still instead of like one in 100, it's now like, oh, maybe there's 50 apartments and there's 10 people here. It's still mostly empty, still mostly empty. Again, either from people dying from the radiation or offloading to Mars. to sort of drop for brevity is the fact that like when you're getting rid of the emptiness you're

getting rid of the fact that like mostly that everyone is being encouraged to get the fuck off planet and deckard only hasn't gotten off planet because he can't because his job won't let him yeah his his job is to stay home and and kill androids that come back to Earth from outer space. Because that's the thing, is like androids are legal on colonies. They're legal off-world. They're not technically legal on Earth. Yeah, they also can't be unaccompanied. Yeah.

So it's like they're not allowed to be solo. They're not allowed to be functional on their own as individual actors their machines for the most part is what they're it's what they're designed to do designed to go to these colony worlds and help build things in places that people can't go they're also meant to be well i mean the book isn't even the subtle about it they're built to be slaves for the humans that go off world because the whole advertisements you get are you go off world you get you get an android designed to your specifications they're going off world it's the reward of going off world and every now

and again they they fucking bust rank and not not strength if i can like break line and escape and escape so like i just wanted i wanted to bring this up at some point i might as well do it now the book uh definitely i don't it's not philip k dick he's doing it through the advertisement for the androids again his usual unsettled one of the ads for the androids literally says like the halcyon days of the plantation yeah it does it's it literally says like the halcyon days before the american civil war you can have a servant that does everything for you so like it is spectacularly it's got the subtlety of a giant like rubber acme mallet the idea that these things are built to be slaves for you yeah which is like despite despite this book's attempt and in a lot of spaces success at making you not necessarily

feel the most empathy for the androids like that's always kind of looming behind you it's like they're they're escaping and this is again something the movie does touch on but you know they're escaping from slavery for the most part yeah they're they're running away from being forced to do things and that you know and they wouldn't they've been designed with enough free will and personality to not want to be slaves yeah so it's it's like, are they really not? Are they, are they that different from people? Like they, they obviously understand the very, the idea of not wanting to be a slave.

Yeah. Which again, though, I think what Philip K. Dick is really driving at here though, is, is yes, there's the sort of the face question of do these androids then have, you know, personalities and, you know, freedoms and like autonomy and that sort of thing. But I think behind that, the layer is, again, and I think which is probably more what P.K.D. was driving at, is what, the morality behind designing a robot that would have these feelings. Cause like whether the robot hat, like, you know, the technicalities of the autonomy of the soul of the, of the Android is one thing, but the bigger thing is what is the morality of the Rosen corporation

setting out to design a robot that can despise the slavery you're designing it for? You are designing this thing to be a slave and then also programming it to hate that it is. To be aware of that. To be aware of the fact that it's a slave, which I think is much more sort of like existential question here. You know, it's depicted a little bit as, you know, like that being obviously like like most novels like Justin, when they present a giant grand philosophical question, they never really they never necessarily answer it that one gets answered pretty uh aggressively uh where it's like yes this is really fucked up because in that instance bringing up the question itself answers the question you know i mean you bring up is this fucked up to do yeah when you when you bring you just bring up the question is it is it kind of fucked up to maybe create a living not necessarily even a living being but a being that is aware of the fact that it is not free um and then even though you know you're going to use it

for menial slave labor i mean the most recent i think i mean this may show my sort of out of touch with media but i remember one of the more recent sort of flippant uses of this question, you know, forgive everyone, forgive me for making this reference. Was the, the gift that is shown over and over again from Rick and Morty, the butter robot, whereas like, what is my purpose? You butter the toast. That's it. That's it. You pass butter. You pass butter and the robot goes oh god and it's like

the marley why would you design the robot to be able to question its own existence like the the cruelty there isn't in i made a robot that does a job it's i also made the robot aware of the fact that it must do this job and it has no other alternative but there could be other alternatives but i didn't give them to him that's like i program now you're getting into like god shit i programmed existential dread into my ai like oh boy this why that that because that question could be used by that could be that could be used that can be used for humanity in and of itself. I mean, you could literally turn that into a theological question. Yes. If you're a theist and you believe in divine creation, then that's one of the questions that has to be answered within your religious faith is why would your creator create you in such a way that you can feel this

existential dread now all the different religions will give you different answers to that question as to as to why and it you know it's all varying things but you're right you can you can definitely place it there because like you said you're becoming a god at this point when you're doing it with robots yeah yeah it's it's it's hubris really uh in the case of this book at least or and i think and i think it's i think it's i think it's hubris when it comes to billionaires now where they're just you know i'll do it because i can and you're like well you just killed like 25 monkeys elon so maybe shut the fuck up this question there's also an answer to it as uh put eloquently in in in in verse in verse form by one of our preeminent poets zach de la roca he uh in one of his songs he says

call her a skin job and my honey do a back flip for you you play in god your eye sockets she gonna rip into so if you feel like you need to play god you should expect that they're going that your creations are going to fucking kill you yeah yeah yeah you should and i mean they do and like they know that that's the thing that that's so funny to me is is that they're capable of creating these creatures that they're designing for slave labor. They, they are designing them to know that they are slaves,

they're slaves. And, and they, they kind of like expect them to fucking break out and escape because they also have people whose job it is to kill them well the rosen corporation doesn't pay those people though no but at the same rosen corporations the same rosen corporation seems pretty intent on deckard not killing andrew it's like they also but it's and additionally like they they don't know how to program empathy they don't know or they don't do it on purpose.

I don't know how to program a robot with empathy. I think with Rachel, when he does the Voight-Kampff test on her, it's shown that she's been taught the proper way to react. She just does it too slowly. She doesn't do it all of the time. She doesn't do it all of the time, but in certain situations, her body reacts appropriately just too slowly, which to me indicates that they were trying to teach her the proper thing to do, which I think means if they could give the androids empathy, they would. Yeah. Because they would want them to be able to feel empathy so it's like you're designing this thing that has all the functions of a human is going to be used as slave labor and has no empathy you're designing psychopaths yes which the book clearly shows that they are they are it's like you're designing psychopaths but then instead of pointing that gun at the Rosen Corporation, what you do is you shoot the android that they built.

Because the Rosen Corporation is too big for Deckard to shoot. Yeah. Like. In fact, it's so big that even though he's just doing his fucking job, they screw him over. They kill his fucking goat, man. They kill his fucking goat. They piss on his fucking rug and trick him into well i mean we can't place all that blame on rachel but uh

i say trick him in quotation marks into having sex with her tempt him tempt him i love how the book is just like uh yeah these this model robot the the Rachel model robot, is designed to make men want to fuck them. Yeah. And you're like... You're like... We specifically designed this robot to make dudes act unwise. Yeah, that's why we... Specifically designed to make you act unwise.

Because two of the three female androids you meet in this book are the same model. The first one that Isidore meets and Rachel are the same model. And that becomes a little bit complicated when Rick goes to... What the fuck is that one's name? When he goes to kill the last three. Because Rachel warned him that one of them is her model uh after they fucked and and now he's like wait that's the same one that i had sex with yes not except it's not but it's not um and but when you when he meets her and even isidore it's it's then implied that like part

of the reason isidore's smitten with her isn't just because she's the first like person he's had contact with in a long time it's also because it's like that model she also does answer the door she also does answer the door the first time shirtless well yeah but she that specific her specifically doesn't seem to really understand what that you know she doesn't really get what that means she doesn't really get it because she's a robot also i think that's the one person that wouldn't be super off-putting to is probably isador because he's kind of weird anyway yeah i think like any other person would be significantly put off by the fact that she just answered the door shirtless i mean maybe she's described as being very attractive but yeah but i'm saying

if you were just a person and you knocked on someone's door and someone opened it up and it was just like shirtless, she'd be like – She'd be like – I'd be like, okay, I'm sorry. You'd be like, oh, I'm sorry. You'd walk away and you'd think – Is it or is it just like, oh – Like some porno out there. Is it or is it just like, oh, okay, sure, why not?

Sure. That's normal. So again, I think he's the only one that wouldn't immediately be suspicious of the fact that she's shirtless. Yeah. But you're right. So like, again, we're not going to come to an answer either, really, about why the Rosen Corporation is making empathetic, sexually attractive psychopaths. Like, is it just the fact that they can make more money with them probably is that it is that really it i mean just capitalism that's i feel like that's i mean i'm pretty sure philip k dick was not a big capitalist if you get my sense i don't know

what i actually don't know what philip kadex personal politics were and i'm not gonna look it up right now i just i just don't i can't imagine someone who wrote this book being a big fan of capitalism i i don't think it's not the right it's not the right kind of sci-fi for that no um i'm it's not heinlein yeah uh it's this isn't this isn't like depiction of a future world that has capitalism in it and it's a good thing this is a future world depicted that has a massive multinational conglomerate that creates psychopaths for slave labor i i feel like that alone is just like it's all you need to know it's anti-capitalist in in aesthetic and and essence there's not much else that can be drawn from that again i don't know what phil's

political persuasions were but any any piece of media any piece of media that had anything to do with the inception of the cyberpunk genre is entirely not pro-capitalist i'm pretty sure he would have been in favor of drug legalization oh without i mean he was in the 60s most of it was legal at the time anyways but yeah we used to be a proper country i see a proper proper nation i could do as many... PKD could put as many LSD tabs under his tongue as he wanted. We used to be a nation, a proper nation.

Yeah. Cocaine was legal, guys. Speaking of drugs... Speaking of drugs, do you want to go back and dial in a little bit on something that we referenced at the start and talk about? That's a good one. On the fucking, what is that?

Shit, what's the fucking name of it again? The emotion organ. Hold on, I'll pull up the specific actual name. The Penfield mood organ. The fucking gender box. No, sorry, mood organ. The Penfield mood organ. The fucking gender box. No, sorry. Mood organ. The Penfield mood organ. Artificial brain stimulation.

Essentially, they just punch in numbers and it makes them feel things. Every emotion you could imagine, more or less, has a number attached with it. And whichever one you want, you walk over to the little box and go, bloop, bloop, bloop. And then it should zap. Your brain feels the way that you told it to feel. You can also program it to make you feel certain ways at certain times. And I think that implies that generally it tries to like alter your mood

based on the situation you will be in. Oh, excuse me. I yawned. i need my mood organ to make me feel zesty yeah i need mood organ 242 uh uh injects talkative creativity for podcasting yeah that yeah it's essentially caffeine yeah typically i just do caffeine for that but it's a bit late we're recording a bit late for this one and it's too late for me to be doing more caffeine because i do want to go to bed at some point i mean this thing seriously has everything and he almost goes out of his way to list ridiculous shit to make you realize that this can do anything like you're uh the very first thing

it's like it immediately wakes him up like he doesn't go through grogginess or anything he just snaps awake and is awake and it does also tell you that he is surprised to be awake yes which he is every day which you know what there's a time in my life where every time i woke up i was like damn i'm surprised i woke up today some of these are uh absurd like uh 594 pleased acknowledgement of husband's superior wisdom in all matters that's just a petty joke from a guy who i'm sure has had lady problems in the past the patriot the patriarchy setting oh yeah the patriarchy setting i i think that's i think it's funny and he he does in a very self-aware way but it's it's just like it's not said in a way where he's like this is an emotion the wife should be feeling because this comes at the end of again if you're only familiar with the movie you also

don't even know that deckard kane had a wife dang on deckard kane yeah rick deckard deckard kane is an entirely different character from an entirely different series that would like for you to stay a while and listen rick deckard uh i'm i'm gonna i'm gonna pretend i know what you're talking about you don't it's fine rick deckard has a wife number one whose name is iran sorry iran or iran or something it looks like it's iran so i i think i think iran like his his wife the nation of iran literally the first scene is him waking up her not getting up as quickly because she didn't use the brain stimulator as much and so she's crabby and he's like you should use the brain stimulator and she's like fuck yourself and he like, get your cop hands away from me.

What a way to introduce the fact that he's a cop. She literally says, get your cop hands off me. He's like, I'm not a cop. She goes, you're worse than a cop. You're hired by the cops. So she literally says, you're worse than a cop. You're a rent-a-cop. It's hilarious because the beginning of this book, now that I'm thinking about it, there's a couple of cliches that they told us never to ever do ever.

Exposition. Well, the cliche is waking up. Oh, is it? At the beginning. Starting your story by waking up? Starting your story by getting out of bed. Is that a cliche? I can't remember.

Oh, yeah. It is probably the most popular. I don't know how many other stories I've read where people start waking up. Where it's, it's, it's, it's legit. But fundamentally it's just funny.

Cause it's that. And then immediately there's a little bit of clunky exposition through dialogue. Where she's like, you're a fucking cop, you dirty piece of shit. And he's like, I'm not a cop.

I'm hired by the cops. And she's like, that's even worse. It's like you're hired by the cops. And's like that's even worse it's like you're hired by the cops and he's like i've never killed a human being in my life uh it's just those poor andy and you know what being technically correct is the best kind of correct he has never killed a human being in his life just those poor andy's better than any other cop in existence better than any actual real cop yes um that being said

he does kill the scape slaves silence i wanted that i wanted that silence to be there make sure that silence makes it to the edit just nice extended maybe another 10 seconds no just to loop it just loop the silence you you you that make, that presupposes I know how to use the loop function on a capacity. So again, the exposition is a little clunky, but let's get to the meat here. Let's talk about the brain drugs. So the brain drugs, he goes over and he's like, let's just, he's like, get up, you know, put some of the happy, happy chemicals in your brain and we can behave like we're supposed to. And then he looks at her machine and she's programmed in being depressed for three hours.

And he's like, I didn't even know you could do that. I didn't know that. Just like me for real. Didn't know that was a setting. And she's like, I had to figure it out. It's not listed and that's when we also get our first reference of like the emptiness that she was sitting in this empty apartment building and began to feel the vast emptiness and and pointlessness of existence settling in on her well she felt she felt it but because she had a different mood punched in she understood it

intellectually but did not feel it emotionally. Yeah, she intellectually understood the emptiness of the world, but didn't emotionally respond to it. And she was like, I want to be able to emotionally respond to the sadness. So she essentially punches in to be emotionally crippled for about three hours a day and then automatically bring her back out of it. Deckard, I think, does make a pretty salient point here.

I think that some of us do needard, I think, does make a pretty salient point here, I think, that some of us do need to keep in mind, I think is true, that that sort of mood is one that can sort of get you stuck in it. That if you're pretty accustomed to slipping into that sort of depression, whether you want to or not, it can be hard to come out of it, even when she has the brain juice box to do it intentionally. Yeah, despair like that about total reality is self-perpetuating. Which I think is an accurate statement. Even with an automatic cutoff, it's dangerous to undergo a depression of any kind.

Forget what you've scheduled, and I'll forget what I've scheduled. I can tell you from experience, undergoing that sort of depression can be dangerous. We'll dial a 104 together. Does it explain what that a 104 is i don't think it does i think it just i think it's just supposed to be happy probably just some sort of general contentedness i would imagine yeah so and then she's and then she's basically like fuck yourself i don't want to be happy. I want to be sad. And he's like, well, yeah, that's because you haven't used the brain juice. And she's like, yeah, I'm upset because I don't want to use the brain juice.

So telling me that I need to push a button that will make me want the brain juice is the last thing I want to fucking do. Yeah. And then it immediately gets into even more convoluted uh territory where she doesn't want to turn on the tv and uh he says dial 888 the desire to watch tv no matter what's on it because i don't feel like dying dialing anything at all now so then dial three i can't dial a setting that stimulates my cerebral cortex into wanting to dial um it's like you can't if i don't want to dial the button at all why am i going to punch in something that's going to make me want to dial like it yeah it's this it's a circular logic where it's like well if you don't want to

dial you push the button that makes you want to dial yeah in this instance i gotta say like rick is on the losing end of this conversation yeah she's right but then at the very end he's like i'm gonna punch in this thing that makes her acknowledge that i my wisdom in all matters that's because she gives up yeah that's why she won the conversation if there could be a winner like i think from the reader's perspective at least my perspective, she's right. Yeah. Like she is right in so far as that, like her assessment of the situation, I think is accurate.

And I think her point of view is one that I empathize with. But in the end, she just goes, fuck it. Who gives a shit? Whatever. You want me to be fucking horny? I'll be fucking horny. I'll be fucking horny. Type in the fucking horny button. I don't give a shit.

You know the fuck you want. And he's like, no, I'll just make you be contented that I was right. It's that entire first section. This is more like a little just impression. It's an almost funny, bizarrely futuristic, just lover's spat. Like this is no different. In essence, this is no different than any like upset, kind of not jiving couple, you know, getting into a spat in the morning because someone was groggy when they woke up. It's the same thing as like it's just over some bizarre futuristic

technology yeah that's what i was gonna say it is like your standard like married couple arguing it's just that what they're arguing about is this like existentially questioning sci-fi thing but that's just a totally accepted hard-coded part of their world yeah we're to us we're like you're arguing about a machine that will force you to like want to feel good about wanting to feel good and they're talking about it as though these philosophical questions have already been kind of decided and they don't care it's just a thing i think that Deckard is very much on the like, yeah, I mean, this is good for us because then you can feel the way you want or should to feel. You know what I mean? I don't think I use those words right.

However, Iran is like, I don't think she's totally on board anymore with the idea that the thing is making you feel ways at the time like i think she's given up on that because she has become too acquainted with the emptiness that we've been discussing this whole time yeah and that she has just sort of does it via giving up yeah it's i mean it's it's it's honestly like this entire book depressing yeah. Yeah. Yeah, that first chapter, every chapter of this book is depressing. And I don't think you can talk about a more depressing topic in this entire book than the animals that are presented here, just period, from front to back. Yeah. The first, and I think we've already we've already kind of mentioned that taking care of animals is seen as like an empathetic thing but we really haven't brought

up what the electric sheep part of dwayne joy's dream of electric sheep comes from yeah let's um yeah let's talk about why the fuck this talks about it. Like the name of this book has electric sheep in it. So as we already mentioned, empathy, mercerism, it's a thing that people should be taking care of animals because there are very few animals left anywhere that, yeah,

there are very few animals left anywhere. So those that do exist should be taken care of and those that can't take care of one because they can't afford an animal they kind of show it through owning similar to the electric people and an ersatz animal yeah it's a electric creature of some kind that is almost entirely indistinguishable from the real thing except for the fact that you know it doesn't like need to eat but it's designed in a way that you have to feed it so there's there's a whole bunch of little things about it that make it like and it's it's almost like a cynical thing mercerism asks that you take care of an animal but not everyone can so in order to make sure

that you look like you're not a shitty person you'll go out and you'll get an electric animal but then you'll protect the fact that it's an electric animal from everyone because if everyone knows you have an electric animal they'll look down on you for not having a real animal but like these electric animals these simulacra of animals are so well done that like and the the the cover has to be so complete that even to have them repaired the company that repairs them puts on the entire facade of being vets, of being actual animal veterinarians. Yes. To the point where they dress up like vets. They drive a truck that says veterinary services on it.

And they show up and they take care of your animal as if it was real because they need to maintain the illusion that you have a real animal. And speaking of. That's who Isidore works for. That's who is it or works for that's who is it or works for but also the truck it depressing encounter with a real animal number one the cat that they pick up i was gonna say the the first depressing thing is when uh deckard explains how his real sheep died because he missed one little tiny piece of metal on the bailing wire of the food for his real sheep that then scratched the sheep and gave it tetanus and it died the animals die in the most like fucking sad ways like pretty much every real animal you're introduced to dies, except for like the neighbor's horse. The horse doesn't die, does it?

Is it real? I mean, it's pregnant. Supposedly. Supposedly. You never know for sure. You never know for sure is the thing. The animals that we have confirmed real in this story all die. All die.

Two of them are murdered. Yeah, just two of them are just straight up killed in the, like we already mentioned, the spider and Rick's goat when he buys it are just straight up killed. In fact, the goat, you never actually see alive physically. You only ever hear about it.

He sees it in a catalog. He buys it in a catalog. Iran gets it, tells him that he gets it. He arrives home after killing the last androids and finds out that Rachel threw it off the roof. So he never actually gets to see it alive, despite spending the entire of the first three and android bounties on it. Sorry, you were talking about the first real animal we actually get to see which is a cat it's a cat that

they pick up thinking it is a fake cat and they can't figure out what is wrong with it yeah well the owner calls them because the owner calls them because the owner thinks they're a real vet place and they come and they're like oh this must be an electric cat they're like oh

shit this is actually a real cat and then the cat fucking dies yeah and then the wife knowing that the husband won't be able to bear the cat being dead the wife does what Rick did for his

wife which is lie and order an electric replacement without telling them that it's not real. Yeah. We like, this just adds on to the layer of the, like the cynical. Literally pretending to your partner that the animal you have is a real animal,

not just to your neighbors, but like to your partner that the animal you have is a real animal not just to your neighbors but like to your significant other like all the real animals are just subject to the most accidentally destructive tendencies of humanity and it's just like well i guess we can't keep these things alive so i guess we're just gonna have to make him electric that owl is electric too isn't it yeah it's fake yeah that's one that they start by lying and trying to tell them that it's real well that's how deckard uh decides to do one final test on rachel as she keeps referring to the owl as an it as opposed to a she which i'm not gonna we're not gonna get into the the idea that the pronoun thing about that, like a living thing can't be an it,

because that's not the, that's not in any sense. I just wanted to lay it out there. That's not in any sense, the way that Philip K. Dick is thinking about this. This is specifically in the fact that Deckard is noticing that Rachel refers to the owl as an object,

not as a living creature. And that's how he catches sort of catches her in the fact that she actually is an android and not a person i just wanted to make sure that any of our sort of you know non-binary or different pronoun using friends didn't feel like we were being dismissive of people that use iterates pronouns that's not what we're talking about we're talking about this within the context of the story anyway yes um so just kind of showing the the really honestly just sad fact that people even need these electric animals in the first place yeah it's again that's one of the other undercurrents of the story between the androids and the android animals is this this like need for you know an ersatz

replacement right a need for a simulacra of animal life as like this sort of need that we have socially to to you know do our social reproduction like you need to have this animal because you're supposed to have an animal but most people can't have animals so you have a this animal because you're supposed to have an animal, but most people can't have animals. So you have a fake animal, but you tell everyone it's real. Like you got a fake animal, tell everyone it's real. And half the time people fucking resent those electric animals because they're not the real animal that they want.

Yeah. You're taking care of it because you have to, to keep up in the eyes of your neighbors, but you resent that you have to, cause you know, it's not real, but even you can, can't even really trick yourself into thinking that it's real because you know, it's not real but even you can can't even really trick yourself into thinking

that it's real because you know it's not and also you can't push a button that makes you want to push the buttons if you don't want to push the button it's like it's all connected yeah i mean that's kind of what it is like i'm gonna get this fake animal that i have to feel like i have to take care of it i don't want to take care of it because it's not real, but I have to, because they can't get a real one. Yeah. It's circular logic again.

Yeah. All, all for mercerism, which we find out by the end. Not real, not, not real. Very much a made up religion.

Well, in the sense, in the sense that not about. Yeah. Yeah. So, well, I think that's, I think that's a little side avenue we can explore here if you're willing is that so we learn

Buster Friendly's big fucking expose is that Mercer wasn't a real person which Buster Friendly's expose is like foreshadowed for the entire thing he keeps telling you about it he's saying oh tune in this day my big my big stories are coming and

then yeah his big story is that they they discovered that wilbur mercer was never a real person it was a character played by an actor for a series of shorts and this actor was someone they went and like interviewed named al jerry but in the ensuing time in the ensuing time between uh when he played these shorts and the current present day in the novel mercerism has become a major religion. That so far as I can tell, the tenants are take care of animals and use your empathy box, which will force or allow you to physically relive the passion of the Christ. Yeah.

That's yeah. You, of the Christ. Yeah. Yeah. You inhabit the body of Mercer as he walks up a hill getting rocks thrown at him. And then eventually in the story,

Mercer reaches the top and is killed by rocks. Through the empathy box, people have died using the empathy box because they are too empathetic for this character of Mercer and they actually get their arms hurt or can die. So we discussed it off mic before we started recording is imagine if like Christians invented a way for you to like stick your head in a box and be able to live through the carrying of the cross and the crucifixion.

And that's how you're supposed to feel empathy for and connect with your God. Yes. Not just, not just them apparently with everyone else who's currently using their empathy box. Everyone using the empathy box at the time are all there together, all currently feeling what it was like to wear a crown of thorns all at

the same time. It's a weird replacement for social interaction. Yeah, I think, and that's where Mercerism, like why it grew, is that in this empty world, it does two things. It encourages empathy with animals and connection with other people, which are two things that are hard to come by in the world at this point. And so there's, it makes sense why this religion sort of took off. But then of course, a buster friendlies a whole revelation is that Mercer wasn't a real person at all.

He never raised animals from the dead. He never did anything like that, but that does bring us. Oh, sorry. Go ahead. It's also i think important to note that buster friendly is an android yes so wait i don't remember does buster

friendly know he's an android um oh shit does he know or does uh what's his name just tell you um that he's one of their own does rucker howard tell me that i don't yeah i was about to say that yeah okay um by the way it's the one girl's name is priss i just keep forgetting yeah you know Rucker Hauer tell me that? I don't remember. Yeah, I was about to say that. Yeah. By the way, the one girl's name is Pris. I just keep forgetting. Yeah. You know who the fuck I mean. Rucker fucking Hauer.

Roy. Roy. Yeah, Roy. Roy. Batty. Roy Batty. Luba Luft. These names are... The names of the androids are super cool, by the way.

Really appreciate those. Luba Luft. That's such a... What the fuck? Oh, also, the USSR still exists in this book uh mls would love to know yeah they yeah the mls will be happy the fact that the soviets are still around uh unfortunately still so is america so accurate probably to what would have happened had they both still existed post world war three or whatever they call it world war zenithith. World War Terminus. Terminus. Buster Friendly is an android that people don't know that.

But I think that's what... I think he must know, because I think that's what fuels his research into the fact that Mercerism is a lie, is the fact that he's an android and he wants to prove that this human shit is fake. I'm pretty sure that's why he does the whole expose. Yes. Is because he knows he's an android so by the way so that means right by the end of this two of the three methods of avoiding

emptiness are gone mercerism and buster friendly and buster friendly like they've both been demystified to an extreme to so much of an extreme extent that like the empathy box, it's like for most people, what would the point be anymore? Obviously we get one more empathy box use before the end of the story, following the, the big moment, which is the first time we see Rick use an empathy box and he does the

whole walk to the top. He does. He does the, he does the passion. And the top. He does. He does the, he does the passion. And I don't know if that, I don't know if that's a proper name for like the walk that Jesus had to do with the cross from like, you know,

the place to the, to the Hill. I don't know if that's the name. I'm just calling it that. Cause I don't know the real name. Well, let me make sure, but I,

I'm sure the Catholics have a name for it. The incidency passion of Jesus. Yeah. It's the short final period in the life of Jesus Christ. So, so it is just called the passion. It would just be the passion would be probably everything from when he gets arrested up until, um, up until he is resurrected. Cat.

I'm saying Catholics specifically, because if you were like me and grew up like you know one of the really vanilla methodist christians you probably don't have a word for it because like why would you i don't know i'm sure evangelicals go a little crazy for it yeah they were the ones who they i mean it was certainly evangelicals who created the passion of the christ film so we'll go ask uh we'll go ask old melly g how it's called oh but anyway yeah rick finally uses one at the end it basically does the entire journey like the whole the whole nine yards afterwards ends up with a uh what he thought was a living frog it not though it was not um iran discovers his wife discovers it is not um which to be fair makes sense i'm pretty sure that most amphibians and given fallout's ability to infest everything would probably all die off yeah i don't think there

would still be an alive thing that lived in the water yes seeing as they can't really wait well taking things through their skin well it's a toad not a frog a toad doesn't have to be in the water well yeah but toads still can absorb shit through their skin yeah also it seems to be that anything that's on the ground was more susceptible which is why all their animals live on the roof of their buildings so so there's a point I wanted to make then, a sort of general point about mercerism, though, and this is more of an existential question, is that if all those people believe in it, all 11 people that are still left on Earth, however many. Every character in this book is everyone that's left. Yeah, it doesn't, you know, again, it doesn't matter precisely how many. Just there's a

community out there that clearly believe in mercerism even after uh buster friendly proves that it's not real does can mercerism still serve its purpose of promoting empathy and human connection even once you know how it was found that it was founded on a lie this is again it's it's can it still do canon can can a simulacrum of religion still provide you what religion is supposed to provide you oh my god i am i am i starting to come to the conclusion that everything – oh my god. You have simulacra of emotion. You have simulacra of animals. You have simulacra of people as beings sans emotion.

You have simulacra of religion. You have like all of these things. Everything in this book is a simulacra of something. Every major thing you come in contact with is proven to be, yeah, a simulacra of something every every major thing you come in contact with is proven to be yeah a simulacra of what you thought even the empathy box is kind of a weird simulacra of empathy itself yeah because it's not real empathy you're like it's making you feel like you're experiencing empathy with someone who wasn't real it's all 17 layers where's this go it's it's it's simulacra all the way down

wasn't there some sort of philosophical work with simulacra in the title i feel like i see all the real theory heads post about on twitter that i just ignore the people on philosophy twitter the ones who actually read yeah um i yeah that's the difference between philosophy twitter philosophy twitter actually reads um left twitter does not well it depends there's there's like over uh there's overlap between the two but um simulacra and simulation uh beau driard i've heard that name uh in which the author examines the relationship between reality, symbols, and society, in particular the significations and symbolism of culture and media involved in constructing an understanding of a shared experience. Damn. This was published in 1981.

Hmm. I was about to say I know what I should have read in preparation, but I don't know. I'm reading directly from the Wikipedia here. Simulacra and simulation is most known for its discussion of symbols, signs and how they relate to contemporaneity or simultaneous experiences. Odriard claims that our current society has replaced all reality and meaning with symbols and signs and that human experience is a simulation of reality sounds familiar jinkies i'm gonna go out on a limb here and say baudrillard is a hack and stole all of this from philip kj i'm sure i'm sure that he's not even the first person to have said anything similar um on this of course i, I want it to be clear that

Jean Baudrillard is, of course, French, who is the only kind of philosopher that would have come up with this sort of thing. Fucking French. Well, now I'm curious. Now I want to read it. I'm sure that there's some problematic thing about him that I should know.

I'll ask someone on Twitter. You should know that Baudrillard is uh into post-modern philosophy oh that's so scary man i'm not i'm not trying to hide like the two or three fuko books i have on on my bookshelf look i haven't read a single philosopher i don't have well just kidding just kidding i technically read some of the ancient ones because i did from a class i had to take i bought a copy of uh of marcus aurelius's meditations because it was like two dollars marcus really even though i know my dick i know he was super problematic but it's like regardless i um i bought it partially because i had a a mutants and Masterminds character

who'd been around since Rome and was raised as a servant in the house of Aurelius so I read I came up with that in retro so I was like oh I'll just read the meditations real quick so I know what the fuck

this character would have thought when he was a kid I mean my biggest problem honestly with Marcus Aurelius is that he was a stoic and yeah that's that's the thing that's not the greek school of thought that i draw inspiration from if you can't tell mine is definitely cynicism yeah ye olde diogenes the only g Greek I respect. The greatest Twitter poster whoever didn't live. The greatest poster of all time. Diogenes of Sinope. Or as

the great poster would say, I don't give a shit. Eat my shit and hair. I don't care. Eat my shit and hair. No, so as we were saying that over and over again, I was like, I feel like there was a whole philosopher who wrote a whole thing about this. Now, somebody out there is going to tell me I'm misunderstanding what Baudrillard is about.

And you know what? You're probably right. It just seems like a weird coincidence. We essentially read the Wikipedia version of the abstract. Like, we're probably getting something wrong. and why I felt the need to look it up because I felt like it was sort of on the same wavelength is the fact that this book, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, is essentially, it seems to be kind of what Beau Dratt is talking about there,

where reality has become entirely simulations. Because if you look at the end of the book, if you're looking at Rick Deckard's life, aside from his wife, everything is a simulacrum his animal's not real his religion's not real and i mean he even sort of temporarily does a little wife replacement with rachel who's not who's not real real well again we're not going to get back to the argument out whether robots are real or not. Yeah, people think that might be the main point of the book.

That's not the main point. It's really not. The android is clearly a simulacrum of a person, right? Yeah. So, like, by the end of the book, pretty much down to the point that nothing in Deckard's life is real except his wife. That's it yeah it's the more i think about it it's a very i love big brother ending you know it's very um he gets to the end and he's like

everything's fake i'm fine i accept that and then goes to sleep yeah i i get i think he at the end, it's where they do a little flip reverse, because at the end, Deckard is where his wife was at the start, where he just goes, fuck it. Who gives a shit? It is what it is. You know, give it up. It's Chinatown. And he fucking goes and goes to bed. And his wife is the one that goes nah it's gonna be somewhat important to him we're gonna take care of this fucking toad like we're gonna take care

of this fake animal iran is a good person the only two good people in this story are iran and isidore i feel like iran legitimately cares about rick I mean, I don't think she necessarily like is, you know, happy with him all the time. No. And I think she occasionally resents him, which, you know,

does happen in long-term relationships and should happen if your spouse is a fucking rent a cop. Yes. Yes. But I do think she genuinely cares about him the same way. I do think Isidore generally cares about living things. You know what I mean? Generally, like he doesn't have a specific relationship to focus on,

but I think they are the, if you could point them out, are the only two unambiguously good people in the story. Iran, largely through the fact that you don't see her as much. And she is through almost pure child, childlike innocence, childlike innocence and whimsy. Yeah.

And which of course has to be destroyed by the androids murdering a spider. Yeah. It's not, well, I mean, it's, it's destroyed by the androids murdering a spider yeah it's not well i mean it's it's destroyed by the androids

murdering a spider and just generally being in the being and yeah yeah being androids and iran is because well we only see her a couple times so we don't really get to know much more about her than the fact that she seems to be a genuinely decent person who is troubled by the never-ending misery that is the world they all live in which who wouldn't be she seems to be stay at home too which probably gives her more time to uh think about it ponder the emptiness yeah yeah i think she definitely does stay at home because that's when she would have time to sit there with the TV off and notice the pounding silence.

In a world that empty, what the fuck do you do for eight hours a day? You watch Buster Friendly. You watch Buster Friendly for fucking eight hours. It's the only TV show. Buster Friendly being an android is also the only explanation for why he can broadcast 23 hours a day yeah so yeah that that is something that they kind of

point out right is that they're like they're like yeah this should have been obvious to everyone but no one wanted to believe that he was an android he's always on he's on the radio he's on the tv which also makes me wonder because unless there's another buster friendly like they just roll them off an assembly line the show wouldn't last that long or is their short lifespan only a movie thing that i think the short lifespan is only a movie thing that i misremember um i you're right i don't remember them actually mentioning anything about an artificially shortened lifespan in the book i think that's just a ridley scott thing which of it is fuck you for fucking with my memory ridley scott but um yeah like we like i mean fundamentally

the more the more we sit here and talk about this um the more ridiculous it is i think that the message someone could pull from this was the question as to whether or not androids are people because that the more you the more we talk about it the more i realize that that has nothing to do with this book at all like it's it's there but simply as a storytelling device for us to for the reader to look into all these other questions the same way deckard and iran having a fight at the start is there but the story is not about that argument they have in the morning that argument is a device for you to learn what his job is and what the brain juice box is and who right it's there as a vehicle to get you somewhere else this idea of like androids

being people is kind of just a vehicle to get you on to other questions because fundamentally the answer to the question are androids people in this book is it's like, no, no, no, no, no, no, that doesn't matter. They never should have been fucking made to begin with.

Yeah. Well, I mean, the book would tell you off the bat. Number one, no, they're not people clearly. That's like an easy,

it's like an easy go to. I think it's just, the book doesn't even really hem and haw about that. It it's, it's way more like the tweet that I shared when i thought of this book than i thought it was where where the the tweet that i shared literally was just like book is about thing and says not to make thing warning about how not to make thing company then goes out and makes thing and and this this one this this book's main thing is don't fucking make Simulacrum real shit.

Do not make androids. Bad idea. Just don't make them. Just don't even do it. Yeah, like, it should never come to the point where are they a person is even a question that can be asked. Because, like, the thing that ended up, like, the thing that made them into these things had no empathy about whether or not they should it gave them the ability to understand it gave them the ability to understand it made psychopaths for nothing also i think the point there is that the rosen company itself and the people within it

have to inherently have no empathy in order to create androids in the first these androids in the first place so the question of whether the androids feel things is superseded by the fact that humans had to lack that to start with yeah it's like if the humans if the humans had empathy they wouldn't have made these robots in the first place these would would be unnecessary. You don't need to do that. Which, the more we talk about it, again, this book more and more drills home my long-term stance that we shouldn't

do any of this. This technology is just getting out of hand. Every time that they're like, we've made a computer that can think better, my immediate response is, you should break it right now. I will say that... We made a computer that can learn specific things.

Yeah, well, fuck those things and fuck that computer. I feel like I have rationalized the fact that I will always be smarter than a computer. By the fact that at work, we have a little bill acceptor that we deposit our our bills in at the end of the night and the dumb fucking machine can't tell a goddamn wrinkled 20 from a clean one and i'm like well at least i know that i am smarter than a computer because uh it doesn't matter if you hand that20 bill to me in a crumpled up mess, or if you hand that $20 bill to me perfectly clean off the assembly line, I know that it's a fucking $20 bill,

and you don't have to feed me 8 trillion generated images using a bunch of AI that program deep learning bullshit. I, however, am not confident that there will never be a computer smarter than me. Listen, we'll probably all kill ourselves before that happens, honestly. I mean, it's possible. I'm just saying I'm not confident

that I'm smart enough to never be outclassed by a computer. Again, it depends on what you define intelligence as. My standpoint, as always, is that we shouldn't let computers get there or even close to them at all i think computers i think computers are already too smart i think we need to go back i think the computers we have are already too smart these computers we have are too smart and then too disposable at the same time you end up in a situation where this stuff is mass produced you know what you have if you have a bunch of mass-produced,

highly intelligent but disposable things? Androids. Psychopath androids. You know what the androids are? Mass-produced intelligent technology that is inherently supposed to be disposable. And you know how that worked out? Bad. They fucking kill people.

Bad for all of Deckard Cain's pets. Okay? Deckard. God damn it. You did it again. the Deckard Cain's pets okay god damn it Rick Deckard the other video game nerds are going to be all over my shit for knowing what to do it's it's a main NPC from all the Diablo

games it's the old man that does all the lore for you ah yes still I listen It's the old man that does all the lore for you. Ah, yes. Stay a while and listen. I'm Deckard Payne. I'm the last of the protectors of the ancient Haradrim knowledge.

I know everything about the war between the angels and the demons. And now he's owned by Microsoft. Yeah. Like everything else. Like everything else. Yeah, so all of my diablo nerds out there i'm sorry i keep wanting to by just saying deckard i want to say deckard kane as opposed to rick deckard i should have just called him harrison ford the whole time that would have cleared this up that would have cleared things up yeah yeah all right so harrison ford uh but don't make simulacra of things yeah that's that's that's the entire lesson of this this goddamn book and yet someone's like hey let's do neural link like fuck you let's

do neural link to try and fake human experience no i'm gonna go a step further we'll step further you ready are you ready oh boy that means we need to abolish social media. Oh, God, man. What would I ever do? Twitter is a simulacrum. Actually, that's a lie. Twitter is not actually a simulacrum of having friends because, by and large, there are people at the other end interacting with you. But not always.

Twitter botnets are famous for Twitter. We know that Twitter has botnets and there are bots on Twitter. It's kind of a simulacrum of social. It's a simulacrum of community. Yeah. The social interaction isn't invented because like. It isn't invented, but it is partially curated and it is incentivized like different forms of it are incentivized than what they would be if you were in person if if if if meta ever happens the way they imagine it being you're doing simulacra well that's that's this this is the freaky thing about

this book this book was written in 1968 and all we have done since then is get closer to this all we've done is make it more real every step of the way so whenever anybody's like you know yeah i think we're kind of heading towards like a cyberpunk yes yes we're already there you're already in a cyber we're already in a cyber i don't think we pointed out this book is set in 2021 oh yeah fuck i forgot that i forgot the first time i fucking read this book which was the beginning of last this of last year yeah this book is set in the same year and it doesn't aside from the lack of you know nuclear bomb dropping on everybody the feeling of emptiness is a thing still that's something that people have talked about for 10 20 years now is the feeling of it like isolation in a

surprising like we're more connected than ever but more alone and it's it's just like why has this book been used like a manual like it's not this is a cautionary thing this is like a fuck don't do this shit book and and i think that's that's a running theme i sort of said it as a as a joke but i i i think a lot of social media is leaning towards that direction i think not just not just social media but but technology writ large yeah where everything we do is is mediated through some sort of technological screen right like the pandemic certainly didn't help yeah imagine in in the book you have the empathy box where you feel Mercer's journey and you can also sort of feel all the other people taking the journey at the same time. That's social media is really not that different. Like we're all just feeling each other's emotional troubles at the same time mediated through a form of technology i mean this is i i i feel bad because i don't

want to be like straying into like i am 14 and this is deep like like social media is bad but we're discussing philip k dick he's blunt as hell there are plenty of i am 14 and this is deep like conclusions to make because he makes them very plain. He does make them very, he does make them constantly. Like even when they're not the main point of his book, he still throws them in there. Like,

Hey, isn't this fucking stupid? And you're like, yeah, yeah. Okay. Yes. He's like,

now I will say this other thing that is plainly awful. And you're like, yeah, yes. Okay. I mean're like, yeah, yes. Okay. I mean, I, I,

I do feel like we kind of hit on something there. And that like the end of this book just shows you that everything he interacts with that Deckard interacts with by the end of the story is all fake. With, with one, with just the exception of his wife. and his wife is helping maintain it for him by like lying about the toad it is i'm sorry it is just that i love big brother ending where the

ending is you know super fucking bleak and sad but there's that tiny tiny little bit in like the appendices that's like oh yeah this thing is going to fall apart in like 10 years where at the very least he has you around well he has his wife which he doesn't deserve but whatever she seems to kind of like him which I know now going

on some tropes where like the man is shit and he just needs his wife to support him because he can't manage they are sort of doing it for each other because he can't manage well no i think they are sort of doing it for each other because he is doing it for her at the start like even though it seems weird and he's like sort of bullying her into using the brain juice machine he's only doing it because he thinks that's what's best for her and he clearly does care about his wife i i think part of the the real thing here is that the only the only thing that is real

is a legitimate human connection with someone else that shares that human connection back with him regardless of how tenuous that connection might be or how sometimes it gets strained or how flippantly he you know kind of messes with it at points. It doesn't. Yeah, by going to fuck a robot. Yes. That was still a simulacrum of relationship. That was, it's interesting because that was the chance or like the opportunity, the temptation for him

to give up all real relationships. Because the one with his wife was the last one. Yes. And this was his, this was his taste of giving up all of them. And we see how well that worked out for him. Yes. You fucking killed the only other living thing that could have been there for him,

which would have been that goat, which would have been a goat. Um, which I'm going to be honest with you from my personal experience if the only animal you have for companionship nearby is a goat good luck goats are devious little bastards at times oh i'm i'm sure so i got i would much prefer something but i i would much prefer a cow. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. In terms of just something you'd like just fucking lay around with and hang out with.

Cow, yeah. Way friendlier. Goats can. Cows are so fucking cute. I'm sorry. Goats' pupils are weird. I don't like their eyes. Goats are not the only ones with those pupils.

Sheep also have them and sheep are also weird for different reasons anyway actually actually horses have the eyes as well they're just usually the the irises of their eyes are usually so dark yeah that you can't tell see yeah hide that shit from me it's weird i don't like it yeah i mean also a lot of creatures have it i'm also just not that big a fan of horses personally. Sorry, not bovine. What's the word for creature with hooves? Hooved.

I know the actual name. Hold on. I don't. Hooved animals. I will look that up real quick. There's a word for them. Ungulates. Yeah, sure. U-N-G has it. There's a there's a word for him. Unguilats.

Yeah, sure. U-N-G-U-L-A-T-E-S. I'm just saying I'm also not a huge fan of horses. Yeah. They are. They're really strong and really easily frightened. That's not a great combo. Not a great combo.

Again, again, give me a cow. Cow's way better. Give me a cow. I'll play Trump. I don't know how to play play trumpet but i'll play trumpet near them and they'll just sit there and watch me give me a give me a pig yes unironically yes i kind of want a micro pig pigs are dope as hell instead of a dog like i mean my dog's super cool too i know know. But I'd be like, it's not on the banned pets list at my apartment complex. Hell yeah. Just kidding. I'm sure my neighbors would object because pigs are loud.

Everyone sign up for the Patreon so Ketho can get a pig. Yes, because the pet fee here is fucking ridiculous. So yes, please do that. I'm going to add a new Patreon goal that's get Ketho a pig. Get Ketho a pig. That would make Melissa really happy. Come towards the end here. I think we really have come around to the fact that the lesson of this book is that a genuine reciprocal human connection is the single most important thing that you you could hold onto in a world

that's trying to fake everything for you. That's deep. So good luck with that. That's deep. Yeah. Yeah. Good luck. Especially when every aspect of reality is trying desperately to get you to

jump into the matrix. So they're going to have to commit violent offenses against me to get me to join the metaverse. And you know what I, and you know what I, you know, the more you think about it, there's a reason that this is considered fundamental for cyberpunk.

And when you think, when I think of, you know, some of the other big cyberpunk properties, I think of things like ghost in the show. I think of things like the matrix and all of them deal with especially those two specifically deal with simulation of reality it's it's i mean that's literally the matrix's whole thing that's well yeah that's the matrix's whole thing literally

with the matrix but like ghost in the show has that shit as well with this also i'm pretty sure that the wachowskis in one of their interviews like mentioned that they read baudrillard oh that oh yeah i'm pretty sure that they said that that's where they got they also they also if i remember correctly talk really highly of the original ghost in the shell yeah it's good i mean it is so yeah it's what i mean it's one of my favorite movies but like um sign up for the patreon we'll talk about it yeah we'll talk about we'll talk about ghost in the shell i'm sorry i've said it too many times just the jokes are too easy yeah i mean no you're right it's it like it's it's a fundamental concept of of cyberpunk that has then continued

through to the other sort of seminal works the other seminal stuff that we talk about like sort of within this genre and i had i up until literally tonight when we were having this discussion i had never really thought about it that way like obviously you think about the matrix you think about simulation theory this other shit yeah yeah obviously you can't not but like i had hadn't really put it together and thought about it in this sort of totality of that every aspect of your life is trying to do this to you we did it fam good job here's the thing here's the thing that's half the reason that i wanted to even do this podcast because you know there's things you don't realize until you sit down and talk about it with somebody and yeah i want the audience all of you dear listeners to understand

that i don't really plan out any of my talking points before we turn the recording on i mean we plan out sometimes well occasional like here are a couple specific things i want to reference but like this isn't some sort of like we've sort of planned out our logic and our conclusions before we get here yeah this really is more like just an off-the-cuff conversation recorded yeah katho can attest to the fact that like we'll be doing a thing and halfway through the recording i'm like oh shit i never that's actually a good thing i never thought of that you can tell you can tell that this is one of the ones that that in quotation marks since i picked the book i had to lead and that's why it's so scatterbrained um but you know well because i mean anyone if you've been here for a few episodes

you kind of understand that kethel's sort of more of the the the sci-fi guy and i'm more of the like animals beating themselves with swords kind of guy um because when i was younger i didn't want to read books that made me think that hard about how depressing the future was going to be. Yeah. Like, like even the sci-fi, even the sci-fi I was like fan of early on was never Philip K. Dick levels of think about this.

You know, I, I halfway considered like asking us to do both this and like Neuromancer in like pretty close to one another just as like a cyberpunk primer how dare you make me think that hard but i'm like oh boy i like neuromancer that's just gonna be a lot to read yeah well it's been sad yeah everything's everything sucks i love big brother i going to go to bed. I mean, that is what I'm going to do after this recording is over.

I'm going to go to bed. Me as well. Because I'm an old man and I get tired. And this is later than we normally record. I was about to say, this isn't particularly early for you to be going to bed. No, no. I, I mean, as of this moment, it is currently 11 P almost 11 PM. My time, which is past my bedtime. That's what happens when you have a job that starts at 5 AM. Okay. Yeah.

We need to get the hell moving. Hey, we're working on it. No. So everyone, I hope this was an enlightening discussion. I hope you sort of came at this work from a new angle again our takeaways whether the androids have our people or not it kind of doesn't matter at all and that's the most shallow sort of question you can be asking about this work well i mean fundamentally that's what they made the movie about though yeah well it's also the first the first question you get to um i would

say though if i really had to think about it that's probably also the one that would translate the best to just being a blockbuster movie or a blockbuster video game like fallout 4 or something yeah like i i uh i don't think a lot of the other things we talked about would actually translate that well into like a movie adaption. But what we're here to do, and I think we successfully did today, is look beyond that. Like what is it else that's going on? It's emptiness. It's the emptiness in that in the world of Dwayne Dredd's dream of electric sheep, the emptiness is tangible almost. And it's the result of nuclear fallout and people emigrating.

But it is a stand-in for the emptiness we feel in modern life now. And we talked about empathy. We talked about the lack thereof in humans is what's led to all these other things that we've already been discussing and you know what maybe do your best i know it's been really hard because of the you know uh generational pandemic that's been going on but maybe try to do your best to keep some human connections in your life or with her pet if you have one they're pretty good yeah they that having a dog was a real good boon to my mental health when i got her four years ago that sure did wonders for me so i can recommend it yeah if my pet wasn't ridiculous i would definitely

yeah even the cat i don't like it's still nice to have him in the apartment sometimes He's really cute when he's asleep Which is something More than I can say about myself But thank you anyway For joining us here today Tonight for us Hopefully it's been enlightening for you

Thank you for joining us tonight Tonight I'm going to use my sexy NPR voice Thank you for joining us tonight On Tonight I'm going to use my sexy NPR voice. Thank you for joining us tonight on this chat about... Ketho and Darius. After Dark. Thank you for joining us on this chat

about the fact that the human condition is one of suffering and loneliness. Sign up to the Patreon. Follow us on social media. Let's say, get your simulacrum of get your simulacrum on and talk to me on Twitter we can have a social interaction mediated by technology

or just consume this and have a parasocial relationship with us like I said or podcast small enough if you tweet at me enough we might make it actually social who knows you know thank you all for listening uh as always our social media links are going to be down in the description if you want to follow us or send us an email coming up next it might it might not release exactly on time might be a week late because it's going to be a lot of reading

for me and for the first time not featuring yours truly yeah uh kevin's gonna take a little break because his real life has a lot of things going on apparently they're more important than hanging out with me i'll forgive him temporarily uh so instead uh when we do come back after this one like i said there might be a week off in between uh i'm going to have a guest maybe two on and we are going to talk about the first three books of The Wheel of Time. So we're going to talk about The Eye of the World, The Great Hunt,

and whatever the one after that is. I haven't looked because it's at least 60 hours of audiobook away. So I've got time to get there. Good luck. But we are going to be talking about, hopefully, the first three books of The Wheel of Time with at least one, possibly two, special guests. That should take up a bit of the next few weeks.

We might have one other one in there before Ketho comes back. And when he does come back, we're planning a special episode with a guest where we talk about the history of genre fiction. Where did it come from? How did it develop history of genre fiction where did it come from how did it develop into a genre where did it come from where did it go is it called cotton i joe uh where so it's going to be more of like a sort of a researchy episode where we talk about how we even got to where we are i think particularly we're going to be talking about the stuff you know before tolkien more or less like where what was he looking at when he was talking about it? Who first was doing fiction?

Who invented writing books? Tune back into our podcast to find out. In the meantime, go talk to a real person if it's safe for you to do so. Goodbye. Bye-bye. Bye-bye. Bro. Are you fucking real, man?

Come on. Thank you.