Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: In this episode, we consider the extent to which Justice Samuel Alitos flag flying controversy undermines the US Supreme Court as an institution and whether that may be the point. And later on, we'll discuss the NCAA's historic settlement that will result in revenue sharing with college sports players. React to the claim from one scientist that he can prove that all of this is just a simulation. And consider what, whether humans are, in fact, addicted to addiction.
Hello. Welcome to the call like I see it, podcast. I'm James Keys, and riding shotgun with me today is a man always gives you what you want, although he may not be the most polite about it. Tunde yoga and Lana Tunde, are you ready to show the people why they call you a rude boy?
[00:01:02] Speaker B: Of course, man.
[00:01:03] Speaker A: All right, now, before we get started, if you enjoy the show, I ask that you hit subscribe or hit the like button on YouTube or your podcast app. Doing so really helps the show out.
Now, recording this on May 28, 2024. And Tunde, I want to jump right in, ask you, Justice, Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito has caused some controversy recently, and it, you know, was revealed that he was flying flags associated with stop to steal and with, you know, far right political movements and such. And, you know, dating back to 2021, you know, when around the time of the insurrection and also even last year. Now, one of the most important things with the Supreme Court, you know, just as an institution, is to maintain the appearance, appearance of impartiality, kind of being above the fray. That's why they're not elected. So what are your thoughts on these controversies? Do you think that, you know, this is something that is a big deal, or do you think this is being overblown, you know, just another media story to get clicks?
[00:01:59] Speaker B: I don't know. I'd say it's exciting.
We got judges who are, you know, I guess, sympathetic to insurrectionists. So where do we go from here?
[00:02:12] Speaker A: Who are judging insurrectionist cases?
[00:02:15] Speaker B: Yeah, that's what I'm saying. It's very interesting.
It's a sad reality. That's why I say it's exciting times, because this is how history goes sideways sometimes where you have people in elite positions like this that really don't like their own country, and I don't, or.
[00:02:35] Speaker A: At least large majorities of it.
[00:02:38] Speaker B: Yeah, well, I guess really what the country is about. Right. And that's my thing is like, anyway, like, for you to fly a flag upside down, obviously you did that on purpose. There's a certain meaning to it all that obviously we could get into the flag code of the United States. I mean, that's only to be done in distress, flying a flag upside down. So clearly, it's a disrespect to the America that he sees. I mean, I'm going to assume that he doesn't like plurality. He doesn't like the way the country's gone, I guess, and he's upset. And what's interesting to me is that he threw his wife under the bus.
[00:03:15] Speaker A: It says, that's what I thought you were going to say when you said it was exciting, is that this guy's throwing his wife under the bus. Who knows what's happening now, you know, at the household. Like you're going to take the fall for this.
[00:03:28] Speaker B: Makes me appreciate Clarence Thomas, though. His wife was found to be supporting an insurrection, he just stayed quiet. You know, he didn't throw his wife under the bus. So he's a little more respectable on this one. Yeah, so, I mean, that's, that's my take, though, man. I mean, I don't know. What do you think? Well, no, I think as an attorney yourself.
[00:03:43] Speaker A: Well, yeah, I mean, and that definitely affects the way I view this. I mean. Cause as I kind of let into in the intro, like, the court is supposed, like, one of the most important things, even when there's not impropriety or there's, you know, like, the court is supposed to maintain the appearance of that because the legitimacy of the court relies on people buying into the court as being above the political fray. That's why judges are set off separately now. You know, many state, you know, local judges will be elected, but with federal judges, they're not even elected. These people are put in. You know, they're there. They're appointed and then confirmed by the Senate, and then they're there for life for as long as they want to be, and that is to remain above the fray. And so him doing this, the thing is that you have to come to grips with is he's not stupid. He knows that by doing this, he, it will be, no, it could be discovered that he did this, and so he's doing this. And obviously, you flying a flag is not you holding some secrets. Belief. You flying a flag is intended to broadcast to everyone that you have this belief. And so what he's doing, basically, I look at this and wondering, is he trying to undermine the legitimacy of the Supreme Court? Because what you're saying basically is not untrue, you know, in terms of being, having a problem with the way that the country, what the country's about, because the constitution, you know, is a certain thing. And if you're trying to overthrow the constitution, you have to delegitimize the institutions that have been set up by the constitution, whether that's delegitimizing voting or which, you know, which stop the steel was all about. Now, he, he arguably is trying to delegitimize the Supreme Court by doing this, because, okay, if. If Supreme Court justices are all on the take, then the natural response to that will be, oh, well, the other people are doing bad stuff, too. And what you end up is this assured, you know, mutual destruction. And so to me, that was really what's happening here. This wasn't some mistake or error. Like, oh, I didn't know anybody would ever see this. You know, like, I did this in my, in my basement, you know, my home, and nobody ever goes down there, like, he did this out front of his house. So it's. It's an intentional move to publicly delegitimize at least a part of the supreme court. And what you do once you delegitimize the institutions is, is you then just take power. You're delegitimizing the institutions that operate from a all men are under the law standpoint, democratic voting and all that kind of stuff. And you say, no, no, we're just going to take this. And that, to me, seems to be, again, that's consistent with what we know what stop the steel was about. So it seems like he was trying to further those ends and delegitimize and do his role to delegitimize where he could. Yeah.
[00:06:25] Speaker B: And, you know, it's interesting.
[00:06:26] Speaker A: Let me add this just from the inside. Delegitimize from the inside.
[00:06:31] Speaker B: Well, no, I think that, you know, look, we got to look at it for what it is. I mean, in reality, right, two things have been shown to have happened. One was that he flew his flag, the United States flag, upside down. The second was that he had.
[00:06:45] Speaker A: And that was in the 2021 period. Yeah, 2021.
[00:06:48] Speaker B: And then the second, the other flag was the alpine, sorry, the pine tree flag, which, my understanding, it's a flag for people in solidarity with the christian right that believe that this should be a nation that's run under christian laws. So basically a theology and not the secular democracy that we've had since its founding.
Which is interesting to me because I think what a lot of Americans don't appreciate is that would put us in a trajectory of countries like Iran or Saudi Arabia, where you would have someone who's like a supreme leader who's who's a religious figure that basically is on top of and can tell the legislature and everyone else what to do based on biblical law and not their interpretation.
[00:07:35] Speaker A: By the way of biblical law or someone's given interpretation of biblical law.
[00:07:39] Speaker B: And they seem to be more, I think, Pentecostal and Methodist, or think that the type of denominations that they follow. And it's just, you know, and that's the thing. And that's why I say, like, it's interesting having this conversation with you as an attorney, because my understanding as someone who's not an attorney is that part of the three years in law school, you seem pretty well versed on the history of the founding of this country and the legal framework of the founding documents in the constitution. And so that's what makes it more offensive that a gentleman who's in the Supreme Court has these views that he seems to not like his own country. The founding of, you know, the nature that the way this country was founded to be pluralistic and to the First Amendment saying there should be no religion legislated in the United States. Again, we've said this on other discussions because the founding fathers understood that once you pick one religion, maybe some of those people are happy, but everyone else won't be, and that one group of people is going to try and tell everyone else how to practice even their own religion. And so, and so it's better maybe to allow people to practice how they want freely, any religion.
[00:08:52] Speaker A: And so that's kind of the evidence of the effort to undermine overthrow, you know, the Constitution. You know, you can call it a revolutionary in that sense. That constitution specifically calls for, you know, that, hey, this is a no establish. There's an established no establishment clause. You know, you cannot establish a religion as being, you know, part of the law or whatever. And people's hands are tipped to this. I mean, and that's flying that, you know, pine tree flag, you know, is something that, you know, my speaker of the house, you know, he's flown that flag, everything. And they're a bit transparent that they think christian rules or whatever, because, you know, the Bible isn't a law book. You know, like, you have to then say, okay, here's what it says in this part of the Bible. I want to use this. There's other stuff I'm not going to use. But you have to start picking and choosing where you. So the people who want to do, like, quote unquote, religious law, it's still their interpretation or their, their selection of certain things that they want to enforce. And then other things they'll ignore. But they tip their hand because there are people that are going around right now in various state legislatures, and they are very adamant that we can't have the anti Sharia law. We can't have Sharia law in the United States, but one, that's already taken care of by the constitution. But two, they're not saying we don't want any religious law. They're just saying we don't want sharia law, which seems to be setting the stage to say, okay, well, first we're going to say, no, no Sharia law. Then we're going to go into and say, hey, we want to adopt these things from, from Christianity. And that is against the founding principles of the country. So you have to look at it. You know, this isn't conservative to want to try to incorporate religion into the laws of the United States. That's revolutionary. You know, that's something that's trying to change what we're doing, what we have been doing here for a long time. And that's not to say that there haven't been people trying to do this before or that there haven't been people, people who succeeded at various state, federal, municipality levels and really showing bias or favoritism to a certain religion or deference to what that sect of that religion says needs to happen. But ultimately, we have to look at this for what it is. And that, I think, is the biggest takeaway is that he has signaled, publicly signaled a desire to divert from, at minimum, what's written in the constitution. You have, Congressman now calling for him to recuse himself from, you know, the cases related to the insurrection or anything around that. And that's one something that should be very taken very seriously because the recusal is a mechanism to try to restore legitimacy. So we'll see if he actually does that. Because, again, what I see this as is his attempt in the same way that Donald Trump attempted to cast legitimacy on the voting system, you know, or to cast illegitimacy on the voting systems. This is Alito's attempt to put illegitimacy on the Supreme Court. So him recusing himself now would actually undermine his own effort, you know, or apparent effort, I should say. So we're going to see how this plays out. You know, like, we don't know how it's going to play out yet. But again, these seem to be shots across the bow at the US Constitution. And so people who support the US constitution are going to have to speak up against this and stand against this. Otherwise you will, you may wake up. And I think you're correct. You may wake up in a country that's governed by religious law, and you say, okay, well, it's not going to be Iran or something or Saudi Arabia because we have a different religion. But religious law generally goes to the same places when it's tried to impose on a society wide level. So you could end up in that. You know, when you have the dark ages in Europe, you know, those are religious law places as well. And that's, they were very restrictive in the same way that we look at Iran or Saudi Arabia right now. So that's the, tragically, that they're signaling they want to take us on.
[00:12:26] Speaker B: Apparently, there's people that left Europe to start their own country because of all religion, where they could practice religions freely. I wonder, I wonder.
[00:12:35] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
[00:12:36] Speaker B: Imagine how that experiment's going 250 years later. Yeah, maybe there'll be people within that system that attack it. I don't know. But you say something interesting about Sharia law because there's a fun fact for the audience that there's a country called Russia, which actually does allow, in certain provinces, sharia law. So there are interesting examples of countries that allow different religious laws to be used within the country based on where the population, how much of a given population there is. But I just want to say something.
[00:13:07] Speaker A: That, you know, they're running away. That doesn't have, there's no guarantee of freedom of religion or freedom of speech or freedom of anything. Like, they don't brand Russia then brands themselves as the land of the free.
[00:13:18] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:13:19] Speaker A: So, so that's not inconsistent. They can put, you know, any kind of law in, because it's all governed by the whims of the, the autocrat.
[00:13:26] Speaker B: Yeah.
And just the thing you've mentioned that I want to bring up, which you said that the Supreme Court justice is appointed for life. You know what? I started thinking of the way that people talk about government bureaucrats who aren't elected and they refer to them as the deep state and all this kind of murky, mysterious conspiracy theory type of stuff. But then they don't look at a guy like this as also a quote unquote, deep state actor. I mean, this is ridiculous that we have a Supreme Court justice that flew the United States flag upside down, period. Just the fact that he did that is ridiculous. And then to understand that it's most likely because he's in solidarity with people that stormed a capitol. I mean, that's what I'm saying is, you're right, this is not, I'm offended for conservative people that these people keep masking themselves as conservative. They're radical and they're revolutionary. They don't like this system and they want to blow it up. And, you know, it's pretty obvious to me that this is how someone like this feels.
[00:14:26] Speaker A: The illusion to deep state is a good one. I do want to get out of here on that a little bit. A lot of times the complaints you hear about the deep state, ironically, are people who are upset that people within the government are, have allegiance to the US constitution. When you're talking about like Mattis and all those guys, General Mattis years back, his allegiance was to the US constitution, not to who the president was at that time. And then the president said, oh, well, that's the deep state. They're restricting me from doing the things I want to do on my whims. And they were doing so on the principle of, well, the constitution doesn't allow you to do that. With the converse here is that this is a person who is actually, again, part of a quote unquote deep state who is specifically trying to undermine the constitution in favor of some ideology that is not in the constitution. So where you can call out a deep state, so to speak, it's like, okay, well, what is these actors who were in the government, what's their allegiance to? Is their allegiance to the us constitution? Well, that's the kind of deep state we would want, is a bunch of people in the government who they all take the oath, the oath of enlistment or the oath of office that declares allegiance to the constitution. They're supposed to have that allegiance. The more troubling one is what we're seeing from Alito where it's like, okay, well, his allegiance seems to be more ideological and less to the us constitution. And in fact, he seems to want to undermine the us constitution from a position on the inside as a quote unquote deep state. So, but I do think we can wrap from there. We're going to have part two coming up here shortly, so we hope you join us for that as well. And thank you for joining us on this part.
All right, our second topic to get today, the NCAA had a historic settlement or has agreed to a historic settlement as a result of several class action lawsuits. Essentially, the NCAA has been operating as a cartel and it's been deter, it's been seen that this cartel is very much illegal in terms of federal antitrust and all that. And it's anti, a lot of principles. Espoused by people in the US as far as markets and stuff like that. This is about the NCAA has been selling for. For huge sums of money, the television rights and just making a lot of money on college athletics and not sharing any of that money that's being made with the players. And in fact, setting up rules that prevent the players from participating in that. And that has been deemed to be a well, over. Over time, more and more that is in, whenever that's challenged in court, it's deemed to be illegal. So there's current lawsuits that some that are being settled now that essentially the NCAA is agreeing to pay back damages to individuals who played, who did not get to participate in revenue. And that's over a couple billion dollars.
And also moving forward, they're going to share revenue with athletes, presumably the athletes that are generating the revenue. But that part hasn't been determined yet. So it's essentially the fall of amateurism as it has existed in the NCAA for over 100 years. And so, I mean, this is a big deal, but many are still wondering what to make of it. So, tunde, you were a professional athlete in the NCAA.
As I can say now, that doesn't sound right.
Where's my money?
[00:17:36] Speaker B: I wasn't because I never got paid. So there.
Yeah, no, it's interesting. I mean, obviously, having been a NCAA athlete, it's, you know, hits home a bit. And what I find interesting, we're looking at the article here, the agreement would pay compensation to close to 25,000 athletes who attend 363 division one colleges.
And it's funny, when I was playing ball 25 years ago, whatever, I think there was 305 division one schools. So how many? How to keep growing this thing. But I'm. Look, it's, it's, it's an interesting. I mean, just thinking about it, I mean, I think that the mechanics of how people get paid and all that, it's obviously that's got to get worked out. What's fair? What's not fair.
[00:18:20] Speaker A: Yeah. Who gets paid, how they get paid all.
[00:18:22] Speaker B: How much. Yeah. And how much and which sports. Right. Because they're talking about now the higher revenue ones like baseball and football.
[00:18:30] Speaker A: Well, yeah. Basketball, women's basketball, men's basketball, women's basketball, and then football are the big work hard.
[00:18:37] Speaker B: And, you know, it's not easy. And so, you know, that's why I think it's good to see it in one way.
The hope is that, like we're talking about, that there's fair compensation for everyone and whatever that means, because that doesn't mean, everyone gets paid the same. It just means that it doesn't get tipped into just a few schools that are making all this money or paying people very well, and then other schools aren't able to attract those kind of athletes. So I think all that will be interesting.
[00:19:11] Speaker A: But I mean, I mean, obviously competitive balance means something, but you say that, but that's a very communist way to look at things because that's like in a market system, that's kind of how it's supposed to work is the better you are or the more money you can generate, then the more you should get paid. I mean, but I mean, again, that's from a competitive balance and just a roster building. You know, like professional sports have had to deal with this. They have minimum salaries and maximum salaries in the NBA and all this other type of stuff. So there, yeah, they're gonna have to be. People come up with mechanisms on how this is gonna work in a way that is sustainable and agreeable to people on the university side and the player side. Yeah.
[00:19:50] Speaker B: And there's other things too that's interesting as we're talking here, like, because think about it, the traditional idea of a kid getting a full athletic scholarship to a good institution. I mean, you know, some of these institutions aren't cheap, right? Thousand dollars a year tuition.
So you're getting that, you're getting a meal plan, you're getting room and board and your books paid for.
[00:20:14] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:20:15] Speaker B: A lot of people would argue that student athletes have been compensated for a.
[00:20:19] Speaker A: Long time, and that's been the argument. But now, from a legal standpoint, that argument is a complete loser, though, because it's not bargained for. You know, like if you work at Walmart and Walmart just let you get, you know, some, some free great value products and that's it. And they don't pay you that. If you, and you don't get to argue about that, that's just, that's what's set across the board by all retail. Then you would not say, oh, yeah, I had a bargain for exchange. The ability to negotiate and bargain is a part of the market system and that many Americans claim to value, you know, and so, yes, the fact that you're compensated doesn't necessarily mean that you are a fair participant in the market if price fixing or wage fixing is one of the most egregious things that monopolies do.
[00:21:03] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:21:04] Speaker A: And, well, which is essentially setting it, setting compensation at a scholarship for everybody is like, and that's why the NCAA loses. And that's why they settled this case is because there's just no way to defend that under antitrust principles and under the principles of market economies.
[00:21:19] Speaker B: Yeah, that's what it was interesting, because I read in the article that they were, you know, talking about creating a certain classification of employee for these student athletes.
[00:21:29] Speaker A: Yeah. Congressionally. Like they would want to do that with, with legislation.
[00:21:33] Speaker B: Yeah, no, and that's what's interesting because then you think about, like, I'm not saying this is reason not to. I'm just thinking there's new wrinkles that people got to think about because I mean, you'd be 1819 years old thinking about, you know, paying taxes and how all this stuff relates to now you really are an adult. So it's an interesting way that kids are going to be able to experience the transition from high school to adulthood while playing sports, having to deal with the w two and election withholding and all that kind of stuff, and group benefits and things that they'll be eligible for. So, look, I think, like you said, in a economy, in a country where the culture is market based and people get compensated for showing up and doing something, this is probably inevitable. And I think it's a good thing.
[00:22:22] Speaker A: But let me tell you this. I see, I think the, where we're going to run into trouble with this, I think this is an unequivocally a good thing. But where we're going to run into trouble is what are the players being paid for? Because I would argue that they, the actual fact of showing up and playing the sport should not be the basis of the compensation. The reason I think that this got all out of whack is television money. The players who are generating the money here, they're not basketball players, they're not football players. They are entertainers. They're television, television product performers. If you're just talking about the money that's being made in the arenas, maybe you can go a little further when you say the jerseys and so forth. But if you're just talking about the ticket sales and so forth, that's no different than a band member or a person who's part of an orchestra in college and they do performances at a concert hall, we don't expect them to then get a piece of those receipts. That's just part of the college experience, you know. So where this all went crazy was when the conferences, and then the universities participating through conferences started signing billion dollar tv contracts and then rearranging the whole sport, football and basketball, around these tv contracts. So if I think where the compensation should be coming from and where the compensation should be based on is eyeballs on tvs. If ESPN or any number of whatever network wants to pay $5 billion or $2 billion a year, whatever, whatever the number is going to be to the big ten and say, okay, we want to broadcast this, this and this and this and this. Then anybody who's showing up on a tv, whether you're on the, you know, on the court or not, you should be participating in that because you at that point you're not a college participant participating in intercollegiate athletics. You are a television performer. And I think I don't, I don't hear that talked about enough, but I think that's the insight that we're missing here because that's where this is distinct. Now that also solves a lot of the problems of which sports gets paid. But that's what's created the issue. That's how we solve the issue is base this on if you're on tell if is your sport being sold to television networks or otherwise broadcast on tv and is revenue coming from that you can get into. You know, there is a issue of, of jersey sales and so forth, but that's a much smaller number than the billions of dollars that have been made on television. So to me that's where we have to be looking. If you really want us to address this in a way that makes sense and is fair, again, that solves all the problems of which sports and men's and women's and because of any women's sports that are, if it's on tv, they should be participating in the television money. And to me that, and that also solves the problem of big school, small school, everything. If you don't want to, if you don't want to pay your athletes, don't put it on television. And if universities are willing to say, yeah, we'll just stage these in, you know, in our arena and that's it then, yeah, then you can have the quote unquote amateurism from that same point. You still can't stop the name, image and likeness which we've talked about in the past and is all over where you can just. That's your ability to sell endorsements and stuff. You still can't stop. That has been determined by law. But television, again, that's the big shining thing here that really needs to be guiding the decision making as we move forward. As I see it in this, yeah.
[00:25:25] Speaker B: As you're talking makes me realize the coaches, I'll stick with basketball and maybe football because I know those sports better but it seems that the coaches, like the system already figured that out with the coaches, as you're saying, about the tv rights and the money. Because if you look at the famous coaches, like the Nick Sabans or the Mike Scheschewskis or the, you know, Rick Pitino types from basketball, they all got paid, you know, crazy.
[00:25:51] Speaker A: Well, think about it. What they get paid. It's a great.
What they get paid. I'll let you back in. I just want. It's an excellent point. What they get paid, what those coaches at, you know, the Alabama football or whatever gets paid is, is millions and millions is so much more. It's not even on the same scale as what a fencing coach will make at that same university. You see what I'm saying? Like, because those sports. Because those sports generate money on tv. And the more money you're, you know, the more you're doing on tv, you make, you're more valuable. Those sports. The coaches get compensated much more handsomely as well.
[00:26:22] Speaker B: But fencing teaches great life skills.
[00:26:24] Speaker A: Hey, I'm with it, man. All sports do. All of the sports do. But to me, that's why going from just a sport to an entertainment product, I think, is the key distinguishing factor. Because of that. Because sports in general, yes, they're character building. A lot of good things come from sports, I think, you know, a lot of our society, like, we can see, you know, like, if you play sports, then you, you lose something. It's not the end of the world because you just work and try to win the next one. That, that teaches you that in sports.
[00:26:50] Speaker B: Be sure so you won't lose a game and then try and say that I won the game. Even though there's a proof that you won't.
[00:26:56] Speaker A: Exactly.
[00:26:56] Speaker B: Okay. Even though that the film says, you know, it shows the score and everything.
[00:27:00] Speaker A: Exactly. Those are people who should have played sports when they were young.
[00:27:03] Speaker B: Yeah. It seems like a lot of people are doing this with other stuff. In our country, at least, sports, it's not happening yet anyway.
[00:27:11] Speaker A: Well, it's all in, all the tape. Yeah, but you see, in other areas it could be.
[00:27:15] Speaker B: Yeah, that doesn't matter sometimes. But anyway, so cool.
[00:27:19] Speaker A: And so the other thing I want to ask you about with this, and I mean, this is kind of addressed with my point, is that from the standpoint of, like, other sports, like, one of the things about the. The excess money now, you know, the footballs and basketballs have generated excess money for a long time. And so two things really. Well, three things have, have benefited from that while the basically taking the place of the money that would have went to the athletes. Coaches make crazy amount of money. College coaches make as much, in many cases, as professional coaches. Which college, you know, that that's crazy. You know, that they would do in a nonprofit, quote unquote, entity that they would make as much as the pros the coaches have gotten and the administrators, you know, and then, you know, whether that be university administrators, sports administrators or conference administrators have gotten a lot of money that, you know, would not have happened in a kind of setup that was if it was what they said it was in terms of, hey, this is just an amateur type of thing. The other group that has benefited substantially from this are the Olympic sports and the non revenue generating sports. So they essentially use the money that could have. Some of the money that could have went to the players or maybe rightfully should have went to players and funded other sports, funded your lacrosse's or your different things. No, I'm not. That's not an Olympic sport, but just in general, funded other sports that were deemed to be beneficial, but that aren't. That you can't sell a tv contract for or sell out an arena for and make money. So do you think that the direction we're going here is. Is unfair to those sports? Or, you know, what's your take on that? Because if that money is going to go where I would say rightfully belongs, people who are generating it or more of it, at least then somebody's gonna get the short shaft. So what do you think about that?
[00:28:53] Speaker B: I don't know. I don't have an opinion on it. Because, I mean, look, you could. I could see arguments on the various sides of it. I think that it's true that for a lot of the higher revenue earning schools that have. That earn a lot of revenue from their sports programs is not just the other sports. It's like the whole campus. I mean, you look at some of the real estate development on the campus buildings, all that kind of stuff. A lot of that has happened because of the football or basketball revenue at some point.
[00:29:23] Speaker A: So let me ask you the question in a different way, because I want to get. Let me throw this at you, and then we'll get out of here after we hit this point. But so if there is a group that historically has had advantages that were unfair by taking advantage of another group, and then effort is made to make the system more fair, and do you think that the group that historically had the advantages there are being discriminated against and has to work to stop things from being made more fair. Hmm.
[00:29:52] Speaker B: I've never been asked this question before.
[00:29:54] Speaker A: Let me think about it.
Because the analogy being that is a.
[00:29:59] Speaker B: Discrimination to ask someone to not discriminate.
[00:30:02] Speaker A: And to no longer benefit from an unfair system. And that, to me, is what we're asking there. And so while I don't. The athletes in those other sports, I don't blame them, but it was a system that was unfair. If you're taking labor that was right, that was earned by someone else, or, excuse me, earn profits that were earned by someone else and then reapportioned this to another person, you know, then that's not a fair system. You know? So if we want to say, okay, well, we like that system, fine, but don't say that it's unfair to put the money where it rightfully belongs and, you know, and then taking it away for where. From where it was diverted, but there was no legitimate claim for that.
[00:30:36] Speaker B: I might be so upset that I just.
Yeah, just blow it up, you know, if I got a share, no one's. No one's gonna have anything. See, that'll be my attitude.
[00:30:46] Speaker A: Hey, well, it's an absurd phenomenon, because some people feel that giving up an advantage is akin to, you know, oppression. You know, like, if you have an advantage, you got to give that up. There are many people that will feel like just giving up the advantage to go to a level playing field is oppression. So, I mean, we're gonna see that pushback.
[00:31:03] Speaker B: But think about it. If you've been pampered by, I mean, this could go as an individual thing. Like, if you have a child that grew up being spoiled, and then they're being told not to, you know, that they got a share being spoiled for their first ten years of their life.
[00:31:17] Speaker A: Correct.
[00:31:18] Speaker B: They're gonna feel like something's wrong. Right.
Everyone else might just say, hey, you.
[00:31:23] Speaker A: Know, in that case, it's not as evident because you're talking about the same child. But if you're talking about, like, generations, it actually will feel unfair. If. If, you know, why would I. Why do I have to face a lesser or a worse relative? Relatively worse. It might be a fair system, but a relatively worse situation, then, you know, why do I have to pay for the sins, so to speak, of my great grandfather, so to speak? But again, you have to be careful. Anytime you're talking about moving to something that's fair, you can't. Then, even if what's fair isn't advantageous, as it you would have liked, you got to be really careful saying, oh, well, it's unfair to move to a more, a system that's more fair because it's not fundamentally unfair to move.
[00:32:05] Speaker B: Just, I'm just smiling.
No, we're done. But I'm just going to say this. Those are the people that are most easily manipulated, because I think he's showing that as well. Very good. Yeah, so. But that's a whole nother discussion.
[00:32:19] Speaker A: Yeah, for sure. For sure. So. All right, well, we'll get out of, get out of here for this topic. Please join us for our next topic. And we appreciate you for joining us on this topic.
All right, for our next topic today we are going to react to, there's a scientist out there, Melvin Vopson, who claims that he now can prove that this universe that we exist in and all that we know and all that, you know, everything we observe and everything is a simulation. And he can say, he says this based on, he's talking about the laws of physics and, and analog to the second law of thermodynamics, which is that entropy will say the same or increase. He calls it the second law of info dynamics. And that what he's observing and what he says he can prove is that in our, you know, with, from an information standpoint, like the, from a data standpoint, that entropy is not increasing, and then, in fact, it is lessening. And that's evidence of data compression, you know, and which, you know, we're observed. We observe, you know, like Internet streaming and stuff like that as a result of being able to stream video and stuff like that, the ability to compress data and so forth. Data optimization, and it's, quote unquote, data optimization and compression. So it's how we send big files over the Internet, and then they show up big again on, you know, or they, they're able to go big again once they get to the destination and so forth. And he's saying he has evidence of this in the universe. And so, which, again, which suggests that there's optimization being going on. That's going on. So, Tunde, what was your reaction to this? Whether either the claim, which obviously, he's not the first one to make and dates, you know, you can go to look at the Matrix or anything like that, or his supposed proof.
[00:33:59] Speaker B: I was going to say that he's making me feel like the Matrix is real.
[00:34:04] Speaker A: I think that's his point.
[00:34:08] Speaker B: No, but, well, that's going to be interesting, because now not only do we have to figure out what happened before the big bang, we're gonna have to figure out what's going on outside the simulation. Maybe they're the same. But on a serious note, it's interesting because a couple things. One is, I know we did a show, I mean, this is probably two years ago, where we talked about how over human history, like, over the last few thousand years, like, whatever historian we were reading was saying that humans have always equated, like, how the body works and how certain things work based on whatever the going technology is at the time. So I remember that when it was like a couple thousand years ago, where it was like aquifers and people starting to have the technology to move water around for certain uses, they would think that the body flowed like a river.
[00:35:00] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:35:00] Speaker B: That was all these analogies of canals and all this stuff within our, you know, our bodies and then became more mechanical.
[00:35:07] Speaker A: Revolution, it became more mechanical. And then when you started having robot computers and stuff like that, now when.
[00:35:14] Speaker B: He'S talking about data and, like you're saying about bandwidth, it's like, okay, could this just us, him imprinting on our most modern technologies today on what he thinks is running the universe? And then the second was just the idea of, you know, the double split experiment for those in the audience that are nerdy enough to have watched these kind of YouTube videos. But the idea that at the quantum level, when observing particles, they can behave like waves, you know, they can behave like specific dots, you know, all that kind of stuff. So the idea is that by observing something, it actually changes its behavior. And so I think is a rule in quantum physics.
[00:35:56] Speaker A: By the way, if you observe something. Yeah. You change it by observing it. Yeah.
[00:35:59] Speaker B: So that's what I would, I would love to ask this gentleman, like, so, like, help us wrestle with that. The fact that you're making these observations, what you're observing now, can we even trust that it is what you believe it is? Because maybe by your observation, it actually changed its state so you can really get into some galaxy brain stuff, which I guess is the point here.
[00:36:20] Speaker A: And to your first point, the context in which you're going to understand that is going to be limited by what our current level of understanding is. And that's the reason why people's analogies to how the brain or the body works always mirrored whatever the modern state of technology was, because that's the only context that people had to explain it in. So it's not a coincidence that in the Internet age, he's describing these things in the context of the way that the Internet works. And so to me, and I mean, I think it's a, it's a complete fallacy. Now, whether or not we're in a simulation or not, I don't think is knowable from in the simulation. If this is a simulation, I don't think it's that we can. We can ascertain that with any level of definitiveness from the inside. We'd have to be from the inside in order to observe it.
There's certain assumptions that he makes, though, to me, that reveal the error. And that is, like, I'll quote, we know the universe is expanding without the loss or gain of heat, which requires the total entropy of the universe to be constant. Well, see, the thing is, we don't know that the universe is expanding without loss or gain of heat. Like, we think these are theories. We think that the universe is expanding. And we've thought that for, you know, a few decades. But now there are people coming with. With information that suggests that that's not the case. And this is based on observation. You know, like, as. And I say this, you'll hear me say this a lot when we're talking about science. As the tools of observation improve, understanding can. More perspective can be gotten. An understanding can evolve in the same way that when Galileo points or Copernicus, you know, but Galileo in particular, points a telescope up and can sees what's up there, our perspective of what's going on changes, because that is a better tool of observation. And so we're limited by our tools of observation. And all of this, like, coming up with a kind of a unified theory of physics. Right now, we don't have one. We should be very clear about this physics as we know it in the regular world. And physics as we understand on the quantum level don't match up. We don't. We cannot harmonize them yet. So someone like this, to me, is a leap or two past that. Like, let's work on harmonizing quantum physics with just normal physics before we start saying, okay, we figured out actually all of this other stuff, because the quantum stuff, as you pointed out in your part, the quantum stuff doesn't even make sense to us yet. You know, like, where you could be at two things, or, you know, something over here can affect something over there, and, you know, even though they're not touching or related or anything. And observing it, you know, like, I could go through. I could go through a lot of these things.
[00:38:54] Speaker B: Quantum entanglement.
[00:38:56] Speaker A: Entanglement, yeah. But observing. Observing something changes it. All that stuff. There's a lot of things with quantum that are completely foreign to us. And until we can harmonize that with, you know, what we actually are observing in kind of the non quantum area. We can't base further theories on a statement like, we know the universe is expanding because it's like, well, actually, what about all this dark matter and dark energy, which are called dark matter and dark energy because we just don't know what it is. You know, like, that's, like, that's not really dark. It's just. We're just calling it that until we figure out what it actually is.
[00:39:31] Speaker B: Okay. I thought that did you were gonna say, because the scientist is woke. That's why.
Because I have to give it a chance on Dei.
And that's why we're gonna be told that we can't teach the quantum physics anymore.
[00:39:46] Speaker A: Yeah, but the dark energy in the dark matter matter is not even. Well, it probably has something to do with quantum stuff, but that's just normal. Astrophysics is like, oh, yeah, there's this. All this gravity over here. We don't know what from. So we're going to call it dark dark matter, you know?
[00:40:00] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:40:01] Speaker A: And then the dark energy that you. We think the universe is expanding. What's making it expand? I don't know. Dark energy.
Okay, got it.
[00:40:09] Speaker B: I think. Well, and I think as, like, the James Webb telescope has shown that by increasing the ability to observe things in greater detail, let's put it that way, it's already started to upend some of the theories that we had, like the Hubble constant, which deals with this whole dark matter and the expanding. How the universe is expanding. So you're right. This going back to the whole simulation thing.
You're right. It's like he's got a new theory based on other theories, but the. But the theories that he has to base his new theory on are theories that aren't themselves yet proven all.
[00:40:51] Speaker A: And they're on safety ground. Right.
[00:40:53] Speaker B: Yeah, that's what I mean. It's a real house of cards, which is interesting. So, which, this is why I don't think humans will ever solve it, because it's also, if you really get into the whole thing with multiverses and dimensions, if that stuff is all to be believed, you know, the idea that we have evolved in a three dimensional format, so if there are four or fifth dimensions, we just won't be able to comprehend them. It just. It's. It's an. It's interesting to think about. You literally can comprehend something just like I can't really compromise. Comprehend what it would be like to be alive in a two dimensional simulation without you know, the third dimension there of kind of space and all that. So, you know, well, this is all fun stuff.
[00:41:39] Speaker A: Well, but from the comprehension standpoint, I would leave that open. Like, it's not impossible because, for example, I think a good analogy here is radiation. And I mean, just all types of electromagnetic, you know, or the spectrum. So we look at visible light we can see. And up until 100 years ago, 200 years ago, that's all we knew that there was. We didn't know that there was other types of radiation going around. We didn't know about infrared. We didn't know about, you know, all the other stuff, you know, like. And so, you know, ultraviolet, you know, different things, things that we can't see. And so radio waves, again, we can't see them. We develop tools to be able to observe them first and then to use them. But that's the prerequisite because that's, again, our powers of our powers, being able to observe, being able to. Being determinative of what we can understand. And so we may develop tools later on that allow us to observe, to go beyond our senses. Our eyes only allowed us to see certain things. We may develop tools to allow us in the same way we did with radio waves and all that, to see and manipulate other stuff. But until that happens with, he's not saying I can measure more stuff now, you know, like, I. I've developed a new tool. He's just saying, hey, based on what we know so far, here's what I think. So from that standpoint, I think it's limited. I don't. I commend them for the attempt. But again, yeah, like, I think he's building it, as I think you put it. Well, he's been in on house of cards that we're gonna have to look at and say, okay, well, but a lot of this other stuff, you know, it might go by the wayside by what James Webb tells us in two months anyway, so, you know. Yeah, tread carefully, you know, sir, until you can figure out a better way to measure.
[00:43:15] Speaker B: Let's just hope when, when he finds out the books aren't banned, so.
[00:43:19] Speaker A: Well, you know, he might be put on house arrest. Like, if we end up with, you know, if we're in a. A religion governed society, because that's what happened to Galileo, you know, but nonetheless, nonetheless. So, but we appreciate, everybody, for joining us on this, this, this part. We'll have one more part for today's show, and so please join us for that as well.
All right, our last topic today, we're going to discuss the science and real, more so, observations around addiction. You know, there, there's a recent article talking, asking the question, are we addicted to addiction? Meaning looking at how humans interact with, you know, obviously drugs and substances, but also food. People talk about sex addiction and everything like that. And so what is this thing that tends to come up where, when, you know, like, where there is a tendency to say, hey, I have a quote unquote addiction to this. And then particularly with the fluid nature of a, quote unquote scientific definition of addiction versus kind of, you know, it when you see it, so to speak. So what was, what stood out to you in this article? And we'll have this, you know, like, we have all of our articles we discuss in the show, notes for the, for the episode.
[00:44:27] Speaker B: It's, it's an interesting concept. Are we addicted to addiction? Because I think after reading this, I think there's some truth to that.
Let me see how to explain this the way that we like our society and we, we relate to it.
[00:44:45] Speaker A: There's.
[00:44:45] Speaker B: There's a couple things. One is the, like, we've, there's different shows for the audience that we've done on food and the social media and the Internet, algorithms and all that. So I think part of it is, when I think about that stuff, is that, yes, we are kind of being set upon by industry in various levels, whether it be the Internet or food, and they already know what we're susceptible to be addicted to. So salts and sugars and conflict online and all clickbait and all that stuff. So in one sense, we're getting pounded by that. In another sense, life for many people in our society is pretty stressful.
And so what happens is there's a lot, there's a need, I think, for a lot of us with escapism, whatever that is. And that could be the alcohol, the drugs, you know, other things that, that can cause addiction because people are trying to escape some sort of either pain or trauma or just boredom even. So I think that, that, yeah, it's, it's, we are pretty much inundated with the susceptibility to become addicted to things. And I think a lot of us are addicted to much more than we realize. Yeah. And that could be from anything. From caffeine.
[00:46:00] Speaker A: We talked about that years ago, talking about how so many of the world, so much of the world's population consumes caffeine every single day.
[00:46:07] Speaker B: Yeah. No, I just think that. Yeah, it's another example where we probably, probably many of us don't want to hold a mirror up to ourselves. And I don't think we can really. Yeah, but, and I say that not bashing everybody, I just think we don't even understand what kind of addiction really is. Yeah. And, and how just all these things order from chemicals, like I said, the algorithms that make us click things and all these things coming at us. And it's like addiction.
[00:46:35] Speaker A: There's a me like, well, yeah, there's chemical addiction there. There's also, like, psychological addiction. And then, you know, pointed out in the article is there's no universally agreed on definition of addiction.
It's been talked about how, you know, it could be looking at it, you know, if you can't, if you want to stop an activity, but you can't if you have cravings and if you tend to carry it out more and more. But that doesn't necessarily apply to everything we might say we're addicted to, you know, like, if you're addicted to food, for example, that doesn't necessarily mean you're going to eat it more and more and more and more and more to the point where you're eating 24 hours a day. But it may mean that you do it compulsively. Once you start, you can't stop, you know, and until physically you're limited. I'm glad you touched on the cultural aspects of it, because I look at this more. I think the cultural aspects of it are picking up on kind of the physiological aspects of it. I think that we're not a species that's built for abundance. You know, like, we're, our problem is that we've developed a society that has such abundance in certain things, that industry, industry thinks we're addicted to addiction because their whole approach is to, to get us addicted to stuff and then benefit and profit from that, you know, but they're reacting to something that already exists. They're saying, hey, people are susceptible to this, so let's, let's play on that susceptibility and then rake in the profits. At its core level, we're just not a species. Like it's. If fruit, if sweet food is something that's only available for a few months, a year, you know, or is limited in some other way, and we can't just show up at a store and buy it nonstop then, or if it spoils fast, you know, like with fruits or stuff like that. That's a limiting factor external to us. But in our modern society, there are no limiting factors on how much you can drink, how much you can, you know, far as any kind of chemical substance, how much you can, you know, how much you can eat sweet or salty stuff. There's no. There's no limitation on that, I guess, but your own budget and a lot of that stuff is cheaper than healthier stuff. So I think the bigger issue is more so that culturally, where we are, has responded to our susceptibility to addiction as, you know, from a physiological standpoint. So I think the answer is yes. And I think actually, this is actually a key understanding in trying to move forward and maybe figure out ways to better address this stuff culturally, because we are a species that is susceptible to addiction whenever there's abundance in something that triggers our brain a certain way. Again, whether that's psychological or chemical or whatever, because it's just difficult for us when there is an abundance of something because our limit, our self limiting, our internal limiting factors just aren't that strong.
[00:49:07] Speaker B: No, I agree. And that's. You made my brain go into some interesting places here, because what I started thinking of is the attention economy, which many people have heard of as a real thing, which is the Internet and all these different things we have now in our lives that we didn't have 30, 40, 50 years ago as a population to deal with. And so think about what we're talking about. If there is something called the attention economy, where industries are all jockeying for our attention, then what's the best way to make sure that they latch onto us and keep that attention as much as they can is by getting us addicted to something. And I think the greatest example is your phone.
I mean, I'm at the point where, you know, like my 13 year old, like, I have, like, there's rules. Like, you know, even when he's eating, like on our kitchen island thing, I tell him, hey, put your phone down. Like, I want you to learn how to be without this thing for like five minutes, you know? And then I think about things like video games, call of duty, but hold up, hold up.
[00:50:10] Speaker A: But to your point, just making it a little further. And those things are designed in ways and tested in a ways to trigger addictive responses. And so it's not like, oh, we just made this great phone, and if you happen to get addicted to it, oh, we're sorry. It's like, no, no, no, we're going to create these notifications like you talked about, the screen, the color screen and things like that, the vivid colors and all that. Like, they have been engineered in ways that consciously are trying to exploit vulnerabilities that they've identified that will get you addicted.
[00:50:40] Speaker B: Yeah. And also, as you're saying it, it's like the things like, like the word abundance is great because I think about, because I wrote down here, like, politics. I mean, think about how many people are addicted to politics today in our lives that you just go around. Everyone's talking about politics like they know it. They know everything about everything, right? They know how the department of Education should be run and how wars should be fought and all this stuff. But when you and I were kids, people didn't. I mean, obviously politics has always been important for many people, but it wasn't at this level. Like, people are addicted to their tv and their phones for.
[00:51:13] Speaker A: That's part of what you just said, though. It's part of the attention economy that for some. But politics is a way to maintain their attention. And yes, it's an abundance. It's a bunch of stuff to get upset about or get happy about that don't really matter, you know, because it's like, gotta give them a hit as death.
[00:51:29] Speaker B: That's what I mean. It's all these different industries that are jockeying for our attention in this attention economy, quote, unquote. Like you're saying they throw so much abundance of everything. So, you know, just like food, right? There's, I could go get lays chips and eat a whole bunch of crap if I want. Maybe I'm not wired to do that or I've disciplined myself not. But I could go in and get lost down a rabbit hole on politics or something else. And it's just that. So I think all of us as individuals in our society are constantly just being attacked by now more so today than in prior generations.
This attention economy that's trying to addict us to something so that we become a customer or we're giving them data so they could sell it to someone else, one or the other. But it's all, it's all about monetizing in a sense. This is interesting. I didn't think of this until I like, you know, the scene in the Matrix when it's the little baby and they're talking about like Morpheus is explaining at the beginning, like, oh, you know, we feed the, feed the dead intravenously to the living. It's almost like that. I mean, we're at this point now where we're, from an economic standpoint, we're little nodes. And, you know, someone's gonna make money off of either us buying something directly, like me being a customer on Amazon or me just going on Facebook and giving away all my information for free. Unknowingly but it's all. It's all designed to keep me addicted to whatever it is that I'm gonna do and just keep doing it repetitively and being this kind of go down this rabbit hole and really not have other experiences after a while, you know, that's kind of the.
[00:53:04] Speaker A: I mean, if you think about how much of it is not particularly concept consequential to your life, like, there are things that happen that are consequential to your life. But 95 or 99% of what you engage with on a day to day basis, if you're talking about the attention economy, is not consequential to your life. And so from that standpoint, the matrix is a good analogy because you are just a plugged into something that, you know, you can handle the important stuff, you know, like in a few minutes a day or whatever, but all of the news that you're reading and sometimes, you know, this, like, I follow sports and I know that that's just, that's not important, that's not consequential. And in fact, I enjoy the fact that it's not consequential. But so much of it is, people are made to feel as if it's consequential as part of the addict, addictive mentality of it, you know? And so taking advantage of that is something that, like I said, we've seen industry do. The only real defense we have is things like consumer protection and through the government, because the industry. And this is where if you have a capitalist economy that's market based, you have to understand the incentive of business is always to get their claws into us more and more and more. And that it's not a fair fight individually between us. And then my willpower against their ability to manipulate it with psychologists on staff and all this other stuff is not a fair fight. And so this is where a role of government, so to speak, is to set boundaries on what's in bounds and what's out of bounds as easy. I mean, people accept and because it's. Because it already exists, but to this extent of, hey, you know, tobacco companies, you can't advertise on Saturday morning, children, cartoons, you know, that's the kind of thing that society has had to do over time. Hey, no, no lead in paint, no lead in gas. You know, like, because industry, and this isn't to say the industry is evil. It's just to say that we have to understand where the profit motive will take them and then make sure when it becomes harmful things that we put limits on them because they won't limit themselves, because the profit motive will require them to try to exploit every vulnerability. And most of those vulnerabilities they're going to exploit are in us.
So that's what we got to try to make sure through, again, through collective power, through government, that we can put some limits on not limiting them. Make money. But let's limit how aggressively you can take advantage of us as individuals and as a species. Our not for the fact that we're not a species that's built in abundance. And you can create certain thing, you know, certain signals in our mind and, you know, chemically or psychologically or whatever that really lock us in and take. Can take us to really negative places that, you know, is not good for society or individual.
[00:55:38] Speaker B: Yeah, I'm so upset now, I think I'm gonna go in my front yard and put my flag upside down.
[00:55:46] Speaker A: Well, see, clearly that's just a statement that you're making personally. That's not, that's just an individual thing.
[00:55:56] Speaker B: I'm so upset that we're being so manipulated that I'm just gonna go hang my flag upside down now that you.
[00:56:01] Speaker A: Said that, though, next week, I don't think you'll be able to blame your wife for that.
[00:56:07] Speaker B: No. Maybe I can really off one of my neighbors so he can call my wife to c word, and then I use that as an excuse to, no, no, I'll let her do it so I can say it was her, but now that'll make a real man out of me.
So what are we talking about?
[00:56:25] Speaker A: No, no, no. So, yeah, that'll be it for today.
[00:56:28] Speaker B: That'll be it.
[00:56:28] Speaker A: That's a great note to end it on. Yeah.
But we appreciate everybody, for joining us on this episode of Call. Like I said, subscribe to the podcast, rate it, review it, tell us what you think. Send it to a friend. Till next time. I'm James Keys.
[00:56:40] Speaker B: I'm Tunde Ogun Mana.
[00:56:42] Speaker A: All right, we'll talk to you next time.
