Episode Transcript
[00:00:14] Speaker A: Hello.
[00:00:15] Speaker B: Welcome.
[00:00:16] Speaker A: Call it like I see it podcast.
I'm James Keys, and in this episode of call like I see it, we're going to discuss the way many have seemed to want to take sides, like in an all or nothing fashion, when viewing and discussing the Israel and Hamas war and how several factors in our society seem to have made this, you know, something more prominent in how people are viewing polarizing or issues with multiple sides.
And later on, we're going to react to the premise in a new book which is called determined, which contends that humans actually have no free will, which pops up from time to time. But this is, you know, as someone who is, you know, a very serious person, so to speak, and, you know, has written a book on it and, you know, based on research, based on dealing with other primates and so forth. So something that is at least worth kind of analyzing and taking apart and seeing, you know, where you come down on it.
Joining me today is a man who, even when he is dressed down, as sharp as a bowtie. Tunde Ogun. Lana Tunde. Are you ready to show them the way you move?
[00:01:23] Speaker B: Yeah, man, I gotta save that one for my wife.
She tends to have a different opinion about how I dress. But maybe we'll do a show on that one day and I'll let you know.
[00:01:35] Speaker A: There you go.
Now, we're recording this on October 23, 2023. And by now, we all know there's a substantial conflict going on in the Middle east between Israel and the palestinian group Hamas, also with some fighting that's been popping up between Israel or with Israel and the palestinian group Hezbollah. Now, as we may recall, the fighting broke out after Hamas launched a large scale surprise attack on Israel that hit defense and civilian targets and killed hundreds and took scores of hostages.
And Israel responded with force, as one might imagine, if someone, something happens to them.
And this is a pretty straight rundown kind of, of how we got to this substantial conflict we're dealing with. But what we've also seen is that the reaction to the conflict has really divided into two camps that almost are divergent. Like, they keep getting further and further apart.
Many who sympathize with the palestinian cause have come out not just raising humanitarian concerns about what was happening in, you know, in Gaza or, you know, whatnot before the, the surprise attack, but also about humanitarian concerns about the Israel's counter attack. And, but they not, not stopping there, but a lot of times what we've seen is they're justifying or defending the manner in which Hamas attacked.
And there's been understandably a backlash to this with many reducing those, though, who either sympathize with the palestinian or express any kind of sympathy towards the palestinian cause as supporters of terrorism. So, you know, as I said, that's, that's kind of people getting further and further apart. So today we're going to look at both of these phenomena and also just kind of how or why this may be happening when, you know, again, the broad strokes seem to be pretty clear, you know, to any person who's looking at this with any level of objectivity. So, tunde, let's start with the former. What do you think about the pro palestinian push and the scale that, you know, like some, again, may be just humanitarian, others may be any, by any means necessary type of thing is coming from certain areas in our society.
[00:03:40] Speaker B: I mean, this is, like you said, we're about to walk into a minefield and there's a 100% guarantee we're going to step on some landmines.
I mean, this is such a complex kind of just issue and discussion. So I think you opened it up well there. And I think for those of us who are talking soberly and rationally, I mean, clearly one must delineate current events with the attack by Hamas on Israel and its citizens on October 7, you know, of this year, just a few weeks ago, of this recording. And so clearly there's no defense of that. Right. I mean, I think under a normal kind of, if you just look at that day and what happened and how Hamas attacked Israel, well, I think that's.
[00:04:32] Speaker A: The question to me, to me and to many, there's no defense of particularly the civilian aspects of the attack. But to some they're saying there is like kind of a, well, things have been so bad, they've been treated so poorly that, that even this, you know, is, you know, this is justified in the sense that they're pushing back against imperialism or colonialism, you know, and that type of thing. And so this is an oppressed group doing. And so that's surprised some people, you know, that, that we've gotten to that. But some people are looking at that seriously and saying, hey, no, this is what you have to do to a colonial first thing.
[00:05:05] Speaker B: What, what the surprising part, I mean, look, did, it's not uncommon or we're not used to seeing on television certain parts of the world react that way. Like when Iran did leadership between the president and I guess, the Ayatollah, you know, the religious leader of the country, when they're out there celebrating what Hamas did to the israeli people or now using this opportunity to also pick at the United States and others in the West. I think we're used to seeing that just as negative as that is clearly to support that type of behavior, no matter what the reason. But I think what we're talking about here, and just for the audience is people have been in the United States, at least. I'll just stick here. I know there's been other stuff going on in Europe and Australia and other parts of the world, but in the United States, I think there's been a bit of a surprise, especially in the Ivy League campuses, for example, that students and young people would be so zealous in their defense of Palestinians. And I think that's where it gets a little bit conflated, where there are people who have genuine concerns about the treatment of the palestinian people for the past decades at the hands of what they see as Australia, sorry, israeli occupiers. And just the way everything has gone down since, you know, the 1940 719 48, I think those people have been mixed together and some intentionally, some unintentionally with people who are celebrating just a heinous kind of act against civilians. And then there's other people. This is a deep and complex subject that are combining in their pre existing things like anti Semitism. Right. There's a lot of conspiracy theories about Jews globally and their control over things and Zionists and all this stuff. So that's why I said a lot.
[00:07:08] Speaker A: Of language and kind of things that come up when, like you said, when anti semitism takes a forefront. We're starting to hear some of that stuff also mixed in to this, this pot, so to speak.
[00:07:20] Speaker B: Yeah. And that's why to me it's, it's, it's an extremely, there's landmines all over the place that, that everyone steps in because, you know, and that's why it's hard to parse it out. Right.
[00:07:31] Speaker A: I think, well, let me, let me jump in because I think part of the issue, I think part of it because you've identified there kind of three segments that might look at what happened and not totally immediately in their gut want to just jump on the pedestal or jump on, you know, and then jump up and down and scream and say, oh, that's so messed up. That's so messed up. There's people who just kind of, you know, in the reverse order. You talked about, like people just with anti semitism, you know, like that, that exists out there who may not look at this and immediately say, oh, this is, this is a terrible thing. You also have people who, to varying degrees, either have, you know, look at the palestinian cause, you know, and then look at, you know, what people have called apartheid. You know, look at a very difficult situation that they're in and have sympathy for that. And so they don't necessarily want to jump up and down immediately and condemn anything that happens right there. And then some people that look at that same situation say actually they need to be doing this type of stuff. So that's three different groups. I think the issue that we're seeing is that it's a timing issue. If you are someone who believes that, you know, from a humanitarian standpoint that the Palestinians are getting a raw deal and shouldn't be treated like they are, then it's not necessarily the best time to bang the table on that right now. You know, like a right after the initial attack. Right. If you do it right, then, then you do lump yourself in with the people who do believe, you know, I'll use the terminology by any means necessary that Palestinians are justified by, to try to get it, people out of, out of Palestine or Israel get, try to get the jewish people out of there by any means necessary. If you, you may not believe that, but if you, if the time you choose to make that stand or one of the times you choose to make that them to make that point, you're going to get lumped in with that and you just got to live with that. I'm not saying that's right or wrong, but you have to understand from a timing standpoint, sometimes it's a good time to really push an issue and sometimes it's not or at least optimal for your message not to get lost or for your message not to get drowned out because the other groups, like I said, there are some people that say, hey, by any means necessary, Palestinians are justified. And I would consider that a more extreme position and not obviously a radical, that's more of a radical position. And then people who are just, you know, they're just anti semitic and they bring that to the table and they're like, oh, well, you know, they're just not going to have sympathy. From the other standpoint, you're good. You have to understand you're going to get lumped in with that. And so what we see that with the university students, that all of them there have been, you know, like whether groups are signing these letters and whatever, and some people have recanted and we, you know, at that point it's impossible to know if they're recanting because of public pressure or because they didn't realize, they kind of saw like, oh, wow. You know, like the timing of this made us look like we're trying to say something else or that we're endorsing this other stuff. The other thing I'll say is that it does seem like there are a lot of people either that are unwilling to or unable to separate out the idea that you can support more humanity, more humanitarian life for Palestinians without endorsing, quote unquote, by any means necessary attacks on civilians, hostage taking and so forth. Like, you don't have to go. And there seems to be this thing where people almost feel compelled, if I take one step in this direction, I got to run all the way to the end of the line. I can't take one step and say, hey, you know, this is that, but still also recognize the humanity on both sides of the issue. And so, you know, that to me is something I've seen that creates kind of this divergence, like an active move away from where's common ground to, you know, you end up with the situation where you started out just saying, hey, you know, let's make sure we treat these people fairly. And you end up saying those people, you know, like anything that happens to them is okay. And that's not, that's not where you want to end up in my view.
[00:11:11] Speaker B: Yeah. I mean, it's, it's, look, there's a lot. So I know we're going to address in this conversation things like misinformation and the activity online and all that. But before we go there, I think this is why to me, this is a, it's, you know, it's a sad topic, the all round. Right. But because there's just no winners in any of this, clearly. And that's what I mean. Like, I'm watching this kind of from the outside looking at everybody having these arguments. And I have in my personal life, you know, it's funny, these moments, you learn a lot about people, you know, and that you've known for a long time. And I've been surprised to learn that I have some people in my life that have some strong views on both ways. You know, I have, you know, friends of mine, good friends that are israeli that, you know, some are more moderate, some are very aggressive right now, and they want to burn it all down. And I've got other friends of mine that I've been surprised to learn they're more anti semitic than I knew before or that I might be comfortable with now. Like, I've got to make some of those choices in my life right now and indifference to some of the other culture. I was going to say culture wars. I think that's putting a little bit to this, a little bit too simply, this palestinian and Israel thing. This isn't just a culture war.
[00:12:38] Speaker A: Well, culture war implies kind of triviality.
[00:12:41] Speaker B: Correct.
[00:12:41] Speaker A: That's what I was going to say.
[00:12:42] Speaker B: This is a true culture war. In that way, you're right. We make a trivial, here in the United States, our culture wars. This is a true one. The two cultures that are very similar, Judaism and Islam. I mean, Islam does stem from Judaism as much as maybe some would not want to acknowledge that.
And Israelis and Arabs have been neighbors now for decades, and Jews and Arabs have been neighbors for centuries. It's not like there were no Jews before Israel existed in the palestinian area.
And so that's why this is very serious, because I realize this has a combination of many things, right? Religion, which is very important to humanity and human beings, and our emotional values are based on that. Then you have the recent geopolitics, post world War two in the region and all that. And then you've got three of the world's biggest religions outside of maybe Hinduism, just because of the amount of people there are in India.
But other than that religion, the other three largest religions in the world call Jerusalem, Bethlehem, those areas their holy land. And so it's, they all have an.
[00:13:55] Speaker A: Important place, you know, basically in those religions.
[00:13:58] Speaker B: So what I realized is this is being broadcast around the world, and the majority of the world has some sort of emotional stake in this because I've thought a lot about things we've been through in our country in recent years. I thought about this even though it's very different. I'm not trying to make comparison, but just as in relation to, let's say, the George Floyd summer again, kind of cultures come clashing, in a sense, within the same country, and people who have been living next to each other but with very different experiences of the same system. So, you know, that's why I say, like, for a lot of black Americans, there's always going to be sympathy when you hear of another group that is being, you know, I don't know how to put it. I don't want to use the word apartheid, because I think that's a little bit too strong for what is going on in the United States, let's say.
[00:14:51] Speaker A: I mean, that's an assumption on your part, that you would assume that, you know, an oppressed people in one setting would always relate to what could be seen as an oppressed people in another state.
[00:14:59] Speaker B: I think there's not always the case, though.
[00:15:02] Speaker A: But you've also pointed out, though, like, you don't always see that with immigrants, for example. You know, like when immigrants, like, a lot of times the xenophobia overcomes that, you know, and it's like, so, you know, a lot of times where you think people would come down on this, it doesn't always line up. And your point about that, this, what we're talking about here in particular, what we've seen a lot of ink spilled about and press about is not oppressed people voicing support for Palestinians. It's a lot of the attention's been on people from privileged areas, you know, Ivy League schools, you know, that are doing this. And I think that caught a lot of people off guard. It wasn't necessarily the, the people who you might look at as an oppressed group that were marching in the streets necessarily for Palestine. It was people who aren't necessarily coming from that scenario. And so I think that also played a role kind of in what we're going to talk about in a second with the backlash and just that it, what, when things defy, it's interesting, you know, like the dark knight, the movie from a while back, always has a lot of gems in that, you know, in terms of just kind of how, you know, the joker, you know, observing people. And it was like one of the things from that is like when if things go according to plan, even if the plan is horrible, people don't really react that much, you know, but when things don't go according to plan, even, you know, regardless of how, how serious it actually is, it just throws people off a lot. And so I think the fact that we're talking about Ivy League students, that's not the quote, unquote, expectation of who should be lining up and voicing support for Palestinians. I think that threw a lot of people off. And I want to ask you about the backlash, because the backlash we've seen has been very interesting from the standpoint. We've seen people getting doxxed, trying to put all these people information out there, and then that comes with threats and so forth. We've seen people not wanting to, if the universities weren't sufficiently critical of the students that, you know, voice support, then people want to withdraw their donations from these universities. We've seen people call to and we've actually seen some job offers being rescinded for people's names or on documents that, you know, with offering support for Palestine. So we've seen a lot of, you know, a substantial backlash. So, you know, just kind of, what do you, when you see the backlash, you know, like, what do you think about, you know, just what comes to mind with that?
[00:17:13] Speaker B: No, it's good because it helps me finish off the thought I was on because that'll explain my thoughts to the backlash here because that's where I was going with this was, and just, and I'm glad you stopped me in my bots comparison to here with the George Floyd summer. But the reason I brought it up is because that's something that was very culturally sensitive in the United States.
But, you know, and I know there were solidarity protests with, with, with BLM and all that that summer, but in general, other countries don't have the same cultural nuances we do. But what I'm saying is because this represents something that's in the holy land and that all three major religions pay attention to what's going on around Jerusalem and all that. And there was a long history of things like anti semitism. There's a long history of the culture, of tension between Arabs and Jews in the region. And all that is that this one now is like, it's like one of our cultural issues but on a global scale with everybody looking at it at the same time and everybody commenting. So going back to now, the point of the backlash, I think you make a good point that, like you said, when the plan, even if it's a bad plan when it fails, is that's when people aren't, you know, people kind of take notice. And I think you're right in a certain way. That's what I feel like. What happened when we see these Ivy League schools protesting in support of the Palestinians and, well, the students at the Ivy League schools. Yeah. Oh, sorry. Sorry. Students. You're right. Not this, not the school buildings themselves.
[00:18:50] Speaker A: Universities themselves haven't necessarily been releasing tons of statements on that, but the students, student organizations and so forth.
[00:18:58] Speaker B: Yeah. And so, and that set me thinking a lot over, you know, just watching this stuff because I thought, you know, number one, you know, like you said, I'm going to give some deference to some people in those crowds. Maybe they didn't realize what, you know, maybe they really genuinely are talking about the palestinian long term stuff and all that and not necessarily what happened two weeks ago on October 7. But I think, you know, at this .2 weeks into this, people that are still protesting against Israel, I think, are pretty aware of what Hamas did at this point. And so we all can make our assumptions about what's in their mind. But I think I started thinking about, like, well, how would it look if we had a small group of college kids on campuses protesting in support of Dylann Roof or Derek Chauvin after the killing of blacks, whether it be at the church in 2015 or George Floyd when he got murdered in 2020?
Just what would that look like? And not so much what would that look like? Because that is what it is. People protesting and having their own way of communicating how they feel about something. What I'm more thinking is if the schools took time to have a response, how would that, how would, how would the country react to that? If we had kids protesting that Derek Chauvin as a police officer was being mistreated for being seen as murdering George Floyd and let's say Harvard University or UPenn just was silent about those, those kids. I don't, again, I don't think you'll be received well by the majority of american public, especially black Americans. So that's where I just.
[00:20:41] Speaker A: Statements, though, whether it would be received. The black Americans aren't the majority of the american population. Not even close. So are you saying it wouldn't be. Obviously, you're saying it wouldn't be received well by black Americans or majority of black Americans. Are you saying it wouldn't be received? You don't think it'd be received well by the majority of Americans as well?
[00:20:55] Speaker B: Yeah, I think it wouldn't be received well. I think, you know, whether the media and those, I think a majority of Americans will say, yeah, we, there's something slightly uncomfortable about trying to defend someone who just murders somebody in cold blood on tape, on the open. And I think about defending the Hamas actions that we've seen, that they did something pretty heinous.
[00:21:14] Speaker A: Let me throw something at you, because I think that's an interesting point in the sense that that goes back to the first point I made today. It's the timing of it, you know, like, it's one of those things that right when something happens that your react, your immediate reaction and your reaction in the immediate aftermath is going to define, is going to be looked at, viewed, viewed differently than necessarily. If you look at it ten years later or 20 years later, if it's like, oh, no, I was in favor of this. Like the example of this is kind of like just the confederacy who was a rebel group against the United States. And there are many people. If those same. If people in 1860, 518, 65 were like, yeah, go, Confederacy. If it would have been looked at differently now than if the people doing that now, you know, because just time has a way of, it's not as raw of a wound to be like, how could you say that right now? And so a lot of times people talk about things in the abstract, like, oh, okay, yeah, this is once a lot of time has passed and it doesn't evoke the same emotional response. I think, though, where I wanted to go with this, actually, or one of the, you know, one of the thoughts that kind of stood out to me is the backlash itself is, I think it's similar to the pro palestinian push in the sense that we have different kind of mindsets that are, we're lumping into in one pot here. You know, like, we have, there's definitely, there's a humanitarian backlash. Like, what in the world? Like, we've just seen civilians getting killed, civilians getting taken hostage. You guys are supporting that. Like, from just a humanitarian standpoint, that's offensive, you know, like, so you have that part of the backlash, but you also have backlash that, like I said, there's people, some people to look at any support of the Palestinians is support of terrorism. And so there's some of that there, there's an anti, quote unquote Muslim, you know, like, where there's, you know, oh, the Muslim, you know, like people, a lot of times there are, there are people who look at the Muslims as pro terrorism, something like that. So there's, there's an anti brown backlash as well. Like, we're part of that as well. And I'm not saying anybody who questions what Hamas did or doesn't support what Hamas did, that or anybody who's looking at the, the Ivy League school universities or other people who have voice, sport support for Palestine is in all of those groups. But because myself, you know, like, I look at, I'm looking, I'm skeptical and not supportive of what the Ivy League students are doing from the standpoint of, from a humanitarian standpoint. Like, it's just, like, yo, you can't do that. Like, it's just, there's civilians are getting killed. That's not, you know, like that. That's, that's not part of the game to me, or it's part of the, it's not part of war to me, so to speak. If you're trying, if the mas is trying to make these changes or whatever, they're not going to get might get me on their side by killing civilians, you know, like that.
[00:23:48] Speaker B: That's just not, let's be distinct here, because I could hear someone already saying, yeah, but the Israelis are dropping bombs as you're speaking on civilians. Right? So that's what makes, well, there's two.
[00:23:58] Speaker A: Points there that they could also point out. There have been many verified claims of Israelis going into Palestinian before this and this with settlers going in and killing innocent civilians as well. Like, so you can point to both sides. And honestly, that's where we came down, if you recall our initial show. And just like, and you said it already today, there are no winners here. Everybody has blood on their hands here. But it's not like in the same way, I'm not going to say if Israel, now if they're targeting civilians, that is a different thing. I do distinguish targeting civilians then the civilians being casualties, so to speak. I think that's different. It's not much better. It's still civilian death. But targeting civilians is a different level. It's a higher level of egregiousness. I think many people would look at it in that way.
So ultimately, though, I think you have to make the attempt, if you're looking at this and trying to be fair, trying to be reasonable, trying to look at it from the standpoint of preserving human life, you can't on one hand say anybody who voices support for pro palestinian. I mean, they need to explain that, though, to me. You know, it's like, what are you, you're saying? You're supporting, you know, going in knocking out civilians or taking hostages or whatever you supporting just generally, hey, we got to do better by these people. And then in the same line or the same, in the same thing saying, okay, anybody who's looking at who's going pushing back against the pro palestinian push, that backlash, like, okay, well, is your concern that the callousness towards a potential humanitarian issue or is it some of these other things? And so grouping everyone together, that kind of, or one side or the other is kind of our specialty as human beings. So that's a big ask, you know, but I do think it's important to keep in mind that there are these different elements inside these different kind of push, these divergent pushes that we're seeing.
[00:25:41] Speaker B: Yeah. And I think that's why to me, I start thinking, because like you said, just this topic of the Palestinians and Israelis is so complex and the tit for tats and, you know, each side can point at enough that the other side's done to justify for their own side and their own kind of people that support their side to be able to say, that's enough for me to internalize that yeah, this is why my. I'm right and my side's right and the other side is wrong.
[00:26:13] Speaker A: Almost. No matter what happens, we're right. Like, no matter what we do.
[00:26:16] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:26:17] Speaker A: Because of, because of. Yeah. Anybody or everybody can point to blank, you know, fill in the blank and say, yeah, yeah, we have to do like this.
[00:26:26] Speaker B: This is why it's so sensitive, because it involves religion as well. I mean, look, you can, I mean, people take it back, you know, to the old days, right, that the jewish temple was sacked in Jerusalem in 100 Ad by the Romans. And the Jews have always wanted to get back to their home.
In the meantime, Muslims, you know, that religion developed and they've occupied that area for a long time and feel it's their home. That's why this is way deeper than, than other issues that most of us have ever dealt with, especially us in America. And especially if you don't have either an israeli background, european jewish background, or an arab and muslim background, if you're in the United States without one of those three, then you basically really don't have an emotional connection in this way that those people with those three, one of those three, or a combination of those three lineages feels about this. And that's why also, like we say about these Ivy League protests and all that, I mean, like, what happens at a lot of times the United States, a lot of people open their mouth and start talking about stuff that they really don't have an understanding of.
[00:27:34] Speaker A: I mean, that's not really the United States, though. That's, that's a human thing.
[00:27:39] Speaker B: Okay, maybe we just have the biggest microphone on it, but there's no maybe about that. It's.
But it's just, um. But that's kind of my, my thought there is, because what I've tried to do, even in preparing for today, is think about what, what other things are very sensitive to us. And that's why I appreciate you bringing up, like, the Confederacy, because, you know, we look at these other parts of the world, other countries, other cultures sometimes, and say, well, you know, how come they can't get it together? How come they can't just solve this? And then we have our own issues in this country that look at how we behave on this stuff.
[00:28:12] Speaker A: I mean, and there is thousand year issues that people live through.
[00:28:17] Speaker B: Yeah. Like, meaning is go talk to somebody in their seventies or eighties and honest people, whether, no matter what kind of side they're on, will tell you how the country was prior to 1965.
[00:28:28] Speaker A: And so, and there's, there's fights now like, oh, we can't teach people about the civil rights movement.
[00:28:34] Speaker B: Is that, is that this, this palestinian israeli conflict actually justifies the teaching of history in a raw and way, an unfiltered way not to try and teach it in a way that somebody doesn't feel bad, because I'm sure that this history with Palestinians and Israeli, yeah, I'm positive that, just like we've been saying here on the show, there's enough from both sides that somebody can feel bad if you say something about the other side. And that's pretty much what we're watching here, is that everyone's pointing fingers at each other and everybody's saying that the other side doesn't know what they're talking about or I don't want to hear what they have to say. And I feel like in another world, look at the state that we live in in Florida. We have 2023 as seen. Basically, the school board of Florida basically change its curriculum on history and about certain facts about our history and certain facts about who participated and how they participated in the country's history. And then there's other stuff they've changed about the actual state history and who's participating, who hasn't. And I think that we look at these things and it seems like, oh, well, over there they can't get it together.
And the way we're behaving towards each other here in general topics, we should look at the Israel palestinian conflict as a warning that at some point when you demonize, you know, the quote, unquote, other side or your opponent, even though your neighbors, you may end up in a situation where you just can't coexist without violence. And that's a shame.
[00:30:21] Speaker A: That's, that's an excellent point. And even tying it to the need to teach history in a certain way, because essentially, if you're only, if you're going to teach history in a way that won't offend a certain group of people or, you know, won't let you know, like, then what you're doing specifically is failing to give them perspective. You are radicalizing them. Because imagine if, well, and this may be the case, but if, if people in Israel only learn about bad, they never learn about things that Israel might have done that weren't good. They only learn about bad things that the, the Palestinians, excuse me, have done. They only learn about that. And then, you know, they're going to, in their minds, be much more radicalized as far as what it'll take, what they should be doing to the past Palestinians, if they don't, they don't learn any perspective, like, okay, well, Israel kind of did this. That was too much. But the Palestinians did this, that was kind of too much. They learned to handle the complexity of the relationship. And when it comes time to try to create a way forward that doesn't involve shooting, then they can be better equipped to deal that if they only learn one side of what's happened so that they don't feel bad, then they're not going to be able to do that. On the reverse side, if Palestinians only learn Israel did this, these settlers, they come in, they do this. You know, Israel bombed here, and then this happened. If that's all they learned, they never learn about anything that the palestinian group Hamas or anybody might have done that was messed up. Then again, they're being radicalized, whether intentionally or unintentionally. And so, along those same lines, what's happening here in Florida, for example, will radicalize people because what they, they will never learn the complexity of the issue. And when complex issues come up, they won't be able to handle it. They'll reject it. They'll retreat to their corner and say, I only want information that makes me feel good. Because when I was a kid, I only got to, I only got exposed to things that make me feel good. I never got exposed to something that was like, ooh, that makes it a little more, you know, that makes it a little more understanding why there's this friction here or why this group did that. And so you, you handicap people, you know, and that's, like you said, that's a great warning for the direction that some people here in this country are taking it right now. Again, whether it's intentional or unintentional, they're definitely setting up to radicalize people to where they become so self righteous. They become so self righteous because all they're aware of is things that would support their own mindset or position. So, and that leads me, actually, to just the kind of the information environment that we have. And there's two things, two kind of phrases I want to throw out or words, phrases I want to throw out. One is misinformation. You know, and social media specializes in misinformation. Misinformation travels faster, is promoted more, everything. There's also just setting aside the idea of information that's incorrect. There's also just the information silos, which kind of plays into what I was just saying, where you only learn about what the other side is doing bad. You never learn about where your side might have done something that was regrettable. And so, you know, just. And then how, though, misinformation, information silos, and then also just human psychology, how do you think that plays a role in what we're seeing as far as how people are? Again, the jit, like, people are seeing different things, but the general idea of what has happened is pretty straightforward, but we're seeing these divergent kind of mindsets going. What do you, what do you see about? Or what do you see when you're looking at that?
[00:33:27] Speaker B: Yeah, I think it's, it's, look, there's nothing abnormal with what we're seeing in the sense that the race for information is always the first, you know, or what truth is, like the first casualty of war, and there's the fog of war.
[00:33:45] Speaker A: They said that before social media came around.
[00:33:47] Speaker B: Yeah.
So that's what I mean is that with the modern ecosystem of Internet, social media, the regular media, all that, we've already seen how disinformation can spread quickly and how it can radicalize people like we've seen domestically here in the United States with some of our people that have done violent things in the name of politics and all that.
Remember, we had the former speaker of the House, her husband was attacked by a dude with a hammer because he was ginned up and radicalized online about politics. And then what happened, just like now, is not like everybody stood back and said, you know what? Families are off limits. We're all Americans here. Let's, you know, these are, we've elected these people. You know, we can yell and scream at them, but, you know, people shouldn't break into their homes and attack, you know, 80 plus year old people that are just because they're married to a politician, that's not what happened. It was a typical, just like with this Israel and Hamas thing. One side, the Democrats, was all upset and all their media was upset, and the other side, on the right, made it like it was a joke. And you had people, influential people in our body politic, like Elon Musk, who owns, you know, x, or formerly twinner, and the wealthiest guy in the world, chiming in and saying, you know, giving oxygen to a conspiracy theory that they were gay lovers, which.
[00:35:15] Speaker A: So my point is a deflection. Just, I want to get. Which was a deflection, an attempt to say that this was justified or defended for other reasons, basically.
[00:35:25] Speaker B: Yeah. And so that's what I'm just saying is that when we look over at Israel and the Palestinians and all that, you know, it's a good lesson for everybody. I mean, this is about humanity, right? That we all are susceptible to going down that type of dysfunction in terms of how we relate to each other. That's the Balkans, like you said. That's the confederacy against the union. These things aren't in a vacuum just because it's over there. And I think that the way that we are, and that's why I guess I'm saying, is that we're seeing now this. This disinformation and the use of it as a weapon now at a global scale at one time, looking at this conflict where before we've seen it in nation states, you know, whether it was Brexit or, like I said, stuff here, but this is the first time in, like, the whole world's on this stuff. And it. And it's just interesting. One of the things I want.
I want to read this to show you how interesting this is, because it reminds me of, you know, again, Israel seems like got a little bit complacent with their. In terms of intelligence collecting and all that, and just relying on the fact they were a bigger player and they had a big budget to spend on all the fancy toys in, you know, military and intelligence stuff. But I'll read here, there's a gentleman named Rafi Mendelsohn, who's the vice president of the israeli bot monitoring firm Sybra. He said more than 40,000 fake accounts have pushed pro hamas narratives online, and thousands of them were created a year before the attack. That's what I found interesting, is how. How in advance this was planned. But think about that.
[00:37:08] Speaker A: This was a part of the campaign. This was.
[00:37:10] Speaker B: That's my point. Like, I heard of them training with, you know, the, you know, the hang gliders and the, you know, like the. For, like, mock villages. Yeah. You know, I mean, sorry.
[00:37:22] Speaker A: Physical training, physically training.
[00:37:23] Speaker B: That's what I'm looking for. That they were doing the villages and all that for a year before, but this shows you that the. The importance of information warfare. Right? That for a year before, they were setting up fake social media accounts so that as soon as this happened, they could go and proliferate. Me, 40,000 fake accounts will get to millions of people within a few hours.
[00:37:45] Speaker A: Especially if they've been designed and curated for the purpose of correct. Maximizing exposure with people who might be. Have a sympathetic ear. And, I mean, to me, I think that's actually a big point here, is that all of this stuff is implicit in our human. In our humanity. You know, like, people have a desire for simplicity, you know, and so that's why a lot of times, conspiracy theories or, you know, like, conspiracy theories play oftentimes on the desire for simplicity. There's a big bad, there's a hero, and, you know, it's Marvel Cinematic Universe at that point. And, you know, like the. So we have that desire, but. And so that's always played, you know, like, as media advanced, you know, whether it be the printing press, whether it be like just pamphlets or whatever, it's always been information has always been a part of, and disseminating information, you know, making one side look all bad and one side look all good and stuff, has always been a part of it. The thing that is new, or that we should take note of is that social media is just much better at this than anything we've ever had in the. For before. Not unlike the. Sure the printing press allowed for people to be better at it. And, you know, other type forms of mass media, you know, like another big jump being mass media. You know, you go to radio, tv, and all that kind of stuff, but social media is just much better. And that's something that is we're gonna have to reckon with, because we have to ask, what kind of society do we want? You know, it. When mass media, which was a substantial jump in efficiency and efficacy from the print media that existed before the United States, put a lot of regulation on the distribution of information on mass media, you know, fairness, doctrines, and all this other type stuff that was out there that really prevented those forms of media from being used in ways to overtly manipulate people. We haven't done that with social media. And social media is something like the creators of it, you know, they know like it. Social media is something that can expertly be used to do what's called to cause imperceptible changes in your own behavior. It can change you without you knowing it. And so as long as it's untethered to any kind of. Kind of regulation or anything, then we subject ourselves to. To continually be radicalized. And again, that's whether it's misinformation. But that's also one of the things social media does, is it puts us in information silos where we only will see it doesn't want to show us things that we'll disagree with, because its goal is to keep us logged in. And if it shows us stuff we don't like, they know we're liable to log out, you know, so it's very. It creates a very dangerous environment where what we do for entertainment is going to radicalize us. You know, if we're not careful, and because it's imperceptible changes of behavior, even if we are careful, it can radicalize us.
[00:40:16] Speaker B: So, you know, it's like a cigarette, but for the brain, like, seriously, like, like cigarettes, you know, I guess tobacco is a plant. I don't know how addictive or not that is, but once the companies put the chemicals in. Right. Make sure that makes an imperceptible changes to your health. But ten years later, after smoking a pack a day, you know, you coughing up a lung and you're not.
[00:40:38] Speaker A: Well, yeah, it's perceptible at that point, but it wasn't perceptible any way along the way.
[00:40:42] Speaker B: Your first or second cigarette. You didn't know that you were starting to go down that road.
[00:40:46] Speaker A: Yeah, no, no. And so, you know, like, I know you had one other thought. Did you want to get to that one?
[00:40:51] Speaker B: Yeah, I mean, it's just the, I mean, kind of on this vein, like you're saying of the social media and kind of, you know, the world we live in. I think one of the things that makes this more difficult is, you know, just history and science has shown that images are very powerful to human beings, and I think different from, that's why this is just a different time now. We have, and we got to be very careful of how we move forward as a society.
[00:41:17] Speaker A: Images slash video, you know?
[00:41:18] Speaker B: Yeah, and that's what I mean by, you know, like you're saying about the regulation of public airways and the way it used to be done with media. I mean, I think we need this. And this is where it's difficult to have a conversation about regulating content and speech in a country that we revere, the First Amendment, freedom of speech. But kind of like the cigarette analogy or some forms of food, you know, at some point.
[00:41:45] Speaker A: Well, cigarette drugs, alcohol, I mean, even television. Television and radio was. Was subjected to certain. It's not regulating what you can say. It's regulating how you present information. And that's the same kind of thing here. It's not regulating what people can say. It's regulating whether you regulate the algorithms or you make people disclose the algorithms. As far as, hey, what are you doing here? How are you putting this stuff in front of people?
[00:42:04] Speaker B: That's the tough thing, because I always feel like the tech companies will be one step ahead because they'll disclose something they did three years ago, and then they got something new that's already going to beat that. But besides, you know, that being beside the point, I think that you know, what I was getting at was, that's the new hurdle we have. Because when I go back to, like, sharing my anecdotal stuff about, you know, I had a friend who sent me something that was misinformation. It was a, it was a meme shot of the president of Turkey saying, we're gonna defend the Palestinians at all costs. And the first thing I said to myself is, you know, I'm not an expert on the nation of Turkey, but I've seen the news enough, and that guy enough to know that he seems pretty measured. I don't think he'd be saying that. And of course, boom, I do a fact check, and it's misinformation. I had another call with a friend of mine who's Israeli, who was beside himself in distraught, telling me about how he saw a video of a kid in a cage and in Gaza and all that that was kidnapped. And I go do the fact check on that and that it was also misinformation. And I'm reading online about how many videos. Like, there was a video apparently, of a young girl who was 16 years old being lynched in Guatemala in 2015.
And that video has been circulating online now as proof of what the Hamas has done with some of the hostages. And so what I'm saying is that I give the example of my two friends on opposite ends of this discussion and what they share with me, because as much as I might tell them that I found that it's fake, the fact that their brain already saw that and they already were in a position where they were conditioned to want to believe it.
What we're seeing is the ultimate confirmation bias, like in human history, with this conflict and with the way that images are proliferating, because it's hard to not see something once you saw it.
[00:44:00] Speaker A: Speaker one. No, no, no. Remember, this was study, when we talked about the russian model, the fire hose falsehood, one of the things they had discovered, well, that they were leveraging is the fact that the reporting of something or the seeing something, your brain remembers more than subsequently learning that it wasn't true. And so that was always their incentive to get the part of the fire hose of falsehood was get out there quick and get out there repeatedly. Because if you, even if later it comes out that what you're saying isn't true, people won't remember that it came out, that it wasn't true. All they'll remember is what they originally saw. And like you pointed out, their emotional feeling, their emotional reaction to that. And so, yeah, I mean, you, we're in a situation basically, and I want to get to the next topic, but I just want just summing it up like we're in a situation where we can't trust what we see, even though it's going to influence us. Like, it's going to change us. It's going to imperceptibly change us, but we can't even trust what we see. And so, like, yeah, we're entering, you know, like, I mean, this kind of undersells it, but we're entering the wild, wild west of that kind of sense.
[00:44:59] Speaker B: Just to finish off one example for us at home. This is why I want to talk to fellow americans. Obviously, we live here. I mean, think about the big lie.
I mean, and the idea, like you're saying about a narrative gets created and then people don't, you know, a lot of people just sort of get confused and decide, I want to just either shut it off or I don't believe anyone. And so it's very disruptive. And we've been subject to that here.
[00:45:23] Speaker A: And that can be used basically intentionally. Understanding that people will have those reactions can be used intentionally, which, interestingly enough, is a great segue to our second topic today, which gets into, you know, we have, this is a legit academic, you know, author everything who is coming out and saying, and I'm saying he understands this is going to be inflammatory. But basically his premise is that virtually all as humans, you know, not, you know, animally, like, not animals, like primates, stuff like that. But as humans, virtually all of our behaviors are beyond our conscious control. So, you know, that basically saying there's no free will. So what were your thoughts? You know, now he just, he's promoting a book. So, you know, we obviously that's going to bring out you, when you're promoting a book, you're bringing out the most interesting stuff. But, you know, like, so what are your thoughts? You know, there was a write up in the Los Angeles Times. We'll have that in the show notes. But what was your thoughts on this?
[00:46:16] Speaker B: No, I thought it was very interesting. I mean, like you said, as a segue from the first topic.
[00:46:22] Speaker A: Oh, just real quick, the author's name. Robert Sapolsky. Robert Sapolsky.
[00:46:26] Speaker B: Yeah. No, and it's interesting because one of my friends, just in this heat of the last few weeks, sent me the documentary from YouTube, which I know is very famous, called Zeitgeist. And I saw this, this scientist was actually interviewed in that 20 years ago. He looks, he looks a bit younger. Yeah.
So it's all interesting stuff. But. But no, I think it reinforces the type of scientific research we've seen in recent decades, especially with the ability of technology to help us see things like the brain scans and all that stuff that obviously even people like Sigmund Freud didn't have access to seeing patterns of the brain and being able to ask people questions and when parts of the brain light up in milliseconds and all that. So I think it's been understood in recent decades for people like us who find this stuff interesting, that, yeah, we are a lot less able to make freely conscious decisions than we want to believe.
The whole idea of how much your childhood impacts you even when you're an adult, so on and so forth, I think all lends to that. This seems a bit radical, though, to say that, like, from birth to if you lived a full life expectancy to, like, 88 years old, that nowhere in that period of time did you have any free will.
[00:47:55] Speaker A: Because it's an extreme. I mean, like, you go from, like, most people in, you know, studying this kind of agree that there are a lot more going into our decisions. Like, we have much less control than we think. But he's going all the way to the end of the road saying there's none.
[00:48:09] Speaker B: Yeah, no, that's. What I mean is that seems a little bit extreme to hear that.
[00:48:14] Speaker A: Yeah, it's jarring. It's jarring.
[00:48:16] Speaker B: But once you read into the way he explains it, I mean, again, I'm not going to say, oh, I believe it just because he's a scientist and he said this, but I am going to say, I mean, it's plausible, right? I mean, I'd like to believe I'm. I have a certain level of autonomy and free will, but also understanding, like we say, human nature, the influence that we all have from our environment, our surrounding world, that there's a lot of things that influence us. And I think going back to just the discussion we had in part one, like when you said imperceptible changes. Yeah, those things begin. So whether it is a certain level.
[00:49:00] Speaker A: Of addiction, let me make the connection by saying imperceptible changes in behavior. Implicit in that is a lack of free will, because it's imperceptible. That means you're not aware of it happening. And that's kind of what that's similar to what this guy is saying, is that we're just not aware of the things that are causing us to make these decisions. They're in our unconscious, not in our conscious part of our brain.
[00:49:23] Speaker B: Yeah, well, that's what I'm saying. Whether it be an addiction to social media or that stuff or an addiction to cigarettes. Right. I think the idea of imperceptible changes having a perceptible outcome at some point is real, which is a good example. If we could extrapolate that into other areas of life, then I guess, you know, if my inability to control myself from smoking a cigarette, that may then lead to me having a falling out with us, with a spouse who doesn't like smoking or may lead to me meeting someone because we stopped at a rest stop to smoke a cigarette, and we ended up meeting there. Right. Which may then lead to something else. Something else. So I could sit there and tell you, James, it was my own free will and accord as to exactly why I married my wife.
But maybe the way this guy's just.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, it wasn't. It was a fact that I couldn't control smoking a cigarette, and I ended up at a rest stop and happened to stand next to a woman and start talking to her. And then we got, you know, we do end up having a good relationship and get married, so. Well, but is that my free will or not? You know what I mean? Like, that's.
[00:50:32] Speaker A: You know, but to me, that's kind of where. That's the interesting part of this is you're getting it. You're getting into the weeds between influence, which there can be multiple factors of influence and actually control. Where does influence in, like, things can influence you to make a decision or to, you know, can influence your circumstances to where you. If you're in circumstance a, you'll make decision a. If you're in circumstance b, you'll make decision b. So factors can influence that versus control. And to me, I mean, it's interesting that he throws it out there, but, I mean, what he's throwing out there is impossible to prove, in my opinion. Like, if you're. When anytime you're going all or nothing, then you're setting yourself up, particularly from a science standpoint, like a scientific standpoint, that be likes me saying, 100% for sure there's life in this galaxy or 100% sure there's not life in this galaxy. I mean, like, that's, you know, like, that's. It's much safer from a scientific standpoint and more easily verifiable to say there probably is or there probably isn't, because, you know, go, am I going to visit the billions of planets in, you know, the galaxy to prove it right or to prove it wrong. So anytime you're on the extreme of all or nothing. And the reason I'd say it like that is because, let's say that his research, he's able to verify that 99% of the decision you make is based on factors out of your control. And then there's 1% that he can't prove. That is like, that 1% is kind of in this consciousness thing, like we can't figure out, well, where does that 1% go? Because different people might react in different ways that aren't necessarily fully explained by their circumstances. That 1% then is, if you have 1% control over your decision and 99% is based on other factors, is that free will? You know, and I would say it is, you know, like, because again, it's a given that so many different factors relate to how it is we make our decisions. So many things that we're not aware of, whether it be, as you point out, childhood, whether it be circumstances, whether it be, you meet your example with it, okay, I met somebody at a rest stop or whatever, how you react to that person deals or will be affected by your last interaction with somebody. You know, if you just got off the phone and get an argument, yada, yada, yada, going back and forth, then you come into somebody, you're talking to them, you're gonna be a different person than if you just go off. Oh, yeah. Wow. You just graduated from school. That's the best thing ever. You're going to be in a different place. You know, you're the same person, you know, so all of these factors aren't going to. You don't go in, when you start talking to that person and control necessarily the. Where you're coming from, from an emotional standpoint. So all of that stuff. Again, I look at this as wild to see, but also pretty much like, oh, yeah, of course. You know, in the sense that, yes, most of the factors behind how we end up, what we end up, or what we're deciding to do are things we're not controlling. But again, if it's 99% and 1%, that's still free will.
[00:53:17] Speaker B: Yeah. And I mean, he talks about that a bit. I think you're right, though. That's why the idea of being absolute, because I keep thinking about the first topic, he did not thought, yeah, to be absolute on a topic like that is going to get you in trouble. You know, it gets you in trouble.
[00:53:34] Speaker A: But it's not because it's going to be also put, how are they going to prove him wrong. You know, like, it's. It's, you know, so that's what I mean is that.
[00:53:42] Speaker B: But. But that's why your analogy of life in the galaxy outside of, obviously, the earth makes sense, because to be absolute one way or another, it's. At least at this point in our technology, it's impossible to prove. So I think it's the same thing with this. I mean, the brain. I mean, they call it a three pound universe. Right. That the brain is almost like another universe, like, from the inside. So it's. It's probably we're at that point to where we're not at a point yet. We can really know what's going on in the brain 100%. So.
[00:54:15] Speaker A: But remember, one of the things that if you look at us, one of the other things that's going on is this whole idea of self awareness, you know, like. And that just thinking about the idea of whether or not you have control influences the level of control you can exert.
[00:54:30] Speaker B: Now, you're going to quantum physics, like.
[00:54:33] Speaker A: Exactly.
[00:54:34] Speaker B: Just observing it is going to change. Change it.
[00:54:37] Speaker A: Exactly.
[00:54:37] Speaker B: Which is a whole different concept. And that's which, by the way, great pool.
[00:54:42] Speaker A: Great pool. Great pool. The quantum part, you know.
[00:54:46] Speaker B: Yeah. So now we got to have a different show.
We got to stop this one, because now I got to have a whole show about the double double split experience.
[00:54:53] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[00:54:55] Speaker B: But it's. It's. It's. Look, it's fascinating. I think just.
That's why I found the topic interesting, because not to just keep going back to part one, but this idea that we now can see just in this period of the last 15 years or so with social media, we have all. Everybody listening to this, know somebody, whether yourself or someone else that you've watched, change in a certain way, hopefully for the better, but a lot of times, maybe more negative due to their interaction with the Internet period.
[00:55:30] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:55:30] Speaker B: And so, and so we know that people can change, and in their mind, they're in control. They're going to tell you. Yeah, yeah. No, no, I know this is right. I know this is right. But you're looking at the same person that you knew from 1015 years ago and saying, no, you you would have never thought this was correct or you wouldn't have been this rabid about it or this extreme or this emotional connected to it prior to these influences.
[00:55:58] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:55:58] Speaker B: Which you don't seem to perceive yourself have. Have moved you from point a to point b.
[00:56:04] Speaker A: No, that was studied even outside of the context of social media. That was studied in the context of news media, where they, this was a recent study, maybe in the last year or two, where they took Fox News viewers and had them, you know, took documented kind of their positions on things, took them out of that Fox News environment and, you know, just had them watch regular news for, you know, a period of time. And then when they came back, what they found is that their politics, so to speak, didn't change, but how they, you know, how far along the line they went did change, you know, so that's. And they're not aware of this, you know, so it's like, even that's not just limited to social media. Social media, like I said, it's just so it's much more effective at it than any media before it. In the same way the television was much more effective than the media before it. Same way the radio was effective, more like, so this, it's just one, we are living through one of the next major jumps in media. And so that's gonna be, that's gonna.
[00:56:55] Speaker B: Affect, you know, it's crazy how we.
[00:56:57] Speaker A: Perceive things, but now we gotta get out of here, man, real quick.
[00:57:00] Speaker B: That study was four weeks. That's what's crazy about it.
[00:57:02] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:57:03] Speaker B: That's how quickly people chance. I mean, that these are things that can, it doesn't take years for people.
[00:57:09] Speaker A: To get influenced, change, and not even know that they changed. So.
[00:57:12] Speaker B: Yeah, exactly.
[00:57:12] Speaker A: You know, so, and that, so that, you know, that affects how we view, you know, from a media standpoint. But that also, it goes into, I mean, the free will mindset. Like, again, the person who, four weeks ago or before, week before the study, that person might have made decision a in certain situation. Whereas two weeks, you know, three weeks later, four weeks later, they may make a decision, different decision. So it, where does, for how much does free will play in that versus how much who they are at that moment? So, you know, these things get, I mean, you can keep digging and digging and digging. I don't think there is a bottom yet, but we got it.
[00:57:42] Speaker B: A rabbit hole.
[00:57:44] Speaker A: Yeah, that is why they call them rabbit holes. But we're gonna close up shop here. We do appreciate, everybody, for joining us on this episode of call. Like I see it. Subscribe to the podcast, rate it, review it, tell us what you think. Send it to a friend. Until next time. I'm James Keys.
[00:57:56] Speaker B: I'm Tunde with Lana.
[00:57:58] Speaker A: All right, we'll talk to you next time.
