Episode 256 : Mystery Episode 27

5 Responses to Episode 256 : Mystery Episode 27

1. jas says:

   February 4, 2016 at 4:24 pm

   So basically what you’re saying is that the TSA has a placebo effect?

   One other angle about surveillance is that if this is what is supposed to be making us safer, then doing it in this kind of way makes no sense. How can one possibly be paying attention everywhere?

   Another somewhat scary thought–if one uses anti-surveillance devices, is this in fact a way of drawing attention to oneself?

   You know what else isn’t rocket science……brain surgery, that’s what.

   Although the goatee haired peanut-butter was really gross, bulimic Superman might have it beat.

   When you were talking about the looking-glass effect and how it impacts people, you might have been thinking of this study from a couple years ago about how children view race: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EQACkg5i4AY

   It also makes me think of something I was reading just recently about little girls reacting to the new Barbie models. Apparently, when they don’t think they are being observed, girls were making fun of the new “curvy” Barbie–calling her various derogatory names. These were 6 year olds, but they already know.

   I might not have quite understood one of the point about psychological conditions like the placebo effect, but, Will, were you saying that psychological conditions would not in fact change (placebo effect stronger or weaker), but only the cultural conditions which might impact them? I don’t think this could happen in any kind of fast way (like something that is the result of a cultural change over several hundred years), but isn’t it possible that psychological conditions (if that’s the right word) could change as a result of a very prolonged cultural cause?

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   • William says:

     February 5, 2016 at 6:06 pm

     Well, I think that’s a good question. Studies have fairly convincingly shown that people who live under the stressful conditions of poverty eventually appear to have radically different patterns of thinking compared to people who don’t live in those conditions, which speaks to a kind of psychological elasticity subject to external factors. I don’t know how long it would take, but I imagine that, if a culture encouraged a kind of hyper-correction of a given psychological tendency for a long enough period of time, the baseline for that tendency could shift, creating a permanent new baseline for that population.

     Put a more cynical way, a culture that encourages people to be stupid, if given enough time and consistency, could, in theory, make those people actually stupid.

     Reply
2. Stuart says:

   February 11, 2016 at 3:16 pm

   Two of my heavy hitting questions!

   I guess I have nothing to say on climate change, we are screwed. Oh well.

   On the surveillance stuff, the discussion on TSA was interesting. Despite the drastic changes made since 9/11, they’ve been found to be quite ineffective in their processes. A “secret shopper” type operation, the other day, snuck 90 or so weapons through the entire security process, i.e., they were successful on most of their attempts.

   I’m with William generally, though (if I understood correctly). It’s not really about the fact that I’ve got nothing to hide, it’s what could happen. It’s the slippery slope to how we end up in various facets of a dystopian society. I mean, we all lament China’s “great firewall”, right? And yet that’s starting to happen in the UK. That’s more overt monitoring, as opposed to PRISM/Tempora, but still. Unless there’s some sort of cataclysmic event, I don’t think you walk into a dystopia, I posit you gradually slide, with reasonable erosion of liberties ostensibly to protect us from bad guys/the fruits of decades of failed foreign policy.

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   • William says:

     February 11, 2016 at 3:24 pm

     Agreed.

     Reply
3. Mark says:

   March 28, 2016 at 7:21 pm

   Community Service: Ah come on, the UPTony & UPWilliam have definitely built a community (however small) of listeners. Why I’m sure some of them even prefer you aujokers.

   Steak Tastes Better: Nice JoCo reference.

   William Dafoe as auWilliam: You should start a fund raiser to make that happen. I’d chip in say $5 to see it. 🙂

   Lottery: I’ve never assumed I was likely to win when I play. I join in on office pools (when ti jackpot hits certain limits) primarily as permission to dream what I would do if I had that kind of money and just a little bit not to be last sad sap in the office if the actually hit the jackpot.

   Climate Change: Yes.

   Vampiric Batman: Yup, I’m with auTony. Wayne Industries would just buy a blood bank. And then he would probably start doing research on artificial blood substitute.

   Mass Electronic Surveillance: Yes, very concerned. And there are multiple problems with Tony’s comment that there’s a huge line of people doing worse stuff before anybody would bother coming after him:

   The US legal system is so complex that odds are you’re breaking the law right now, doing something that nobody (except a lawyer) might think of as illegal.
   Our legal system isn’t fully automated. Instead human beings have significant impact on it. Suppose for a moment that somebody who didn’t care for you got involved with law enforcement; it’s not inconceivable that they could shorten that line in front of you.
   Computers keep getting faster, so eventually they’ll be able to automate this enough that the line can’t be long enough to keep you safe.

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