Shownotes Transcript
Open hyper, welcome back to the pod. Today we are discussing the latest Christopher nolan film. Got two of my good friends here to join the conversation with me. Camel Foster back to the show. Uh, camel now as of, uh, this week is a colleague of mine as well is the head of content and fatter fine is also uh cohoes of the fifth column, which is like the only podcast that I listen to other than blocks reported sometimes really is just like the this colum and a former I guess he still a cofounder, free think and former head over there also got tray Stevens for the first time ever on the pod trade is a partner founder fund and a cofounder of anda which is a defense technology company in uh will not really in silicon valley but in tech.
I made a perfect group for this conversation where all big no one fans um let just get into IT today's episode we're going to start with like this is a general view of uh of of open hyer going to get into where going to talk about knowing we're going to talk about this film in the context of uh his other films will talk about what we thought about the film. We're going to get into trace theory the I guess controversy of the title um from the sort of government's perspective commuters got some thoughts just I think the overall I don't I want play up too heavy, but the pessimistic maybe nature of the film. Uh and then I want to talk about the reception and I think where they spend a little bit time on this the reception of this movie and one sort of like one species of reception in particular, which is the like amErica is evil reception.
And i'm going to kind of combat IT with an essay that I read a long time ago that really made a huge impact on me, which is called thank guy for the adam bomb by paul fossil. So let just get into IT. I mean, the open I am.
Oh, can you also mentioned that I should do little spoor alert? And if you are not aware of what happened at the end of world war two, I would just go ahead and paul, this podcast until you go wash the movie and find out, uh, this is where to talk about everything the movie so if you have to see that, definitely um pause, go watch IT come back and I think out with us so I rather that like. I I love crisp heron bad movies.
They are super hair movies, so they don't often, I think, at the credit they deserve. I think they are brilliant. And me, interStellar is the best movie that has ever been made.
People, I meant to be a controversial opinion. I think they're stupid. Um I had some problems though. I think that like like what is the most recent taiwan? I like what the what is going on here and I thought the mental, even as a kid, the very first one that I I was like this is that's him right memento that's where he I was even as like a teenager i'm like what is this post modern bullshit is not for me um and then I think my little sister, I say little word in our late thirties um he says of inception it's like it's like a it's the kind of movie that people think is smart when you're not that smart like that and you guys maybe you're going to push back on this but that's my overall like this. I feel like this movie sits like top third, but like the bottom of that top, maybe I would say I don't know what what is your overall sent of just the movie?
I would say that you know I think I think you basically is to historical epix, right? He has dunkirk and yeah in this one.
excEllent ba dunk, excEllent top third.
And and I think I think like dunkirk was interesting in a way that open hymir wasn't because the whole movie was predicated on the basis of this soundtrack, where they have this like tick that progressively build over the course of the film until the very end when the ticking stopped, when the soldiers came back across the channel um from from million europe.
And I think that made IT really powerful in a way that I was completely unprepared for like physically, emotionally watching that film was just really, really daring um this one yeah to historical story really well but I felt like IT locked that extra something that really unlocked the the like brilliance of his film making um and IT also lacked the complexity of stories that I think he's told the past that i've really loved like the prestige actually is one of my my top movies of all side. I think if you were to break IT down into top thirds, I would put this bottom of top, third, top of second, third um IT definitely didn't for me hit the notes of inter Stellar inception. The prestige IT was A A tear below.
And I think just with bio is IT, by the way, I mean eternal conflict or is IT bio picker BIOS?
It's bio pic.
I mean bio pic. I'm going to go with biopic. C bio pic sounds like seems a weird surgical procedure.
I think they're mostly there. They're usually bad. And they are usually bad in a similar way, which is like they don't know how to plod IT out.
And this is like when you're doing a bio pic, you have to pick up a part of the person's life and tell a story. And they they didn't really choose here, right, that you have two movies in one movie. And so here come the spoilers, right?
If you I mean that only spoilers, it's like, this is history. But in terms if the movie, it's like you've got, on the one hand, the story of the adam bomb, it's being created, it's being built. It's open hymir building his team.
It's like those animals. And that story by itself. For me, I want to see that story.
The second story is the story of him being persecuted by communists, or by being persecuted for being a communist by the U. S. government.
Following all of this in the thousand nine hundred and fifties, are in a carthy era. And that is an interesting story, I guess, IT. But he feels like a interesting piece of the story to me.
It's not the meat. It's not why we're there. It's not why why we're seeing open hymir. And I guess I have a conspiracy theory actually about this and I what do we you guys think about IT? Um like, I mean, right off the ground floor I wanted to see more of the just a bomb shit and I didn't and this whole this whole trial that's happening really just like secret not really a trial. It's um I don't know a sort of secret persecution of him there.
They're trying not give him clearance and kiomi's government um as i'm hearing about his history with communism, watching this film that is clearly designed to make him look like a victim of this a sort of ground like this at the first sort of lens or which you look at IT. My sense was like, are you actually just kind of giving me a way here, like my take away washington is holy shit, that he was definitely a common ist and like, maybe the reason the the soviet got the bomb is like, sort of that is like I like, oh, that I was not up in hymir truth or before this, but I certainly am now that was not like that doesn't seem to be their point, but that is my take away. Is that like, where are you guys on .
that I built I mean, you know where I where I come down and and I don't draw back to the up and I am a story. But I think maybe the place for you and I break a little bit on our obsession with than our seller is that IT was a perfect movie until the freaking test state, and then IT just IT became almost incomprehensible. I think that that's basically what happened in this movie, like they did the trendy dy test and then all the sun. IT took this hard turn into this political commentary about a senate confirmation hearing. And I was like the equivalent of the text act and intersection ers, like.
you should work worse. IT was worse than a pivot, right? Because it's like it's cut throughout the movie. So you don't you don't get to just sit there and be like for me, the natural tension of an adam bomb story is obviously like, holy shit, the show and the germans are going to have an adam bomb.
And what what does that world look like? Which, by the way, is a great question that we should always, always be asking like that. We were very close to that reality. And that is a horrifying, whoever got that bomb first would have shaped the next century and um you're welcome to the rest of the world that IT was amErica but we can table back and get back to you later that the tension is like that's the warning shot oh my god, potential apocalyptics scenario. And then the conclusion is like carota oasis, which we didn't even even see, which is crazy, I guess, because they want to focus on an open heimert. So then I I would have then been like, okay, I I see that they want to focus on him so that I would have been the test but the actual test, like he felt a tecla matic to me somewhat yeah and then I was like, you were rocking back and fourth between this it's like a time hop thing and and that that didn't work for me. Well.
I wanted take a step back just a little bit here, because a lot what I loved about the film is stuff that was IT reactivated, some things from a film class I took in undergrad years and years and years ago. Actually a little daunting to think about the number of years that have passed since then.
But IT was the first time i'd watched a lot of really important classic films like doctor strange of um we watched when Harry met Sally, which I am watched. I'd watched before but I watched under the total age of the filmmaker and to think about the narrative choices that are being made, the source material is being called from as as everyone knows at this point. And the Christopher, her noland's particular interest in devotion to using practical effects in this fill in particular, which I imagine might might be a lot of the reason why he ops not to go show you the wreckage of japan. Having to try to create that in an authentic way is really chAllenging. In addition to wanting to perhaps stay with this narrative and before washing the film, I also went in red american committees, which I know was the principle thing that inspired his decision to make this film. And I remember being a little befuddled by the choice because he just doesn't that book doesn't move in an energetic way IT is this very detail in a literary of facts and this happened and this happened and this happened um and it's told in an almost lawyerly fashion um in the fact that knowing goes from that source material to this really remarkable film which actually I think has a third act or maybe it's just a preambles where he's at university and he is obviously haunted by the the very odd d revelations about the way that the world really works about the implications of quantum mechanics and relativity and it's keeping him up and he closes his eyes and he sees and you get to see this happening on on the stream like atoms colliding with one another, fields interacting with one another and add bottom. That is what's whatever we see.
That's what's really going on really I don't mean to dismiss the the sort of importance of the experience we're having right now at this level um but it's it's really interesting to go from the discovery of this field in the enthusiasm and excitement and even the kind of fear, at least the discomfort that's associated with that to him actually mastering some of this new insight and hey, and the rest of the scientific community and the species broadly like actually leveraging that insight this this thinking matter becoming a aware of these facts of the universe and cracking the adam open and being able to extract something incredible from IT unleashing this power which is both the potential to create essentially limitless energy um and also two level cities and kill one another and of the most honest ways imagine impossibly and the fact that this is a part of the story is one of the things I have found and of most um most invigorating, possibly destroying the world that we've seen so many movies all of us have where the world, the universe, the Cosmos is at stake if we lose and this is one of those instances where literally very, very real, very real possibility here in their minds, you push the spotted, everything goes black for everyone all at once. I had to remind myself, sitting in that film, this is real, like all this happen, these choices are real. Not all of that.
There are some liberties taken, but that is a very real part of the story. There was uncertainty about what all of this might mean, and the implications were enormous on so, so many levels beyond the nazis. Wifi, which is already replying to imagine the responsibility of ultimate existential calamity.
But that is amazing. There was an interesting moment in the film, I forget, which visits st. IT was, who kind of lamented the fact that. Two hundred years of of religious mind blowing research into physics was going to amount to IT was concluding in, like just creating a dome's day device, and our device just an instrument of war.
And in this regard, I found the film a little bit schizophrenic in that, like there was an earlier retard, maybe was later, where open heima is pressed by someone about what he was building. Like, do you think you get the nobel Price for this? And he reminds the person like, will nobel created dynamic? And it's like, these people all seemed to be aware that you are building a bomb. And eventually I want to not get there just yet.
But I do want to like chAllenge the notion that people were as upset going into this about the weapons piece as we have kind of we remember IT now I think that people is like, yes, we're building a weapon and we're fine with that and he needs to happen I think is what a lot of people thought um and I think that that's a fine position to take actually in the middle of a horrifying war um but yeah is I guess I understand uh I guess I understand where where the one scientists is coming from and where you're coming from now. And IT is interesting. And then also, isn't that the history of isn't that the history of scientific and technological progress isn't IT always that? Isn't that what dark IT is? Isn't that we're like every piece of technology that we have like this is kind of the sad. This revelation or this realization to me, was a little bit, I do not see black pilling, but it's hard for me to grapple with because he does seem like most of the things I love most in the world in terms most of the things we celebrate the most um they were developed for this purpose and uh and someone found some way to make something good out of IT. Maybe i'm wrong with that.
What is your try? East, at least double edged, right, like fire, that you can use this to cook your meals and warm your house, or you could burn down an entire city. Think both things are entirely possible and ultimately culpability for the decisions we've respect to what you do with this thing. Um IT comes down to the individual, which can have an interesting insight IT over a .
long enough time. Harries IT IT will be used in both ways. And so as we accelerate church in in the world of technological progress, like with every great leap, you know you have to see topic and vision, but there is a corresponding is right there negative use case that is horrifying.
And this is maybe and this is maybe where the the sort of lei takes are coming from. It's like they're not entirely rock, like with greater reward comes greater risk in, I don't know, was spinning around. I kind of walked out of that movie too also thinking like they're still a risk of nuclear war like colly shit.
I mean, it's a sander thread and like this could start really at any second and maybe now more than ever because we're all in this regard. We're like, oh, the age of nuclear war is over so people get sloppy. They stop thinking about IT and then and IT could .
just begin yeah I I do think that the the fear was there. I don't think that the movie overplayed that at all. I mean, the kind of way the open hammer started, the way the Christmas and drew this out was talking about the letter that Howard eeda in in leo z la um sent to the president kind of warning warning him of the risk and I was that a real test cal event that really happened?
I think a lot of these physicists were very concerned about the potential for an unstoppable chain reaction. Um and you know there's there's a lot of tension in this uh conversation like IT. Actually my great grandfather were found in hand project that Operate national labs um and I had like a massive existence al crisis after the bomb was dropped on here SHE with like a realization of a top sugar program that he was but he didn't know what he was doing and how that how I impact to the world and kind of change things moving forward. This is kind of like of a similar moment in my family is history actually so I think I think the fear was definitely there um but you know the realization that this was you know going to forever change global politics um IT is both um correct and uh you know probably true on the deterrent side of things but also really difficult to grap with emotionally especially um and so I think that I don't feel like I was overplayed all actually well.
I know I know we're going to come around to some of these teams in a deeper way in a little bit. So I i'll job back job back to talking about the narrative itself and the presentation of things in the film, one detail that I think we haven't talked about yet is the fact that there is a scene that they keep returning to. We are engineer.
We are discovering this thing, this knowledge that is just out there about the universe. And it's going to open all sorts of doors to the extent we're opening a door or a weapon. This is a weapon that will end all wars because IT is too hideous to imagine people actually using these that are having these huge conflicts.
So that's what we're doing. And and the same thing that happened with nobel and in T. N, T, it's like, this is so so often an instrument, but no one will actually want to use this.
Well, do they say the sation? Yeah, yeah. There are some very cards of conversations about that. Yeah, but but, you know, that's one aspect of the narrative that I think is worth on paying special attention to um I I also want to mention um because if you know me you know all roads lead back to cormac ma thy is two most recent books. We should really just kind of one book in two different ways.
Stem areas in the passenger have a similar sort of back story, and that the the parents of the protagonist, that book, or the father anyways, the manhattan project, and was haunted by IT in this theme, is kind of woven into the story. So if you haven't read bees, two books, are you really, really shot? And then visit the read.
I read one of his books, I on the road or no, the road, road.
yeah, yeah.
And I was so bleak.
And it's, and every, I mean, I could talk for weeks about how much I hate this book. And one image that is burned in my head forever that I cannot get out, and it's because of that man and I I actually like, I find him to be almost like terrorist in nature, to be honest, not hard time back.
That book is beautiful. The love between this man and the boy who was so this is.
I know they don't have to read other books. We disagree. So fundamental.
The road might be my least favorite of his books. And I still think it's a very good work, which you need to do, go read such A Y, and I am confident you'll love this but and then read blood meridian, which eventually you will come to love as much as I do because I know you have good taste that's IT. We don't. Uh.
you last night of the screening, you gave a little you gave us some opening reMarks before we started and you talked you have tweeted about this as well. Um you talked about the sort of controversy surrounding the name of in hymir. And i'm assuming ing because it's not the controversial i'm seeing a line, it's not the controversies i'm seeing from serve like I guess left of cenote pe people. Uh, you're seeing is the controversies are reading from the government. The government is finds this maybe a little bit controversial or maybe this concept is controversial within government um and that is that it's named open hyper can you just like after the man um can you just take us down that rabbit tell me tell me what you talked about there .
yeah I wouldn't say there's an an open controversy in this particular setting. But I think there there's something very subconscious ly countercultural that's happening here that uh kind of flies in the face of the way of the government things about things which is that we used to believe that individuals, individual people, could change the course of human history um and open heima is one example of this with manhattan project.
There's also people like Kelly Johnson who started skunk works and built the youtube the f one seventeen a the self fighter um the sr seventy one um you know we went from like the right fire to the S R seventy one in less time than as past since the S R seventy one and that all happened under uh under the control of Kelly Johnson you have been a striver with icbms, Grace hopper with machine independent coding languages um like when surf uh and robber com with the internet at darpa. Like there were people that were accountable for pulling us forward. Um you know that the f thirty five program that joined the strike fighter started in nineteen ninety four over a year twenty nine and IT still really doesn't work.
It's like kind of A A manufacturing disaster. Um you know it's been grounded intermittently over the last few years because I had trouble flying in the rain IT had trouble with its life support systems. And the question is like who's responsible for they have thirty five, right?
I think the answer is nobody nobody is responsible for they have thirty five. It's a programme office and and you know the the way that the government has has kind of grown in its bureaucracy is basically to say that there's no individual is responsible for anything. Um we're going to create layers and layers of bureaucracy and paperwork. All we're the purpose of obfuscating responsibility and for kicking the can as far as you can down the road um so that you never own the own accountability for the actions.
And I think that aside from just the name, which is obviously all all I knew, aside from the trailer are going in the watching in the movie, I think, you know, no one really hit on this like he understood that open hire, rightfully a oly, thought that he had deep accountability for his actions, both in the positive and the negative. And I think this is like it's almost unthinkable in the modern day government IT that someone would take count for their failures. I mean, we've gone from albinism to mistakes were made, right? And that's like the biggest golf imaginable.
And they also in the movie IT wasn't as open hammer. I'm going to go back there. There was a team with uh with president at the time and IT was like there was a question of who is to blame and they were both sort of a summing blame. IT wasn't just opening and like. I made this is I am responsible for this and he was like that is interesting to have two people trying to claim responsibility for a truly heavy burden that I think even despite his kind of um brashness let's say I think that of human nor open hymir really wanted right no one wants to sit with with that um but they both would do IT IT was a different a generation .
the my life and I were talking about this on the right home after we watch .
Barbie last night where I did a double .
feature ah there's this question about like what actually was going on or human in that moment and this is a historical al event this wasn't like I made up interaction uh that from Christopher and um there's a question of like was truman trying to Carry himself within ego about this like you are nobody i'm the one that did this um or was he trying to absolve open hymir in some way because he didn't pull the trigger and he was saying, like. Look your scientist your role was important but I had to make the call to pull the trigger and that's that's a burden that I Carry, not a burden that you Carry um and it's like i'm not especially clear like which one of those that actually was maybe truman was just like an eager to mess um but as you said, like IT was a different time like people are fighting over being held accountable for a truly terrible moment and humid history um where are today like nobody yes no if you I can even imagine having that conversation with like a recent american president, they will be finding some way to blame IT on the other party, some way to blame me on the disfunction on the bureaucracy they known would just stand up and say, like, I gotto own this like, yeah.
this happened. This application of responsibility. And I think it's such an interesting insight to just sit with for a little bit. IT has implications for the way that we go about trying to innovate and build new things and has implications for leadership. And I I can't help would see the connection between the way that we you describe the kind of the the landscape IT would respected defense tech, and think I also think about congress and their abdication of responsibility when IT actually contents to conflict.
You guys are supposed to vote on this and do the author ization and make them so much to account, push that responsibility off onto White or is someone else? And even once the conflict starts at just kind of the anders in so many ways, and no one is actually responsible, no one wants to, and speak in a, in a very certain way about this is a dangerous circumstances. Find yourself the kind of wrestling.
Responsibility is important. IT is invaluable. It's part of what helps us to make good improving decisions and to push the envelope. Pe, an important respects. I think it's a really a vital point for us to to take into consideration .
beyond the world of conflict. Even you see this in california, right? Who is responsible for the high speed rail vaso? Can you give me a name I would love to know, like who is the one? And there's just there's nobody.
And so that's why this problem persists, is why we spend billions of dollars and we haven't even laid down one tracker. I don't even know how many billion up to at this point. It's like IT feels like it's never going to happen and it's like it's at every level.
It's like the national level who is talking about now is the state level. With the high speed rail, you go down to the to the local level. The problem of homelessness in the city of sanford, like were getting into small, small problems.
Now we're talking about like a seven mile by seven mile area in the problem of, let's say, seven, eight, nine thousand homeless people living on the streets. Who is responsible for that problem? How is there really like there's no there's just nobody.
It's like eighty nonprofits. It's like a bunch of people on the board of soup. It's like it's not the mayor that's crazy. You can't do anything that way like someone has to lead and and no one yet no one wants IT. It's like everybody wants the glory and nobody wants to actually do.
And if and do they even want the glory, it's like no knows even like like I want to live in a world where people want they want the glory and they're willing to just like own the disaster. That's the world that I want. And I don't think that I don't think we have either of those that people are not very glorious. Like no one is like out there living my my like glorious aesthetic dreams right now. It's it's like it's just that yes it's actually .
funny how like there's there's this thread where you know it's almost like a majority to even talk about someone owning or being responsible for anything where people say like elon musk twitter ella must start a space x ah like you know the fact that he is personally associated with these brands somehow devalues the brands because it's like there's like a person that's too big for that and the reality is is like, no, that's literally how everything is .
that you like someone .
has to own a responsibility to move the ball forward or the ball move forward.
It's it's in the context of that kind of aggressive synonym. The the cancellation, the the pillon where we get to it's you you did IT. That's the only time when I sees people scrambling for the opportunity to be seen and making some sort of bold statement. It's when they're condemning someone else's actions for having run a file of what we say is the right virtuous thing to do and that I do think that there's something again is inherently danger about that IT IT kind of leads to a sort of slower sis and IT certainly shouldn't be the case that the most celebrated and venerated people in our lives, in our culture, international politics, are the ones who who wag their fingers the the sharpest in the direction of someone who is supposed to be a sensibly bad uh that that that probably isn't the place we .
wanted be yeah and I mean, I mean, are there lots ways and going back to your entry point to this bag test, so much like you know, there are certainly ways in which open hamer's background and his relationships, connections are are maybe somewhat troubling. But I think he also realized that he was the father of the atomic bomb.
But then you look at all of those physicists that were working on the manhattan project that IT ended up becoming independently, like world changing physicists, people like regular people, like nails board who showed up on on occasion to help out people like Lawrence, who is what Laurents living on national labs is named after. They built the first accelerator. Like there are.
There are all of these people that are independently, very, very historically significant people. But open, I understood that he was bearing the responsibility because he was the direction of the project. And like that's the sort of accountability that we we continue to on out, obviously open.
I were knew that he couldn't do that. His team, he obviously knew that he didn't know enough about all of these different aspects to do IT together. But he knew enough to understand that putting a person in charge of a thing and holding them to account for that thing is the only way the thing was going to get done.
The only other person who i've heard uh, mention the fact that will I mean, yes, kind of appropriate that there was some scepticism of the guy like we were in a conflict with these people and they had obtained the secret. And that particular base where they were doing this development was lousy with spice. We would later discover in some respect, you know if he's culpable for other elements of this, he's culpable for that too.
It's appropriate for there to be a lover of scrutiny in and um my cocos ira or on the fit column is the only other person who have heard make this point um I should also mention I told anyone else this that morning and i'd big I caught him weeping during the film sitting next yeah while open ever is given the speech after the bomb has been dropped and he is obviously wrestling with the horse that were visited upon japan as a result of this. And I saw more to hand wipe a arterial, which again, I don't know if that was joy because there were so many lives snatched away or so IT was so hideo poto. Imagine IT could be here.
There really good. Well, I was like this. IT is possible that both of these things are true. It's possible that, like, you know, he mccarthy m was out of control and you going out and cancelling a bunch of people who had obviously dedicated their lives to their country was a really not super great thing to do. But also there there things that you could have been very concerned about with the open hymir.
Like ah i've gone through this process personally, not being not having my a clearance pool, but I go through security planet stuff. And the reality is is like they do look really deeply your background into your professional and personal associations and if you had a bunch of relationships that tied you back to one of our strategic adversary, yeah of course that's going to raise questions that is very deeply concerning. So like I think both of those things can be true for sure.
That's I think it's such an interesting point of a catheters m where, uh we we remember it's I say we remember as we were, the story that we are told about the cafe ism is that he was a witch hunt. And in fact, that's what the crucible al is based off of and that's the whole it's like there was no communist, uh, spy, in the contrary. And we IT was not a problem.
IT was a huge problem. actually. There were spies. The service did want to fucking destroy us.
And like if you are selling, seek or giving secrets to the self union, that's treason. And it's a huge problem. And IT puts a lot of lives at risk.
And IT is very serious. And I I do think IT was someone of a fAiling of the movie unless my conspiracy is correct. And nolan wanted us to walk away thinking about this story that I think is pretty much forgotten. Not many people are talking about like was open hyper or communist, who knows um and now I think a lot of people are at least going to think about IT um but certainly like the the literal reading of the script in my opinion is like IT seems to implied that this was a huge problem with huge which counted IT wasn't right and I think those questions are actually important and it's a new last conversation and don't want to be which bringing people run and but like there are stakes. There are still takes here .
the opposite of the source material definitely try to clear open heim of any sort of connection to communism. That sort of affiliates we never remember, definitely never remember. That is not clear a little more ambiguity there, which I don't think away from.
Do you have to be a card Carrying member of the communist party to be responsible for this? Like that's just such a weird that's such a weird like benchmark for kind of stuff like who is who is even, I guess back then, maybe a lot of people were running around getting memberships to the communist party. I was so invoke, I think, and like me, be the twenty years and thirties and like all the cool hipster r people of the day we're doing IT um but it's still like 1 you definitely he clearly had spathes uh in the sort of realm of communism。 The only things that really uh I think abb solved him of this were the conversations that were obviously made up by the filmmakers um private conversations between him and his communist lover like actual common ist lover like historically we know he was a communist I and it's like I don't know like that that does matter to me and um and IT does matter to me that the soviet union got the bomb. Obviously, the world would have been much Better if we weren't in a nuclear arms race and no one else ever had nuclear weapons of then we had like a few of them that would have been ideal you know.
an open, harmful review. I really wannsee dean preston. How does he grapple with this? Yes, he's obviously going to take the side of the communist. But like apparently the communities on the built the a bum. So no, that's a that's a tough position for the impression to be.
isn't I do you have any thoughts? You mentioned that you thought the movie is pretty pessimistic, guy, like maybe some thoughts on that. And then I wants to get into the fossil essay.
yeah. I mean, the big conclusion of the film and it's part of the reason why at our screening that we attended more than him and I IT was very quiet like no one was moving at the end of the film. You might have expected a pause or something like that.
But people they were they were intensely looking at the train, just want to shake IT is because open hammer and einstein ultimately have this conversation. We discovered the content of the conversation of the very end. And it's open.
I was saying, you know, I was worried that if I pushed that button, you know, to set off this bomb, we might destroy the world. And I think we did. And he has this vision of, uh, nuclear missiles being launched all over the world in the fire, just kind of burning through the atmosphere. And it's this prominent that eventually we will have a hot armed nuclear conflict and destroy ourselves because any innovation that we uh attain that has disruptive potential, we are going to use IT and we're going to use IT in the worst possible ways.
And that seems to me that, that is a very pessimistic perspective to reach into our conclusion to arrive that I don't think it's necessarily true, obviously um and I think there's quite a lot of reason for for optimism for believing that we've obtained like a much and moral horizon and that we can as a species becomes sufficiently responsible that we can live in a world where there are these profound on possible dangers but also these incredible of vests where we can create the world that we want to live in the dispute with opulence and prosperity like that. The chAllenge before us and the the kind of pessimistic over over unnecessarily um how of fatalities perspective that ultimately IT comes to not is just at odds with I think the arc of human history like life is amazing. I I could think of no other time in the past I would have preferred to live in right now. And there is a very real sense in which all of that helped create this and creating more of this will require us to do something. But there is no reason to imagine that it's necessarily bad.
But at the same time, it's been only what's seven decades or something like it's a blip in in in human history, the the out of time we gone without having a nuclear war like the bombs. The innovation of those bombs did make IT possible for the first time in human history for a war to reduce us to ashes. And that is.
I just right.
We've never been so close to total capital m, and we were talking like within twenty four hour, whole world could be over. That's that's A A thing that hangs over ahead .
in terms of the time scale. But but as you both know and I don't know, we're getting ahead of ourselves here. We've been bombing japan for a long time and the fire bombing of cities is uh, a kind of innovation of this particular conflict.
But IT was happening everywhere and hundreds of thousands of people were being anny law in whose babbs? And by the time you get around to dropping the looks like you're talking about tens of thousands of people dying, but you're hoping this ends this horrendous conflict that had already snatched away so many lives and could have snatched away so many more. You know, could we level the city in a moment now? Could we level IT over the course of a couple of months, weeks even actually? Yeah kinder I think um this .
is a pretty good segway into the power fossil essay. And it's not mean not that IT is hundreds of of thousands, but it's still that there is still a question here that I think we need to pass. Um what I was in college have this professor.
He was he was quietly the troublemaker professor. Nobody really knew that he was like using the rorie behead a rtc class. I was in a class like fifty with her. Um I was his favorite and so his mike never heard a and he was just like I was like I was writing I was writing arguments and making arguments that I really just I loved IT and he wanted to be introducing, I think, intentionally provocative sets and the first one that really opened my mind was he went up on the a the White board and I was like, he wrote a bunch of things down. IT was a haroon, I IT a IT was japanese internment IT was the baton n death march IT was comfort women.
And um there were a couple more and he just asked, you know which ones do you know about and the ones that we knew about where the atrocities that we had committed, we didn't know anything about japan whatsoever and that alone that's like the first kind of interesting piece of this is people are not really aware at all of how the japanese fought in the pasific. We are very aware of the not that's the villain of world war two. We have no sense what's ever the average person has no sense whatsoever of what the japanese were up to.
Um and IT was brutal and vicious and just I mean in many cases just as bad as the notes then he went on to make us hope this esa called thank god for the adam bomb by paul fossil which Sparked a lot of controversy in the class because know we're taught it's slagg and the atom omb are these unambiguous evils in american history they proved that we're even it's like slavery, absolutely true, unambiguous evil. The adam bomb is complicated and uh it's complicated just in terms number. So I want to just highlight, I think ever sugar rd S A uh by paul fossil.
Thank for the atom omb excEllent, provocative, strange like you encounter arguments like this often anymore but some of the highlights so he's writing this decades and decades ago and already there was immediately there was attention among um the american public between there's like on one him notion that the japanese were just got to surrender, the war was already over. We didn't have to drop the bomb at all and on the other hand the reality of that just and this just IT seems like his way to me like I seems pretty clear that that the only thing that was going stop that war was a land invasion. So the U.
S. Military was already preparing for the land invasion. IT was already under way. And all of the soldiers who were going to be on the first several ways, they knew that they were going to die.
Um so you have uh an estimation from the government quietly that they're going to be around as many as one million U. S. Casualties, just american casualties.
Is not including the, not including the alias, you know from the U. K and what not the soldiers preparing knew they were going to die the first one through five waves, especially the marines. Um and.
That's not counting there were like something like two million japanese soldiers, all of whom were gone to fight until their death. This is coma azy culture. On top of that, like the culture of japan was he was, after their dead, the elderly and the children will fight in the streets like there is.
We are never going to give up. We're looking at really a situation where casualties would have bend somewhere between, I think three million is kind of like the absolute ground floor and IT could be, if anyone's guess as to how many millions more on top of that. So just just in terms of numbers, it's like this thing, the adam bombs saved lives just like straight up like we're talking a couple hundred thousand deaths to, but potentially ten million plus deaths right there.
We're not even talking now about how that the future shape of japan, because amErica was wasn't japan and north the soviet zn. And what we're not even talking about, just like the long term consequences of this and and what not like, like just ground floor IT, seems prety important to me. There's a separate notion that if you didn't drop the second bomb like you did maybe didn't have to drop the second bomb.
I think here may be a more interesting and compelling argument, but it's also not really clear that that's the case in between the north and the fifteenth of August um when the bombs were dropped uh nakai in the hero shama uh, you had a whole series of things go on. I mean, there is, uh it's like that the war is on going you had the seeking of a submarine and you the thinking of a destroyer. You had another destroy loss.
You had, I think, eight, eight or twelve a japanese american fliers captured and beheaded by the government. Like they were just kind of they were just Carrying on and and then I guess the the last point is like for as long as they would Carry on, we're talking about seven thousand deaths a week. So for as long as the the war went on, this would happen.
And the estimation was IT would take about IT would take about a year to Carry on to Carry on the invasion without actually just ending IT definitively right then. And I think it's hard for us to face that because none of us have fall in a war um and it's and we want to believe that, that things are simple and you can just do the unambiguously good thing. But it's like I think it's true that knowing the city is horrifying and also that war is horrifying and ending a war is important and it's a complicated thing to grap with, but I think it's an important thing to grap with what you .
guys think yeah I mean, one of the things that the Chris rolland did that I was perhaps the most bothered by is where he injected a uh a very subber uh script twice in this discussion around the ethics of ending the war.
The first was with the um the secretary of war um where they were having a discussion about what the target list was and um he he said, well, i'm going to strike kyoto because my wife and my honeymoon and kyoto kind of like making a sound like IT was sort of ad hawking in silly how they were picking the targets and that's not historical. There was like there's no there's no historical to this idea that like IT was spared because of his hey honeymoon there. But IT like was very clearly used to signal something that was probably not happening in that room at the time.
The second is where a oppenheimer's is meeting with with truman and truman says, you know in here shima he says and sai and he came back that oh yes and negates aci and he like intentionally mispronounced IT as well um and that also has no historical sort genial and I was like just twice that is like very, very small moment that's like ten seconds maybe of the total movie we're made to like like rewire our brains to think that people in government in senior positions weren't taking this seriously which like I think they were taking this I think they exactly what you just teed up from the fossil, I say, is what they were thinking. I don't want to write any more letters to the parents of dead children. I don't want to do that anymore.
The worst one was actually, I mean, in my opinion, I agree, those two moments spit out to me, but there was another one where they actually introduced. I forget who oppenheimer a was talking to, but the guy said, like, you know, hey, a lot of people are going to die if we do a land invasion and that is just that.
Such an understand that like you have to actually make the case for people to understand, to get inside of the heads of people at that time, you have to make the case because IT wasn't just like some people are going to die and who cares? Their soldiers, first of all, soldiers who were soldiers. We're talking about boys, teenage boys who go to war as they always have.
They didn't make this decision. They are sent there to die. And second of all, it's like not just a few of them.
We're talking about millions of people are going to die if we don't end this war and and that's frustrated to me that we that we kind of still can't grasp on with this honestly online right now the discourse is um this is like a White guy movie or life. People maybe ignoring maybe I just two into the discourse. I've got ten this criticism.
I think that's spare. I don't know. I think you're spend .
too much time on twitter, matt.
and I am I just all set with that. But um i'm seeing a lot of like like this is an unambiguous hour. This is the greatest terrorist attack of all time. Previously, this idiot from tech, the guy who I don't want to get in into IT, but let's to say an idiot on twitter, said this.
Another one that's more interesting is there's a filmmaker right now who's going viral for saying she's been trying to make this film about a woman who suffered like the fallout of the testing from ah the first open hymir test forever and like a bunch of people like once of kids died because if they got lukie a and all of this and and you want to tell that story and how dare you tell open hyste and it's like how are we not aware of the scale of difference here? It's like really frustrating to me that we can have this conversation because it's really important. IT is IT is not an easy conversation.
And like, if you are in adult and you are entering the discourse, I just I need you to be capable of of having a complex situation about A A topic so complex is this IT IT is the question of war. And like maybe we're just and it's a good thing sort of you know, we're soft. We haven't had a really horrifying war of this kind in a long time in what a blessing that is.
And thank god for the adam bomb. Like I think that's actually the reason that we haven't had that war, which is whole other conversation and cut on the anoma think this should have been tearing around that for a while, but, and maybe we should just get into that now. But like that, that IT frustrate to me, like the story is bigger than this.
And and, and that places the frustration, or maybe not the frustration that that places the um the moral self interrogation of open hymir into a different context. For me it's like he didn't just allow human to drop up on on some japanese people who are you know basically innocent. He saved millions and yes, the world changed.
There's a question of whether IT changed for the Better or the worse. And my question is not really answered in my opinion. I think we don't know of the answer.
I think to this point after after the war in particular, you can look at like the trajectory of weapons development, also fundamental change. We started beginning of human civilization. We had like one to one conflict is like your fists or rocks or knives at best.
And then we like figured out out how to make that slightly more destructive with things like tribulations and catapults. And then with the advent of gunpowder, you like tennis and firearms, um we figured out bombs and IT went from like one to one to like one to sum to one to many to up with the atom. M IT IT was really like one to infinity, like we now have the ability to destroy all of humanity.
And I think there is this assumption that we we're just going to keep going and like eventually, like we're going to have like star killer weapons. But the reality has actually go on backwards. All of the tech development has happened since uh since the the forties, except in the specific strategic nuclear category, has been precision guided weapons.
How do we avoid casualties um how do we use new technologies to be Better targeting using things like computer vision to like make sure that we're getting at the target that we want most recently um taking out of era and pakistan um we actually did that with a non explosive IT was just a rotating knife basically that hit him IT only hit him IT has no other damage at all. And we can do that from play like playing that are not piloted by people from thousands of miles away. I mean, it's like incredible how much back down that curve we've come back to the wonder one kind of conflict, and this is responsible for saving millions of us. I mean, that's like remarkable how big of a difference that made a .
little push back. So in is responsible for that in the same way that the world was like sort of locked in a peaceful state when amErica was the only country that have the adam bombs. But once this technology becomes ubiquitous and everybody has IT, aren't we sort of I mean, what does that look like? What in in your opinion as unlike proliferation?
Is that what you're asking you? I'm talking about the proliferation .
of these precision, these precision insurance of death like once every country has them and then every ganging lord has them like, I mean, what is that? That seems like a world of of. That seems like a world of more violence generally, not less. Uh.
I I don't know about that because it's still an active war like you're still like invading enemy territory when you're doing that and you wouldn't want to like draw more attention. I think the point is that we don't have to, like stand in lines, oppose to each other irr markets. Now we going to say like we're just going to go right to the source and we want this to stop as quickly as possible.
Um and I think I think that is is changing the face of warfare. Now obviously there's like the next level of this that probably gets into a scary level of arms race would be rots from god where you have like a refrigerator in orbit in space that has tongon rods and you can just basically direct the tongue rods to take out any point on earth like six minutes, six minutes or less and that's not explosive. It's just like you are a very high velocity project at that point. Um and I think if we got to at that point, we would be having this conversation about like what does that do because then you like you can just like strike without any consequent.
Whatever you want to do is get serious about policing space like we need to not allow this to have. There is should be no proliferation of the shitten space. And I can't help but look back at why why did we ever allow other countries to get the atoms about that seems just like IT.
Seems like the most important thing you could have possibly done at that moment in time is due whatever IT takes to prevent anybody else from getting IT. And like that APP y comes like your chief focus is just is just the singular focus of of the entire military. U.
S. Military arata should have been preventing that from happening. And um I mean, what is the U. S. I .
background there? Like why am I size can stop the sport?
You see the test happening.
You can see that that all know I mean, like people know how to do this. Like all you have to do is just like figure out this.
I think you're escaping I think you're running away from the uncomfortable aspect much because IT is not just science. IT requires IT requires enrichment in IT inquires h IT requires resources. We know what if the tests are happening because we have uh we can we can register the um I forget what the actual area measuring eea topes or something like you can we they're always like read out some things like like every time you know that .
when there's a ah you know we knew like there were a lot .
of things we could do. I could not just go and spin up a nuclear weapon in my backyard, and a lot of countries were in that position.
I mean, that's what talk of amErica is about. It's about taking out, yes, right.
american like american, great days like that. I want to see more of that.
I me i'm wondering those a lot like how practically that could have been achieved given what what actually unfolding IT. I mean, our greatest geopolitical adversary is over. Union is working on a bomb.
They're developing a bomb, invade them like afterworld war to to try to to stop them and take away their capacity to develop uh, a weapon of vast destruction. I don't know that that actually is a Better place than what ended up happening. A cold war in which there was a bunch of build up on both sides.
And you ve got all of these weapons. And at one another you say, if you do anything going to low you to shit, if you do anything the only you should eh, you know, is that bad? That's bad. But I think the bloody conflict that would have been necessary to try and achieve that outcome would have been bad.
There was.
no, he doesn't mean you might have to invade to stop them. So you're think .
bomb them and to saying no, no even made the threat. No one was like like one more test and we're going to new facilities and .
going if they don't stop and you make thre is the prescription, there will just start bombing and then bomb any other country that starts building one because they say the only way to stop the U. S. From becoming this this, uh, murder, is to build our own nuclear weapons. And I don't know that that we thought what you see yeah, but I I mean.
we have a world in which there are endless like how many countries at this point have nuclear bombs? I'm i'm trade. You know the number of this is like .
the efficient number of the efficient number, right? I think it's nine officially, so I don't .
like that is an inherently unstable, dangerous, scary place to be, especially when you talk about something like russia collapsing and who knows where the fuck their bombs have gone. That is really frightening. And I don't think I think it's like right now, it's a kind of theoretical question.
What is more dangerous like the I states that having done whatever IT took to prevent proliferation from happening or um like some potential capacity m in in the future based because we didn't and and I just don't think it's gonna theoretical forever seems really unlikely to me that adam bombs will never again be used on civilians in in the course of or anyone in the course of of human history like even the next century. O, K, I think it's like I think the risk of nuclear war is a lot, a lot, a lot way higher than than we think. We've just Normalized the idea that it's over because the berlin welfare but just that world is doesn't work that way.
It's like geography. Y is already falling again. Conflict is on the horizon. It's where an unstable place is my basic feeling and um and I think it's like the stakes are higher than we realized.
A lot of people are certainly thinking about nuclear conflict these days are account of the the ukraine uh, crisis. Uh so IT, it's certainly part of the conversation these days. Um i'm again and I don't know that i've said IT here, but i've said at many times I am uh a serial optimist and I won't make any apologies for IT.
I don't imagine that the best outcome is always going to happen, but I do think it's always a possibility and we work towards that end. So while I acknowledge that is, as you describe, IT terrifying threat ing, I also think that the fact that, that has that happened yet is a pretty good sign and that there are lots of good reasons to think that we can avoid those worst possible outcome is going forward. But IT is it's going to require something of us and thinking about what that is that might require as important and also the fact there may be some more devastating tech that's on the horizon. Um I don't know what that might look like.
Let's not talk about A I today. I don't I don't want .
to get into that, but I wasn't only the Better IT .
is if what you're saying is if the general rule is true in the bombs being locked in this weird threat of nuclear wars and to keep us from real world war again um as IT has like over the last seven, eight decades or whatever it's seven decades, then the bomb not only saved you know millions of lives at the end of the war but it's saved potentially hundreds of millions of life since we don't not like there was no reason and been another worlds worth following that and who knows how many words have not happened because of this dynamic if that, however, the very prosperous peace then the weapons themselves will be the thing that prevented the conflict in that is that is an only bigger is good at that point. It's not a non ambigu was good that's that's a good that's like another it's like a lot more in the good column. Um last auto guys, before you wrap this up, i'm just thinking about .
what you uh said when you described the the professor that you really loved and that the amic dote about the class not being familiar with the horrible atrocities that have been perpetrated by other countries and imaging that there is this kind of unique the privity um uh with respect of the american project and i'm remembering something gathered newsome twist when he was celebrating the fact the california had this like reparations committee that was going to be studying this project and he said, our past is one of slavery, racism and injustice our systems were built to impress people of color and I remember encountering that and immediately thinking about what a proposal sly like stupid thing to say like this is just IT is a hit is so typical of the the current epoch in which we celebrate cynics and so many people imagine that being like just as really try boring cnc is somehow uh the same is being really thoughtful and area date.
This doesn't make any sense. It's completely incoherent. The united states isn't the apogee of human awfulness.
Slavery is older than writing. It's been practiced on every continent. Even at the that the U. S. Had slavery, there were even more slaves in other parts of the world like that is that the truth like IT was awful IT was terrible.
But the american project has always been defined by these amazing ideals um and this optimistic vision about our possibilities and this notion of freedom being something that was succinct ble to farm more people then IT had to previously been granted to. And has this been this project of us essentially becoming more perfect? To use a very odd phrase, IT has bizarre like we've expanded the horizon uh of the people who can participate in this project. And I think to the extent i'm concerned about anything in a really palpable way, one of my persistent fears is that not too few people appreciate just what a remarkable innovation like amErica was is a philosophical idea.
This is not any sort of hollow, cheap, patriotic speech I mean just genuinely you look at the broad sleep of history there's something really special about a place that is rooted in this idea of basic equality and basic human freedom, however imperfectly IT was articulated and implemented at the start um and the the the rather prosaic that amErica is terrible and so ashamed we are so awful uh is a historical um but is also dangerous to genuinely dangerous. I think it's it's totally reasonable and fair to try and persuade more and more people that there are some things special and worth preserving, worth working on and developing. We don't need to tear down the structure order to make progress like we can actually just continue to improve and expand our our m, our, our sensibility with respect to I have to make more people more free.
I think the question itself is an indication that we are good. The fact that we are constantly fighting over this question and like mining our past and and analyzing our faults and input, clear implication is that everybody in the country on every side wants to be. Morally righteous and good and to do the good thing. And we actually, we actually sort of we all, I think we have universal agreement on what what IT means to be good at is like maxim ation of freedom and treating people with respect, and like where we break down is like the IT is on the question of whether or not we are doing that and we have worked towards that and that's what the fierce disagreements happen. But when you just look at like what IT is that we're fighting about, exactly, I think the indication is clear that we are one of the old I don't know many, we are I won't say we're the only one, but I will say amErica is an exceedingly moral nation just based on the questions that we're asking up from both sides.
Yeah and you know, I spend a lot of my time working in the nursery community, obviously. And I think this idea that there force our generals and political appointment officials sitting around boardroom tables like glibly making decisions about life and death for people like both americans that are americans that are serving abroad as balls, like in internal conflict, it's just the most absurd idea error.
Like nobody wants to write a letter to apparent letting them know their kid. Nobody wants to do that and we don't into a conflict or willingness. Li, right?
Like we are actually very, very thoughtful about how we go about making sure that we're extending protection uh to our allies and our partners um that we're supporting people that don't have the ability to support themselves. And this is like a core of american the american democratic institution that we've established. And I like mocks that or make IT sound like there's a lack of thoughtfulness is just kind of ridiculous like it's just not happening.
awesome. Well beco guys both for joining today, a stoked for the maxell movie in I guess twenty years from now, who knows? Um I don't children by the time that comes out, that's that guys have.