This was the original script, as of 4 April 2022. Many stage directions to Actor Scott, crossouts to remember intentions, yellow highlight for words/beats to hit that couldn’t be cut, etc. If you’re reading this, that’s what you’re doing.
THE FUTURE. THE OH SO PREDICTABLE FUTURE.
NARRATOR
Tomorrow, I predict, with my psychic powers,
(abilities)
you’re going to read, doesn’t matter what day this is, you’re going to see in the news,
there’s gonna be a bunch of scientists, they’re gonna say that things are bad.
Specifics, I dunno. Methane, Greenland, doesn’t matter.
THE OTHER GUY
(don’t eat this)
“How can you say it doesn’t …”
NARRATOR
No. Doesn’t (matter).
I’M OKAY, THE SCIENTISTS ARE OKAY
You’re gonna feel bad, you’re
going to blame yourself.
Don’t.
Do what I do. Blame the scientists.
(walk it back)
I’m not talking about blaming the messenger for the message.
ONE WORD JOB
I’m talking about blaming the messenger for blowing it on a one-word job description.
FINE. WE’RE DUMB.
And okay,
(fine, sure, I’ll begrudgingly admit)
I acknowledge that we’re pretty dumb …
… with the whole … killing the planet for no reason … thing.
(okay as memorized, it’s a refrain)
NO, YOU’RE DUMB!
But how dumb are they,
(speak the beat out loud!)
that in order to stop us…
… they’ve been saying the same thing for 30 years, in the same way, 30 years.
(added to emphasize callback to psychic)
Predictably.
(resume)
Everyday, knowing it didn’t work the day before.
There’s a name for that, when you do the same thing over and over …
… it’s called thinking people will be rational.
BRAKE!
EVEN I DO THIS (YES, EVEN ME)
Now keep blaming the scientists …
(don’t justify this beat)
… but we all do this. We all make these kind of rational arguments.
WE ALL
Oh, I’ll just present the information. That’s always worked.
BACK TO ME
I’ve been doing it my whole life.
I was eight years old, I was talking to my mom.
YOUNG SCOTT
“Hey mom, mom. Smoking is bad for you”
NARRATOR
And she responded as everyone always does.
SUZI KING
Smoking’s bad for me? This neutral information changes everything. As a rational actor, I have to quit to protect my health, and the health of my children.
NARRATOR
And I still do it. Very recently, about forty seconds ago, I was telling the scientists,
WHAT I TOLD THEM
hey scientists, your strategy methods of argument
(quieter and quieter)
it’s not working, you gotta …
(trails off)
BRAKE!
INCITING ACCIDENT
But I’m tired of doing what they do. I’m tired of making the rational argument. So, I’m going to make the irrational argument.
This is nothing new.
MEET THE ACTUAL SPARTANS, WHO WERE DICKS
The bad guys do this all the time.
That story, you’re going to read tomorrow? You’re not even gonna read it.
Too depressing. You going to see the headline, say, “No.” The first word. Arctic. “No.” Scientists. “No.”
(“No” not “nope”)
Because if that article, that headline, was really grim, and this is how you know I’m making an irrational argument. If it was really bad, there’s a good chance that it was a plant from the Russians and the Oil lobbies.
This is called doomism
They gave up on trying to trick us into thinking it wasn’t happening, so now they’re trying to trick us into thinking it’s happening times ten.
They find the worst predictions, the bleakest scenarios, and promote those.
WHY WE FIGHT
(refrain…)
They know
(…statement)
make someone depressed, they’ll do nothing.
(refrain…)
They know
(…statement)
rational arguments don’t work. Emotional arguments do.
WANNA SEE ‘NOTHER BAD GUY TRICK?
And the bad guys got thousands of tricks like this, thousands of ways to use your emotions against you.
Take the term “bad guys”. Classic bad guy move.
Invent an enemy … Gets the feelings all stirred up.
CONSPIRACY THEORETICIAN
They’re out to get me.
… here’s what the bad guys don’t want you to know.
NARRATOR
(in earnest)
And here’s what the bad guys don’t what you to know …
EMOTIONS ARE SIMPLE
It’s that emotions are very simple.
How complex could can they be?
We’re an extraordinarily stupid species, what with the whole killing the planet for no reason thing.
THE OBJECTOR
We’re not stupid! What about the Mona Lisa?
NARRATOR
Yeah, Mona Lisa. I guess it was all worth it.
(you actually believe it)
It’s a great painting. Thanks.
STUPID IS AS TAUTOLOGY DOES
(gesture – one side, other side)
Stupid species. Simple emotions.
(regain pronoun)
Here’s a rule about emotions.
(/pronoun regained)
Applies to every decision we make
(“decision” good alternate for choice)
The bad guys don’t know this one, so if you’re a bad guy. We’re on the honor system. Just stop listening. Simple rule.
(listens)
Okay, they’ve stopped. Simple rule.
THE SIMPLE RULE ARRIVES
(equivocation is death!)
When we choose, every time we choose, we choose between feelings, not outcomes.
Even when we choose between outcomes.
Sounds insane/farfetched? Don’t So take my word for it, take your word for it.
Whatever you choose, you still have to experience it.
You are inside yourself.
(don’t lose them!)
That’s where you’re always gonna be.
(/don’t lose them!)
Whatever happens in the real world, whatever choices you make, whatever choices are made for you, are experienced in your little meat lighthouse. And you experience them as a feeling.
$25, t-shirt with your favorite band on it, t-shirt’s real, $25 is real. But it also makes makes a feeling. And you do it for the feeling.
Save the twenty-five bucks, don’t buy the t-shirt
(decent joke, too judge-y for listener)
don’t support your favorite band. That’s how they make their money, it’s at the merch booth.
(/decent joke)
Money’s real, but saving it makes a feeling, and you do it for the feeling.
(aside)
The feeling of fucking over Ticketmaster.
(/aside)
Get a taco
(generality is death, be specific, taco/t-shirt)
it’s a feeling, go for a run it’s a feeling.
(“feeling” cut, spoils “as an example”)
Take heroin
(this works as part of a list so “as an example” seems more natural)
… as an example.
(Take heroin… please)
The heroin is real, going to your plug for a discount
JUNKY SPELLED WITH A “Y” BECAUSE THAT’S HOW BURROUGHS SPELLED IT
because the last one was a beat bag.
NARRATOR
That’s real. The syringe is real, going into your veins. But you’re taking it for the feeling of heroin.
CHOOSE LIFE:
Sake of argument, you don’t take heroin.
Choose life.
(Trainspotting reference justified. because of “choose” set-up)
You choose every day go to that 9 to 5 job. You choose
(hitting “choose” softens the obviousness of the “born before 1970” gag)
to have a family. You choose to be born before 1970, so you can afford to buy a house.
(rule of threes satisfied)
(don’t throwaway!)
You do everything right, get the perfect obituary, with all the right numbers.
All along the way, you experienced the results of all those choices as feelings, and you did it
(very optional)
like heroin!
(/end optional)
because of how it made you feel.
A choice is only made because of how it feels.
(or)
We choose between feelings, not outcomes.
MICHEL DE MONTAIGNE
Michel de Montaigne, tells the story, The Philosopher and The King.
(beat)
3000 years ago, King has a philosopher on staff, Philosopher asks the king.
PHILOSOPHER
King, whatrya gonna do next?
NARRATOR
King says,
KING
Well, I’m going to conquer Egypt, then I’m going to conquer Rome.
PHILOSOPHER
Okay. What about after that?
KING
Then Africa, Europe, then the whole world. I’m not going to stop until I’ve conquered the whole world.
PHILOSOPHER
Okay. You’ve conquered the whole world. Then what?
NARRATOR
King says,
KING
(proud, haughty)
Well, I guess I’ll have a glass of wine to celebrate.
(“won’t I?”)
NARRATOR
Philosopher says, maybe you see where this was going,
PHILOSOPHER
Why don’t you just have the glass of wine?
Beat your fellow billionaire into space. Get the fastest car ever built, and turn left 500 times. Conquer the entire world. Have the glass of wine. Whatever you do, whatever you choose, you do because of the way it makes you feel.
(new one)
Everything you do, you experience as a feeling, and you do it for the feeling.
THOSE DARN RATIONALISTS
THOSE DARN RATIONALISTS
Hold on,
NARRATOR
It’s the people who make arguments that they know won’t work, and they object, and they say
THOSE DARN RATIONALISTS
hold on, we don’t choose between feelings. No, we choose between
(gesture one side, then the other)
rational and irrational.
UNDOUBTABLY SCOTT KING
(character defining trope alert)
Well, that’s wrong.
NO. RATIONALLY BETWEEN FEELINGS.
We can choose rationally BETWEEN feelings. But that’s as good as it’s gonna get.
Maximize your throughput. Integrate your asymptote. Get 120 points on the prisoner’s dilemma. Make a series of optimal choices to
(I dare you)
exploit your workers perfectly and extract the maximum profit?
(/I dare you)
you still experience the results of all of that with a feeling.
They don’t say nothing tastes as good is,
OPTIONAL
they say, “Nothing tastes as good as thin feels.”
DE. SCIENTIST
The comical contradiction of rational choice theory is that all the choices, and all the rewards, are experienced internally.
But you can still choose rationally between feelings.
(hit “can” for cadence)
You can choose between the feeling of having touched the hot stove the first time, or the feeling of touching the hot stove the second time
NARRATOR, AGED 8
“to show mom I knew was hot, but I touched it anyway. I did it on purpose, mom!”
BEING ALIVE. SURE. WHY NOT.
THE RATIONALIST
Hold on here.
NARRATOR
same people from before, the ones who are trying to stop us from destroying the environment that keeps us alive, they say,
OR
the ones trying to stop us from burning down our own home while we’re in it, they say,
THE RATIONALIST
You can choose to survive. That’s gotta be a rational choice, with real world consequences.
NARRATOR
(counters with a left)
And I say, being alive.
(genuine to make the joke work)
It’s fantastic.
(/end joke)
Putting aside for one second that we’re choosing the feeling of being alive …
(ARTIFICIAL WATERMELON FLAVORED) NOW OR LATER
NARRATOR
There’s an argument to be made here
(hit the “I”)
when I make it that …
(state the theme)
what you could mean by a rational choice is a feeling later over a feeling now. We choose survival, we choose, something that isn’t the pit of lava, ’cause that joke ain’t working.
that when we choose survival, when we make a rational choice, we’re choosing a good feeling later
(gesture “later”)
over a good feeling now.
(gesture “now”)
And that time difference, being able to make a choice for a future feeling, that might be what we mean when we call a choice “rational”.
There’s a shiny thing on the other side of the giant pit of lava, and you say
YOU
No. I’m not going to cross a pit of lava
(state the beat)
I’m going to survive until tomorrow. No matter how shiny,
(long beat)
no matter how shiny
(beat)
it is.
(Serious voice is better than fake cry)
ANYONE BUT ME AS AN EXAMPLE
Now, I’ve had three cakes that taste as good as thin feels.
(not throwaway emphasis/pride)
Today.
But we’re not going to use me, I’m a terrible example. We’re going to find a rational actor,
they’re going to say,
THE RATIONAL ACTOR
You know what? I don’t want to die of diabetes. I want to live a long and healthy life. Instead of the cake, I choose to have the salad. Which I acknowledge, like all salads, is objectively disgusting.
(then)
(play this character)
I gave up a good feeling now for a good feeling later. And that choice felt pretty good. I mean, it felt pretty rational. Obviously you can’t feel rational, not possible. It just was rational, and that felt… No. No. There were no feelings involved in any step of this process. Why are looking at me like that? There’s no feeling here.
(trying to control the emotion)
There’s. No. Feeling. Here.
So this fictional character I made say things says there’s no feeling here, but ask yourself ….
Does this sound right?
NOT
true
OR
Does this sound familiar?
OR
Does this sound plausible?
You’re still inside your own meat cockpit.
HOW ABOUT YOU? DOES IT FEEL GOOD TO BE RATIONAL?
In those rare instances, in a particular moment where everything lines up
(needs rule of threes)
and instead of doing something stupid, we do something smart.
(refrain alert)
does it feel good to be rational?
(example)
You don’t buy the lottery ticket.
(example two)
You don’t spend twenty minutes looking for a parking space that’s two minutes closer.
AND
You don’t do heroin, even though heroin is delightful. Because it feels good to be rational.
And we know this. Those scientists, making the same rational arguments over and over, knowing they know won’t work?
Being rational has to feel amazing
(quiet angry voice)
CAUSE IT’S NOT DOING ANY GOOD.
Long beat. This is the point you were building to.
BECAUSE …
We choose between feelings, not outcomes.
(leads to new point)
And we’re choosing between feelings we don’t even have names for.
(list item 1)
“Buying a T-shirt“
(refrain alert)
that’s a feeling, doesn’t have a name.
(list item 2)
“Conquering the entire world”,
(refrain alert)
that’s a feeling,
(British underplay)
had a little bit of impact over the years
(/British underplay)
there’s no name for it.
(list item 3)
being rational
(list item 4)
being alive
(list item 5)
getting that last Tetris piece in there
NARRATOR
Our lives are the choices
(add notion of time)
sometimes second by second
(/endadd)
between these feelings
(alternative to “give them names”)
and we don’t even know what to call them
MEET THE CARTESIANS
NARRATOR
And there’s a reason that we don’t take feelings seriously enough to even give them names. And that reason is René Descartes.
THE OTHER GUY
No. Not René Descartes. Leave him alone!!!!
NARRATOR
No. I’m not going to leave him alone.
(then)
Because what did he say, he said, “I think, therefore I am”.
(callback to Scott King’s sunny personality)
Well, that’s wrong.
(/callback)
It’s “I think, therefore I feel.”
Because every thought we have has a feeling that comes with it… especially a thought like “I think therefore I am.”
(no fake pause)
OPTIONAL
You might object to this, same situation here, you’re in your meat control room. Ask yourself, what happens when you think? Do you feel something about that thought?
THE OBVIOUS SUSPECTS
There are many easy examples of this. You wake up in the middle of the night, staring at the ceiling, going over the day in your head, when he said … and what I should have said …
(indecipherable mumbling)
Those were my TPS reports, Steve, and if someone is going to get the credit for having them on time, and under budget, it’s not going to be you, it’s going to be me.
(/mumbling)
(long beat)
SUMMARY
You’re not feeling nothing!
You ever wanted to know what happens when you go to a movie? Gonna solve this mystery.
Nothing.
Nothing happens.
You pay money to sit in one place, stare forward, and have nothing happen. To have information in front of you change over time. That information creates thoughts, those thoughts create feelings, and you pay money to have those feelings.
(refrain)
I think therefore I feel.
NEWS… ON THE MARCH
NARRATOR
Tomorrow, when you skip that article on the environment,
when you rationally choose to avoid the feelings that those thoughts will give …
(or)
not to have the thoughts that produce those feelings
(/endor)
you’re going to find another article.
YOU
I just read this story,
NARRATOR
That’s you
YOU
and it just made me so angry. And the more I thought about it …
OPTIONAL
the angrier I got, and so I read more, and so I had to tell other people, and they agreed with me. It was infuriating, and the angrier I got …
(OPTIONAL theme refrain)
Thoughts produce feelings.
(color commentary)
And by that I mean out of the billions of stories out there every hour, the media only choose the ones with the lowest emotional content, the ones that are least likely to provoke a recreation.
BRINGING BACK THE SCIENTISTS
THE SCIENTISTS
“Hold on a second”,
NARRATOR
it’s the same guys from before, they say,
THE SCIENTISTS
Of course there are thoughts that don’t create feelings. Of course you can observe things dispassionately. What about a totally neutral observation, like, “That’s a tree” or “The tree has leaves” or “The leaves are green”. There’s no emotional content there.
THE RATIONAL SCIENTIST
(use increasing speed to convey anger rather than tone)
And yes, I’m aware as a fictional character that you made say things, I’m aware I’m being emotional right now. But being emotional doesn’t invalidate my point!!!!
(calm now, gets under control)
The point being,
(long, long beat)
that observations can be neutral.
A ROCK
NARRATOR
So let’s go down the road
(optional)
that this fictional character has laid out for us.
(/end option)
Pick a neutral statement, like “That’s a rock”.
(statement is now chosen)
Now keep in mind, once you find the neutral statement, you also have to find the person who can say it neutrally. It can’t be someone who has undergone rock-related traumas or who indulges in
rock-related thrills
It can’t be a particular type of rock, like a diamond.
(speed to convey anger as well)
Because if it was a diamond, it might remind that someone that DeBeers holds back the supply of diamonds to artificially inflate the price of what is in fact a common mineral, and that would make them VERY ANGRY!
(beat to get calm)
But once again, we’re not going to use me. I’m a terrible example. We’re going to find someone for whom there’s no memory, no association, positive or negative, with rocks. When they say,
THEY
“That’s a rock.”
NARRATOR
There’s nothing else to it. Right?
(beat to get to “Of course not.”)
LURKING BEHIND THE SCENES
Of course not. Because you forget all the steps it took to get to that thought.
Fortunately, or unfortunately, you have a condition called pareidolia. You make sense out of whatever is in front of you, no matter what.
PIAGET BREAK
When you’re an infant, it’s just shapes, noises and colors.
But over time, you take a particular set of colors and shadows and tactile sensations and say,
YOU AS A CHILD
“Okay, that group of colors and shadows and tactile sensations is a separate and distinct entity
NARRATOR
That’s you as a child.
YOU AS A CHILD.
“known as a rock”.
NARRATOR
Wherever you are right now, here’s what you’re doing. You are standing near an electronic device, and in that device, there’s a diaphragm, and that diaphragm is being told to vibrate in a particular way, to create clicks and clacks that are a facsimile of the clicks and clacks that, from my perspective right now, are currently coming out of my food hole. Your brain turns those otherwise random noises
(active tense is more good!)
into sensical objects, words into sentences into thoughts.
The artist in me hopes that these thoughts provoke a feeling. Like … annoyance, or … being annoyed.
(trans)
TAKING YOU OUT … METAPHORICALLY
But even if it’s absolutely passionless, that moment when I talked about the clicks and clacks and random noises turning into words, it took you out of it. It gave you a glimpse into the chaos behind all that order, into what it was like before the child made the rock to hold that chaos at bay. And that chaos is a big feeling. You know how I know?
A big feeling we avoid every time we make sense.
Because that’s one of the nothings you pay for when you pay to see a horror movie.
Horror films are about what happens when something escapes the tidy borders of reality we made in our heads,
(/end options)
what happens when things are out of place.
EXAMPLES?
PHRASING
What if … Dreams could kill you.
EXAMPLE MAN
Dreams can’t kill you … can they? Is there something in the mirror that isn’t in the room?
/EXAMPLES
THE SCARED NARRATOR
(don’t act, faster and better)
What’s in that shadow, is that a person? But if it’s a person, why is it moving like that?
THE RATIONAL NARRATOR
And if I’m a person, why I am just standing here? I should be running away. What’s the matter with me/you? Get out of there!!!!!
(calms down)
Horror films make feelings, the feelings that come from the difference between the world we make in our head, and the world where anything can be anything.
As Renowned Physicist Philip K. Dick tells us, just because that’s a rock, doesn’t mean it can’t be a bug.
CATCHING THE CARTESIAN BUG
Now you may not be sold on the idea that even neutral thoughts have secret feelings behind them. So, let’s go back to where this all went wrong. René Descartes.
Because why did he even say “I think therefore I am”?
He’s not working in a vacuum, he’s addressing a discipline called philosophy. And what does philosophy do? It asks the big questions.
(example 1)
What is truth?
(example 2)
What am I doing here?
(restate)
These are not neutral questions.
You can make a classic horror film out of any of them, and people have.
DISTRESSED RÉNÉ DESCARTES
What does it mean to be alive? Is reality even real, or is this all in my head?
If Shadowman is coming to get me, why am I going up the stairs? I should just exit and the ground floor and run in any direction. Get out of there!!!!
NARRATOR
(not Homer, more empathetic)
Stupid René Descartes
NARRATOR
Because if you say something like “I think therefore I am”, you’re answering a very particular question …
(the question)
“Am I?”
(same tone)
That’s not a neutral question.
(same tone)
That’s a horror film question.
(/same tone)
TERRIFIED RENÉ DESCARTES
“Am I?”
NARRATOR
And if you say …
CALM RENÉ DESCARTES
(rational)
“Because I think”
NARRATOR
Well, you’re answering the question, but you’re also trying to resolve the horror film feeling, and you’re doing it with another feeling. And this other feeling? It’s probably the biggest one out there, certainly the biggest one without a name.
(good, that started as a qualifier, now it’s a callback)
(refrain)
And that is, it feels good to know.
REQUIRED SET UP
I think the bad guys know this one. You can tap them on the shoulder, it’s okay for them to listen now.
We don’t have a name for it; they do.
(them knowing the name moved farther down.)
It feels good to know.
I’m not talking about curiosity. I’m talking about the feeling at the end. I’m talking about the rat ding. But instead of the food the rat gets when it presses the button, you’re getting information.
The rat hits the button, gets the reward,
(don’t ruin ‘cocaine’ gag, below)
you click the link, get the information.
(continuing the joke)
So tomorrow, after you rationally choose not to have the feelings of the depressing climate story
(/end or loop)
and after you see something that makes you so mad, and the more you thought about it …
(then)
All right, okay.
(one “all right” to not oversell the joke) )
(save for below)
There’s another headline,
CONSPIRACY VOICE
“Five ways the scientists are experimenting on you”.
YOU
What are they? What are the five ways?
NARRATOR
Ding. The rat presses the button.
HEADLINE
“Stop turning right! Here’s why you can’t out of that maze.”
YOU
“What am I doing wrong, tell me!”
NARRATOR
Ding. The rat presses the button.
SELF-REFERENTIAL NARRATOR
I stole that from the “Top ten clickbait titles for rats.”
YOU
“Well, what are they? What are the top ten titles?”
NEW OKAY, ALL RIGHT
Okay, all right.
NARRATOR
Ding. The rat presses the button.
And those headlines can only work, because it feels good to know.
This feeling is how the internet was built
THEN
THESIS MAN!
The internet didn’t just wink into existence one day because we needed something to blame all our problems on. We made it.
We weren’t were walking in a field one day, there were two boxes, one was Inner Contentment and Peace, and the other was The Internet, and we just picked up The Internet Box.
(to be read as written)
SCOTT KING ONE
(meh)
(justifying/explaining)
“I picked up the box that was closest.”
SCOTT KING TWO
(also rational)
(exhale to maintain calm at Scott King One)
“Why didn’t you just pick up the Willingness To Go Farther for Boxes Box?”
SCOTT KING ONE
(whiny – rational)
(throwaway)
(meh/couldn’t be arsed)
“It was too far”
(OR)
“It was even farther than The Inner Peace and Contentment Box.”
No, we built it. We wanted it.
(refrain)
Because it feels good to know.
THEME STATEMENT
Give you an example. You’re walking along and there’s a missing piece of information in your head. And you need it.
YOU
“Wait, who was that guy … who was in that movie …”
ME
You get on your phone, you start typing away. You figure out what movie because he was also in that other movie with that lady, and then finally …
YOU
“Ah, man, different guy.”
NARRATOR
And you look up
And you realize, you crossed the street, staring at your phone. It was just blind luck there were no cars there, you’d be dead.
Because in that moment, you had to know. Knowing was more important than being alive.
ADDENDUM
And that’s how good it feels to know.
YOU
“Wait! Which guy were you talking about? What movie was he in?”
CERNE MOTHERFUCKERS
Whose fault is this? Anyone remember? That’s right, the scientists. Because as stupid as we are …
Scientists are all about this feeling.
(callback alert)
Here’s a rock, a perfectly neutral rock. Scientist comes along, says
A PERFECTLY RATIONAL SCIENTIST
What’s inside the rock? A molecule. Okay, but what’s inside a molecule? An atom. Yeah, but what’s inside an ATOM?????
WHAT’S INSIDE THAT?????
NARRATOR
I mean rationally. Pursuing this rationally.
But there’s a serious problem with what they’re rationally pursuing at Cerne right now.
THE STRANGELET (MAY CONTAIN SOME EXPOSITION)
You may have heard of Cerne, where they throw little tiny things at other little tiny things to make even smaller tiny things. But one of the tiny things may not have heard of is called a Strangelet. A strangelet is a hypothetical particle that’s equal parts up, down and strange quarks. Quarks are the building blocks of neutrons. It may exist in the universe, it may not.
(phrasing)
It may not yet exist.
(/phrasing)
But if it does exist, and we accidentally make one …
The gravitational force will crush earth to the size of football field mini-mall.
IT’S HYPOTHETICAL!
You can say, and they do, that
THEY
“this is just hypothetical”,
BACK TO ME
and that’s correct.
But almost every single particle that they’ve discovered was hypothetical first, so they could know what to look for.
HISTORICAL NARRATOR
The atom, the neutron, the electron, the neutrino, all of them theorized before they were found.
RATIONAL NARRATOR
“Why can’t they just predict/theorize it?”
CONCLUSION
Because it feels good to know.
THIS IS DISHONEST
(can’t be used)
They’ve got a good track record with this.
LINE ACTS AS TRANS TO:
NARRATOR
(cadence)
You can say, and they do,
CERN-O
“The odds of this happening are very low”
THE BRITISH UNDERSTATEMENT
Something like that, I don’t know if I could settle for very low.
TAKE THEIR WORD FOR IT
And why are they risking this? Because it feels good to know. Don’t take my word for it. Take their word for it. They’re the ones saying it. What do they say, they say,
THEM
This is pure science, knowledge for its own sake.
BACK TO ME
I didn’t say it. They did.
And they’ll be a giant bank of lights, because I imagine this as a 1960s science fiction movie, and someone will throw a switch, and one of those lights will turn from orange to a slightly different orange, they’ll say:
SCIENTIST
Oh.
NARRATOR
And then, a microsecond later.
SCIENTIST
(very delivery dependant)
Oh.
NARRATOR
There’s no practical application here, by design. They are risking the end of all life on earth exclusively, because that’s how good it feels to know.
ADD IT UP – FEELING GOOD TO KNOW + CHOICE
So, let’s add it up.
It feels good to know and we choose based on feeling
And that’s going to cause some problems, because we also choose what to believe
In fact, when I said, “We choose what to believe”, you made a choice.
… you decided not to
(or, more rhyme-y)
believe me
(/more rhyme-y)
take me seriously
(/andor)
which IN EVERY OTHER INSTANCE
(“would be the right choice” – optional)
Because when it comes down to it, we’re just gonna make a few decisions about our destinies,
(working)
between being a movie star, and just living an humble life that movie stars make movies about to reassure us that that was the better choice.
(/working)
You’re gonna make a couple more choices between cake and the most disgusting food ever conceived. But most of your choices are gonna be about what you believe.
You’re
(repetition of “gonna be”)
gonna be
(/repetition)
stuck in traffic, and you’re gonna say to yourself,
WE
(confident)
(“unlike everyone else”)
“Oh, I know a shortcut.”
ME
And you go through an elaborate set of side street to get home.
(sentence ends with conclude sound)
That’s not the choice I was talking about. The choice I’m talking about is when you do get home, ninety minutes later than usual, you’re gonna tell yourself
YOU, THE IDIOT
(tone dependent)
“it was definitely faster than staying in traffic”
Most of the choices we make are about beliefs.
Every day, and every second of that day, we are facing a wave of information. Including information from ourselves. And as that information comes at us, and from within us, without really even noticing, we say,
YOU
(these should be faster pauses in between)
No … no … yes … no
(beat to imply you’re thinking about it even though you’re actually not)
No.
NOW THERE ARE THREE
Most of the choices we make, are about beliefs.
(note reverse ordered list, most recent thought goes first)
And if belief is a choice, and
we choose based on feelings,
(“feels good to know” goes here because of response from You)
AND it feels good to know?
We’ve got a problem.
YOU
(try deep, authoritative)
“It feels good to know. That’s not a problem.”
That’s why we have science.”
(callback to Cerne)
You just said so yourself. Scientists are all about this feeling.
WHOOP DEE DOO
U stop here.
NARRATOR
And yeah, okay. Because without that feeling, Archimedes is sitting up in his bathtub, and he’s saying.
Archimedes groans annoyingly, and then finally.
ARCHIMEDES
(“I guess”)
“rrrrrmmmm … eureka”
TRANS:
That’s not how it happened.
CAVEAT
And while everyone working at Cerne is a MORON,
RECLAMATION
It feels good to know, and this feeling has led to a lot of actual useful things.
ME, AS FLEMING
It must have felt great to discover penicillin. I mean, it felt pretty good, I mean, it didn’t feel like anything, it’s just something …
NARRATOR
All right, yep, all right.
TOUGH TRANS
SCIENCE? YES. EVERYTHING? ALSO, YES
So, yes, these three things, that it feels good to know, that we choose based on feeling, and we choose what to believe, that is why we have science.
(beat)
But there’s a little, tiny, little tiny problem there.
(theme statement)
it’s also why we have everything.
Because the second they announced the discovery of penicillin? There was a guy out there, I guarantee you, probably more than one, there was a guy and he said …
GUY AND WHAT HE SAID
“Penicillin? That’s just mold water. And
(dismissive “heh”)
mold looks gross on bread.”
DRIVE IT HOME
And they could save his life with penicillin and he still wouldn’t believe it worked.
(get to it)
Because him knowing that penicillin was just mold water, felt just as good, and in the same way, as discovering it.
THEY ARE THE SAME FEELING
(cadence “because”)
Because they are the same feeling.
(theme statement)
Because if it feels good to know, the content of your knowledge doesn’t matter. It can be anything, and it will feel the same.
TOUGH TRANS
HELIOCENTRIC BASTARDS
For a very, very long time, it felt good to know that the earth was at the center of the universe.
Until some nitwit comes along and ruins it with … math.
Until some nitwit comes along and says
SOME NITWIT
“The math doesn’t work.”
OR
The battle of superstition vs. reason.
They cast Pope Urban the VIII as the bad guy cause that’s a very effective technique.
NARRATOR
But there’s no reason to make it so dramatic/grandiose. Instead you can just imagine poor Pope Urban the VIII.
POPE URBAN THE VIII
“The earth’s not at the center?
(delivery dependant)
Man. I already learned that”
TOUGH TRANS
BATTLE OF THE NETWORK FEELINGS
So, that feeling, that it feels good to know, it’s not just different from curiosity, in fact, it’s been fighting curiosity the whole time.
(you need to say, at some point, truth is fighting curiosity. )
Look at the entire history of knowledge...
EXAMPLE
We could have gone from believing in the Moon God to going to the moon
(beat for reveal)
to actually meet to the Moon God, seems like a nice guy, in charge of … in a single generation.
OUT OF CHARACTER, BUT …
From the floating uterus, to flying cars. Which we still don’t have yet.
BETTER
From the wheel to being stuck in traffic, 100 years is all it’d take.
But it didn’t take a hundred years, it took thousands.
WHY
what was holding us back was the fight between those two feelings.
(theme restate)
between curiosity and how good it feels to know.
We don’t have a name for this feeling, it feels good to know.
The bad guys do. They’re not going to tell me. ‘Cause I wouldn’t let them listen in on that one part …
(pleading)
it was just the one part.
DR. SCIENTIST
Thoughts are the means, feelings are the end.
(long beat)
All right, they’re not going to tell me.
(then)
Fine. I’m going to make up a name for that feeling. I’m going to call it …
(pause for effect)
truth.
THE BIG REVEAL/RISK
Because truth is a feeling.
OTHER OPTION
If it feels good to know, how much of a stretch is it that truth is a feeling?
OPTIONAL
It’s the same problem as before. You’re in your meat cockpit. Whatever various realities are out there, we still experience the trueness of them as a feeling.
Yeah. I know. Kant’s going to be very upset about this.
NARRATOR
And not just Kant! The pundits are out there,
(aside)
if the bad guys are listening, the pundits can listen too,
(/aside)
and they’re bemoaning this post-truth world.
POST-TRUTH WORLD
You can’t say that, truth is a feeling. That’s very dangerous! We need truth now more than ever!
TOO MUCH, THE BIT
Well, that’s wrong.
STATEMENT
(possible chorus)
No, truth is what’s causing the problem.
(/chorus)
And that’s how it’s been from the beginning. There’s a whole history of people who’ve died over what was true.
CAUSE OF DEATH? JUST PUT DOWN “TRUTH”
THE OBJECTOR
All the people bled to death by doctors who thought that would cure them, even though it never had. All the people who died from infection from doctors who wouldn’t wash their hands because they were from the upper classes, and couldn’t possibly be dirty. And God help you you’re in the wrong group. Trotskyites, witches, heretics, pagans, Christians when they technically were pagans. All of them dead because of what was true.
THE OBJECTOR
Or rather what was true … at the time. Because something can be true at a particular time. And even though that’s been happening for the last ten thousand years, I guess
(try dragging it stopped)
… now it’s … stopped …
(trans)
Because when you say something stupid like,
POST-TRUTH NUTJOB
“We live in a post-truth world”
NOTE TO SELF
How does that even work? Was there an actual, literal, actual moment of truth?
POST-TRUTH NUTJOB
(similar voice to Mona Lisa guy)
“Hey, everybody! It’s April 4th, 2005, 3:52 Greenwich mean time. Everything is finally true!”.
NARRATOR
And then, one second later
POST-TRUTH NUTJOB
“And now it’s all ruined!!!”
NARRATOR
Truth has been a problem from the very beginning, and it hasn’t stopped being a problem. People are still out there dying over what they know to be true.
THE RATIONALIST
You mean over what they believe is true.
ME
Well, that’s very clever, but it’s the kind of stupidity that a scientist has.
YOU
“Oh, I’ll just tell them what they believe is false. That always worked.”
ME
Maybe something is true, maybe it isn’t. But the real question is: how does it feel if it is?
Look,, There are eight billion people out there. Those eight billion people agree on five things.
ME
1)
YOU
Well, I know what’s true.
ME
2)
YOU
And I know what I know is true is true because lots of people agree with me.
ME
3)
YOU
I mean, not on everything, obviously. In fact, no one agrees with everything I think is true.
ME
4)
YOU
And yes, those people who disagree with me on some things, those people who disagree with me on everything, sure. I know they think what they believe is true is true.
ME
and 5), that the best explanation for this 8 billion to one contradiction?
YOU
But that’s just because everyone else is wrong.
— OPTIONAL —-
BACK TO ME, NATURALLY
Because I can tell you what no one is saying. No one is saying:
NO ONE
Well, I believe a couple true things, but mostly? Just lies.
NARRATOR
No one says that.
/— END OPTIONAL —\
And if truth is a feeling, well that’s a pretty good explanation why.
EXAMPLE
All those bits of information, rushing at us, we’re going
WE
Yep. Yep. Nope. Yep. Yep.
INSERT
We’re not asking, How does the “yes” feel? How does the “no” feel?
DON’T KNOW WHERE TO PUT THIS
And that “no” is pretty important, because it’s a decision to keep believing something.
OPTIONAL, MAYBE FUNNIER
I mean, if we do it that quickly, it’s gotta be a great system.
REFERENCE
And we’re definitely not asking the most important question
(beat for statement of theme)
How do you know if something is true? I’m not talking about a particular thing. I’m talking about everything. Do you have a process you use every time for everything?
STRAW MAN
(deep voice)
Well, I’ve so glad you asked. I do have a process. I use evidence
(beat for pride)
and logic.
SCARECROW
Oh. My god. That’s what I use!
STRAW MAN
We both use the same system? This is amazing.
SCARECROW
It’s fantastic.
STRAW MAN
And if we use the same system, you know what that means.
SCARECROW
Well obviously I know what that means; I use evidence and logic. It means that …
STRAW MAN
It means that we’ve come …
SCARECROW
… we’ve come, to exactly the same conclusions …
STRAW MAN
… about everything!
SCARECROW
So much so,
STRAW MAN
So much so,
SCARECROW
there’d no reason to confirm what those conclusions actually are.
STRAW MAN
Well, they have to be the same.
SCARECROW
Because we use …
STRAW MAN
… unlike everyone else …
SCARECROW
… unlike everyone else, we use evidence …
STRAW MAN
… and logic.
I GOT SOUR NEWS FOR YOU, JACK
Because evidence and logic?
(then)
It’s everyone’s system. And Evidence and logic? It just doesn’t work.
Wanna convict a witch, Salem witch trials? Well, you gotta use evidence. The witch is cursing people by touch, whadaya do? Blindfold the witch and have them touch people.
(chorus)
Evidence and logic.
TRANS
I had a dog named Velma who, as some dogs do, liked to eat poop. One day, she looked at herbehind her to discover that poop was coming from her own butthole.
VELMA
“Oh my God.”
NARRATOR
She thought.
VELMA
“I made food!”
NARRATOR
(chorus)
Evidence. And logic.
Baby looks at the moon, covers it with its hand, moon disappears.
BABY
Mommy. I made the moon disappear!
Evidence and logic.
NO
Thinking that bad air causes disease. Evidence and logic.
BETTER
Ogg smashes his hand with a stone, trying a make an arrowhead, blasphemes against the invisible creatures the Shaman told him about, takes their name in vain. Next, the invisible creatures make the whole village sick.
(good call forward to invisible creatures)
(then)
Evidence and logic.
CONSPIRACY VOICE
There’s invisible creatures in the air, and when we breathe them in, the whole village gets sick.
NARRATOR
Except in that last case …
ALT
Beat with which to let sink in, then.
NARRATOR
The last one sounds the craziest, and also the only valid one. Why?
NEEDS TO BE FRONTED
The last is the craziest one, and only the valid one. How is that possible?
NEW VERSION
Everyone uses evidence and logic, but that’s just normal human reasoning. But we’re not taught how the last one works and saves lives. We’re not taught
(beat)
how to think.
SOCIETY BASED ON WHAT NOW?
Because this is a society not based on lies. But on easily disprovable lies. Place like that, you think they’re gonna teach you how to know things?
ORIGINAL:
Because this is a society not just based on lies,
(aside voice)
that’s fairly obvious,
(/aside voice)
but on easily disprovable lies. Place like that, you think they’re gonna teach you how to know things?
NARRATOR
So, three thousand years ago, there’s a conversation, same king as before, this time it’s between him and one his slaves.
SLAVE
Wait, so you own me? Like property. And I have to do everything you say?
KING (MAY NEED ACCENT)
Natural order of things.
NARRATOR
I’ve given the king an accent, makes it clearer.
Move up? Might help.
SLAVE
Oh. Natural order of things. Okay. All right.
OPTIONAL
KING
Okay, so. There’s a guy over there … Blech.
NARRATOR
That’s where the king dies.
SLAVE
Oh, well, if you’re dead, I guess I’m free to …
KING’S SON
Hold on a minute.
NARRATOR
King’s son. Slightly different accent.
(or)
Pretty much the same accent, ’cause come on, how many can I do, and he says.
MASTER’S SON
(Vinnie D’onfrio in MiB, combined with fake John Huston in There May be Blood)
Nope. I’m his son, so now I own you.
SLAVE
So it’s based on kinship.
KING’S SON, NOW THE KING
That’s right.
SLAVE
Natural order of things.
KING’S SON, NOW THE KING
Exactly.
SLAVE
But if it’s kinship, and it’s the natural order of things, you really only know who your mother is, not who your father is. So it wouldn’t make more sense if it was women that were in charge of…
KING’S SON, NOW THE KING
No. It would not make more sense.
NARRATOR
King’s son, now he’s the king, keeping in mind that even now, three thousand years later, that makes sense to us, even though it makes no sense whatsoever, king’s son, now he’s the king, changes the subject.
KING’S SON, NOW THE KING
So, as my father was saying, that guy, over there? He has some stuff I want. So, a bunch of my guys are gonna fight a bunch of his guys. And if you kill enough of his guys, I get to keep his stuff.
SLAVE
You do.
KING’S SON, NOW THE KING
Yep.
SLAVE
So you’re going to give us a bunch of weapons.
KING’S SON, NOW THE KING
Yep.
SLAVE
And that guy is going to give his guys a bunch of weapons.
KING’S SON, NOW THE KING
Uh-huh.
SLAVE
But we’re not going to fight you. And his guys and not going to fight him.
KING’S SON, NOW THE KING
Nope.
SLAVE
Even though there’s a bunch of us, and only one of you. And we have all the weapons.
KING’S SON, NOW THE KING
Nope. You’re not going to do that.
Long beat.
SLAVE
Yeah, all right.
/OPTIONAL
NARRATOR
It’s much better now.
(beat, better if narrator says it)
(believe this when you say it)
It’s because you didn’t work hard enough.
KING’S SON, NOW THE KING
(do fake far-away voice)
Also, these clear rocks are worth a lot of money, and regular rocks aren’t.
ME
That’s enough outta you.
Easily disprovable lies. This is not a society that’s gonna teach you how to know things.
WHERE DID THIS START?
So now we can go back to where it all went right. Because scientists are,
(begrudgingly)
occasionally
(/end begrudingness)
not wrong
(elaborate set-up for chapter 2)
about things.
They evidence and logic, because every one does, but they also use something else in order to
(begrudgingly two)
occasionally
(/begrudgingly two)
make genuine discoveries to their particular fields.
(then)
Now they fail to apply this something else when they failed to notice that expecting people to be rational was not a rational choice. But this something else? This third principle. It works. It produces results.
(pause for effect)
What is that principle? You may may have already asked yourself this question. Why is it called a theory?
THEORETICALLY…
Theory of gravity. Theory of climate change.
IDIOT
If it’s a theory, how good could it be?
NARRATOR
The answer to that is
(try a beat here)
1) not very good and
2) as good as it’s ever gonna get.
Because when it comes to science, actual practiced science, the reason it’s called a theory is because you’re not trying to prove if something is true. You’re trying to prove if something is false. When it comes to actual practiced science …
DARE TO SAY IT!
… nothing is true, including this.
Sound esoteric? It’s going to get worse before it gets better. David Hume.
(pause for laugh track, may need a)
I know.
(/may need a)
David Hume is why is the best we’re ever gonna get, is theories.
DREADED INDUCTION
He proposed what he called the problem of induction.
Basically, you can’t believe in cause and effect, unless you already believe in cause and effect.
Induction is usually,
(might soften the accidental racism of the proposition)
and incorrectly,
(/end soften)
explained as the black swan problem, that all swans are white until one day, and you find a black one.
But it’s much bigger than that. The problem of induction is more like all swans are white until one day, one of them turns into a bug.
Because what Hume is talking about is causality itself. His example is the pool table, you hit one ball, and the other balls go flying. You do this a million times, it happens a million times.
But even if something happened a million times before doesn’t mean it will happen the millionth and first.
Thing of it is, this is actually correct.
Before the big bang, there was no gravity, no matter, no light. No cause and effect. Every law we have now, didn’t exist.
Don’t believe in the big bang? Same problem. Little kid asks the priest.
LITTLE KID
Well, who invented God then? Could God make a God so big that He Himself could not make another God bigger than than Him?
NARRATOR
and so on.
(beat)
I know, it’s an anecdote about priests and little kids that didn’t involve molestation. That’s because it was my dad.
So one day, you’re going to hit those pool balls, and they’re just going to sit there. In fact, technically speaking, it won’t even be a day.
This might seem terrifying, that nothing is stable, that nothing is true.
(callback to horror film)
It might even make a good horror film.
See what I mean about the feelings behind neutrality now?
(soft phrasing)
But instead of covering our eyes or screaming at the screen to tell the characters to get out of the house, let’s sit with that terror a bit. Nothing is certain in the physical universe, and it all could change, just like that.
(beat)
That anxiety, doesn’t it just make you want to invent something? Something solid? Something certain? Something the bad guys won’t tell me the name for!!!!!
(option 1)
What should we call it?
(option 2)
I wonder if the bad guys have a name for it?
(option 3)
WWTBGD
But this is where the bad guys can actually help us. Everything I’ve done is from their playbook. Faced with the people acting like morons what would the bad guys do? Well, yes, they would find a way to profit off it, and they do. But faced with people acting like morons and wanting them not to, what would they do?
(statement of purpose)
what would the bad guys do?
Well, they would do what I just did.
(possible)
They would drop the names of philosophers to make them sound smart.
(/possible)
They would call attention to their tricks, making you think you can trust them.
They would create an insurmountable and anxiety inducing problem. Nothing is true. Nothing is stable. That fear would make you turn to them for answers.
They would talk
(pay attention to pronoun!)
about bad guys engaged in a vast conspiracy to use your feelings against you.
COMPLOTISTE
The world is trying to prevent you from learning how to know things.
(to????)
Nothing is true. Cause and effect.
They would then proceed to sell you the solution. Evidence and logic don’t work on their own, but they do work with a third ingredient, and all three together allow you to navigate through that …
YOU
Yes. No. No. Yes.
NARRATOR
… process, and see which bits of information are valid, and which are not.
And they would promise to sell you that solution
(better)
that third ingredient.
(/better)
… in their next episode.
END OF SECTION