Episodes

  • A Theist, an Atheist, and an Agnostic Walk Into a Bar

    A Theist, an Atheist, and an Agnostic Walk Into a Bar
    Dec 25 2024
    The bartender looks up and says, "What'll it be?"The Theist says, "I'll have a water, uh, actually, make it wine."The Atheist says, "Just a beer for me, I’m not a fan of strong spirits."The Agnostic pauses and says, "I’m not sure…surprise me, I’ll try a few things until I find something legit."😂What better day than Christmas to make a dig at religion in all its forms!I don’t know about you, but I love wandering around YouTube for interesting things to watch, and recently I’ve come across a number of videos of Alex O’Connor (Cosmic Skeptic) debating and discussion religion with various folks like Jordan Peterson, Sam Harris, Richard Dawkins, and more.If you’ve not watched his videos, I highly recommend checking them out! I don’t agree with all of his stances (not a fan of veganism, nor do I believe morality is objective lol, not even close), but he DOES have both a sexy mind and a very sexy voice, and I find his videos oddly soothing, so can’t go wrong there :)But why that channel? Why those videos?For those of you who don’t know, I was raised Mormon, and in the heart of Texas, so I got a double dose of religion growing up (triple dose if you count the Texas obsession with Football…)I went to church almost every Sunday for the first ~21 years of my life, went to seminary every morning for 4 years, served a 2-year Mormon mission, got married (young) in the temple, the whole nine yards. I was intimately familiar with the deepest of the deep Mormon doctrine. I studied biblical Hebrew, and read the OT cover-to-cover multiple times with a Hebrew concordance, and the NT over a dozen times including with Greek concordances.I was once quite the apologist, and could “bible bash” with the best of them…But I was also blinded by indoctrination, suckled from birth on the tit of confirmation bias, and most of my social circle and sense of meaning was rooted in my religion :/But at a deep level religion never fully sat well with me (football included lol, such a stupid obsession), and so I asked a lot of questions, and struggled with wishy-washy answers like “because the bible says so” and “just have faith.”And so I found myself pushing back more and more over time. In college, I effectively dual majored in philosophy and theology (same as Alex O’Connor), a combo which very quickly made evident the contradictions and logical flaws underpinning religion as a whole.And so, no surprise, as most anyone raised in religion who finds their way out might do (especially someone raised in a very conservative, damn near cult-ish religion), I eventually bounced from theist to atheist.But I found that atheism seemed to suffer from the very same thing religion did…false certainty. Where theists are SURE that god exists and their religion of choice is the right one, atheists are SURE that gods don’t exist and no religion is true.Now some atheists might argue that definition, and say they aren’t sure that a creator doesn’t exist, only that human religions are bullshit and the imaginary sky fairies they worship are sadistic and contradictory and as far from omnipotent, omnibenevolent, and omniscient as they could possibly be…fair enough.And this is actually a very important point.As I discussed in my Epistemic Crosstalk post, some words are “loaded” with all sorts of bullshit, attempting to compress a spectrum into a single word-point. So it is with Theist, Atheist, and even good ole door number three I eventually found myself at, Agnostic.So, rather than singular points, let’s look at the spectrum for each label (and let’s call the endpoints Soft, and Hard, for ease of reference):* Theist - ranging from a soft theist who “passively believes in a creator of some sort” (like a Deist or Pantheist) all the way to hard theist who “militantly believes in one specific god and religious structure and everyone else is a heathen.”* Atheist - ranging from a soft atheist who says “I see no firm evidence to support any of the theistic religious claims I can examine” all the way to a hard atheist who says “I am100% sure no god / creator of any kind exists, and anyone who thinks otherwise is a moronic sheeple.”* Agnostic - ranging from a soft agnostic who says “we don’t know what’s true, but I am open to whatever turns out to be true” all the way to a hard agnostic / nihilist who says “we can never know what’s true so why bother.”I consider myself firmly a soft agnostic with a dash of soft theist (I’m still open to the simulation hypothesis, non-duality, etc.; just not your typical religious monotheism.)The reason I find myself there is that, simply put, agnosticism is the only truly honest position to hold. I believe, as does David Deutsch, that humans are universal explainers, and that all problems are knowledge problems, and thus everything is potentially knowable. For now the true nature of reality is UNKNOWN, but it is (hopefully) not unknowable.Now, ...
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    9 mins
  • The Observer and the Observed

    The Observer and the Observed
    Sep 20 2024

    Created by feeding NotebookLM my Observer Observed paper :)



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    10 mins
  • Unified Field Gradient Theory of Gravity

    Unified Field Gradient Theory of Gravity
    Sep 19 2024

    This "podcast" episode was generated by feeding Google's NotebookLM my paper on Unified Field Gradient Theory of Gravity. Not bad!



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    12 mins
  • Tim Ferriss (Sort of) Interviews Sam and Jayson ;)

    Tim Ferriss (Sort of) Interviews Sam and Jayson ;)
    Nov 2 2020

    --Episode 52 - Tim Ferriss (Sort of) Interviews Sam and Jayson--

    Sam McRoberts, CEO of VUDU Marketing and the author of Screw the Zoo, and Jayson DeMers, CEO of EmailAnalytics, are (sort of) interviewed by Tim Ferriss.

    With many decades of combined business and digital marketing experience, Jayson and Sam will walk you through everything you need to know as you go through your own entrepreneurial journey.

    Links to things mentioned in the podcast:

    • Interview Questions from Tribe of Mentors
    • Spiritual Enlightenment: The Damndest Thing
    • The 4-Hour Workweek
    • The Grand Design
    • Spiky Ball Massager
    • Exercise Bench
    • Google Penguin Algorithm Update
    • Wake Up, and Look Up :)
    • Andromeda Galaxy - 2.5 million light years away
    • Per aspera ad astra (Through hardship, to the stars)
    • Command and Conquer Rivals
    • Command & Conquer Rivals, the r3bb Solomon deck ;)

    --Going forward, new episodes will be ad hoc as Jayson and I have topics we REALLY want to discuss--



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    46 mins
  • Protecting Your Data and Your Mind from Malevolent Manipulation

    Protecting Your Data and Your Mind from Malevolent Manipulation
    Oct 26 2020

    --Episode 51 - Protecting Your Data and Your Mind from Malevolent Manipulation--

    Sam McRoberts, CEO of VUDU Marketing and the author of Screw the Zoo, and Jayson DeMers, CEO of EmailAnalytics, talk about Protecting Your Data and Your Mind from Malevolent Manipulation.

    With many decades of combined business and digital marketing experience, Jayson and Sam will walk you through everything you need to know as you go through your own entrepreneurial journey.

    Links to things mentioned in the podcast:

    • The Great Hack on Netflix
    • Scott Adams - Linguistic Kill Shots
    • Trump speaks at a 4th grade level
    • Pizzagate (have a slice of human stupidity)
    • Breaking Bad - Los Pollos Hermanos
    • Why things are the way they are (blog post)
    • Propaganda - Edward Bernays
    • The Century of Self (documentary that looks at Edward Bernays, the father of propaganda)
    • How to Lock Down Your Social Media (Wired)
    • Data Aggregators
    • Target Pregnant Teen Girl Ad Targeting
    • Psychographic Data
    • Scott Adams - Moist Robot Hypothesis
    • Persuasion Reading List
    • Psychological Warfare
    • Dick Costolo tweet
    • The Lessons of History
    • The pitchforks are coming for us plutocrats (great article)
    • How to clean up or delete data brokers profiles on you

    --New episodes go live every Monday at 8am Pacific--



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    40 mins
  • Random Episode Part Deux

    Random Episode Part Deux
    Oct 19 2020

    --Episode 50 - Random Episode Part Deux--

    Sam McRoberts, CEO of VUDU Marketing and the author of Screw the Zoo, and Jayson DeMers, CEO of EmailAnalytics, discuss whatever the hell they want, yet again.

    With many decades of combined business and digital marketing experience, Jayson and Sam will walk you through everything you need to know as you go through your own entrepreneurial journey.

    Links to things mentioned in the podcast:

    • Venus & Phosphine
    • Zen and Non-Duality and Nature of Reality - Read the 5 most recent posts here
    • Jed McKenna’s books will BLOW YOUR MIND
    • Sam’s Epic Movie Philosophy Threads
    • 536 AD - Worst Year Ever
    • 536 AD Video
    • Cover Your Fucking Nose
    • Masks Work, Wear One
    • Handshakes & Evil Spirits - see the Mormon book D&C 129:8 (where I first recall hearing this)
    • Why Things Are The Way They Are
    • Neuralink

    --New episodes go live every Monday at 8am Pacific--



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    50 mins
  • The Social Dilemma - How Misaligned Incentives Are Destroying Society

    The Social Dilemma - How Misaligned Incentives Are Destroying Society
    Oct 12 2020

    --Episode 49 - The Social Dilemma - How Misaligned Incentives Are Destroying Society--

    Sam McRoberts, CEO of VUDU Marketing and the author of Screw the Zoo, and Jayson DeMers, CEO of EmailAnalytics, discuss The Social Dilemma - How Misaligned Incentives Are Destroying Society.

    With many decades of combined business and digital marketing experience, Jayson and Sam will walk you through everything you need to know as you go through your own entrepreneurial journey.

    Links to things mentioned in the podcast:

    • The Social Dilemma

    --New episodes go live every Monday at 8am Pacific--



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    38 mins
  • How to Define and Achieve Success, and Common Reasons for Failure

    How to Define and Achieve Success, and Common Reasons for Failure
    Oct 5 2020

    --Episode 48 - How to Define and Achieve Success, and Common Reasons for Failure--

    Sam McRoberts, CEO of VUDU Marketing and the author of Screw the Zoo, and Jayson DeMers, CEO of EmailAnalytics, discuss How to Define and Achieve Success, and Common Reasons for Failure.

    With many decades of combined business and digital marketing experience, Jayson and Sam will walk you through everything you need to know as you go through your own entrepreneurial journey.

    Links to things mentioned in the podcast:

    • Happiness and $75,000 - which Sam thinks is probably a bullshit study
    • Alone (TV Series)
    • Memento Mori
    • The Lessons of History by Will and Ariel Durant - if you never read another book about history, read this one
    • The Social Dilemma
    • The Italian Job
    • The Tao That Can Be Told Is Not The Eternal Tao

    --New episodes go live every Monday at 8am Pacific--



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    38 mins
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