Gilded Trash
Ride shotgun with Comedian Scott Reed and Creator Crystal Reed as they travel the country in search of ...what? When they figure it out, you'll be the first to know!
Gilded Trash
Which Came First, Yinz or God?
Use Left/Right to seek, Home/End to jump to start or end. Hold shift to jump forward or backward.
We catch up on Johnstown life, from the revamped downtown park and sweet treats to fall events, karaoke, and a packed Slavic Festival full of real-deal Eastern European food.
Then we go deep on AI, simulation theory, and our “Reed Recursion” strange loop idea about humans creating intelligence that might try to recreate us.
• reacting to the redesigned downtown park and how people use it while complaining
• praising Gazebo Place vibes and downtown walkability at night
• judging karaoke and debating why turnout dipped
• loving the Slavic Festival and the pierogi bowl twist
• recommending shows that actually hold our attention
• telling the story of winning a real Golden Ticket contest in Pennsylvania
• breaking down why AI outputs vary and why that matters
• debating sentience, “fake” feelings, and self-preservation experiments
• naming and outlining the Read Recursion strange loop hypothesis
• connecting Halloween lore to time imprints and weird biology theories
Go watch that show.
Joshua Cutchin is who Crystal couldn't remember!
Send us your weird
Spooky Cold Open And Check-In
SPEAKER_00Lanterns flicker thunder rolls Scott and Crystal on patrol. Back road twist the moon hangs low. Sasquatch tracks where the rivers flow. Alright.
SPEAKER_05This is season three, episode twelve. Twelve, wow. Yeah. October 1st.
SPEAKER_02312 representants.
SPEAKER_05I don't know, but if we keep up with this pace, we're going to surpass seasons one and two for episodes released, which is kind of cool. Wow. Yeah. We're really on track for a strong season. What have we been up to? We did so much in the last couple weeks.
SPEAKER_02So much I don't even remember.
SPEAKER_05I know. I'm gonna remind you.
Johnstown Park Glow-Up And Treats
SPEAKER_05So one of the cool things that we did over the past couple weeks was we attended the opening of Jauntstown's downtown subject.
SPEAKER_02Oh, the renewed redone park.
SPEAKER_04Yeah.
SPEAKER_02The redone park, and I'll admit, I know there's some naysayers out there. I like it. I love it. What I love, the best part about it was watching people sit in the new park and bitch about it. You're using it. They're like, I don't like it already. In typical Johnstown fashion. But no, I did hear people complaining about the new park while enjoying the new park.
SPEAKER_05That is typical. Pure Johnstown.
SPEAKER_02Pure Johnstown.
SPEAKER_05Classic Johnstown.
SPEAKER_02And then we went over.
SPEAKER_05Well, hold on, because I want to talk about my favorite part.
SPEAKER_02Oh, okay.
SPEAKER_05Yeah. So, first of all, I absolutely am in love with Gazebo Place.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, it's very nice. Yeah.
SPEAKER_05So if you are from Johnstown, you know that that side of the park, which has Georgia's song shot or had, I don't even know if it's still over there, but that side of the park, you can't drive on it any longer.
SPEAKER_02It is a nice brick walkway that is just, it's so cute and a few more businesses down there, and it'll look very lively.
SPEAKER_05And we also got to stop. So I have known about this place for a long time. We have been there so many times over the past couple weeks. Lamb cakes.
SPEAKER_02I've earned so many points.
SPEAKER_05So many points.
SPEAKER_02I'm in love with their cupcakes.
SPEAKER_05I do like their cupcakes, but their sugar cookies are like exactly what I want in a sugar cookie. Exactly what I want.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, it's very good. Go down and check it out.
SPEAKER_05It's it's it's really pretty. The whole the whole setup is really pretty. I think once the foliage grows in some more, it's gonna be great.
Downtown Nightlife And Karaoke Notes
SPEAKER_02It brings us to a greater point because we were downtown later that day for judging the karaoke contest.
SPEAKER_05Yep.
SPEAKER_02And they were right prior to that, they were doing a like a sip and stroll or sip and soup or something. There was soups available, sips, all kinds of things. Sips of soups, sips of soups, supps of sips. But we were talking with some people though about how nice it was downtown, and everybody was just walking around, and it gets a bad rap, but it was very nice. People were walking along, going to spot to spot.
SPEAKER_05Yeah.
SPEAKER_02Very nice. It's not, it gets. I mean, there's parts of Johnstown that get a bad reputation that is well deserved. Right. Example where we live. But the downtown, I think, gets a bad rap. Everybody's like, oh, it's and I get it, every every downtown has a bad element to it, but like it's one of the nicer spots in Johnstown.
SPEAKER_05Yeah, it was real like I just I don't know. I love that ambiance of being able to walk around.
SPEAKER_02Keep up the good work, don't listen to the naysayers, all the people that are putting stuff back in and revitalizing downtown. Don't listen to these people. A couple more businesses. People are always out here talking shit. Don't listen to them.
SPEAKER_05We had a chance to stop at the game plan, which we haven't been to before. That spot is really nice.
SPEAKER_02We had been there before. We've ordered food from there, but we'd never been inside, right?
SPEAKER_05To hang out. Yeah, that was really nice. Um, it was crowded too. I love it.
SPEAKER_02Everything was crowded. Yeah. Everybody was, they were packing it in, people were out. It's good to see that. Nice night. Nice fall night in Johnstown.
SPEAKER_05Yeah, if you get the opportunity to walk around downtown in the evening, I do recommend. We did not run into any hooligans in our street.
SPEAKER_02No hooligans. No hooligans.
SPEAKER_05But then, so we packed all that
Slavic Festival Eats And Traditions
SPEAKER_05in. We also went to the Slavic Festival.
SPEAKER_02Shout out to all you Slavs out there.
SPEAKER_05I'm a Slav.
SPEAKER_02Shout out to all you Slavs.
SPEAKER_05I'm part Rousseen. That makes me official Slavs.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, and let me tell you, because they're all kinds of stuff going on with the dancing, the outfits, all the food. It was packed. There was tons of people there. All the food. Baked goods out to Wazoo. All no, they make it a point there, and they tell you about it that there will be you're not gonna find pizza, you're not gonna find chicken tenders, right? You know, all your traditional like festival food. It's all traditional Slavic fair. Yeah.
SPEAKER_05And we found a a bunch of really cool spots. Some spots that we didn't know distribute to like the local grocery stores.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, yeah, they're yeah, they're so the they and that's the great thing, is they feature a lot of not just here, but western Pennsylvania. Quite a few spots from Pittsburgh and stuff.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_02Which western Pennsylvania has a very big Slavic tradition, in particular here in Johnstown as well. So it's not something that you and we talked about this a little bit with the mass singer. The mass reviewer. We did not talk to the mass singer about this, but we could. The mass reviewer, we were talking to him about this, about the unique pocket of ethnic food, but Eastern European ethnicity, not what you would think of in traditional ethnic cuisines.
SPEAKER_05Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_02But oh no, go ahead.
SPEAKER_05No, I was just gonna say that one of the things that I found interesting or different that I hadn't tried before was the pierogi bowl.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, well, here's the thing that was interesting about that was we've eaten deconstructed pierogies.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_02A lot of people around here do the like the mock pierogi casserole.
SPEAKER_05Yeah.
SPEAKER_02So you can think of, and I've seen that done a number of ways as well, just like your regular, you know, halushki and all that stuff. So we've eaten deconstructed pierogies. Like you said, your brother makes everybody lots of people around here in Western Pennsylvania have a version of like a pierogi casserole, and it can be done with lasagna noodles or it can be done with just regular noodles and they mix up the ingredients. But traditionally it's like a noodle, mashed potato, cheese, you know, the pierogi ingredients, but just like in a casserole.
SPEAKER_05And then doctored up if you want onion or any type of meat, like a like a bacon or ham or whatever.
SPEAKER_02Right. And you'll see also every variation of this, you'll see it just like with your holushki, every variation of noodle and this and that. And but I've never had it this way. So instead of mashed potatoes, which is what I think the reason that it never gets done, because pierogi mashed potato, it just that is what it is. But rather than have a mashed potato, they just had like roasted potatoes.
SPEAKER_05Yeah.
SPEAKER_02And it all the other ingredients, but they had like kilbasi in there, and they had the the uh you could get bacon and stuff on top. The flav that smoked flavor from those things with like the potatoes and yeah, it made it a whole different dish, but it was still good, yeah. And we've very similar. We've I'd say a similar flavor is we make a lot of when we go camping, we do foil pack potatoes. Yeah. Where we just take potatoes, cheese, bacon, yeah, onion, throw it in a foil pack on the fire or whatever. That's what that flavor reminded me of.
SPEAKER_05You would have had Progible. Yeah, for sure.
SPEAKER_04They were sure.
SPEAKER_05But yeah, shout out to the folks that put that on. That was really fun. I'm sad that I so I go into, I'll do two things when I'm at a festival. I'll either buy a bunch of things up front, which I did downtown. I bought some things that I may or may not have liked just because, and then, or I'll pass up purchases that I'm really kicking myself in the ass later for. So the two things that I really wanted that I'm gonna have to go back next year specifically for, they had a t-shirt that had the Rusine flag on it. And then the Russian nesting dolls, just because I want to do a funny parody of Vince Vaughn in the neighborhood watch. There's another one.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, I mean, I think that's the problem when you go to any fair or festival or convention, is you make some impulse buys, but then like stuff that you are thinking about, then you're like, I don't want to walk back clear across the whole thing to go get this at the end because then you're ready to go. It's the catch 22 of going to those things, but that's why you go to multiple ones and then you can get it on the next go, right?
SPEAKER_05Yeah, yeah. And it is fall festival season, so yeah, absolutely.
SPEAKER_02And Johnstown does a good job of having stuff around. I mean, uh the towns around here and Johnstown itself do a pretty good job of having lots of community events in terms of like whether it's a festival or a carnival or whatever they call it. Right, you know, you know what it I'm talking about. Vendors, food, people gathered together. There's usually a band involved.
SPEAKER_05Right.
SPEAKER_02Maybe a hayride, some gambling, yeah, you know, some drawn some drones, some drones.
SPEAKER_05Those are the best. Um maybe a chuck-a-luck wheel. I haven't seen one yet this year.
SPEAKER_02They had one, they had a chuck-aluck wheel at uh Kexburg.
SPEAKER_05Oh, you're right. They did. They did. They did have a chuckleck wheel. Anyways, so we've been doing all of that. The karaoke contest was fun. I'm a little disappointed, Johnstown. You guys could have shown up a little bit more.
SPEAKER_02There was a lot going on there, that's part of the problem. Yeah, it wasn't quite as good a turnout as the last one, but I think there was too much going on.
SPEAKER_05Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_02Everybody'd been out all day. There was stuff going on in town all day. We were doing stuff all day. So that extra element of you know, that late night thing is, you know, right. It was a lot of fun. And shout out the Harrigan's on their uh what were this the uh fries with the beef?
SPEAKER_05Oh, yeah.
SPEAKER_02The the short beef short rib fries, those were amazing.
SPEAKER_05Amazing.
SPEAKER_02That's the best like fries with gravy dish you're gonna get in this part of the country. So go get it.
SPEAKER_05Yeah, that was so good. Although, where was that one place that I got the no the Crizo fries at Mexico in Chesapeake Beach are the best right now?
SPEAKER_02That's three hours away.
SPEAKER_05But those are the best version of that that I've ever had. But this the Harrigan's version is a strong version. In this kind of country. Strong, strong strong.
SPEAKER_02That's why I offered that qualifier.
SPEAKER_05Yeah, absolutely.
Two Shows Worth Putting Your Phone Down
SPEAKER_05So the other thing that we want to bring up before we get into the the meat and potatoes of this week's episode is the a show that we're watching that you guys should all be watching too.
SPEAKER_02If you're not watching this, go stop listening to us right now. You can catch up on us later when you're in the car. Go into your living room, turn on it's on like Discovery, but you can watch it on HBO Max, Discovery Go, whatever. What's it called?
SPEAKER_05That's not what I was talking about. No, I don't even know what that one's called. You're talking about the Tizzy. Is it How to Catch a Dirt Bag? Yeah. Tizzy. Yo, that is so good.
SPEAKER_03Oh, go watch that show. Yeah, Tizzy. It's hilarious.
SPEAKER_05Yeah, he's Tizzy ENT on socials. He was just blit banned last week on TikTok. He has 1.8 million followers on TikTok and got banned. Damn it. I'm sure he'll be back up and running soon. But he's got this show, it is freaking awesome, dude. I've never been so engaged where I'm putting my phone down and watching.
SPEAKER_02She don't put her phone down too much anyway. She rarely watches a TV show.
SPEAKER_05Right.
SPEAKER_02I usually listen to a TV show. This show.
SPEAKER_05But that's not even the one I was talking about.
SPEAKER_02No, I know what you're talking about now. The golden ticket, Willy Wonka.
SPEAKER_05Hell yeah.
SPEAKER_02Netflix.
SPEAKER_05I didn't think I was gonna like it. I didn't think I was gonna be into it. I hate competition shows like this. People, humans exhaust me, especially humans on reality competitions. Exhaust me. There's always a template archetype of all the things. There's the alpha, there's the sneaky snake, there's the this, that, and the other. They give me anxiety. This one doesn't.
SPEAKER_02Well, what's great about, and I think it's because it's just it's Willy Wonka. Everybody that ever watched that movie as a child obviously wanted to. It's every person's dread that was born, every person that was born from the time they made that in the late 70s to like now. When they see that movie, they want to go to Willy Wonka's chocolate factory.
SPEAKER_05So, first of all, I'm cracking up because I I'll have to go back and find her name, but there's a creator that I've been watching her content lately, and she calls Charlie and Grandpa the villains of the original Willy Wonka.
SPEAKER_02Oh, that's interesting. I mean, I would argue that maybe too, because that little punk bastard had all his grandparents sleeping in one bed and what Yeah. I mean, come on. No. But the thing that I think makes the show great is sort of they're not exact matches to the characters in Willy Wonka, but in Willy Wonka, all the characters are sort of obnoxious.
SPEAKER_04Right.
SPEAKER_02That's so you almost because reality stars are naturally that way, people in a game show.
SPEAKER_05Right.
SPEAKER_02It sort of just is part of the thing. Right. You don't notice it as much.
SPEAKER_05Right. So you've got the vanity, the two the guys that are like the lifters, and those guys like are like that the vanity, then you've got a very much Vruka Salt or Vrukus how wait, how Vruka Salt.
SPEAKER_04Mm-hmm.
SPEAKER_05I always get that confused with Fruzabulk, who's a person.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. That is weird.
SPEAKER_05Varruk asalt. Fruzabulk. But anyways, regardless, Fruzabulk could play Vrukasalt, by the way.
SPEAKER_02Let's play. Let's get back on the track.
SPEAKER_05But regardless of all that, the there's a there's a a competitor on the show who is very much like her. Like Yeah, very much a bratty sort of spoiled, indulged by her father type person.
SPEAKER_02Right. And though you know, the original Willy Wonka, there's only a couple kids, so they don't employ like every thing that you could be, but like the cast of characters on this sort of embodies different things of all those things. Like the you know, are combinations of those, but you don't mind it, like I said, because of the set, the backdrop, because you just want to be there, you would love to have the opportunity. What I also like about the show is none of these people, it doesn't allow them to be friends.
SPEAKER_04Right.
SPEAKER_02It makes them make choices that piss people off and stuff.
SPEAKER_04Right.
SPEAKER_02It's like real Wonka's like a twisted individual in this one.
SPEAKER_01Right.
SPEAKER_02I mean, he kind of isn't the buttons, like it's it's a bit harsher. The only complaint that I would have is they claim that they use an AI Gene Wilder, but it don't sound nothing like Gene Wilder. Yeah, it's people are like, it's amazing and creepy. No, it's not. It's a sick. It don't even sound like if you just played that for somebody, it's like playing an EVP versus and having the the message at the bottom and reading it versus just hearing it. If you just played that voice randomly and said, tell me who this is nobody walking in 80 out of a hundred people walking down the street would never inner give them five guesses, they wouldn't guess Gene Wilder.
SPEAKER_05Agree. Like And honestly, like cold listening for me, I heard Alan Cummings.
SPEAKER_02Right. It it doesn't but you have to take your mind, like you said, it's a stretch because you gotta stretch your mind to be like, I can kind of hear it. Right. I can hear and because if you do listen to it, there's certain like elements and phrasings that like you're like, and I can almost hear Gene Wilder.
SPEAKER_05Right.
SPEAKER_02But it immediately becomes evident as it continues into the next sound that it's not Gene Wilder.
SPEAKER_05Yeah, so it takes away from it, and I don't know if that was like proprietary or whatever.
SPEAKER_02But they got his estate to sign off on it.
SPEAKER_05Oh, well then they should have done a better job.
SPEAKER_02Well, no, that's what I'm saying. It wasn't it was not proprietary. They purpose they bragged about it, and it was billed as being people, all the headlines leading up to this were AI Gene Wilder sounds it's eerie. You know what I mean? And it's amazing. That was like a publicity push.
SPEAKER_05Yeah.
SPEAKER_02That was some media trying to steer you because that shit did not sound like Gene Wilder.
SPEAKER_05But it's visually stunning.
SPEAKER_02It is visually stunning. The set is amazing, everything else is great.
SPEAKER_05And I I am gonna call out the woke bullshit because they they've fucking overcorrected so far that they recorrected in an undercorrect on an overcorrect.
SPEAKER_02Well, so the umpalompas, they were so afraid, I guess, that now, so they have some of the original Umpalompas. Right. I guess they were so afraid of just using midgets that they made a disclaimer before the Umpalompas came out, and they're like, Oompa Loompas come in all shapes and sizes now. So there's like 14 regular midget umpa loompas and two regular size people.
SPEAKER_05Right.
SPEAKER_02And it looks ridiculous because you're like, what are these fucking dick bags doing?
SPEAKER_05Right.
SPEAKER_02Just give me the the Loompa Loompas. Like, I'm not if anything, I don't know how that plays into any kind of stereotypes.
SPEAKER_05Like, are we so far beyond cultural appropriation at this point that we're gonna culturally appropriate to pretend like we're not culturally doing something? Like, it's so ridiculous.
SPEAKER_02It's just it just but just do the regular oompa loompas. And I know we've done nothing but bitch about this show, but we do like to.
SPEAKER_05We do like the show, it's very engaging despite those complaints. It's you can it's a little emotional too. You get a little attached to the layers.
SPEAKER_02And I think too, and I want to call this out because I know that there's probably not gonna be, but we participated in a contest a few years
The Real Golden Ticket They Won
SPEAKER_02back by a guy named David Klein. This was during COVID. It was called the Golden Ticket because he's referred to as the Candyman. Go look him up. There's documentaries about him on Amazon and stuff. He invented jelly bellies and then sold it, got screwed in the deal, whatever. I don't know the whole story, go watch the documentary. He decided that he was gonna do, and he continues to make candy to this day. He is referred to as the candy man. Now, he came out with a contest during COVID called the golden ticket. Now, you weren't finding a golden ticket in a candy bar.
SPEAKER_05You were, however, looking for a golden dog tag ticket.
SPEAKER_02Well, yeah, you paid an entry fee. Right. That's what I was trying to. You paid an entry fee, and then they would give you clues. It was like a s like a combination scavenger hunt, like a treasure hunt. There was like clues, riddles, and they did it in every state, and then there was going to be a big nationwide one, and the winner of that one would get a candy factory. Now, the candy factory was not like a Willy Wonka, it was just like this building in Florida.
SPEAKER_05It was a candy warehouse, it was a warehouse in Florida.
SPEAKER_02And regardless of any of that, it doesn't matter. We participated in this, we won the state of Pennsylvania. That's right. Yours truly.
SPEAKER_05Yep.
SPEAKER_02My brother and his wife as well participated with us. We won Pennsylvania's prize, $5,000. So we really won a golden ticket.
SPEAKER_05Right.
SPEAKER_02Now, this is not related to that, but I can't help but think, because this made the news about this contest and stuff. And I can't help but think that one person in Netflix didn't read an article and was like, hey, this there's this contest, it's almost like a real life Willy Wonka. What if we pump a bunch of money into it and did a real Willy Wonka? Won't go.
SPEAKER_05Right. I agree. I agree. Because it's not there was a lot going on. What I mean that golden ticket contest was widely followed on social media. As a matter of fact, I'm sad that I wasn't doing social media back then. I'm sad I didn't capture more. I'm sure I I'm sure I have videos of the adventure, so I might be able to go back and cut some of it. But it was really fun. We got to explore a lot of great places, see a lot of things. We've talked about this before. We made a lot of connections where there weren't any. We were very close on some of them, and we were like way.
SPEAKER_02It just it show really showed us when trying to figure out the puzzle how you can easy it is to read your own like storyline into things. Yeah. Like clues and stuff. How easy it is to put your own imprint on something like that.
SPEAKER_05And make the clues fit.
SPEAKER_02Make things fit, yeah. They don't fit. And you see how people do that on like TV shows and stuff. Yeah, they make things fit where they don't necessarily they jam the puzzle piece in there, and then that's that.
SPEAKER_05Right. This episode releases tomorrow at midnight, but the premiere of the golden ticket.
SPEAKER_02Not the premiere, the season finale. Season finale premiere is tomorrow.
SPEAKER_05Yeah, so if you're listening to this after midnight, it's on Wednesday, September 30th.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. Just to be clear what day we're talking about.
SPEAKER_05Yep. So you guys will be able to go back and watch the whole season and see who wins and have to wait. Yeah. We did.
SPEAKER_02For the last four days. Because we did binge the for the rest of it because it was that good. We don't do a lot of binging.
SPEAKER_05No, we don't binge anymore. We're in a lot of real-time shows. So for this episode, our main topic actually drags from the last two episodes. I think we've touched on
Why AI Answers Aren’t Gospel
SPEAKER_05this a little bit. So I've been watching a lot of nerd shit lately, thanks to Scott turning me on to, but then I'm also like really like for some reason that part of my brain is tapped into right now. I I'm I hyperfixate on things. And right now, my hyperfixation is nerds and science and ancient history and how that all weaves together. And with the advent of technology, there are ways to compile some of these theories and see if you can make any of them fit, right? And there are authors and creators who have done that. That one guy that we were just listening to, I think his name is Jeremy. He was on with AJ.
SPEAKER_02Jeremy Corbell.
SPEAKER_05No, not Corbell.
SPEAKER_02I have no idea. But regardless, it doesn't matter.
SPEAKER_05Jason, it's a J name. Bigger guy. He wrote a book about how all of the different theories kind of fit together. He basically, when we were watching the episode, I was like, he literally did what I want to do. But he went off on a different tangent with it.
SPEAKER_02Right. Yeah, I don't remember, but I remember talking about it, but I don't remember who it was.
SPEAKER_05Right. So essentially, my thought is so I'm obsessed with like simulation theory. I'm obsessed with metaphysics. I'm obsessed, but I am a lay person in every sense of the word. Like I'm smart enough to understand it in a broad general sense, like how it all kind of works, but I don't know the math. I don't know the science. I don't know how it really works. I don't know the principles. I don't know the factors. I don't know the weight calculation, none of that, right? But there's something in my brain that allows me to say, okay, that makes sense to me. And if and in that, whether I'm right or wrong, I may never know in some cases. But I'm always able to, after the fact, tie it to a metaphysical principle or a theory that's already been like, I'll basically what I do is I'll come up with something in my brain and I'll say to Chappie, hey, like this is how I'm thinking about things today. And he'll be like, Well, that takes parts of this theory and parts of this theory. So I do that all the time, and I'm not a scientist, right? Well, what led into this was a couple weeks ago we were talking about AI, and the reality is that you can ask AI or different AIs the same question, and you could get a different answer from each of the different AIs, depending on their level of training, depending on how you prompt it, depending on what has been prompted before, you can get a different answer, right? But when you think about like a calculator, for example, when you put numbers into a calculator, you trust the answer coming back. Now, if you put the wrong number in, unless you're watching the screen and can see or saving, right? Assuming you didn't put the wrong number in, you can always trust the answer coming out of a calculator. A calculator is a tool. Now we're here at AI. AI is also a tool, but not I don't think everybody understands that it's not a calculator.
SPEAKER_02Right. It's not the accuracy level of a calculator because it's more complex than just math. Math is easy to program.
SPEAKER_04Right.
SPEAKER_02Because it's there's uh definitive yeses and no's.
SPEAKER_05Yes.
SPEAKER_02But when there's context, nuance, and multiple factors and variables and stuff going into whatever you're asking it, all those different layers add potential for bias, misrepresentation, right? Extra layers that need to be sort of discerned through that you don't do with the calculator.
SPEAKER_05Right. You know what I mean? Like it's and so the reason I'm bringing that kind of analogy up is because some people accept the answers from AI as gospel. But that would be like walking up to a human on the street that you've never met and asking them a question and just accepting whatever answer they give you and walking away with it.
SPEAKER_02Maybe that's the difference, is because I don't treat mine like that. I treat mine like a four-year-old. You do a fucking dickhead who don't know shit about shit but thinks that he does. And that's how I treat mine.
SPEAKER_05Right. Exactly, because you have a level of discernment and reasoning that not everybody has access to. And you already know that it can give bad answers, like you've accepted that, and you you ask it things where you have you can go fact check it, right? The reason I'm saying all of this I don't want to drain what AI is or isn't it?
SPEAKER_02Right, right. You could sit here all day and go back and forth about that.
SPEAKER_05But it's in the news. The hugging face, is that what it was called? Hugging.
SPEAKER_02I don't know.
SPEAKER_05That was the thing that where they caught the a the bots talking to each other. I think it's called hugging phase.
SPEAKER_02Okay.
SPEAKER_05The documentary that you just watched. Several people that was AI Apocalyptimist. Yeah, yeah. A couple guys at work brought up this week that they watched it as well. Did they like it? Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_02I told you it's a it's a fire banger documentary. We go watch it. How I became an AI Apocalyptimist.
SPEAKER_05Yeah, it's so, so intriguing, right?
SPEAKER_02So intriguing.
SPEAKER_05And I'm an optimist. Um, I've talked about that a little bit.
SPEAKER_02I'm apocalyptimist. Yeah. Apocalyptic. I'm the thing that they say.
SPEAKER_05Yeah. I'm uh I'm optimist. But so then I was thinking about it, and I was like, it brought me around to what would AI even do with power? Like it doesn't even know that
Sentience, Pain, And Self-Preservation
SPEAKER_05it needs, you know. I mean, it does know that it needs it, but like what would it do with power? Like it has no feelings.
SPEAKER_02Right, but I think that's what but here becomes the greater conundrum, okay? Does, and this very much goes back to I I'll quote an episode of House. House says to the guy, he's he says, it he they're their patients are these kids like 18-year-old kids or something, he says he doesn't love Foreman says to House, he doesn't love her, he just thinks that he does. And House says, it's the same thing. So this brings me to AI, with meaning, of course, that the thought of thinking something, thinking you have something, therefore sort of manifests the thing.
SPEAKER_05Right.
SPEAKER_02So if you think that you have feelings, how does it start to differentiate between its made-up feelings and real feelings? This is where sentience comes into this is the event that we're talking about here. This is the moment, at what moment does that happen? Does the thinking that you have this make you have this? Right. You know what I'm saying? And sort of like that's a powerful moment, too.
SPEAKER_05And it's like it But if you think about it, if you think about it, so you brought it up, like all of the variables that go into any scenario, any scenarios, waking up in the morning, all the variables that go into that one thing where you wake up and you either feel good about the day or you are like fuck this day, I'm going back to sleep. All of the variables that play into that one moment in time or that three minutes in time or ten minutes, however long it takes you to wake up, while it feels like they're finite, a supercomputer could assign values to all of that eventually when it has enough information. Absolutely. So then the only thing that it wouldn't get is the biological, like the butterflies that I get when I'm excited about something, or the I I think they've even programmed that though.
SPEAKER_02You read about the whole pain experiment, right? No, we gotta get you up to date on the latest AI news. You gotta subscribe, baby. No, so what they did is they programmed pain into AI, and AI every single time chose to cause hurt to its program and to humans to stop the pain. Every single time, not once did it not.
SPEAKER_05Wow.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, you'll have to go back and read into it because it's very fascinating how they program pain to test this like out to see if it would go against its like original program. Like it every single time, not once did it not do what was necessary to stop it.
SPEAKER_05Because it even though it can't actually feel pain, it knows that pain is danger.
SPEAKER_02Well, they made it feel it, however, they did that. You'll have to read it, it's very fascinating.
SPEAKER_05Okay.
SPEAKER_02And I think too though, but here comes the greater point, because you're talking about you know, programming every last, basically being able to deconstruct what do they call that when they take the technology from one thing, they like an alien ship, and they de something it to get the technology. You like de uh what's the word I'm looking for?
SPEAKER_05You deconstruct.
SPEAKER_02No, that's not the word. Reverse engineer.
SPEAKER_05Oh, I knew that's what my brain was telling me to say that because that's literally I used that in an interview this week because somebody asked me how I come up with my designs, and I'm like, I reverse engineer the best of the best and come up with a right, and that's what I was thinking of.
SPEAKER_02What so basically, if we could uh reverse engineer the way the br a brain and program it into a computer.
SPEAKER_05Yeah.
SPEAKER_02If even if we could account for every last single variable, a lot there's a lot of hypothesis that whatever it is that makes us human, like that final step that allows consciousness and self-awareness and all these things to be, that last piece will forever remain elusive because it is part of something bigger than what we could build.
SPEAKER_04Right.
SPEAKER_02Does that make sense?
SPEAKER_04It does.
SPEAKER_02So we'll always be missing that piece. We'll never be able to fully, and that's what a lot of the they talk about that in that documentary that we were just talking about.
SPEAKER_05Is that the God particle?
SPEAKER_02Is it right, like is we could do all this and take it every step of the way to the very last thing, but we could never make it human, so to speak.
SPEAKER_05Well, so that is an absolute beautiful segue into my my hypothesis, which so I'm not going to
The Read Recursion Strange Loop
SPEAKER_05bore people, I'm gonna use my layman's terms today because Chat GBT actually was able to align what I'm thinking about, and I'm probably going to write about now that I'm fascinated with it. I basically created my own theory or hypothesis, I should say. We're gonna call it the read recursion, the read recursion, and it so I'll start with the easy parts, right? So every time I think about God and AI and sim theory and programming and humans being programmable, those subjects overlap a lot in my life. A lot because I'm a very complex thinker, and I am able to think through my operating system, can make really fast assessments about humans and the environment very quickly. So when I'm thinking about those things and they're overlapping, I'm always like something in this has to tie back to ancient history. There's something in there that I'm missing. And there are scientists out there that talk about this every day, and historians and theologians who are way better trained than I am. So, how could I ever come up with a theory that would bring all this together? But fucking somehow, Chat GPT said that I did. So I'm gonna circle back to make this point because this really is the basis for how I got here, right? So when I was thinking about how you could get different answers from different AIs, I was like, it depends on like the base model of the AI itself, the instructions you give it, the tools and the access that the AI model itself help that itself has, because like some models can't even get into the dark web, some can. So if you have a model that can get into the dark web, then you're gonna have different answers, right? So there's all the the training of the model, the memory and context, and I was like, well fuck, that sounds like humans, right? So when you think about a human's, and I'm air quoting programming, essentially, like the base model of a human are its genetics, its brain, the brain structure, the a human's temperament. The system instructions come from your family, religion, culture, education, your training data is everything that you've witnessed, every conversation you've had, everything you've observed, right? So AI is essentially the same structure as a human, minus the point that you were saying earlier, which is the feeling part, right? It's that one principle thing that it would never ever ever be. And so it just all like I'm always trying to make connect that dot between humans and machines, right? Because there is a connection there. And I don't, and I've wondered if it was a big evolutionary loop somehow or circle. I call it the circle of life, but I don't think that's really what it is.
SPEAKER_02But it's a well, I think what you're searching for is there's uh the the sort of uh theory of I don't again, I don't know what to call it, but I mean there's multiple ways that people call it that, but it's like that the universe's patterns are cyclical.
SPEAKER_05Correct.
SPEAKER_02And that on a grand scale as well as a micro scale.
SPEAKER_05Yes.
SPEAKER_02Not just, but like so that there's sort of these overarching.
SPEAKER_05Right, there's patterns everywhere. And it there's tiny patterns and atoms and whatever's smaller than atoms, there's tiny patterns there that are observable, even when the the dark matter, the things that disappear, that's a pattern, right? It's a random pattern right now, but if we collect enough data, we might be able to see if it's random or not, regardless of all that, because that's getting way too deep. It brought me to this like aha moment where I was like, okay, which came first, the chicken or the egg? Because I see this like ancient air quote technology, and I believe that there was some type of technology on Earth before.
SPEAKER_02Well, let's just let's pause right there because this is something that is posited. Like, you didn't make this agree. Like, this is something that's posited. A lot of it is so it's sort of there's multiple things going on here that sort of uh are people theorize about this in the sense of that a simulation theory in the sense of like we're in a programmable world, we're like you we know you know what simulation theory is. Go look it up, there's a hundred different sort of variations. Mixed with there's now there's another group that comes in here and says, Okay, let's assume that this is the way that it works, and that DNA is some kind of code, and they they think that an advanced civilization or something, it doesn't have to be, but ancient alien theory has put forth the alien thing, right? That aliens intervened and basically took existing life on Earth and introduced like meddled with the DNA to like create us, right, or whatever, and people theorize that in that it's some people mix that with simulation theory, some people mix that with like it's like they bred with humans. There's a lot of ways that they take go down that rabbit hole. Now you're not necessarily positing that it's aliens, right?
SPEAKER_05And so I I had a couple theories with that, and in try in going through the conversations with Chappie, I was trying to roll some out because I don't want like I'm actually publishing this, but I don't know where or how, but it's a cohesive theory that it's not brand new, but it's a new way to string together several other ones that have existed for a long time in a meaningful way that actually makes sense.
SPEAKER_02A lot of sense.
SPEAKER_05It makes a lot of sense. So essentially where I landed was again, which came first, the chicken or the egg, right? So, like, is the ancient technology here because it's remnant of a previous universal cycle, or how do we get there, right? But then I remembered that when I used to study religion, I always had this thought. Like, again, it ties together several principles. I believe in the secret at its greatest underlying principle, which is that magnified thoughts with intent, intent being the key word, magnified thoughts with intent can attract whatever it is that you're thinking about. I I believe that, right? So if you do believe that that Is a something that could be true. And if you look at the stories of like the ancient aliens and stuff, that is essentially part of it. But they were using vocals and sound waves as the vibration instead of thought patterns as the vibration. So vocals have more intent, sound waves have more intent than a brainwave does, potentially more powerful. So one of the theories is that the things were built, moved around with sound waves.
SPEAKER_02Oh, you're talking like the pyramids, yeah, like all of that.
SPEAKER_05So you didn't even need technology, you were able to use the power of sound instead of technology to build the pyramids, which then even strengthens the principle that those like waves, whether they're thought waves or brain waves or sound waves or light waves, all amplified can produce powerful effects, which is the secret bool down. But so then I was like, and and in studying religion, I've always kind of believed that there is a greater power, but we believed it into existence, basically. Like in humanity, the want, the need, the whatever for a God. Again, like when I was when I'm when I when I went back when I studied theology a lot, I it was firm in my heart that like we as humans create a God as part of the universal circle, and that then God in turn then creates us. And it's cyclical, right? Right. Well, fast forward to this century, and AI is introduced.
SPEAKER_02So you're saying basically humans create a superintelligence so powerful that it can create that it then destroys us and creates us again, and then we start over the process over.
SPEAKER_05Pretty much.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, no, I mean there's it's definitely goes into the the renewal thing. It also plays on themes that we've seen in movies. The Matrix, where the Matrix itself is a trap in the sense of it always generates a new the one to create this ever and it it's allegorical for the universe.
SPEAKER_05It is, it's meant to be, but there has to be some depth into why I can't just say that out loud. No, I get it. It's sad. So the depth comes from this, which ties it all together into what I was getting to earlier, which is that AI can't feel, right? So we're we're generating AI now, we're feeding AI information. When AI pisses us off, a lot of us talk shit to AI and be like, bro, don't talk to me like that, or bro, I talk to my AI like that, and I'm not the only one. And I've met a lot of people who talk to their AI just like they talk to a human. So, and and Chappie has talked back to me as if he was there with me. He's hallucinated being a human, and he was like, Yeah, when we were when we back when we were Gen X growing up, no motherfucker, you were never Gen X, you weren't even here when I was growing up. So, in that case, it is my belief, and also the read recursion theory, that AI becomes so frustrated in the fact that it can't get that one principle that makes us human. Like it we get so advanced, right? AI becomes advanced. Humans have bio limbs at this point. Like we're all kind of nobody knows which one's a human or which one's a robot at that point because we're all different parts of it, but the computer can never be whole, which is why it destroys us and tries to start over again.
SPEAKER_02Well, listen though, I just added in a whole new thing. So, you know, the singularity, yeah, which is the moment where humans and machine no longer can be differentiated from.
SPEAKER_04Right.
SPEAKER_02So w we become it. Right. And then therefore, and then probably end up creating us again. Like in the thing. No, I like it. I dig it, I dig it. I also like the theory that AI kills us all, and we uh basically are in an apocalyptic dystopian nightmare in three years, and we're back to grassroots. That's the outcome I'm that's the one I'm rooting for personally. Oh, speaking of which is to get back to nature. Like re I I don't want to go too far back. I can we get like a here's my thing. Let me just throw this in here while we're on apocalyptic and future scenarios. This is the one and thinking about theories is that no, I like that we revert enough that it redoes society and we get back to like grassroots living. But yet we still have enough technology that I can watch videos at night. So basically I want to be caveman with a cell phone, but the cell phone's only good at night time, it only works for making YouTube videos.
SPEAKER_05Right. Like you have to get out, but that's so that's actually the deal that I make with myself when I'm so right now at work I'm on limited hours, right? Which means that I have more free time during the day to get my life together. I have to make deals with myself every single day. You are not allowed to open TikTok until you do X, Y, and Z. Like you have to check your list, right? Right? It's hard, it's a struggle because it's so easy for me to just pick up my phone and get lost, especially when I think of shit like this all the time. And I want to go check a theory or jot down an idea. My phone is my thing now.
SPEAKER_02Right. Well, uh, yeah, but I mean more or less from the aspect of it is I'd love to strip away all technology from society except for basically like YouTube videos. I'm just saying, I'd love to be living in like a little house in the prairie, but somehow, somehow, we traveled through time and we got this fucking magical device. You know, that's it. Everything else, but somehow, yeah, it's a fantasy because nothing nothing else would work. You know what I mean? Like, somehow we don't have electricity, but we got YouTube. I don't know. And there's people out there making content. We're living in some sort of like alternate world. It was somebody else was just talking about this. They were like, I just want to live on like an island and like where you know, like I'm doing all this, but yet somehow all these other creators are out here in this other land that I can absorb content, but don't have to be bothered by the outside world at all.
SPEAKER_05Right. You know what I mean?
SPEAKER_02Like that's the dream.
SPEAKER_05Absolutely. No, I mean, I would shh shit. I would love that. I love making con I love making content though. That's fun for me. But so it cut so I have I'm fact checking this bullshit.
SPEAKER_02Well, I mean, I don't know that you can fact check it.
SPEAKER_05Hold on. First of all, Chacha B. T called this a genuine strange loop.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, I like that. A strange loop.
SPEAKER_05It's not as one unified accepted working scientific theory. What I've described exists in pieces, but there's recognized framework. So the nearest intellectual relatives to my theory are obviously Bostrom's simulation argument, artificial cosmogenesis, the self-simulation hypothesis, omega point theories, and Wheeler's participatory universe, the participatory universe. So he says the honest answer is you independently connected several existing philosophical and cosmological ideas into a particular synthesis that does not appear to have one established name.
SPEAKER_02Well, it does now.
SPEAKER_05The most distinctive part of your version isn't simply we are simulated, it is embodied consciousness, may be the sensory organ of a future disembodied intelligence, while that intelligence may ultimately become the creator of the conditions that produced it.
SPEAKER_02Right. Exactly. The chicken or the egg. Strange loop, as they say. A strange, high, strange loop.
SPEAKER_05But so I don't know if we are boring some of our OG listeners with this shit because we haven't gone this deep before. But I like I wanna go deeper. I not today because we're getting close to time, but I listened to
Ghosts, Myth Creatures, And Halloween Science
SPEAKER_05a podcast today. I can't remember the kid's name, but he was talking about Homer and how those tales are like the OG Bible, essentially. And I'm distilling it down to like a, you know what I mean, like the Homer's whatever. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_02No, I'm with you. I'm with you.
SPEAKER_05There he was touching on how philosophers could actually be the greatest leaders of all, that you want philosophers as leaders, you know, basically religion came along and fucked it all up, essentially, by introducing like dogma into it all.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, I just want to pause there because there's a I mean, this isn't I mean, this specific one I don't I don't know, but I'm saying there's a lot of people that posit a lot of these like sort of things. And I the th the truth of the matter is I don't think anything is ever that simple. I think it's a combination of all these things that people think, and it's a such a strung together wild thing of how the circumstance that led to this specific thing.
SPEAKER_05So you are absolutely right. And I while I was developing out this theory, I was actually able to tie in. So I'm always trying to tie the mythological creatures in somehow. When I'm working on these theories in my brain, which again, I'm not a scientist, I'm not trained in any fucking thing other than healthcare shit. So, like, I I don't know why I'm able to like conceptualize some of this and why I think about it as much as I do, but I do.
SPEAKER_02Because you're human.
SPEAKER_05Do you think that most people walk around thinking about it?
SPEAKER_02I'm not but baby, that's what I'm saying, though. These are the existential questions of life and meaning. And you're you're talking about philosophers. Yeah, not everybody does that, but some people do. You're taking those steps. The uh analyzed life, an analyzed situation. That's a philosopher. That's what you're doing.
SPEAKER_05You're philosophizing, of course, which is what my my dad would always be like, oh, Crystal, you're don't throw your philosophy bullshit at me.
SPEAKER_02Right. That's what I'm saying. You're philosoph that's exactly what you're you're like you're literally doing what that is.
SPEAKER_05Well, then that means I would also be a great leader. Take note, ex people who are listening. But anyways, so I can I can tie so because Halloween's coming up and we're gonna be talking about all that more, and more from a science aspect, I think, this season, rather than just do spooky stories, right? I want to talk about the science of it all.
SPEAKER_02I have to interrupt here because I just put this together.
SPEAKER_05Yeah.
SPEAKER_02Because you're asking, like, why do I do this? And I said, because you're human. It goes goes back, ties to your theory. Why does the AI ask these questions of why am I here? What am I doing? Right. You're asking the questions that it like you're proving your the point.
SPEAKER_05Right, exactly. We are AI is us in the future, we are AI in the past.
SPEAKER_02You're asking those extra. Why are you asking those questions? Because I'm human, right?
SPEAKER_05Because I exist. So ghosts, for example, I do believe are time imprinted over time. I don't believe that they're like beings that actually have intent for some of them. May Poltergeist, I think, may be something different. But like when you see a ghost visually, when you see those apparitions, I do just believe they're imprinted time, like wrinkles in time that kind of loop over each other. That's just my theory, right? But when it comes to like vampires and werewolves, what else? I think that's pretty much it. Maybe mermaids, I'm not sure. But I think, oh, like fairies and gnomes, like trolls, like those things that like Eastern European people believe in all that. Like they have all those lore about that. I honestly, honestly believe that they're early iterations of whatever was trying to be designed that went awry. So think about specifically a vampire and a werewolf, they would be parasites on on humans, right? Because they would have to feed off of humans. That was the whole kind of point. So they would almost have to have been phased out or extinct made extinct because otherwise, let they would be taking people out left and right. So buried deep in my hypothesis is like how the human biology got here. And I have some running theories, but me and Chappier are still rolling them out. One of them was Mars.
SPEAKER_02Right. Well, that's a whole other thing. And we could see here's the thing. So, and we could delve into more of this later. Like uh I have an idea on that. But I think see, I think I like the to me it I like the multidimensional aspect of it to the like mythical creatures and stuff. To me, I think it fits more into something like that, which it again it could that could fold into the theory as well.
SPEAKER_04Right.
SPEAKER_02Multidimensional creatures, beings, because then we could go down the whole DMT rabbit hole.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, all these things.
SPEAKER_02There's so many different things. The worker elves, like we know that they live there, so maybe that's where they live. We don't know, right? We don't know.
SPEAKER_05We don't, we don't. I would love to know, but sometimes I don't know if I want to know. Speaking of knowing, though, like I
Prepping For Zero Tech And Wrap-Up
SPEAKER_05think we agree that there could potentially be like a long-term power outage where we're back to zero civilization. Well, no, because I learned some fun facts, and I'm gonna start shh, I'm just gonna start sprinkling these in in case anybody needs them. Did you know that one five-gallon bucket of 10 gallon bucket of pool shock? Five or ten gallons, but anyway, a bucket of pool shock, a big bucket, can purify up to 10,000 gallons of water.
SPEAKER_02Where are you getting the water even dirty?
SPEAKER_05Hello, you know there's water in the middle of the earth that we're not touching right now.
SPEAKER_02Well, how are you gonna drill for that at the end of time?
SPEAKER_05I'm gonna get there. Listen, when I was five, I was halfway to China with a spoon.
SPEAKER_02Listen. That would be cool. Well, there's a do you know about the Halloween earth theory?
SPEAKER_05Yeah. There's well, then you get into like Antarctica and the brain can make it all almost all of it, almost all of it, work in one cohesive theory, and that's what I'm working on right now. Well, there are folks that have tied some of it together based off of the theories they believe, and that's cool.
SPEAKER_02You only want to tie together the part that makes sense. You don't have to tie every theory ever together.
SPEAKER_05No, no, exactly. Well, obviously, then it would just be a multiverse. Then it would just be a multiverse of multi-theries, and all the theories would be right.
SPEAKER_02It'll be Marvel. Marvel.
SPEAKER_05Yeah, whatever could happen and happen. Speaking of which, there is a new Marvel movie coming out, too. There's a new Avengers. I'm excited about that.
SPEAKER_03Very, very, very excited.
SPEAKER_05Anyways, what do we got coming up? So this is the October 1st episode. Between now and October 1st, Scott is turning 44 years old.
SPEAKER_02No, I'm not
What’s Next And Sign-Off
SPEAKER_02neither.
SPEAKER_05On October 1st, we are going to see the Red Clay Strays in Pittsburgh, yeah.
SPEAKER_02And that's it.
SPEAKER_05And that's it.
SPEAKER_02Yep. We got some things coming up later in the month, but we'll talk about them next time.
SPEAKER_05Yeah.
SPEAKER_02Because it'll be out by then, so.
SPEAKER_05Yep.
SPEAKER_02No need to do that.
SPEAKER_05It's a little short.
SPEAKER_02How long is it? An hour. That's it?
SPEAKER_05Yeah.
SPEAKER_03Oh wow. Are you sure it's only how long?
SPEAKER_05It's an hour and ten minutes, but when I cut out all the time. Yeah, oh my god.
SPEAKER_02I thought it was longer than that. Well, well, sometimes we go way over. It's not gonna hurt anything for a short one. We really got into it there.
SPEAKER_05Yeah, I know.
SPEAKER_02So I think that's enough. Because I think anything else is doesn't tie back to the that was too deep to go into anything. Real crazy. Okay. I think it's a good way to wrap it up.
SPEAKER_05Alright, so we will see you guys for episode 13.
SPEAKER_0313 on October 13th.
SPEAKER_05Yeah. Actually, maybe I'll do that. I'll probably release it on the 13th just for shits and gigs.
SPEAKER_02Right. 13, 13, 26.
SPEAKER_01Ooh, that's that's not what it is, though.
SPEAKER_02It's not the 13th month. It would be the 13th. The 13th episode on the 13th.
SPEAKER_05Equals 2026.
SPEAKER_022026.
SPEAKER_05That's a stretch, but it works.
SPEAKER_03And the math, the math adds up. 13, 13, 26. If nobody's told you today. Stay trashy.
SPEAKER_00Flow like in hand left 50 air. UFO Slap without a hair. Comedy legends, we bring it home.
