(upbeat electronic music) – Welcome to Ear Biscuits. I’m Link. – And I’m Rhett. This week at the round table of dim lighting, we are exploring the question is privacy dead? – And do we even care? – Wow. Wow. Could get philosophical, it could get intimate. How private are we going to get, you know? What kind of privates are we talking about here? I’m sorry, I mean– – How public are we gonna get about our private, s. Privacy, about our privacy. – Yeah. – Let’s jump right into it. – Jump! – Jump, jump. It all started, good morning, by the way. – Good morning, man. – We’re recording this one in the morning– – But you already knew that when you looked at my face. – Or listen to my voice which is, my voice gets a little bit lower. – Starts a little bit lower. By the end of the day, you talk like Mickey Mouse. – Yeah. – A lot of times you don’t, we never record after 4 p.m. because he’s full Mickey Mouse by that point (laughs). – It’s kinda like counting the rings on a tree. – I’ve been awake for 12 hours. – Listening to my voice over the course of the day. – I don’t know physiologically what’s happening there. – It’s like a sun dial more than tree ring. – They’re stretching. – It lets you know what time it is. – They’re not stretching, they’re constricting, ’cause tighter vocal chords would make– ♪ Higher sounds ♪ – Everything on me gets tighter over the course of the day. – Uh-oh. – Like I hop out of bed and everything’s pretty tight and then you know, I loosen up pretty quickly. – Immediately starts getting tight again. – It’s just like slowly turning the guitar knobs, what are those knobs called? – Tuning knobs? – So I said let’s jump right into it and then we didn’t. – That’s what moisturizer’s for though. If you do a full body moisturizer every 30 to 45 minutes, you stay loose all day. Don’t you know when I step out, speaking of privacy, when I go into the loft– – You’re lotioning. – I go into the lotion loft (laughs). – The lotion loft (chuckles). – Oh, how did that happen? – There’s a lot more conjecture about what’s in our loft after the LTAT where– – [Rhett] The money man’s men went up there and– – They came back down. – Who knows what they did. – Well they know but they’re not allowed to say publicly. – Alex was bloody. – Again, that goes back to privacy. So this might get heavy. – Or it might not but that’s a teaser. – It might get scary. I’m curious if– – Safe bet. – I am gonna get scared because I’ve avoided this question actively. I just don’t like to engage mentally in things that I think will make me have to change my life, my practices, or more importantly, make me more anxious. I don’t need to get tighter than I already am. – Loosen up, man. – By the end of the day, I’d sound like a chipmunk. That’s even worse than Mickey. – Mm-hm. – It all started because my doorbell was broken. – Oh gosh. – When I bought the house that we have lived in for years, the doorbell worked. But what I didn’t really understand was that the doorbell was, it was a remote doorbell. It wasn’t, that’s too much clicking. Is that your– (chuckles) Are you hitting one space bar again and again? – That was his elbow. – Click click click click. – That was his elbow. He’s got tennis elbow. – Okay, now I feel like I have to apologize for putting you on the spot, Jacob. Jacob’s over there– – You didn’t eve have to say who it was– – Jacob’s over there hitting the space bar again and again. I’m trying to talk about my damn doorbell. – It could have been anybody. – [Jacob] I’m trying to emulate the doorbell. – (chuckles) You’re exactly right. When people would press my doorbell, that’s what would happen, it’d be like pressing the space bar when the computer’s off. – And I think I may have talked about this before but many times in the past few years that you’ve been living at this house, I’ve showed up at your house, rung the doorbell and I didn’t hear anything and then started to beat on the door and then beat on the window and then I start trying to figure out how to get into your backyard. – ‘Cause you know I’m in there and you know that I’m expecting you mostly. – Right ’cause you’re like, “Be there at 8:30,” and then I am there at 8:30. (Link chuckling) You’re like oh I didn’t hear it. You didn’t hear it ’cause it didn’t work. – It causes problems. – First of all, there was a 24 to 36 month period where you defended the doorbell, you’re like, well it usually works. But a doorbell that usually works– – Doesn’t always work. – Yeah. It’s the time that it doesn’t work that is worth paying attention to. – And if you got a package that needs to be signed for and then they walk away with it– – Forget about it. – Now it’s impacting me, brother. – Now you gotta go to the shipping center. – This is not just– – Or fill out some form. – Ticking off the person at the front door, this is ticking off the person on the other side of the door, me. And they’re beating on my window and stuff, it’s like, you’re gonna break my window down, man. – Might loosen it up. – You’ve gotten legitimately angry at my doorbell. Or me. – I got legitimate angry at you. I don’t get angry at inanimate objects. – That’s a lie. – I get angry at the people behind them. – So when you in high school were taken out of the basketball game and you kicked the bleachers– – I wasn’t mad at the bleachers. – You weren’t mad at the bleachers. – That’s a ridiculous assessment. – You were mad at yourself. – I was mad at my coach. – No, you were mad at Rhett. – Mad at the coach. – Who, Rhett? – I was mad at the coach. – Yourself. – The coach. – That you broke– – Coach Gage. – You broke your toe. – Then I was mad at myself. So I was mad at myself after I broke my toe. – All of this was a rouse just to get you to admit that you still got some baggage. (chuckles) – You’re bringing up my anger issues from age 17. – So I decided I’m gonna get a doorbell, I heard about, there’s lots of doorbells on the market. I got the Nest Thermostat, not a sponsor. And I saw an advertisement for the Nest Doorbell, I thin it’s called Hello, I can’t remember, but it’s a camera that then when somebody rings it, even if you’re not at home, you can see on your phone, you can see a video and you can talk to them. And if it’s a burglar, again, I’m not trying to sell this thing, they sold me on it and I bought it. – This is the same functionality of the ring doorbell but a different thing. – Company I guess. – Right? – Yeah. Different company. – Okay. – I’m a fan of the Nest company, I’d love for you to be a sponsor. But subject to this conversation that we’re gonna have today because I go on the website to buy this doorbell, and I get excited ’cause it’s like, oh now it’s on my phone and this is no normal doorbell, it’s also a security camera and it’s a communication device for people at the door. It just seems fun and cool and safe and neat. And I go on the website and then all of a sudden I’m like, oh they also sell some outdoor security cameras and there’s been some burglaries in my neighborhood. I’m like I gotta get with the program. I had sunglasses stolen from my own driveway, from the car in my own driveway one time, and that’s disconcerting. That’s a violation of privacy, get it? – Did they just open the door? – They just opened the door, yeah, it was unlocked. Rummaged through it, probably some kids. Kids wearing my prescription sunglasses, ha! Joke’s on you, kids. – Unless they needed ’em. Must have the same exact eye condition that you did. – That would be serendipitous. – If you knew that the person who stole your glasses had the exact same eye condition as you, does that make you feel better about them stealing it? – It redeems the entire situation. – You’re like a Robin Hood. – Well I’m not. – No, not really. But you know. – I’m still the king, but– (Rhett chuckles) So then I start putting outdoor security cameras in my cart and then I’m like, at this point, I frequently ask, what would Rhett do? – You just need a bracelet that says that. – Rhett would (chuckles), Rhett would start buying everything. – I should sell those. – I’m trying to loosen up a little bit by buying more things ’cause I’ve been so, I have a purchasing problem. – Meaning you have a problem purchasing. (chuckles) That’s your purchasing problem. – I know this doesn’t sound healthy but me deciding to buy things is therapeutic. – Yeah, right. – Do you agree by the way? I know it sounds crazy to many people listening. – No, I mean– – No or yes? – Do I agree that you have a purchasing problem? – Do you agree that it’s therapeutic for me to buy things? – Yes, you should spend more money. – (chuckles) So I did that. And then I saw that they had indoor cameras. – Indoor, outdoor, front door. – Which I know you have one of those. – All those. – And I was like, I’m gonna get one of those. Then I’m like, well if I’m gonna get one, and I’m starting to think where I’m gonna put ’em, I’m like why should, I need three. So I bought three. So I bought outdoor cameras, three indoor cameras and a doorbell. Side note, I added on the installation of the doorbell which I probably could have done myself and the guy comes out to do it, and then the reason why I have a remote doorbell is because it’s not wired, it doesn’t work, so the new doorbell would not work and it still does not work because I haven’t called a proper electrician to come out and install wiring for a proper doorbell which the Nest Doorbell will be. So that’s not even functional at this point. Neither are my outdoor cameras that I bought weeks ago. ‘Cause I just haven’t gotten around to putting those things up, takes some work, drilling of holes from the outside to the inside of your house– – Are you doing it? – That’s intimidating. Heck no. I’m gonna hire an electrician to do all of that. Because I’ll kill myself somehow with electricity or wires. – As you know, I am doing the same thing, but I’m doing it, I’ve got a guy who’s doing the whole thing. – Can I talk to him? – But you’re making me think maybe I should, because they’re talking about putting a literal DVR in my house, 10 different cameras. I’m going with 10 cameras. – You see the difference between us? I’m bragging about I bought three cameras, I thought I was doing something, then he’s like, well I’ve got 10. That’s your problem. By treating my problem, making yours worse. Don’t get 10 cameras just ’cause I got three. – No, I didn’t know how many cameras you were getting. The guy came over, well my contractor’s doing some other work on the house who has a guy who just did his house, is like, he just walked around the house and he was like, you need one there and you should have one there and you should have one there and then all was said and done he’s like you need 10 cameras. – Are these Nest cameras, ’cause they store either five hours or days worth of footage in the cloud, and it’s not stored locally. I don’t wanna get into this. – No but I’m thinking out loud here because, then a guy could just break in and take the DVR. – Well don’t put it at the front door. – Well it’s not like I’ve got– – Don’t make it the welcome mat. – Yeah but if you know that somebody’s got cameras, you see the cameras and he’s like, this is a DVR house or a cloud house. Now I gotta get the DVR backed up on a cloud. – The only thing I have installed is the cloud, I don’t have anything, well actually I do because the only thing I have working are the three indoor cameras, I got those set up. – But what about when your wifi goes down? – That’s a problem. – Ah, you know what? All they gotta do is unplug your router and then do the dirty business. (chuckles) – Too late, I’ve already recorded you and it’s already been sent to the cloud. – Yep. – Gotcha. By the way, are you casing my house right now? – Yeah yeah pretty much. – And am I comfortable talking about all this on a podcast? – You brought it up. By telling people that you’re gonna have this incredible security at your home, I think this would be a deterrent. – Well here’s the thing, all of a sudden now that I have these, here’s what I’m getting at, I’ve got these three cameras set up inside of my house, one’s looking at the kitchen, one’s looking at the living room. – Don’t tell people where they’re looking at ’cause then the robber will go to the other rooms. That’s why I’ve got 10 cameras. You cannot get away from my cameras. – That’s overkill, by the way, that is stupid. – No it’s not. – I’m out of cameras. Because if you can pass any– – I want it to be like one of those rooms– – It’s not like they can teleport into any room and bypass– – I want it to be like one of those rooms in a bank– – You’re being bamboozled by a security person. – Where like Mission Impossible where you have to like go through lasers, I got so many cameras that you’re always being watched. – You’re being bamboozled, man. – It’s like 1984 in my house at all times, and we’ve decorated the whole house like 1984. – Ripped off. But you need to come to grips with something that I have been smacked in the face with which is the ethical dilemma of indoor security cameras. Because here’s what happens, I can pull up my phone, I can look at my house right now. I can look at anybody in my house. I can also listen. I can also talk to them through the cameras. – Let’s do it. – No I’m not gonna do it. – Okay that was a test. – Nobody’s at my house right now, I did it right before. – Yeah ’cause you just checked. – I performed a test with Christy which I’ll tell you about. She’s not home right now so I can’t do it– – A test? – Can’t do it live. But I started to feel weird when the first night we had it, I’m going to bed that night and of course it’s a new toy so I pull up, Christy leans over, she’s like, what are you doing? I’m like, I’m looking at my cameras. – Do you have one in the bedroom? – (chuckles) No. – Oh. This is for posterity. I don’t send that one to the cop. (both chuckle) – Posterity. What do you mean it’s for posterity? – So I can watch myself. (laughs) – That’s not what posterity is. Posterity means that– – Adjust my technique. – What you seem to be– – Do commentary. – When you say for posterity, what you’re implying is that– – I have a whole YouTube channel where I do commentary. – Oh gosh. – On myself. Not really YouTube though. – You imply that when you’re dead and gone, your estate will release this footage from your bedroom escapades for people to benefit from. Ain’t nobody gonna benefit from that. – When both my wife and I die, whoever dies first– – Of course. – When we’re both dead, then we release the sex tapes. – Just come out and say it. I was hoping you wouldn’t just come out and say it. – We sell it so the kids can have a future, you know. Just reams and reams of it. – Great word choice. (Rhett chuckles) – I’m glad you picked up on that. – I’m gonna take a little breather here. So I’m in bed pulling up my Nest cams and it just so happened that that night, my kids had friends over for sleepovers. – Uh-oh, right. – And I’m like look, they’re in the kitchen. They’re eating something. – Oh. – And then I’m like, they’re having a conversation. – [Rhett] Let’s listen. – And then I’m like, I turned it off. – Yeah you made the right call. – This doesn’t seem right. ‘Cause when I bought the thing, I just thought this is cool. These cameras are cool and then it’s like, it could be a pet cam or obviously it could be a security camera if someone breaks into your house. – Hold on but isn’t, I mean, just so I’m on the right page, because the way I thought about this is exclusively about the security of my family in my home. I haven’t been thinking about what you’re talking about. It’s a valid point. – By the way, it’s not– – But you’re thinking about this is a pet cam, first and foremost, so you can look at Jade during the day? – Well we have friends who– – She’s gonna be a little black dot on the screen, man. It’s not gonna be that intimate. – We crate her when we’re gone because she’s a dachshund which means she sneakily pees everywhere. – Does she have a crate cam? – No. – Put a Nest cam right in the crate if you wanna get a closeup. – So I don’t even need it as a pet cam. I don’t know why I bought these cameras because having security, you need a siren. You need a alarm. – Well you gotta have one of those too. I’ve got one of those already. – The reason why you have cameras is to catch these boogers and jail ’em. Like get a facial identification of these people. So it’s not as much about safety as it is about justice, and I could be wrong about that. You can talk on it and say, “Hey get out of my house,” and they’ll run away. – It’s a deterrent. When people see that you’ve got 10 cameras– – If they see all 10 of ’em– – I’m gonna go to the house that doesn’t have any cameras. – Again, if they see all 10 of ’em it’s too late. – I got 10 because typically they’re gonna shoot out the cameras, they’ve only got eight bullets. Then there’s two cameras that are still there. – I also justified the camera as, my kids are of an age now that sometimes, not every time, but given certain circumstances, Christy and I can leave the kids alone at home. I mean Lily and Lincoln are responsible to take care of themselves and Lando. Same is true at your house, right? – Yep. – But it’s nice to know you can kinda check on them and see what’s up and there’s a level of accountability there. But then with this voyeuristic power, I started to become a little disconcerted with the ethics of it. And I’m the only one who has access to it. Like, Christy hasn’t asked for it yet and I’ll gladly teach her how to do it, it’s just one of those things, download the Nest app, it’s pretty easy but she just hasn’t done it yet. – Right. – So here I am, the only one who isn’t gonna be violated, my privacy, but I’m still kinda wiggin’ out about this thing, trying to figure it out. So I think these are the questions that I’m wrestling with that then I do believe lead directly into a much larger question because it’s applicable to the entire digital world that we live in, and that we type in and that we operate in and that we live our lives in and we’re being surveilled and advertised to and manipulated, judged, dot, dot, dot. – Controlled. – Controlled, how far does this thing go? So these are the questions we seek to answer starting with, should I get rid of my indoor cameras? – Okay I have a strong opinion. It can wait until after the break, because we wanna let you know that you can grab not only the t-shirt that I’m wearing, not only shirt that looks like the shirt that Link is wearing but is not the shirt that he’s wearing. – It’s better ’cause it has miniature horses or a wood grain on it. – But you can grab these Ear Biscuits jars, which are in short supply. We’re not ever making them again. And they are running low. Inventory low. I turn on the camera to the warehouse and I counted ’em. – Right. – Let me tell you what those guys in the warehouse were doing the first time I looked at the camera. – Shipping jars. – Yeah. – Right. – Anyway, Ear Biscuits jars, a lot of other stuff. – Get ’em until they’re gone because when they’re gone– – They’re gone forever. – It’s over. – Mythical.store. – Thanks for supporting internetainment. So if we have a babysitter come over– – Yep. – I feel like– – Here you go, here you go. – We have to disclose there are cameras here, would you agree with that? – Yes. – And then, I mean, how do we feel about that? I think that’s okay because we’re hiring somebody to do a job and I like that there’s an added level of accountability. Christy and I are out on a date or maybe we’re doing something overnight, so it’s like an extended period of time. We can just check in and see what’s up, and like, there’s a sense of accountability that any point, we could be watching. – Mm-hm. – It is a little creepy but it’s a professional relationship where you’re paying somebody to do a job. We have cameras here for security purposes but it’s totally legal because it’s a business where these things happen. Now we don’t monitor our employees in that way for accountability, but we could. – We could. – Legally. – Right. – And I guess that applies at home too. I shouldn’t say guess, I assert that that’s the truth. But I do feel like I need to disclose that. But what about, we got friends over, or my kids have friends over, should I put up a poster that’s just a disclosure that once you enter this premises, here in LA, you walk into places all the time, there’s big placards that say you will be filmed if you enter this establishment. – Yeah you should have one of those on your front door. Christy will love it. (Link chuckles) Okay well I’ll tell you what I think my policy’s gonna be. When I get these 10, I may go 12 cameras, I don’t know. – Okay and then I’ll tell you what I, the experiment I performed, on my wife. – Wow, is it related to the cameras or are we just talking about– – Well it depends on what you’re about to say. – Okay so I think that obviously, like I said, the primary purpose of the cameras in my mind is to serve as, to protect, not the privacy, but the security, to ensure the security of my family and my belongings and so therefore, it is primarily a deterrent. Because any would-be booger as you said is going to see that there are cameras, there’s gonna be cameras on the outside, there’s gonna be cameras on the inside. A total of 10. And then I think that the secondary purpose is that in the case of an incident, it is a record, like you said, for identification purposes. For me, that is the sole purpose of the cameras. Now, I do think that you should tell anyone, anybody who’s watching your kids, you should be like, yeah, we’ve got cameras. Anybody who’s a friend, usually you’re gonna be in their presence. If it was a friend who was coming to house sit, be like, hey, there’s cameras, just so you know. I would probably also say the next part of my personal policy which is, as a rule, I do not randomly review the footage, or watch the footage for entertainment or voyeuristic purposes. Just so you know. The purpose of the cameras– – But you’ll have to trust me on that. – You do have to trust me, but the purpose of the cameras is for surveillance, is a deterrent and then a record, but not for constant surveillance of my family or friends or anybody’s who’s legally in the house. Now, in the case where there is some sort of incident, okay, for instance, the other day, I get a call from Lindsay who was watching the kids and does sometimes and does some stuff for us. And she’s like, Shepherd and Locke just had a pretty intense fight. There was a punch. There was a punch from Shepherd to Locke. Locke’s not gonna punch Shepherd. A 10 year old punching a 14 year old. It was Halloween candy incident, ’cause Shepherd had a lot of Halloween candy but Locke didn’t have any and he just wanted a piece and that turned into a fight. – A punch. – And a punch to the face that drew blood. – Oh. – Okay. They’re McLaughlins, this kinda stuff happens. – Blood from where, the lip or the nose? – The nose. – Oh God. Punched him in the nose. – Yeah, you know, I mean– – What piece of candy was this? – I don’t know. – You don’t even know? – Probably butterscotch. – Well did you review the footage or not? – Exactly, so, now, in the case that there is a discrepancy in their accounts of the events– – Oh yeah. – Then I feel like in those cases, I will have every right, once these cameras are installed, to review the tape. – Did you review the tape? – No they’re not installed yet. – Oh, dang it. – They’re gonna be installed any day now. – That’s the thing you want for entertainment purposes, you wanna see Shepherd punch Locke, right? – Yeah and so– (Link chuckles) I would do it our of curiosity, yeah, I would watch it, but I would also be like, I might coach Shepherd on his technique or I might just say– – It’s in the hips I think. – I might say, “Guys, listen. “This is ridiculous. “Look at yourselves. “Listen and look at what you did.” Showing them, and even when a kit pitches a fit, when a kid is being a typical ass like they can be sometimes, or maybe when I’m being an ass. – Oh yeah. – Jessie could say, a lot of times she’s like, you said this, I’m sure of it. – Oh yes. – We can go to the tape now. – That happens. I hadn’t thought of this. – So to me– – Argument settlement. – Again, I haven’t employed this yet because I don’t have it in my house, but to me that is the only time in which we can go to the tape, when the involved parties, if it’s two adults, if it’s me and Jessie, I think we both have to agree that we’re gonna go to the tape. – Uh-huh. – If it’s the kids, I have the right as their guardian to go to the tape when I want to but I’m not gonna be like, okay, one of ’em has friends over and I wanna see what they’re getting into. – That’s a violation of privacy. – And then one of them has a girlfriend over and I wanna see what they’re getting into. At that point, I think the fact that there are cameras will probably serve as a deterrent, knowing that, there’s not a corner of my house you could go to that you’re not under surveillance. Which is actually not true, that’s not the case, but I’m not gonna tell you where the secret corners are. But my kids will know and just knowing that there’s cameras there, they’re gonna behave a little bit differently, but they’re also gonna know that, guys I’m not spying on you. There’s not one in their bedroom, you know. – Right, right. – So anyway, that’s just where my general philosophy that I’ve been thinking about employing. – Well I’m glad you said that because now when Christy and I get in a heated conversation, a disagreement, I’m gonna be like, can we move this conversation to the kitchen, where we’ve got a camera on top of the fridge. Let’s just– – That’s true ’cause a lot of those– – Of course I may not wanna do that. – Those arguments and discussions happen in the bedroom and at that point you don’t have, I mean you don’t have. – But you do for posterity. – Footage, right. – You know I thought about Buddy System season two because this was actually a source of conflict between our two characters because it was discovered that you had surveillance of me– – The top bunk. – Yeah. – Just a camera on the top bunk. And then the other cameras were just cameras that looked at the other cameras to protect that camera. – I felt extremely, don’t laugh at our own joke. – It was good! I mean when we came up with that, I was like, this is great. Again, Buddy System. Freakin’ watch it! – Start with season two, don’t waste your time. – Yeah, you don’t have to watch both seasons, but if you choose to watch one season– – Season one, I’m proud of season one too but– – Watch the second season, you don’t need the first season to just dip right into the second season. – I’m dippin’, just jump in. Our characters worked through it, so can we. But I felt, my character felt very violated, and it’s one of those things where… I logged onto the thing this morning, no, yesterday, I was out with Lily and I was just like, you know, I gotta get into the habit of looking at the Nest, see what’s happening at home. Again, I have the opposite mindset that you do. – Why do you need to get in the, why? Get in the habit for what? – I just like it. I like knowing, I like– – This is a weird disposition. – I’m a peeping Tom. – Yeah, exactly. – (chuckling) I’m just being honest, so I turn it on, and I’m like, nobody’s in that room, nobody’s in the kitchen, oh there’s the living room. Okay, there’s Lando sitting on the couch. He’s on Christy’s phone. Oh and there’s Christy, she’s taking a nap on the other couch. I’m like, okay, that’s good information. Now I’m not gonna call or text Christy because I don’t wanna wake her up. See? – But you’re, okay, well. – But I didn’t say anything or let them know that I was looking at them and it felt weird. And then today, I was like, you know, we’re about to have this conversation, I’m gonna do it one more time and just see what happens. I don’t even know if Christy’s at home and I looked and there she was, (chuckles) standing in the kitchen just doing something. – Just stark naked. (both chuckle) – No, she was doing something, she was about to leave the house and then I turned on the microphone and I said, “Hey.” – Oh gosh. – And I saw her kinda look around a little bit. She looked down, she didn’t know that it came from the upper corner of the bookshelf like near the ceiling in the other room. And then Jade runs over and I’m like, “Hey,” and Jade starts freaking out and then Christy walks over and looks at the camera and I didn’t have, I couldn’t hear her for some reason ’cause it wasn’t connected and then I called her on the phone later, I was like, I told her why I was doing it for a podcast, not just because I’m a peeping Tom and I said, even though I do practice of that, I guess I may have a problem, but I said, “How did you feel?” And she was like, well it felt weird. I’m not doing anything that I’m embarrassed about or I’m trying to hide but it did feel weird that all of a sudden you were watching me and I immediately thought, how long has he been watching me? – Right. – And that feels like a violation. If something feels weird, you feel a little violated, you know, your personal privacy. Because, so I don’t know what to do. I actually, is it about me using constraint, or is it about me taking the cameras down? – Well okay, so, you heard what I thought my philosophy was gonna be was to not do what you did. As a general rule, but I am open to changing and maybe one is better than the other. It seems right now that just given our general understanding of privacy in modern society, that it’s a wiser choice to not randomly check in on people, right? But, some of the research– – But here’s the thing. Well, like sometimes if Christy’s not at home, if I know she’s out and I’m like, I know she’s coming back, I could text her but she’s driving. I can just look, she’s enabled location services on her phone so I can look on my phone under the text screen and see where she is, see where her phone is. – Well of course, you can argue yourself into– – That feels okay. – Conveniences and the functionality of– – ‘Cause she willingly shared that with me. – Of this monitoring. – My location. Her location. – Which we’re gonna get into that, but I think that, if we take a look at where we came from, basically the historical understanding of privacy, is a pretty fascinating thing. And then what is our current understanding of privacy and then where are we going in the future? And I think we might be able to land at what our policy should be. – Okay, yeah, let’s do it. So again, this goes well beyond security cameras. This is all types of privacy. – This is just the concept of privacy, which basically informs the way Christy feels about you checking in on her, because she is a product of modern society as is, except for the vampires, everyone who’s listening. So this is an article from Medium, which, anyone can write an article on Medium, but there’s a guy Greg Ferenstein who has this thing called Ferenstein Wire, which was a very well researched and, I’ve only looked at this article, but, basically pulled from a lot of different sources to kinda go through some historical examples of tracking the way we think about privacy. We could camp out on any one of these that we want to. – Okay. – But interestingly, when it sounds like I’m reading, yes, I am just quoting Greg, so I’m not trying to sound like Greg, I am quoting him. Privacy as it is conventionally understood is only about 150 years old. Okay, so most humans living throughout history had little concept of privacy in their tiny communities. And obviously the further you go back and the closer we get to diverting off of a common ancestor from chimpanzees about six million years ago, the less and less privacy mattered. Privacy has become more important sort of as we’ve advanced, but you get the picture of being in a hunter-gatherer community and just the idea of I gotta go somewhere to do this thing, was just not really, in fact, we see this, there’s modern societies that have been observed. Not modern but basically tribal people who have not been influenced by modern society, there’s a few of them that are still studied. – Contemporary. – Contemporary hunter-gatherer communities. In fact, Jared Diamond who wrote one of my favorite books ever, Guns, Germs and Steel, is a UCLA anthropologist, he said because hunter-gatherer children sleep with their parents either in the same bed or in the same hut, there is no privacy. Children see their parents having sex. In the Trobriand Islands, Malinowski, which is a researcher, was told that parents took no special precautions to prevent their children from watching them having sex. They just scolded the child and told it to cover its head with a mat. – Well, I think about, I remember watching Dances With Wolves, and there’s that scene with, all they had was a rug, a bear skin, well a bear skin coat of some sort. A bear skin, I’ll just leave it at that. A bear skin covered their bare skins. – Right. – But there were other people in the room. – Right, what are you gonna tell ’em, to leave? – And also, there was a similar scene in Vikings, you remember that? – Mm-hm. – Yeah where it was like, well– – I got that one in the memory bank as well. – It was the kid, the kid was in the room. – The personal DVR that I keep in my head. – That’s your welcome mat. This seems odd, I mean, I don’t even. – First of all, I acknowledge that this seems a little bit nuts, right, to us because we have rooms. Most people have their own room, and we’ll talk about why we feel the way that we do. – Do you send Barbara out? – I put Barbara in her crate. I don’t send her out. – Does she have a view? – Eh. – She has a view from the crate? – But she doesn’t watch. Do you send Jade out? – No. – Is she in a crate? – No. – Is the in the bed? – No. – She’s on the floor? – No. – Where is she? – She’s on the couch. – But your dog can’t jump onto the bed. – No. – My dog can. – Oh yeah my dog– – So my dog has to be confined. – Yeah, when I put Jade somewhere, she stays there. She doesn’t jump on the bed or off the bed, it’s a wiener dog thing, for their back. – But the idea– – But she learns a lot. – That she can’t apply and neither can Barbara. – Sadly. – Although Barbara learned a lot at doggy daycare. First of all, she’s a female dog. Second of all, she’s been spayed, is that the right one for female dogs? – Yeah, fixed. – But she learned something from some buddies at the place where they stay because we got her this little stuffed dog that actually looks a lot like Barbara and she humps it. – Well what is the canine psychology of a– – She’s like, I’ve seen my buddies doing this. Let’s see how it is. She doesn’t know what she’s doing, she’s just doing hip gyrations. – You don’t have to do it. – Well no one knows that I did that except those who watch on video. And I didn’t really do it, I just went like this. Anyway, so, you can learn a lot. Your dog is learning a lot, that’s all I’m saying. Just depending on how much you’re gyrating. So one thing I will– – Wouldn’t that be embarrassing, like we have friends over and it’s like what is your dog doing over there? – Imitating me. – Oh that’s– (Rhett laughs) That’s a special, that’s a patented move that I thought only, oh gosh. See we’re very, I mean, it’s interesting what’s happening now. We’re being so public with something so private. Our wives would probably kill us with this conversation. – It’s making people feel uncomfortable. – But the fact is, yeah, we’re just making, if you feel uncomfortable right now, that’s on you because we used to be hunter-gatherers that fact, it was just part of existence. – And now we live in a place where– – Public existence almost– – You gotta make sure that the door’s locked ’cause God forbid, your kids walk in on you and all of a sudden their lives are ruined because they see the way that they were made? Really? I mean that’s the way we think about it now and that is a distinctly modern understanding of privacy. – But don’t act like you wouldn’t feel weird if that happened. – I’d obviously feel weird because I’m a product of modern society. – Okay. – Speaking of that– – Exactly. – In medieval times, which is not that long ago, newlyweds climbed into bed before the eyes of family and friends and the next day exhibit the sheets as proof that the marriage had been consummated. That is from Georges Duby, editor of A History of Private Life. – I think that was less about privacy and more about something else, like something about consummation. There was probably some sort of legal ramifications of that, that like that was actually how a marriage was made. – Regardless of the reasons for it, the practice was, and there’s actually a painting associated with this particular quote in this article. It basically shows a couple in the bed and now they did have like the sheets, the curtains around the bed, but then the family was all standing outside the bed and then a couple was getting ready to do it in the bed. Again, individual beds are a modern invention. For most of history it wasn’t uncommon for there to be one large bed, for most of history there wasn’t a bed, but since there’s been beds, it wasn’t uncommon for there to be one large bed where everyone slept. That includes the entire family, some servants, and even guests. Where else you gonna sleep? We’ve got a bed. And I don’t necessarily know what all was going on in the bed but this idea of personal space and privacy is something that was not natural. In fact, the way that Greg puts it is transparency is humanity’s natural state. – What’s the weirdest bedding down situation you’ve ever been in? – Probably just sharing a bed with a friend in a hotel. I think. – We’ve had to do that. – We’ve done that. – In desperate times. Led to many altercations. – Yeah we have different sleeping styles. – I sleep with reckless abandon as I have gone on record in saying. – And when I sleep by myself, I go all over the place, and when I sleep in a bed with my wife, I kinda go all over the place. When I slept in a bed with you– – You’re like a rotten log. – I just stay completely still, no contact. And its like, it would subconsciously just stay with me the entire night. We don’t do that anymore. – We’re that successful. – That’s right, we get our own rooms. (Link chuckles) That’s why we do this, so we can travel and have our own rooms. That’s why we have ads. (both laugh) However, in spite of this– – I think what you’re arriving at is disturbing, but keep going. – There seemed to be some instinctal, instinctual (chuckles), or instinctal, preference for privacy. So it wasn’t uncommon for people to choose to have sex outdoors, and I realize we’re talking about having sex a lot but I think that that is the most intimate thing that you can do in the presence of other people so that’s why Greg used it quite a bit to help illustrate privacy. – He’s also a freak! (chuckles) – People choosing to have sex– – Greg, freaky deeky. – Outdoors rather than in the same room if possible. So in Dances With Wolves, if it wasn’t too cold, you might go outside, but that doesn’t mean– – To dance with the wolf. – (chuckles) It doesn’t mean, they didn’t choose to not have sex. I think that in certain situations, okay, for instance, let’s just say that, and I’m gonna quit using us and our wives as examples just for the reason you pointed out earlier, I don’t wanna get them too riled up. – Too late. – Let’s just say you’re a couple and you go on a trip with another couple and you are in a financial situation that necessitates sharing a hotel room. – Oh now you’re talking about Fargo. – I don’t really remember this scene. – Two double beds, one hotel room, four people. – Right. And then– – Two couples. – The question for you, listener, is, you know, are you going to abstain– – Yes. – From hanky panky? – Yes. – Yeah, most, I would go as far as to say 95% of modern people in the western world would say– – For one night, sure. – We don’t have to do it tonight. – If this was the living arrangement forever, we might have to start having a discussion and purchase a bunch of ear plugs and I don’t know, a divider. – I’m gonna kinda rifle through a few of these things just to kinda quickly catch us up to modern society ’cause I think this is when the conversation gets very interesting. So what changed, why do we think differently about this now? Well so, while transparency is humanity’s natural state, there has always been a preference for privacy, but there wasn’t a logistical opportunity often. Does that make sense? – Yeah. So if you could– – Practically speaking, if it’s very hard to be private– – If you could press a button and have your own room, you would have done it but we didn’t. That’s not how we lived. But the invention of the printing press, again, this is, I’m sure Greg is drawing a lot of sources, but this is Greg’s thoughts and I tend to agree. The invention of the printing press laid the foundation for privacy. – ‘Cause you could hide behind it. – As it allowed personal and private– – It was a big machine. – Contemplations of writings, most often religious ones like the Bible. However, this was an elite luxury. So, meaning that, having some time, ’cause it used to be like, if you were gonna be read something which was usually done in the context of a religious setting, there was a public reading and you would all kinda gather around and listen. But now with a printing press, we can take these writings and we could go and we could contemplate on them in private. And actually the concept of the private life and what’s going on privately, again, a lot of this happened in the religious context, but there was also the concept of confession, which wasn’t always a thing but the idea that you were gonna go and confess something to a priest, at least in the context of the Catholic church, and that was an acknowledgement that there was a private life and there was an internal morality that needed to be brought into public but it was this concept of, I’ve got things that I’m thinking about. I’ve got things that I’m reading on my own. I’ve got time that I’m spending alone and I’m contemplating things and I am planning things and I may be thinking things and I’m dealing with things on my own but they wanted to kinda bring that back to have it dealt with, but you started to get this idea that there is something that I can kinda separate. – But you’d go into a closet and you’d shut the door and talk through a screen. – Right. – At a priest about it. – Developing understanding of infectious diseases also necessitated private beds in hospitals, because before they had individual– – Spreaded disease, okay. – Individual beds in hospitals, they had communal beds in hospitals. Why do it any differently in a hospital? So you basically had a bed with a bunch of sick people in it and they started noticing, everybody’s getting sick in these beds, let’s have a clean individual bed, and that’s when the concept of the individual bed really started to take off for a lot of people. But then it starts to enter into writing in thought, and again, this is incredibly recent. This is like literally less than a second ago in the timeline of– – The scheme of existence. – The Industrial Revolution pushed it even further. So basically the material and moral wellbeing of workers depend, the health of the public and the security of society depend on each family’s living in a separate, healthy and convenient home which it may purchase. And this is a speaker at the 1876 International Hygiene Counsel or Hygiene Congress in Brussels which is one of my favorite historical events (chuckles). So that was when they started saying everybody should have their own house which led to everybody should have their own room in the house which is kind of a later concept, you kinda start getting that in like 40s, 50s, like post-war, 60s, and of course now– – You gotta have your own TV in your room. – Right. And then finally– – With a web cam that’s watching you and then you get rid of, you relinquish all your privacy again, full circle, but go ahead. – That’s exactly where we’re going. – Oh yeah. – And the final thing, until we get up to kind where we’re at now, the legal concept of the right to privacy, in the Harvard Law Review in 1890, it was written, the intensity and complexity of life depend upon advancing civilization, have rendered necessary. Some retreat from the world and man, under the refining influence of culture, has become more sensitive to publicity so that solitude and privacy have become more essential to the individual but modern enterprise and invention have, through invasions upon his privacy, subjected him to mental pain and distress far greater than could be inflicted by mere bodily injury. So this was the beginning of the recognition that– – A violation of privacy is a true violation. – We’ve got to stand for our right to privacy, because as we begin to introduce modern enterprise and invention, they begin to invade privacy. But there’s another thing about us as humans. So transparency is the natural state, but we began to fall in love with privacy because when we can make the choice to choose privacy, we will do it, as has been demonstrated by history, but we have a problem. We value convenience over privacy. So obviously you’ve got modern examples of just like choosing to do online banking and stuff like that. – And that brings me to… The Time article I was reading details what researchers call the privacy paradox, which is, we care so much about our privacy, yet we keep giving our information away. And it says we do it because we reason that our future self will probably suffer no consequences. We figure that the worst that will likely happen is we feel kinda violated by all the corporate algorithms and maybe the government, tracking us along with everything else, but it’s worth it because we get to use the app, or we get to buy the thing so quickly or we get to enjoy the entertainment or we get to connect with people or we get to share something and get boosted in our ego zone in a digital sphere. – And meanwhile the– – So it’s not, we care about it but we care about convenience, connectivity, dot, dot, dot, a lot more. – And the people who have all the money and all the power, the corporations, they know that this is the way that we are and that’s why– – They got us, brother. – They continue to give us the conveniences, and they continue to, to whatever degree, we can talk about what the degree is, track us and listen to us and understand the things that we like and that we search for to begin to develop a profile of us as individuals so they can then turn around and sell stuff to us. – According to CBS News article, Google has said it has access to, quote, quoting Google, 70% of credit and debit card transactions in the United States. – Mm-hm. – According to the author of one study, again this is still the CBS News article, Google has trackers on 76% of websites while Facebook watches us on 23% of sites. – And you can– – That’s about six or nine months old, this article. Who knows how much that’s changing day to day, but it gives you an indication of– – How much they know. – How much is being tracked. – And you can download, you can actually find both Facebook and Google provide ways for you to do this. You can find out everything that these companies know about you and I read an article where a guy explains how to do it and (chuckles), I think from Google they got 150 gigs of information. – Wow. – Now interestingly, and we’ve talked to our friend who knows a lot about these issues, explained to us that Apple has a very different approach to privacy than either Facebook or Google, and as a result, the return that you’ll get from Apple when you find out what they know about you, I don’t know how do to that, but you can figure it out, is like, for him it was a page. It was just a page. Now, and it’s interesting because Apple has chosen to say, at least thus far, that we’re going to respect your privacy more, and obviously– – Even to the FBI. – Obviously they would be more successful– – Maybe it was the CIA. – They would be more successful as a company, they’d have a higher profit if they were taking advantage of the information that’s out there. But before we– – And I will add one more thing because we’re all starting to have this experience of, you have a conversation and then you get an ad. Like, okay, my phone is listening to my conversations. It’s uncanny. – Even though they will say that they don’t. – Yeah because, I mean, Google said we do not use ambient sound from any device to target ads. This is still the CBS News article. Facebook had previously said, we show ads based on people’s interest and other profile information, not what you’re talking out loud about. There are sites though, there are apps that do listen and you can control what the microphone on your device is allowing access to, but the amount of– – The people who know– – They don’t even need to do it, that would be so much data if they were constantly listening, they don’t have to do that. The computers are so smart with all of your, just your digital footprint that it can predict things that you want and know so much about your spending and your salary and everything. – Instagram. – Where you are. – Instagram knows me so well. – They don’t need to listen. But it’s just a testimony to how effective they are that you’re convinced that they’re listening. And maybe I’m wrong but, I think I’m right, and I think that’s a stronger point that they know that much and they’re not even listening to the audio. That’s even scarier to me. – But I mean, there are devices like Alexa, they are listening. I mean I don’t know what they’re doing with the information. – They said they’re not storing it. – Yeah yeah, all I’m saying is that we don’t really know but we know that a lot of information about us as individuals is out there and it is being used to then sell things back to us. – And let’s not forget the government. I’m not one to– – Let’s not forget it. – I’m not one to, I just wanna, a lot of people that would say that at this point. It’s like, you can get worked up about Facebook and Google but don’t forget about the government themselves. That’s not something I find myself personally thinking. I have this default trust, but again, I think for me, as I hinted to at the beginning, I value convenience and you know, I scroll down, scroll down, just to click accept on the terms and conditions on anything that I’m already convinced that I gotta have in my life. – Yeah and everybody does. – I buy cameras and then realize I’ve become a peeping Tom. For goodness sakes. It’s just, I’m being facetious with that, you know. I am not a peeping Tom. – Well let’s get back to that because, okay, you being a peeping Tom, yeah. Backing up just a little bit, this is not a modern concept like there were some examples in Greg’s article about us beginning to, out of convenience, sort of say, privacy is not that important. Postcards, postcards invented in the early 20th century, people started using them like crazy and they would write very personal, intimate things on these things that could be read by the mail man or anyone who happened to see the postcard. – Hmm. – Party lines, before there was individual telephone lines, there were party lines where you basically had a phone for the community and you had to trust that your neighbors were not listening to you and they were listening to you all the time. Because all you gotta do is pick the phone up. It was just like listening to your sister talk to her boyfriend, it was so easy to do, but it wasn’t just confined to a house, it was within a community. We have been willing to have intimate conversations via text and via our voices even knowing that we could be listened to. It’s not a modern invention, so as soon as we began to value privacy, it was being eroded and it was being attacked and now with obviously what’s happened with the internet, it’s just been accelerated to the point where, in fact, a guy named Sam Altman who is the Loopt co-founder, he was the guy who pioneered paid geolocation services. He said the magic age is people born after 1981. That’s the cutoff for us where we see a big change in privacy settings and user acceptance. – Meaning looser privacy settings and more acceptance of just willy nilly just letting it into the ether. – Yeah now, we have a pretty high level of paranoia and skepticism. I was born in 77, you were born in 78, so we’re before the cutoff. But given what we do for a living and given our personalities which is a very high value of convenience. – We simulate a much younger age in practice. – I tend to be a proponent, my brother-in-law has historically been very concerned about his privacy when it comes to online banking. I remember having a conversation with him like 15 years ago where he was making the transition to online banking ’cause it was still something that was happening. And he was like, I just don’t feel comfortable with it. It seems like anybody could get, I was like, but here’s the thing. There’s safety in numbers. It’s inevitable, we’re all doing it. You can’t really function in modern society without doing it. – Yeah your hand is forced. – And so then just recently, his son is applying for college and apparently there’s a new service that allows you to create one account and then basically make your applications to a bunch of schools at the same time as opposed to do what we did which was hand write to a few schools that you wanted to apply to. If you wanna go to 15 different schools or apply. – Right. – And it required my nephew putting in the birthday and social security number of both parents, and of course himself, and my brother-in-law was like, I’m not comfortable with this, and again, I said the same thing, I was like, you know what, anybody who wants your social security number and birthday who’s motivated to get it can get it. – But if you want to keep your kid out of college, then that’s on you. You know it’s like again, your hand is forced and you have to make the decision, so he had to do it, right? – Of course. – He did it. You made him feel a little bit better about it. – I just said, just have a credit monitoring service. – Here’s the thing– – I was like, just make sure you have that. – I feel like, well I don’t have anything to hide. But it’s that moment that your husband comes over the web cam and is like, “Hey,” that all of a sudden, you have this feeling of how long have you been watching me? It innately feels like a violation. Now you’ve made a historical argument that it’s cultural, is what I hear you saying. It’s in our constitution. Is that an inalienable right? – Well, maybe. Let’s talk about this. – My specific question is in tracing privacy– – Yeah I see where you’re going. – Where you’re making an argument that it’s just cultural and that we need to get over it, because, and I’ll just go ahead and say everything and you can revisit any part you want. I have this sense that, I just can’t worry about this stuff. Our hands are being forced, but if I am gonna worry about something it’s not, to me it’s not the government, and many people will argue, that’s a big mistake. Or it’s not Google or Facebook or fill in the blank with whoever other corporation it is, and other people will say, well that’s a big mistake. But it’s the people who are going to, the bad guys who are gonna steal it and use stuff, but I’m like, even then, what’s the worst that can happen? So I’m just like, I just don’t wanna worry about it. I wanna live my life, give me the chip. Give me the pill, whatever it is. – You’re willing to take the chip? Which is happening in pretty significant numbers in Sweden at this point. – Right. So it’s not, I don’t wanna talk about the chip per se, but it’s like, and maybe you can go even further into the future, but again, that’s where I’m at. Fill in anywhere you want. – You’re post-1981 for all intents and purposes. – But are you making, so, did you make an argument, just get over it? Are you with me? – Well here’s what I’ll say, in some weird, it’s just crazy, right? Transparency is the default state, the natural state of humanity, meaning that, we don’t have privacy naturally or a desire for privacy to the extent that we do now, but modern invention led to the development of a preoccupation with privacy that then further advancement in a very short period of time, 150 years, led to the essential complete evisceration of privacy. And we are– – Full circle. – In some weird world, we’re turning back to a state of transparency in the modern world, and I think this is where we’re going ultimately. – Sex in front of our children. – Exactly, this all comes down to having sex in front of your kids and you should go ahead and just start doing it now to embrace the future. No that’s not exactly where I was going. – Use a bear rug, please. Use a bear skin. – I think this is where we’re going. Again, I don’t know what the timeline for this is. But I think we’re going to a place, the technology is leading us to a place, and literally the technology will lead us at one point. (chuckles) We’ve talked about that before. To a place of constant surveillance. Constant surveillance, that makes 1984, Orwell’s book look like Child’s Play, the movie with Chucky (chuckles). Which would be a great collab. But we’re getting into a place where not only are we gonna be being– – [Link] 1984 starring Ryan Gosling and that puppet from Chucky. (Rhett chuckles) – Not only are we gonna be in a place where we’re being monitored by cameras but we’re gonna be being monitored, everything down to our thoughts, right? I mean, I don’t know when this is gonna happen, but basically all that’s happening in our brain is some electromagnetic signaling and we can’t really figure it out yet but we will be able to at some point. Not in our lifetime. But it will happen. – I don’t believe. I believe that the brain is so complex that that will never happen. Before it all implodes on itself. – Okay, that’s a fair argument that we die off as a species but technology is inevitably getting to that place. – But even if it’s not true, it is helpful to paint that as a worst case scenario, then like, how bad is it? So keep going. – We are moving, we are essentially moving to a place where we are an organism, right? Which interestingly, it’s where we started from. An organism that we all came from and we’re going back to a place where, like a beehive, and again, this is, absolutely makes your skin crawl, as it should if you’re a healthy person. The idea of being in a place where ultimately, your thoughts are not even your own. But they’re being shared and directed by a collective of intelligence that’s not even limited to humans. I mean, read some Asimov and you get to a place where… It’s just crazy that he was able to talk about all this in the 50s but basically, this is where the technology leads us. Now there’s gonna be rebellions against this, right? There’s already people who are like, I ain’t gettin’ the chip. There’s The Matrix, right? There’s all these examples of the people rebelling against it and that’s probably a healthy thing and there will be rebellions, but the general trajectory, unless we destroy ourselves, which is very likely that we will destroy ourselves. Let’s just for argument’s sake say that we won’t destroy ourselves, the general trajectory is towards a place of us becoming an organism. And individualism is a super, like American thing right now and we’re all excited about it and we wanna defend it and we’re willing to fight and die for it right now, and that’s great, all I’m saying is, it’s temporary, and it’s not even a natural thing when it comes to humans. It’s just something that was an anomaly, a blip on the radar of existence that happened because of some technology that got brought into existence. – I think that’s the probably the biggest contribution of the self-driving car is how it will be a big cultural shift of acceptance, of community. – Well I have a wild, one last wild theory. I believe, I’m kind of on the Elon Musk team here in thinking that statistically speaking, we’re probably in a simulation. We’ve talked about this before. If we’re in a simulation and the inevitable trajectory of the simulation is that we are getting to a place in which we recognize that we’re all one organism, it’s all data, and it’s being controlled, experienced and exchanged as a collective, at that point, we basically become indistinguishable from the computer that is powering the simulation that we’re in, which is all based on data. All right? I haven’t read this theory anywhere, I’m sure somebody else has come up with it. But at that point, once you’re this collective and you’re just kind of existing in the world of data, that is essentially a computer hard drive. And at that point, when we get to that place in this indistinguishable, the simulation is indistinguishable from the computer that is making the simulation happen, that is when we will be delivered. That is when we will be delivered as a species. – Delivered. – We will get out of the simulation. I know me and you tried to do it one time. I used to think that maybe just admitting that it was a simulation and holding hands with your best friend was how you got out of the simulation. – [Together] We two guys are Link and Rhett, and we know we are in a simulation, and we want out! Now! – That didn’t work ’cause we tried it. We tried it many times since then. – Let’s not try that again. – But now I’m beginning to think that it is– – Let’s beat our head against the wall instead. – It’s just a recognition. It’s not a recognition, it is an assimilation into the actual data that is making up the simulation. You have to become the data and once you become the data, (snaps fingers) you break out of the simulation. – We collectively transform into an 18 wheeler. – Distant future. – An 18 wheeler. – Yeah we could also just destroy ourselves and take– (Link mimics horn honking) Take a chance that the simulation ends at that point. But I don’t wanna take that chance. – So are you in it to win it? Caution to the wind? – So I guess what I’m saying is– – Privacy be damned. – Temporarily, you– – You’re doing it for the singularity. – I’m not going to watch my family and friends because it makes them feel uncomfortable. But in the back of my mind, I know that everyone’s gonna be watched eventually. I’ll let it come when it’s inevitable, but I’m not going to usher it in. And I might be part of the resistance. I’m not saying that I’m not gonna be part of the resistance, because Morpheus is really cool. – I was about to say that. (Rhett laughs) The cool switch turned on, you were like, hold on, actually, it might be cooler to be on the other side. So I might be part of the resistance. I could tell, I saw when it happened. – Yeah yeah, yeah, right. Whatever’s the best experience for me, man. I’m selfish. – At this point, I’m putting it on you. #EarBiscuits, let us know, and you know what, what I don’t want you to do is just rip me a new one for being a peeping Tom, okay. It’s like, I’m gonna slow my roll and as a family, we’re gonna put some ground rules in place, and then we’re gonna have our own so to speak placard on our door. I’m just saying that I’m not really, if you wanna talk to me about it, that’s fine. I just said my piece. But then the larger question of how, I am curious how you relate to these issues of privacy. #EarBiscuits, let us know. – Yes. – The conversation must continue. – And we will be listening. To hear this Ear Biscuit in its entirety and make sure you don’t miss an episode, follow the links in the description to subscribe on Apple Podcasts or anywhere else podcasts are available. – [Link] To watch more Ear Biscuits, click on the playlist on the right. – [Rhett] To watch more of our daily show Good Mythical Morning, click the playlist on the left. – [Link] And don’t forget to click the circular icon to subscribe. – [Rhett] Thanks for being your Mythical best.