Episode 71: The Murky Morals and Mysterious Metaphysics of "Mr. Robot"

Well, it's like a world full of people. So many people. Always opinions and judgments and arrogance and theories. People who think that they help people and they're pointless. None of them know anything. You might as well listen to a woodpecker pecking in a tree.

The great impost has spoken. Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain. Who are you? Who are you? A very bad man.

I'm a very good man. Good man.

They think deep thoughts and with no more brains than you have. Pay no attention to that man. Anybody can have a brain. You're a very bad man.

I'm a very good man.

Just a very bad wizard. Welcome to very bad wizards. I'm Tamela Summers from the University of Houston. Dave, I need to know right now, are you a one or a.

Know? I can actually answer this. I am a one. Because here's the little background. Whenever we collect data from people and we collect what sex people are, you have to put a code, like assign a number. So I assign a one for men and a zero for women. Not because I'm sexist. It wouldn't be for the reasons that you do it, but just because a one is like closer to a penis.

The one that is more anatomically correct rather than the one you identify with.

That's actually what my penis looks like. It's approximately the same size as a twelve point times new Roman one.

Oh yeah, that's really small compared to ten point font. No, that's true. I know some ten point. I'm a really hard, stiff one for Mr. Robot. I am all in. I love it so much. It was a great pick. And that's what we're going to talk about today. We're going to spoil Mr. Robot. It's so freaking good you brought it up in the last episode as the TV show that you recommend. That's philosophically, psychologically relevant, and it definitely is, but it's also fucking awesome.

I just love it and I'm sort of happy that I wasn't crazy in my pick. For what it's worth, the reviews have also been pretty damn good. Really good. It's like in the high 90s on.

Rotten Tomatoes, I'm at the point where I like it so much that I make it miserable for everybody else around me how much I like it. You know what I mean?

It's like the wire, but live.

Or like in Bruges was like this where I saw it with Jen. She liked it. She totally liked it a lot. But I liked it so much that she had to start sort of being like, hey, slow down. It kind of ruined it for her how much I like Britain Bruges. And that's how I am about this. I'm ruining it.

And we should say so. You already said it, but if you haven't watched it, probably don't listen to this pause. Go watch it, because we're going to spoil it. I mean, there's nothing that we are going to assume. Everybody's seen it.

We're going to assume that you're caught up and that you've watched the first three episodes.

Yeah. So we're going to be talking about three episodes. And another thing I want to say is, it is like I said before, it is a little weird talking about something with only three episodes when presumably there's going to be, whatever, twelve or something. So I'm with you.

It already got renewed for a second season.

Oh, wow. Yeah. And I'm not sure how it will be. It does seem like it's hard to at least carry this particular storyline for that long, but trust it.

I have faith. They've already broken a lot of the rules that I thought had to be followed, especially on, like, USA anal sex.

I know. Yeah. Wait, was that anal earlier? Tamler sent me.

I got to give my friend credit because he posted on Facebook Justin Coates, he's a colleague here at University of Houston. He said this is why people hate philosophers. And it's this article on Vox, the Ezra Klein online magazine. It has these two grad students, and I'm sorry, I feel bad that they're grad students, but they're adults and they wrote this on Vox. And two philosophers explain what Inside Out gets wrong about the mind.

Right. And so I should say I have not seen inside out. You have, but I don't think this conversation requires having seen it. At least it doesn't to me.

It requires you actually understanding what's a movie and what's an article like a peer reviewed article.

Right. Clearly, Inside Out did not get peer reviewed by philosophers of emotion or psychology. And as somebody who does, part of what I do is psychology of emotion. I've gotten a ton of people asking me, what do you think about Inside Out? I can imagine that they are in some ways trying. Like, they actually consulted with a couple of psychologists. Dakar Keltner at Berkeley was one of them. And so I imagine that they were attempting to not do a grave injustice to what emotions are and what they do.

But they did some research. The people in Finding Nemo did research, too. And it's not like people were writing articles saying, here's what Finding Nemo gets wrong about the ocean. Number one, sharks don't talk and they can't be vegetarian.

You could never get anywhere with that fucked up little fin of his. You'd just be swimming in circles, various.

Species of fish, and show them around the coral reef. I mean, of course they're going to do some research to try to get certain details right. But now, I think I mentioned in the last episode. I didn't love Inside Out, but that's character issues, story issues. It has nothing to do with how accurately I know.

And to the question of how accurate is it, I'll say wildly inaccurate because emotions aren't little guys and girls that talk to you.

Okay? When I first read this, I was thinking what they're doing is and maybe the headline writers tried to make it a little bit more controversial, but really what they're doing is saying what it gets right? What's accurate about it and what isn't accurate about it. But then, as you keep reading it, it's not anymore like they're using Inside Out as an opportunity to explain to you about the mind. They're actually, like, a little annoyed with Inside Out's inaccurate portrayal of the mind. So it's misleading, to say the least, to represent episodic memories as high def records of things that actually happened that are crystallized forevermore in discrete capsules. The idea that it's misleading like, that they're deliberately misleading the audience here. But this is my favorite sentence, and I would just want your reaction to this. We also haven't addressed we also haven't addressed I haven't even addressed don't get them started on this. The movie's utter disregard for the physiological, or, quote James Lang theory of emotion, which states that our physiology, our actual physical stuff happening in our body causes our experienced emotions rather than the other way around. It's literally, like, at that point, it's like a referee report.

That's reviewer, too.

Exactly.

This is I'm sorry, I'm reading it right now. The outrage for the utter disregard of the James Lang theory of emotion. It's like they didn't even read Jesse Prince's book. Come on.

It's unconscionable.

I would love for someone to rewrite this in accordance with these criticisms, what that movie would look like. One of their complaints. Like you said, memory doesn't look like these high def orbs of video. So make some shitty ass video. They should have put shitty, low def video when they were doing memories. Yeah.

Anyway, we don't my friend emailed me, and I just think this would be a funny thing. Maybe readers could do this. Not readers, listeners. He did, like, a couple