Ep. 336: "A Deck of Life"
Merlin: Hello.
Merlin: Hello.
Merlin: Hello.
Merlin: Hello, John.
Merlin: How are you?
Merlin: Hello.
Merlin: How is it going?
Merlin: Very good, thank you.
Merlin: Oh, yes.
Merlin: Oh, rather.
Merlin: This has a bit one believes we'll never get old.
Merlin: This one could sustain for over one hour, one imagines.
Merlin: Oh, sure it could, yes.
Merlin: Isn't Hitler the worst?
Merlin: I hate that guy.
Merlin: Literally the worst.
Merlin: Okay, uh, uh.
Merlin: You told... Okay, first of all, we've got to say something to our listeners, just to avoid utter confusion.
Merlin: Do we rather, as you know, when the summer times are approaching, one must sometimes alter one's schedule quite egregiously, such that one pre-records episodes of one's podcast.
Merlin: And as the time stretches out into the horizon, one might find that the episodes were recorded further and further in the murky past.
Merlin: Who wouldn't want to agree?
Merlin: I hate this.
Merlin: What's happening?
Merlin: You're having some kind of a neurological incident.
Merlin: So, you know, it's summertime and the living's easy.
John: The living is easy.
John: It's a hot time.
Merlin: Fish and cotton, jumping high, old man river, et cetera.
Merlin: And so, no, I just, you know.
Merlin: And so the thing is, over the next few weeks of your time in the future.
Yeah.
Merlin: Is it really your time, Mr. Hand?
John: Isn't it our time?
Merlin: Whoa, whoa, whoa.
Merlin: Remember he orders a pizza?
Merlin: Remember that?
Merlin: And so, anyway, just as a heads up to you, this will not be the last time you hear this, but given the fact that this is slightly pre-recorded and other episodes may be increasingly pre-recorded, we just want to let you know.
Merlin: Because if stuff happens in the world...
Merlin: I don't want to sound insensitive.
Merlin: I don't want to get canceled because we said something.
John: Are you saying... Now, wait a minute.
John: Yes.
John: In the entire history of this program, which has been running for 15 years... 15 years, yes.
John: Have we ever really addressed current events?
John: Have we addressed current events?
John: Do we even acknowledge current events?
Merlin: One tries to keep the big world outside at bay.
John: Yes.
Merlin: But sometimes it finds purchase and plants its seed.
John: One time, many, many years ago, you introduced me to the concept of evergreens.
John: You said, make the show evergreen.
John: Evergreen.
John: And I said, what's that?
John: And you said, it doesn't matter when you listen to this show.
John: It doesn't matter in what order.
John: You could listen to it 25 years from now.
John: And we're not just talking about what's on TV today.
John: Well, that's probably going to come up, kind of, yeah.
John: What if I know it was on TV two and a half weeks ago?
John: But I think, for instance...
John: If you want to learn about Uncle Licky in the year 2100, you can learn about Uncle Licky.
John: You don't need to be up on current events.
John: It's not 9-11 contingent.
John: You know what I mean?
Merlin: PodBot will elevate all of the necessary information and maybe even do the organizing for you.
Merlin: But don't let PodBot do too much of the organizing because you need to listen to all of these programs.
John: All of them.
John: And really, you could listen to them in order.
John: That's fine.
John: People do.
Merlin: Well, let me just say this, John.
Merlin: I am not saying this show is like the Bible.
Merlin: I'm not saying it's like the Bible.
Merlin: Well, if you jump into like a first John, or let's just say you jump into John.
John: Sure.
John: Merlin 316.
Merlin: Well, 1 John 4, 7 and 8.
Merlin: You know what I'm saying?
Merlin: Beloved, let us love one another.
Merlin: For love is of God, and everyone that loveth is born of God, and knoweth God.
Merlin: He that loveth not, knoweth not God, for God is love.
Merlin: So, beloved, let us love one another.
Merlin: 1 John 4, 7 and 8.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: So, you jump into a 1 John, you know what, it could be a Kings.
Merlin: You jump into Kings without an Exodus, you know what you're doing?
Merlin: You're going to the ballgame without a program.
Merlin: You don't know what to expect.
Merlin: You get a judges just because you want to find out what happens with the Samson thread.
Merlin: Do you follow?
John: Yeah.
Merlin: I'm just saying it would be useful to have a little bit fill in with the backstory.
Merlin: And I don't know if PodBot is going to be able to bubble that up.
Merlin: You want to learn about a Shadrach, Meshach, Abednego.
John: Oh, no, I don't.
Merlin: Oh, they're the guys that walk in into the fire.
Merlin: Who are the kings of this show?
Merlin: Like what chap?
Merlin: Oh, you mean like what book or the book?
Merlin: No, who are they?
Merlin: Who are the characters?
Merlin: Oh, who are the kings?
Merlin: Who are they?
Merlin: That's going to be such old news by the time this comes out.
Merlin: Who are the kings of this show?
John: Lola.
John: Lola is the king.
Merlin: Oh, yes.
Merlin: Okay.
Merlin: Okay.
Merlin: Oh, I like this.
John: I like this.
John: Lola, she's one of the top kings.
Yeah.
Merlin: You know what you got?
Merlin: You got Dramatis, what they call Dramatis Personae.
John: Personae.
Merlin: Don't you think you got a Dramatis Personae?
Merlin: Like, it would be nice to go like, let me learn more, but who is Jason Finn?
Merlin: What is happening with him?
Merlin: He seems to, right?
Merlin: You got John's, both of your parents, really, practically your whole family.
Merlin: Lola's definitely large in the mythology.
Merlin: Sure.
Sure.
Merlin: If people may not know Lola because they're jumping in now, they're here for Samson and they never got to Lola.
John: Is a dead rubber girl a king?
Merlin: She might be a king.
Merlin: She might at least be a duchess.
Merlin: Let's be honest.
John: Okay.
John: All right.
John: That's true.
John: That's true.
John: We could break it down that way.
John: Well, let's leave that aside.
John: You were in the middle of saying something about them.
Merlin: futureness of the past oh my god yes uh what was i i yes yes i i evergreen is good i don't know john i don't know what's gonna happen here like maybe even more than ever you know we are unstuck in time you know what i mean you and i are extremely unstuck in time yes my daughter started my daughter started reading that book
Merlin: A wrinkle in it?
Merlin: No, Slaughterhouse-Five.
John: There's quite a bit of stuff in that part.
Merlin: She got to the lampshade part.
Merlin: So the thing of it is, listen, Colin, Billy Pilgrim is unstuck in time.
Merlin: Right?
Merlin: Right.
Merlin: Yes, absolutely.
Merlin: Potewit.
Merlin: And so when you're unstuck in time, you know, and maybe you haven't learned the full ways of the Tralf Amadorians, it's all going to seem, like, super confusing.
Merlin: We're going to try to give you as much continuity as we can.
Merlin: But, like, if you want to find out how Wilberforce got his glove, you're going to need to dig into the back issues.
Merlin: Here's a good question.
John: Yes.
John: And I'm going to call it a good question even before I've asked it.
John: I know that generally we ask a question and then we let someone else decide whether it's good.
Merlin: You're like Polly with the sausages.
Merlin: Every question you ask is by definition good.
John: Yes.
John: Okay.
John: Well, no.
John: Sometimes my questions are wackadoodle.
John: Yes.
John: But if we had a science, if we had a scientific method by which you could take every episode...
John: And somehow cleave it so that each vignette of an episode was its own story.
John: And somehow, either you would have to gather the moss, you would have to gather the threads from within, the tendrils from within an episode, and combine them, take them out through digitalis, bring them all together so that the story, the contiguous story, was told within an excerpt.
John: And then you took all of the excerpts, which would have to be manipulated in order to capture them.
Merlin: They would have to be memetic and atomic.
John: Because they are all tendrilic throughout one another.
Merlin: But there would be a bespoke digitalis that would be useful in gathering the tendrils, as well as the body, and then be able to interact that.
Merlin: Is that what you're saying?
Merlin: Futurelings will look back on this and say, oh, hypertext.
Merlin: Hypertext, very, very simple idea.
Merlin: You click a thing, go to another thing.
Merlin: You're talking about way more than that.
Merlin: You're talking about an entire dynamic 4 to 9D environment that somebody could interact in and be able to really, really explore the space.
Merlin: Is that kind of the idea?
John: No, but if you took them and then you threw them up in the air and you mixed them all together, not as episodes, but as vignettes, and then you recombined them and maybe even recombined them and then unfolded their tendrils so that their tendrils interacted with other tendrils of other things that happened unrelated to them in space and time.
John: Would it work?
John: Could you create a new past?
Merlin: Yes.
Merlin: A thing where... A kind of digitalic recombination.
Merlin: We're not shuffling a deck of cards.
Merlin: We're shuffling a deck of life.
John: Exactly.
John: With tendrils.
John: With tendrils and also a deck of roddles that would... So the roddles as we've seen them...
John: Have created a worldview.
John: If we mixed it up, would it create the same worldview?
John: Would the worldview change?
John: Would the nature...
John: Would our perceived identities change?
Merlin: We think we know what the program is about because we, by virtue of the fact we were there, largely there, when it was recorded, we got our own idea of which tendrils should be held in hand and held in hands in the pale moonlight.
Merlin: But you're saying, could there be like a whole secondary, like infinity-ary reality of like the way other people would perceive the way it all tendrils together?
Merlin: Kind of?
Merlin: Stories, stories.
Merlin: We're talking about stories.
Merlin: We're talking about stories.
John: We're talking about stories on top of stories.
John: We're talking about stories that capitulate stories.
John: If you alphabetize the books, it doesn't change the books.
Merlin: Right.
Merlin: But if you took... We're not talking about books.
Merlin: We're talking about atomics.
John: We're talking about atomics.
John: If you took every... Well, let's see.
John: What would be a good way of... If you took the four books of the trilogy of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, and you...
Merlin: John?
Merlin: Oh no.
Merlin: Oh no.
Merlin: I think, oh no, I think John caused a rift in time.
Merlin: I don't, I don't know if I have the means to heal.
Merlin: John, John, I don't know what happened, but I think we might have caused a tear.
Merlin: Just by talking about it, we... I don't know if we can even meta talk about it, but I think we just fucked some shit up.
Merlin: I don't know.
Merlin: Okay, let's just see what happens.
Merlin: You were telling us, oh my god, about what happens when you apply the digitalis to the atomics, and now what happens when dot, dot, dot?
Mm-hmm.
John: Well, maybe we can never know.
John: We can't know.
John: That's the thing.
John: We can't know.
Merlin: We probably shouldn't know, and yet we wonder.
John: We know already too much.
John: What we're talking about now is a thing that only futures can know.
Mm-hmm.
John: Right.
John: Like what?
John: Like who wrote Shakespeare's plays?
John: Right.
John: Right.
John: As as a wise man once said, it wasn't Shakespeare.
John: It was a it was a different guy named Shakespeare.
Merlin: Oh, it was just a misunderstanding about surnames.
John: Yeah, I didn't get that quote right.
John: It was very funny when I heard it the first time.
Merlin: I think Christopher Marlowe said that.
John: Oh, it was Chris Marlowe, I call him.
John: Christopher Robin, yeah.
John: But you know what I mean?
John: At a certain point, the question... The future will know.
John: Yeah.
John: At a certain point, the question, who was Merlin Mann, is going to be raised by someone.
John: Someone is going to say, who was Merlin Mann?
John: The thing is, they're going to try and figure it out.
John: They're going to try and figure it out.
John: And they're going to make the mistake.
John: Here's the mistake they're going to make.
John: The mistake they're going to make is that they're going to try and take all of the Syracuse.
John: Syracuse.
John: And all of the Max Temkin and all of the lonely sandwich and all of the me, they're going to try and take all that out because they're going to say, this is not relevant to who is Merlin Man.
John: Because we do that all the time when we look back at things.
John: Right.
John: Right.
John: We say, look, the letters that Franklin Delano Roosevelt wrote to people, that's not really – we're looking at something else, right?
John: We're not looking at the letters he got from them.
Merlin: Oh, I think I am on your wavelength.
John: Yes.
John: We're only looking at the letters he wrote.
John: We're not looking at the letters he got.
Merlin: Well, yeah, I mean, like if you go back and you only read the, well, we say Plato, you only read the Socrates side of the dialogues.
Merlin: That's not a dialogue anymore.
Merlin: They named it after the person he's talking to a bunch of the times.
John: We know all about Socrates.
John: He's sitting on a couch eating grapes and getting a handy.
John: Some of the people that Socrates talked to were pretty clever, I bet.
John: Anyway, so there's going to be a future where someone is sitting, probably at the library at Yale, probably in this weird big cube that's in the middle of this old campus that doesn't belong there.
John: They're going to be sitting there, one elbow on a Gutenberg Bible, and they're going to be listening to – or they're going to be trying to figure out who is Merlin Mann.
John: And so they're going to use their technologically –
John: And they're going to pull out all the tendrils and they're going to feed them all together.
John: And they're going to say, you know, they're going to be putting together a kind of line reading.
Merlin: They're going to know what that means if they chose to.
John: That's right.
John: And they're going to put, I swear to you, we've talked about this before.
John: They're going to put an AI together.
John: Yeah, what we call an AI.
John: What we call an AI.
John: They're going to put a hologram.
Merlin: Might as well say like sun god or something, right?
John: Some kind of sun god, yeah.
John: And the hologram's probably going to have a mustache.
John: It's probably going to be growing its hair out right now.
John: And it's going to have your manner.
John: It's going to have your words.
John: But is there a way that we can take the Merlin out properly?
John: And is it enough of a – is it a merlin?
Merlin: Is it a full merlin?
Merlin: Oh, I'd love to make this not about me, but I agree with you.
Merlin: Now, futurelings in some ways are going to have it good because you know what they're going to be able to do?
Merlin: They're going to be able to say, I would like a really good recipe for mushroom sauce where it tells me the ingredients and how to cook it, but it doesn't have a story for 11 paragraphs before I get to the –
Merlin: If there is a recipe in here, can the AI find this?
Merlin: Now, that is a future that I would really look forward to.
Merlin: I just want to make some mushrooms.
Merlin: I really don't want to know about your porch.
John: I have never, ever, ever skimmed as much as I skim now.
John: Oh, you have to skim, John.
John: Because it's like, I don't want to hear your story, man.
John: Just get to the part where you're talking about – because everything – I'm reading a book right now about a medical condition.
Merlin: Mm-hmm.
John: Yeah.
John: Yeah.
John: And let's talk more to the medical condition by.
John: Yeah.
John: By virtue of them having the medical condition.
John: And so when I'm reading their their stories about themselves and their struggles with their medical condition, I'm fascinated.
John: But there are whole big sections where they're talking about things that I think they are trying to establish a setting that.
John: But I don't want a setting established.
John: It is not relevant to the medical condition.
Merlin: I read and reread this one book about a medical condition.
Merlin: Every time I get to the part where the guy has made his point for the 14th time and now wants to spend 17 pages talking about one patient and how that applies to this, I don't find that very useful.
Merlin: No.
Merlin: In the future, the AI would know the parts that I would find useful, I imagine, and be able to redact or recombinate using Digitalis into a way that would make it sensible to me in a way that I could never do on my own.
Merlin: You know?
John: I mean, that's why Lives of a Cell is such a thin volume.
John: Right?
John: The man who took his wife for a hat.
John: Oh, yeah.
John: These are not thick books.
John: Now, those are some good patient examples.
John: Travels with Charlie.
John: Yeah.
John: You get in, you get out.
John: These are not of mice and men's, of mices and men.
John: Mm-hmm.
John: Mm-hmm.
John: These are like zippity-doo-dahs.
John: Yeah.
John: Yes.
John: So, is virtual Merlin...
John: Is it a thin volume?
John: I don't like talking about myself.
John: Is virtual Merlin, is he a kind man?
John: Is he a kind man?
John: Is he a righteous man?
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Merlin: I don't know.
Merlin: I think what I was trying to say, oh my God, I'm so confused already.
Merlin: Um, I was, what I was trying to say was like, uh, if you, uh, and you could tell me if I'm wrong here, but like you, if you go and you alphabetize the books, it doesn't change the books.
Merlin: It's kind of what I'm trying to say here.
Merlin: And, and like, okay, so, so you're ready.
Merlin: Like a dumb, dumb, like, like us from, from the current times, beep boop.
Merlin: We're thinking stuff like, okay, computer, show me all the things about John and traveling.
Okay.
Merlin: Sure.
Merlin: Now, you could have some basic taxonomy to pull that together, but I think a smart AI in the future is going to go, that's the sound it'll make.
Merlin: It'll be an error message.
Merlin: What do you mean by traveling?
John: That's the sound of the man working on the chain gang.
Merlin: Yes, the chain gang.
Merlin: But you know what else it could do?
Merlin: Maybe a couple years later, it goes, what do you mean by John?
Merlin: Right.
Merlin: Right.
Merlin: Shmoop.
Merlin: Right.
Merlin: It's the ship of Theseus.
Merlin: You know what I'm saying?
Merlin: Like, is it the same John?
Merlin: You know, and at that point, you might have been rebooted by the UFOs.
Merlin: Who knows how many times?
Merlin: Maybe you've worked up the ladder.
Merlin: You're a lieutenant colonel anchorman.
Merlin: And you know how many times you've been rebooted.
Merlin: I don't know the answer, but I can wonder.
Merlin: I can speculate.
Yeah.
John: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
John: Maybe I should have been born a pair of ragged cloths that scuttled across the floor.
Merlin: Should you eat a peach?
Merlin: Maybe they'll know.
John: Right.
John: Well, I grow old.
John: I grow old.
John: I will wear my trousers rolled.
John: Here's a bit.
John: Here's another.
John: I hope.
John: Is there a time in the future where where I actually am the director of the CIA for a time as a facsimile of me?
John: I can't know.
Merlin: That doesn't even really require a multiverse, I don't think.
Merlin: No, it could be in this verse.
John: Whatever you would call a single one, I guess you would call that the monoverse.
John: They could combine it and recombine it.
John: It could be recombinant.
John: Yes.
John: And then they would just employ it.
John: Okay.
John: Because already we know that Jonathan Colton doesn't need to be on the Jonathan Colton cruise.
Oh.
John: He doesn't need to be there.
John: I see where you're going.
John: Right.
John: In fact, most people don't care if he's there anymore.
John: Half the people on the JoCo cruise don't even know who he is.
John: Has it gotten to that point?
John: Yeah.
John: So he could appear on a screen and say, and he could be animated like the guys from the Money for Nothing video.
John: And he could go...
John: I've got to move these refrigerators.
Merlin: You could say, welcome to this soft serve machine.
John: Welcome to the Joko cruise.
John: You're going to die.
John: And it's right.
John: And then people would be like, yeah.
John: Quick, to the gaming rooms.
Merlin: Okay, or like, let's say you're a bad enough parent that you're going to let your child play football.
Merlin: And you say, let's get my kid into Pop Warner football.
Merlin: Let's set aside whether that's a good idea.
Merlin: Pop Warner died in 1954, but we still have his football.
John: oh right okay talk about a ship of theseus that it's a football of warner and the kids are still out there and they're getting the brain damage yes well it's just like warner for that it's just like when something when you know when somebody's out like fighting a white whale we saw we say oh that's so melvillian oh we do we do say that yes but it's just like what's what's he doing oh he's got this he's got this white well oh it's so melvillian
John: You hear that all the time.
John: And sure, when did Herman Melville die?
John: Probably in 1700.
John: Maybe in the 40s.
Merlin: Yeah, it's certainly been a while.
Merlin: But you might say, beep, boop, computer.
Merlin: Let's roll quick, quick.
Merlin: Give me all the quick, quick.
Merlin: Just pull the quick, quick out.
Merlin: Just give me the, it's a very woke future.
Merlin: You might not even call it homoeroticism anymore.
Merlin: You could just say, show me the native loves.
Merlin: Show me the bed sharing.
John: If you just take the Queequeg out, do you get a picture of Queequeg?
Merlin: All I changed was the mast.
Merlin: Is it still a ship?
John: I don't know.
Merlin: I don't know if that's a ship anymore.
John: It's surprising how often they change the mast.
John: Yeah.
Merlin: You know, this happens a lot.
Merlin: I don't know the answer to that, but I hope...
Merlin: Someone, something, some will be able to do these kinds of things for the people.
Merlin: And I think the data is here.
Merlin: It's in a normalized format.
Merlin: People are going to be able to do that.
Merlin: And they're going to be able to integrate it into their lives even then.
John: Some point in the future, there's probably going to be some family of some kind.
John: that has some sort of spawn, and they're going to be fans of the program, and they're going to name their child Merlin Beeblebrox, let's say.
John: Merlin Beeblebrox.
John: And when Merlin gets to be a certain age, Merlin Beeblebrox is going to say, why'd you name me Merlin?
John: And they're going to say, why did we name you Merlin?
John: Well, here, let's introduce you to your namesake.
John: And then through a curtain is going to come...
John: Maybe a hologram, maybe a robot, maybe actually a clone.
John: And it's going to say, hi, I'm Merlin.
John: And the kid is going to say, oh, you know, and every kid's going to have one of these.
John: It's going to be his pet Merlin, and it's going to be full of your wisdom.
John: And it's going to have all your sayings.
John: Can it be you?
John: Can it be you?
John: No, no.
John: It's going to be like, no, I got it.
John: John is a much nicer name.
Merlin: John's a much nicer name.
John: I hope it's a girl.
John: I hope it's a girl.
John: Future Merlin's going to be flipping three by five cards at this kid.
John: Kid's going to be like, whoa, don't you want three by five cards?
John: Yeah.
John: I mean, it may be that there are whole schools where I just walk around in some future form with my hands behind my back.
John: And every time somebody asks me a question, I go, well...
John: And, you know, and then, I don't know, just words come out, you know, just like a word salad.
John: And people are like, yes, yes, Swami, right?
John: And the word salad could have nothing to do with anything I actually said.
Merlin: It could mean something so, I mean, like, and what is virtual?
Merlin: What's virtual?
Merlin: That's our word.
John: Good question.
Merlin: Good question.
Merlin: What does it mean when we stop being virtual and start getting real?
Merlin: Like, when is that going to happen?
John: What's virtual?
Merlin: What's real?
Merlin: Everything we have, we're basically dealing with sticks and stones and breaking bones when we talk about we have a USB drive.
Merlin: No.
John: That's insane.
John: It's all saved on Platinum Records.
John: Here's a question.
John: In most situations in our science fiction, we know who the clones are because they're wearing some kind of white army suit that allows you to shoot them with impunity.
John: Okay.
John: Yes.
John: Yes.
John: But what do you do?
John: Where are the science fiction ones?
John: Like, for instance, if you're a replicant, the Blade Runners can tell because they give you the Voight-Kampff test.
John: And when they ask you some question about your family, you get all agitated and turn the desk over.
Merlin: In the future, they will still ask questions about turtles and mothers, probably.
John: Yeah, and they say things like, is that a real snake or whatever?
John: And then you're like... It depends on what you mean.
John: But what if you're just living amongst clones...
John: and uh they're just as real as you you're saying like in the future future ai i mean it's a me i um and and i would be interacting throughout the academy as a virtual uh real-ish being what if one of those islands that's shaped like a palm tree in dubai okay is called merlin isle john and everyone on that island is merlin oh
John: And you can go there as a visit.
John: Oh.
John: You mean people?
John: Yeah.
John: Norms.
John: Snorks.
John: It could be a stop on the Choco Cruise.
John: Exactly.
John: You go to Merlin Town on Merlin Island.
John: Yeah.
John: And there are Merlins of all stripes.
John: There's a Merlin in charge.
Merlin: There are Merlins that are— You started for four hours at Problematic Island.
John: There are super poor Merlins that are just living, like, on the edge.
John: There are, like, rich Merlins that are lording it over everybody.
John: Oh.
John: And you go and just everybody you talk to is some iteration of Merlin.
John: And they're all real.
John: They're all real.
John: No, no.
John: Yeah, they're flesh and blood.
John: They can die.
John: They can scuttle across the ocean floor.
John: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
John: They can't, though, because they could get to other islands if they could do that.
John: So there's got to be some limitations on them.
Merlin: You can't get them wet.
Merlin: They're like gremlins.
John: Well, but I mean, the thing is, if you were in New York City 2,600, wouldn't you want to have the opportunity every once in a while to run into a Merlin?
John: I would.
Merlin: I'm not.
John: A real one.
John: I can barely take the one.
John: A real one in like a vintage Air Force jacket with the first mustache.
John: That's the version I want, first mustache.
John: You're talking about mustache actual, mustache prime.
John: I want first mustache Merlin.
Okay.
John: I've seen him.
John: I know he was in New York even.
Merlin: I almost have the same hair now.
Merlin: Well, now as we record this, not for future links, but as we record this now, I almost have that same hair now.
John: You looked exactly like Dread Pirate Roberts.
John: I'm surprised you didn't get cast.
John: I'm surprised you didn't get cast as Dread Pirate Roberts.
Merlin: You know, that's the thing.
Merlin: Moments snap together like magnets.
Merlin: We're living in a time where our access to recombinating through any kind of like even widely available digitalis is going to be very non-tendral.
Merlin: Like you get what you get and you don't get upset.
Merlin: Mm.
John: This is like my psychiatrist said to me when he said, why can't you be happy?
John: And I said, because I can never achieve my goals.
John: And he said, what are your goals?
John: And I said, to be, I mean, he was like, well, you know, you're doing great.
John: Like, who are your role models?
John: And I said, Descartes.
John: And he said, well, did Descartes know he was Descartes while he was alive?
John: Whoa.
John: And I was like, oh.
John: I bet he was of two minds about it.
John: Oh, see?
Merlin: But here's the... That's the kind of thing you're going to get in New York 2600.
Merlin: You're just going to be getting that fucking all the time.
John: You're going to sit next to a Merlin on the subway and he's going to be like... While I try fart tight.
Merlin: Was that a Hegel joke?
John: I don't know.
John: But here's the thing.
John: If I end up if some if some recombinant me ends up being retired director of CIA, is that my accomplishment?
Merlin: The you of now extant in situ, John.
Merlin: Me, which I'm assuming to be the original me.
Merlin: Do you give future credit?
Merlin: Like if you had retired, if you'd retired from Pop Warner football and were in AI and were able to get more sports competition points, would that be credited on your virtual football card?
John: Well, so Pop Warner never knew he was going to be Pop Warner.
John: But when we look at Pop Warner, we credit being Pop Warner to Pop Warner.
John: He didn't know he was Pop Warner.
John: No.
John: And so if I am retired director of the CIA in some future form... Yes.
John: Of course it's credited to me now.
John: It's not credited to me then.
John: It's credited to me now.
Merlin: Does that count as a retroactive credit?
Merlin: Is that like when they raise your jersey up in the rafters?
John: Well, it is.
Merlin: Okay.
Merlin: Okay.
Merlin: Well, is it...
John: That's the only reason that Descartes is Descartes.
John: He was fine in his day, but I'm sure he had disputes with people.
John: I'm sure they owed some money.
John: I'm sure that ladies sometimes were like, you're an asshole.
John: Although nobody ever called Pablo Picasso an asshole, I'm sure they did.
John: Well, I bet they really did.
Merlin: I'm sure people called him an asshole all the time.
Merlin: I'm turning into virtual Porky Pig.
Merlin: But...
Merlin: But my question for you is, would that be posthumous if you were only virtually, if you were only reality dead, if you weren't virtual, that would not technically be posthumous.
Merlin: Also, humus implies ground.
Merlin: What if you were never buried?
Merlin: Is it still posthumous?
Merlin: What if they put your head in a jar?
Merlin: What if they put your dick in a box?
Merlin: What of all the ways that you could be made, you know, eternal...
Merlin: Well, who gets the credit?
Merlin: Who gets the ribbon?
Merlin: Will it be white?
John: We don't know.
John: We're just walking around.
John: The thing is, is this helpful to me now?
John: Right.
John: Sitting in a basement room.
John: Yeah.
John: Am I should I be like buttoning my shirt?
John: Because the future is watching.
John: You know what I mean?
John: Should I should I go put on pants?
John: Because the future is conscious of the fact that you're Pop Warner or I'm Pop Warner.
Merlin: Should have bought dinner.
Merlin: They're going to know that that's a thing.
Merlin: I've had this tab open for for an hour and a half.
Merlin: And the tab is for the the Wikipedia page for the hedgehog and the fox.
Merlin: which is a notion that I don't know if we've ever talked about it here.
Merlin: I'm going to say we probably haven't.
Merlin: I was going to bring it up.
Merlin: Can I just tell you as I sit here, I bet you in the virtual future or the realistic past, they're going to be able to know that that's a thing I thought about saying to you, and they're going to know whether or not that should have been a good idea, even if it didn't happen.
Merlin: That's the kind of digitalist interpolation that you can do once you understand that alphabetizing does not change the book.
Merlin: I think.
John: I feel like, but I don't know.
John: I do wonder.
John: There are even people in our own day that if you ask a question like, have I ever mentioned the hedgehog versus the giraffe or whatever?
John: The fox.
John: The hedgehog versus the fox.
John: There are people in the world who have an answer for that question where you and I do not.
John: You know what happens right now where they say, oh, you know what?
Merlin: You left out.
John: dot, dot, dot.
Merlin: You ever get that?
Merlin: You get that you left out.
John: You probably don't get that.
Merlin: I don't get that.
Merlin: Oh, you ever get that you forgot about?
Merlin: You ever get that you forgot about?
Merlin: Nope.
Merlin: Never gotten that on one of your programs?
Merlin: You forgot about this?
John: Oh, no, I do get that.
Merlin: Oh, you might never have gotten that, but what'll happen is sometimes somebody goes, meh, you left out this thing.
Merlin: Left out.
John: Right.
John: Oh, I did get I got one of those just recently.
John: I was talking about Lord Cardigan and I was talking also about Lord Vestibule or whatever.
John: And somebody was like, oh, you forgot, you know, Lord sandwich.
John: You forgot the, you know, the Lord of Lord of Thrones.
John: And I was like, huh, I did.
John: Actually, you're right.
John: We were dancing around.
Merlin: Let me show you my cutting room floor.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: Ooh, yes.
Merlin: Right?
Merlin: I did.
Merlin: Even if I didn't think of that, believe me, I thought of it.
Merlin: That's the thing.
Merlin: That's what editing is, knowing what I didn't even think about and then not doing the thing I didn't think about.
Merlin: Mm-hmm.
Merlin: But they'll say that to you.
Merlin: People can do that now just using something as seemingly simple as Twitter is to say you left out or you forgot about.
Merlin: Can you imagine what's going to happen once they got those tendrils in a box, a virtual box?
Right.
Merlin: you know how many you forgot about future use going to get on on uh on twitter 2600 i bet you you could just do a super cut of all the times that you and i were trying to think of a word and couldn't oh you know it's already done right now this is going to be part of another super cut where we talk about the things that are notional that we didn't remember not having happened that's all going to be on a reel because there's no reel
John: Super cuts.
Merlin: There's no reel because we don't need a reel anymore.
Merlin: What's a reel?
John: What's a reel?
Merlin: Are you going to tape it?
Merlin: No, we're not going to tape it.
John: No, you're not going to splice it together and cut out the parts that are bad.
Merlin: There's no editing on a floor because we don't even have floors anymore.
Merlin: What are you talking about?
John: Is it an orb?
John: Is it a fog?
John: If it's not here, does it matter?
John: Is it water?
John: Are we in water and we don't even realize it because we're fish?
Merlin: When we throw something away, where is a way?
Merlin: Because do we even have a way anymore?
John: Is there a way?
John: We know that whales pop up.
John: Yes.
John: It's one of the things they do.
Merlin: We know dolphins pop up.
Merlin: The former generation up to the 40s would have said it's Melvillian.
John: It's Melvillian, right?
John: When they pop up.
John: So the whales know that there's an ocean and then there's a sky.
John: The whales know about the sky.
John: And they know that there are people up here doing all kinds of shit, right?
John: The whales are hip to it.
John: They know it.
John: And I'm sure there are whales that wonder why.
John: There are whales that go, why can't I go up and check out all that stuff?
John: Jet skis.
John: They see airplanes.
John: They know what's going on.
John: People are talking to them all the time.
John: And they know that all the nets and stuff and the little, like, Chucky dolls that are floating on the ocean, they know where those come from.
John: I'm sure they look at them and go, there's a whole universe.
John: So part of being a whale is looking up.
John: Unlike a pig, they can look up.
John: Unlike a pig, a whale can look up.
Merlin: It could be something where they say, I don't know the difference between chocolate, vanilla, and swirl, but I do know there's someone in fancy pants up there eating what I would, in my whale words, call a soft serve.
Merlin: They could see all of that.
Merlin: That's not directly germane to what happens under the waterline all the time.
Merlin: But they're going to wonder.
John: They must ask.
John: So here's a whale.
John: Let's say I'm a whale.
John: And I'm out in the middle of the ocean because I'm on my way from one place to another because sometimes I want to be in the sun.
John: Sometimes I want to have food.
John: Now...
John: Most of the time they're out there, there's nothing going on.
John: And then every once in a while they go through a shipping channel and they see boats all around them.
John: Okay.
John: And then they go on the other side of it and there's nothing going on again.
John: So they've done this enough times that they know about shipping channels.
John: They know that Holland America is going back and forth between, uh, between, you know, Curacao and Miami.
Okay.
John: And they know that Holland America is not going back and forth between Montevideo, Uruguay, and let's say Casablanca.
John: Okay.
John: Okay.
John: And so the whales are not only conscious of like all this, the Chucky dolls and the airplanes and the fact that we're sometimes going around them in jet skis going, hey.
John: Right.
John: But they also know other things about us, things that we're not even thinking about.
Hmm.
John: And we wouldn't know maybe things we would know to even look for.
John: They don't.
John: We don't even know to look for them.
John: The whales are doing tricks for us sometimes because you've seen that video where the guy cut their whales caught in a fishing net and some some like hippies in a boat.
John: The whale comes over to them and they're like, oh, this whale is doing something.
John: And then they realize it's caught in a fishing net.
John: And so they go into they go into like action mode.
John: And they're trying as best they can to cut this whale free.
John: And the whale is actually kind of moving around to let them do it.
John: He's doing it on purpose.
John: And then they finally free this whale.
John: And they're just like, we just freed a whale from a fishing net.
John: And then the whale goes and does like a bunch of flaps and swaps and schnicks and schnacks.
John: Is you saying it does a little gratitude performance?
John: Yeah, it does a thank you dance.
John: Okay.
John: So the whale is super, super hep to what's happening.
John: But let me ask you this.
John: Yeah.
John: Is it tuna?
John: Is a tuna.
John: Is a tuna.
John: A tuna is 100 years old, but does a tuna ever poke its head out of the water?
John: I don't think it does.
Merlin: Maybe the whale is, we won't know, but maybe the whale is, it's the beginning of a long grift.
Merlin: Maybe the hippies cutting me out of a net is a way to set up a long grift.
Merlin: Maybe it's a long con, because con stands for confidence from Latin.
Merlin: And what you're doing is you're getting the hippie confidence.
John: So you're not saying con like K-H-A-N?
Merlin: No, no, no, not like a comic con, although that's its own kind of a con.
Merlin: Not to be confused with Madeline Kahn, which is not a Kahn.
Merlin: I said it.
Merlin: No.
Merlin: But that could be a setup.
Merlin: Oh, oh, they'll throw me in the briar patch, cut my net, and now I'm going to do a dance and we're pals.
Merlin: That's what it seems like for now.
Merlin: Now, if tuna, then that's 100 years.
Merlin: 100 years of solitude.
John: 100 years.
Merlin: Unless you decide to do it differently, in which case, you know, Zans can't dance.
Merlin: You don't know what's going to happen with that tuna.
John: No.
John: 15 is your limit on Schnitz and Rubin.
It does.
John: how would we even know well so are you a tuna or a whale i don't know are you popping up i didn't even see no i didn't even bring up that did i on this episode did i mention the hedgehog and the fox because that's kind of what you're presenting to me here i think so are you a whale or a tuna are you a whale or a tuna are you asking why are you looking around are you conscious of the airplanes in the sky is there one that wonders more
John: Yes.
John: The whale has got to wonder more than a tuna.
John: Okay.
John: Are you saying the tuna's just doing tuna?
John: This is what I don't know.
John: Is it tuna?
John: Is it tuna?
John: Equivalent to someone driving a Dodge Ram 3500 pulling a trailer with two jet skis on it.
John: Okay.
John: And a whale is driving a Volvo, but a classic Volvo, like a Volvo 121S or whatever.
Okay.
John: Or 141 or 142.
John: That makes it clear.
John: Okay.
John: And they are driving along.
John: They got some bumper stickers on the back that are espousing a thing, but they're not 100% sure.
John: They're not 100% confident.
John: Okay.
John: Because they can't possibly know what it's really like to be in an airplane.
John: A whale can see an airplane.
John: It can guess about an airplane, but it can't ever know what it's like to be in an airplane.
Merlin: It can't know what it's like because it's got the classic Volvo versus the tuna.
Merlin: I don't know.
Merlin: I'm not that into cars, but I worry that I'm a tuna, but I fear that I'm a whale.
Merlin: I'm not sure which I am, because the thing is, what is sky?
Merlin: What is sky for whale?
Merlin: When whale looks up, sky is not this.
Merlin: When I move into this other area, I mean, there aren't that many people apart from you that have ever even been underwater, right?
Merlin: What is sky for a whale?
Merlin: What is sky for whale?
Merlin: Now, you go underwater.
Merlin: Most people have in their lives never actually been underwater, as far as we know.
Merlin: Interesting.
Merlin: Well, you've moved around in there.
Merlin: You've inhabited.
Merlin: You've spent some time hanging out underwater.
Merlin: But you never for a second believed that you were the turtle.
John: No, no.
John: I knew I didn't belong.
Merlin: You weren't playing at turtle.
Merlin: You know you still have to go back to land and sky.
John: Oh, but here's the thing.
John: I didn't know that I didn't belong.
John: I knew I did belong.
John: Okay.
John: I did belong, but I knew I wasn't turtles.
Merlin: You knew you weren't turtle, and in the fullness of time, owing to, I assume, physiology, physics, something from the Greek, because it's got a Y, and all the good Y words are Greek.
Merlin: It's got a question in the middle of it, and you know that.
Merlin: When you get back to the surface lands, and you see sky, you know that, now, is this where I'm supposed to be?
Merlin: I'm learning things, I feel like, by being around underwater where no man has been near turtle.
Merlin: And now I rise, I rise, you come on out of water time.
Merlin: And how are you going to be regarding the world?
Merlin: You can still be thinking about the water time, but you're living in the sky areas.
Merlin: And that's the kind of thing that other people will be able to explore in deeper detail.
Merlin: And they're going to be able to make the connections that we, from time to time, struggle to make.
Merlin: Right.
Merlin: Or we make them and we wonder if they're right.
Merlin: Because we're not made of stone.
Merlin: We're not afraid of making a connection.
Merlin: But who's to say, well, did we actually make the connection?
Merlin: Did it actually click?
Merlin: Right.
John: Who?
John: And who?
John: And who?
John: And who?
John: Like if you are echoing – so this is not a multiverse thing.
John: No.
John: No, no, no.
John: But if you're echoing through time, if – this is the thing, right?
John: My dad didn't – there's hardly any movies of my dad.
John: Maybe there's a couple Super 8 movies.
John: There's a couple of videotapes that I did on some Hi8 tape that I don't even know if I can read anymore.
John: But there are lots of videos of you and of me –
John: Videos galore.
John: But what if...
John: What if not only are we on the other side of the Wikipedia divide, but what if you and me now are continuous?
John: What if, I mean, this is a way in which we are not a turtle, and I'm saying not continuous in the sense that we have children and they are children, but continuous like when you go into the dressing room of an old-fashioned department store and you close the mirrors on either side and you look to infinity.
John: Yes.
John: What if there's always a Merlin now?
John: What if the world is never without a Merlin from now on?
Merlin: Are you implying that in the future, some people will be non-continuous or for that matter, non-contiguous?
Merlin: Is there a future in which some people are not reflected in the mirror?
Merlin: I think.
Merlin: But you're saying, I hope your dad hasn't been lost tears in rain just because of the Super 8.
Merlin: You think the tech problem for now is going to be part of the jam up.
John: This is the thing that we have right now, which is the techs.
John: The techs are building, you know, they're busy building, they're busy disrupting.
John: There's a perfectly good thing and the techs come in and go, no, and then they do a thing and then they screw it up.
John: I got an email today from Digital Tip Jar.
John: Are you familiar with this group?
John: Is it like a PayPal-ish money thing?
John: Yeah.
John: Digital Tip Jar was a pre-Patreon Patreon that just had a slightly – they were just a MySpace.
John: They just had a slightly not as good idea as the Patreon people.
John: And the Patreon people came and they had the same idea except slightly different.
John: And people decided to use it and not the other thing.
John: And Digital Tip Jar, which tried to get me to – and here's the problem with it.
John: It tried to get me to –
John: joined their thing five or six years ago.
John: And the, the idea was that you go out and say, uh, I don't remember what it was, but you, you, you go, you go to people and you say, Hey, tip me.
John: Okay.
Merlin: So you hit the button or the hyperlink and you microtransfer me some, uh, some earth dollars.
John: Yeah.
John: Right.
John: But you have to go to this side and you have to do this and you have to do that.
John: It's really all about the site, isn't it?
Merlin: Doesn't it ultimately become about the site?
John: And it wasn't it wasn't a thing that caught on.
John: And so they sent this email and you've seen a few of these, I'm sure.
Merlin: Our journey.
Merlin: Well, our journey has come to an end.
John: As of, you know, May, whatever we it's no longer we're closing down Google chat or whatever.
John: So there's that.
John: But most of the people I know are not on the interwebs like you and I.
John: Would you say that we're very online?
John: We're pretty darn online.
John: Now, we're not 100% online.
John: No.
John: You don't put selfies in yourself.
John: Yeah.
John: People barely see you.
John: Yeah.
John: But they know you.
John: Yeah.
John: And me too.
John: And so, so, so, so, so, so, so.
John: There are so many of my friends, 99% of my friends are not going to be contiguous.
John: Okay.
Okay.
Merlin: now in the future who knows but like for instance but based on the tech tech we have now the text in the mix that we have now yeah we're laying the groundwork yeah but like but by what we have now do you think your dad i mean i don't want to take you out this do you think your dad might you don't think he's going to be able to be um tech tech techs erected nope nope nope i don't even think i don't even think what if they fix your tape could they fix your tape no no no no they're just going to make stuff that breaks faster
John: Well, who, well, them, I don't even care about them because they've built a thing that they don't, because Skynet is self-aware.
John: They built a thing that they don't know what the thing is because they're not, because they don't ask why theirs is, but to do and die.
John: Yes.
John: Right.
John: So they're just go, they're just, they're just coming up with digital tip jars and they don't even realize that they've animated the golem.
John: Oh no.
John: So now let me tell you about Ben Gibbard.
John: He is very famous.
John: He's got a lot.
John: There's a lot of video of him.
John: Yeah.
John: But 90, 90, 99 percent of it is him going playing champagne in a paper cup on stage at a big thing with a light show and fog.
John: Yeah.
John: OK.
John: So so Ben, although he's more famous than us, is not going to be contiguous except in the sense that he is always going to be playing champagne in a paper cup.
Merlin: Oh, wow.
Merlin: So in the movie industry, say that's what they have coverage for.
Merlin: They've shot coverage for that.
Merlin: That's a very good album.
Merlin: They've shot plenty of coverage for that.
Merlin: And that's going to have an impact on whether or how contiguous he ends up being.
John: Yes, because Ben Beeblebrox of 2500, when he's like, why is my name Ben?
John: And his parents say, let us introduce you to Ben Gibbard, your namesake.
John: Ben's going to walk in and play champagne in a paper cup because it's all they have.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: Why does he do that with his hips?
Merlin: Yeah.
John: He's, yeah, he does.
John: He's going to do the dance, but he's not going to walk in and say, let me tell you about the time that I, that I tongue kissed a parrot.
John: Yes.
John: Right.
John: And then, so what, so what are you going to, so who, which kid, John Beeblebrox or Ben Beeblebrox is going to know
John: about kissing a parrot, only one of them.
Merlin: And they may not be able to pass it on in a way that endures, like in what we would call a future memory.
Merlin: Is there going to be a way to pass that along in the way that you would share a post?
John: They don't have to because John is contiguous.
Merlin: merlin is contiguous there will always be merlin always okay well like so you know in the future futurelings will be able to draw this connection before i'm done with this sentence but when ben took us to mc hammer's birthday party right at the at the java room at the place and i think i think willie willie brown was there and willie brown who i said hello to at house of prime rib once and he was very nice
John: He's a nice guy.
Merlin: I said, thank you for your service.
Merlin: And he went, mm-hmm.
Merlin: Former mayor of San Francisco.
Merlin: Former mayor, sharp dresser.
Merlin: And here's the thing is, you might remember this about MC Hammer.
Merlin: In the future, this is all going to make a lot more sense.
Merlin: But you might remember MC Hammer announced a few years ago, okay, that he had a new project.
Merlin: He's always got a project.
John: He's a tech investor.
Merlin: He's a mech and techs.
Merlin: He's a techs mechs investor.
Merlin: And he said at the time, I'm MC Hammer, and I'm going to introduce the YouTube of dance videos, which on the face of it sounds pretty cool.
Merlin: But then people pointed out to him, there's already a YouTube of dance videos.
Merlin: And it's called YouTube.
Merlin: Do you see what I'm saying?
Merlin: Right, exactly.
Merlin: Now, at this point, the emoji will be visible on your screen or virtual bot persona, right?
Merlin: But I mean, tears and rain,
Merlin: John, is that all going to be connected?
Merlin: Is somebody going to be able to access that quote?
Merlin: We have plenty of Ben Gibber doing that thing with his hips with a stomp box, but are we going to have a way to integrate?
Merlin: Will they have a way to fold that in such that now you take the cards, the whole, the mini decks of cards and life that have been dispersed and give yourself a full house?
Merlin: if you'll pardon my saying, where you would be able to say, now I, as a virtual futureling, will know what MC Hammer 2600 means and make that connection.
Merlin: I don't know if that's going to be possible if Ben Gibbard's not contiguous.
Merlin: He might be the weak link.
Merlin: Certainly not your father.
Merlin: I feel like your father's been covered enough that they could at least make him into something like a Disney-level animatronic.
John: I don't know.
John: My dad, you know, my dad could, yeah, he'd be like Abraham Lincoln going like, I don't know, what the fuck, get out of here.
John: You know, but like even even someone that we know as well as we know, Jennifer Lopez.
John: Right.
John: In the future, contiguous Jennifer Lopez is going to be able to rate your dancing.
John: Oh, yeah.
John: She's going to be able to she's going to be like a like some kind of prison guard that that ends up being an accomplice to some crimes.
Merlin: She's going to there's going to be able to tell you how to get out of a trunk in a way that she couldn't in 1998.
John: Right?
John: She's going to be... She's seen some stuff.
John: She's also going to get in and out of the backs of expensive cars with sunglasses on with Ben Affleck trying to avoid paparazzi pictures.
John: Because of the hair.
John: But we are never... And also she was going to be... At one point she's going to be in a backseat karaoke or whatever with the British guy and she's going to tell a couple of stories about stuff.
John: And she's very forthcoming about her boyfriends.
John: But... Yes.
John: We're never really going to know...
Merlin: jennifer lopez wow not the way we know merlin oh no yeah yeah this is the thing who do you know better jennifer lopez or merlin it doesn't matter who you are it doesn't matter if you've followed jennifer lopez couldn't it be like a virtual intelligence food court like okay you take you take an andy rooney now let's be honest he's not going to be contiguous but we do have ample footage of him sitting at a desk talking about things that upset him it's true it's true you gotta feel
Merlin: Open his drawer, at least in the tapes that I've seen.
Merlin: They're not really tapes anymore, but you can watch Andy Rooney get real flustered about like rubber bands.
John: Right.
John: But if you're building a virtual Andy Rooney in the future, let's say, you got to fill in those gaps, right?
John: You got to figure out like what Andy Rooney would do at home.
John: And you can extrapolate some of that.
John: He's like, ah, what's the deal with these silverwares?
Right.
John: But in order to flesh him out, you got to have other stuff.
John: So what do you flesh him out with?
John: And in the future, they're going to be like... You can intuit some of it.
Merlin: You know he's going to be mad about how the... You know he's not going to be mad about how the TV works.
John: Yeah.
John: But you're going to flesh him out?
John: You're going to flesh him out?
John: Because the future is going to be like, ah, Andy Rooney, Mickey Rooney, let's just put them together.
John: Well, just make one...
John: Right.
John: Just do one.
John: We only need one.
Merlin: My dad's got a barn.
John: What is the deal with desk drawers?
John: But who do you fill in the gaps with Jennifer Lopez?
John: She's so positive.
Merlin: You're saying she wouldn't be in the food court.
Merlin: She might be at like the sunglass hut.
John: I'm just afraid that you're going to have to fill her in with filler that's coming from somebody else.
John: This is the danger.
John: You don't want to fill in Jennifer Lopez's missing quadrants with Mickey Rooney.
John: No, that would be like restoring a painting wrong.
John: Right.
John: But the thing is, what do you do?
John: Rosie Perez?
John: Like on the surface?
John: Yeah.
John: Oh, wow.
John: But you put those two together?
John: No.
John: yeah in the future that'll make sense oh hell well fuck why don't we just throw in some rita moreno that'll fix it you're like wait a minute that's a little bit racist she's she's an egot or a pre-got although when you're talking about jennifer lopez and rita moreno and uh and a little bit of rosie perez you're i'm starting to get very interested i'm so interested in that right yes
John: So, and you got a lot of footage.
John: You can put a little Gina Lola Brigida in there.
John: Oh, yeah.
John: But now, but this is the wrong game.
John: This is the wrong game.
John: No.
Merlin: Would that become a kind of Latina rat king?
Merlin: Would that be a rat queen?
Merlin: A rat queen.
Merlin: Would it be a Ray Day raton?
What?
John: I don't even know.
John: But the thing about Contiguous Merlin is we already know what happens in his kitchen.
Merlin: Because you've told us.
John: You've told us what happens in your kitchen.
John: You know how I feel about desk drawers and rubber bands.
John: Oh, yes, we do.
John: We know how important it is for you that you leave at a certain time.
Merlin: Can I just work at the information booth?
Merlin: Can I be virtual at the information?
Merlin: Can I just I don't know.
Merlin: I want to be helpful.
John: There's almost nothing we don't know, including contiguous Merlin is not going to want you to know about it.
Merlin: Oh, don't.
Merlin: Is it too late to change it?
Merlin: Can I become non-contiguous at this point?
Merlin: Is it too late?
John: All you can do is add.
John: You cannot subtract.
John: You can only add.
John: There is no subtraction.
Merlin: You're saying it's like a Hydra.
Merlin: I break one glass and then I got six more and suddenly I'm more contiguous.
John: Holy shit.
John: So this is the thing.
John: You cannot erase.
John: And the thing is, you and I haven't really done any bad things.
John: I mean, I've done some bad things.
John: You've done some.
John: I mean, you know, what is in the future?
John: What is bad?
Merlin: What do you think, Andy Rooney?
John: I don't.
John: So I think that Contiguous John is going to be okay.
John: I think it's okay.
John: I think it's okay.
John: I don't know for sure.
John: I mean, I want him to be useful.
John: I want Contiguous Merlin to be useful.
John: Yeah.
John: It's going to be primitive because a lot of it's on Skype.
John: A lot of it is people – I wasn't using the right microphone for a while.
John: People are going to be mad about the sound quality, although I think that's going to be replaceable.
Merlin: That's all.
Merlin: If you're talking about stuff that's already its own form of proto-digitalis, I imagine that's the kind of thing where you could do what you call upsampling.
Merlin: Upsampling.
Merlin: Upsampling on the reality we got.
Merlin: I mean it's like Donald Rumsfeld says.
Merlin: You go to virtual reality with the digitalis you got.
John: Not the one that you prefer.
John: Do you remember the first time that you ever called me to podcast?
John: Mm-hmm.
John: I was sitting at some desktop computer.
Merlin: Yeah.
John: And the phone went, ring, ring, ring.
John: And I was like, okay, all right, where's this thing?
John: I got a position.
John: I turned it on.
John: Yeah.
John: And it was video podcasting.
John: And you said, nah, nah, turn it off.
John: Turn it off.
Merlin: That's what I said.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: Future links will know that is what I said.
John: And I was like, what?
John: Turn the video off.
John: No, I do not want to see you.
John: And I was like, oh, okay.
John: So I turned it off.
John: But what if I hadn't?
Merlin: Oh, now you're beyond the moniverse.
Merlin: You could be someplace else.
John: Well, we could be we could be into a whole other level of future Merlin because they're only putting you together out of like 15 snapshots on Flickr of you holding some holding some pirates booty for a large pole.
John: Yeah.
John: Now me, they've got more to work with.
John: Yes.
John: Uh, but that's the, that's the glitch.
John: Like, like contiguous Merlin is going to have lots of smart things to say, but he's going to look really choppy.
Merlin: Oh, you think it might be like an eight bit, like a Mario where they tried to use a smart fill, but then they kind of had to pixelate and do like a, like a, whatever the opposite of an unsharp mask is like a sharp unmasking.
John: Yeah, you're constantly going to be bending down and going, help me over you one.
John: You're my only hope.
John: God, yes.
John: You're going to do that over and over.
Merlin: But if they improve it, it won't actually make it better.
Merlin: You just have more rats.
John: You know what I mean?
John: You'll be leaning down and you'll be saying like, we need to leave at 822.
John: It is now 825.
Merlin: And that's how it began.
Merlin: That's how it began.
John: Mm-hmm.