The Phony Age: Navigating Digital Deception, Noise, and the Need for Wisdom

The world is becoming increasingly proficient at telling stories that deny God. As such, we need thinking Christian to become as natural as breathing. Welcome to the Thinking Christian podcast. I'm Dr. James Spencer. Through calm, thoughtful, theological discussions, Thinking Christian highlights the ways God is working in the world and questions the underlying social, cultural, and political assumptions that hinder Christians from becoming more like Christ. Now, on to today's episode of Thinking Christian. Hey, everybody. Welcome to this episode of Thinking Christian. I'm joined by Nate today, and we're going to be discussing an interesting topic that actually, I listened to a conversation between Jordan Peterson and Sam Harris on the Jordan Peterson podcast this week. Nate listened to it as well. And they were talking about the bad things that the internet is doing to our brains. And so we're going to dive into that topic. You know, if you've listened to the podcast before, these are topics, you know, faith and technology that we address an awful lot. And so this seemed like a good one and they had a really rich conversation. And I think Nate and I are going to as well. So Nate, welcome back, brother. How are you doing? Yeah, good, man. Excited to talk about this. It's definitely something that's been on my mind. I was mentioning before we started, we talked about this at skate ministry not too long ago. And I think it's it's moving at such a rapid rate. People don't even know probably how vast this is or how much, you know, the scope of this is. So I think it'll be good to unpack it for our listeners. I mean, tell a little bit because you are working with younger people than I generally do. You know, what do you what do you see when you're talking, when you're interacting with them, when you're talking with them? What are your what are your interactions look like? How do they think about this stuff? Yeah, I think before things started rapidly changing like here lately, like we're talking about now, I think even several years ago when I was leading skate ministry, I would talk to kids and be like, understand, you might look at someone you follow and love, but you're seeing just their highlights. Like you're not really seeing the whole grand scheme of their life. Like, you know, so don't compare your life. It's easy to do that, especially in skateboarding or anything you're achieving to be. You're looking at somebody's highlight reel. And so that's that's one thing that I've always just tried to get kids to understand. Don't you know, what's that quote about? Comparison is the thief of joy. You know, who's gonna be comparing yourself to other people? So I've always kind of tried to instill that in people, my kids, you know, when I'm talking to younger adults or whatever. But I think now it's more and more accepted to literally just like even you'll see kids at a stoplight and they got two seconds. They have to check their phone. It's like this impulse. And so that's what we were talking about at skate ministry a couple of weeks ago about like, you know, when you get the alert from TikTok or Instagram, like time to take a break. Like, I don't think people realize how much they're scrolling. You know, they call it doom scrolling or whatever. But it's definitely been a topic. And I think this younger generation deals with getting sucked into that way more because when we were growing up, we were out till the streetlights came on. And, you know, it's a much different era. Our kids today don't, don't know what that's like. They're like, what? I have to go outside and do something. I'd rather hang out with my friends or my daughter will be playing a video game on the TV and she'll have her iPad up and her phone. And I'm like, that gives me anxiety just looking at it. Like, you're just used to juggling so many different things. It's such a different uh trying to explain that to them. They think it's normal. So, I mean, I've never had on on any of the platforms I'm on and I'm not on TikTok, but just to clarify what you said, there's an alert that comes up. If you scroll long enough, TikTok has built in an alert that says, hey, it's time to do something else. Yeah. And you're supposed to, does it actually stop people from scrolling TikTok or can you scroll right past it? You can, you can, you can hit ignore or you can take the the criticism and be like, okay, I've been on here for quite a while, obviously. So at the very least it might break the cycle, but really it's a pretty minimalistic uh safeguard that's built in. Yeah. Well, it's funny. There's probably 22, 23 people in the sitting at outside the skate park there having pizza and we're about to do Bible study. And then he opens with that kind of starts talking about it and he asks, and I was like thinking, I've never seen that. He's like, by a show of hands, how many of you guys have seen that? And my son's sitting next to me and he's like, I see that every day. Like, oh my gosh, like I've never seen it. I don't know what the time frame is, but I've never, I've never seen it. I'm not on TikTok, but uh I mean, most of the kids were like, oh yeah. And they all kind of laughed. I was like, wow, I didn't even know that. I've seen the apps now that they have where, you know, this guy can't use his phone until he does X number of pushups, which I kind of think is sort of cool. But at the same time, you're like, where have we come as a society that we need to have this prompt, right? It, it's kind of crazy. Well, that's cool, man, because I, I think sometimes I'm, I'm a little out of touch as how significant, you know, I can read the statistics and Jonathan Heights work's been really helpful. And um, you know, I tried to keep up on research and looking at some of these different things that People talk about with regard to social media, but my kids, we've kept them off it. Uh, so I don't even really experience it at home. Uh, my, my daughters are still at that age, you know, Apple has the family sharing thing. And so even if they want to put an app on their phone for school, it has to be approved by us. So they don't, you know, we know they don't have TikTok. We know, you know, we, we've given them, they've got Instagram, but we gave them Instagram, you know, maybe a year, year and a half ago, something like that. And it was because they were playing lacrosse and they were starting to get recruited. And so having a profile is important and those kind of things. But I mean, they don't have, you know, you can, you know, I can look at their, their profiles. They don't have followers. They don't, you know, they don't follow anybody. Like they don't use it. And so in some ways, I think, not that I, I think we did anything particularly right. Um, but I think the way we handled it, it means that I don't have a good sense of what's going on there. You know, um, it also helps that my daughters particularly are active. I mean, they don't really have a lot of time to sit and scroll. And whenever they do, you know, whenever they are sitting there, you know, watching a show or playing a game or whatever it is, it's kind of like, well, they've had a full day of gymnastics, lacrosse or whatever. It's like, take your downtime if you need it, you know? Um, but it's interesting to hear your take on it because I, I just, like I said, sometimes I feel kind of out of touch with what this is actually doing. And there's only so much you can glean from reading papers, you know, listening to conversations like, like Harris and Peterson. Totally. Yeah. I mean, I thought it was really interesting, um, the conversation with Harris and Peterson. I don't know what you took from it, but maybe, um, if you have something, let's, let's start there. Did you have anything in particular that like while they were, while they were having their conversation that you resonated with most, Nate? Well, I just thought it was interesting because he has a brilliant mind, obviously. And sometimes he goes right over my head, but I was like, he's obviously concerned about this. And if he's concerned about it, I'm like, we definitely should be because I think he's one of the brilliant minds of our, of our time or whatever. And uh so yeah, I mean, I just, I agreed with, with almost everything that I heard from him, but it made me just think like, man, I have to make sure I have a safeguard on my phone where I set like a two hour window just because, you know, you know, I never sit for even 20 minutes, but you know, when it's two minutes here, three minutes there, it all adds up. And then once you start paying attention to that, realizing it's like, oh man, I'm a lot of it's for work, but I'm like, I'm on there a lot more. So since I've done that, it's so much better. I feel like I have more uh clarity of thought. And they kind of mentioned that just like you kind of get sucked into this cog of like, you know, and it's like, oh shoot, I just lost 45 minutes or whatever. Um, uh, you know, but um, I'm trying to think there wasn't like a, a big point that stood out to me. I just thought it was really interesting. So

What I thought was, so much of this is just phony. Right. Like, how much of this are we seeing that isn't real, that isn't, it's just, like, clipped together to make us think something, but it has no basis in reality. I feel like you and I are, like, more savvy and we're going to pick up on things, but when I heard that part of the episode, I literally immediately thought about Joe Rogan because, I mean, he would have to have a whole team just to do this, like, because I see it all the time. Like, it'll be clipped of his show and it looks like he's promoting this product and then you're like, wait a second, the mouth's not completely matching with the audio. Yeah. Most people don't always check that or, or, and they're just like, oh, well, this product's probably great because Joe Rogan was talking about on his podcast, the biggest podcast in the world. And so that's what I thought of immediately was Joe Rogan, but how do you, how do you go about stopping that? Because it's literally like probably every five minutes, there's a new one popping up and not one I said time or two or anything. So that's crazy. And well, no, you think about what, you know, advertising has been around forever, right? So we've, we've sort of had the, I mean, I'm still old enough to remember the, I'm not a doctor, but I play one on TV. And so, you know, take this, take Tylenol or take aspirin or whatever it was. And you're going, why, how does playing a doctor on TV, like, help you be a good spokesperson for this? Right. But it worked, right? They were effective campaigns for a reason because they create sort of a sheen of relevance, even if there's no real substance, right? It's sizzle without steak. And so advertising's done that for a lot of years, but now it feels like what we're doing is we're sort of ramping that up and we're just creating a lot more fakes, a lot more counterfeit sort of ideas, a lot of counterfeit products, a lot of counterfeit claims. And we're, we're using these voices that will have an influence on certain segments of the population to do it. Now, like I, you know, when I see an ad with like Joe Rogan, I've seen those around. I'm kind of like, whatever, you know, and it'd probably be the same with most, right? But at the same token, you know, they have to work at some level. Otherwise people wouldn't do it. And so I, that one struck me. I thought that was very interesting. How are we going to start spotting phoniness? Yeah. You know, how do you, Henry Frankfurt wrote a book. I won't say the title because it's a, it's a potty word, but it's essentially bull feces on bull feces. It was a philosophical work and he distinguishes lying from this sort of phony conversation and essentially argues that phoniness or counterfeits, they, they really are fairly ambivalent about the truth. So if you think about a counterfeit dollar bill, a counterfeiter wants to make that dollar bill look as close, as exact as he possibly can to a real dollar bill. And if he succeeds in that, you could look at those $2 bills and have an expert look at them. Let's say he does a perfect counterfeit, right? And the $2 bills are indistinguishable from each other. One's real, one's counterfeit. And what he's arguing is that, that this ambivalent relationship to the truth, right? If a counterfeiter needs to make the bill look like it's real, he'll make it look like it's real, but it's still phony. It's still not real money. Right. And in putting it out into circulation, he's doing damage to real money. And I think that's sort of a good analogy for what we're looking at a lot of the times on the internet. Right. You have these, you can put a real clip in there, right? Somebody actually said something. And so it's true, but it's being used to direct us towards something that isn't really rooted in reality. It's a counterfeit reality. Right. I just find that fascinating that they're having that problem. Well, and we've seen it a lot, even in the political side, because if you take context out, you know, just like even that one video we did at NRB, you know, it's like they only showed us one part. Correct. Stuff that's missing. So when there's missing context, that's not, you know, a fair playing field for people to really have all the facts. If you only show 60% of it and the 40% that they're not showing you would probably counter what they're saying. That's the tricky, that's the slippery slope. And I feel like we definitely saw it during the last couple political cycles. Oh, definitely. Well, I think the other thing that I saw there, that I heard in the episode that I found fascinating was this sort of, I'll say nostalgia, but that's probably not a fair way to characterize it. There's a, a recognition that the loss of institutions is a bad thing. And so we were talking ahead of the episode, you know, and you think back to what we used to have. We used to have broadcast television, which had a finite amount of space and time, right? There were only so many hours of the week and you actually show programming. You had newspapers, right? That have finite amount of space, right? Your newspaper is going to be a certain length. And so stories, you can't have infinite numbers of stories being put in that newspaper. You have to pick and choose publishers. There's a finite amount of money. There's, you know, you can't spend time doing every manuscript that comes in. And so you're making choices. And when we as consumers of that information are getting what's been chosen to be released, we have no idea what's been left out. Right. And so we're trusting those institutions to pick for us which stories are most relevant. That requires a lot of trust and it requires, I think to some degree, a general consensus about what is important, what counts as news, what counts as good research, what counts as, you know, X, Y, Z, right. Good programming. Right. Now we're in this situation where literally anything can be pushed out. And we have to exercise a lot of individual discernment to do two things. One, to decide what we're going to put out. Right. We've had, not very many, we've had a few episodes where I have opted not to release them. We've recorded them. We've had the interviews and it's like, nope, that one's not going to make it out. And for a whole host of reasons, right. But then on the other side, we also have to individually discern what we're taking in. Right. We haven't, but I don't think we've really exercised those muscles for most of our lives. We've gotten good at deciding between a small set of content, right? Do I want to watch the news on channel 4 or channel 5 or CNN or whatever? Right. Do I want to watch, you know, regional or global news? Right. If there's conflicting time schedules or whatever. But as we've been able to sort of consume all of this content, it doesn't feel like we have the muscles to do that right now. And they talked an awful lot about that. No, I totally agree. Yeah. I mean, it's weird. We almost were just like accustomed to like, no, this is what we got. This is our options. I think of it like when you travel to like a small town and, you know, you don't stay in the nicest hotel. Usually the TV options are going to be limited. And you're like, I have to watch, but, but where, where in your life do you have that nowadays? Now you have all these options at your fingertips, whether it's your phone, your TV, your computer, you have infinite options. Whereas, you know, even when we were kids having to turn the dial, I remember only having so many channels. Right. It is definitely a different playing field. And I think social media changes everything. But then another example of this, James, is when they did that big white house release, like I think it was the Epstein files. They had actual influencers there that have no business probably being there, breaking this news or releasing this stuff. And it was just like a big fiasco and it turned out like there wasn't even anything really that they were releasing. But I thought that was interesting that they brought people that had big reaches on social media platforms to the white house for that. I mean, they got the lanyards, they're all dressed up, you know, and all this stuff. Did you remember seeing that? Oh yeah. It's interesting that that now, like just a normal person that knows how to just regurgitate information on the internet has become, you know, top tier for something. Whereas before people would have to go to college and have years of experience in journalism or, you know, it's just interesting. It's like the wild, wild west right now. Let me ask you a serious question. If something triggered a major market drop in the coming months, would your retirement be ready or exposed? With inflation, market volatility, and ongoing global uncertainty, more families are taking a closer look at whether their retirement plan is truly built to hold up. And many are finding that adding a layer of protection makes a lot of sense.

Of sense, Sanctuary Metals is a Christian-owned company that helps families strengthen their retirement savings with physical gold and silver through a gold IRA. During uncertain times, many people look to precious metals as a way to add stability when other assets may be under pressure. If you'd like to explore whether a gold IRA is a good fit for your situation, Sanctuary Metals makes it easy to get started. Text GUIDE to 94878 to receive your free retirement defense guide or call 888-958-6579 to speak with one of their knowledgeable team members. Again, text GUIDE to 94878 or call 888-958-6579. Well, I mean, I think a great example of it in recent years is the little girl who was advocating for climate change, Greta Thornburg. And you sort of sit back and you watch this oddity of a, I don't even know whether she was 12, somewhere between 12 and 15, I think, is what she was. But you're watching adults sit and be captivated by the words of someone who surely does not know the scientific research well enough. And not not taking anything away from her, right? I think her sincerity was absolutely there. And I doubt she was completely uninformed. Right. But unless I'm wrong, unless she's some sort of super genius who is a scientific wizard, and I just don't understand that about her. If you pull up a piece of research, scientific research on climate change, it's not easy to get through. Right. Like it's pretty technical stuff that you kind of need somebody to help you understand it. You need to be able to understand and understand how to read statistics. You need to have some understanding of sort of underlying assumptions that are being made throughout this. Right. And so I get the impression that she probably didn't know that research as well as many others who might have been better equipped to speak to the issue in a more balanced manner. Right. You know, with a more informed opinion. And yet there's something captivating about, you know, this young woman who's very passionate about climate change, speaking passionately about climate change and having these world leaders listen to her. It doesn't necessarily have the full substance, but it had an awful lot of sizzle. Well, I think it was like prime pickings, though, for a meme like she I think there was a meme beyond and then she became more popular because of that. And it almost gave her accreditation, kind of validated her, especially the younger generation. They're like, oh, well, she knows what she's talking about because, you know, Barstool posted about her or whatever it is. And she was everywhere there for a minute. Like she came out of nowhere and then it was like meme, meme. And now it's like nothing. Yeah, but it's I think it's a good example of the sort of sort of the way that we're dealing with. If we combine that idea of phoniness, right, there there was a there was a counterfeit aspect of what she was doing. It wasn't that she wasn't saying certain true things like I don't know anything about climate change. Right. So I'm not trying to be political on climate change, but I'll assume that she was saying some true things. Right. She's making some interesting points. Even a 12 to 15 year old can do that. Right. It's not like they're, you know, imbeciles who shouldn't be able to talk. That's not the point. But the point is that it's a very serious conversation. Right. And so it just feels like maybe at 12 to 15, she hasn't done the sort of research that she might need to do to really fully understand and be an expert on this topic. We're not worried about that because what we can do is we can use this this situation to draw her into the public eye and give everyone this sort of idea that this is a really crucial issue. And look at this. Look at this girl who's talking about it. It's it's sort of captivating in a way. But it's not substantial. Yeah. You know, if we added up all the time that we you know, people watched memes of Greta Thornburg, you almost have to think it would have been more. Helpful for people to have, you know, read some sort of scientific summary of the research. We had a we had a very similar situation. I'll give you one more example. My wife and I were at a conference down in I think we were in Tennessee and it was right around COVID. They were talking about the vaccine and of course, my wife's a pharmacist, so she understands a lot of this. And they had two speakers up there sort of presenting different perspectives on the vaccine, not a pro and a con, but truly two different perspectives. One guy was a Harvard virology researcher who did the technical work and biochemistry behind vaccines for multiple decades and multiple years. And they gave him about 10 minutes to present the new MRNA vaccine, you know, sort of delivery, what it was, how it worked, what the dangers were, you know, sort of pros and cons of the kids. And so he was up there very quick. And then they had a journalist who had spoken to a number of different experts talk for about 45 minutes. What? And I was like, I'd like more of the guy who actually knows. And he wasn't telling a story necessarily. Right. Like he was talking the science of it and going right, going deeper than than I'd ever gone before versus the journalist who I talked to several experts. I talked to parents. I talked. And so here's the perception. And it's like, but it's it'd be like asking me what I think about quantum mechanics. Right. It was cool in Ant-Man. Yeah. Like, what do I know? Right. That totally reminds me of Bill Gates. He was an interview, I think, with Barbara Walters. And and she's like, what makes you think that you are like qualified to say this? Like, you know, you own Microsoft, the computer company. And he's like, well, I've done a lot of research in because he's talking about like population and like the vaccine and like the work that he's doing with that. And it's like that that was to me kind of the interesting like same kind of thing. But it is backwards. Like I would have much rather I wasn't even there, but I would have much rather listen to the guy that actually does this on a daily basis, not a journalist. And they gave him 45 minutes and the other guy 10. Right. It was the craziest thing I've ever seen. But again, it sort of plays into where I think we are right now. Right. That that depth is taking a backseat to salience, what we think is relevant, what what people will actually be willing to listen to. And there's part of that where I'm not suggesting that everybody should be a science nerd. And, you know, there are certain there are scientific lectures I would never want to sit through. Right. There does have to be some translatability to people who don't have the expertise. And so there has to be a bridge that, you know, you're not you know, we don't sit here and do Hebrew exegesis on the program, for instance. Right. Like that would be really boring. And so there's a way that experts have to sort of bridge across and make it relatable to people who don't have the same expertise they do. So I'm not arguing against that. Right. But what I would say is, you know, when he started talking about the perceptions that he's heard from people. I'm just kind of like, but who are these people? Right. Because there are certain people I don't know that I care about what their perception is. Right. Their perception is uninformed. And so I don't I don't mean to suggest they shouldn't have a perception. I'm just saying it's uninformed. Right. Right. It's like. And it's interesting because what would happen if Al Gore would have had a big meme because he's he's been the guy for the last several years, if not the last decade, that has been pushing climate change and all that kind of stuff. But because Greta came on the scene, she's something new. And it's like memeable, I guess if you want to call it that. Like people talked more about that than Al Gore. And that's kind of what Al Gore kind of shifted his whole career towards the last decade or so. So it is just because she got that five seconds of fame memes, the Internet just ate it up. I think Al Gore talked way more about it than she did, though. Let me ask you a serious question. If something triggered a major market drop in the coming months, would your retirement be ready or exposed with inflation, market volatility and ongoing global uncertainty? More families are taking a closer look at whether their retirement plan is truly built to hold up. And then you're finding that adding a layer of protection makes a lot of sense. Sanctuary Metals is a Christian owned company that helps families strengthen their retirement savings with physical gold and silver through a gold IRA. During uncertain times, many people look to precious metals as a way to add stability when other assets may be under pressure. If you'd like to explore whether a gold IRA is a good fit for your situation. Sanctuary Metals makes it easy to get started. Text GUIDE to 94878 to receive your free retirement defense guide or call 888-958-6579 to speak with one of their knowledgeable team members. Again, text GUIDE to 94878 or call 888-958-6579.

6-5-7-9. And these things were not capable of happening back when the institutions were still sort of alive, right? And I think what I see Jordan Peterson and Sam Harris sort of lamenting is the fact that there's not even an institution to counteract these other sort of viral narratives, that it's all gotten so insane that you can't even turn to more reputable publications and expect to find substantive work on a particular topic. Like the place where you can actually find good data and good answers and helpful research is getting smaller and smaller and smaller and smaller. And so, you know, they talked a lot about nature, which is a, I think they talked about nature, but I might be confusing it with a different conversation. But there were these journals back in the day that were sort of the standard. You'd know that these were really good journals that were difficult to get in. They had a strong peer review process. And so if you were reading it in a nature, if you were reading it in a science, you know, various publications, you knew these were solid because they're vetted and like really... Right. And they've just worked a really long time to cultivate that reputation. It doesn't solve all the problems, you know, it doesn't answer all the questions, but they had that sort of solid reputation and a good basis for it. We're in a situation where it feels like we're losing that. And I think that was part of what they're lamenting. It's like, we need these institutions around that are doing work we all agree is necessary work. And so when they were talking, I couldn't help but sort of make the analogy to Christianity. Christianity has creeds, the Nicene Creed, for instance, doctrines, very specific doctrinal boundaries. And those boundaries aren't constrictive, as I've talked about in other places. Like our constraints enable us. They allow us to do things. They're not inherently limiting, right? And so when we're talking, we're following the rules of English grammar. We're using the syntax of English grammar. We're using the words that people would understand. And if we decide not to do that, and we decide just to make up our own words and make up our own rules, we're not going to be able to communicate. And so those rules, actually, the constraints enable us to communicate. They don't keep us from communicating. Right. And it's very similar, I think, with creeds and doctrines. We have, as a Christian community, creeds and doctrines that allow us, enable us to conform to the image of Christ, to be disciples, to walk in the way of Jesus. Like we have that. And so if we stay within those boundaries, we're enabled to do that. When we step outside those boundaries, we get ourselves into trouble. We can no longer do what we're supposed to be doing. Right. And so as they're talking about, hey, you know, sort of lamenting the loss of these institutions, it just strikes me that what they're really saying is, what we need are some appropriate constraints that we can all sort of sit down and say, yeah, this is what constitutes good research. This is what constitutes good journalism. This is what constitutes, you know, good programming. Right. And we sort of all agree on that. And now we play within those boundaries. We play that game within those rules. So it doesn't devolve into chaos. Yeah, so there's a standard. Yeah, but right now it feels like it's getting a little chaotic. Oh, yeah. Dude, I've just, it's a real fear. I'm 45 years old, and literally there's been a couple of times I've almost sent something to my kids, and I'm like, nope, they're gonna crucify me over this because I'm like, this is probably not 100% accurate. But my dad is much older than me. He's 72 or 71, and he has sent things to us or to my kids. And they're like, oh, Papa's like, you know, he doesn't know if this is true or real. So now I have this fear of like, as technology advances and I get older, like, when is it going to be, I'm already starting to, like, I have to do, you know, a couple glances at something. I'm like, how do other people that don't spend much time like we do talking about this, looking at this, I'm on the internet, social media all the time. But it's very alarming because five years from now, it's probably going to be way worse and way different. It's moving at such a rapid pace. So I literally have this new fear at 45, like, when am I going to not know what's going on? Am I going to be this senile old man at 50? Exactly. That's saying odd things and has no concept of what the real world is really like. I totally get that, Nate. I mean, I think where we're headed, and part of what I would say I sort of took away from the discussion with Peterson and Harris is that this has to start happening, the sort of institutionalizing that they're talking about, the creation of boundaries and constraints of how we think about not only the content that we consume, but how we might go about consuming content. I actually think that has to happen on a micro level. It needs to happen on an individual level. It needs to happen on a familial level. It needs to happen in an ecclesial level, let's say. And as we do that, as we start to sort of help one another, help ourselves and help one another discern what we should or shouldn't be listening to, how should we think about the content that we do listen to? How do we evaluate it? You know, how do we get past the phoniness to a reality and a substance? I think if we can't do that individually, familially, communally, right, it's probably not going to help to have some sort of institutional structure up here just randomly created to police what's on the Internet. Right. I always thought it was sort of comical when, you know, we've had these debates, should Facebook act like any other publisher? Should it be held accountable for deciding what content goes on and what content goes off? And my thinking is, oh man, I don't want Facebook deciding those questions. These are not the sort of people, great, you built a tech platform, congrats. I'm not sure I understand, and this is out of ignorance, do the people at Facebook have the moral scruples to call balls and strikes? Are they working with the same strike zone that we would be working with? And so, you know, I think we have to ask those questions because it can't just be, let's create some controls. No, no, no, no, no. It's about setting the right controls, the right constraints so that we are not flooded with ridiculous information, but also so that we're not being intentionally manipulated, right, because certain information is left out and certain information is put in. Right. And I think it's worse being a big movie buff because I've seen so many movies that said in the future. Yeah. I used to think, oh, it's all fiction, you know, there's no way anything like that could happen. But now I'm starting to think some of this stuff could happen someday or it could happen soon. It's the wild, wild west out there, like we're saying. There's no real boundaries. You know, we were talking before about North Korea and the differences in their culture and ours, you know, like, yeah, have an abundance of freedom, unlike most places, especially if you compare it to something like North Korea. But we also have to recognize this is a real threat and a real danger. Like if we don't, I'm glad they're having, I'm glad people like that that are really brilliant are having these kind of conversations because it's gonna be a problem sooner or later, for sure. Yeah, I think there has to be something we probably need to start thinking in terms of sufficient constraints, is the way I would put it. Freedom exercised apart from constraint is just gonna be anarchy. It's gonna be total chaos, right? And right now we don't live in that society, right? There are constraints on our behavior. I can't go out right now and drive 150 miles an hour down the highway, right? I'll get pulled over, I'll get a speeding ticket. In Illinois, I'll get, you know, some sort of misdemeanor charge because I'm going way too fast. It's like an aggressive driving charge. And so there's constraints on this. And those help to keep us relatively safe, right? That's one of the functions, I think, of the law. And where I think we are right now is we haven't thought through sufficient constraints for some of the social media activity, for the Internet, for AI going forward. It's not that I think we need to close these things down or shut them off completely, but there has to be a sufficient constraint because otherwise what we've got is we've got this whole segment of society that is free without constraint and it's just going to turn into chaos. And I honestly think that's what we're seeing. When you explain it like that, it makes me think of the Autobahn and, you know, why the world didn't create something like that. It's like, let's just throw that out the window and people know the risk of getting on there and you have people that probably take advantage of it and then...

people that probably stay within their lane, but I don't know how to, you have to weigh those pros and cons because I think you have to have guidelines. Otherwise, I mean, people probably, I don't know the statistics right off the top of my head, but I'm sure more people die on the Autobahn than they say the I-35 here in the Midwest. I really, yeah, I don't have any idea, but here's an analogy for us that you'll resonate with, I think. Did you grow up in the, when they started making seatbelt laws mandatory? Oh yeah. OK, so I can remember my parents being really frustrated about having to put on their seatbelts. Oh yeah. Like, and it wasn't a, you know, for them, it wasn't sort of the militant, nobody should tell me what I should do with my body, and, you know, this is a government overreach. Like, they weren't like that, but they'd never ridden with a seatbelt. You know, I can remember as a kid driving to, you know, my dad, his family was from West Virginia, so we'd take trips to West Virginia and I'd be in the back of the pickup with a cab on it, and they'd throw a mattress back there, and that's where I'd ride. Nice. I mean, that's probably child endangerment today. Probably. But back then it was, they're like, fine, you know, there were no car seats, there were any of that. But I remember, I remember very specifically things like seatbelts, like open containers, like open alcohol containers in cars. When those laws changed, like, folks, those weren't always laws on the books, right? And people were really frustrated about it, but someone had to be the adult in the room and say, look, this is for everybody's good. This actually helps society overall. It's like this motion, you know, to click it in. All cars have them. We don't have to go back and, like, retrofit cars. Every car's got them. And, you know, just buckle up. That's all you needed to do, right? Click it or ticket were some of those things, right? Or make it click. Like, you had all these little slogans they did to sort of promote the law. Arrive alive. To try to keep people safe, right? And I just think at this point, yes, there needs to be some sobriety as we think about how we go about regulating some of these things, how we start thinking about pulling constraints in. But it's no different than telling people they need to wear a seatbelt when they're driving a killing machine that can go down the road at 70 miles an hour, right? Somebody just be the adult in the room and start making reasonable, start placing reasonable constraints on the tech companies, on, you know, whatever we need to, right? In that case, I mean, I do think there are some individual constraints we probably need to be considering. That's a great analogy to put it at. And when you tell that story, I have to briefly say this because you might remember my parents had a Volvo station wagon and it actually had a bucket seat, bench seat in the back facing the back window. The back window. Yeah, yeah. And that's where I usually sat. Dude, if we got in one rear-end collision, like airbags back there. That's right. This was not safe in any way, shape, or form. So I think it just speaks to the human nature of, like, we don't know what we don't know. Back then, they thought, oh, this is fine because they didn't have the research. They didn't have the internet. They didn't, you know, just like, you know, look at the cavemen or whatever, what they used to do. We always progress and we move forward. But this is a scary, maybe one of the scarier topics for us and our generation, especially us because we've lived before and after the internet. Like, we know both parts. So I think this is maybe one of the more scary ones because it's more unknown than just, like, traffic laws or what seatbelt can save us or help us or whatever. I think it's, I agree with you, I think it's scarier, but I think it's scarier because we don't have those sufficient constraints. So if we think of, it's sort of a negative kind of comparison, but if we think about the internet and social media like a mob, right, a mob is essentially a moment in time where, as a collective, a group of individuals, right, throws all constraints out the window, right? So all of a sudden they can burn things, graffiti things, throw rocks at people, right? It's sort of a de-evolution of any, there's no constraints on that mob whatsoever until it can obviously be dispersed. And I think part of what we're really struggling with with the internet is there's a mob. And we need to figure out how do we constrain the mob within the, how do we pull that back so that people aren't throwing rocks at each other? How do we pull it back so they're not painting graffiti all over people? How do we pull it back so that they're not, there's different activities, but, you know, We see bad things going on on the internet. Things that we would not tolerate in a physical society, in a physical interaction. And so in reality, I think there are probably mechanisms we can use to fix this. Somebody's just got to go in there and actually fix it. And so that's one of my two cents on it. I just think, I don't want to eliminate it. I don't want it to be gone. I think the tools are actually really helpful in a lot of ways, but I think that we have, we have yet to figure out how to sufficiently constrain them so that they enable us to do what they have the promise to allow us to do versus sort of creating a de-evolution effect, right? Devolving into our baser instincts where chaos sort of reigns. And so I think, you know, overall, the internet and social media, there is good and bad, right? There's, so it's not like I want to paint this as the darkest picture possible, but I just don't, you know, we're focusing on some of the negatives right now, but I think that we do need to attend to those negatives. We can't just assume that those negatives are sort of negligible and we don't need to think about them. We don't need to address them. Or that they're going to go away. I'm glad they're having, like I said, I'm glad we're having this conversation. I'm glad people like Jordan Peterson and Harris are having these conversations because I think it's only going to get worse and it's going to be more of a need for it as we move towards that. I think about big companies I've worked with in the past. We would have to do like yearly or quarterly, like security briefing kind of training because, you know, when you have access to your email, it could be, someone could hack into your email and get access to the whole server or whatever. So you have to like recognize phishing and stuff. And I feel like it's in 25 years, every time I've done it, it's all the same kind of stuff, but people have to be reminded of that by human nature. You know, we're like easily manipulated, you know, not, not all of us, but I mean, some of us, you know, like you can slip through the cracks or whatever. And so enough to the point where big organizations like, no, everyone needs to go through this training once a year or whatever. I'm sure you've had to do it at Moody or different places. And it's like the worst. You're just like, gosh, I'm right. This is terrible. But doing that for that long and there's still people can find loopholes and ways to, to utilize that. It makes me nervous because I don't even understand most of the stuff we're talking about. Like I get a fake PayPal receipt in my junk mail almost every day. And you just, you know, there's a certain, you know, I see it and I'm like, can't even click on it. Just delete it and move on with life. Exactly. And so it's it's very real. And that's what I think I mean. Like, there's just so much fakeness out there. There's so much phoniness out there and there needs to be some sense individually where we take responsibility for that. So we're sufficiently informed that we can avoid some of those things. But also I think there needs to be some sort of balance between that and institutional policies, maybe even governmental policies that are creating sufficient constraints so that we lose some of this stuff. I know it's very difficult to police. It's hard, but it's such a worthy endeavor that I think we, at least individually, familially, communally as churches, we need to be talking about this because it will have a detrimental impact on the next generation. It's probably having a detrimental impact on us. We just don't recognize it quite as much. But we've got to get past this because it's just such a crucial issue when we think about making disciples for Jesus Christ. This technological age that we're in brings certain challenges and we just need to be really aware of them, really understanding them, and then starting to think of ways that we can counteract them. Yeah, totally. Well, bro, I'm glad we had this conversation. This is good. And I don't know, we'll see how the internet works, I guess, right? We'll see what happens tomorrow. Maybe our episode will go viral and people will start clipping us and taking our words out of context. That'd be fantastic. I can't say I would wish that. I'm good staying small and relatively unknown. Some people might think that if they've ever heard the end to the kitty litter automated thing that they might think that that's fake, but

it's definitely interesting, but most people can't catch that like us. So anyway, not to get off topic, but... No, man. Well, good. Well, we'll call that an episode. Everybody, thanks for sticking with us. Hopefully you enjoyed it. I'd encourage you to go over and check out the podcast with Peterson and Harris. I thought it was really interesting. And of course, we've got tons of resources on usefulwithGod.com that are related to AI and various things. You can go back and listen to some of the Thinking Christian episodes on AI. We just had a conversation about AI and the apocalypse. You know, I've been digging into AI for a really long time and social media and all that kind of fun stuff. So yeah, check out the other episodes of Thinking Christian. You go to thinkingchristianpodcast.com. Feel free to subscribe to our YouTube channel if you're watching on YouTube or hit the subscribe button on our podcast. And that really helps us out. So take care, everybody, and we'll catch you on the next episode of Thinking Christian. Just want to take a second to thank the team at Life Audio for their partnership with us on the Thinking Christian podcast. If you go to lifeaudio.com, you'll find dozens of other faith-centered podcasts in their network. They've got shows about prayer, Bible study, parenting, and more. Hey friends, I'm Susan Michael. My podcast, The Out of Zion Show, is now partnering with Life Audio Podcast Network. You know, after decades of travel and study in Israel, I created Out of Zion to bring you a simple, clear, powerful insights about the Bible, Jesus, Israel, and your own walk of faith. Follow Out of Zion on your favorite podcasting app. I can't wait to take this journey with you.