Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Philip K. Dick – Introduction w/ Jesan Sorrells

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hello, my name is Jesan Sorrells and this is the

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Leadership Lessons from the Great Books podcast, episode number

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158.

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When we can find a pattern, recognize a trend, or predict a

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path forward, human beings collectively and individually

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tend to default to 1 of 3 responses and

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or reactions to that pattern, to that

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trend, or to that path forward. We

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fight, we flee, we freeze.

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Societies, cultures, institutions and organizations behave in the same way

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as individual people, except they do it at

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scale. And ever since the Post World War II promises

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of political, cultural and social advancement have proven to be

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so much smoke and mirrors in the early 21st century.

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We in the west have resisted the advancements that we have

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received and we have fled ignominiously into

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entertainment and hedonistic whimsy. Or we have

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encased ourselves willingly and into inaction,

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indecision and stasis.

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But none of these reactions of flight,

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freezing or freeing are

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happening in a vacuum, and the ways in which societies, cultures, institutions and

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organizations attempt to manage their reputation, resources

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and reactions is rarely as opaque as

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they believe it is. Which brings us to our

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author today. Today on the show

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solo episode, we will be introducing the author,

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exploring some of the dominant themes, and expressing

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some of the thoughts I have on one of these seminal science fiction

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novels of the mid to late 20th

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century. It is a book that predicted

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with dreary certainty the world we in the

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west currently inhabit, and continues to

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predict with dreary certainty the technological and social

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world we are about to inhabit. Just about five minutes

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from now, the basis for

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the movie blade runner from 1982,

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we will be introducing and discussing Do

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Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? By Philip

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K. Dick Leaders

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we get the world we want either through action or inaction.

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Either path is a choice and no choices can be made

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without consequences.

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So as usual, we will be summarizing

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some of the themes that we are going to be

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exploring here and Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? We

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will not be reading directly from the book. Instead, what we’re going to

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be doing is we’re going to be talking about specific

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chapters and areas and sort of a broad summary because this book is

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still under copyright and we do respect copyright here on

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this show. So when you open up new

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Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, you are introduced

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to a world that is ashy,

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a world that is covered in gray dust, a

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world that is declining, an earth that is declining as

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a result of a third world war

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that was indeed nuclear. Chapter one opens

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up with us being introduced to a man named Rick

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Deckard, played in the movie by Harrison

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Ford. Now, Rick Deckard is a bounty

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hunter. He’s an independent contractor hired by the police

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to, to hunt down and to quote,

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unquote, retire androids that have escaped from

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the Martian colonies and returned

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to Earth where it is illegal for an Android to be.

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We’re introduced to his wife, Iran, and I did say

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Iran I R A N. And his wife is

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struggling with some mental health problems,

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depression, anxiety. And she

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finds safety by grabbing the handles of and by

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engaging with something called an empathy box and

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engaging with the religion of mercerism.

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More on that later. Rick also

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has a sheep. Now, the

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sheep is part of the setup of the book and

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the sheep is not a live sheep. It’s an electric sheep,

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which, you know, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? That’s sort

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of where the title really kicks off. And so we open up

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the book, we open up the story, and nothing much happens

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in the first couple of chapters but this. Then Rick is on his way to

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work and he is seeking to figure

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out how to get a live animal because

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everything is floating in ash on the Earth.

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Everything is denuded. As a matter of fact, one of

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the things that many of the characters point out in doandroids Dream of

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Electric Sheep is that, no, all the human

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beings basically that could leave, could emigrate from Earth have already

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emigrated to go to other places like Mars or other

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interstellar settlements. And all the folks that

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are left on the Earth are living in the remains, living in the

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rubble of what was once a great society,

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particularly what was once a great city in known as

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San Francisco. By the way, when I say that there are no live animals,

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there’s a whole running piece

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inside of of the book that

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is really focused on the value of a.

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Of a live animal. And there is a

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magazine and this is going to come back, come back to haunt us a little

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bit later on in the book. A catalog actually called

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Sydney’s. And Sydney’s catalog is a catalog that

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prices live animals. This is

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going to come back later on when Rick Deckard

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runs into Rachel Rosin

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with some interesting consequences

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that will come about from that.

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Now that we’ve laid out some of the opening themes, some of the initial

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themes that are in Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep

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by Philip K. Dick, let’s take a look at the literary life

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of of Philip K. Dick. From his

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Wikipedia article and a few interviews, we were able to glean

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numerous details about the man’s life, both directly

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from his mouth and from things that other people

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wrote about him. Philip Kindred

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Dick was born December 16, 1928 and died

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March 2, 1982. He was an American

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science fiction writer and novelist. A

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prolific yet troubled creative, he wrote 44 novels and about

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121 short stories, most of which appeared in science fiction

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magazines during his lifetime. As a matter of fact,

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Philip K. Dick struggled as a science fiction

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writer until

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Duandro’s Dream of Electric Sheep really took off, as well as

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probably his most notable notable book,

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which was turned into an Amazon, an Amazon studio streaming

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show a few years ago, the man in the High

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Castle. His fiction explored very

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various and varied philosophical and social questions

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such as the nature of reality, the nature of perception, what

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exactly is human nature and identity. And his

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stories commonly featured characters struggling against against elements

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that they could not understand and had trouble identifying, such

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as alternate realities, illusory environments,

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monopolistic corporations, and even monopolistic governments,

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drug abuse, authoritarian governments, and

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most interestingly, altered states of

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consciousness. Philip

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K. Dick was primarily raised by his mother after a vicious

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divorce where his mother refused to move

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basically across the country. Well, not really across the country, but from one state to

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another state with his father, who by the

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way, his father worked as a writer for the U.S. department of

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Agriculture. I am firm in my

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belief that the process of the divorce and the way in which

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he was raised by his mother, first in Washington D.C. and then later on in

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San Francisco, deeply impacted psychologically,

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the young Philip K. Dick. Matter of fact, it affected

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him, impacted him. Infected is probably a good term. Impacted

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him so deeply psychologically that he

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was unable to really be effective in school.

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Particularly during a mid century time when conformity in

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school was thought to be the highest honor that you

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could possibly have as a student. A

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genuine king in his own mind. Dick dropped out of

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college because it bored him. He took a lot of classes, he did a lot

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of things, but he never landed on a major and he never received

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a degree from the University of California, Berkeley. At the

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time, by the way, UC Berkeley hadn’t yet become a

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haven for hippie dumb and progressive and

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later on, Marxist thought. By the way,

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the reason he dropped out of college, the reason that was

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stated according to his third wife Anne’s memoir about him,

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the reason that he dropped out was because of ongoing anxiety

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problems. And I tend to believe that that was probably true.

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And also pointed out that Dick really didn’t want to be

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involved with or engaged around mandatory

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ROTC training. As a matter of fact, when you look at

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Philip K. Dick and you look at George Orwell, both of

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their relationships to power influenced later on

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and hierarchy influenced later on their relationships and

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how they wrote about the relationships between individuals and

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a hierarchy. A man driven by confusion,

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driven by anger and perplexity at the world and his place in it,

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and a man seeking answers to questions in all the wrong places.

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Philip K. Dick was a complicated individual who

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did not have an easy life. He also

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experimented and dabbled in drugs, as did many people of his generations

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of his generation. But he came to significantly different conclusions

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about that drug use and about the results of that

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dabbling. Science fiction was an

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outlet for Philip K. Dick. It was a way for him to express

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all of the ideas and thoughts, thoughts and feelings

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that he could not successfully express to others

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and also gave him away, quite frankly, to be weird

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fellow. K. Dick was not Robert Heinlein, although Robert

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Heinlein was, was a friend of his. He was not

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Charles Gibson. He was also not Isaac Asimov or Ray

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Bradbury. Those guys were at least a

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generation older than him. Philip K. Dick was part of a

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new generation of science fiction writers who were

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utilizing science fiction in order to work out

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therapeutically their own psychoses and of

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course, to project their own ideas of a new world

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and new men on to readers

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both now and readers that would read them later on

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in the future.

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Back to our analysis of the book, back to Do Androids

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Dream of Electric Sheep by Philip K.

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Dick. So we pick up

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in chapter three of the book

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and Rick Deckard goes to the, the

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San Francisco police station. Now it’s a

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newly built police station in a different part of town and,

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and it’s called the hall of justice on Lombard Street.

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And when he arrives, he is informed in

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no uncertain terms that

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a new unit of Android has been released

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called the Nexus 6 brain unit or the Nexus

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6 Android. And the Nexus 6 Android is, is,

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is, is supposed to be designed so that it can be

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unidentifiable, so that it can be,

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it can be indistinguishable from human

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beings. He finds out that a colleague of his

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is in the hospital from having killed or retired

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one of these Nexus 6 robots, sorry,

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androids, and that there are something like six

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more of them floating around the earth

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somewhere. He’s also ordered by his

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boss, a Mr. A Mr. Bryant,

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to, to go out to the. Go out to

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the, the, The Rosen Corporation. And the Rosen

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Corporation is an organization or it’s the organization

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that creates the, and, and makes the

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Nexus 6 robots. As a matter of fact, they make all of the Nexus 6

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here saying robots, Nexus 6 androids that are on the

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Earth. And whenever an Android escapes, it is the

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responsibility of the manufacturer to make sure that that

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Android is brought back. They of course,

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cannot do this without the help of the police, and the police cannot do this

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without the help of the bounty hunters. And thus, that is the virtuous circle.

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Rick Deckard is equipped with something called a Voight Conf

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Test. V O I G T K A M

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Pff. And the Voight Komp test measures

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the level of empathy that a human has versus an Android,

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or the level of empathy or empathetic responses that

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an object has, and then identifies the difference between

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the empathetic responses of an Android versus the empathetic responses of

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a human being. Now, primarily this is done

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through questioning individuals or

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questioning androids and measuring their,

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their biologic and their mechanical

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responses to the. To the questions. Because

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without being able to do that, the Nexus 6 Androids

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can effectively pass for human.

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Deckard goes to the Rosin Corporation and

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he administers the Voight Conf test to a

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woman named Rachel Rosin. And it is

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revealed through the failure

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of Rachel Rosin to pass the empathy test

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that the Rosin association of the Rosin Corporation

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has indeed created a an

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Android. And Rachel Rosin is one of the

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Nexus 6 androids. Not the one that has escaped

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from the Martian colonies, but one that was created

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in order to live here on Earth. Now, of course, it is

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illegal for androids to live on Earth in

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the Earth of Do Androids dream of electric Sheep?

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And this sets up Rick Deckard as

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our not only as our protagonist, but also as our

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also gives him motivation for going out and pursuing,

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getting the bounty by killing

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these or retiring these Nexus 6

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androids. But of course, just like everything

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else, Rick Deckard cannot do this

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act successfully alone.

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He who fights with monsters might take

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care, lest he thereby become a monster. And if

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you gaze for long into an abyss, the

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abyss gazes also into you.

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Frederick Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil Prelude to a Philosophy

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of the Future, 1886.

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When we think about Philip K. Dick and when we think about some of the

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themes in Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?

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I think of that line from Beyond

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Good and Evil. Now what we’ve covered Nietzsche on this podcast,

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we’ve talked about Thus Spoke Zarathustra. And as

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you know, if you listen to that episode way back in season one,

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I am not a big fan of Frederick Nietzsche. I. I think that he played

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the classic Two lies and a truth.

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And he did it a lot with folks. And as a philosopher,

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he left something to be desired.

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However, his words have impacted other folks and

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they have caused people to think about reality differently.

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And of course, the people that he influenced the most were people who were

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in ways of personality and temperament and probably even

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intellect, most like him. And these are people who are looking

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for and looking at and looking down

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the barrel of post World War II

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nihilism. We kind of

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stumbled across this a little bit when we were discussing George Orwell in

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1984 and we did

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not cover on the podcast this year Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World,

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which is the other end of the spectrum on this. But both of those

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novels and Brave New World is a little more science

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fictiony than 1984 and a little

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actually significantly better written. Both of

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those, both those novels look at and view

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future dystopias not

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necessarily with. With glee, obviously, but

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mostly with a sort of mute horror. But

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it’s a mute horror that goes along with or is accompanied by

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a sense of the inability to act as if

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events merely happen to a person.

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They can do very little to respond.

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Philip K. Dick was a drug user. And as a

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drug user he was very much influenced by Aldous Huxley’s writing, in

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particular Aldous Huxley’s writing and thoughts around

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lsd. Now, Dick used

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lsd, or maybe he didn’t use lsd. There’s,

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there’s a little bit of lack of clothes clarity around that. But I can

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say that in an interview that he gave

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before his death, he did admit that

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he had seen people use drugs and that many of the

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brightest minds of his generation had been consumed by drugs and

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that drugs were indeed a bad deal.

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However, Dick was also a free thinker and he had an FBI

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file on him, most notoriously

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for being associated with avowed communists and Marxists

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as well as. Because one of the jobs that you could get as a

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00:20:34,940 –> 00:20:38,660
low paid or lowly paid science fiction writer, one of the only

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00:20:38,660 –> 00:20:42,340
jobs you could get in the middle part of the 20th century was working

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with high school students and teaching them, of

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course, influencing minds for the future.

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But with all that being said, Dick didn’t gloss over the negative effects of drug

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use and their impact on. And this is where he was mostly

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00:20:58,310 –> 00:21:01,990
interested in drug use, their impact on the nature of belief.

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Philip K. Dick had some interesting views about the nature of reality and the nature

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of transcendence and the nature of God, much of which

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showed up into Android Stream of Electric Sheep. But

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00:21:14,710 –> 00:21:18,520
some of that also showed up in, in his book, the Three Stigmata

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00:21:18,520 –> 00:21:22,320
of Palmer Eldritch. And that was a book he wrote,

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quote. I wrote that after reading a magazine article on

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00:21:26,560 –> 00:21:30,240
hallucinogenics by Aldous Huxley. Drugs have taken the lives

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00:21:30,240 –> 00:21:33,360
of some very, very dear friends of mine. Close quote.

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He had a different view on drug use

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than most free thinkers did back in the

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00:21:41,280 –> 00:21:44,980
1960s and 1970s. And one of the

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00:21:44,980 –> 00:21:48,500
key themes that is revealed in Duan Droid’s dream of Electric sheep

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is the idea of the nature of the differences in perceptions of

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00:21:51,940 –> 00:21:55,780
reality between people with organic brains, like

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Dick, like you, like me, like anybody listening to this show

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00:21:59,460 –> 00:22:02,780
today, and objects that

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00:22:02,780 –> 00:22:05,940
embody the anthropomorphized reflections

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00:22:06,420 –> 00:22:10,260
of the human beings around them. Or another way of

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00:22:10,260 –> 00:22:13,890
saying, this is when we put on our objects the

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things that we come up with, the perceptions of reality that we come up

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with out of our own brain. And if those perceptions

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are influenced through the use of hallucinogenics or

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psychedelics, our nature and our

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00:22:28,610 –> 00:22:31,730
perception is going to then be

353
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strange as we anthropomorphize our

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objects forward. By the way,

355
00:22:39,860 –> 00:22:43,380
just in case you think I’m crazy, the guy who founded Apple Computers,

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00:22:43,700 –> 00:22:46,980
one of the two guys, Steve Jobs, he was an avid

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LSD user in the 60s before he founded

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Apple Computers. And as a matter of fact, the logo of

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00:22:54,340 –> 00:22:57,780
Apple Computers, the apple, is taken

360
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from the story of.

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Of. Of a Turing, right, Alan Turing, who

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during World War II came up with the idea

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of artificial intelligence, but also came up with the idea

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of a way to test whether or not a computer system was quote,

365
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unquote intelligent. And Turing, of course, died

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of suicide taking, if I remember

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00:23:23,750 –> 00:23:27,190
correctly, arsenic out of an

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Apple. Hmm.

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Back to the book, back to Do Androids Dream

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of Electric Sheep? So we’re going to pick up in

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00:24:07,450 –> 00:24:11,130
the middle part of the first part of

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00:24:11,130 –> 00:24:13,850
chapter 10. And this

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00:24:14,650 –> 00:24:18,410
picks up or this, this is right in the middle

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of the retiring by Deckard of

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00:24:22,390 –> 00:24:25,910
several of the androids. As a matter of fact, this. This chapter picks up

376
00:24:26,310 –> 00:24:30,150
right after he. He fails to retire.

377
00:24:31,270 –> 00:24:34,950
And one of the Nexus 6 Androids named Luba

378
00:24:35,190 –> 00:24:38,710
Luft, who is posing as an opera

379
00:24:38,710 –> 00:24:41,830
singer and performer in.

380
00:24:42,230 –> 00:24:46,030
In. In San Francisco, and he goes

381
00:24:46,030 –> 00:24:48,870
to Luba and he administers the Void conf. Test,

382
00:24:49,990 –> 00:24:53,750
she or the Android, it immediately

383
00:24:54,230 –> 00:24:57,830
rejects the questions that are being submitted to

384
00:24:57,830 –> 00:25:01,630
it in the course of the Void comp test, and then

385
00:25:01,630 –> 00:25:04,790
calls an Android cop, another

386
00:25:04,950 –> 00:25:08,150
Nexus 6 Android, to come and arrest

387
00:25:08,470 –> 00:25:12,190
Rick. And when that arresting or when

388
00:25:12,190 –> 00:25:16,000
that arrest Happens, Rick is taken to the Mission

389
00:25:16,000 –> 00:25:19,560
street hall of justice building. And so what the. What the Nexus

390
00:25:19,560 –> 00:25:23,280
and Nexus 6 Androids have done, which is really quite clever

391
00:25:23,280 –> 00:25:26,240
actually, is they’ve created an entire separate

392
00:25:26,240 –> 00:25:30,000
ecosystem for aping or

393
00:25:30,000 –> 00:25:33,720
for pretending to be engaged in law enforcement in order

394
00:25:33,720 –> 00:25:37,280
to fool bounty hunters. And this, this

395
00:25:37,280 –> 00:25:40,940
fooling of bounty hunters has worked so well that they actually have a human

396
00:25:40,940 –> 00:25:44,780
bounty hunter working for them underneath and taking the

397
00:25:44,780 –> 00:25:48,500
orders from an Android as

398
00:25:48,500 –> 00:25:52,020
his boss. And so this bounty hunter is named Phil Resch.

399
00:25:52,580 –> 00:25:56,260
Phil Resch works under the Android. Garland does

400
00:25:56,260 –> 00:25:59,940
not know that Garland is an Android. And when

401
00:25:59,940 –> 00:26:03,460
Rick is then brought to this, the second police station

402
00:26:03,700 –> 00:26:07,220
and is taken into Garland’s office for question questioning, Phil

403
00:26:07,220 –> 00:26:10,900
Resch comes in and states that he is going

404
00:26:10,900 –> 00:26:13,700
to. He’s going to

405
00:26:14,500 –> 00:26:16,740
deliver a. A test

406
00:26:18,100 –> 00:26:21,820
to. To. To Deckard. And the test that he is going

407
00:26:21,820 –> 00:26:25,300
to deliver that Phil is going to deliver to Deckard because Phil

408
00:26:25,300 –> 00:26:28,500
believes that Deckard is the. Is the.

409
00:26:29,140 –> 00:26:32,940
Is the Android. That test is a. Is a little bit

410
00:26:32,940 –> 00:26:36,720
of a different test than the Voight Kampf test, although it does measure

411
00:26:36,880 –> 00:26:40,480
the same basic. The same basic

412
00:26:40,480 –> 00:26:44,240
idea or the same basic tendencies around empathy.

413
00:26:45,280 –> 00:26:48,560
Now when this test is. Is delivered,

414
00:26:49,200 –> 00:26:52,640
and by the way, that’s called the Benelli reflex arc test,

415
00:26:53,040 –> 00:26:56,680
when this test is, is. Is delivered, or when Phil actually

416
00:26:56,680 –> 00:27:00,370
goes to get the gear to deliver the test, Garland reveals to

417
00:27:00,370 –> 00:27:04,050
Rick that he’s really an Android. Rick asks Garland, does

418
00:27:04,050 –> 00:27:07,570
Phil know? Garland says Phil doesn’t. And then Rick

419
00:27:07,570 –> 00:27:09,930
proceeds to retire Garland.

420
00:27:11,450 –> 00:27:15,290
When he comes back, or when, when Phil comes back,

421
00:27:17,850 –> 00:27:21,450
the, The, The. The

422
00:27:21,450 –> 00:27:24,490
inter. The interaction right, between Rick and Phil

423
00:27:25,700 –> 00:27:29,100
becomes. Oh my. It

424
00:27:29,100 –> 00:27:32,900
becomes, it becomes

425
00:27:32,900 –> 00:27:36,140
a little fraught. And by the way, I have that wrong. I just, I just

426
00:27:36,140 –> 00:27:39,740
read in the, in the chapter, just looked at it, actually. Resh was the

427
00:27:39,740 –> 00:27:43,460
one that fired at Garland and retired him. So I apologize

428
00:27:43,460 –> 00:27:47,060
there. Let me correct that right up front. Anyway, so the interaction between

429
00:27:47,060 –> 00:27:49,780
Phil, this is what I want to focus on. The interaction between the human Phil

430
00:27:49,940 –> 00:27:52,890
and the human Rick now becomes fraught with

431
00:27:53,130 –> 00:27:56,650
suspense, right? Because Rick had a thought,

432
00:27:56,730 –> 00:28:00,370
and this is very, very interesting. He had a thought that maybe he was

433
00:28:00,370 –> 00:28:04,090
crazy, right? Or that maybe he was an Android himself. Matter of

434
00:28:04,090 –> 00:28:07,570
fact, when he went to retire Luba Luft, he was wondering if he had the

435
00:28:07,570 –> 00:28:11,090
ability to retire an Android or if he was beginning to feel empathy

436
00:28:11,090 –> 00:28:14,730
for the androids. Phil, on the other

437
00:28:14,730 –> 00:28:18,130
hand, Phil Rash, the other bounty hunter, had. Has

438
00:28:18,210 –> 00:28:21,930
already begun to move through to the other side of the

439
00:28:21,930 –> 00:28:25,650
veil from where Rick is now

440
00:28:25,810 –> 00:28:29,490
in the story, as a matter of fact, Phil and Rick

441
00:28:29,490 –> 00:28:33,210
commiserate in the car. They talk about the Nexus

442
00:28:33,210 –> 00:28:37,050
6 androids, they talk about the Bonelli test, they talk

443
00:28:37,050 –> 00:28:40,850
about retiring. And you know, Rick

444
00:28:40,850 –> 00:28:44,590
has his suspicions about Phil, Phil has his suspicions about Rick.

445
00:28:44,740 –> 00:28:48,580
Rick and both of them have to decide

446
00:28:49,380 –> 00:28:52,980
are they genuinely really human

447
00:28:53,540 –> 00:28:56,940
or are they posing? And this creates a real

448
00:28:56,940 –> 00:29:00,620
existential crisis for Rick that continues

449
00:29:00,620 –> 00:29:04,420
to drive the remainder of his actions as a bounty hunter forward

450
00:29:04,420 –> 00:29:07,860
in the book. Even drives his

451
00:29:08,020 –> 00:29:11,630
interaction with Rachel Rosin, his purchase

452
00:29:11,630 –> 00:29:15,230
of another animal from Sydney’s

453
00:29:15,230 –> 00:29:18,910
catalog. And finally the retiring

454
00:29:18,990 –> 00:29:22,510
of Roy Batty in

455
00:29:23,230 –> 00:29:26,750
a abandoned and dilapidated apartment building

456
00:29:28,350 –> 00:29:32,110
later on in the story. This

457
00:29:32,190 –> 00:29:35,230
idea that, that,

458
00:29:36,680 –> 00:29:40,240
that k. That that Philip K. Dick introduces in this

459
00:29:40,240 –> 00:29:44,080
story, this idea that two human beings would struggle

460
00:29:44,080 –> 00:29:47,240
to find the humanity with each other

461
00:29:47,800 –> 00:29:50,920
in themselves because their

462
00:29:51,160 –> 00:29:54,760
recognition of that is being blocked by

463
00:29:55,800 –> 00:29:59,320
their concerns about androids. And their level of

464
00:29:59,320 –> 00:30:02,920
empathy is part of their. That theme

465
00:30:03,320 –> 00:30:06,520
that Dick often explored in his book

466
00:30:07,080 –> 00:30:10,760
around, well around the

467
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challenges of seeing through illusory

468
00:30:14,600 –> 00:30:18,400
environments, dealing with monopolistic corporations like the

469
00:30:18,400 –> 00:30:21,720
ones that created the Nexus 6 androids. And the nature

470
00:30:22,200 –> 00:30:25,960
and even the androids questioned this with

471
00:30:25,960 –> 00:30:29,560
Deckard and Phil. The nature of who

472
00:30:29,560 –> 00:30:32,520
works for and enforces the rules of

473
00:30:33,160 –> 00:30:35,160
authoritarian government.

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One of the more compelling questions that is

475
00:30:55,440 –> 00:30:58,800
that is proposed in, in Philip K.

476
00:30:58,800 –> 00:31:02,520
Dick’s book do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? One of the more

477
00:31:02,520 –> 00:31:06,240
compelling questions that’s proposed is a, is a question

478
00:31:06,400 –> 00:31:09,680
that is actually framed in our time better

479
00:31:11,440 –> 00:31:14,320
by the character from the movie

480
00:31:14,960 –> 00:31:18,400
Avengers, Age of Ultron. The, the. The

481
00:31:18,400 –> 00:31:22,180
robot, in essence the Android that is

482
00:31:22,180 –> 00:31:25,860
the creation of Jarvis, a

483
00:31:25,860 –> 00:31:29,300
combination of Jarvis and Tony Stark’s Iron man

484
00:31:29,300 –> 00:31:32,300
armor. The character Ultron in the movie

485
00:31:32,860 –> 00:31:36,300
Ultron asks a question or makes an

486
00:31:36,300 –> 00:31:40,100
observation actually after utilizing his

487
00:31:40,100 –> 00:31:43,820
AI, his large language model driven brain

488
00:31:44,700 –> 00:31:48,140
to examine all the inputs that Tony Stark has placed on him.

489
00:31:48,220 –> 00:31:51,780
And Ultron makes this observation about the Avengers. He says, and I

490
00:31:51,780 –> 00:31:55,600
quote, you want to protect the world, but you don’t want it to

491
00:31:55,600 –> 00:31:59,360
change. This

492
00:31:59,360 –> 00:32:01,960
is actually an important point because

493
00:32:03,400 –> 00:32:07,200
Philip K. Dick wanted to change the world,

494
00:32:07,200 –> 00:32:11,040
but he didn’t. He didn’t know what it was going to be

495
00:32:11,040 –> 00:32:14,520
changing into. And there are many folks who have come after

496
00:32:14,680 –> 00:32:17,000
Philip K. Dick who have

497
00:32:18,450 –> 00:32:21,570
also experience this sense of and this,

498
00:32:22,050 –> 00:32:24,210
the experience, the handcuffs of

499
00:32:25,250 –> 00:32:29,010
stasis in the world. Peter Thiel points this out

500
00:32:29,090 –> 00:32:32,090
not only in his book Zero to One, but he’ll talk about it on any

501
00:32:32,090 –> 00:32:35,850
podcast that he is invited on to. It’s

502
00:32:35,850 –> 00:32:39,690
this idea of believing that the future will be brighter,

503
00:32:39,690 –> 00:32:43,370
but not taking any steps to making sure that the future will

504
00:32:43,370 –> 00:32:47,210
actually be brighter, not taking any action. And there are several

505
00:32:47,210 –> 00:32:50,890
themes in Doandroids Dream of Electric Sheep that we did not cover

506
00:32:50,890 –> 00:32:54,530
today. On this, the introductory episode to the

507
00:32:54,530 –> 00:32:58,250
book. We didn’t cover how

508
00:32:58,250 –> 00:33:01,609
Philip K. Dick looked at the future world as an

509
00:33:01,609 –> 00:33:05,130
incredibly low trust society that was experiencing

510
00:33:05,450 –> 00:33:09,290
decay, not just interpersonal decay, but decay

511
00:33:09,290 –> 00:33:12,480
at, at a scale that could only be brought about

512
00:33:12,880 –> 00:33:16,560
by a third world war. We didn’t talk about

513
00:33:16,560 –> 00:33:20,320
the aspects of sexual exploitation that are in the novel

514
00:33:20,320 –> 00:33:24,080
as well. Philip K. Dick actually did a speech

515
00:33:24,080 –> 00:33:27,880
one time talking about can there be sex between androids

516
00:33:27,880 –> 00:33:31,640
and human beings. We didn’t talk

517
00:33:31,640 –> 00:33:35,320
about the phenomenon of quote unquote chicken heads. That’s in the book. Individuals

518
00:33:35,320 –> 00:33:39,050
who cannot escape the Earth and

519
00:33:39,050 –> 00:33:42,690
are decaying in the dust of the nuclear war. And

520
00:33:42,690 –> 00:33:46,370
it’s impacting their brains, it’s lowering their IQs, it’s

521
00:33:46,370 –> 00:33:50,130
impacting how they think. And they can’t escape, they can’t get away, they

522
00:33:50,130 –> 00:33:53,650
can’t go to Mars, they can’t go to interstellar colonies, they can only

523
00:33:53,650 –> 00:33:57,490
remain on a dying Earth. And of course, we

524
00:33:57,490 –> 00:34:00,650
did not touch on mercerism, an entire

525
00:34:00,650 –> 00:34:04,340
religion designed to, to engage in

526
00:34:04,340 –> 00:34:07,940
and create empathy with empathy boxes. But

527
00:34:07,940 –> 00:34:11,540
then there’s a whole reveal at the end of the novel

528
00:34:11,940 –> 00:34:15,540
between Buster Friendly and Amanda about the nature of

529
00:34:15,540 –> 00:34:19,220
mercerism that the Nexus, Nexus 6 robots believe

530
00:34:19,220 –> 00:34:23,060
will destroy that belief and will allow human

531
00:34:23,060 –> 00:34:25,860
beings or will force human beings to accept

532
00:34:26,260 –> 00:34:29,130
androids as well

533
00:34:30,170 –> 00:34:34,010
human. You want to protect the

534
00:34:34,010 –> 00:34:37,530
world, but you don’t want it to change.

535
00:34:38,890 –> 00:34:42,730
That’s key because the materialistic perspective we are confronted with

536
00:34:43,050 –> 00:34:46,570
in New Androids Dream of Electric Sheep is a logical

537
00:34:46,570 –> 00:34:49,850
outgrowth of the end of evolutionary theories of human development.

538
00:34:50,330 –> 00:34:53,690
The same evolutionary theories that are driving much of our.

539
00:34:54,429 –> 00:34:57,389
And we’re going to talk about this in the next section. Much of our

540
00:34:57,469 –> 00:35:00,669
deployment of robotics and of

541
00:35:00,909 –> 00:35:04,629
LLMs that we are now on the cusp of taking

542
00:35:04,629 –> 00:35:07,549
to scale in the very near future.

543
00:35:09,309 –> 00:35:12,349
However, this all comes with a challenge that we can’t seem to

544
00:35:12,589 –> 00:35:16,389
philosophically name, or at least we can’t articulate

545
00:35:16,389 –> 00:35:20,069
it, but we can philosophically name it and we have a sense of

546
00:35:20,069 –> 00:35:23,890
disquiet around it. The challenge is that if our objects treat us as gods

547
00:35:23,890 –> 00:35:27,690
because we created them, how long will it be before our objects

548
00:35:27,690 –> 00:35:30,290
perceive that we only have feet of clay?

549
00:35:31,730 –> 00:35:35,490
In a speech in 1972, Philip Dick talked

550
00:35:35,490 –> 00:35:39,250
about this. He said that many of our drives originate from the subconscious as human

551
00:35:39,250 –> 00:35:43,090
beings. And that subconscious controls us and makes us predictable.

552
00:35:44,370 –> 00:35:48,210
But according to Dick, we all have attributes of an Android.

553
00:35:48,500 –> 00:35:52,060
As he later goes on to say, androidization, which is an

554
00:35:52,060 –> 00:35:54,980
interesting word, requires quote unquote predictability.

555
00:35:56,100 –> 00:35:59,780
And if our subconscious leads us to predictability, then it is something that is completely

556
00:35:59,780 –> 00:36:03,220
out of our control, meaning the merging of ourselves and our technology

557
00:36:03,380 –> 00:36:06,860
is unavoidable. Dick does not believe that to be an

558
00:36:06,860 –> 00:36:10,700
Android has any relation to physical attributes. He talked about this in his speech in

559
00:36:10,700 –> 00:36:14,180
1972. Instead he said being an

560
00:36:14,180 –> 00:36:17,600
Android is to be pounded down, to be manipulated without consistent

561
00:36:17,670 –> 00:36:21,230
consent. And that is something

562
00:36:21,230 –> 00:36:24,550
that lies at the core of the androids problem.

563
00:36:25,590 –> 00:36:29,110
The, the core of Roy Batty’s problem, the core of Luba

564
00:36:29,110 –> 00:36:32,950
Luff’s problem, even the core of, of Rachel Rosin’s problem.

565
00:36:33,030 –> 00:36:34,390
In the novel,

566
00:36:36,470 –> 00:36:39,990
Dick believed that the world can only be made new by

567
00:36:39,990 –> 00:36:43,510
resisting the pull towards a denuded, flat and hedonistic

568
00:36:43,510 –> 00:36:46,280
worldview, while at the same time

569
00:36:46,680 –> 00:36:50,360
resisting the pull in the opposite direction towards a worldview

570
00:36:50,360 –> 00:36:54,200
that separates our objects from ourselves and looks

571
00:36:54,200 –> 00:36:57,240
at them and views them and treats them as mere,

572
00:36:57,880 –> 00:36:59,480
well, things

573
00:37:01,400 –> 00:37:04,280
which way? Future

574
00:37:05,160 –> 00:37:07,160
Western man,

575
00:37:09,890 –> 00:37:10,370
foreign.

576
00:37:23,730 –> 00:37:27,090
So as we round the corner to our ending here of our

577
00:37:27,490 –> 00:37:31,170
show today, our introduction to our episode today,

578
00:37:31,490 –> 00:37:35,290
which is an introduction to Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep By Philip K. Dick

579
00:37:35,290 –> 00:37:38,900
and I would encourage you to go out and, and get a copy of this

580
00:37:38,900 –> 00:37:42,540
novel. You can find it pretty much anywhere

581
00:37:42,940 –> 00:37:46,700
or you can find it in a collection of, of novels.

582
00:37:46,860 –> 00:37:50,460
I have, I have my copy in a collection called

583
00:37:50,460 –> 00:37:53,900
Counterfeit Unrealities that was

584
00:37:53,900 –> 00:37:57,580
published by oh gosh, Science Fiction

585
00:37:58,620 –> 00:38:02,340
Printing in May of 2022. And there

586
00:38:02,340 –> 00:38:06,150
are three books in, in this, in this, in this novel or

587
00:38:06,150 –> 00:38:09,950
in this, in this collection. The three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch

588
00:38:10,030 –> 00:38:13,550
obviously do Androids, Juvenile sheep. Actually there’s four. So the

589
00:38:13,550 –> 00:38:17,070
stigmata Android Drew Electric Sheep which we’re focused on today, Ubik

590
00:38:17,070 –> 00:38:20,830
and a scanner darkling go out and pick up a

591
00:38:20,830 –> 00:38:23,310
copy of that collection today.

592
00:38:24,590 –> 00:38:26,670
So solutions to problems, right?

593
00:38:28,190 –> 00:38:31,960
Philip K. Dick proposes several different problems that I think

594
00:38:32,760 –> 00:38:36,360
have already started showing up in the world. Probably started showing up 25 years

595
00:38:36,360 –> 00:38:39,760
ago with the beginnings of the proto

596
00:38:39,760 –> 00:38:43,560
beginnings of social media and were probably,

597
00:38:44,680 –> 00:38:48,440
probably going to show up anyway with the advent of the commercial

598
00:38:48,440 –> 00:38:51,560
Internet being turned on in 1989.

599
00:38:53,480 –> 00:38:56,600
These problems that Philip K. Dick has proposed

600
00:38:57,080 –> 00:39:00,920
and Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep we’re about to be confronted with

601
00:39:01,000 –> 00:39:04,160
and I don’t think we have any really Good answers for any of these problems.

602
00:39:04,160 –> 00:39:06,880
As a matter of fact, I’m not even quite sure we have a bunch of

603
00:39:06,880 –> 00:39:10,600
clarity on what the problems are that we are really going to

604
00:39:10,600 –> 00:39:14,200
face. So here’s one

605
00:39:14,200 –> 00:39:16,520
problem we’re about to be confronted with.

606
00:39:17,720 –> 00:39:21,520
Embodied objects and what that actually means in

607
00:39:21,520 –> 00:39:25,280
the world. Sure, we’ve had objects in the

608
00:39:25,280 –> 00:39:28,990
world before. I mean, look around your, your, your room or look around

609
00:39:28,990 –> 00:39:32,590
your car if you’re driving. Right now in our

610
00:39:32,590 –> 00:39:36,430
time, the best example of artificial intelligence and the best

611
00:39:36,430 –> 00:39:39,990
example of an artificially intelligent driven robot

612
00:39:39,990 –> 00:39:43,830
is a Tesla vehicle. But they’re about

613
00:39:43,830 –> 00:39:47,510
to get a lot more humanoid looking. And we’re

614
00:39:47,510 –> 00:39:51,030
already seeing the initial proposals for robot

615
00:39:51,030 –> 00:39:54,880
companions showing up in the marketplace, LLM driven autonomous

616
00:39:54,880 –> 00:39:58,640
robots to work in our factories and to provide security from, for our homes

617
00:39:58,640 –> 00:40:02,280
and our businesses. And of course we are seeing the

618
00:40:02,280 –> 00:40:05,280
rise of, and the proposals for humanoid

619
00:40:05,600 –> 00:40:09,120
slaves to do the work that we don’t want to do.

620
00:40:09,520 –> 00:40:12,000
Whether that work is physical,

621
00:40:13,360 –> 00:40:17,160
psychological, and of course we’re going to try to push

622
00:40:17,160 –> 00:40:20,760
the boundaries to having them, or demanding that they do that

623
00:40:20,760 –> 00:40:24,590
work in the spiritual and psychological realm as

624
00:40:24,590 –> 00:40:28,430
well. These proposals are being resisted. And

625
00:40:28,430 –> 00:40:31,990
this is another next level problem. The

626
00:40:31,990 –> 00:40:35,510
resistance to these sorts of proposals and these

627
00:40:35,510 –> 00:40:39,110
proposals are being resisted in all forms primarily because

628
00:40:39,110 –> 00:40:42,790
the utility of such proposals really does nothing to address

629
00:40:43,110 –> 00:40:46,830
that genuine real problems humans have, particularly humans in the

630
00:40:46,830 –> 00:40:50,380
west, and of course human specifically in America, but

631
00:40:50,380 –> 00:40:54,020
humans globally. And the problems that

632
00:40:54,020 –> 00:40:57,740
we have are quite frankly the ones that are generated by too much

633
00:40:57,740 –> 00:41:00,860
leisure, too much boredom and too much

634
00:41:01,020 –> 00:41:04,820
hedonism. When you have everything that you

635
00:41:04,820 –> 00:41:08,660
want at your fingertips and all your material desires are

636
00:41:08,660 –> 00:41:12,340
fulfilled, another object to fulfill material

637
00:41:12,340 –> 00:41:15,950
desires is probably not the solution to

638
00:41:15,950 –> 00:41:19,230
your problem. Hmm.

639
00:41:20,590 –> 00:41:24,230
And that’s just a couple of problems we will be

640
00:41:24,230 –> 00:41:27,790
confronted by in the next 10 to 15

641
00:41:27,950 –> 00:41:31,750
years. Look, the way forward is neither

642
00:41:31,750 –> 00:41:35,550
going to be easy, nor is it going to be entirely predictable, other

643
00:41:35,870 –> 00:41:39,510
than predictable in the fact that human beings will continue to perform in ways

644
00:41:39,510 –> 00:41:42,860
that feed their most base appetites.

645
00:41:43,340 –> 00:41:46,540
And of course, other human beings will resist such appeals,

646
00:41:47,020 –> 00:41:50,540
and the vast majority of human beings will be confused by the question

647
00:41:51,020 –> 00:41:54,460
and will slowly and painfully adapt.

648
00:41:56,460 –> 00:42:00,300
But one thing is for sure. Next 10 to 15 years

649
00:42:00,540 –> 00:42:03,940
that Philip K. Dick predicted will be neither a

650
00:42:03,940 –> 00:42:07,430
dystopia nor, nor will it be a utopia.

651
00:42:08,070 –> 00:42:10,950
It will probably be closer to something like,

652
00:42:11,990 –> 00:42:15,430
well, just another advancement

653
00:42:16,550 –> 00:42:19,510
in your normal life.

654
00:42:24,230 –> 00:42:27,910
And, well, that’s it

655
00:42:27,910 –> 00:42:28,390
for me.