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CONVERSATION LESSON

Okie dokie. Aaron Campbell. How you doing?

Daniel D Douglas III.

How’d you know I was the third?

You’re the third. You’re always the third.

Okay. Cheating death. We’re talking about cheating death.

Yeah. Cheating death. Cheating the grim reaper.

You know a lot about cheating.

No. I know nothing about cheating.

You dirty cheater.

No. I am not a cheater. I think you’re the cheater.

But cheating death, on the other hand.

That’s not such a bad thing. Cheating death.

Cheating the grim reaper.

Yeah. I mean, if you cheat death, maybe you get a new lease on life.

Okay. What do you got?

What do I got?

You got some story about cheating death? I’ve heard that before.

Not really. I’ve never-

You told me that story-

No. I’ve never cheated death. I’ve never cheated it.

Oh, come on.

I mean, I’ve been in situations where I thought I might die but does that qualify as cheating death? I don’t know. Maybe.

I don’t know. It’s interesting idea, cheating death. It’s as if you know, you owe it to die.

Oh.

That’s what you’re supposed to do.

Okay. No. I’ve never cheated death then.

Okay.

Yeah. I’ve been in some hairy situations.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Like what?

Well, I’ve been at sea a few times in big storms where I thought the boat might capsize and I was pretty scared about that. I was once in a situation where some violence occurred but I left before it happened. Well, then it could be cheated death. I don’t know.

With your tail tucked between your legs?

My tail tucked between my legs, quivering and shaking in fear. Some-thing like that.

Smart man. Better safe than sorry.

Better safe than sorry. How ‘bout you? Have you ever cheated death?

Have I ever cheated death? Well, I’ve almost drowned but I’ve told you that story so many times.

That’s right. We’ve heard that before. Yeah. Yeah.

Then, I’m not going to tell that again.

I think we’ve heard my cheated death stories before too.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Well, actually I’ve almost drowned three times.

Oh really.

I haven’t told you about the other two times.

I see. Okay.

They’ve both involved drinking and swimming in large bodies of water-

That’s not a good combination.

-at young ages. Yeah. I wouldn’t recommend it.

Yeah. Yeah. As a youngster, I’ve done many risky things that could’ve led to more serious consequences.

Yeah.

I consider myself lucky.

Yeah.

Yeah. I guess a lot of young people do risky things-

Right.

-without thinking about what the consequences are.

Right.

Anyway, one of the most intriguing aspects of the story this month that I thought was the first story about the mountain climbers.

Right. Simpson and Yates.

Yeah because you know, sometimes either for entertainment or for just intellectual curiosity, we give ourselves these hypo-thetical situations. What would you do in this kind of situ-ation?

Right.

This is an actual, real situation that would otherwise be a hypothetical situation. What would you do if you were being dragged to your death because your friend were pulling you down, you know, the weight of your friend were pulling you to death, would you cut the rope?

Or if you’re just really hungry and you wanted to get up to the top to eat?

Well, that’s a different question. I didn’t really have that one in mind.

That’s pretty much the same situation.

That’s not exactly the same situation, Dan.

Oh, okay. How’s it different?

Well, I mean, you want to live. The other choice is death. It’s not about food.

You got to eat. A man’s got to eat.

No. It’s not about food but here’s what I think is interesting about it.

Okay.

It’s one thing to ask yourself the question, “Would you cut the rope and let your friend go in order to save your own life,” and for some people that’s a difficult decision but I think logi-cally-

Oh, come on. Who’s had a difficult decision before?

Well, people who love their friends. They don’t want to let their friend go. It might be difficult to do and maybe so difficult that the person postpones the decision until it’s too late and they both fall to their deaths.

I wouldn’t have that problem. Don’t worry.

Especially if it were me, right? You would just let me go right away very quickly.

Don’t worry. I would know what you wanted. You wanted me to get up to the top and get my grub on.

Okay. Want to get your grub on. I get it. I get it but what if that were your … I was think about this a lot. What if it-

What if that was my hamster? Or your hamster?

No. No. Not the hamster. I’m talking about someone who had their whole life in front of them.

Oh, yeah. Like a kid.

Who depended on you for their own life, like a child or a young teen-ager and it was your daughter or your son.

Right.

Would you still as easily cut that rope and I feel like I don’t know how to answer that question. Would you be able to live with yourself if you knew that you cut the rope that led to your daughter’s death? I would almost prefer death in a way.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Because who knows. Maybe you can hang on.

Yeah. Maybe. Maybe a miracle will happen. Maybe something will change.

Well, you know, apparently what little I know of this story, apparently the Yates got a lot of flack-

Really?

-for this and that’s the reason that Simpson wrote a book to kind of de-fend him.

I see.

To tell the story that was what he claims was the main impetus for tell-ing the story, the tale.

That’s pretty cool of Simpson to do.

Yeah but it’s like, okay. Why was he … I’m sure Yates told the story as it happened but yet he was still, you know, people were calling him out or maybe they were saying, “Well, maybe he could’ve hung on.”

Right.

Yeah. I mean, there is always that chance, though, I guess you know. If you’re slipping, you’re slipping.

Yeah but it reminds me of that website where they give you a test of what you would do in various situations. If a driverless car were coming down the road, because they have to pro-gram in these type of decisions for driverless cars be-cause driverless cars maybe in certain situations where the car needs to choose between killing the occupants of the car or killing people who are outside the car that are going to be hit.

Right.

The option is you either hit those people who are walking across the street or you hit a large truck or a bus or a wall and kill the occupants inside. How do you choose? They give you various situations of what to do and what not to do.

You mean how the computer is programed to choose.

Should act in that situation. Yeah.

Yeah, okay.

This is like their research onto what people think how the computer should make those decisions.

Right. Right. Well, yeah. People want the car to defend them at all costs, right?

I most cases but it’s also making decisions between if a fat person were walking across the road and an athlete were walking across the road and you only could choose between one or the other, which one would you choose and it forces you to make those types of decisions. Even though you may think, “Well, they’re both equal in my mind,” you still have to make a choice because that’s the situation you’re given. The car has to make a choice between them. It calls into question your values and it’s quite interesting. Have you seen this website before?

No.

We’ll put a link in the PDF or on the website.

Right.

Yeah. It’s really interesting.

What is the car programed to do?

Well, the car isn’t programed to do anything at this point. These are researchers trying to figure out how to program the car and what they’re doing is they’re basically crowdsourcing people all over the world to make these kind of decisions so that they can get a better idea of what the best thing to do is when they program that computer, based on peo-ple’s responses to this quiz. Yeah. It’s quite interesting.

Anyway, this story reminded me of that.

Did you find anything interesting about yourself when you took these tests?

Not really. I mean, it did force me to make some decisions that I was quite uncomfortable with-

Yeah.

-that didn’t make any sense to me. I mean, in my eyes there is no qualitative difference between, on the inside in terms of human value, between an athlete and someone who’s not in shape. To me, they’re both equally valuable human be-ings.

I mean, that just doesn’t even seem like a question that a computer would be assessing. It’s like a computer’s assessing-

No. Well, no, they would. I mean, if they have the ability to sense what data is out there. Yeah.

Well, actually maybe they could say, “Oh. This person is more likely to take a hit and survive.”

Possibly and they do it with different ages, with different genders. They look at many, many different … different occupa-tions, like the difference between a doctor and let’s say, a factory worker or something like that. It forces you to make all these judgements even though … because in a split second, what would you do if you were the driver of that car? You’d have to make a split second decision and you don’t have time to think about it.

Well, I mean, yeah-

The computer will need to do the same thing. Yeah.

I think people just hit the brake and hope for the best.

Perhaps. I don’t know. Maybe that’s the end result of this. I don’t know.

Miracle Mike, you ever hear about him?

Oh, the chicken.

Yeah.

No. I’ve never heard about him until I heard this story. No.

That poor chicken.

I know. What bothers me about the story is, not so much that they were cutting chickens heads off, because that’s often how chickens are killed for food but the fact that they kept the chicken alive. I mean, what kind of life is it when you need to be force feed through your neck and you have no eyes, no nose, no mouth. You cannot really live a decent life.

It sounds horrible.

Yeah.

I mean, you know, whose anybody to say that this life isn’t worth living because it looks horrible to us.

Yeah.

What do you call those legal contracts that you can fill out to say at what point you want to not be resuscitated or what point, if you’re in a serious medical condition and your body is not able to carry on by itself and maybe you got some-thing to fill your lungs with or to make your heart beat or to feed you.

There is a name for those documents but it’s not coming to the tip of my tongue right now but it is a legal document. It’s like a living will or something like that.

Yes.

Is that what it is?

A living will. There you go.

Is that what it is?

Yeah.

Okay.

My mother wanted to fill one of those out with me and we’re filling it out and I said, “Okay. What about if you are,” and I was reading through this list. I said, “What about if your brain dead?” She said, “Pull the plug,” and I said, “What about if you cannot breathe on your own?” “Pull the plug.”

Pull the plug.

I said, “What if your heart needs some-” “Pull the plug.”

She just kept saying, “Pull the plug.”

Then, she started making up her own. She was like, “If I cannot walk re-ally good, pull the plug.” I was like, “That’s not an option.”

“If I cannot get out of bed in the morning, pull the plug.” There is no plug. You haven’t even been on life support yet.

If I got some wrinkles under my eyes, pull the plug.

Pull that plug, so she’s ready. She’s ready.

My mother’s got really low tolerance for I guess, a low quality of life.

Low quality of life, right?

Yeah.

Yeah.

Have you thought about whether you would want to be kept living if you’re brain dead?

No. If I were brain dead, there’d be no point. I mean, I’m not that at-tached to life.

But you might not be. It might just look like you’re brain dead.

Yeah, but even then, like it’s not a big deal to me. It’s not. Just pull the plug. It’s not a big deal. I mean, don’t get me wrong. I en-joy life a lot.

Life’s pretty good.

As it is now, yeah.

Life’s pretty good my friend.

Yes. Yes, it is.

Let’s not forget that.

It is pretty good, but we’re lucky to say that. It’s not so good for eve-rybody.

Yes.

I feel very fortunate and if I were in a situation where I couldn’t use my brain, I mean, would I even know that I exist? I don’t know.

Yeah.

I mean, it doesn’t matter to me at that point.

Yeah.

Yeah. Just pull the plug.

Yeah.

Life goes on. Yeah.

Yeah. Miracle Mike, you know, they’re taking him from TV show to TV show and making him run.

Poor chicken.

I mean, we got an expression to run around with your head-

Yeah. Run around like a chicken with your head cut off. Right.

Like a chicken with your head cut off. Right, so I guess that’s a normal thing for a short amount of time. Maybe a minute.

Yeah. Usually 20 seconds, maybe 30 seconds at most.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah, but not five years or whatever crazy amount that was.

Yeah. That was too much. Yeah, but how about this other guy, Dimitri, this millionaire Russian who wants to create the technol-ogy to transfer human consciousness to a computer or to some sort of digital existence.

Right. You know, he’s a Russian guy. I don’t know where he’s based. If he’s based in Russia or the US but I know in California, there’s quite a few super rich dudes-

We’ve actually done a Listening Fluency on this guy before. We’ll link to it so you can get an idea of it but-

Oh, okay. Okay. It’s been a while.

Yeah. It’s been a while.

I forgot about this one.

I bet a lot of people haven’t seen it but yeah. It’s fascinating, the idea that … again, this presents a hypothetical question. If you could extend your life indefinitely, would you do it? Of course, you wouldn’t have the same body you have now. You’d have digital bodies. You’d have different experienc-es. Would you keep on going?

For me, I would like to try that. I think it would be … I just love learning and it would be a chance to learn more and experience more and experience something different. Maybe I’d reach a point where I wouldn’t want to live an-ymore, but I’m not ready to go. I love this life. I enjoy it. I would extend it if I could.

Life is good. I’m with you there.

Yeah.

But, you know, I think we probably talked about this before. I don’t know if that’s going to leave room for the youth.

What do you mean?

You got all these old people living forever.

Yeah.

You know, the Earth can only support so many people.

No, but your body would die. Your consciousness would be trans-ferred to a digital body that would exist, like online or in a chip or whatever and your body would, just like all bodies, they pass away. They disintegrate. They go back to the Earth and the air.

Oh, right, right, right, right, right, right. Right.

Yeah, but without the physical vehicle, seems like you could be imprisoned by some computer dude.

I don’t know. I wonder about that. I mean, what if it gave you unlim-ited possibilities to explore different existences and dif-ferent situations but then what, you know. What’s the end point? There is no end.

Yeah.

It’s just eventually maybe it has no meaning, so maybe death is bet-ter.

Yeah, and that was the conclusion of, well, not the conclusion but one of the aspects of Dougal Robertson, his family that he … They almost died and he doesn’t regret that experience at all. Being on the edge of life and death made him appre-ciate the moment that much more.

Though, it sounds a little bit crazy to say … He says, “In my darkest moment in my darkest hour.” There were 38 days on the ocean with six days worth of supplies.

Yeah.

You know, drinking turtles blood and he said, “Not once did he regret.” It’s like really?

Really.

You’re seeing your kids starving, getting sunburnt and you’re just enjoy-ing the sunsets and the seagulls?

Maybe he was just so happy to be rescued by the former enemy, that he realized that … maybe in retrospect he felt that way but maybe at the time-

That was a nice little twist that he got.

Yeah. I like that.

He was able to forgive his enemies.

His former enemies.

His former enemies. Right.

I thought it was quite unique the way that their ship sank.

Yeah. Hit by whales.

Can you imagine the fear that would cause?

Killer whales. Yeah.

How unexpected that would be?

I actually think we did another story about a ship going down, being hit by whales.

Did we? I don’t remember that one.

Yeah. There was a-

But it wasn’t killer whales.

Yeah, I don’t know. I cannot remember.

There’s something kind of a bit scarier about killer whales.

Yeah. Yeah. Who did they kill, killer whales?

Killer whales?

Yeah.

They love to eat seals.

Seals. Okay.

Seals and sea lions. That’s their favorite food.

Right.

Yeah. They love those.

Right.

If you’re a seal or sea lion, beware.

Apparently not humans but they take out a ship.

No. They don’t go after humans. In fact, they might even help hu-mans, if humans are in the water. They might not eat them. They could even help them like dolphins do. They’re related to dolphins in many ways.

Yeah.

Yeah. It’s just they’re larger and a bit bigger.

Yeah.

Bigger teeth.

Well, they had something against that boat.

I guess so. They didn’t like that boat. Yeah.

Yeah.

They didn’t attack the people. They took off.

No. That’s true.

Yeah. Yeah. Maybe the boat was intruding upon their home. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. The Robertson family … I don’t really feel the appeal of be-ing out on the ocean, traveling on a small boat. Could you see yourself doing that?

I suppose I could see myself doing that but I’m just not much of a wa-ter person. I get seasick. I wouldn’t choose that method if I wanted to travel with my family.

Yeah.

I would do something over land or perhaps on a river.

Yeah.

I don’t know if I would travel on open sea. That just doesn’t appeal. I’ve done it and it’s just not for me. Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah but I do think what’s interesting about that story is a parent’s decision to bring their children up, you know, take them out of a “normal” life of going to school every day and maybe getting a part-time job when you’re a teenager and just taking them and traveling around the world. That’s pretty brave.

Yeah. It’s an adventure.

Yeah. It’s an adventure.

Not my idea of a good time.

To each his own, I suppose.

They got a good story out of it. Well, on that note, stay safe. Keep your eye out for the grim reaper.

Yes and let’s cheat death at any chance we have.

Yeah.

Okay.

All right.

All right, we’ll see you next month.

See you.