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Good morning my beautiful backstagers. It's Gatsby and the Rye here. It is Monday the 13th and I know I haven't done a recording in a long time so I thought maybe today would be a good day to do one since it is my birthday.

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Not that that makes a difference either way but I have off today so here we go. I debated on what to do. I haven't done an actual GWA post in a long time either so that was of course always a possibility.

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But I do feel like I have a better connection with you guys. Especially with the every Wednesday to tarts posts and everything. I don't know. I like you guys a little bit better so here we are.

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And you know sometimes you just don't want all of the messages from the people. Yeah that's about it.

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Okay so today I'm going to do a questionnaire since I haven't done one in a while. I don't know that you guys really care about them. Maybe you do. Maybe you don't. Maybe you hate questionnaires. In which case I'm sorry. But you shouldn't have clicked on those. It says it's a questionnaire. It's your own fault.

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I'm also a little stuffy. I haven't taken an allergy pill yet this morning. That's a fun thing. I didn't used to have allergies and then I thought I was getting a little allergy-ish at work about a year ago.

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And I started taking an allergy pill and I was like you know what maybe I'm just being crazy and I don't actually need this. So I tried to stop taking an allergy pill and I feel it when I don't take it. So either I have completely placebo affected myself.

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Possibly I've built up some sort of dependence on a pill I didn't need or I do have allergies. Also it's early so I am drinking my coffee so I'm sorry if there's moments where I'm taking a sip.

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Like that. Okay so the questionnaire I decided to do today is the White Rabbit Questionnaire from Before Night Falls. I haven't really gone through the questions on this so we'll see where this leads us.

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I do really like Alice in Wonderland a lot so I'm imagining it'll be kind of similar to that. We'll see.

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First question. You're in a park when you see a white rabbit in a vest holding a pocket watch declaring to no one in particular his tardiness. Do you follow him? Do you continue down the rabbit hole knowing full well where it might lead?

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That is...

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I don't know.

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I don't know if I would follow him. I would like to say yeah I'd follow him. But I'm also just trying to wrap my head around how weird it would be to actually see a talking rabbit.

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Not to mention the vest in the pocket watch.

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I don't know if I'd think I was delusional and maybe start to have a little bit of a breakdown or if I would follow it. I think I might. I might follow it.

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I don't know. I don't feel like I'm that person in horror movies stuff like that when like there's a weird noise and they go investigate it. I'm like why? Why would you investigate the weird noise?

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It's never good. What are you gonna do if it's a burglar? You're just gonna catch them unawares and they might hurt you. Just don't do it.

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So I'm trying to compare that mentality to this very funky situation.

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I'm sorry if you heard a little noise then as well. Those would be messages coming in on my phone since that's how I record because I'm not fancy.

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On the flip side, if I knew that following the rabbit was going to take me to Wonderland, I would go for sure. I think that Wonderland is... I don't know. It's just very...

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It would probably be very frustrating to actually be in but I don't think I could pass that up. The chance to go there.

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Two. Who are you? How do you know this?

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Oh no. That's a tougher question than I was expecting.

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This is a thing that I struggle with a little bit with who I am because it's gotten better for me. I've been able to sort of bring all the parts of me together I guess.

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For a long time I really kind of compartmentalized my personality depending on who I was with. Sometimes that still happens but it's not nearly as bad as it used to be.

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Because there's some friends I have where I'm more the outgoing person and I have to convince them to do things. There's other friends where I am the kind of more quiet, pulled back, you have to convince me to go do stuff friend.

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Those are direct opposites and I have the capacity for both. I had a little bit of an identity crisis almost a while ago.

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Kind of when I moved back home because everything was just hitting like the fan. So personality wise that was happening to where I started to realize how much I had partitioned off parts of my personality to show to only certain groups of people.

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That I didn't show my more introverted side to the friends who expected me to be extroverted. It made me really upset and kind of depressed because I didn't know who I was I guess.

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It felt like since I compartmentalized myself like that no one truly knew me and did I know me either. So every once in a while I still have problems with that but I'm getting much better at it.

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The answer is I'm all of those things combined into one person and I just I'm trying to sort of get there where I'm okay with being me 100% of the time and not putting on a false face or shielding part of myself just because it's more comfortable for other people.

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Yeah, that was a deep question and I'm sorry you guys maybe didn't want to know that.

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Three, are you simply your mind or your body or a combination or something more?

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This is a good question too. These are much deeper, much deeper questions than I thought they were going to be, but I enjoyed that. So I'm sorry in advance if this is a long post. I'm also sorry for apologizing every three seconds. I'm not sure why I feel the need to do that.

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So I love thinking about the nature of of consciousness and a soul. The other day we were talking about the His Dark Materials books and around when I was reading those books is around when I was also sort of trying to work things out for me how I thought the world worked in terms of of souls and personalities.

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So the best that I've come up with for me, and this won't work for everybody, because I'm not religious.

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And part of that was when I was growing up, I was raised religious not super religious just like go to church every Sunday do all the Bible camp stuff that whole deal.

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And there was one moment in particular when people asked me like, when did you know that you didn't believe or when did that start happening.

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When I was younger, and I was kind of right on that cusp of when you stop being a kid at church, you know how they have little like kids sermons for people for kids.

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And it's usually like before the regular sermon. I don't really know why they do that because then the poor kid has to sit through their version and through the really long version that makes them want to sleep, but whatever.

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So I was right on that cusp of like when you would stop going up for that kid thing, kid sermon and I was up there. I think it was one of the last times I went up and the pastor had this radio and it was turning on and off and it seemed like it was doing it on its own.

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And his whole point of the little sermon is just because you can't see it doesn't mean it's not happening or it's not real, which would be great except I noticed he was holding the cord in his hand.

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So either it had like a one of those little like the light switch thing where it's a little bit on the cord and you turn the little wheel thing and it turns it on and off.

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Or he had the whole plug in his hand and he was just connecting it and reconnecting it. And so he asked how it was happening and I told him how it was happening.

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And it was one of those moments where like you can just tell everyone is disappointed or something that you did something wrong almost it was kind of like a shameful moment.

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It really bothered me because you shouldn't feel shame because you had the right answer.

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You asked how it was happening and I told you and I was wrong like I don't know I had a really big problem with that.

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Not to say that I don't believe in things that you can't necessarily see but just the whole it made me start to doubt things a little bit like just if I had to be blindly going into this and not thinking about it for myself and all that jazz.

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So for me when I started sort of just thinking on my own about it I think there's so much that we just don't understand about everything really but about our world in particular.

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There's so much that we're discovering all the time all the time and I feel like there's got to be something that we just maybe aren't seen or can't detect.

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I feel this way a little bit about kind of more paranormal activities or stuff to where I don't think it's all legit by any means.

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But I do think that there's a very strong possibility there's things that we just can't comprehend.

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We can't detect kind of like I don't know there's only certain parts of the visual spectrum that we can see.

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That are limited in what our bodies can physically detect and what our brain can process. So I think there's a good chance there's more around us or out there that we just have no clue about.

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And part of that I at least would like to think this is the case so I'm just sticking with it is the soul and I've never felt very connected to my body if that makes a lot of sense.

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Like I know it's there and it gets me around but I feel like it's such a small part of who I am.

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Like just so small it's barely worth noting really.

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I feel much more like in my head than in my body.

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And I think that this kind of goes into the next question because I beat the head which is about defining consciousness.

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But I think that in terms of like a soul His Dark Materials and I are kind of on the same page.

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In the His Dark Materials trilogy they're looking for dust and the dust ends up basically being your soul.

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But it's little particles that make it up.

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And I kind of am on the same boat where there's so many things we don't know or understand about the world that I think maybe there's just some sort of like atoms or whatever that make up whatever your soul might be or your consciousness.

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And just like the rest of your body when you die and you decompose like they all break apart.

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And yeah that's I guess kind of my general theory on that.

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I know it's a little weird and like as I'm thinking about it I'm like what do we really not know about those kind of atoms.

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It's so hard to say but that's what I'm sticking with. I think there's something like that.

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I don't necessarily think there's an afterlife or anything but I think it's possible for you to feel like you've lived other lives.

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I mean all these different atoms get back together to make up other matter in the world.

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So what's to say that parts of you haven't been together before and if you have like parts of your body have been together before maybe you would recognize that.

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Okay I'll move on past this. How do you know you are conscious?

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I don't think you can ever really know that answer. Dreams can be very very vivid and I lucid dream.

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So that makes it a little more difficult sometimes to distinguish the two.

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My worst dream ever I've rewound my dream multiple times and I kept dying.

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I was being killed by a burglar and every time I was like nope that didn't work.

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I would rewind the dream and I'd do something different and every time he'd find out and I'd die.

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It was the worst dream I've ever had. I was so scared to go back to sleep.

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So stuff like being able to do that sort of thing makes that harder sometimes but I have to know that this is real life here.

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My dreams are very very different and all over the place and if that was real life and if this was my dream my dreams would be boring as shit by comparison.

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I think it's way more possible that my real life is more boring than my dreams.

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Is it possible to prove that other people besides yourself have consciousness?

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How would you prove it?

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This feels very matrix-y to me. I don't know if you can prove that other people have consciousness.

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That's like trying to prove if other people are real I guess.

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That doesn't seem legit.

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I don't know how you would prove that. I think it's just kind of a given.

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I think any questions where people can choose different answers, I think that really goes a lot with it too because you'd have to really make that decision.

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If it wasn't, if they weren't real or weren't conscious, they wouldn't be able to have that sort of thought process to come up with their own answer.

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Everyone would have the same answer as me if I was the only person who was conscious.

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I guess that is probably the best way.

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Does intelligence and consciousness go hand in hand?

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I don't know that I would call it intelligence. I mean yes in the fact that you have to be able to reason like that, but I usually think of intelligence as like how smart you are.

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I don't think that the more smart you are, the more conscious you are of yourself or your surroundings or your place in the world or anything like that.

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I know some very smart people who are just not conscious of anything but themselves.

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I don't think they know themselves that well either so I don't think they go hand in hand as far as that goes.

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How can you be certain that other people exist and are not extensions of your consciousness?

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I went through that a little bit with the other questions so I'm just going to skip that.

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Can a machine obtain consciousness? Why or why not?

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Yes, I think so.

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There's so many artificial intelligence sort of things now. I think it's a real possibility.

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I mean they're usually programmed in a certain way but eventually they start to make connections on their own because they see patterns and that's how that sort of stuff works.

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I think they can probably extrapolate from that to eventually become conscious.

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I think it's like a way down the road for it to really really happen but maybe I'm wrong on that. I don't know.

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If someone is cloned are they conscious? Are they the same person or someone new?

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Are we talking theoretical cloning or like the real process of cloning? The real process of cloning they are someone new.

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They can't take you at your age now and make a duplicate of you at your age now. They'd have to use your DNA to make a clone in an embryo and then that embryo would have to be raised and grow up and everything.

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So they are a totally different person. If it was theoretical cloning and you could just zap like an exact replica of me right now I would say that is their own person too.

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Unless you can guarantee that we're gonna make the same decision every single time and I don't think we would because there's some days where I'm very wishy-washy and I could go one way or I could go the other.

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It's just like a last minute decision and I don't think that if there were two of me I would make the same choice every time.

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So we'd be very similar but we wouldn't be the same person.

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10. Do you make choices? Are your choices only made because of forces acting on you? Ultimately do you have free will or is it simply an illusion?

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I think you have free will. I think there's things that maybe are trying to influence your decision. Whether it be other people, other forces in the world, whatever.

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But it is ultimately up to you to make that choice and sometimes you make the right one and sometimes you make the wrong one.

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And then you deal with that and then you just sort of have to, I don't know, own up to those choices and see the good and where they lead you even if it's not the way that you maybe should have picked.

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Good things still come from it.

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11. Do we have the right to be happy or is it a privilege that must be earned?

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No, everyone has the right to be happy. That's certainly not a privilege.

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I think that some people are looking for happiness in a wrong way though.

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Everyone deserves to be happy and fulfilled but if you get ultimate happiness from murdering people, for example, well maybe you should not do that.

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Your happiness has to take other people into account.

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Not just everyday happiness. There's so much around us that in realizing that someone is such a hippie, that is really good and beautiful and that we just don't take time to appreciate.

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But everyone does deserve to be happy. That's a real big thing for me.

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A bunch of people that I used to work with, my old job was very, made everyone very unhappy. We were very complainy. Things were bad. It was not a good situation.

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And since I've been at my new job, I have been happy and it hasn't been this overwhelming blissful state of happiness.

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But just in general, I am content. And that's good. That's happy for me. I'm not miserable then and I must be happy.

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Everyone deserves that. I've been a big proponent of everybody finding something that makes them feel better.

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And for that reason, a lot of people are actually now quitting that job and coming to work where I work now. Just pretty funny to me.

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But I like it a lot.

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12. What is the actual value of currency? It's garbage.

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Currency used to be based on actual resources or wealth or whatever and it just is not anymore. It's fictional.

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It's just a made up thing that we've based life around and it's screwing up so many people's lives.

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I really wish we'd be able to do a whole overhaul on currency, but we can't because it's the whole world and we can't all get behind it.

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Because even if the rest of the world got behind it, you know for sure Trump would not currently.

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And I think that's probably going to be the same for forever. There's always going to be someone who is not on board with it.

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And that makes me sad because I think lives could be a lot better if they weren't so focused on currency and having enough money.

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When money isn't even really a thing, it's just made up.

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13. Every time you wake from your bed, how can you be certain you are still not in a dream?

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Are you grounded in the knowledge that the waking life is real and your dreams are simple fantasies?

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I sort of talked a little bit about that before.

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Yeah, I feel like I've pretty solidly answered this before.

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My life is boring. This couldn't be a dream. My dreams are much more vivid and strange.

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And I'm pretty sure in my real life, I wasn't chased around a warehouse by a werewolf when I was a kid.

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It's one of my most vivid dreams. And then at the end, some guy was like, you did a good job. Here's a hamster.

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Like, that's a weird fucking dream. That's not real.

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14. Are you certain of your own existence? I sure am.

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15. Are you free? If not, how can you become free?

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That is a weighty question. I want to say yes, that I am free, but I'm not.

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No, I don't think anyone is free, or at least very few people are.

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Everybody's tied to something or someone or something like that that kind of prevents you from being totally free.

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I don't know that there is a way to become free, because then you have to stop caring about other people in your life.

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And that doesn't sound like much of a way of living.

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I mean, I think you can still do sort of free will things, actions.

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Live your life a certain way that seems very free, but really it's not because everything is tied together.

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And I think that's okay. I think being able to live the best version of your life is very freeing.

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And that's about as close as you can get to being truly free.

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That was a really intense question here that I was not expecting.

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Sorry I got really rambly. Again, there's that apologizing thing. I don't know why I apologized. You chose to listen.

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And if you got this far, well then, I mean, you must have been entertained, maybe, or very bored.

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In any case, I hope you guys have a great week. I will talk to you later. Thanks for listening. Bye.