This Reflects Badly: The 319th Evolutionary Lens with Bret Weinstein and Heather Heying

Hey folks, welcome to the Dark Horse podcast live stream 319.

Right? No, come on. 319? How would, no, do many things to add into it? So many.

It's not a huge number of buttons. More than two. Four, in fact, four. All right, I have no idea what they might be. 11, and 29.

11, 11, and 29. Yeah, that's beautiful. Okay, well, I'm Dr. Brett Weinstein. You are Dr. Heather Hing. It is April Fool's Day.

April Fool's Day, and you're not going to see this coming, but everything we're going to talk about is true as far as we know. I'm actually. But some of it, a lot of it maybe, we wish, wasn't. We wish this were April Fool's Day.

We wish these were jokes. Yes, I will say I am now resolutely against April Fool's Day on the basis that every day is now April Fool's Day, and we do not need to compound the problem with one day, in which we pretend that the outlandish things

that we are faced with are not true ha ha, because so much that we are told is not true. Yeah, you get like, it's almost like there's holiday creep. So certainly there has been with Halloween. You're not referring to me.

There is holiday creep.

And with Halloween, which is a holiday that I've never

understood and have been interested in, but yeah, I was a kid dressed up at whatever, but I've never understood adult's fascination with it. Except that it speaks to some of the same things that like Marty Grad does, that exploring the liminal,

taking on a different role, being some, you know, putting on a different persona for a period and seeing how it goes. But that is obviously become a year-round phenomenon for many people as well.

So good point.

“You know, how many of these, okay, about St. Patrick's Day?”

Well, some people are just drinking all the time, but maybe that was always the case. Yes, although I now realize that you and I are guilty of this in a way that I think either of us would defend ferociously, which is that you have

so completely mastered the phenomenon of the Thanksgiving feast that we often end up doing more than one in here. Yeah, but it's not year-round. Right, no, it's definitely not a year-round thing.

But it has doubled the, yeah, sometimes. Well, I guess I, because you and our delightful children, one of whom is about, we're about not to have teenagers anymore. Anyway, our younger son is going to turn 20 over the weekend, and that's rather extraordinary.

But because the three of you all declare that you love the traditional and traditional inspired dishes that I make for Thanksgiving, I often make the same thing for Christmas. Yep.

And, you know, it leaves days and days of delicious leftovers. And if anyone, like, I don't really like Turkey, or I kind of am not into the thing, you know, we wouldn't be doing it, but yeah, not really like so. Yeah.

Whereas the universal cause plague that crept out of Halloween, and the, what, what did you, oh, April Fool's Day? That's, that's how we got it. That's how we got it. Yeah.

You are suggesting that every day has become a defect of April Fool's Day, and therefore we should just, you're arguing for the cancellation of a beloved holidays what you're doing.

“I think we could revisit that, or were the world to return”

to a basically interpretable stage. Would you know it won't, and they're, or are you arguing for cancellation? Pretty well. Which is frankly shocking.

It's coming from you. Actually, it's one argument you could make that I'm woke, so that I'm arguing to cancel April Fool's Day. Cancellation being the sinquanana woke. Yes, this, this was my point.

That's your point.

Yes, well, here's the thing.

Somebody in response to my suggestion this morning that we get rid of this terrible holiday. Oh, you'd said this publicly. I did say this publicly, and somebody suggested, which I saw it.

You have two totally separate lives. And like they come together sometimes here. And sometimes I hear from people that, like, how could you not know he said this? Like, I don't pay attention to all of the other things

that he does publicly.

“But in any case, I assume that you will say the important things”

to me directly. Yes, yeah. And I do. I don't think I very frequently tweet something that you and I haven't had a discussion about

or something like that. But in any case, someone proposed that actually what we could do is we could reverse the holiday and on April 1st, people are required to tell the truth, which I think would be fantastic.

And would also cause the, it would cause Goliath to crumble in his tracks. Yeah, it would cause market failure. It might cause the market to return to being something other than a casino.

Right. That would be good. Wouldn't that mean market failure in the current environment?

Oh, OK. Yeah, market failure is-- Sorry, didn't know. Yeah, that's when markets screw you,

“where they're supposed to be creating wealth.”

Oh, OK. Market fails to do that for various reasons. Yeah. Yeah. No, we can't use reserved terms.

No, we have to reserve-- We have to reserve terms for what the reserved for. Yeah, I guess we do. OK. We had a great Q&A on Sunday.

Go check it out at locals.

This is the first of a four pack of evolutionary lens

episodes. Livestreams are doing today. Wednesday, next Saturday, the following Wednesday, the following Saturday, and then we're off for a couple of weeks. So keep coming back for these Livestreams,

and you're doing some Patreon's this weekend. And we've got all sorts of all sorts of good stuff happening. Yes. Here. Here, now, soon.

Yes. All those things.

“You know, all the things as the kids now say.”

Do they? I-- pretty sure they do. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. OK.

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Empastic. It is fantastic. It is fantastic. Yes. It's not fantastic.

Oh, I know a few things. Yeah.

“One of them is a company that I learned about during our Q&A this last weekend.”

You'd already heard of it, but the question, who came from the man who presents himself

as a gnome ink feather, was about the company reflect orbital. Mr. ink feather, to use his pseudonym, says of them and this turns out to be true. So I'm just going to use his language here, says they plan to put 18 meter mirrors in space to reflect sunlight down onto the night's sides of Earth at Will or on demand. Not only do they plan to put the night's sky with daylight, but also use it for advertising.

I imagine military applications as well, and there he goes on. I'd never heard of them. I thought, sure, this is a joke, maybe it's an early April Fool's day thing. Well, it turns out, no, so let's just walk through a little bit of their sight and see what it is that these people are planning.

Can you see my screen? Awesome.

“So this is the home page of reflect orbital.”

Sunlight after dark being their tagline, which just goes through a little bit of what they've got. Reflect orbital delivers a spot of sunlight on demand with a constellation of in space mirrors. Precise area, they claim five kilometer diameter in up, highly localized, configurable in which you can adjust the intensity and location on demand or to sunlight instantly in

a provocation without new infrastructure now before you say wait, now it's already happening. It does not already happening, but they've got two satellites either up now or schedule to be up and start doing, start doing, not dramatizations, testing more than testing, actually, display demonstrating to potential clients this year. I will get to the schedule they've got here soon.

So I send uniform dynamic and no ground infrastructure. Yeah, easy set up an onboarding, they say, for the client who calls up and says, yeah, it's

11pm here and it's kind of dark and I get some sun and they set up basically involves

you put up the shades of lounges, yeah, grab some iced tea, yeah. What's possible with a spot of sunlight, they say, energy expands solar potential, making clean power dispatchable and available when you need it. Now if you dig into their actual claims about how much solar they're going to be able to generate, it's quite low, so I'm surprised that they're highlighting that because even

they know that that's, that's not the main thing that they're actually trying to do. What they're really trying to do is light up everyone, light up the earth, response, illuminate disaster zones and search and rescue missions. That sounds admirable, that's, that's a use case that sounds admirable, industrial extend working hours, improved safety, light remote sites and agriculture, tailor growth cycles,

extend seasons, boost yields, confused birds, confused, everyone, the big picture sunlight

is the most valuable and powerful resource in the solar system, about 2.2 billion times

more sunlight misses the earth and hits it, which means humanity can only use a small fraction of our sun's power and our constellation intercepts the solar energy R that being reflect orbitals, constellation intercepts the solar energy that misses us and enables humanity to use it. I'd recommend.

The number is that low given the 2.2 billion times, and it's radiating in all directions the earth isn't close to that. I feel like they just ticked the number with a bunch of zeros out of a hat. Let's go with this one, it sounds plausible, I agree, it seems too low. Okay, so check, this is their plan.

Our constellation of markets expand over time, in which constellation is their satellites. The 262, 207, 36, and 208, they're hoping for over 1,000 by 2030, over 5,000 by 2035, over 50,000 of their satellites, space mirrors, going around the earth, allowing people on earth to call them up and say, "Hey, I'd like a spot of sunlight here, it's just about that time."

Let's see what happens when you click on light here, light without limits, because

“of course, imagining that we have limits is so what?”

Yesterday, 20th century, human, realistic, light without limits, they say. Light is evolving, interesting claim, interesting claim, smarter, more sustainable, endless accessible, reflect orbital glimmers, large area, lighting after dark for any use case. Yeah, light is evolving, sliding, lighting is evolving, it makes that. Right, okay, so they do, oh wait, civilization, I've also got civilization, what's possible

is spotlight, replace streetlights, reduce light pollution, enhance urban life, yeah, and enhance urban life, because that's what cities need is to have every moment, feel exactly

Yeah, I'm going to invest in companies that make I am asking, because that happens. Okay, so they just continue with the same kinds of claims, we're launching the future of sunlight, I just like the number of crazy taglines in here.

You risk is incredible, really remarkable.

And then we're going to go to their facts, which is maybe the most damning part of the whole site. And I also read some of the, some of the press on these guys, you know, it's a couple of a couple of young guys with some mecky, some mechanical engineering background who you saw a need apparently, saw an opportunity and/or a lucky young sociopath.

“You know, I know, I go there, fine, I don't, I think actually the problem, I think”

it's worse than that, because I don't think the techno hubris, the technoptimism, the technoptism, the technoptism, the technoptism, the technoptism that we see behind so many of the really egregious errors of this age, mostly can't be attributed to sociopathy. It's attributed simply to hubris, which is a much more common, and, you know, both sociopathy and hubris are human, but it's worrying that, you know, I think it's attributable

to a very common problem, which is, I don't know anything about evolution, I don't know anything about biology, anything about evolution. I think that we live in a clockwork universe, a machine like universe, in which all the things are like machines that I do know how to deal with. And therefore, all I have to do is switch a few things, and voila, it will have solved

a problem. So, you know, maybe sociopaths, but it's not required here. Well, I don't think it's required, but I do think that it falls out of the game theory pretty naturally, because if you imagine, this is not an in obvious idea, the idea that it was

actually proposed on the 70's first.

So there you have it. If I have that right.

“Yeah, the point is, who do you expect to find deploying this?”

You expect to find people who find nothing objectionable about it. In other words, game theoretically, this is a tragedy of the commons, where if, you know, 50 modern folks or companies have thought about this idea and rejected it because of the implications, you expect to find the company that didn't reject it is most likely to be driven by people who have some defect that results in them not seeing it.

I don't know, but there's an assumption built in don't you just said, which I don't think is right. What you said was, if 50 companies have considered this idea and rejected it because of the implications, and what I believe I have gleaned from going through some of what they've got online and some of what the media has written up about them is that this

is only now technologically feasible. So to the degree that this has been considered before, it has not been possible. No, no, I know that. But so it's not, so it's not, a lot of other companies rejected it and that demonstrates that, you know, they weren't sociopaths.

I was imagining 50 companies in modern times when it has become possible, right? Let's say post. Maybe I don't see evidence of that, but maybe post starlink, yeah, post starlink where we now know that it is possible for a corporate entity to deploy and array of global

covering satellites, I mean, I think maybe that's the second of them that was a failed project

“to deliver, I think it was GPS, what was its name, I can't remember if they're in, I can't”

be, because that's, there I see, but but something along those lines was deployed, it failed for economic reasons and the satellites were either repurposed or had to be pulled down. But anyway, the point is, we now know, we've got a successful entity that is deployed a, you know, a net of satellites, global covering and so the point is, well, what else could you do if that technology is now in the range of a corporate power?

And so I'm imagining a lot of people have run through this idea because it's obvious. And many of them have rejected it for business reasons, the risk here of the investment it takes to initiate such a project and the likelihood that it fails, I mean. Well, I guess my objection to you deciding because you and I can see so many obvious reasons not to do this and to do everything we can to get in the way of anyone's ability to

cause us to lose our night sky, I mean, we write about this, we have to gather the

that we do that we have night and we have no idea what all that means for who we are and

“how we are and how we make meaning in the world.”

But I don't, I just don't, it's not at all clear to me that what is clear to us about the value, much of which is implicit in having darkness and having a night sky and having things that cannot be technologically lightened is obvious to most people and those things that are obvious to the techno optimists just because it's not obvious to them doesn't make them sociopaths.

In fact, if it were obvious to them and they were ignoring it, that's evidence of sociology. Okay, so you've just won the argument and then I'm going to take it back for me. You're right, there's a path there from a myopia rather than a moral dysfunction, but these people are going to use it for advertising. They're monsters.

Well, I don't actually see that on here, I don't, I don't, I don't, but I'm not saying not. Then I will back my argument and off and off and I will say if they're going to advertise with this, they are monsters and clearly so I will grant that. But let's look at, I'm not saying them not, I just, I just, I appreciate the caution.

“I think it's the right way to think about things.”

I would say, you know, I was being flippered. De facto sociopaths would be expected to, you know, people who can rationalize. Yeah, but I'm not saying, I think, you know, one of the things, one of the things that we all of us, hopefully, who learned during COVID, is how very human, really horrifying, the best delusions are.

And so, some of it, you know, we talked a lot about fear driving people and certainty. We've talked a lot about, but hubris, which is, I guess, hubris and certainty are related to one another. Fear and hubris are quite different. And they, and the techno-optimists, the, you know, the so-called rationalists and the Silicon

Valley Bros and the disruptors, they've all got way more hubris than they are. They have sense or, or imagination. They don't, they're not, it seems, interested in imagining what is actually true outside of the scope of what they already know. They're just interested in, you know, moving fast and breaking things.

That's, whichever one was at Zuckerberg, I don't remember who said that, but, no, that's going to be a mosque, I think. But anyway, it doesn't matter, it's, it's the ethos, and, you know, there are realms in which

“that is wise, but the point is doing things at scale is not one of those realms, right?”

If you're trying to innovate something, move fast and break things, may very well be the mindset that, you know, gets you to the awesome wealth-creating thing.

But the problem is the very human capacity to an instinct to rationalize, and the, um,

the degree in fact of intervening and complex systems creates unintended consequences that you can't predict means that the mindset of, like, well, I shouldn't, right? Obviously, there are use cases in which, you know, if there's a catastrophe and people are under rubble and the, the rescue workers are trying desperately to get them out, you know, could we imagine collectively that it would be a good idea to bring some light to that

situation, um, you know, sure there are use cases. You can imagine a famine that's threatened by a crop failure that you have a brief frost and that some country is going to have mass starvation if you don't get through the next 72 hours of cold, right? Is that a defensible use case?

Yes. But the point is, that's the thin end of the wedge that gets you to something unholy, and the unholy thing is a threat to the environment. Oh, can you prove it? Do you know exactly what it is?

You know, do you have the data and the answer is no, we're going to find out the ways in

which this is a disaster later as the birds don't get to their breeding grounds or, you know, whatever other thing it is and the point is, we're constantly playing catch up ball or the point is you're going to have to create the catastrophe for me to describe it precisely enough to explain why you shouldn't have done that fucking thing in the first place.

And the point is that we can't run a planet like that. The power to do things at this scale now exists, so, you know, and this, I mean, this is going to sound like a tiny little piece of this puzzle, but, um, it certainly should

system under which all life on Earth has evolved four billions of years, right? But, oh, what exactly is going to happen? Well, I can make predictions about effects on migration and phonology and breeding schedules and animals and such, um, but A, I don't have to be right about that, but also, this is, you know, this is maybe just a little bit too, like, too arcane, but we are losing our ability

even to compare what happens in the future with what has happened in the past because our museums, our collections of where organisms have been, where under what circumstances

are being either destroyed or moved off site into places that they're at risk of basically

disintegrating. Like, you know, some of the value of natural history collections is precisely so that, as conditions change, we can have a way to quantify the fact that things have been changing. And if we lose access to the past as we are losing access to, then it will be just so much, you know, sort of arm waving, like, this feels different than it used to.

Well, we had, you know, we had extensive museum collections and they are disappearing. Yes, and the number of places in which we strangely lack for the evidence that would allow us to detect how much of a change there has been is many. And I would say, you're one place that you all have encountered. I've been saying for decades what happened to the insects that used to splatter the windshield.

“Now, this was commonly discussed, but at first, it was like am I imagining something?”

Did I have a road trip that went through, particularly dense thing, and I'm misremembering? No, at least in the West and by which I include, you know, 10, 12 western states. Every summer road trip required a lot of work multiple times a day to clean off windshields. Yes, and it was very difficult to do. And so this existed, you know, into your and my driving and taking road trips of our own,

so that we were responsible for our windshields, and it was like an actual problem for seeing, right? So the point is, no, that memory is crystal clear in so many living minds that we can nail this one down, but the point is, let's suppose you didn't have that, right? Let's suppose that the order of technological innovations had made the destruction of the insect populations proceed the invention of the car, right?

“Well, then the question is, how do those of us who remember that there were vastly more insect established”

that that's not something about the fact that we moved where we lived, or we were misremembering, because of a particularly intense summer, or something like that, very hard to establish. Likewise, all the people saying, you know, the sun used to be yellow. Now, I don't know what to do with that claim, because I remember it as they do, but I don't know that memory is a valid check on the thing.

And the problem is all of the stuff you would typically use to check this doesn't work, right?

The photographic stuff has biases in it at its most basic level. So you can't just go back and look at old photographs, because the technology has changed. So, you know, you need baseline data. Well, the sun used to be more yellow is, as you say, it's a different sort of a claim. There were more insects, road trips felt different.

That exists across an entire generation, at least for people who lived in, you know, a wide swath, the United States, and I don't know, I assume it was also true in the south and the Midwest and the East Coast, I just don't know.

“But one of these, for which I think largely anthropological data, which is to say human stories,”

are providing the evidence, and it's sufficient in this case, is the salmon runs in the Pacific Northwest and even down into California, right? Along the eastern edge of the Pacific Rim, along the west coast of North America, which is to say the eastern edge of the Pacific, you hear stories, and even we, growing up in Southern California, where there weren't any salmon, but in living memory, I don't think they ever got, I don't think there are any rivers within so Cal, but in Central California up into Alaska, BC, and for the Repalaskan, then of course, all the way around the Pacific Rim.

You hear stories about just rivers being so teeming with salmon at the right time of year that you could barely tell that it was not a solid mass of salmon. And those stories are replicated across river system, across individuals, across, but corrected for, you know,

sort of from the moment that basically Western anthropologists started recording the stories of native elders up until, I don't know,

up until we started putting the dams in, and then we started spraying our chemicals on agricultural crops, and all of the other things that have made the salmon fisheries collapse.

back when we were still professors, and it looked to me like there were a lot of fish, but it's nothing compared to what people report there haven't been, not too long ago.

And, you know, destroyed in multiple ways, and multiple ways in which each individual change sounded reasonable.

“And, I mean, at some point, you should probably continue with the frequently asked questions, but at some point, we're going to have to have a discussion about how to protect our rights to have a planet that is intact.”

How that gets balanced against the nanny state instinct to forbid you to do anything at all, right? We can't be paralyzed by the inability to do normal stuff, even that has a minor impact. And you can't be allowed to just gamble on all of our planet by doing things at scale and discovering what's wrong with them, and, you know, you and I talk in the book, and we've talked many times here about the principle of reversibility. Question is, can you reverse what you're doing? Now, this is interesting. Arguably, you can stop using this if it turns into a disaster, but the question is, once the technology exists, it exists.

It exists and it will be defended by corporate entities that don't want their profit stream cut off, and, you know, there will be damage done in the meantime, and then there's a question about, you know, this huge network of satellites and what impact it has. Anyway, we have a whole set of rights that we don't rights that are effectively, God given rights that are not defined because, you know, we had it our founders forget to mention protecting the night sky from maniacs, right? How could they possibly have missed that? Well, for obvious reasons, and so the point is our rights that would have been defined if they understood the danger aren't defined, and anything is not defined is treated as fine, and so anyway, that is really the discussion for all of this things for weather modification for, you know, climate, you know, for geoengineering and climate, all of these things, the questions, who the fuck are you people that you think you have the right to play these games?

You think you're doing it for the right reason. Yes. Who are you that you get to decide for me that the climate needs to be changed, right? You don't get to do that, and yet you are.

“No, and we've talked about this before too, they all think they're doing it for the right reason, in part because we live in a world where people are informed of what they think villains look like from cartoons, right?”

And so, you know, the really evil guy, you know, rubbing his hands together in a cave somewhere, that's, that's not what villains look like. They have convinced themselves, this is, I mean, this, this was one of the important contributions of the now late, great bob-trivers, was his work on self-deception, that it is, the, the most basic point, which is obvious and retrospective, so much of the best evolutionary biology is, is that if you're going to lie about something, it is far easier to be convincing.

Of, to the person who you are lying to, if you are first convinced yourself of your own lie.

And so, you know, being deceived yourself that you are actually a good person, really working on behalf of the people who just need light on earth, and what about if you put mirrors in space, is much more compelling. And it does, it will make, of course, to, you know, come full circle, it much more difficult to discover the actual sociopaths, because they've convinced themselves first. Yeah, well, you know, and, and we don't have a good enough text on me, you've got actual sociopaths who lack the capability for sympathy.

And you have, in fact, you have, you have facultative, which is probably normal for humans, they're wrong.

“I'm sure, which, you know, if you're a soldier on a battlefield, you have to be de facto psych, a sociopathic to just do the job.”

But then there are, you know, functionally sociopathic people who are working through mass rationalization, you know, the board room in which people are very excited about the billions that might be made through this new venture. And then they figure out how to tell the story, so it sounds like they're doing something noble. And, and then you get to the advertising, it's like how you people rely. Yeah, okay, so let's just show, again, this is reflect orbital.

This company founded just a few years ago, and is aiming to put 50,000 plus space mirrors up so that we, we can never have a night.

Of course, that is not their claim, but so that you can have day on demand if you have enough money to do so. What is reflected sunlight? Natural sunlight redirected from space with mirrors, the same sunlight we see every day simply redirected at a time when it is not typically accessible.

I was just different from artificial lighting artificial lighting relies on things like pools.

Other things do, but they actually say pools. Um, it's, okay, so I mean, that's, that's sort of obvious, you know, there's no ground infrastructure. What areas can it illuminate anywhere on earth? Then they say the light will not spill out of the defined service area. And this may be a tiny point, but earth has an atmosphere.

Part of what makes life under possible is indeed our atmosphere without it, we wouldn't be here.

“When atmosphere does, oh, we're there things, is it reflects light?”

And so whereas on the moon, if you put a spotlight on a piece of the moon that was facing away from the earth, they'd be right.

The light would not spill out of the defined service area, but on earth it will.

Of course it will, just like after the sun has said, you still have light in the sky for a while. So that's just a lie. Yeah, and it's just inherently a lot unless, unless, um, so it's obviously a lie. Unless defined in this, there's service areas like what we intending and then they're. They've got to spill zone, but yeah, it's not going to work because clouds, right?

You're going to reflect us to your cloud. That is going to be visible from a great distance away, which means some of the light escaped. Which doesn't mean that the amount of light that escapes in that circumstance is going to have an important impact.

“But the point is you can't, you can't say this cleanly and you simply don't know what the impact is.”

And also important impact.

You know, so, um, let's just, well, hold on on that. When dealing with sea turtles and watching a nest hatch, it is very important that you not wear head lamp that is on because the sea turtles. Look for the line of foam that is lighter in color and they go towards it. So the head light that head lamp distorts their path and actually gets them killed because they have to get to the water quickly in order not to get picked off. So are you telling me that you're illuminating a cloud at night doesn't have that potential for other creatures.

You couldn't possibly know that. Yeah, we can, we can tell a clean story about human technology effect on sea turtles because it exists at human scale. And it's a charismatic organism that humans go to and go to with light and we have we have seen the effects. Most of the effects will not be known or knowable. Right, they simply won't be.

“You know, especially think about this, what are you going to get?”

If they've got a nice defined beam of light, it's going to be a circle in the sky. There are things that navigate using the moon, right? So it's not hard to spot ways in which this could be an important impact. And the question is, how exactly did you get the right to sell this capacity to people just based on the fact that they've got the money? Yep.

Okay, let's just go through the rest of their frequently asked questions. Can the light be adjusted? Yes, it can effectively be turned on and off by rotating the satellite. And then timing can be scheduled so that it operates only during requested hours. Okay, requested by whom? Who gets to make the request? Who gets to say, I don't want that request met? Who benefits from this technology?

Anyone needing clean, controllable, safe, light can benefit. Applications range from extending solar generation hours without requiring any new land or grant infrastructure to illuminating precise areas for operations and remote environments. Check out our products to learn more. Is it safe? We designed for safety in three ways. So they don't answer if it's safe. They just say they're designing thinking about safety because they can't know and save for whom.

Right? That remains an unspoken question. Can it be avoided? Yes, we will only provide redirected light when it is specifically requested and approved by the appropriate local authorities. In addition, we will share positions in advance so that scientists and other stakeholders can plan around the service. Other stakeholders, meaning every single life form on the planet. Everything can just know what you're doing and schedule what plan around the service.

So every life form on the planet is now going to pay attention to you guys to plan around your service because what you want to make a bunch of money. And you know, cloak it in like this will be useful. It's extraordinary. Scientists and their stakeholders as if scientists and I don't know who but maybe there might be some other stakeholders who care about whether or not there's light in the sky. Well, stakeholders is one of these very clever terms where the point is, oh, well, we're going to define the stakeholders.

These are the people who get a save. It's basically a translation of seated the table. And you may have noticed that often those of us who suffer from policy, you know, let's say the clear cutting of the forest of the Pacific Northwest.

And so the point is they're defining nor were we in any of the profits. Right. This was one of my yeah that went to wear hazard right the point is and I used to be angry at the citizens of the Pacific Northwest because the point is look.

“You're defending some of them on the basis that this is necessary for jobs, but these people are exporting the natural wealth of the region and you didn't even get your cut right.”

How how did you miss the fact that this it's not about a small number of loggers. This is about the fact that this was a resource that belonged to all of us that somebody privatized and sold any you didn't get your cut you didn't even get your cut right.

That money could have gone to other things and then at least you'd be able to argue that the benefit had counterbalance the cost, but now it was just.

It was the the rape of the environment based on savvy corporate entities. Yep. Yep. There you go.

“What about that look like on the ground? The spot is brightest on the ground with minimal sky glow in the air. Again, if there are no clouds, right?”

Which I don't I did not do a thorough surge, but I don't find any mention of whether that was for your conditions anything. From within the spot it will look and feel like the given brightness level right moon to high noon those are the options there. It's the span right moon to high noon with a star like spot passing overhead. How can I request the service contact us? Okay, so you know the organization dark sky and a national they are defending they are trying to defend the right of life on earth to have dark skies.

Here are our alarmed as you might imagine. Here we have a piece from them from end of December of last year dark sky international opposes reflect orbitals proposed orbital illumination system. It's a good piece. It's about what you would expect and I don't think I need to read anything from it.

“And a few months later that is to say last week I think it was yes March 25th reflect orbital put on their site reflect orbital seeks collaboration with dark skies.”

What dark sky international dark skies what is that how do you collaborate with dark skies what what what what are they even claiming and the piece looks like it was put together in a hurry and it doesn't really make any sense and if you're not paying a lot of attention it sort of looks like.

They've just always been open and they're just really hoping to get the attention the dark sky people because they're in.

Clearly this is a response to dark sky international saying hold up stop you have no right and here we have three months later when invitation to collaborate. Reflect orbital says expanding access to clean energy from space has the potential to be a powerful tool to make humanities energy demands again they're pivoting between light and energy and I didn't spend any time on their energy claims but they're crappy. The idea basically is that they can shine they can reflect sunlight onto existing solar arrays at night and have those solar arrays not be off.

Off line at night, but even they estimate that you're going to pick up you know a percent or two in terms of value in terms of these solar arrays like it's really it's. It's a it's a bad model. Well if you just think about how much surface area you would need to collect sunlight that wasn't going to hit the earth from in order to materially alter the amount of solar energy collected with the.

Exist it doesn't it it's superficially doesn't pass the softest and also as always is the case you and I have talked about the.

The energy standards for construction and never in the calculation is the question of okay these you know purged dual glass panels. So when you say purged I mean purged other vacuum or their nitrogen I think there are gone or there's some some inert gas in there which has obvious benefits you increase the our value of the windows but you also call the windows respectively it's like a what's it. Yeah but you well and it's better than air it's better than allowing free flow of air the way old storm windows used to do because the our value is higher.

But if you're placed them every now and again and the point is there's a lot of energy hidden in the oh well okay you just took a bunch of resource you threw it in the landfill you needed new resource you had a factory run you had to you know move it with trucks. The question is okay did this just feel good because the our value on the window went up or was it actually an energy savings and yeah and you know and this is going to be a quality life argument rather than an actual actually did you save energy argument which I think is a very strong one.

You know to borrow something but simply the re-glaze yeah exactly simple to re-glaze and and that was that was going to be a rare incident and that doesn't become any more or less likely with single versus double glazed or now they're even doing triple glazed whereas.

“Almost everyone who has been around any kind of modern buildings has had the experience of having one of these seals fail and having the the window become more more opaque over time.”

And you know sometimes you don't fix it right away because it's expensive or you feel like it's not that bad yet I'm going to get as much life out of this as possible.

But meanwhile your quality of life looking at that window is degraded day by day by day whereas with a single panned window okay you're paying more energy costs. From you know in terms of utility bill you may be paying less overall over the length of the entire window if you include all the costs of having to replace it when the seals fail and the experience of having a window is degraded. Often because when the seals fail they fail in a way that you know you don't you don't fix it right away and it just reminds you constantly that you have something that needs to be done and that your life isn't perfect.

Now in this case we have to factor in the immense energetic cost of putting things in space and maintaining them and communications with them so you know if they're making a small increase in the efficiency of solar panels at some large expense to put them where they are.

That is not inherently a net benefit and if there's a benefit it's small so the point is it's kind of a.

Trying to find a synonym for smoke and mirrors using here but well yeah the whole energy part of their claim seems like a stretch because.

“That's what people in the start up and especially the tech community are so focused on right now because of the draw from AI because of the you know.”

Coming need for so much more energy than we appear to have access to yep and so you know they. I think they will be able to light up the earth and I think that's horrifying. I am not compelled that even they think that they will be able to even offset their own energy use with what they're doing but energy is such a big piece of what people are interested in investing in right now that I think that that's why that's here.

There's also the risk of abuse or example.

Given I mean we are well down the road of unthinkably awful weapons and you know multiple layers you know psychological weapons weapons that you know drive people to madness soldiers to madness that they can't fight things like this. But you know is this going to be you know we're watching the wholesale bombing of civilian populations now. Is this going to be used to drive people insane until they cry uncle. Right one could imagine that. Yeah he used to be you put you put speakers outside the house of someone that you've got on house arrest or something and you just Blair music at them all night long. Let's do it with light too.

Yeah and who knows what else. I mean the fact is you know mirrors are a. And the question is is there's some private reason that this network would be desired. You know one could imagine things being is being redirected from the ground. You know it's so anyway yeah there's a lot here you would want to know and what we already know is pretty frightening and light of the fact that they're. Tampering with you know the master complex system on which we all depend and they're doing so from you know what me worry.

Kind of let's look at all the upsides version in which they're downplaying obvious downsides that are already obvious let alone all of the ones that we're not going to know until after they do this right.

“They should stop you should stop yes and if you're tempted to argue back think about whether or not the advertising claim is true and if it is go to help.”

All right. We live in the state of Washington yes. Shall we talk a little bit about the state of Washington state of Washington state yes it's not what you would hope. Now unfortunately it's not to be let's start.

The reaction of the earth sunlight that misses the earth it may be right and but I think it's a fun exercise to figure out whether that's right and I'm going to see if I can do it.

Yeah I mean it feels it feels calculable. Let's put it this way if what son was a point source so just reminder of what you're talking about the claim from off like orbital is that. The earth collects.

“The earth misses like 22 billion some I don't even remember what the exact number was but misses some extraordinary amount of the sun's energy and shouldn't we try to collect some which it does.”

We're not very close exactly what all directions not very big not very close all those things are calculable. Yeah you know you can calculate it as put it this way though the one thing I'm not sure how to calculate is thinking about the size of the son as a non point source. Mm-hmm.

That's going to be it's going to make the calculation harder but anyway I'll see if I can figure it out.

All right not right. No no wait we got other stuff to do state of Washington state which is here on earth. I'm I'm free. No I think it's best we move on to. Okay um.

Let's see.

“Hold on I'm not sure I'm in the right place.”

I wanted to start this discussion by saying that yes this is where I did last start.

Okay um. We have Washington state has an affordability crisis you can show my screen here. It's an executive summary from some recent analysis about the state of Washington. The state of Washington state ranks as the fifth most expensive place in the nation and and okay fifth most expensive turns out that's after let's see I'll find the we're after. I'm not seeing the it's like California New Jersey and DC and there's one other state that's that's ahead of us. Washington state the cost of living the change in the cost of living is far outpacing the change in the cost of living of any other state.

And so here we have Washington is in green for those of you who are colorblind Brett that's the top line. And it's also you know labeled with with letters which doesn't affect the colorblind. Change since 2013 in relative change in regional prosperity 6.1% here and you know California is going up but not as fast of Florida is actually going up some but but not you know more since 2019. Then California but still hasn't hit California Arizona is having a bunch of weird surges and then you know various other states are actually going down.

This is oh and here we go here's the here's the list that currently according to a new analysis Washington ranks fifth most expensive in the US based on overall price levels trailing only California DC. Jersey and Hawaii and then even more concerning Washington's cost of living has increased faster than any other state over the past decade relative prices have risen more than twice as fast as in California. Is that because the quality of our services has got so good. Oh man our quality of services crap.

So it's not that them yeah no it's not that unfortunately it's it's really really not so. Let's see here my own actually I think if I go right here. Bob Ferguson our governor.

“This is from yesterday it's time we fix our regressive tax code Ferguson writes on x and address affordability in our state that's why I sign the millionaires tax into law.”

Yesterday it will provide free breakfast and lunch to all K 12 students eliminate sales tax on diapers extend the working families tax credit to 460,000 households and provide the largest tax break for small businesses in state history. Who pays less than 1/2 of 1% of Washingtonians okay a lot has been made of of this let me just give a little background and let me have my screen back so I can see so my notes here. This legislature. Washington state legislature passed this so called millionaires tax a couple weeks ago and it was understood then that you know Ferguson was promising that he was going to sign it.

And it's I believe the 11th similar tax in the nation to be passed on which is to say an income tax that is that is aimed at high earners only. I will say in full disclosure. This is not a tax that would affect us that does affect us it would be great if we could imagine you know making enough that it would affect us but it doesn't yet so this is that's that's not exactly where this is where this critique is coming from.

So this is a 9.9% income tax on all income over a million dollars in a state in which it is unconstitutional to have an income tax voters have over and over and over again rejected referendums calling for income tax and. And in fact the first four I that the state made into what has widely been understood to be another kind of income tax which is the capital gains tax which is voted in a couple of years ago was snuck in on the basis that instead of calling an income tax which it patently is because some people make their money through capital gains rather than W2 salaries was by calling an exercise tax which is a tax on transactions.

And that's just a semantic game right there they are just playing semantic games in order to collect more of my money which you know to your earlier question well at least they must we must live in the best state in the union or cost of living is going up twice as fast as California's we are already the fifth most expensive place to live we must have the best schools the best roads the best infrastructure the best fairies the best everything well now and we'll get to that but first let's talk about the revenue so.

We went from being a state with a zero income tax because that is what is constitutionally required to a state that is now starting a couple of years going to have a 9.9% income tax on high earners on people making only on the amount of money that you make after your first million. But a few things. No one imagines that it's going to stop there that that one million dollar income cap or income limit is is where it's going to and indeed already within the same ledge session there has been a suggestion to lower that number to a hundred I've seen either 125,000 or 135,000 so already now that's one random progressive due to Olympia who's proposing that but he's in the legislature and this is a very blue state with.

“You know a lot of history in that's collect as much tax money as we can and let's do as little as possible in terms of offering services and goods to the people of Washington as we possibly can.”

We also have with regard to this tax it is it has a marriage penalty and exactly do you might expect for the west coast right we are going to discourage monogamy and fidelity and stability and loyalty because why not it's a two for we can tax rich people and we can discourage marriage. What do I mean by marriage penalty whereas some of the other states that have income taxes on high earners like California and New York there's a number call it a million you see it's a million and if you make over a million and your spouse makes over a million the over a million is taxed but if you make over a million and your spouse makes less than a million and the total is less than two million you're not taxed because you're two people right.

“In Washington according to this new tax as well as in Massachusetts and at least one other state that has these millionaire taxes there's a marriage penalty that one million number.”

It is goes to you if you are a single person or if you are a couple which means that high income earning dual income couples who are not by most metrics exceedingly rich may well get taxed now because. They're married right there is a benefit to getting divorced for a number of upper middle class people under this tax and this tax has been compared to what's happening in Massachusetts which several years ago imposed a. High earner marginal tax of four percent on top of their base rate of five percent which is a very different situation they still have a total income tax it's similar to what Washington states is going to be they have nine percent total for high earners and we're going to have a nine point I'm percent.

But there was already a tax rate of five percent and so they're one of the arguments that has been made by sociologists and economists who say there's not going to be any movement away from Washington as a result of this because look what happened in Massachusetts millionaires didn't move well millionaires suddenly had an additional four percent in Massachusetts and in Washington millionaires.

“All of a million are going to be taxed about ten percent which is a pretty substantial difference yes and of course this there's a question about.”

What motivates it there's a question about what it's real effect is going to be and one of the things that is clear is a there's a desire you know they've now broken through a forbidden.

So now the point is income tax is a thing and now we can juggle around what the income tax applies to and the threshold can be moved towards regular folks.

It's you know it's an arbitrary cost of continuing to live here and there are other places you can live so well so that.

“I listen to a little npr podcast today that was reporting to assess to look at this question and I don't have it linked here I can put it in the show notes.”

But the interviewing a sociologist from somewhere in the east coast he's written a book who's specializes in the millionaire taxes actually cause people to move and he has access to all this IRS tax data and he says now but of course we don't have access to his analysis so you know we I can't say. How good as analysis is and you know one of the points that he makes that I think is a reasonable one is that once you have created a life and a business in a place that has all of your community around you but not just all your personal community but all your business community around you.

“It's not necessarily easy to pull up stakes and just and and just move to a new place and you know he argues that look that you know the poor are actually more mobile.”

Then the rich because the poor have less keeping them to a place which in terms of the sheer numbers might be right but what you know a few things are 100% true that when people are imagining or when people are thinking about like okay. You know I'm I'm the next reflect orbital people God forbid and I'm looking for a place to go and have my start up in my now going to move to a state in you know 10 years ago Washington was understood to be especially compared to the other west coast dates but really across the board.

A remarkable place for business because it had no capital gains taxes and no income taxes and are being out taxes or business taxes are weird and I'll get to that in a moment like they're they're a little bit they're strangely punitive but they're pretty low compared to what a lot of other states do. But they're not changing like we're not we're not getting rid of those because of the new taxes they're just you know adding on to the other ones but if you were startup in you know 1998 or 2018 or 2018 you might well have looked Washington because there's a great tech sector there's great food in August the weather is fantastic.

“And you know there are all sorts of other reasons to be here but you don't decide to come to Washington at this point given that they're now both extraordinarily high capital gains taxes and high income taxes for income over a million.”

In an environment when literally 10 years ago there were neither it was zero for both and that is a radical change that like that is one of the things that I think is missing from the conversations that the just the turning on a dime into a state that that penalizes all the ways of generating revenue is. Of course going to drive some people away you know some sociologists work on IRS data notwithstanding but definitely affect people as they decide where to where to move their startup to where to start their startup.

At worst it just simply slows down the same process and the point is some people are going to move even though it's difficult and even in that analysis from NPR the point is oh what you're really saying is having a business traps you under our punitive tax regime. Okay well so try to be trying to steal man it. People who create businesses and places that are traditional businesses have facilities have staff have employees have all sorts of stuff around them that makes it hard to move right and where you have been successful as we will continue to be successful successful and picking up stakes and moving if you've got any sort of infrastructure and personnel is is very difficult right and this is exactly what I'm saying is.

That statement from NPR is equivalent to saying these people are trapped by the fact that what they have is difficult to move so that only goes so far if you have a high tax rate.

That basically is a you know a weight on the ankle of any business here that weight can only get so large before people will move but if at the same time and I must say the thing that is most galling about this is. Our services are absolutely crappy and poorly managed and so the idea that at one level not only are we among the most expensive places to live at the level of. Of taxation but the rate we are now outpacing others and at the rate at which our taxation rate is going up at the very same time but not not only that but also just the cost of living right you know to the to the first graph that I showed.

And that's what is going on in the middle of the day.

It's like it's being deliberately mismanaged at the same time that we're seeing punitive taxation and the combination of those two things is going. That's one more thing I just want to finish the point about what happens if you do this if you stop businesses from starting here and if you drive people so that they move elsewhere even though it's difficult to do then the point is the tax base dries up which then forces you to become even more predatory for the people who stayed and that's really the thing right they're setting themselves up so that they have to go after more and more people because the people who are starting new businesses are not going to do it here and that means.

“You know basically my point is if you actually cared about the values that these Democrats claim to care about then you have to think about what actually generates the most tax revenue.”

You don't want a punitive taxation scheme because what you really want is wealth to be created that you then tax and the point is you want people to start businesses here and making it inhospitable is like cutting off your nose despite your face.

Yeah and so that to to that point I'm going to I'm going to come back to the capital gains in the estate taxes the B&O taxes which I mentioned which are the business taxes.

When we moved here from Oregon and we lived in Portland and in Multnomah County and in Oregon and we had incredibly high taxes and so when we moved here four years ago from from Portland Oregon our taxes went down substantially. And it in part because Washington still was was priding itself on being a place that was good for for small businesses.

“But I remember being figuring that our bookkeepers were making mistakes and when I was seeing the B&O taxes coming through every month.”

It's like what like this doesn't this isn't making any sense why are we paying tax on all of this given that we had all of these expenses. You surely you've made an error. You're calculating our tax based on our gross income as opposed to our net income after all of our expenses. So that's how P&O tax in Washington is actually assessed believe it or not like I can't even say with a straight face it's based on its assessed on gross which means that a rather than net which means that a business with small margins an early business a restaurant any early business where they're probably putting a lot in and they don't expect to be making much yet and they're just hoping that they can get to that point and maybe it six months down the road or two years down the road but they have enough.

“You know built in that they can they can make it work as long as they you know start making a profit by some point in the future as soon as they make any any profit at all.”

They are paying the same tax rate on those profits as someone who was entirely profit who had no expenses whatsoever. Which means that your taxes in the state of Washington your business taxes can actually not just eat up all your profits they can actually send you into the red at the point that you finally started being in the black. So again the B&O taxes aren't super high right they're slightly variable and they are going up to like that's a new thing they're also going up. But they're not that high but the fact that they're on gross receipts rather than net is extraordinary.

They're higher than they look. They're higher than they look and they specifically penalize businesses with slim profit margins which is to say small businesses and young businesses and this is why when I was reading Governor Ferguson's tweet and he said you know we're going to help small businesses know. You are not you are absolutely not there is no way that this is helping small businesses. So sales taxes are also expanding in the state they're already very very high sales taxes. Apparently the new income tax is going to relieve was it sales tax on diapers great thanks.

But now it's going to except for diapers there's going to be sales tax on things as there always happen but also now services sales tax on services now as well which is new.

That's huge yep the estate tax is near or at the highest in the nation it's actually just been dropped. The little bit but the tier to state tax begins at 10% and the top rate is 35% in the state of Washington. 35% that is huge and then capital gains tax which was brand new in 2022 is 7% for gains under a million and again that 9.9% number for gains over a million. And again this was I've said this already but this was the first for a and to income tax for the state of Washington in which they started playing around playing a little semantic games like oh that's I income tax that's a transaction tax.

The taxation is going up the cost of living is going up and again well at least the parks are amazing in the schools are amazing the streets are great and and law and order is intact and their homelessness dealt with and none of those things are.

None of those things are true in the state and the state is repressive in regards to our rights they've enabled themselves to institute.

“What I think are no exception medical mandates on the basis of vague claims of public value.”

So the point is it it's either like a mental disorder where people who have no experience with the way things actually work. They cannot discover that their fanciful notions from some essay they wrote aren't true in practice. Which they're still mad they got to be or or it's actually some kind of sabotage either you know there's a leak the money is going somewhere that we can't see and so the services collapse and the hunger for more revenue is insatiable. The fact that there are other states with much lower tax burdens in which the services actually work in which the states are actually well governed tells you something isn't right here and one of the things that might not be right here is you're making an inhospitable environment for the people who create wealth.

Not arguing that that's a pure fact as I've said many times you know all great fortunes typically have a wealth creation aspect and a rent seeking aspect. So I know it's a mixed bag but the point is you want the wealth created in your state because it makes your people especially your people who are close to the bottom better off you want your state to be well run you want the services to function and so.

“Create a punitive tax environment is sabotaging the very people that you claim you're doing it to help.”

You want the state to run well and you're making it run like crap that's going to result in less wealth created here which means that your punitive taxes are going to have to go up not down making so it's a death spiral is what it is. So you were filling up your truck the other day yes and gas prices were high enough that actually you and two other people at the pump started having conversation about the fact that you were paying 650 a gallon. Wasn't 650 but it was both six. It was above six. Okay.

For regular that's not fancy.

“Yeah for regular over six dollars a gallon when we were in Hawaii in February I was shocked that our gas prices in Washington were higher than they were in Hawaii and I looked into it.”

And I found out that our fuel sort of our fuel taxes in the state of Washington are actually third highest in the country.

But at least those fuel taxes are going to make amazing like amazing transportation infrastructure in the state right.

Well no actually not. So if show my screen one last time here this from the reason foundation the annual highway report finds that Washington's highway system ranks. Forty eighths in the nation and overall cost effectiveness and condition so we have the third highest fuel taxes in the nation and the third worst. Highway system across all of these metrics in fact we're dead last across a number of metrics capital and bridge dispersements maintenance dispersements other dispersements which is to say where does the money go.

Right right the local taxes are collected but in terms of dispersing it to capital and bridge dispersements maintenance other. I don't know like it just we just we just we live with the pot holes and the failing you know I don't actually fairies don't show up here because this is across all states and you know maybe it's it's probably niche somewhere in here and I don't know exactly where but. You know why not doing terribly I guess you could say not terribly and like other fatality rate we're only 38 but like we're not good in anything here like nothing we're like we're literally 48 in the nation.

Our highway infrastructure even though we have the third highest fuel taxes in the nation that right there is just such a perfect summary of the situation.

Team blue in Olympia is is crying more loudly than ever that they just need more money and then they'll fix the problems and. Taxes are going up cost of living is going up everything is more expensive and no one is claiming that life in Washington is getting better. Yeah, it's just not right so let's put it this way if you knew nothing else you just knew that.

Right there are worst cases you know that this is fraud or sabotage or something but the point is best case scenario is gross mismanagement of the state by the people who control it which of course are the Democrats.

“I'm not saying the Republicans are any prize but the Democrats on the West Coast have demonstrated that at best they have no fucking idea what they're doing.”

Yeah and.

The functional systems be better with more money usually that is the case when you have non functional systems that demonstrably don't do anything good with the money they've got.

That's not how you fix a system especially when the key element is the tax base and yours your sabotaging it.

“You know, I mean, I think it's a lot of people are going across the word Idaho, which among among other things has you know it actually has a it has a flat five something percent income tax rate five point three maybe it's like that.”

And so has the very first actually at the friend of ours who wrote the legislation and got it passed in Idaho the very first health freedom bill in the in the entire United States.

The guarantees that you shall not be forced to get any sort of medical procedure or shot or pill or anything no matter what that child not be mandated on a human being which is remarkable. Yeah, all right.

“Be there. I think so. All right, we'll be back on an April 4th on Saturday on our younger sons birthday.”

Talking more about you know probably not Washington because sort of Washington at the moment.

We'll still be here, but we'll be talking about, you know, the news the day all through an evolutionary lens as we do. And until you see us next time, be good to the ones you love, eat good food and get outside.