Episode 322: A Theater of Simultaneous Possibilities (William James' "The Stream of Thought")

Very Bad Wizards

Tamler Sommers & David Pizarro

Society & Culture, Philosophy

4.8 • 3K Ratings

🗓️ 9 December 2025

⏱️ 81 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

David and Tamler return to William James' monumental "Principles of Psychology", this time wading through his famous chapter "The Stream of Thought." We talk about his rejection of empiricist theories of consciousness in favor of a view that consciousness is a continuous stream of thoughts, sensations, and emotions without any elements (atoms) that repeat or appear in other people's streams. We talk about how vividly James captures certain features of consciousness, like trying to recall a forgotten name, or the ways that the subjective per of two people differ radically in the same environment. And we debate the merits of James' methodology as well as his universalist ambitions.

Plus, we discuss one of the early to mid-2000s papers, how seeing Batman on a subway makes you more altruistic because – wait, hold on, what, this study is from 2025??

Pagnini, F., Grosso, F., Cavalera, C., Poletti, V., Minazzi, G. A., Missoni, A., ... & Bertolotti, M. (2025). Unexpected events and prosocial behavior: the Batman effect. npj Mental Health Research, 4(1), 57.

James, W. (1890). The principles of psychology. Chapter 9: "The Stream of Thought" [free access to fulltext via psychclassics.yorku.ca]

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Very Bad Wizards is a podcast with a philosopher, my dad, and psychologist Dave Vizarro, having an informal discussion about issues in science and ethics.
0:09.4	Please note that the discussion contains bad words that I'm not allowed to say, and knowing my dad, some very inappropriate jokes.
0:17.3	That's how real it is. I think somebody is trying to kill me. I'll be waking up paranoid. I'd be really scared. I'll just be power. That's just the way I am.
0:27.6	The great boss has spoken. Play no attention to that man behind the curtain.
0:43.3	Who are you?
0:46.3	Who are you?
0:48.3	I'm a very bad man.
0:49.3	I'm a very good man.
0:51.3	Good man.
0:55.7	They think deep thoughts, and with no more brains than you have.
1:00.0	Pay no attention tonight, man.
1:06.0	Anybody can have a brain?
1:09.7	You're a very bad man.
1:12.6	I'm a very good man.
1:13.6	Just a very bad wizard.
1:16.6	Welcome to Very Bad Wizards.
1:18.6	I'm Tamler Summers from the University of Houston.
1:21.6	Dave, Vince Gilligan, the creator of Breaking Bad and Better Recall's All, and now Pl Pluribus has said about AI that it's the most expensive and energy-intensive plagiarism machine.
1:35.8	I think there's a very high possibility that this is all a bunch of horseshit.
1:40.8	Now, you know that I agree with him on this, so go ahead.
1:47.2	Defend your boy. By your boy,
1:53.3	I mean AI. I was going to say, who am I defending here? Look, we're on the same page about art and AI. And I feel like that's what you're focused on primarily in your attacks on AI. Because what
	...

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