NPR, short for National Public Radio, recently released a podcast called Alternate Realities: A Strange Bet. This three-episode series chronicles a ten-thousand dollar bet between a father who descended into the world of alt-right conspiracy theories and his son, Zach, who’s trying to pull him up, back to reality. Throughout the episodes, Zach, his father, and his mother offer their perspectives on the father’s beliefs, behaviors, and attitudes, as well as free form discussions between Zach and his father. Note: this article contains spoilers, so please watch the series first if you’re interested.
Zach’s parents’ names are not given, so I will refer to them as ‘the father’ and ‘the mother’ throughout this post. From the father’s point of view, it’s Zach who needs to be pulled up. One day, the father makes an interesting proposition – he sends Zach an image of ten predictions and ten one-thousand-dollar bets that each prediction will come to pass by the end of 2024.
Zach, intrigued, agrees to the bet. The mother originally disapproves, but after reflection, reverses her opinion, believing this would put a timeline on the father’s increasingly erratic beliefs and behaviors. During the podcast, she states that she’d been considering divorce, despite her age and the difficulty of undertaking such a radical lifestyle change. To her, the conclusion of this bet would act as a forcing function: she’ll either stay, or she’ll leave.
The father wasn’t always an alt-right conspiracist, not according to Zach. When he was a young adult, he held liberal viewpoints, and in a manner of speaking, he was himself the ‘Zach’ to his father just as Zach is to him. In other words, the grandfather held his own set of beliefs that significantly diverged from reality. As the father got older, he delved more and more into the world in which he is currently trapped. His increasing use of the internet has spurred this on.
The podcast gives the father ample time to express his views, justify his beliefs, and explore the ways in which they’ve affected his relationship with his family. From his own words, he reveals how he’s fallen into the world of conspiracies and prophecies. He firmly believes that he’s one of a small minority of people who can see the ‘big picture.’ In a discussion with Zach, he uses an analogy to describe his insight: just as the president of the United States has more information than the rest of us upon which he can ‘see the big picture,’ the father has more insight in which he can do the same. When Zach asks him what gives him this insight, he replies, “because I believe God has gifted me with wisdom and discernment to discern between fact and fiction and read between the lines.”
In my opinion, this is the crux of his problems. I don’t know if this belief caused his descent, or if his descent led to this belief, but its repercussions are the same. If he believes his clarity is God-given, convincing him otherwise will be intractable. Any disagreement or counter argument will reduce to a flat competition between his opinion and yours, and how can your opinion compete against that of someone who’s opinion is God-given? While this fundamental belief stands, the father will never be able to overcome his problems. Anytime something challenges his worldview, he can fall back to this belief and reassure himself. To him, anyone who disagrees just doesn’t get it.
This series didn’t include any discussion of his particular beliefs nor arguments between Zach and the father regarding those beliefs. While I agree with this decision to leave it out, its absence prevents us from understanding the father’s point of view – we know he believes in these conspiracies, but we don’t know how exactly he justifies it to himself, other than his supposed God-given wisdom. However, he does make statements about “knowing in his soul;” we can assess his state of mind partially by reviewing the idea behind this statement. He never explained what “knowing in your soul” means to him, so I’ll attempt to dissect the statement myself. This is reminiscent of a quote from 17th century mathematician Blaise Pascal, “the heart has its reasons whereof reason knows nothing.” It’s a poetic statement that differentiates between matters of science and humanity which ironically serves to explain why the father’s beliefs are unjustified.
In matters of personal relationships, tastes, and life ambitions, the heart can serve as an excellent guiding force. In matters of empiricism, those of real-world events, the opposite is the case. I can tell you that I, as an author, love the process of writing books and articles, but I know that I cannot use this feeling as a means of convincing you that I’m a writer of merit, I can only hope to use evidence such as editorial reviews, public reception, and the content I produce itself, were you to judge personally. I might pride myself on having a successful software engineering career, but I cannot use this pride to justify any particular software engineering decisions I make. If I, personally, were to feel as if I “know something in my soul” on a matter which is empirical, I would consider it an intuition that requires proof. The father fails to do this, opting to believe in his worldview from an emotional standpoint instead of a rational standpoint.
In the second episode, Zach asks his father what advice he would give to someone who’s fallen down a similar path. The father doesn’t believe he’s fallen down at all, but he understands the question’s intent and answers it, quoted below:
“Help me understand why you believe what you believe. Let’s look at the fallacies or the shortcomings in believing that. If you continue in believing that, how’s it going to impact your world? How’s that going to affect your relationships? What if you entertain ‘this’ thought? What if you could believe ‘this’ way? … What if you could adjust that thinking enough, so that it didn’t cause you the pain and the anguish that your current belief causes you?”
On the surface, this appears to be sound advice. It urges the hypothetical individual to consider the consequences of their beliefs, both on themselves and their communities. However, it says nothing of verification or falsification – there’s no advice on checking the veracity of the beliefs themselves, and there’s certainly nothing on disproving them, despite its cruciality. The advice is limited to how the beliefs affect the individual, as if truth itself is a buffet style offering, allowing individuals to pick the servings they like while leaving the rest behind. There is no truth-seeking or falsehood-filtering involved. I believe this resembles the father’s attitude toward his own beliefs.
Ultimately, the father’s predictions did not come to fruition. At the end of the series, the father admitted he was wrong and agreed to pay his newfound debt of ten-thousand dollars. However, as Zach predicted, he didn’t admit his worldviews were wrong, just the timing of his predictions. His worldview remained intact, unaffected by this loss. As a result, his wife left him, and his relationship problems with his daughter continued. As interesting as the podcast itself may be, it’s ultimately a story with a sad ending – the father’s family broke apart even further, and he himself remains in the hell of ignorance he’s created for himself.
