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What is a view? What is attention? Does a number become more real if it is larger? Are advertisers being ushered into a hall of mirrors? And if every video, every creator, every athlete, every billionaire, and every man on earth can be given a bigger number, have we made the world better — or simply made value meaningless?

We discuss YouTube views, attention inflation, dead internet paradise, advertisers, Zimbabwean trillionaires, egalitarianism, Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, cinema box office inflation, World of Warcraft stat squish, the psychological horror of decline, the impossibility of measuring attention, the parable of the workers in the vineyard, angelic value, Christianity, equality, and whether every mote of dust has infinite worth.

Chapters:

00:00 The number goes up

00:51 Introduction

04:45 YouTube changes the view count

08:02 Advertisers and the fantasy economy

12:40 Do labels change reality?

14:47 Egalitarianism, power and resentment

19:03 Do big numbers hide inequality?

22:35 Cinema, inflation and fake success

24:22 Stat squish and the horror of smaller numbers

27:14 What can value actually measure?

31:07 Can attention ever be quantified?

36:01 The workers in the vineyard

38:01 Earthly numbers and angelic value

42:36 YouTube views in heaven

43:38 Christianity, equality and infinite worth