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December 17, 2023 19:03
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| {"doc_id":"nXJBccSwtB8_0","video_id":"nXJBccSwtB8","content":"You said these are dangerous times. The world order is shifting before our eyes. We also both know that with hyper disruptive technologies like AI on the horizon, a good outcome is not guaranteed. Why do you think big tech will become the third superpower and what are the dangers and opportunities if it does? Big tech is essentially sovereign over the digital world. The fact that former President Trump was de-platformed from Facebook and from Twitter when he was president, you know, most powerful political figure on the planet. And he's just taken off of those networks and as a consequence, hundreds of millions of people that would be regularly engaging with him in real time suddenly can't see it. That wasn't a decision that was made by a government. It wasn't a decision made by a judge or by a regulatory authority or even by a multinational organization like, you know, the UN. It was made by individuals that own tech companies. The same thing is true in the decision to help Ukraine in the war. In the early days, the U.S. didn't provide much military support.","nb_tokens":218} | |
| {"doc_id":"nXJBccSwtB8_1","video_id":"nXJBccSwtB8","content":"Most of the military capacity and the cyber defenses, the ability to communicate on the ground, was stood up by some tech companies. They're not allies of NATO. They're under no obligation to do that. They've got shareholders, right? But they still decided to do it. I think that whether we're talking about society or the economy or even national security, if it touches the digital space, technology companies basically act with dominion. And that didn't matter much when the internet was first founded because the importance of the internet for those things was pretty small. But as the importance of the digital world drives a bigger and bigger piece of the global economy, a bigger and bigger piece of civil society, a bigger and bigger piece of national security, and even increasingly defines who we are as people, how we interact with other human beings, what we see, what we decide, what we feel, how we emote. That is an astonishing amount of power in the hands of these tech companies. And yes, there are some efforts to rein them in, to break them up, to regulate them.","nb_tokens":222} | |
| {"doc_id":"nXJBccSwtB8_2","video_id":"nXJBccSwtB8","content":"But when I look at artificial intelligence in particular, I see these technology companies and their technologies vastly outstripping the capacity of governments to regulate in that space. So does that mean that suddenly you're not going to be citizens of the US? You're going to be citizens of a tech company? No, I'm not going that far. But certainly, in terms of who wields the most power over us as human beings, increasingly, you would put those companies in that category. None of us, even five years ago, were thinking about this seriously. And certainly, when I was studying as a political scientist, this is my entire career, the geopolitical space is determined by governments, right? Like them or hate them. And some of them are powerful, some of them are weak, some of them are rich, some of them are poor, some are open, some are closed, some are dictatorships, right? Some are democracy, some are functional, some are dysfunctional, but they're in charge. And that increasingly is not true. As you look at that potential, or not potential, as you look at that growing reality, how does that play out?","nb_tokens":237} | |
| {"doc_id":"nXJBccSwtB8_3","video_id":"nXJBccSwtB8","content":"The one thing when I look at that, that I really start getting paranoid about is that AI, especially quantum computing, I'm maybe less familiar with, but sort of lingers in the back of my mind, become one of two things. Either weapons used by governments, even if it's not against their own people, though I do, especially with authoritarian governments, I get very paranoid about that. But even if they're just used as warfare against other countries, that sort of quiet, invisible battle freaks me out. And then also, I worry very much about this becoming the new battlefield for a cold war between the US and China specifically. Do you see us as moving towards that because the tech will make that increasingly easy to fight an invisible war? I do think, of course, that all of these technologies are both enabling and destructive. And it all depends on the intention of the user. And in some cases, it's someone who's just a tinkerer, that makes a mistake, or that's playing around and it explodes. I'm not particularly worried that the robots are going to take over.","nb_tokens":226} | |
| {"doc_id":"nXJBccSwtB8_4","video_id":"nXJBccSwtB8","content":"I'm not particularly worried that we're on the cusp of developing a superhuman intelligence and that we're suddenly irrelevant or we're held hostage to it. In other words, I know that you love The Matrix. We talked about that a little bit before the show. This is not my 5-10 year concern. But the idea that this technology is going to proliferate explosively, I mean, vastly beyond anything we ever were concerned about with nuclear weapons, where 80 years on, it's still just a handful of countries and no corporations, no terrorist groups, no individuals to have access to those nukes. No, no, no. AI, with both its productive and destructive capacities, will not just be in the hands of rogue states, but will also be in the hands of people and terrorists and corporations. And they'll have cutting edge access to that. So, I mean, it would be easier to deal with if it was just about the United States and China. And we can talk about the United States and China and how they think about that technology differently and how we're fighting over it and how it has become a technology Cold War.","nb_tokens":236} | |
| {"doc_id":"nXJBccSwtB8_5","video_id":"nXJBccSwtB8","content":"I think that we can say that that exists right now. Not a Cold War overall, but a technology Cold War. I think that exists. But I think the dangers of AI are far greater than that. It is precisely the fact that non-governments will act as principles in determining the future of the digital world and of society and national security as a consequence. And governments right now, governments still seem to think that they're going to be the ones that will drive all this regulation. And in the most recent days, the United States is taking just a few baby steps to show that maybe they recognize that that's not the case. But ultimately, either we're going to have to govern in new institutions with technology companies as partners, as signatories, or they're not going to be regulated. And I think that that reality is not yet appreciated by citizens. It's not yet appreciated by governments. Okay, so tell me more about that. What does the world look like where this technology is proliferating like that and is not regulated? Well, if it's not regulated at all, that means that everyone has access to it. So let's look at the good side first.","nb_tokens":240} | |
| {"doc_id":"nXJBccSwtB8_6","video_id":"nXJBccSwtB8","content":"Let's be positive and optimistic because I am a believer in this technology. I think it does all sorts of incredible things. And I'm not just talking about chat GPT. I'm talking about the ability to take any proprietary data set and be maximally efficient in extracting value from it, helping allowing workers to become AI adjacent in ways that will make them more productive and effective. I look at my own firm Eurasia Group, we've got about 250 employees. And I we did a town hall with them the other day, we do one every quarter. And we were talking about AI. And I said, I don't think there's anyone in any of these offices globally, that will be displaced by AI in the next three to five years, not one of my knowledge workers. But I said, all of you will be AI adjacent.","nb_tokens":172} | |
| {"doc_id":"nXJBccSwtB8_7","video_id":"nXJBccSwtB8","content":"And if you're not, if you're not learning how to use AI to dramatically improve your work, whether you are an analyst, or whether you're on the business side, or you're in finance, or you're, you know, in on the IT help desk, or you're a graphics person, an editor, whatever it is, you will become much less productive than other employees that are doing that. And that will be a problem for you. So we need to get you the tools, and you need to learn. So and I think that that's, that's true in almost every industry imaginable. It's true in education, it's true in healthcare, and for new pharma and vaccines. It's true for new energy and critical infrastructure. And what's so amazing about it, one of the reasons why it's taking us so long to respond to climate change, even now that we all agree that it's happening. We all agree this 420 parts per million of carbon in the atmosphere, we all agree there's 1.2 degrees centigrade of warming, like that's, that's no longer in dispute.","nb_tokens":233} | |
| {"doc_id":"nXJBccSwtB8_8","video_id":"nXJBccSwtB8","content":"And yet, it's really taking us a long time to get to the point that we can reduce our carbon emissions. And the reason for that is because you need to change the critical infrastructure, right, you need to move from one entire supply chain, oriented around carbon, to another one oriented around something new, whether that's solar or, you know, green hydrogen, or you name it, right. When you're talking about AI, you're talking about first and foremost, creating efficiencies using your existing critical infrastructure, which means you have no vested corporations that are saying we don't want that. No, every corporation is saying, how can we invest in that to create greater profitability? Everyone, every, every oil company is going to use AI, just like every post fossil fuel company is going to use it, every bank is going to use it, every pharmaceutical company, whether they're using whether they're in mRNA, or they're in traditional, you know, vaccines that are that are developed as we have over decades now, I think that we truly underestimate the impact that will have in unlocking wealth, in unlocking human capital, and it's going to happen fast.","nb_tokens":237} | |
| {"doc_id":"nXJBccSwtB8_9","video_id":"nXJBccSwtB8","content":"It's not decades, as it took with globalization to open markets and get goods and services to move across the world. It's years, in some cases, it's months. And that that to me is very, very exciting. So that's the positive side. And frankly, that's what the positive side looks like without regulation, too. Because I mean, look, there are trillions of dollars being spent on this rollout. And it's being spent by a lot of people who are hyper smart, they are hyper competitive, they want to get there first before other companies that are in that space. And they don't need any further incentive to ensure that they can roll that out as fast as possible. So you and I can, we can say whatever we want. But it's not, you know, further subsidies are not required, right? Like that is just going to happen. That is going to happen.","nb_tokens":187} | |
| {"doc_id":"nXJBccSwtB8_10","video_id":"nXJBccSwtB8","content":"But what they're not doing, and I'm sure what you want to spend more time on with me, is not the everything's going to be great, or you know, what they call this E-act, the, you know, sort of exponential accelerationists, who just believe that if we just put all this money in it, then we're gonna, we're gonna all become a greater species, and it's just going to happen. But there are going to be a lot of negative externalities. And we know this from from globalization. I mean, the miracle of your and my lifetimes, thus far, before AI, the miracle was, we managed to unlock access to the global marketplace for now 8 billion people, trade and goods and capital and investment and the labor force, the workforce, and that created dislocations. It meant that there were a whole bunch of people that were more expensive in the West that lost their jobs as inexpensive labor that was very talented in China and India gain jobs. But But that led to unprecedented growth for 50 years. There were also negative externalities. And those negative externalities played out over many decades.","nb_tokens":236} | |
| {"doc_id":"nXJBccSwtB8_11","video_id":"nXJBccSwtB8","content":"But it's when you take all of this inexpensive coal, and oil and gas out of the ground, and you don't realize that you're actually using a limited resource, and you're affecting the climate. And so decades later, we all figure out, oh, wait a second. This is a really huge cost on humanity and all of these other species, many of which are already extinct. And no one's bothered to pay for them. Well, with AI, the negative externalities will happen, basically simultaneously with all the positive stuff I just talked about. And just like with climate, none of the people that are driving AI are spending their time or resource figuring out how to deal with those those problems. They're spending all their time trying to figure out how to save humanity, how to accelerate this technology. So if we don't talk about those negative externalities, they're just going to happen. And they won't be mitigated, they won't be regulated. And there's a lot of them. And you know, we can talk through what they are.","nb_tokens":218} | |
| {"doc_id":"nXJBccSwtB8_12","video_id":"nXJBccSwtB8","content":"But I mean, there's, you know, just just to put in everyone's head here, that kind of like climate change, right? We all wanted globalization, I'm a huge fan of globalization. We all hate climate change, we wish it hadn't happened. You cannot have one without the other. And, you know, the fact that we were so focused on growth, and that all of the powerful forces are, let's have more stuff, let's get more GDP, let's extend our lifespans, let's improve our education, let's take people out of abject poverty, all of which are, you know, laudable goals, some more, some less, but things that we all like. But there were there were consequences that no one wanted, no one dealt with, no one cared as much about, because they're not as directly relevant to us as the shiny apple that's right in front. And that that is what is about to happen in exponential fashion with artificial intelligence. All right, so we've got the shiny object syndrome, myself included, I am I am deploying AI in my company as fast as I can.","nb_tokens":237} | |
| {"doc_id":"nXJBccSwtB8_13","video_id":"nXJBccSwtB8","content":"But at the same time, I am very worried about how this plays out. You've already touched on job loss, you're not super worried about that. And the three to five year time horizon, I may be a little more worried about that than you. But I gave a same a similar speech to my company, which is I have literally zero intention to get rid of anybody. But I do have the expectation that all of you are going to be learning how to use AI. And I know that that is, is going to mean I'm going to get efficiencies out of my current workforce, which means I won't be hiring additional people. So while the people I have are safe, it certainly creates instability in people in terms of looking for a new job, the kind of mobility, I don't think people are going to be scaling as quickly as possible. But my real question for you is given that you have a global perspective, which which I've come to late in the game, and for longtime viewers of mine, I will just say the reason I become so obsessed with this, you and I were talking about this before we started rolling, I come at everything from the perspective of the individual.","nb_tokens":244} | |
| {"doc_id":"nXJBccSwtB8_14","video_id":"nXJBccSwtB8","content":"And I think that that culture and all these knock on effects are all downstream of the individual. And if we want a good society, we have to be good individuals. But we have to take the time to say, what is that? Like, what are we aiming towards? What's our North Star? What are we trying to get out of this? So for me, the punchline is human flourishing. I don't spend time in this interview defining what that means. Certainly, my listeners have heard me talk about that before. But what do you think about, I assume you will roughly given the talk that you just gave, will roughly say something similar, we want good things, we want to pull people out of poverty, we want to clean up the environment, there's going to be a lot of things we want to do that I think more or less are about human flourishing. What then is the collision of a new technology like AI becoming so ubiquitous in an unregulated fashion that gives you pause? Is it US-China? Is it a rogue actor making bioweapons?","nb_tokens":219} | |
| {"doc_id":"nXJBccSwtB8_15","video_id":"nXJBccSwtB8","content":"Like what's the thing that when you look near term, we'll say the three to five year time horizon, what gives you pause? So there are a few things. And I don't, even though I said, I don't think I'm going to fire anyone because of AI, I do worry that the same populist trends that we have experienced in the developed world, in particular, over the last 20 years, can grow faster. If you are a rural, you know, living in a rural area, or you're undereducated, and, you know, you're not going to become AI adjacent in the next five years, 10 years in the United States, in Europe, and those people will be left farther behind by the knowledge workers that have that opportunity. And so I'm not saying they're going to have massive unemployment, but I worry about that. What do you think about like picking fruit and stuff like that with robots that make your radar for anything near term? Again, not not so much. So I again, I would say no, let me tell you why I say no about that.","nb_tokens":228} | |
| {"doc_id":"nXJBccSwtB8_16","video_id":"nXJBccSwtB8","content":"Because when I think about what CEOs do with their workforces, generally, they take those productivity gains, they pocket them, you know, they pay out good bonuses to themselves to their shareholders, maybe they invest more in growth. But as long as growth is moving, they're not getting rid of a whole bunch of people. They like the people that they have, they want it, they're always thinking the trees are going to grow, you know, sort of to the heavens. And then when they face a sudden contraction, a recession, or even worse, a depression, then suddenly, they look at everything around them and say, okay, where can we cut costs? And if we've suddenly if those workers, if a lot of those workers aren't as efficient as they used to be, and you get new technologies, suddenly, it's not like you're incrementally getting rid of people every year, it's that you've taken a huge swath out of the workplace. So I don't think that that's going to happen suddenly, in the next few years, because we're coming out of a mild, narrow slowdown right now. And the next few years should look better.","nb_tokens":241} | |
| {"doc_id":"nXJBccSwtB8_17","video_id":"nXJBccSwtB8","content":"I more think about what happens the next time we're in a major cyclical downturn. And, and combining that with where we've gotten to with the AI productivity build up at that point. But I, but I still think that in the interim, you're going to have people that aren't gaining the productivity benefits from AI inside Western economies. And those are the same people that have been hit by the fentanyl crisis. Those are the same people that haven't had good investments in their educational systems. Then around the world, the people that digital have nots, the people that aren't even online, so they won't be able to use these new AI tools to be able to improve their knowledge, to have access to better doctors. So they'll be left behind this new turbocharged globalization. And that's a lot of sub-Saharan Africa, first and foremost. So I do think that there are two groups of people that even in the next five years, that will suffer comparatively, and will be angry politically, and will create social discontent. So I didn't mean to imply that I didn't care about that, or that I thought it was off the screen.","nb_tokens":237} | |
| {"doc_id":"nXJBccSwtB8_18","video_id":"nXJBccSwtB8","content":"It was more that I don't see that as a firm of literally 250 people, like we're tiny. And if you tell me that we're going to have a lot more efficiency, I wouldn't actually hire less. I'd hire more because I want to get to 500 people faster. There's just more things that I want to do without taking any outside investment. But that's a tiny, tiny issue compared to the other stuff we're talking about. The things that I'm probably most worried about in the near term, three years, let's say, I'd say are three buckets. The first is the disinformation bucket. The fact that inside democracies, increasingly, especially with AI, we as citizens cannot agree on what is true. We can't agree on facts. And that delegitimizes the media. It delegitimizes our leaders and both political parties or the many political parties that exist in other developed countries. It delegitimizes our judicial system, rule of law. It even delegitimizes our scientists. And you can't really have an effective democracy if there is no longer a fact space.","nb_tokens":233} | |
| {"doc_id":"nXJBccSwtB8_19","video_id":"nXJBccSwtB8","content":"I mean, we're seeing it right now in a tiny way with all of these indictments of Trump. And it doesn't matter what the indictments are. It doesn't matter how many they are. It doesn't matter what he's being indicted for. What matters more to the political outcome is whether or not you favor Trump politically. If you do, then this is politicized. It's a witch hunt. And Biden should be indicted. And if you don't, then Trump is unfit. And every indictment doesn't matter what it is. Before you even get a result of it, then he's guilty. And that with AI becomes turbocharged. You can reboot your life, your health, even your career, anything you want. All you need is discipline. I can teach you the tactics that I learned while growing a billion dollar business that will allow you to see your goals through. Whether you want better health, stronger relationships, a more successful career, any of that is possible with the mindset and business programs in Impact Theory University. Join the thousands of students who have already accomplished amazing things. Tap now for a free trial and get started today.","nb_tokens":235} | |
| {"doc_id":"nXJBccSwtB8_20","video_id":"nXJBccSwtB8","content":"I want to get into why that happens. So my first question on that is, it's definitely pre-AI, because I think this started breaking down with social media. How prior to social media do you think that we were able to come to a consensus on truth? Well, a couple of reasons. One is that a lot of people got their media from either the same source or from overlapping and adjacent sources. So you had more commonality to talk about politics to the extent that you talked about politics. Second, it was mostly long form. So you would read a newspaper article, you would listen to a radio show, you would watch a television show. You weren't just getting the headline. Because today, if you go on CNN or Fox News on their website, and don't look at the headlines, just look at the pieces, the pieces actually overlap a fair amount. If you look at the headlines, and then if you look at what headlines you're being filtered to, then the news that you're getting is completely different. So I think that's a reason too.","nb_tokens":220} | |
| {"doc_id":"nXJBccSwtB8_21","video_id":"nXJBccSwtB8","content":"And of course, the fact that people are spending so much more time intermediated by algorithms means they're spending less time randomly just meeting their fellow other. And that's even true with the rise of things like dating apps, right? I mean, as opposed to just happening to date someone you were in high school with, or in college with, or you know, you meet at a bar. I mean, if you're meeting that person through a dating app, you're already being sorted in ways that will reduce the randomness of the views that you're exposed to. So in all sorts of tiny ways that add up, that are mostly technologically driven, we become much more sorted. Sorted, not sorted, though sorted probably too, as a population. And then you put AI into this. And suddenly, this is being maxed. So let's get another example. You'll remember that I think it was David Ogilvy, who the great advertising entrepreneur who once said that we know that 50% of advertising dollars are, you know, are useful, 50% are useless, we just don't know what 50%. And of course, now, we know how to micro target.","nb_tokens":244} | |
| {"doc_id":"nXJBccSwtB8_22","video_id":"nXJBccSwtB8","content":"Now we know that when we're spending money, we are spending it to get the eyeballs of the people who are going to be affected by our message, they will be angered by it, they will be titillated by it, they will be engaged by it, they will spend money, they will become more addicted by it, all of those things. And when you do that, you more effectively sort the population, as opposed to throwing a message at the wall, but everybody gets the message. And so it is not the intention to destroy democracy, it is not the intention to rip apart civil society, it is merely an unintended secondary effect of the fact that we've become so good at micro targeting, and sorting, that people no longer are together as a nation, or as a community. And AI perfects that. AI allows you to take large language models, and predict with uncanny capacity, what the next thing is. And the next thing for an advertising company is how I can effectively target and reach that person, and not the other person who doesn't care about my money. Yeah, and keep them engaged. So let me give you my thesis on this.","nb_tokens":239} | |
| {"doc_id":"nXJBccSwtB8_23","video_id":"nXJBccSwtB8","content":"This, I think, is one of the most important things for us to all wrap our heads around. I've thought a lot about why is there a sudden breakdown in in truth. And the more I thought about, okay, what is true? How can we go about proving it? The reality is that so much of what we perceive to be true is merely your interpretation of something. So you're going to get a perspective on something built around what I call your frame of reference. So your frame of reference is basically it's your beliefs and your values that you've cobbled together sort of unknowingly throughout the course of your life. It becomes a lens through which you view everything, but it is a very distorted lens that is not making an effort to give you what is true. It's making an effort to conform to the things you already believe are or ought to be. And so when people confuse that for objective reality, then you have a problem. And so when you introduce AI, well, one, when you introduce algorithms, you get massive fragmentation. So now I can serve you just the things that you're interested in.","nb_tokens":230} | |
| {"doc_id":"nXJBccSwtB8_24","video_id":"nXJBccSwtB8","content":"So if you go to my feed, you're going to niche down into really weird things around video game creation, which is something that I'm very passionate about that somebody else isn't going to see. And so you get already that fragmentation. You layer that on top of your perspective, which you're coming with those predistortions. Then you layer that on top of the algorithm has an agenda that may not match your agenda. And now all of a sudden you get into these echo chambers that are feeding back to you your same perspective. They're eliminating nuance by giving you like you were talking about headlines earlier by giving you like this is the talking point. And so now you start everything becomes predictable. If I know you're on the left, I know what you're on a basket of concepts, I know where you're going to fall. If you're on the right, same basket of concepts, I know where you're going to fall. And so once you get rid of that nuance, now all of a sudden, again, we're not optimized for truth. We're optimized for party line.","nb_tokens":227} | |
| {"doc_id":"nXJBccSwtB8_25","video_id":"nXJBccSwtB8","content":"And because that then feeds into a sense of tribe and I belong and ease of thought, quite frankly, which is one of the things that scares me the most. It's like, oh, I don't have to think through that issue myself. I just need to know what my party line is. Cool. Got it. And now I go. And as we get more and more fragmented, now it becomes, okay, I know what my party line is in my very deep fragment here, but I don't know what's true. And I no longer even know how to assess what's true. In fact, I probably think again, because that distortion reads to me as objective reality. So I think it is true. And so now you have all these people who are like, this is true. Like there's not, there's nothing you could tell me that will make me think any different because I believe this to be true. And so now the question becomes, if I'm right, that truth is perspective and interpretation and you're soaked in the perspective and interpretation of others, so they reinforce. So it becomes perspective, interpretation, and reinforcement.","nb_tokens":234} | |
| {"doc_id":"nXJBccSwtB8_26","video_id":"nXJBccSwtB8","content":"And so that becomes, quote unquote, truth. Outside of science, for lack, no, because even science, we run into the same problem. So what do we do? We run into the same problem in science. So in a world where the only way I can think to get on the other side of this quagmire is to go, I want to achieve this thing. And I'm going to state, this is my desired outcome. This is the metric by which I will determine whether I have achieved said outcome. And then instead of asking what's true, I just ask what moved me closer to my goal. Is there any way else around that, that you see, or is this just a one way street to fragmented catastrophe? No, there are lots of ways out of it. We're just not heading towards any of them. I mean, no, you look at your Twitter feed or your X feed and you've got the people you're following. And if you're willing to spend the time, you can curate a following feed that has people of all sorts of different backgrounds, inclinations from all over the world. And I do that.","nb_tokens":239} | |
| {"doc_id":"nXJBccSwtB8_27","video_id":"nXJBccSwtB8","content":"But it takes a lot of time and effort and you need expertise to be able to do that. You have to be able to research and figure out who those people are. You have to know some people in the field. Most people don't do that. But of course, the 4U feed is much more titillating. The 4U feed is very entertaining. It engages you, it angers you and it soothes you. At the same time, you want more of that. And that, of course, is driving you exactly in the direction you just suggested. Now, a lot of people will say, well, OK, you watch CNN all the time. You should watch some Fox as well. No, that's not the answer. The answer is not watching Fox because you will just hate watch Fox because you've already been programmed to realize that everything that the people on the other side saying is false. And so they're all evil. And so all that's doing is validating your existing truth. No, what you really need to I tell young people this all the time.","nb_tokens":224} | |
| {"doc_id":"nXJBccSwtB8_28","video_id":"nXJBccSwtB8","content":"You really want to understand and get outside what's happening in the United States ecosystem. Watch the CBC or Al Jazeera or Deutsche Welle or NHK in Japan. Just watch their English language news once a week for half an hour, an hour. It's not very exciting, but it's like a completely external view of what the hell is going on in the United States and the rest of the world. And that forced you. First of all, it's long form, right? It's not the headlines beating you down. And secondly, it's like you don't actually have your anchor of all of the things that are stirring you up. They're not even playing with that. They're just kind of reporting on the best they can tell what the hell is going on. And then they're occasionally talking to people like that are locals and whatnot, but from every side that that's very valuable. But the thing that worries me about AI, I don't believe that AI is becoming much more like human beings. They're not faking us out by by just being it by being able to replicate me.","nb_tokens":227} | |
| {"doc_id":"nXJBccSwtB8_29","video_id":"nXJBccSwtB8","content":"I think what's actually happening is technology companies are teaching us more effectively how to engage like computers. I mean, you and I in person in a conversation in a relationship, a work relationship, a friend relationship, a sexual relationship, whatever it is, there's nothing a computer can do that can tear us away from that. But if we spend our time increasingly in the digital world, where we are driven by where all of our inputs are, are algorithmic, well, computers can replicate that very easily. And so if they can only make us more like computers, then no, it's not like the matrix where you want to feed off us in terms of fuel. It's much more that we're very valuable in driving the economy if you give us all of your attention and data. And and that is the way that you create, right, a maximal AI economy. It also happens to be completely dehumanized. Because we all know that human beings are social animals.","nb_tokens":198} | |
| {"doc_id":"nXJBccSwtB8_30","video_id":"nXJBccSwtB8","content":"We know if you stick us in a room or you stick us in a desert island, we're going to like engage with each other, talk to each other, figure out things about each other, doesn't matter what color we are, what sexual orientation we are, we will figure it out. If we're stuck, if we have no choice. But if you if you take us, and you and you use our most base, most reptilian impulses, and you and you monetize those so that we're the product. Oh, no, no, then then you lose everything we built as human beings, all the governance, all the community, all the social organizations, the churches, the things, the family, the things that matter to us that we're losing, that we're losing the things that make us rooted and make us sane and make us care and make us love. I mean, flourishing, flourishing starts right here. It starts at home. It doesn't start online. flourishing start those are tools that we need to use to create wealth, but you can't flourish if you don't have real relationships. That takes away it strips away the essence of who we are as people.","nb_tokens":243} | |
| {"doc_id":"nXJBccSwtB8_31","video_id":"nXJBccSwtB8","content":"And yet, we are all running headlong away from flourishing. Yeah, so that the only thing I'll take exception with there is the sense that we're we're running away from it. I think we're there are pulled away at all. Exactly that that feels more right to me. That's right. That's a better term for it. I agree. One of the things that I feel like is is really falling apart. And this is the thing I don't have a good solution for this is shared narratives. So Yuval Noah Harari talked about this very eloquently. And he said, you know, look, there are other species that can coordinate in massive groups, as big if not bigger than the way that humans can do, but we're the only ones that can coordinate in these huge groups flexibly. And he said, the way that we create that flexibility is through shared narratives. Now, they have historically come most compellingly through religion. And as religion changes, I resonate with the language that you know, God is dead Nietzsche sort of interpretation of that, that can hackle some people.","nb_tokens":228} | |
| {"doc_id":"nXJBccSwtB8_32","video_id":"nXJBccSwtB8","content":"So I'll just say that, that the tenor of it is changing that in a world where I think a lot of people have alternate belief systems, or things they gravitate towards, or not even necessarily thinking about religion. I think there's a God shaped hole in all of us. And I am not a believer, as my longtime listeners will know, but I acknowledge that I have a God shaped hole in me that I need to fill with meaning and purpose. And as we fragment, so going back to this idea, as we fragment, this gets very scary, because we don't have shared narratives anymore. And so now we're not necessarily cooperating in as large groups, where at least before we would have the narrative of the nation. And so we had something that we could galvanize around. But obviously, with the rise of populism, cyclically throughout history, it's not like just now. But whenever that rears its ugly head, then some very dark things can happen. But on the flip side of it, and so I'll say that's like a hyper shared narrative, right?","nb_tokens":226} | |
| {"doc_id":"nXJBccSwtB8_33","video_id":"nXJBccSwtB8","content":"Something has an injustice has been done to me, and the other person did it, and we need to rise up against. Okay, cool. Shared narrative can get dark. But you can also have on the other side where there is no shared narrative, you are now to your point about you're being pulled in a direction that doesn't unite us, but only fragments us further. And I'll plug into that the reason that I don't look at that and go, oh, we just need to then come up with a shared narrative. In fact, I'm going to put this in the framing of your book, you open your book, The Power of Crisis, with the story of Reagan and Gorbachev. And Reagan says to Gorbachev, hey, if I if the US this is like, at the height of the Cold War, if the US were invaded by an alien, would you help us? And Gorbachev said, Yes, absolutely.","nb_tokens":199} | |
| {"doc_id":"nXJBccSwtB8_34","video_id":"nXJBccSwtB8","content":"And that idea of, okay, there are things that we could rally around that take us out of our smaller narrative into a larger narrative, hence the title of the book, The Power of Crisis, there is a thing that that can bring us together and give us that shared narrative. But what scares me is if you plug in AI bias into this equation, you can't get now I Yeah, now I'm like, whoa, like, one, who gets to decide what the AI's value system is what the AI's belief system is how the AI interprets truth, what the AI reinforces. And then if there are a lot of AI, which which is probably the thing that protects us from an authoritarian answer, but at the same time, then you have all this competing reinforcement that again, just brings us back to fragmentation. So as you look at that suite of unnerving potential problems, what do you see is our path to the other side of this to doing it well? Yeah. So President Biden just two weeks ago, had a group of seven AI founders slash CEOs, the most powerful companies in this space, as of right now, that will not be true in a year or two, there'll be vastly more.","nb_tokens":250} | |
| {"doc_id":"nXJBccSwtB8_35","video_id":"nXJBccSwtB8","content":"Some of them are hyperscalers. Some of them are large language model creators, and some are both. And it was very interesting, because those seven companies basically agreed on a set of voluntary principles that included things like watermarks on AI. And, you know, reporting on vulnerabilities, sharing best practices on on testing the models, all of this stuff, the stuff that if you looked at it carefully, you'd say, those are all things we want. Those are things that will help protect us from the worst excesses of AI proliferation. Now, on the one hand, they are not only were they voluntary, but they were super undefined in ways that every company that was there could already say, we're doing all of those things, we don't need to spend any more money on them. But I am told those seven companies are planning on creating an institution that will meet together. And we'll work on more advanced on advancing those standards and defining them more clearly. We'll see where that goes. But also, I mean, as more companies get in the space, you're creating an expectation in the media, in the government, in the population, that these are things that they're committing to.","nb_tokens":245} | |
| {"doc_id":"nXJBccSwtB8_36","video_id":"nXJBccSwtB8","content":"And so increasingly, other companies will also want to show that they're doing that. And maybe there will be some, some backlash if they're not effective at doing so. But, but, you know, what was interesting to me about that initial meeting is the White House convened it, but they didn't actually set the agenda really at all, because they don't have the expertise. They don't have the technology, they don't know what these tools do. I mean, they're trying to get up to speed and hire people as fast as they can, but they, they're not going to be anywhere close to these companies. And what I think needs to happen in short order, is that you're going to need to create an approach that marries these things. You'll need the tech companies to have these institutions that they are, you know, involved in standing up, but the governments are going to need to work with them. And, and they're going to need to have carrots and sticks, they'll need to be licensing regimes, like we see for financial institutions, there's going to need to be deterrence penalties, they need to be responsible for what's on their platforms.","nb_tokens":243} | |
| {"doc_id":"nXJBccSwtB8_37","video_id":"nXJBccSwtB8","content":"And if they're used in nefarious ways, there's going to have to be penalties that could include shutting them down. And, you know, there's also some carrots that they should have, as this becomes a field of thousands and thousands of companies, there's proprietary data sets that the US government and American universities have access to, that can, you can drive massive wealth with AI. And maybe those will become public data sets that any AI company that's licensed can potentially use. I mean, all of this needs to be created. But we are nowhere on this right now. And the AI, like what we've been hearing about for 40 years, but suddenly, it's exponential. And exponential is not like Moore's law exponential, it's not like a doubling every 18 months, it's like 10x in terms of the size and the impact of the data sets every year. So we don't have years on this. And that's why the urgency that's why I mean, I've completely retooled, you know, our knowledge set to focus on what's the impact of AI on geopolitics.","nb_tokens":230} | |
| {"doc_id":"nXJBccSwtB8_38","video_id":"nXJBccSwtB8","content":"I mean, in the last year, because I've never seen anything that's had so much dramatic impact on how I think about the world and how geopolitics actually plays out. And so far, you and I have only talked about the disinformation piece and a little bit of the job piece. We haven't talked about what's probably the most dangerous piece, which is the proliferation piece of things like hackers, and, you know, developing bio weapons, and you know, viruses that can kill. I mean, I don't I'm sure you've heard this. I've heard from friends of mine that are coders, that in past weeks, that they cannot imagine coding without using the most advanced AI tools right now, because it's just like, it's just a world changer for them and how much they can do. I don't know any hackers.","nb_tokens":175} | |
| {"doc_id":"nXJBccSwtB8_39","video_id":"nXJBccSwtB8","content":"But I'm sure that criminal malware developers are saying, I can't imagine developing criminal malware or spear phishing without using these new AI tools, because I mean, it's just going to allow them to target in such an extraordinary and pinpoint way, and also to send out so much more, you know, sort of capable malware that will elicit so much more engagement, and therefore, you know, bring so much more money to them or shut down so many more servers and give them so much more illicit data and so much of the illicit data that they've already collected from the hacks on, you know, all of these companies that you've heard about, Target, for example, other firms. I mean, so much of that so far is just, oh, we're just selling that for people that want to like use the credit cards. No, now you're going to sell it to people that are empowered with AI that can generate malware against that data. And that again, and that's, that's like, we're going to develop all these new vaccines and new pharmaceuticals that will deal with Alzheimer's and deal with cancers. And it's going to be an incredible time for medicine.","nb_tokens":242} | |
| {"doc_id":"nXJBccSwtB8_40","video_id":"nXJBccSwtB8","content":"But we'll also be able to develop new bioweapons that will kill people. And that's not going to be just in the hands of North Koreans or Russians in the lab, it's going to be in the hands of small number of people that our intelligence agencies are not yet prepared to effectively track. Right. There's a reason why we don't have nuclear weapons everywhere. It's because it's expensive. It's dangerous. It's really hard. I mean, imagine the biohackers thinking back to the days when oh my god, you know how hard it was? Like, you know, you'd have to actually mix the stuff in a lab you you could die yourself. I mean, now we can do all this on the computer, the quaint old days, you know. So yeah, I, I worry deeply about the proliferation of these incredible tools used in dangerous ways. And we are not going to be able to allow the slippage that we have had around cyber tools that we have had around terrorism and their capabilities, we're going to need to get like, you know, our net, our filter is going to have to be incredibly, incredibly robust.","nb_tokens":240} | |
| {"doc_id":"nXJBccSwtB8_41","video_id":"nXJBccSwtB8","content":"Do you have a sense of how we pull that filter off? Well, part of it is, as I say, a hybrid organization. So there have been some people that have spoken about an international atomic energy agency model. So it'd be an international AI agency model. I think that won't work. Because that implies a state agency with inspectors that have a small number of targets that they're engaging in those inspections on I don't think that works. I think what you're going to need is an agency that involves the tech companies themselves. And so you know, if you're developing an AI capacity in your garage, if you want to use that anywhere, it's going to have to be licensed. If you've got software that's going to run AI, it's going to have to be licensed and and the tech companies that are running these models are going to have to police that in conjunction with governments. So this is I think this is a new governance model.","nb_tokens":197} | |
| {"doc_id":"nXJBccSwtB8_42","video_id":"nXJBccSwtB8","content":"I don't think it will work with the governments by themselves because they won't have the ability to understand what the capabilities of these algorithms are, how fast they can because they can proliferate what they can do, how they can be used dangerously. But the governments are the ones that are going to be able to impose penalties, they will have the effective deterrent measure. I mean, Microsoft, Google, Facebook, Meta, you know, these these companies are not what are they going to do? They'll throw you off their platform? No, no, that can't be the penalty for developing, you know, a bioweapon. You're going to need to be working together around this. And together, not just in the company hands over the information to the government, the agencies are going to need to be much more integrated. So here's one thing that I've been thinking a lot about be very curious to get your feedback on this. So I'm definitely somebody who is a big believer in Bitcoin and what's going on in cryptocurrency. But as I look at it, I'm like, oh, like this is definitely if we have it.","nb_tokens":234} | |
| {"doc_id":"nXJBccSwtB8_43","video_id":"nXJBccSwtB8","content":"The thing that makes me believe in Bitcoin specifically is that it's the closest thing to a digital recreation of an exploding star. So for people that understand for people that understand how gold has become across a bunch of cultures throughout time, the thing is because it it doesn't mold, it doesn't rot, and it it could only be generated from an exploding star. So there's no way to fake it. There's no way to make more. I see. And so, yeah, so you have this thing that's very good about carrying wealth across time and space. It isn't that it is inherently like people say, oh, but you can make jewelry and stuff. Yeah. But if we don't care about jewelry, then that never becomes a thing. And there's no reason that we should care about gold jewelry. I mean, the industrial uses of gold are utterly marginal to its utility as a currency. I agree. Exactly. So along comes Bitcoin, which same idea. There is a finite amount of it. You can never make more. It's the sort of computer equivalent of the exploding star. And it's better about going across space.","nb_tokens":234} | |
| {"doc_id":"nXJBccSwtB8_44","video_id":"nXJBccSwtB8","content":"So maybe it's equal to gold in terms of across time, but it's certainly much easier in terms of going across space. So I'm like, OK, cool. I really believe in that. But as you create that, you now have alternatives to government fiat currencies. And that is the slight weakening of their power. They're going to obviously push back on that. And so we'll see how that sort of plays out from a regulatory perspective, whether they just get in on it and start buying it or whether they get very anti it. I think that yet to be determined. But when I think about the things that will weaken the government's hold on things, the next thing that comes into the picture is just the government's absolute inability to stay on top of AI. And so now you've got, oh, we're already having to lean on these companies. And so if it becomes the most powerful tool, the most dangerous tool, and it's not controllable by governments in the way that nuclear weapons is, that's another weakening of the power. And so now you start getting into this.","nb_tokens":225} | |
| {"doc_id":"nXJBccSwtB8_45","video_id":"nXJBccSwtB8","content":"Two paths before you, you get apologies if I don't know if you know, apologies, but you get his idea of the network state where it's a non geographically bound grouping. So going back to that idea of shared narratives. So people share narratives from all over the world. They come together. They have digital currency. They can sort of make their own rules and laws. And then the other one is the authoritarian version where it's like, we just grab a hold of all of this. It is top down and you're going to adhere or life is going to be brutal. Obviously, that would be China's take. But both of those aren't ideal for me as a child of the 80s, where it's just like, oh, this is so stable and wonderful. So one, do you think that are are those the sort of two most likely polls or is there something in the middle that's more likely? Yeah. So I agree with you that, you know, Bitcoin and crypto represent a similar kind of proliferated, decentralized threat to governments as AI.","nb_tokens":221} | |
| {"doc_id":"nXJBccSwtB8_46","video_id":"nXJBccSwtB8","content":"Having said that, crypto, the amount of crypto, you know, in existence and being used compared to fiat currencies is de minimis. And I do not think that there is any plausible threat of scale against fiat currencies in the next, say, five years. And I do believe that if it became a threat of scale, every government in the world that matters would do everything they could to ensure that they continue to have a regulatory environment that maintains fiat currency is dominant. And they'll lean into stable coins, they'll lean into the technology, but they will want to have control over it. China, obvious. I mean, you've got, you know, WeChat and lots of digital currencies that work, but you have to use a digital RMB. You know, they refuse to have currency that they don't have control over because they want the information set. They want the political stability. In the United States, it's also the importance of having the dominant reserve currency globally, which matters immensely to America's ability to project power, to maintain, you know, our level of indebtedness, all of these things.","nb_tokens":228} | |
| {"doc_id":"nXJBccSwtB8_47","video_id":"nXJBccSwtB8","content":"So to weaponize finance, to, you know, to declare sanctions and tariffs to get other countries to do what we want, to align with us. So given that I think the timeline for AI being fundamentally transformative in governance is minimum two to three years, maximum five to 10, I only see one thing here. I mean, even climate change, which is huge and in front of us and trillions and trillions of dollars of impact and changing the way everybody thinks about spending money and governance and where they live and all of that, climate change, in many ways, is slower moving and slower impact than what we're going to see from AI. Like, I think AI is going to have much more geopolitical impact in the next five to 10 years than even climate will. And that was, you know, what was one of the things that when I wrote the book, The Power Crisis, that was before AI really took off. For me, each of the crises I was talking about were becoming larger and more existential. And I started with the pandemic, because I was writing kind of in the middle of it. And then I moved to climate. And then I moved to disruptive technologies and AI.","nb_tokens":245} | |
| {"doc_id":"nXJBccSwtB8_48","video_id":"nXJBccSwtB8","content":"And people were saying, how could you not put climate, you know, as the big one? I'm like, well, because climate, like is, first of all, it's not existential. Like we are actually on a path to responding to climate, it's just going to cause a lot of damage. And we're going to end up at like 2.5 degrees, 2.7 degrees warming. And it's also going to happen like over the next 75 years. And we'll probably be at peak carbon in the atmosphere at around 2045. And then a majority of the world's energy, you know, starts coming from our peak carbon energy use, excuse me. And then a majority of the world's energy starts coming from renewable sources. And that's an exciting place to be where with AI, like, we don't have 50 years for AI, we don't have 30 years for AI. Like, you know, we have 5-10 years to figure out if we're going to be able to regulate this or not. And if it's going to look more techno utopian, or if we're not here anymore.","nb_tokens":240} | |
| {"doc_id":"nXJBccSwtB8_49","video_id":"nXJBccSwtB8","content":"Like, I mean, honestly, I haven't really said this publicly, but we're having a broad enough discussion. Like, I'm, how old are you? 47. Okay, I'm 53. I think that, knock on wood, I don't think that either of us are likely to die of natural causes. I think at our age, we are probably either going to blow ourselves up, you know, as humans, or we're going to have such extraordinary technological advances, that we will be able to dramatically extend lifespans to in ways that are I mean, you know, dealing with with cell death and, and molecular destruction and genetic engineering. And I mean, just looking at what is ahead of us over the next 10-20 years, this does not feel remotely sustainable. But that doesn't mean it's horrible. That means it's one of two tail risks. And I just can't tell if it's the great one or the bad one. But to the extent that I have any role on this planet, I'd like to nudge us, as I know you would do, in the better direction.","nb_tokens":234} | |
| {"doc_id":"nXJBccSwtB8_50","video_id":"nXJBccSwtB8","content":"And that means getting a handle on this technology, and working to help it work for humanity with humanity, as opposed to, you know, not against it, but, you know, kind of irrelevant to it. We don't want technology that does not consider human beings as relevant on the planet. You can reboot your life, your health, even your career, anything you want. All you need is discipline. I can teach you the tactics that I learned while growing a billion dollar business that will allow you to see your goals through. Whether you want better health, stronger relationships, a more successful career, any of that is possible with the mindset and business programs in Impact Theory University. Join the thousands of students who have already accomplished amazing things. Tap now for a free trial and get started today. No, I agree with that. The thing that I think that we're going to have to contend with, though, is what is a governmental response going to be to the potential of their weakened power? So we know how China is dealing with it. So it was really amazing to watch China open up the capital markets and really just explode. And in your book, you talk about this.","nb_tokens":240} | |
| {"doc_id":"nXJBccSwtB8_51","video_id":"nXJBccSwtB8","content":"And I found it a really interesting insight that that forced me to reorient my thinking about what China did. And so, you know, if you've read Mao, The Untold Story, it's like it's just devastating to see how much death and destruction came out of an authoritarian government. And then at the same time, you're like, I don't know that America's approach is always the right, the most optimal answer. I forget the exact words you used to every problem. And what you pointed out with China when they opened up, like just the growth rate was pure insanity and is really pretty breathtaking. But they learned from the collapse of Russia exactly what not to do. And now they're clamping back down. Now, as somebody that grew up in the U.S., man, I look at that. I'm just like, dude, that I don't like that. That freaks me out. The thought of always being on that razor's edge of like the individual doesn't matter and we can just completely obliterate you. But then I watch not even the government necessarily in the U.S., but the people in the U.S.","nb_tokens":236} | |
| {"doc_id":"nXJBccSwtB8_52","video_id":"nXJBccSwtB8","content":"giving up on free speech, which as I think about what what's like the one thing that you just can't let go of, if you want the individual to matter. And I think if you want to get to the, quote, unquote, right answer, you have to have free speech, like even in my own company, where it would be very tempting to run my company in an authoritarian way. I just know I have too many blind spots. So I'm constantly like trying to get the team to be like, hey, say whatever you need, whatever you believe to be true. If what you believe to be true is that I'm an asshole and I do not know what I'm doing, you need to be able to say that. Now, I'm going to push you to articulate why I don't want some emotional statement. I want like give me going back to truth. Right. What is our goal? What's the metric by which we determine whether we're getting towards our goal? What can you show me in the math that shows that I'm doing this the wrong way?","nb_tokens":225} | |
| {"doc_id":"nXJBccSwtB8_53","video_id":"nXJBccSwtB8","content":"And then, you know, what's your take and why do you think it's going to work better? But. When I look at just the instability of that on both sides, you have authoritarian rule where we just obliterate it as soon as we don't feel like the government's in control, we kidnap those my words, Jack Ma, reeducate him and then put him back forward. Terrifying. Or on our side where it's like, no, if you say something I don't like, you 100 percent should be canceled going back to what you said about Trump. So. How do we as two people that want to nudge this in the right direction? What's the right pressure point? Is it is it the government? Is it the individual? Is it the algorithms? Is it making sure that I has the right biases? Like what what's the the right pressure point? I don't know that the right biases are the issue. I mean, you know, again, there's a lot of whack-a-mole going on tweaking these models as you roll them out.","nb_tokens":226} | |
| {"doc_id":"nXJBccSwtB8_54","video_id":"nXJBccSwtB8","content":"I think it is more in trying to ensure that you have clarity and transparency in what these models are doing and then the data that's being collected as it's being collected that has to be shared with this. These are experiments that are being run real time on human beings. And we wouldn't do that with a vaccine even in an emergency. We would have a lot more testing. We wouldn't do that on on a new GMO food because we'd be concerned about, you know, sort of disease, cancer, you name it. But we're doing that with these algorithms. It's very interesting to me and a little chilling that the Chinese, who have done everything they can in the last 20 years to catch up and surpass in some areas to the Americans in new technology areas, they look at AI and large language models and they've said, OK, we're going to have control over these. We're going to have full censorship over these. We're not going to give them data sets that they can run on in the public because they think it's too dangerous. And that means that the LLMs that the Chinese are running right now are crap.","nb_tokens":236} | |
| {"doc_id":"nXJBccSwtB8_55","video_id":"nXJBccSwtB8","content":"They're nowhere near as good as what the Americans presently have. And that's because the Chinese are willing to accept the economic disadvantage to ensure they have the political stability. And I think that the United States, again, we're not going to be able to simply stop this progress. The progress is going to happen. There's too much money. It's too fast. We don't know what we're doing as a government in response. And also, there are too many things we're focused on. Yes, you're focused on proliferation. But what I say is fake news and what I say is disinformation. Someone else is saying you're trying to politicize it. Right. And then you'll have a whole bunch of people saying we can't slow down our companies because we need to beat the Chinese. We're going to be the largest economy in the world, just like Zuckerberg did with Facebook 10 years ago. And so for all of those reasons, I don't think you can slow this. I don't think you can stop it. I think what we need is a partnership between the technology companies and the governments.","nb_tokens":230} | |
| {"doc_id":"nXJBccSwtB8_56","video_id":"nXJBccSwtB8","content":"And that is going to have to be regulated at the national level. It's going to have to be regulated at the global level. By the way, the financial marketplace is not so radically different from this. You have algorithms, trading algorithms that run, and they need to be regulated because you want to know that certain types of trading is not allowed. And other types of trading is. And the 2008 financial crisis, when it hit, even though it started in a small part of the economy, we were all worried. Oh, my God, this could explode the whole economy. What happened? All the banking CEOs and the Fed head, the chairman of the Fed, the Secretary of Treasury, they got together and said, OK, what are we going to do to ensure the system can stay stable and in place? And that happened in real time. And one of the reasons it works relatively well in the financial space is because the central bank governors are technocratic and somewhat independent from government. Like they know that you want to avoid a bad depression, a market collapse. They know that you have monetary and fiscal tools that you can use to respond.","nb_tokens":234} | |
| {"doc_id":"nXJBccSwtB8_57","video_id":"nXJBccSwtB8","content":"We're going to need to create something like that in the technology space. We're going to have to create regulators who are in government but are working directly with the tech companies as partners to avoid contagion, to respond immediately to crises when they occur. And they won't just lead to market collapse. They could lead to national security destruction. They could lead to lots of people getting killed. But it's going to be the same basic kind of model. And we got to start working on that now. All right. So let's talk about then the central thesis of your book. So using my words, the book kind of wants for a crisis. Hence the title The Power of Crisis. You call it the Goldilocks crisis, something that is devastating enough that people stop and pay attention, but not so devastating that we can't respond well to it. Is that the only way to get people to act, to cooperate in the way that we would need to cooperate? And when you think about the ideal state of the world, is it globalized or sensibly de-globalized? First of all, it's a great question.","nb_tokens":230} | |
| {"doc_id":"nXJBccSwtB8_58","video_id":"nXJBccSwtB8","content":"And it's not like you can never make progress outside of crisis. Progress happens all the time outside of crisis. We see new legislation that gets passed. We see, you know, new companies that are started. We see all sorts of we see good works by people of other people on the street, you know. But, you know, it's one thing to say, can't we get can't we get the progress we need? In a family, you can. In a community, you can. When you're working together well within an alliance, you frequently can. In what I call a GZERO world, where there's not a level of functional global leadership, where countries aren't working together well, they don't trust each other. They don't have, you know, the institutions that align with the balance of powers today. So it's not a G7 or G20. It's really an absence of global leadership.","nb_tokens":191} | |
| {"doc_id":"nXJBccSwtB8_59","video_id":"nXJBccSwtB8","content":"I think in an environment like that, the most, by far the most likely way to get an effective response, just like with the Soviets versus the Americans, Reagan versus Gorbachev, in the opening of my book, is if you have a crisis, if the aliens come down. And, you know, it turned out that the pandemic wasn't a big enough crisis. Didn't kill young people. It wasn't. I mean, you know, look at look at what happened. The Americans pull out of the World Health Organization. The Chinese lie to everybody about not about not being transferred human to human. The relationship got worse between the two countries. The Americans, we didn't provide vaccines to the poor countries around the world, even though we had people in the United States that didn't need them and were waiting on that already took them and were waiting on boosters. Like it was it was a complete clusterfuck. Pardon my French. And it's because it didn't feel like an existential crisis. It wasn't big enough to force us to cooperate to a greater degree. January 6th in the United States.","nb_tokens":231} | |
| {"doc_id":"nXJBccSwtB8_60","video_id":"nXJBccSwtB8","content":"I mean, maybe if Pence had been hung, maybe if some so I mean, God forbid, maybe if, you know, members of the House or Senate had been killed or injured or kidnapped for a period of time. But as it stood that evening, a majority of Republicans in the House voted not to certify the outcome. Why not? Because they're focused on the jobs because they knew it wasn't a constitutional crisis. They knew it wasn't a coup. So I do think that in this environment, in a dysfunctional governance environment where people don't trust each other at the highest levels that are in power, where we don't have the institutions that can work are proven to work to respond to the crises in front of us. Yeah, we need a crisis. And the good news is that climate is clearly not only a big enough crisis, but also one that humanity, I think, is up for. And so that is forcing us every year. We actually are exceeding radically exceeding in in renewable energy production and reduced cost from what the International Energy Agency is predicting every year for decades now. We've been exceeding that.","nb_tokens":227} | |
| {"doc_id":"nXJBccSwtB8_61","video_id":"nXJBccSwtB8","content":"And that's because this crisis has been big enough and it's affecting everyone to mobilize our asses into action. And the question is, is AI a crisis that we can actually effectively respond to? There's no question. The size is suitably great that it should motivate us. And when I talk to government leaders around the world today, they are focused. They are focused on it. They're focused on it because of the size of the crisis, but also it's very interesting. So the U.S. government, it's not just because they're suddenly all experts in AI. It's also because the three things that they are most concerned about is national security priorities, which is confrontation with China, war between Russia and Ukraine, and proxy war with the Russians, and threat to the U.S. democracy. They think, and they're right, that all of these are dramatically transformed by AI developments. So not only is AI coming as a big new thing, but also all the things they're already worried about, spending a lot of time and money on and blood, are things that are, they better figure this out or they're in trouble.","nb_tokens":234} | |
| {"doc_id":"nXJBccSwtB8_62","video_id":"nXJBccSwtB8","content":"So I do think the motivation to get this right is going to be there. I just, I hope we're up for it. And, you know, again, I'm an optimist. I'm hopeful. I mean, at the end of the day, I mean, the fact that we're here and we're talking about it means that we're capable of doing something. My only fear is that with global warming, you can't win global warming and get a leg up over China or Russia, but you can win AI and get a leg up and be better. And I think that one thing that people aren't talking about enough for sure is that AI is going to be an adversarial system, meaning bad guys are going to have AI and they're going to try to do things to hurt me with that AI. And then others are going to build AI that is protective and try to stop the bad guys. And so you will have, just like with normal hacking, you'll have an ever escalating arms race of AI. And so even if only with the best of intentions, we will end up getting to AI super intelligence because we're trying to stop somebody from doing a bad thing.","nb_tokens":243} | |
| {"doc_id":"nXJBccSwtB8_63","video_id":"nXJBccSwtB8","content":"And this is, go ahead. I was gonna say, that's a really good point. And I've given a lot of thought to that because, look, we don't trust the Chinese at all. They don't trust us. They've invested billions and tens of billions of dollars into next generation nuclear, wind, solar, electric vehicles and the supply chains for all of that. Now, there are a lot of people around the country that are not particularly focused on climate, but they're focused on China. And they're saying, hey, we cannot let those guys become the energy superpower post carbon. We've got to invest in it so that we're going to be the energy superpower. But the good thing about that is, hey, that's virtuous competition. Like if we end up investing more so that we're the dominant superpower, that just means cheaper post carbon energy faster for everybody. But in the AI space, it is absolutely unclear that there is a virtuous cycle of competition if we are not working together. The proliferation risk is much, much greater. I couldn't agree with you more on that point.","nb_tokens":232} | |
| {"doc_id":"nXJBccSwtB8_64","video_id":"nXJBccSwtB8","content":"Yeah, so now the question becomes, when, when you look at what we get on the other side of the crisis, the cooperation, the banding together to focus on one problem, does, does that lead us back to globalization? So we, we opened this up with globalization. Amazing create, we were lifting some on God, like 160,000 people out of poverty every day for like nine years. I'm just absolutely crazy. The number of people that we pulled out of poverty, but you get the Rust Belt pushback, rise of populism. It's not good for everybody. And so needing to really be honest about that. But in this world, let's say that we get the right crisis, what are we steering towards? Is it re globalization? Or is it what I'm calling thoughtful D globalization? I think we are trying to move back towards globalization, but thoughtful globalization, where you are using the resources you have to more effectively take care of the people that are left behind, that you are constantly retooling your institutions and reforming them because the technologies are changing that fast. And that's something governments by themselves won't be able to do.","nb_tokens":240} | |
| {"doc_id":"nXJBccSwtB8_65","video_id":"nXJBccSwtB8","content":"Again, they'll have to do in concert with these new technology companies, or governments will have to change what they are, they'll have to integrate technology companies into them. And that's that scares you. That's more of an authoritarian model, frankly. But I do think that one of the reasons that you've steered me a couple times now, in a direction that historically, I'd be very easily steered, which is to talk about US versus China. And I've resisted it. And the reason I've resisted it, even though US China is in a horrible place right now, and the relationship is getting worse, it's not getting better. But I think it is more likely within three, five years, that AI companies cutting edge in all sorts of fields will actually be all over the world. I don't I think this is going to be a proliferating technology for good and for bad. So I'm more concerned about individuals, rogue states, terrorist organizations doing crazy things, as opposed to the US versus China that ultimately wants stability in the system.","nb_tokens":217} | |
| {"doc_id":"nXJBccSwtB8_66","video_id":"nXJBccSwtB8","content":"But I'm also hopeful that it's not going to be a small number of dominant companies in the United States and China that control all of the next generation AI. Actually, if you're at a position where you can run a near cutting edge AI on your own laptop, or on your smartphone, and millions and millions of people have access to that intelligence, and they can do things with it. I don't think that a small number of mega tech corporations are going to control it. I mean, they may have platforms that they'll be able to charge taxes on basically tariffs on. But I think so much of both the value, the upside and the danger will be distributed all over the world. And that's, again, very different than the way we think about geopolitics today. So I don't think the US, I don't on the AI front, I don't think the US China fight is the principal concern to worry about in the next five to 10 years. Okay, well, so this is very interesting.","nb_tokens":209} | |
| {"doc_id":"nXJBccSwtB8_67","video_id":"nXJBccSwtB8","content":"One of the things that you talked about in the book is that when Russia invaded the Ukraine, one of the things that they did to try to appease the West and keep them calm was like, hey, we know you're really worried about hackers, we're going to go round them up, arrest them. And what happens to the ability to use political means to get these bad actors in line, if they are proliferated everywhere, and we have varying degrees of ability to influence? Yeah, it's one of the reasons why I think you don't have an Interpol model or an IAEA model. It's why I think it's going to be, it's going to have to be much more inclusive with the technology companies. I keep coming back to this. I don't think that the US government by itself or the Russian government would be able to make that kind of a promise as easily. Russians are a little bit different here, right? If you're an authoritarian state and you have real control of the information space, maybe the vast majority of people working on hacking are under your authority, maybe.","nb_tokens":225} | |
| {"doc_id":"nXJBccSwtB8_68","video_id":"nXJBccSwtB8","content":"But if AI really becomes as explosive and as decentralized as I believe it will, then the governments by themselves are going to have a hard time even maintaining control of the AI space. I'm not sure the Chinese model on this is going to work, I mean, in five and 10 years' time. Remember, they gave up on the great Chinese firewall, and instead, because it was too porous, and instead what they did was they used the surveillance mechanisms and they had a whole bunch of people that were online that were basically nudging Chinese citizens towards better behavior and towards certain things that they should say and against certain things they didn't say, and that turned out to be more effective. AI, I think, is going to become, if it becomes a much more decentralized space, it's going to be much, much harder for an authoritarian state to do that. But certainly, it'll be impossible for a democratic state to do it. Now, the question you haven't asked me is, does that mean that democracy is sustainable?","nb_tokens":210} | |
| {"doc_id":"nXJBccSwtB8_69","video_id":"nXJBccSwtB8","content":"I mean, if the US government feels immediate national security threat from all these tech companies and they can't regulate it, you know, might the Americans start finding the Chinese model on AI much more attractive? I don't think so. And I don't think so because I think our system, because our system is so entrenched, it's so slow moving, it's so receptive to money, the companies are so wealthy, they have the ability to capture the regulatory environment. Like, again, I mean, never say never. It can happen here. If things are incredibly dangerous, yes, I mean, you know, you can take desperate measures. But short of the worst scenarios, I think that the United States is closer to kleptocracy than it is to authoritarian regime. If there's a way that the Americans are going to move away from democracy, it's probably not a Chinese model, right? Well, that's horrifying. I doubt, my hope, it's funny, my brain tried to fill in what you were going to say. And your answer is probably more true than what I was hoping you were going to say.","nb_tokens":230} | |
| {"doc_id":"nXJBccSwtB8_70","video_id":"nXJBccSwtB8","content":"But what I was hoping you were going to say was that we have such a strong shared narrative around freedom that we wouldn't make those. He laughs, ladies and gentlemen, he laughs. Yeah, oh my god, that used to be true when my dad was alive. And after World War Two, I just don't see it anymore. I mean, not unless everyone's lying to the pollsters all the time. It just doesn't feel that way. I don't think we agree in the United States what our country stands for. I don't think we do. I don't think we know what our country stands for. There's such incredible cynicism among young people that they're just being lied to that it's performative from their governments, from their corporations, from everybody, from the media. And some of it is very understandable. You know, it's painful, but our economy is doing so well. Our technology is doing so well. We have the reserve currency. It's not being threatened. We are in a great geography. It's very safe. It's very stable. There are so many things that are great.","nb_tokens":232} | |
| {"doc_id":"nXJBccSwtB8_71","video_id":"nXJBccSwtB8","content":"I saw that Jamie Dimon, you know, a few minutes that everyone was talking about standing up for America, but he didn't talk about our political system. And our political system is deteriorating. And people don't believe in it the way they used to. And there are no, I've not seen any pushback against that in the last 20 years. It got worse under Obama. It got worse under Trump. It's gotten worse under Biden. It's clearly not just about those people. It's structural. There are a lot of things driving it. And that, I don't see a, I mean, God forbid if we had a 9-11 right now. I mean, I was here, I was in New York at 9-11. I saw the second tower go down. I saw the way that New York City rallied. I saw the way the country rallied. There was 92% approval for Bush a month after. Young people will not understand how crazy that is. And I don't think that could happen today.","nb_tokens":217} | |
| {"doc_id":"nXJBccSwtB8_72","video_id":"nXJBccSwtB8","content":"I don't think it could happen, even with someone who is as much of a unifier as Biden has been historically. And it certainly couldn't happen under Trump. And that's really sad. That's really sad. Do you have a sense of how we unwind that? This is the one thing my thesis has been on this, that until there is enough pain and suffering, which unfortunately historically means war, you don't get, the country won't come back together, right? So we've obviously been more divided than we are now, because we've been in open civil war in the past. But I don't see how you unwind these increasingly divergent narratives of left and right without real suffering. Well, I mean, there was this great book that was written by a Princeton historian about the great, the three great levelers. And it talked about how in societies, whatever the governance mechanism historically, they tend to get more unequal and people with access to power get closer to access to power over time, unless one of three big things happen, famine, revolution or war.","nb_tokens":219} | |
| {"doc_id":"nXJBccSwtB8_73","video_id":"nXJBccSwtB8","content":"And, you know, that's, that's a little depressing, because that implies that you have to have that kind of great kind of serious crackdown crash before you before you, you know, come out and create more opportunities for people. But I also am seeing, I mean, coming out of the pandemic, there was an enormous amount of money that was spent on on poor people. It wasn't just like after 2008, when you bailed out AIG and Lehman Brothers and the bankers this time around. I mean, you bailed out everybody, you bailed out working mothers, you bailed out small and medium enterprises, and it made a difference. And inflation has hit hard. But now finally, working class wages are actually growing faster than, you know, than inflation, and then the average wage. And that wasn't true for decades. So maybe there is a bit of a lesson in that. Maybe there is a bit of a lesson when people are seeing that, you know, it's the wealthiest with their legacy capabilities, that are getting accepted to the major universities, the best universities and not others. And there's a backlash against that. And maybe that forces greater transparency.","nb_tokens":245} | |
| {"doc_id":"nXJBccSwtB8_74","video_id":"nXJBccSwtB8","content":"Maybe it turns out that AI becomes, with all the wealth it can generate, becomes more of a leveler for people in the United States that will have access to opportunities they hadn't had before. Maybe it allows globalization to pick up again. And not everybody's boat will rise at the same speed, but at least everyone's boat will be rising for a while. Look, coming out of the pandemic, we had 50 years, if we look at humanity, as you know, this little ball of 8 billion people, we had 50 years where overall, we had extraordinary growth. And if you watch Steven Pinker, and Hans Rosling, and all of these pro-globalization folks, it is true, we created not just very, very wealthy people, but also a global middle class. And anyone looking at the globe, you know, without a national, without a nationality, just like you're an average person, you don't know where you're going to be born, you don't know what family, would you want to be born in the last 50 years? Yes, yes, you would. And hopefully you win the lottery and you're in the United States like you and me.","nb_tokens":246} | |
| {"doc_id":"nXJBccSwtB8_75","video_id":"nXJBccSwtB8","content":"But you know, anywhere, if you could, that's the time you'd pick. But the last three years, you wouldn't. Because the last three years, suddenly human development indicators have gone down. More people are, you know, forced migrants, more people are, you know, born into extreme poverty. And people are getting angrier as a consequence of that. Well, I mean, I think there's a good chance that with AI, we will have a new globalization that will create far more opportunities. But we need to be very careful about those negative externalities. And so far, it's very early days, but we're not addressing them yet. So given all of that, paint a picture for me of the near term, let's call it the next 10 years, the world is shifting and changing. What does the world order look like? As we look out into the future?","nb_tokens":185} | |
| {"doc_id":"nXJBccSwtB8_76","video_id":"nXJBccSwtB8","content":"And I'll contextualize that with you've got things we've talked about here, you've got the war in Ukraine, you've got a dynamic between the US and China being radically upended by the proliferation of AI creating potentially powerful or at least destructive entities anywhere, which make it harder for us to yank levers of political persuasion. With all of the unique cocktail that's brewing now, how does one begin to conceptualize where the world is heading over the next 10 years? Well, I can't imagine wanting to be alive at any other time. I mean, we talked about the Anthropocene, where human beings, the first time in history, we have the ability to actually shape the future of humanity and our role on the planet that we're on. That's pretty extraordinary. And, you know, what does that mean? I think that means that governments and governance will look radically different than anything that we have lived with. We've lived for all of our lives for 50 years, you and I on average now, we've lived in a fairly stable system, the Soviet Union collapsed, US was in charge, China's had an extraordinary rise.","nb_tokens":237} | |
| {"doc_id":"nXJBccSwtB8_77","video_id":"nXJBccSwtB8","content":"But generally speaking, the global order today still looks more or less like the global order you had 50 years ago. Henry Kissinger recognizes it, right? He was 50. Now he's 100. But it feels like geopolitics still function the way they used to. You've got heads of state, you got governance, you still have the UN, you know, you've got the IMF, you know, you've got the World Trade Organization, you got these big things that more or less, I mean, I was just at the Security Council, Security Council's kind of the same Security Council we had before from the 70s. But you know, whatever, it's not, it's the rules, the UN Charter, it's all there. You know, you could have been born a long time ago. In 10 years time, I think we'll still recognize the tectonics on the planet.","nb_tokens":191} | |
| {"doc_id":"nXJBccSwtB8_78","video_id":"nXJBccSwtB8","content":"I think the demographics we can talk about, we can talk about how Japan will be smaller and how China's peaked out now India's growing and that we pretty good sense in that climate, we've got a pretty good sense of what climate is going to look like and extreme storms and the rest. But, but government, how government works, how the geopolitics work, how the world is ordered, ruled. I think it's going to look radically different in 10 years. I really do. Certainly in 20, but probably in 10. I think that a big piece of the power that determines who we are, and how we interact with people will be driven by a very small number of human beings that control these tech companies that may or may not know what they're doing. And that may or may not be with intentionality. And we don't really know what their goals are. And those goals can change. Right? I mean, I talked a little bit in my TED talk, which I haven't really talked much about, which is kind of good, is I talked a little bit about how, you know, when you and I were raised, it was nature and nurture.","nb_tokens":243} | |
| {"doc_id":"nXJBccSwtB8_79","video_id":"nXJBccSwtB8","content":"And that determined who we were. And that now for the first time in humanity, we are being raised by algorithm, and that we have a whole generation of kids, whose principal understanding of how to interact with society will be intermediated by programmed algorithms that have no interest in the education of that child. That is a subsidiary impact of what they are trying to do, those algorithms, it, what it is trying to do. And a lot of the interactions that will take place with those kids will be AI interactions, not just intermediated, but the actual relationship will be with AI. Which, by the way, if I could wave a magic wand and do one regulation in the world today, I would say anyone under 16 cannot interact with an AI directly as if it were a human being unless it's under human super direct human supervision. So I just don't want people to be raised by anything other than people until we understand what that means. I'm at the level of education. I get into I want that to be directly controlled by supervised by a person.","nb_tokens":216} | |
| {"doc_id":"nXJBccSwtB8_80","video_id":"nXJBccSwtB8","content":"So yes, I think education, I think a doctor, I'd love to have AI being used, you know, for medical, you know, on medical apps for kids. But I'm saying if you're having a relationship with something, including with a teacher, I don't want kids to have a relationship with an AI educator unless it's overseen by an adult until we know what it does to the kids. You know, we just don't know. We just don't know. And I worry about that a lot. I wouldn't want I mean, I don't have kids. If I had them, I'd worry about that. I know my mom wouldn't have allowed that and thank God for it. So yeah, I think that we're going to be different as human beings. I mean, you know, you talked about Yuval Noah Harari recently, who I find very inspirational as a thinker. And you know, this Homo Deus concept that he comes up with. I think that young people today are already something a little different from Homo sapiens. And I don't know exactly what that is.","nb_tokens":229} | |
| {"doc_id":"nXJBccSwtB8_81","video_id":"nXJBccSwtB8","content":"None of us do, because we're running the experiments on them now. I'm not comfortable with that. It's a good summary. Ian, this has been incredible. Where can people follow you? They can follow me on Twitter at Ian Bremmer, or LinkedIn at Ian Bremmer, or even threads, you know, the few people that are on that, but it's kind of fun, Ian Bremmer. What else? I mean, you know, g0media.com, g0, all one word, media.com, where we have a little digital media company that we reach out to people all over the world, and they can get our stuff for free, which hopefully it's engaging and useful, just like I really enjoyed this last hour or so. This was a lot of fun. Same, man. All right, everybody, if you haven't already, be sure to subscribe. And until next time, my friends, be legendary. Take care. Peace. If you want to learn more about this topic, check out this interview. I actually want to start with a quote of yours.","nb_tokens":228} | |
| {"doc_id":"nXJBccSwtB8_82","video_id":"nXJBccSwtB8","content":"So for anybody that doesn't know, you're a former CIA legitimate spy, which is crazy. And the reason I find that interesting is because you would have to be a master of psychology your own and others.","nb_tokens":43} | |
| {"doc_id":"6KJhM7Pg5EA_0","video_id":"6KJhM7Pg5EA","content":"Culture is software. We know it's continually failing us. We should not have a significant number of Americans alleging the election was stolen. There was a pretty gnarly one-two punch between COVID and Trump that I really think caused a sense-making apparatus to fall apart in some way. My question is, can we stop the rise of evil or is that already a fallacy? And if we can, then how? Well, I mean, I think your first point is that we didn't have anything like a consensus around what was going on. I mean, people were siloed into various echo chambers and just not converging on an assessment of just what the facts are about anything. I don't consider myself the best judge of how this happened because there were people who were sufficiently far from me on the information landscape so that I just ceased to understand how they could be thinking and doing what they were thinking and doing. I mean, I'm not seeing their social media feed.","nb_tokens":198} | |
| {"doc_id":"6KJhM7Pg5EA_1","video_id":"6KJhM7Pg5EA","content":"I'm seeing some fragments of what they're finding persuasive, but it's just amazing to me that there are, I don't know what it is, 30, 40% of American society still thinks that Trump was not only fine, just better than fine, they're just impeccable on some level, ethically, and that January 6th was a non-event and that there was really nothing at stake there. It's all just been, insanely, it was a combination of nothing happened, but everything that did happen was Antifa or Trumped up by the CIA, or it was just, it was not violent, but the violence was from some other source. I mean, this is not a coherent view, but you literally have something like 100 million people who think that there was just no factor. I mean, there was just nothing. The only thing bad that happened is that the election got stolen from the rightful president, which was Trump. I don't know how you are paying attention to anything like a valid source of information and you still believe that, right?","nb_tokens":219} | |
| {"doc_id":"6KJhM7Pg5EA_2","video_id":"6KJhM7Pg5EA","content":"And there are people who believe that or pretend to believe it enough that they're, I mean, I do think there are people who are just being fundamentally dishonest with their audiences. So you have, and it's amazing how it can come down to a couple of dozen personalities that really are close to the lever that moves public opinion here. So you have someone like Tucker Carlson, who we know on the basis of the Dominion lawsuit, behind closed doors, was talking about Trump as a demonic force. He couldn't wait for him to disappear from the public conversation. He hated him with passion. Those are basically verbatim quotes of his text messages within behind the scenes at Fox that got entered into evidence in the Dominion case. And yet his public facing message is all Trump supporting conspiracy theorizing all the time for years. He was the most watched person on Fox and pretty soon he'll be the most watched person wherever he finally hangs his hat. But his Twitter videos get apparently tens of millions of views. And so he's got this enormous audience that seemingly doesn't care about his hypocrisy, right? Which is amazing to me. I don't know how you maintain an audience with this kind of loss of face.","nb_tokens":243} | |
| {"doc_id":"6KJhM7Pg5EA_3","video_id":"6KJhM7Pg5EA","content":"The mainstream media was not shy in advertising the discrepancy between what he was saying behind closed doors and what he was saying on his show, right? So either you have a hundred million people who just simply never watch any mainstream media product or read it, and that's quite possible. But the basic problem before anything, before we think about antithetical ethical commitments or political commitments or people who disagree about evil really at bottom, we just can't even converge on a discussion of facts. I mean, people just can't agree about what is happening or much less why or what should happen. The thing that we have to start with, one, to set the table is, is that what people are doing? That they really do all have their own good intentions. They all think that they have spotted the evil, but they're just spotting it from different sides. If that's true, then people's behavior at least makes sense. I understand how it's self-motivated. Now, it's never gonna be that pure. I'm sure there are also some people that are just grabbing for power.","nb_tokens":222} | |
| {"doc_id":"6KJhM7Pg5EA_4","video_id":"6KJhM7Pg5EA","content":"But if the public response is, okay, I see from where I'm sitting from my side that the other side is evil and I need to really react accordingly, then it starts to make sense. Now, if that's what's going on, then it becomes, okay, well, now we need the sense-making apparatus by which we figure out what is evil, what is the right response. And the first step in that is gonna be, I think, to identify what's true, that we need some anchor in the storm that we're gonna say, okay, this is the foundation and we're gonna build up from here. There has to be a mechanism by which we start to figure all this out. And so I'll lay out my rough thesis as a way just to sort of guide the conversation. So I think that there's something about the modern world, largely as it's married to technology, that creates this inability to get people to share a narrative, which allows us then to approach any issue from the same perspective of what we're trying to achieve. So you've got velocity of information. So information is just coming out of so fast and furious.","nb_tokens":236} | |
| {"doc_id":"6KJhM7Pg5EA_5","video_id":"6KJhM7Pg5EA","content":"I've heard you talk about Alex Jones in that context. I'm like, hey, this guy just talks as fast as he can, throwing out so many points at you. Each one just makes you look uneducated if you're like, I didn't know what that was. And you're like, you find out it doesn't even exist. And so that is social media. Just the rate at which information can come at you is so fast. The business model of social media is that whatever grabs attention is gonna be monetized. So then people very quickly realize the more salacious, the more sort of grand and aggressive, the more likely it is to get attention. So now it's coming at you hyper-negative and hyper-fast. When you combine that with this sense of everything has to roll up into a headline. So all of these ideas are incredibly nuanced. The problem is to get them to propagate on social media, they have to be a headline. It has to be something that's memorable. It has to be something that's easily digestible. And it has to be something that's repeatable.","nb_tokens":226} | |
| {"doc_id":"6KJhM7Pg5EA_6","video_id":"6KJhM7Pg5EA","content":"And when you repeat it, that the other person's like, oh, that's sick. You got it just right. And now they wanna go tell somebody else. And so for anybody that's being bombarded with all this information as a way to wrap their heads around it, they just pick a team. And then the team just tells them, these are all your positions. So now all you have to memorize are the headlines for your group. And I actually am deeply empathetic to that because holding onto the nuance of a complicated situation is already very difficult. When you are able to roll that up into a headline, it becomes something that you can hold on to far more easily. But then the truth of the on the ground interaction points all get lost. And so as I was watching all of this unfold, then it became those 12 people that you're talking about. And certainly I will put you as one of them. It began to be unclear, like, okay, wait, what is the foundation that you're building on that you level up from this? And so what I wanna get through in the beginning here is, what is that foundation?","nb_tokens":237} | |
| {"doc_id":"6KJhM7Pg5EA_7","video_id":"6KJhM7Pg5EA","content":"So in a world where the sense-making apparatus is dealing with velocity of information, misinformation, power grabs, corruption, but you can actually hide a lot of that through velocity of headline, rolling up a complex topic into an oversimplification. Where do we get the bedrock? Now, I am aware of the, not debate, maybe it was a debate, that you and Jordan did about what is truth. And I know that you can devolve into madness. But if you were to give a simple explanation of how you ground yourself when you think through these things, what does that look like? First of all, not being tribal, right? So not being, not caring really about, I mean, I care about sources of information as a proxy for just not having to figure out everything from the bedrock every time, right? So I think- Meaning expert? Yes, I think you can default to expertise most of the time, all the while knowing that expertise can fail.","nb_tokens":199} | |
| {"doc_id":"6KJhM7Pg5EA_8","video_id":"6KJhM7Pg5EA","content":"It's just a sanity-sparing and certainly time-sparing practice to say, okay, most of what is printed in the New York Times has to be to a first approximation, mostly true, otherwise the New York Times is no longer the New York Times. Now, I think there have been moments where, and certainly on specific topics, where it's been valid to worry that the New York Times is no longer the New York Times, right? They're sort of systematically getting certain topics wrong or shading the truth for, as an expression of obvious political bias. So there are moments where all of our institutions have, if not frankly failed us, showed a capacity to fail us at times. And what that did to much of the country is just torpedo any trust in institutions, right? So the trust in the mainstream media is at its all-time low, I would imagine. Certainly the last time I looked at a poll on that topic, that seemed to be the case. But so it is with government messaging on virtually any topic, in particular public health, our scientific institutions, our universities.","nb_tokens":220} | |
| {"doc_id":"6KJhM7Pg5EA_9","video_id":"6KJhM7Pg5EA","content":"And all of this is understandable in that in the last six years, post-Trump and post-COVID, we had this almost perfect storm politically where there really did seem to be a capture of the mainstream institutions by a very intolerant and really at bottom, illiberal political ideology. I mean, it's supposedly liberal, it's far left, but in terms of its style of thought, we were edging toward Chinese show trials. I mean, it was really, it was just the kinds of... And the truth is you didn't need that many specific cases to feel like, okay, you've seen enough. There's no reason to listen to these people ever again, right? I mean, if you're somebody who's just poised to throw the baby out with the bathwater, you just need to hear one case of someone being defenestrated at the New York Times for not surviving one specific blasphemy test. And then the New York Times is no better than the Epoch Times or Breitbart or anything else that is in the business of putting things in font and shipping them. And it's all journalism, right?","nb_tokens":229} | |
| {"doc_id":"6KJhM7Pg5EA_10","video_id":"6KJhM7Pg5EA","content":"So for me, you had to recognize that though our institutions are challenged, there is still such a thing as expertise. There is still such a thing as institutional knowledge. There's a need for institutions that we can trust. Certainly when you're in the middle of a pandemic, we need a CDC and an FDA that we can actually trust, right? So the fact that we felt that we couldn't quite trust them is an enormous problem. And the thing we need to shore up is the trustworthiness of indispensable institutions. It's not that we need to tear everything down to the studs such that there are no institutions. No one thinks in terms of institutions. It's all just podcasts and sub-stack newsletters as far as the eye can see. And we're just gonna all do our own research, right? And I think it's not to say that doing your own research is never valid and it's never even important. I mean, there's certainly cases where one person can pull at a thread long enough that something really important unravels and we're all wiser for it.","nb_tokens":220} | |
| {"doc_id":"6KJhM7Pg5EA_11","video_id":"6KJhM7Pg5EA","content":"Or that one individual, given a specific problem in their lives, let's say a medical problem, they do their own research and they discover the remedy for the thing that was ailing their family member or whatever. And the doctors didn't do it and the CDC didn't do it and the FDA was wrong and they found the thing that helped. Okay, great. Generally speaking, when times are good, doing your own research is just frankly a waste of time. And when things really matter, it's very likely a dangerous waste of time, right? It's like you don't get on an airplane and decide, you know, I'm not so sure I trust the pilot or the guys who repair the engines. I'm gonna do some of my own research here. Let me in the cockpit. I wanna interrogate some of those dials and switches. It's like that's not a situation where anyone would tolerate this sort of contrarian anti-establishment. I'm gonna innovate, just break stuff and see what happens. And the problem is in many respects, we are at 30,000 feet together, all of us, all the time.","nb_tokens":234} | |
| {"doc_id":"6KJhM7Pg5EA_12","video_id":"6KJhM7Pg5EA","content":"And we're having to figure out what is real and what to do. And we do need experts that actually warrant our trust because they are in fact experts, right? So when, you know, there's just specific cases like, what's really happening in Ukraine and why and what should we do about it? Should we be sending them arms? Is Putin lying about, you know, the last thing he said was true on the ground? When our state department has a press conference and tells us what's going on, we need a state department that we trust to inform us, right? And when the New York Times has some point of view on what's happening there, we need a New York Times that is sourcing information in a way that is valid. We can't have everyone trying to get to ground truth based on their own private efforts to come up with what we should all think about Ukraine or what we should all think about mRNA vaccines or whatever it is. But people do feel that. And I certainly felt that at the beginning of this. So as I hear you say, so remember my initial question is what's your foundation?","nb_tokens":230} | |
| {"doc_id":"6KJhM7Pg5EA_13","video_id":"6KJhM7Pg5EA","content":"And the foundation felt like you wanted to be experts but you understood that you couldn't. But you understand how much they've eroded their credibility. So my question, because I don't disagree with you, if I was at 30,000 feet, I don't want people going in and trying to mess with the pilot. But I think that the analogy might not quite be right for what we went through. What it felt like, I'll just speak for myself, but I think I represent a lot of people. What it felt like was, oh, I'm realizing that the pilot is lying to me. Now I'm willing to be generous and say the pilot is lying to me because they're trying to stamp out evil. And they really believe that to trick the American public into taking a vaccine, whatever, is the right answer. And that they are doing it with a big heart and that they really just want to help people get where they're going. But when they said masks don't work, it was just like, come on, that doesn't make any sense. And then they flip and they're like, no, of course, actually masks do work.","nb_tokens":239} | |
| {"doc_id":"6KJhM7Pg5EA_14","video_id":"6KJhM7Pg5EA","content":"And we were just lying to you because we needed to get them into the medical professionals' hands. So it's like just slowly, slowly, they start eroding and you suddenly realize everybody has an agenda. Now that, I get it. But where it starts to be a problem for me is when if we understand that experts have an agenda and I'll even, I had Peter Atiyah on my show who's a medical expert, amazing. And if he tells me to do something, I basically just do it. Like he's unbelievable. And he, in his new book, he talks about how you actually can be fat and healthy. And when he said that, my first impulse was, Peter, you can't tell people that because even if it's true, it's in such a like edge case, narrow percentage. And the vast majority of the bell curve are all people who are fat and unhealthy. And if you give them that out, they're going to take it. They're never going to make any changes and they're going to die and they're going to raise their kids worse and their kids are going to have shorter life expectancy.","nb_tokens":235} | |
| {"doc_id":"6KJhM7Pg5EA_15","video_id":"6KJhM7Pg5EA","content":"And I really had an emotional response of like, you can't tell people that even if it's true. But in that moment, I realized, oh, this is the very thing that drives me crazy. So I'm like, you can't. So I was like, well, if it's true, it's true. And the consequences are going to be what the consequences are going to be. So then I start going, okay, then if I can't just more myself around, experts are going to know and they're going to be able to say because I don't think three years ago, Peter would have written this book. I don't think he had the insights into it. So even somebody as bright as him over time is changing. So experts don't really know what's right and what's wrong, especially not in a hot and heavy situation like that. On top of that, there are inevitably going to be things that I think should be said, somebody else thinks shouldn't be said or vice versa. And so now you get to, okay, well, if we can all agree, we're only going to say what's true.","nb_tokens":235} | |
| {"doc_id":"6KJhM7Pg5EA_16","video_id":"6KJhM7Pg5EA","content":"Like even that I think is a task, but let's say that we all agree that we're only going to say what's true. Now this gets really complicated. And I will put forth that what I think is quote unquote true is based on perspective, interpretation and reinforcement. So there's physics, which we don't even understand fully. And then there's everything else. And because a gigantic part of everyday truth, and I don't know if that will help us get to a sort of in the weeds working definition, but everyday truth seems to be predicated on that. You have to take into account the person's perspective. So how do they see the world? Blue, red, right? You have to take into account their interpretation. So looking at data, some people are going to say, no, it doesn't show that. It shows this. And you can get people that look at the data and just violently disagree on what it shows. And then you've got the reinforcement. So if they put out a tweet saying their version of the truth and they get a wall of reinforcement, then they're just one that feels good.","nb_tokens":233} | |
| {"doc_id":"6KJhM7Pg5EA_17","video_id":"6KJhM7Pg5EA","content":"They're going to see it more and more and more and more and more. And so just the sheer repetition of it all. Any of those pieces feel wrong? Well, I think the thing you pointed to there in your conversation with Peter is important to focus on because people have a very hard time just keeping track of everything that's said, right? And keeping things in proportion, right? And so I think your intuition that it's dangerous to be precisely true on that point because most people, most of the time will draw the wrong message. That is the style of thinking, as you observed, that our public health officials were too encumbered by, right? Like they were aware that they were messaging into a very dirty information landscape, right? It's just polluted with conspiracy thinking and frank lies. And we had a president who was, you know, by turns, minimizing everything and lying about it, just telling pointless lies. Like, you know, we have 15 cases and it's going to go away, you know, immediately, right?","nb_tokens":214} | |
| {"doc_id":"6KJhM7Pg5EA_18","video_id":"6KJhM7Pg5EA","content":"And so, and there was just this basic fact, it was quite inconvenient in the case of a pandemic, that it's this moving target where we're finding that we actually don't understand what we thought we understood yesterday, right? So the message is changing. It's not that we have a completely clear message that is still difficult to parse and we have to be careful. We have to talk to people like children or at least in a kind of paternalistic way and say, okay, listen, most fat people are not healthy. It's generally not healthy to be fat. Virtually every fat person would be healthier if they were less fat, but it's still possible to be healthy if you're fat. And there are people who are skinny, who are not healthy and it gets confusing. So, but you can't really go wrong with this basic message that you want to be thin and fit and you want to do the thing. You want to be on your way to being thin and fit at minimum. You want to be active. You want to be eating well, et cetera. I am a freak for efficiency.","nb_tokens":230} | |
| {"doc_id":"6KJhM7Pg5EA_19","video_id":"6KJhM7Pg5EA","content":"So let me tell you, I am always on the hunt for clothes that can work in any setting. The bad news is most traditional pants do not have that kind of versatility, but bird dogs were designed to meet that exact need. They were created to be your go-to pants for any and every activity. Bird dogs are made with a cloud knit fabric that looks just like khaki, but stretches with your every move. And their built-in liners use anti-stink, sweat-wicking fabric that I know a lot of you boys are going to need to keep cool and dry all day long. With bird dogs, you can go out, work out, meet with clients, kung fu fight, go to an event, whatever. They've got you covered and you can do it all without having to stop and change. Go to birddogs.com slash impact or just enter promo code impact for a free Yeti-style Tumblr with your order. You won't want to take your bird dogs off. We promise you that. In the case of COVID, the truth was getting overturned by further revelations.","nb_tokens":222} | |
| {"doc_id":"6KJhM7Pg5EA_20","video_id":"6KJhM7Pg5EA","content":"I mean, the truth with respect to the disease, the epidemiology of it, how contagious it was, how dangerous it was. We were getting new variants. Literally, the disease itself was changing. What we understood about vaccines was changing. You know, initially in the beginning, there was every reason to believe, at least there was every reason to hope that the vaccines would block transmission and therefore not getting vaccinated was a decision not just with respect to your own health, but the health of the people around you. Later on, that began to unravel and it was clear, okay, that doesn't really block transmission all that much, maybe a little bit, but not really. So therefore, it's a personal decision and it's not a decision that you're making for others. You're not a bad citizen. Therefore, if you don't get vaccinated, you're not a good citizen. So we were messaging into an environment where there's so much misinformation around specifically things like vaccines, right? There's literally like an anti-vaccine cult that has been working in the background of our culture for decades.","nb_tokens":225} | |
| {"doc_id":"6KJhM7Pg5EA_21","video_id":"6KJhM7Pg5EA","content":"And this was their moment to really kind of seize the reins of the social media conversation, at least. So it was understandable that our public health officials and doctors generally felt like, okay, we got to keep this really simple. This has got to be idiot proof. Get vaxxed. COVID is dangerous. Wear a mask. Don't wear a mask when you're stealing the masks from people who don't get, who are our first line responders who need the PPE. But once we had enough, wear a mask. And the problem was when that began to unravel, there were so many clear moments of dishonesty that where anyone who was going to have their trust broken with mainstream institutions, just they broke up right there and they seemingly broke up permanently, right? It was just, okay, you're going to tell me that I have to get vaccinated because it stops transmission and now you're telling me now I'm hearing that it no longer stops transmission. Okay, I'm done, right? And then the other problem is that now we have an information landscape where basically everything survives.","nb_tokens":221} | |
| {"doc_id":"6KJhM7Pg5EA_22","video_id":"6KJhM7Pg5EA","content":"There is not the normal Darwinian contest between sources of information where if something gets sufficiently discredited, you never hear from it again. You can, the internet is big enough and friction-free enough such that you can be a complete lunatic who everyone knows is a complete lunatic and yet you create an ecosystem that enough people love and you can figure out how to monetize it. You can have an audience of a million people forever, it seems, right? And you're literally, literally you could be saying that the craziest case is something like QAnon where it's like the actual claim that people are bonding over is that the world is being run by child raping cannibals and among those cannibals are people like Michelle Obama and Tom Hanks and I mean, it's just- I always knew it. I mean, so it's like, okay, we're really saying that these people are cannibals and pedophiles and we're gonna spend a lot of time having this conversation amongst ourselves. We don't care if the rest of the world thinks we're crazy because in this space, this is just our playground. This is our information playground.","nb_tokens":239} | |
| {"doc_id":"6KJhM7Pg5EA_23","video_id":"6KJhM7Pg5EA","content":"There's nothing- we're not bumping into any hard objects here because we have as much real- we have as much information real estate as we can- as we want to carve out for ourselves. I mean, that didn't used to- it used to be that- I mean, if you wanted to publish books or publish print newspapers or magazines, you needed enough contact with the normal kind of reinforcement of just mainstream consensus that you would survive financially. It's like there's something about the internet that has just made the cost of spreading information go to zero. And when you're- I mean, when you're dealing in bits and no longer dealing in atoms, it's everything survives and persists in some basic sense. So- Yeah, I think it's important to really understand what that mechanism is. So it's what I'll call velocity of information. If you have a better name for it, I'm all for it.","nb_tokens":189} | |
| {"doc_id":"6KJhM7Pg5EA_24","video_id":"6KJhM7Pg5EA","content":"But there's something about packaging an idea up in an environment where there's so much information, all you can digest is the headline when something is hyper-transmittable that it just has, you know, whether it's clever, it rhymes, it whatever, that has just that little bit of extra juice on it. It's something that's funny, memefied, that it's really going to burn through culture. Now, for me, where this all begins to become deeply problematic is that it isn't so much that just the internet is forever. It's that Socrates hated democracy because he didn't think people were smart enough to parse through the information. And he thought, you shouldn't be able to vote on this thing if you're not educated on this thing. And the reality is, most people aren't going to be educated and therefore democracy is really not going to survive. So I take a totally different approach to this, which is, I think that if you create an environment where everybody gets to vote in a world that has the velocity of information that we have, information is free to send. It's easy to package it up, roll up into headlines.","nb_tokens":239} | |
| {"doc_id":"6KJhM7Pg5EA_25","video_id":"6KJhM7Pg5EA","content":"There's no doubt that a lot of misinformation is going to get out there and people just don't even know where to check, where to turn to know, like who's who, what's what. That will have very negative consequences. But the only flip side of that that I see is top-down authoritarian control, where it's like, I decide, whoever I is, the government, Twitter, YouTube, whoever, they decide what's real information and what's not. Because what people are trying to get back to is what you were talking about before, where information velocity was slow, that you had to go to a print piece of newspaper. They even put extra checks where it was like, it had to be vetted by three sources or whatever. And I'm not saying yellow journalism didn't exist. Of course it did. But there were self-imposed constraints. There was a business model that let even those self-imposed constraints really be financially viable. It was just harder to do, harder to get out there. And so by reducing it, there were only so many narratives that you were going to be able to get out.","nb_tokens":231} | |
| {"doc_id":"6KJhM7Pg5EA_26","video_id":"6KJhM7Pg5EA","content":"So even if New York, back in the 20s or whatever, had 50 newspapers just in New York City, that's still only New York City. You're not dealing with a global readership. So you have just this natural constraint. Now, once nature isn't giving you the constraint anymore, the second you want that constraint from the top down, you now step into what I call the trifecta of evil. And the trifecta of evil is three books that I read. They technically have nothing to do with each other, but just completely explain how all of this goes awry and has made me absolutely terrified of top-down authoritarian control far more than I am afraid of the absolute chaos of 1,000 Alex Jones. So the three books are The Gulag Archipelago by Alexander Solzhenitsyn, Mao, The Unknown Story, and then The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich. And those three books tell you just how wrong things go when people are told, shut up, your opinion doesn't matter, and this person knows better, and you're just going to get in line.","nb_tokens":229} | |
| {"doc_id":"6KJhM7Pg5EA_27","video_id":"6KJhM7Pg5EA","content":"And the great thing about the Mao book is that I hadn't realized how evil Mao was. I thought he was like a junior level of evil compared to Stalin and Hitler. But you read that book, and it's just, I mean, the details are just so sadistic and ghastly. Yeah, unbelievable. I literally had no idea when I started reading that book. The fourth, if I were going to do an honorable mention to give Stalin some more love would be Red Famine. Mm-hmm, yeah. That book is shocking, shocking. Have you read it? No, but I've read a lot about Stalin. Yeah, I don't know if I can recommend it. There's this one part where a woman telling a tale, a woman comes up and looks through another woman's, this is in the Ukraine, starving, 1921 or whatever. And she looks through the window and catches her neighbor eating her seven-year-old daughter. Right. And it's just like, I just, I can't imagine. So that scares me a lot more than we're all having a hard time figuring out what is true.","nb_tokens":234} | |
| {"doc_id":"6KJhM7Pg5EA_28","video_id":"6KJhM7Pg5EA","content":"Now I have a pitch for how I think we figure out what is true. That is certainly going to be flawed. But the first thing I want to either agree, debate, whatever is, do you agree that this is sort of the sequencing of events? That we have this wall of information, it's coming in too fast. It's all rolled up into headlines. There's no nuance. Most people probably aren't smart enough to deal with the nuance anyway. And now temptation one is to just go, oh, dear elites, pre-masticate all of this for us and tell us what to do. We tried that. They have agendas. Even if they're really being sincere and trying to be good, they have agendas. And that just feels absolutely shitty. Feels like you're being manipulated. It breaks all your trust. Can't do that. The other one is, just absolute top-down, do what the fuck you're told, shut up, and this is it. Both of those strike me as horrendous. And that leaves the third option, which is free speech, which has become contentious somehow.","nb_tokens":230} | |
| {"doc_id":"6KJhM7Pg5EA_29","video_id":"6KJhM7Pg5EA","content":"So as a child of the 80s, to me, that's like the greatest thing ever. I'm all for free speech. I love what Elon is doing on Twitter. I think it's amazing. But at the same time, I know that's not widely shared. I'm not even sure where you fall down. Yeah, no, I can push back on some of that. Well, so a couple of distinctions. One is that it's not just that everything gets boiled down to headlines, right? I mean, that is a problem. Sometimes the headline doesn't even faithfully represent what's actually in the article. And so many people only read the headlines. They never even read the article, right? So there's that problem. That problem's been with us for a while. There's the algorithmic boosting of outrage and misinformation preferentially, which is the problem, and on social media. And the distinction, so I would make one distinction, which is, and this is, many people have made this, like freedom of speech and freedom of reach are different things, right?","nb_tokens":223} | |
| {"doc_id":"6KJhM7Pg5EA_30","video_id":"6KJhM7Pg5EA","content":"So you should be free to post whatever you wanna post, but it is a choice on the side of the social media company to preferentially boost or dampen whatever they wanna boost or dampen, right? So it's to change the character of the conversation. And they have to make decisions there to make no decision is itself a decision, right? So if you're gonna make it completely flat, people will have one experience. If you're going to tweak it algorithmically, people have a different experience. And that is a business choice that they are incentivized to make, largely because they have a terrible business model. I mean, the gaming of attention is a bad business model, I would argue. So the fact that it's an ad-based attention economy has a lot to do with what we, with the kind of the original sin of social media, I think is the business model. And if these were all subscription businesses, I think we could have a different, we could have a different landscape there with respect to social media. But still there would be a moderation burden.","nb_tokens":219} | |
| {"doc_id":"6KJhM7Pg5EA_31","video_id":"6KJhM7Pg5EA","content":"And it's something that it seems like they're never gonna get right, even, I mean, except for the, in the presence of something like omniscient AI that we could trust, I don't see how your effort to moderate what hundreds of millions of people say to one another, or even in some cases, billions of people, that's always gonna produce casualties. It's always gonna produce somebody who was just a completely valid academic who just took an edge case position and got flagged as a Nazi or whatever. And there has to be some process of appeal, et cetera. The other distinction I would make is that there's a big difference between governments silencing speech and actually punishing people for errant speech and companies, private companies, or even publicly held companies deciding that they want to be associated with or not associated with certain kinds of speech, right? So, and so when I look at this through a free speech lens, from a US-centric First Amendment lens, and we should acknowledge that most of the world doesn't have the protection of the First Amendment and they're worse off for it.","nb_tokens":225} | |
| {"doc_id":"6KJhM7Pg5EA_32","video_id":"6KJhM7Pg5EA","content":"And so if you're living in the UK and you're perceiving this debate, you're looking at it as someone who feels stifled by the reality that you don't have a First Amendment to default back to. And that's, I've been slow to appreciate just how different that is politically and ethically for people. So speaking from the US context, I think we have it right that the government should not make any kind of speech illegal with a few exceptions like inciting violence. So I think you should be free to be a Nazi and say your Nazi things, and you should be free to reap the reputational costs of that, right? People now know you're a Nazi, they don't want to do business with you, they vilify you on their forums. But the question is, should a platform like Twitter or any other platform be legally required to associate with Nazis, right? Can they have in their terms of service a no Nazis policy? And I think my free speech concern now is aimed at the owners and employees of those platforms, right? So I'm thinking about the person who starts a social media company.","nb_tokens":230} | |
| {"doc_id":"6KJhM7Pg5EA_33","video_id":"6KJhM7Pg5EA","content":"The truth is what we're going to do this, we're going to, you know, this is an experiment because my, you know, as you might imagine, my faith that you can actually produce a social media platform that works is pretty low. But for Waking Up, my meditation app, we are going to launch a, basically a forum of some kind. And that will, you know, very quickly have tens of thousands and even some hundreds of thousands of people in it, presumably. Should I be able to have a no Nazis policy, right? Now I'm not expecting any Nazis. I mean, the first of all, this is a subscription business. So there's already a gatekeeping function that is helpful there, I think. Ensuring a kind of good faith and quality. But there, you know, anyone who needs free access to Waking Up also gets it. So there's a lot of free users of it. So it's not a perfect paywall. But I think when I start a platform like that, first of all, I should be able to just zero it out overnight.","nb_tokens":227} | |
| {"doc_id":"6KJhM7Pg5EA_34","video_id":"6KJhM7Pg5EA","content":"Like if it's not working, if I don't like the way this is working, I should be able to just send everyone an email saying, sorry, you know, you guys broke this place. I don't like the conversation. This is over, right? That's actually something I told Jack Dorsey when he was still running Twitter, that he should just delete it and he'd win the Nobel Peace Prize and he would deserve it. So I think you should be able to, you should be free to delete your social media account if you in fact own it. And you should be free to decide, okay, these are the standards of conduct in this space. Like it's, you know, this is true if you open a restaurant or if you open a movie theater, if you open any public space, it doesn't change if it's merely digital. You should be able to set the terms of service. And if it's a no Nazi space, well, then Nazis are not welcome here, right? So if you demonstrate that you're a Nazi, we kick you out of our platform.","nb_tokens":225} | |
| {"doc_id":"6KJhM7Pg5EA_35","video_id":"6KJhM7Pg5EA","content":"Now I, so I'll grant you that any company should be able to do what they want to do. If Hooters wants to hire only attractive women, by all means, let them hire only attractive women. If someone wants to do a female only company, I don't have a beef with it. I don't even have a beef if Harvard only wants to, you know, if Harvard wants to make it near impossible for an Asian student to get in, as long as they are clear and transparent and don't take government money, I'm all for it. I don't care. But the transparency matters to me. But my real question is, like, as we think about actually solving the problem. And so I'm asking this largely in the connotation of 2024 is coming. We're going to be running into this again. I really think the right way to set the table is you've got people on the left and people on the right who both think that the other side is evil. They both think that they have recognized the problem reincarnate.","nb_tokens":219} | |
| {"doc_id":"6KJhM7Pg5EA_36","video_id":"6KJhM7Pg5EA","content":"And if we don't establish a new sense-making mechanism for a world in which the velocity of information is this fast, AI is coming. So deep fakes are going to be a real thing. Like we need a method that we can all rely upon in order to think through these problems well. And so like where I come down on free speech isn't whether a private company should be able to limit the reach of somebody that's a Nazi or say, I don't want Nazis on my platform. That's fine. There is a real consequence to that though, which is then it just bifurcates and you get the right and the left. Cause that's really what's being argued about. As far as I can tell, there's, I have not seen any of what I would call real Nazi like stuff. It's normally just behavior people don't like it. It's coming from the opposite side of the aisle. So when I say, okay, what is the right way to deal with this? My answer is, I think everybody needs to distrust themselves a little. So they should not assume that they are right.","nb_tokens":230} | |
| {"doc_id":"6KJhM7Pg5EA_37","video_id":"6KJhM7Pg5EA","content":"Everybody should be willing to put their ideas forward on how they think through the problem. So rather than only listening to experts, it's like, hey, I'm an expert or I'm not but this is how I think about the problem. This is how I've ended up with this conclusion. I've looked at this or I've studied that, whatever but this is how I come to this conclusion. And then to want the collision of ideas and the second people are more worried about bad ideas being out there. They're either saying I completely give up to this velocity of information problem. So we have to just choke it. And we have to make sure that there's only the authorized information or you accept the consequences of letting the ideas battle it out in the public consciousness. And as far as I can tell, the second you say the people aren't smart enough to battle these ideas out the system of information distribution is so broken that it's unsafe, maybe isn't the perfect word but you'll never get a good outcome by doing that. You can't have democracy.","nb_tokens":217} | |
| {"doc_id":"6KJhM7Pg5EA_38","video_id":"6KJhM7Pg5EA","content":"Like it is literally only in the face of the ability for people to say what they believe is true and to battle out those ideas that we have any hope of people really understanding as close to the sort of unsculptured way of presenting an idea that we're going to get. And look, there are going to be people that won't be able to navigate that mess. And so I'm certainly not saying that this is perfect but when I step back and look at the reality of the landscape that we're in algorithmically controlled all of that, everybody has a voice in social media, et cetera, et cetera I don't see a way around it. Well, so we don't have a pure democracy, right? It's not like you just get online and vote and it's one person, one vote. And then we decide whether we go to war with Russia based on the tally. We have, we pick representatives and there I think it's important that we have representatives who are not blown around like weather veins by just whatever's happening on Twitter that day, right?","nb_tokens":222} | |
| {"doc_id":"6KJhM7Pg5EA_39","video_id":"6KJhM7Pg5EA","content":"So yes, they need to care about what their constituents want but I think it's good that there's a looseness of fit between what 500 people in the government do and what, and the cacophony on social media, right? That may be to some degree informing their impression of what their constituents want, right? So we need serious people in serious roles of responsibility. And insofar as we're losing that and there's definitely signs that we are losing that. I mean, we've got, you know at least one person in Congress who when our state is on fire, she speculates that maybe it's, you know Jewish space lasers starting those fires, right? This is Marjorie Taylor Greene. Marjorie Taylor Greene has heard that there were some space lasers put up there by Jews. I think it was Rothschild funding that could start fires and we might wanna look into that, right? So insofar as that is happening that we're getting people so anti-establishment that they are effectively lunatics in positions of real power.","nb_tokens":214} | |
| {"doc_id":"6KJhM7Pg5EA_40","video_id":"6KJhM7Pg5EA","content":"I think that's a, maybe that problem has always been with us to some degree but at least I am perceiving it certainly post-Trump as uniquely worth worrying about at this moment. Like populism is tending to promote candidates that are almost by definition have fewer institutional commitments with all the good and all the bad that that entails, right? So, but there's a lot that's good that if you care about, you know the last hundred years of scientific knowledge, right? And your statements about, let's say something like climate change is gonna be constrained by a basic awareness of, you know what most climate scientists most of the time think about climate change. That's your one kind of representative. If you're somebody who's just gonna freewheel based on what they heard Alex Jones say, or, you know I mean, like literally Trump gave his first interview I think to Alex Jones, right? Like there's a difference of kind of a center of narrative gravity there in populism that I think we need to worry about. But, and there's obviously right-wing and left-wing variants of populism, both are problematic but there's just, we have to recognize that there are asymmetries.","nb_tokens":245} | |
| {"doc_id":"6KJhM7Pg5EA_41","video_id":"6KJhM7Pg5EA","content":"So what you seem to be recommending is that we basically talk to everyone give everyone a fair hearing. It's only when you just bring sunlight to everything that people are gonna be able to make up their minds. And they're not, and they're gonna, you know they're still left and right are still gonna demonize one another but we're gonna approach something like maximum understanding. If we just talk about everything. So why not have RFK Jr on your podcast, right? You know, Rogan brings him on the podcast and just, you know RFK, tell me, give me the world as you see it. You know, tell me, you know who killed your father, who killed your uncle? What do you think about these vaccines? Do vaccines cause autism? And just let him go for four hours. The downside with that is that even in the presence of somebody who is a subject matter expert who's there to provide some kind of guardrails to that conversation, there is an asymmetry between the time and effort it takes to make a mess and the time and effort it takes to clean it up, right?","nb_tokens":229} | |
| {"doc_id":"6KJhM7Pg5EA_42","video_id":"6KJhM7Pg5EA","content":"And whether it's even possible to clean it up given the resources available, right? So if somebody is, if someone's just gonna make up lies in front of you even if you're an expert in that area you, there's only so much you can do because like you're not, they're playing with a completely different kind of information physics, right, they're just gonna make something up. So if you might be a climate change expert or a vaccine expert, and if you have a somebody who's a pure conspiracy theorist on those topics you know, in my experience, you're sitting with someone who is very often unscrupulous enough to just make stuff up, right? Or to be so delusional in their, in the way they have interacted with even valid information in the past that the word salad they're gonna produce is, you know, effectively just a tissue of lies and yet there may be no way to actually interact with it in an honest way in real time on Rogan's podcast or anywhere else so as to properly debunk it. So you can't- Let's take RFK Jr. as an example.","nb_tokens":233} | |
| {"doc_id":"6KJhM7Pg5EA_43","video_id":"6KJhM7Pg5EA","content":"Do we think that he is wrong and well-intentioned or do we think he is sinister? Well, wrong and well-intentioned can cover for a lot of dangerous error, right? I mean, you can really make a mess being wrong and well-intentioned. I think with him, he's so, he's got so much sunk cost. First of all, there's so many people, like there is just a characterological, you know, psychological phenotype that just is addicted to the contrarian take on more or less everything, right? So it's just like, and it's not an accident. The people who are all in on, you know, the JFK conspiracy, right? It's like, you know, no way it was a single shooter, no way Oswald was a Patsy, whatever it is, right? Those people, by and large, tend to just jump on all the other conspiracies, whether it's, you know, the moon landing or 9-11 truth or it's like they, and you have someone like RFK Jr.","nb_tokens":222} | |
| {"doc_id":"6KJhM7Pg5EA_44","video_id":"6KJhM7Pg5EA","content":"where it's, it seems, I don't know the man, but I've, you know, I've been paying attention of late, it seems like there's almost no conspiracy that he doesn't have an appetite for, right? So when someone says, well, what about Bill Gates injecting, you know, transponders into us with the vaccine? He's got time for that, right? He doesn't say, oh no, that's, I mean, you really think Bill Gates is doing that? That's just, isn't that obviously bullshit? No, no, he's like, well, you know, this is something we really have to look into. It's like, you know, I don't have verbatim what he said on that, but it was, he's way too open-minded on points like that, right? And so it is with everything. And now it's deeply inconvenient for someone like me at a moment like this to have to recognize some of these conspiracies turn out to be true, right? And some always looked plausible from the very beginning. So like the origins of COVID coming from the Wuhan Institute of Virology, right?","nb_tokens":242} | |
| {"doc_id":"6KJhM7Pg5EA_45","video_id":"6KJhM7Pg5EA","content":"Like, is it a lab leak or is it the wet market? Well, it always looked plausible that it could be a lab leak, right? That was always a valid thesis worth worrying about and investigating. And it was never racist to speculate that that might've been the case, right? So the fact that our medical establishment tried to tamp that down in a completely bad faith way, and maybe for reasons that are, if you dig deeper into Fauci and into the other players, maybe they really are, there's some deeply invidious things to discover about people's conflict of interest and research we funded and now we don't want to admit we funded or whatever it was. I mean, it was that moment in Congress where Fauci and Rand Paul were kind of debating the meaning of gain-of-function research. And Fauci looked like, to many people's perception, and I actually shared it at the time, he looked like he was just doing this sort of Talmudic hair-splitting on what the phrase gain-of-function meant, whereas Rand Paul was saying, come on, just be honest with the American people.","nb_tokens":229} | |
| {"doc_id":"6KJhM7Pg5EA_46","video_id":"6KJhM7Pg5EA","content":"Like, you know that if you are changing the function of the dynamics of a virus such that it spreads more among humans, that's gain-of-function, by any other name. So maybe there's something sinister beneath all of that, right? So here's one conspiracy, among all these other conspiracies, that people were branded as conspiracy theorists for entertaining, and yet it was always plausible to be worried about that. Yeah. This, by the way, is exactly the thing that I'm worried about. So it becomes very easy to shut people down, to say, oh, that's just conspiracy, and to start having the apps get involved. So YouTube marking it as like, oh, you talked about ivermectin, shutting this episode down, like just so many things coming at you at once, trying to say, this is outside the Overton window. And so my whole thesis is very simple, that in a world where there's too much information coming in, the answer cannot be to choke it off, to try to limit the amount of information, because you will get that wrong. It is manipulative by its very nature.","nb_tokens":233} | |
| {"doc_id":"6KJhM7Pg5EA_47","video_id":"6KJhM7Pg5EA","content":"The closest thing you're gonna get is to let ideas battle out. There are going to be consequences. I wanna be very clear. We probably, when it comes to things like this, you were better off when you had trusted, but hyper-limited media sources that could at least get everyone to walk towards the exits in a calm and orderly fashion. So I'm not denying that, but that world is over. And so now you really only have two options that I can see. You either top down, clamp down, or, and I'll lead people back to my trifecta of evil, or you go, there are gonna be consequences to letting people battle the ideas out in public, and there are gonna be a lot of people that get confused by things that should never be taken seriously, and they're going to be taken seriously, and we're gonna have lives lost because of that, but it will balance out, and we won't have lost all of our faith.","nb_tokens":199} | |
| {"doc_id":"6KJhM7Pg5EA_48","video_id":"6KJhM7Pg5EA","content":"And you're not gonna get the small guy trampled to death, sent off to the gulag, killed because he's an inconvenient voice, whatever the case, which also opens the door to the power grabs, and now you get will to power, which we saw a lot in COVID was like, oh, I can get a little bit of power, and so it draws people into that, so you get power grab, power grab. So when I think back, and in fact, maybe the right way to ask the question is, and I wanna keep this tied to RFK, I don't wanna depart from that yet. So you've got RFK, your view is that he's making things up, that it's conspiracy, maybe just personality-wise he's drawn to it. I don't hear you saying that you think he's sinister, just that's just how his mind works. Other people that think that he's bang on, that he's right, you've already admitted that he'll probably end up being right about some of these things.","nb_tokens":215} | |
| {"doc_id":"6KJhM7Pg5EA_49","video_id":"6KJhM7Pg5EA","content":"I know you well enough to know you're gonna say, well, there's nuance, and if you're right for the wrong reason, you really do have to think that through. It's not enough just to be right, but we'll set that aside for now. So you've got this guy, conspiracy-minded, not being sinister, probably will be right about some of these things, but probably you still don't want him to be platformed. And then it becomes- Well, but the crucial distinction, again, is between it being illegal to platform him or just the choice for any private platform- I only care about the choice. I wanna know why, because you are such a potent sense maker. There's so many of us that are like children of Sam Harris, where you really helped us think about putting these ideas together. And then there's something in this one-two punch of COVID, Trump, where all of a sudden I felt like, wait, I've been using the tools you gave me, and now I feel like you're using a different set of tools. And so I'm trying to remap, because here's how I approach you right now.","nb_tokens":240} | |
| {"doc_id":"6KJhM7Pg5EA_50","video_id":"6KJhM7Pg5EA","content":"Obviously, I've watched some portion of the internet go, Sam's brain broke, he used to be Sam Harris, not Sam Harris. You did your own podcast about it, which was brilliant, by the way, where you're like some portion of my audience thinks like, what have you done? I forget the exact phrase you used, but you're so aware of how people have responded, but you've stayed really steady. So I'm like, okay, then maybe there's something here I'm just not getting, which is why I keep laying my thing out, because you don't feel erratic to me, but I wanna understand your layering ideas that allow you to make sense of this in a way where you're calm. If people are gonna freak out on Twitter, I'm just gonna step back, I'm gonna keep doing my thing. Being with you does not feel like I'm in the presence of someone who's on a manic episode or anything. You feel as ever sort of calm and centered. And so because I am skeptical of my own approach, I want to understand yours. Now, I'm not gonna pull back on the parts where I think that it doesn't make sense.","nb_tokens":244} | |
| {"doc_id":"6KJhM7Pg5EA_51","video_id":"6KJhM7Pg5EA","content":"I'll say it doesn't make sense, but I actually do wanna understand. So where I was going with that is, don't worry about illegal, not illegal. I just wanna know why you think it makes sense to deplatform or to not platform, maybe a more accurate way to say it, to not platform someone like RFK Jr. When the founding fathers said, hey, the one thing you don't wanna fuck with, make sure people can say whatever the hell they want. Mm-hmm. Okay, well, it matters what the platform is. So with a podcast, it's very simple. I'm only gonna do 40, 50 podcasts this year. I just have to make a choice. It's an editorial choice. It's a publishing choice. What do I wanna pay attention to? Whose book do I wanna read? Who do I wanna talk to? Most people- But you have said don't, like there are certain people you don't think should be put on a platform. Trump was one of them. Well, there's some certain people I wouldn't talk to for specific reasons, right?","nb_tokens":232} | |
| {"doc_id":"6KJhM7Pg5EA_52","video_id":"6KJhM7Pg5EA","content":"You're not talking fair enough, but are there people that you think should never be platformed? Well, I think if you're gonna platform, so what I said about RFK on my podcast is that if you're going to platform him, you have a journalistic responsibility to do your homework, not only in anticipation of the things he's going to say on your podcast, but you need to catalog the things he's already said, which are obviously bullshit, that you should challenge him on, right? So there is just a widespread scientific consensus at this point that there is no link between childhood vaccines and autism, right? Now, autism is a problem. Autism rates have gone up. We don't understand autism, but people have gone deep studying the MMR vaccine, but just vaccines in general and autism and found no linkage, right? So, and he is out there telling people, anyone who will listen, that there's every reason to believe that vaccines cause autism or we should be worried about it or I'm hearing from mothers who have seen the clear correlation. They had a normal kid on Tuesday, on Wednesday, they got vaccinated and the autism started, right?","nb_tokens":237} | |
| {"doc_id":"6KJhM7Pg5EA_53","video_id":"6KJhM7Pg5EA","content":"So he is spreading that fear and as far as I can tell, it's on the basis of no valid scientific information now. Now, it's also, this is now linked up with everyone else's concerns about COVID vaccines and just the reliability of medicine in general and bad incentives and pharmaceutical companies. And there's a lot of there there in stuff that is worth worrying about. I mean, I think a profit-driven motive in medicine is something that we're always gonna be in tension with because what we want is, we want the medical establishment to be recommending drugs because they're safe and truly safe and effective to people who truly need them, right? We don't want people in the privacy of their own minds or in the privacy of their board meetings celebrating how they're gonna make billions of dollars at this new opportunity because they can market this drug successfully to people who may not need it, may not benefit from it, maybe in fact be harmed by it, right?","nb_tokens":195} | |
| {"doc_id":"6KJhM7Pg5EA_54","video_id":"6KJhM7Pg5EA","content":"So it's that a disalignment of incentives that is specific in the case of medicine that is, I think people are understandably uncomfortable with but so in the narrow case, when you're talking about having a podcast, first of all, you could just, the burden is not on you to platform everybody, you can just decide who you wanna talk to. If you're gonna talk to someone like RFK Jr, I think given his track record and given how much I think genuine misinformation he has spread and consequential misinformation, I think you have a responsibility not to just put a mic in front of him and let him rip, you actually need to debunk him and maybe bring on someone who can also debunk him. Now, again, as I said- And you have no problem with that. So if it was done in a debate format with another expert or superior expert, then it's, we're good. Yes, except the asymmetry I pointed out before still applies. If he's going to just make stuff up, right?","nb_tokens":207} | |
| {"doc_id":"6KJhM7Pg5EA_55","video_id":"6KJhM7Pg5EA","content":"So like, you know, he will, I mean, the example I mentioned on my podcast, like he's been telling a story, I think in several venues that, you know, he had collaborated with a journalist, Jake Tapper, 15 years ago on a documentary. They had just put in a ton of effort. They did a really deep dive on the link between vaccines and autism. And at the last minute, Jake Tapper called him and said, listen, we're going to pull this. In all my years as a journalist, I've never had this experience, but this just came down from corporate. They're just pulling the plug on this, I'm so sorry. And, you know, so the punchline for him, and I'm not sure if he said this on Rogan, he definitely said this on some podcasts I listened to. Punchline for him is, okay, the pharmaceutical companies have such a pull. I mean, they spend so much money with CNN and these other outlets that, you know, if they don't want something to air, it's not going to air, right? That's how corrupt journalism is now.","nb_tokens":238} | |
| {"doc_id":"6KJhM7Pg5EA_56","video_id":"6KJhM7Pg5EA","content":"Now, if I was on a podcast debating RFK Jr. and he trotted out that story, I would just have to eat it. I would say, all right, well, that's bad. I agree, that looks bad, right? Now, Jake Tapper has published an article saying, this is just a lie, right? This is just like, this has like a 2% relationship to what actually happened. There was nothing about it being, it's just, it's all upside down, and I keep debunking this, and he keeps telling this story, right? So unless you know that, it doesn't matter that you're a vaccine expert, you could be an expert in a dozen relevant disciplines. If someone's just going to make up a story that is perfectly shaped to tickle the contrarian, they're all a bunch of fucking liars part of the brain, he still lands that blow in real time on a podcast. There's no way to debunk it in real time. You literally need Jake Tapper to, you need to pull him out of the woodwork for that particular point. And there are many things like that, that's the thing.","nb_tokens":243} | |
| {"doc_id":"6KJhM7Pg5EA_57","video_id":"6KJhM7Pg5EA","content":"I mean, it's not like, so someone who has this style of reasoning, again, some of it's conscious lying, some of it's misremembering, some of it's that they're reading studies and they're not understanding them, and they're just, they're pulling half-truths out of studies that can be made to seem real. And so they're making such a mess that it is genuinely hard to be an expert in that, riding shotgun on all of that and debunking in real time. But the only responsible way to do it would be to have an expert there to try to do that. I think it's worth stepping back and asking the question, well, why is anyone listening to RFK Jr. about vaccines at all, right? He's not an expert in the relevant domain, right? He's not, I mean, he's not an expert in epidemiology, he's not an expert in immunology, he's not a vaccine guy, he's like, he's not, he's a lawyer and an activist who got this particular bee in his bonnet 20 years ago, and he's just made a lot of noise about this.","nb_tokens":242} | |
| {"doc_id":"6KJhM7Pg5EA_58","video_id":"6KJhM7Pg5EA","content":"And interestingly, he's also a climate science activist, right, and there you can see a very bizarre mismatch between how he deals with mainstream scientific consensus in climate and how he disavows mainstream scientific consensus on the topic of vaccines. And everything is flipped. I mean, it's just like he's got all the toggles flipped. So this is the perfect example for me of the very thing that I'm worried about. So here you have a guy, he's either sinister and wants to help the climate, in which case I think most people have cognitive dissonance, or he's sinister and wants people to not take vaccines that are gonna save their life, or he's maybe right about something that other people disagree with, or maybe he's wrong but well-intentioned. So- I think wrong but well-intentioned covers for a lot. I mean, just think about, the vaccine thing is really a unique case because what you have is an intervention on a healthy person, very often a child, that is nevertheless risky to some degree. Some number of people are gonna have a bad reaction.","nb_tokens":226} | |
| {"doc_id":"6KJhM7Pg5EA_59","video_id":"6KJhM7Pg5EA","content":"Some number of people are going to die from, I let you, I mean, this is just everyone's worst, certainly every parent's worst nightmare. You know, I let them stick a needle in my child and he was never the same, or he died, right? Like that's just, so you just have to hear one story like that, right? It doesn't even have to happen to you. It's just, it could be a friend of a friend of a friend. You hear this story and you think, man, it's just, it's not worth it. Like I just, I don't, you know, in the case of childhood illness, you know, infectious disease, you can, as you know, basically everyone who doesn't get their kids vaxed does, you can just be a free rider on this larger system of herd immunity. You can say, listen, most people are gonna be vaccinated from measles. I don't even have to get my kid vaccinated. Like I just don't, I'm not gonna run this risk. I'm just gonna opt out.","nb_tokens":225} | |
| {"doc_id":"6KJhM7Pg5EA_60","video_id":"6KJhM7Pg5EA","content":"And so he's intersecting with totally understandable fears that get wherein specific anecdotes, specific stories get amplified to the, I mean, they're above data. They're more important than data. You can show me all the data in the world. I know what happened to my kid, right? That's, again, scientifically that's all upside down, but it is so compelling that- What should we do though with people that are in that situation? Because for me, if a parent doesn't wanna vaccinate their child, I do not think you should be able to force them. Even at the height of COVID, where I was like, when I really believed everybody just needs to go get vaccinated and some people were like, I don't wanna do it. I was like, word, then fine. Like I, that just feels, so it felt wrong to me. And this is where it feels like everybody needs to have a moral compass. Part of where I think the breakdown is happening. I've heard you refer to something as a great unraveling. Now, I don't know what you mean by that, but I started mapping out what I thought you meant by that.","nb_tokens":240} | |
| {"doc_id":"6KJhM7Pg5EA_61","video_id":"6KJhM7Pg5EA","content":"And one of the things that certainly I would mean as a great unraveling is we don't have these shared morals anymore. We don't have one religion to carry us through. And you know, cause what I think ends up happening and the thing that you and I've been talking about without really talking about is that this is a battle for the truth. If things were clear, they'd be clear. Like if we really knew, like vaccines don't cause autism. Like if vaccines caused autism, it'd be very clear. You just see it, boom, done, right? So it's in some sort of weird, like maybe it does, like there's enough credibility there that people can still buy into it. There isn't enough, just like unequivocal evidence in the other direction. People go, ah, I've looked at this. Because if it were true, I could just show you this and I could show you this. And then people would go down the line. Nobody's arguing about whether what you eat impacts what you shit, right? Everybody just gets it. I don't have to tell anybody. I don't have to go convince people.","nb_tokens":237} | |
| {"doc_id":"6KJhM7Pg5EA_62","video_id":"6KJhM7Pg5EA","content":"It's just like your life is such proof that there is a one-to-one relationship between what you put in your mouth and what comes out the other end. So there is some weird gray area. So the question becomes- And it's mostly gray area for most things. Right. So now if we know we're living in this area where everything is great, nobody knows who's going to be the expert. You started the conversation by saying, okay, we really do need experts, but no joke, like nine words into your sentence, you were caveating. Experts have sort of thrown away their credibility. And so it's like, that is the world that we live in. Like this stuff is so complex. So the thing that we have to take on in head-on collision is, how do we discover what is true? Well, you do it the way R.F.K. Jr. is doing it for climate, right? Like you notice that you have to- You can find any- Believe the preponderance of accidents. Yeah, it's like, it's not an accident that almost all climate scientists, right?","nb_tokens":229} | |
| {"doc_id":"6KJhM7Pg5EA_63","video_id":"6KJhM7Pg5EA","content":"There's a general principle you have to understand here is that it's always possible to find a handful of PhDs or MDs who are crazy or conflicted or just for whatever reason, disposed to stake out a genuinely disreputable and indefensible thesis. You could always- So the cigarette companies could always find somebody with a seemingly relevant degree to say, I don't think smoking causes cancer. I don't think it's addictive. But you could find that guy. And then that guy would sell his wares to the chemical companies that are putting fire retardant in mattresses. And he could say, well, I don't think this is- If it gets into the bloodstream, it's not a problem, right? So you can always find those people. So I'm not saying we are always ruled by scientific consensus because there are genuine breakthroughs in science that overturn even a 99.9% consensus, right? But scientific consensus is still salient and still matters most of the time. And it's not arrived at by accident. And there's so much tension in science to disprove other scientists, right?","nb_tokens":228} | |
| {"doc_id":"6KJhM7Pg5EA_64","video_id":"6KJhM7Pg5EA","content":"It is such a competitive atmosphere that, again, there are studies that don't get replicated. There's false ideas that survive far longer than you think they would. But generally speaking, you are not going to go wrong most of the time by lining up with what 99% of Specialist X thinks on this very specialized topic. So RFK Jr. plays that very center of the fairway game on the topic of climate. And he does something completely different when he's talking about medicine. Now, I don't know, maybe he has a story that reconciles that difference. But yes, we need a healthy institutional and scientific conversation such that good ideas generally survive and bad ideas are generally debunked. And that we know that most of the time our experts are real experts. They acquired their expertise by a process that was going to weed out the imbeciles and the delusional and deliver somebody who really is arriving at their opinions on the basis of a methodology that we generally can trust, right? They're not obviously conflicted by- Can we lay out that methodology? Well, you're on guard for obvious cognitive bias and wishful thinking and certainly bad incentives, right?","nb_tokens":239} | |
| {"doc_id":"6KJhM7Pg5EA_65","video_id":"6KJhM7Pg5EA","content":"So it's understandable. It's like, yes, if R.J. Reynolds is funding research into the toxicology of cigarettes, right? It's not to say that obviously conflicted money is always gonna fund a study that is false, right? I mean, you could run it. Wouldn't be hard to run a totally valid study where the money came from what would classically be considered the wrong source. But it's easy to see that there's, at least the optics are bad enough that that's not how you wanna fund that particular science, right? And at minimum, scientists have to declare any economic interest they had in any part of this picture. But the truth is, I mean, science is deeply flawed and yet it's better than any other part of culture with respect to how we play this game of just letting ideas collide against one another and seeing what survives. That I agree with. So the problem is I don't feel like that's what's happening or what's being championed. So broadly, and then we can get specific to you and I and exactly what we're saying.","nb_tokens":224} | |
| {"doc_id":"6KJhM7Pg5EA_66","video_id":"6KJhM7Pg5EA","content":"But the way that I think about this is you've got even something like science. If you talk to Eric Weinstein, he talks about the DISC, I think it's the Distributed Information Suppression Complex. So he talks about how there is for whatever reason just inherent into the world of science, there's a certain bias, there's certain ideas they don't want getting out because people have built their entire careers on something. And if you're putting something for it that challenges it, not necessarily that they're being evil, but it's the same kind of idea of the cigarette guy is gonna see what he wants to see. And the guy whose entire career collapses, if your new idea is right, well, magically the peer review that you get is terrible and he's got a laundry list of things like that. And so I'll back up. So in a business context, I created something called the Physics of Progress. And it was me trying to teach to my students exactly how you solve novel problems. So I was like, hey, if you wanna grow a business, I have no idea what the product is, how the audience is gonna respond, what the market situation is gonna be like.","nb_tokens":243} | |
| {"doc_id":"6KJhM7Pg5EA_67","video_id":"6KJhM7Pg5EA","content":"So you really have to understand how to think through a new business, new product, new era, new market dynamics, whatever. And the way that you do that is Physics of Progress. And I lay this whole thing out and I'm super proud of it. And I'm pitching it to my team. And I'm like, okay, you're gonna start with where are you trying to get to? What's your goal? You're gonna identify the obstacle between where you're at and your goal. And like, why won't I just automatically achieve my goal? Then you're gonna come up with a experiment that you can run, a thing that you can do to try to overcome that obstacle. You're gonna do that thing. You're gonna look at the data, figure out whether you made meaningful progress. You're gonna then re-inform your hypothesis about how to overcome that obstacle. And you're gonna start over. And one of the guys in my team goes, that's the scientific method. And I was like, is it? I actually don't know the scientific method. And he's like, yeah, that's the scientific method.","nb_tokens":234} | |
| {"doc_id":"6KJhM7Pg5EA_68","video_id":"6KJhM7Pg5EA","content":"And I was like, okay, that makes sense. To me, that's it. The reason that I called it the physics of progress, and again, just completely acknowledging it's the scientific method, but the reason that it occurred to me as a physics of progress is because it is the only way to make progress that you're not gonna know. You're just taking your best guess. You know where you're trying to get to. You have a guess about what the thing is that's stopping you. You're gonna try something. The problem is, and when I teach this, the big issue is when going back to what I was saying is truth. Truth is perception, interpretation, and reinforcement. And at the moment you look at the data, so I ran my test to see if I could overcome that obstacle, I get a result. When I look at that data, I'm bringing my perception, my interpretation, and my reinforcement to that. And it's not that I'm evil, but I'm not necessarily going to see what's true. And this is where science then begins to break down. It is the right answer. Like it is what we need to do.","nb_tokens":241} | |
| {"doc_id":"6KJhM7Pg5EA_69","video_id":"6KJhM7Pg5EA","content":"As far as I can tell, it's the only way to make progress in anything. But what we're living through right now is that moment of the interpretation, the perception, and the reinforcement causes you to see something that's not actually there. You're looking at the world through a funhouse mirror. And so what- So how- Sorry, one second. Let me bring this all together. The one thing that I live in perpetual fear of is that you have the guy, the doctor, you'll probably remember his name, I don't, who was like, you know what? I think after you do an autopsy, you need to wash your hands before you give birth to somebody. Yeah, Semmelweis, yeah. What, Semmelweis? Semmelweis. Semmelweis. So Semmelweis goes and tells people this, hey, I think this is causing the death of mothers. We really have to start washing our hands. People make fun of him, lambast him, drive him into an insane asylum where he dies before it's discovered, oh yeah, germ theory, he was right. And so that's how wrong this goes.","nb_tokens":237} | |
| {"doc_id":"6KJhM7Pg5EA_70","video_id":"6KJhM7Pg5EA","content":"I don't think that humans have changed. I think that we still have that reaction where it's like, they're not necessarily even trying to be mean. It just doesn't make sense to them. And it would cause like all these changes and we don't really know that this is a thing. And so to me, the people that want to make the decisions, they lack the humility to recognize the odds of me being wrong border on a hundred percent. Not on everything, but when you take everything in totality, you're going to be wrong and you just don't know about which things. And so if I'm thinking, okay, you've put forth your idea. We need these, we need experts. We need an institutional response that we can trust. My thing would be the closest thing I could imagine to that. You have to red team, blue team. You've got to get somebody like RFK Jr. who really believes this is a problem. This is really causing autism. And then you debate it with data that you predict ahead of time. So it comes down to, okay, what was your prediction? What did you think was going to happen?","nb_tokens":239} | |
| {"doc_id":"6KJhM7Pg5EA_71","video_id":"6KJhM7Pg5EA","content":"Then you run the experiment. Did it actually happen? Yes or no. And then both sides, because when you look at the data is the point at which you're most likely to make your errors, bring your biases, all that. You look at the data and then you try to go with a consensus. Now, I don't see any way and climate is a great one to talk about. I don't see any way to stop all kinds of pro longed debate. But then you hope that when there really is evidence that it starts to be just one by one, all the detractors start falling away. It just becomes too self-evident. And then you really can get something approaching consensus in action. Yeah, well, so let me see if I can just isolate what we're disagreeing about here. Because you seem to be imagining that we can have an information landscape, whether let's say it's on a platform like Twitter or YouTube, where it's as flat as, but there's as much, no one's doing anything deliberate to tune the signal to noise ratio, right? Because to do that would be to be biasing it based on error.","nb_tokens":239} | |
| {"doc_id":"6KJhM7Pg5EA_72","video_id":"6KJhM7Pg5EA","content":"The honest answer is I think people are hyper biased. So that is factored into, while I didn't talk about that, that is factored into how I think you have to let the ideas battle. So that the wiser, more eloquent fighters, and I think this is probably a lot of some people's pushback on you stepping back somewhat, exiting Twitter, because they were like, you were the guy I counted on to be able to throw and dodge punches and bring humor and all of that. And so we've lost one of the great fighters of this. And that gets hard because I don't see myself as talented enough in the idea of public opinion to do that. So you have to have people that can dismantle these ideas. Like I've seen you on stage do this, particularly with religion, which is outside of where we're at right now in the conversation, but where you've been funny and it's shareable. The clips themselves are amazing because they hit and they shake you up, but they're easy to transmit and remember. And so when you find a great orator, Douglas Murray is another guy that can really do this.","nb_tokens":236} | |
| {"doc_id":"6KJhM7Pg5EA_73","video_id":"6KJhM7Pg5EA","content":"That feels to me, and I know you keep saying, I'm not the guy to think through COVID or whatever. And I'm like, actually. So as long as it's people who are disagreeing respectfully, who care about truth, you have to, as the individual, care about truth and you have to not pride yourself on being right. You have to pride yourself on identifying the right answer. But I have a feeling that experts almost need that external panel of people who are like, I'm not invested in this, but I know how to think through novel problems. Here's how I'm parsing this data. Let me ask you really pointed questions, give me your feedback, and then I'll triangulate on an answer. That feels like in the reality of how ideas win at scale, that feels the closest to true. But it requires that people be able to say whatever the hell they want, that they don't get booted, kicked off, silenced, whatever. Well, but so let's just take that last claim first. All of these platforms have to kick people off for specific violations of their terms of service, right? You need some terms of service.","nb_tokens":239} | |
| {"doc_id":"6KJhM7Pg5EA_74","video_id":"6KJhM7Pg5EA","content":"As far as I know, even 4chan has a terms of service, right? I think maybe 8chan doesn't, but if you want to be more extreme than 4chan, you have to go somewhere else. So I will give you barriers must be put up. Now, where we put the barriers, we are going to- But the moment you concede that, right? Then you recognize that there's absolutely nothing novel about what Elon is doing on Twitter. He's just biasing it in a way that he likes better than the previous bias, right? So he brought Kanye on knowing he was an anti-Semite and then Kanye did something and he kicked him off because he realized, okay, I can't really have this happening on my platform. And so it is what I mean, he's cozying up to sort of queuing on lunatics and he may not even know who he's signal boosting. He's just like, you know, glad handing somebody who said something he thought was clever, sent him a meme he thought was clever. And he's actually signal boosting somebody who's just odious in their ideological commitments and in their lying about everything under the sun, right?","nb_tokens":246} | |
| {"doc_id":"6KJhM7Pg5EA_75","video_id":"6KJhM7Pg5EA","content":"And I'm not saying Elon's actually paying attention to all that, but he's doing something incredibly ad hoc and sloppy and it's still not free speech absolutism, right? Free speech absolutism just doesn't exist. It doesn't even exist on 4chan. I mean, as far as I know, I have this on just good faith because I'm never on, I don't think I've ever been on 4chan ever, but I think it has a terms of service and that's why 8chan was spawned. It's like in protest over the puritanical control on 4chan. So what you seem to be recommending is the 4chanification or the 8chanification of everything and what that would be in my view, if that were happening on YouTube and TikTok and Twitter and threads and everywhere else, it would be a maximally noisy, uncivil space, right? So it would get hard insofar as you achieve that ideal of no libtard institutional bias, right? We're just gonna let it rip, right? Anyone with anything to say gets equal chance to say it.","nb_tokens":231} | |
| {"doc_id":"6KJhM7Pg5EA_76","video_id":"6KJhM7Pg5EA","content":"What you're gonna have there is just pure cacophony and it's gonna be harder and harder to find the signal and the noise, right? So the moment you admit that, you admit you're in the business of favoring certain voices over others, platforming and even deplatforming people when they prove on the 10th infraction that they're truly beyond the pale and just committed to making a mess, right? And what I experienced, so my leaving Twitter was just, it was much more of a personal decision. It wasn't a decision that, it was just a decision about how I was gonna spend my time and attention ultimately. But I mean, the reason why I didn't see a benefit to my staying there is that it's just the wrong space in which to try to have a conversation like a conversation that converges on anything useful on these kinds of topics, right? Really any polarizing topic. Because I tried, I mean, it was the only play, it was the only social media platform that I ever used personally. I mean, I'm on others, but those are just marketing channels and I never see them. But it was really me on Twitter.","nb_tokens":242} | |
| {"doc_id":"6KJhM7Pg5EA_77","video_id":"6KJhM7Pg5EA","content":"I was really trying to make sense to people. What I was getting back was just this, you know, tsunami of bad faith attacks and craziness. And what was actually exploding was not just, you know, headlines that were false, but like, you know, in the final case, it was a clip of me on another podcast, which was genuinely misleading as to what I said in context on that podcast. But it simply didn't matter because the clip itself seemed to be, it seemed intelligible enough. It seemed clear enough what I was saying within the clip that people just, they didn't even want to hear that there was a context. Is this the Hunter Biden thing? Yeah. So they didn't, like literally, they didn't want to hear, and even like no one has the bandwidth to go back and find the context for the thing that they just reacted to, that just, you know, primed all their, you know, satisfied all their salt and sugar and fat receptors. And so when you ask like what my principles are, my general principle is to be very on guard for doing that sort of thing myself.","nb_tokens":232} | |
| {"doc_id":"6KJhM7Pg5EA_78","video_id":"6KJhM7Pg5EA","content":"So like, even when there's somebody who, who I know I understand and revile appropriately, somebody like Trump, I'm still on guard for the clip of him that is actually misleading, right? And I will actually defend him as much as I, you know, find him indefensible. I have, I've burned a fair amount of, you know, reputational capital, you know, over here on the left by defending him on specific points when I felt that the attack on him was just based on lies, right? So like when he, when he gave a press conference after Charlottesville and said that, you know, there were good people on both sides, and he seemed to be saying in that clip that the neo-Nazis are good people, right? And that was spun from, that was spun politically from every, you know, everyone from Biden on down. It was spun by the New York Times. I mean, literally I would have, if I had to bet 95% of the commentary at left of center still thinks he was praising neo-Nazis in that, in that press conference.","nb_tokens":228} | |
| {"doc_id":"6KJhM7Pg5EA_79","video_id":"6KJhM7Pg5EA","content":"And yet within the, within the context of the press conference, it's absolutely clear that he's not doing that, right? He says, you know, within 20 seconds of the clipped piece, he says, you know, I'm not talking about the white supremacists and the neo-Nazis. I'm talking about other people who were there for, you know, who were just worried about, you know, monuments getting torn down. And so I think we have to acknowledge that there's, we're in a media landscape now where people are being reliably misled by clips that, I mean, so the underlying ethic here is that when people are arguing in a partisan way, they don't really care what their enemy has said or meant to say. What they want to do is they want to hold them to the worst possible interpretation of what they said and make that stick, right? And the game is just see if you can make it stick. See if you can, you, and so I've long, I've made this claim, you know, for years now. And this is, you know, this is more based on what happens to me from the left as opposed to the right.","nb_tokens":245} | |
| {"doc_id":"6KJhM7Pg5EA_80","video_id":"6KJhM7Pg5EA","content":"I mean, the example we're talking about now was sort of defamation coming from the right. But, you know, I've made this point before and this is, you know, it's an inconvenient point to make because like even this can get clipped out to my disadvantage. But it's just, it's worth saying because this shines as bright as possible a light on what everyone is doing. And many, many good people are doing it kind of unthinkingly. But so I'm living, I've long known, for at least eight years or so, I've known that I'm in an environment where if I say on my podcast, black people are apes, white people are apes, we're all apes, racism doesn't make any sense, right? There are some considerable number of people who will clip out me saying black people are apes or make a meme, black people are apes, Sam Harris, right? And they will export that to their channels with apparently with a clear conscience saying this is fair game, right? And that's the kind of people I was dealing with on Twitter.","nb_tokens":228} | |
| {"doc_id":"6KJhM7Pg5EA_81","video_id":"6KJhM7Pg5EA","content":"And that's the kind of person who clipped that clip from that podcast is exactly that sort of person. And he was being signal boosted by lots of other people we could name. And so I just recognize that this is a, it's just the wrong occasion to try to have a conversation with people. And it's built into the dynamics of the system where people are incentivized just to dunk on everybody, however dishonestly, and then move on. And part of the pathology I saw with Elon taking over the place was not so much what he was doing to the place as its owner, but just how he was behaving personally on the platform himself. I mean, he was doing the same thing. One of the first things he did after he took over Twitter was he spread this meme about Nancy Pelosi's husband after the hammer attack on him. It's like, it's not what it seems. This could have been a gay tryst gone awry. And he linked to a website that had an article to that effect. This was a website which during the 2016 election claimed that Hillary Clinton was dead and that a body double was campaigning in her place, right?","nb_tokens":237} | |
| {"doc_id":"6KJhM7Pg5EA_82","video_id":"6KJhM7Pg5EA","content":"So Elon links to that as a source, right? In front of, at that point, probably 110 million people amplifying a completely crazy conspiracy theory that is getting spun up in QAnon circles. And then when that gets pointed out to him, just how wrong all of that was and how irresponsible it was, he never corrects the record. He never apologizes. He never changes his appetite for doing that again. In that case, I think he just deleted the tweet, right? And moved on. And so it's like even people who reputationally have a tremendous amount to lose by behaving that way, you would think are goaded into behaving that way because of the mechanics of the platform. And so for me personally, I simply don't understand how people have audiences that will still follow them after they prove that they don't care to make any of these distinctions. I mentioned Tucker Carlson. The fact that behind closed doors, he's saying that Trump is a demonic force. And then in front of the camera, he's basically messaging to Trumpistan 85% of the time in a very supportive way.","nb_tokens":228} | |
| {"doc_id":"6KJhM7Pg5EA_83","video_id":"6KJhM7Pg5EA","content":"I don't understand how, like in front of my eye, if a similar thing were revealed about me, my audience would just completely disavow me. I mean, it would be a complete breach of trust with my audience. And that's the way I think it should be. But Alex Jones, I mean, like Alex Jones has an audience of some tens of millions of people. In the aftermath of Sandy Hook, he has lied and lied and lied about Sandy Hook being a false flag, fake confection of the Obama administration. They're all crisis actors. The kids never died. Or I mean, it's like, I don't know how deep those claims went, but some version of that. None of this is as it seems. He created immense harm, demonstrable harm with all the Sandy Hook families. I mean, these are families, in many cases, they've had to move home. Some have moved homes 10 times since he started spreading those lies about them. All of this gets kind of, you know, forensically documented at trial. He gets a billion dollar judgment against him. How does he still have an audience?","nb_tokens":235} | |
| {"doc_id":"6KJhM7Pg5EA_84","video_id":"6KJhM7Pg5EA","content":"Or like, who are these people who are still listening to him? Is that legitimately confusing? Because that one to me is very clear. He's entertaining. All these people are mentally ill? Or like, what is this? Because I don't, look, I don't know Rogan well at all, but Rogan keeps having him on. I don't know if he has recently, but he thinks he's funny. Since then, but. Yeah, that I don't know. But certainly my take is that people find him amusing. He's funny and he's gotten enough weird stuff right that people are like, all right, look, he missed. I know literally nothing about the Sandy Hook stuff. So I'm certainly not defending that. I'm just saying I understand the phenomenon. The phenomenon is that this is an age where the algorithm is a big part of the piece of information. And so the reason that certain people become the voice is that they also are able to speak in a way that people find really compelling, entertaining, engaging. And so that person is gonna keep going. Alex has a way of delivering information. That's zany.","nb_tokens":236} | |
| {"doc_id":"6KJhM7Pg5EA_85","video_id":"6KJhM7Pg5EA","content":"It's crazy. It's over the top. You can't believe it's real. He's funny. He's fun to make fun of. And there are enough things that people like, I mean, he gets memed, right? It's like another crazy thing that he said five years ago just came true. And so he's a bit like the Simpsons in that people be like, yo, Simpsons 12 years ago predicted this thing. He's like, that's insane. So same thing with Alex. But now that doesn't mean that he isn't a destructive force. It just means that it's very easy for me to see why he's entertaining enough that people are gonna keep going back to him. You can reboot your life, your health, even your career, anything you want. All you need is discipline. I can teach you the tactics that I learned while growing a billion dollar business that will allow you to see your goals through. Whether you want better health, stronger relationships, a more successful career, any of that is possible with the mindset and business programs in Impact Theory University. Join the thousands of students who have already accomplished amazing things.","nb_tokens":236} | |
| {"doc_id":"6KJhM7Pg5EA_86","video_id":"6KJhM7Pg5EA","content":"Tap now for a free trial and get started today. I'll grant you the entertainment component, especially in his case, but in his case, perhaps to a lesser degree, but certainly in Tucker's case, there's this pretense of, I'm just giving you honest information, right? I'm just calling it as I see it. Like this is just, like what you see is what you get. There's not like, this is just, there's a fundamental integrity to the message. That's what his audience seems to think they're getting. And then we know that he is a completely different person behind closed doors. I can explain that one as well. So you've got, all right, we all know they, I'm just giving you what a dyed in the wool red Republican is gonna say. They shouldn't be looking at his private communications. And- I mean, that's a way of not taking the knowledge on board. Correct. I'm not saying it's the right way. I'm just saying this is how he keeps his audience. They shouldn't be looking at his private communications. This is exactly what Trump has been warning us about.","nb_tokens":239} | |
| {"doc_id":"6KJhM7Pg5EA_87","video_id":"6KJhM7Pg5EA","content":"People getting into your private life, governmental overreach, all of that. And then of course, he's gonna fight for Republican values. Even if he thinks that the leadership isn't great and that he'd rather have somebody else. He knows that lying on behalf of a guy that he thinks is demonic, but at least he's Republican, is better than the outright dangerous, I don't know what words they use for othering the Joe Biden camp, but that's how it's gonna be. That you would much rather, I mean, it was like when Trump said that, yes, I'm a bully, but I'm a bully for you. It was like, okay, sure, Tucker's not perfect. Sure, he lied to present things. I'm kind of glad he did because I need him to represent our side. We have to win against the other people. There's this real escalating sense of we have to win. The stakes really matter. And in fact, going back to that idea of if I look at, so I watched the whole interview that you did where you were talking about the Hunter Biden laptop.","nb_tokens":230} | |
| {"doc_id":"6KJhM7Pg5EA_88","video_id":"6KJhM7Pg5EA","content":"And so I'm watching it with an open mind and just a ton of respect for you, Sam. I cannot stress it enough. Before, after, this minute, a year from now, I just can't fathom not really being blown away by how you think and all the meditation stuff. You seem sincerely to wanna help people. So it was very easy for me to go, okay, I think I get where you're going with this. But for me to interpret that moment the way that you did, and this is why I said, this is about stopping evil. To me, your interpretation of Trump is that either because he's just a clown on the loose, a dangerous troll, or because he's actually nefarious, either one has the same outcome. So I doubt you split real hairs with that. But he cannot be in control of this company. It is, I don't know if you go all the way to existential, thank you, this country.","nb_tokens":198} | |
| {"doc_id":"6KJhM7Pg5EA_89","video_id":"6KJhM7Pg5EA","content":"I don't know if you go all the way to existential or not, but it's so high risk, finger on the nukes, asking questions like, why do I have less nukes than JFK back in the 60s? This is as close to unhinged narcissism as you're gonna get. It's too dangerous. We are now at a point where, hey, everybody, yeah, fine. I will step forward and say that there should be a smaller group of people that just keep us from this lunacy. And if that means that we have to not necessarily bury the laptop, but you cannot let it come out right in a moment where it could possibly sway the election and put that psychopath back in. Now that's where I say that is way more dangerous. And now we can at least talk about what we disagree on. To me, the authoritarian nature of like, I and some small group of people have decided that Trump is that dangerous and have decided that this laptop revealing at this moment would be dangerous to the democratic candidacy. So whatever it is that we have to suppress, we have to suppress it.","nb_tokens":230} | |
| {"doc_id":"6KJhM7Pg5EA_90","video_id":"6KJhM7Pg5EA","content":"Let me just be clear about what my position actually was at the time and what I was actually saying on that podcast. Not especially well. My position was, it was always a hard judgment call at that point. We're talking about 10 days before the election. This thing comes, it's clearly an October surprise, foisted on us, timed intentionally to be hard to parse right before the election. It's just like, we're on Rudy Giuliani's timetable. It's like he, this is like here, this is when I'm gonna show you the laptop, right? You got 10 days to figure this out. It was meant to detonate politically at that point. And we already knew what happens in the 2016 election when 10 days before an election, you say, hey, we got Anthony Weiner's laptop and now we're reopening the email investigation to Hillary Clinton. We saw that that was, her poll numbers by the hour went down. And whether that was decisive or not, who knows? She was unelectable for other reasons.","nb_tokens":217} | |
| {"doc_id":"6KJhM7Pg5EA_91","video_id":"6KJhM7Pg5EA","content":"So we had a, so my claim at the time was, it was totally understandable for journalists to say, we're not gonna be hostage to Rudy Giuliani's timetable here. We have an election in 10 days, first do no harm. Let's just give this, let's wait for three weeks to figure out what's true about this laptop, right? We can't figure out whether this is a Russian forgery, there's reasons to be concerned that it could be Russian disinformation. Who knows what's going on here? We should not be in a rush to create a disaster here politically. So it was, and so I viewed each of these platforms having different choices to make. So journalists could decide, do we wanna focus on this now? Or do we wanna give this a little more breathing room? That was an editorial choice that I completely understood and still a genuine hard call. Then you have Twitter deciding not only to, whether or not to amplify certain things, they decide to de-platform the New York Post that had a journalist who decided to write about the story, right? That was a very different decision. And I think almost certainly the wrong decision, right?","nb_tokens":239} | |
| {"doc_id":"6KJhM7Pg5EA_92","video_id":"6KJhM7Pg5EA","content":"I mean, again, understandable given the political bias of the people on Twitter and given the genuine uncertainty as to the ground truth of the validity of the information and where that laptop came from. And I think even in that case, on the New York Post story, one of the reporters who reported it out didn't wanna sign his name to the article. I mean, like it was the Wild West over there in terms of actually doing the journalism. So, it's, I mean, my view, it was a coin toss as to what to do there. Now, if you raise the stakes more, right, you make Trump even more sinister, you make the election even more tenuous, you make the information even more dubious than the dials change. And so many of these decisions are not decisions you can make categorically in principle. It really is this pragmatic balancing of just what is true and what are the stakes, right? So like, I'll compare this to another case you spelled out earlier. So you felt that it was obviously wrong to force people to get the mRNA vaccine for COVID, right? Now, I would grant you, certainly in retrospect, that seems true.","nb_tokens":240} | |
| {"doc_id":"6KJhM7Pg5EA_93","video_id":"6KJhM7Pg5EA","content":"But if we change a few of the variables, I think your ethical intuitions and certainly political intuitions would totally change. So you make it a much more obviously effective vaccine that really does block transmissions, like a sterilizing vaccine. You make it a much more dangerous virus. You make it a virus that's actually preferentially killing kids rather than old people. So now we're in an environment where you're deciding not to get vaccinated is putting my kids at risk, right? Do you get to make that choice, right? And you might say, oh, yes, yeah, I should be able to make that choice. It's my body, you know? But dial up the deadliness of the pathogen. Give us something like airborne Ebola that incubates for a month. You don't know you have it and you walk around spreading it. And it's got, you know, a 75% fatality rate and it's mostly killing kids. No one gets to make that choice anymore. I mean, then literally the cops come in and vaccinate you. And I would say that all of us would agree to that.","nb_tokens":233} | |
| {"doc_id":"6KJhM7Pg5EA_94","video_id":"6KJhM7Pg5EA","content":"The moment, again, that you turn up the lethality on the pathogen, you turn up the effectiveness of the vaccine, you turn down the risk of the vaccine. Down the risk of the vaccine, give me a truly safe vaccine where there's not even one documented case of vaccine injury, right? So then you just have to be completely crazy to be worried about being vaccinated in that kind of environment. Then it's just a no-brainer. Then we just don't tolerate a diversity of opinion because the stakes are too high. It's a full-on emergency. Bodies of kids are being stacked up in parks, right? There's so many of them, we don't know what to do with them. We've got these mobile morgues and we have a vaccine that actually works. And then we've got RFK Jr. saying, maybe you don't want to get the jab on Rogan's podcast, right? That's the world I've been worried about ever since COVID. Like a world where the truth is really clear and yet our media environment is so crazy that we can't even talk about it.","nb_tokens":229} | |
| {"doc_id":"6KJhM7Pg5EA_95","video_id":"6KJhM7Pg5EA","content":"And we get this, I mean, again, the fact that something like QAnon is possible, right? The fact that we could have a president who messages to QAnon favorably without disavowing any association, right? When asked about QAnon, he says, well, they sure seem to like me. They seem like nice people, right? This is a, I mean, some tens of millions of people, it seems. I mean, let's say it's a hardcore of maybe 3 million people, who knows? Millions of people who believe that the world is being run by child raping cannibals, right? That's like, if that is possible in the current system, you just have to imagine what that would do when the stakes are truly high, right? Like when it's part of the machinery of some decision-making. And- So I have a slightly different intuition on this. So I like to take the hardest possible look at this thing and then see what I would do. So one, even if you dial it up, it's airborne Ebola, it takes a month, you're walking around, dead kids are being stacked up.","nb_tokens":240} | |
| {"doc_id":"6KJhM7Pg5EA_96","video_id":"6KJhM7Pg5EA","content":"I would still let RFK go say, I don't think people should get the jab. But having said that- But what do you mean let? Like you would decide to have that conversation or you just think there should be no law against it? On my podcast, there should be no law against it. Right, but so I agree with you there. So like that, where I hold the line with the first amendment is, yes, you should be able to be as wrong as you wanna be, but we don't have to algorithmically boost those errors, right? Correct. Like, and if I have a platform, if again, I'm creating a social media platform, I don't want the Nazis and I don't want the people who are spreading lies about the current pandemic that is gonna get people killed. Where you and I break down is, I am so paranoid that people don't know what a lie is. Right. And so the very thing, and this is why I brought up the founding fathers before, the reason that I'm saying, I want these people to be able to speak is because I don't know who knows the answer and who doesn't.","nb_tokens":240} | |
| {"doc_id":"6KJhM7Pg5EA_97","video_id":"6KJhM7Pg5EA","content":"And so I need the information. Now, over time, certainly for myself, I'll begin to discern who I think is a good faith actor and is really thinking through this problem. And I get that there's gonna be people that get caught up and just the speed of it, it's hard to parse who's right and who's just entertaining. And that will be very frustrating, especially if it's my kids that are being stacked up in the park. And I get all of that. But I would also say that if you need those sort of wartime powers, this is Ebola, it's spreading, the deaths are just absolutely outrageous. We have reason to believe that the vaccine is working. While I wouldn't say that people can't speak up, I would be like, you are getting vaccinated or you're getting quarantined in some way. And that would be horrible. And that's really God awful. And it will have absolutely terrible consequences. But I don't wanna say that I can't see a world in which I look at it and go, that's the right answer. What I wanna talk about is what am I using to determine that that's the right answer?","nb_tokens":241} | |
| {"doc_id":"6KJhM7Pg5EA_98","video_id":"6KJhM7Pg5EA","content":"That's really the thing that I wanna talk about is how we think through these very difficult, very novel problems. And so one of the things that I find interesting is you've got founding fathers and you've got religion. So the founding fathers to me represent a shared narrative about what people ought to be, what the US for sure ought to be in a moralistic sense. Like how do you structure a government to protect itself from tyranny? How do you recognize the individual people? What ought they be able to pursue without the government being able to interfere with them? Like what are those bright lines that makes us Americans? Riding on the back of freedom and freedom of speech and all of that. Now, of course, crazy, they're doing all this while holding slaves, but they put an idea together that as you adhere to the idea, all that other bullshit starts to fall away. So that to me is a structure of a system that grows better over time. So that's one element that it's an orienting mechanism where live free or die, right?","nb_tokens":215} | |
| {"doc_id":"6KJhM7Pg5EA_99","video_id":"6KJhM7Pg5EA","content":"It's something people were literally willing to give their lives for an idea that has fallen apart in a way that I don't clearly understand that I would love you to talk to. The other part of this is religion, same thing. It's how do you know what is true? In fact, I was thinking about this today. Tell me what you think. I think that religion is the thing that allows you to establish your behavior patterns when truth cannot be scientifically established. So you have religion for the millennia when you couldn't look under a microscope to know about germ theory. So you just said, don't put these fabrics together, don't eat pork, whatever. And ultimately it was like, you knew you were doing the right thing because it was written down in a book or told in an oral story and you either hewed close to what it said to do and you were doing the right thing or you didn't and you weren't. And so what I think we're living through now is people realize religion doesn't hold that sort of gravitational center that it used to because we now do have microscopes and we can really see what the religions were trying to get at.","nb_tokens":238} | |
| {"doc_id":"6KJhM7Pg5EA_100","video_id":"6KJhM7Pg5EA","content":"But it did give us a shared narrative that works well for people that are headline readers that can't hold the nuance of the argument. And so they just need 10 commandments, tell me what to do. And so I know that I'm either in line or not. So now when you're looking at a global pandemic and we don't really know what's going, we don't know the lethality, we don't know if you should get the shot or not. If I can point to religion and say, to be a good Christian, you would get the jab for this reason. I would draw a parallel with one of the stories, then people do it. And now I get people to, of their own accord, out of a desire to adhere to this shared narrative, they do it. And so you see how religion can be this incredible boon, but in a modern era with idea velocity, with hyperfragmentation driven by algorithms and social media and all of that. Religion is, I need you to speak to this because I don't know the data well enough. Losing its power, losing its efficacy, I don't know. It's lost something.","nb_tokens":239} | |
| {"doc_id":"6KJhM7Pg5EA_101","video_id":"6KJhM7Pg5EA","content":"It does not have the effect that it used to have. And- Well, I would also say it just doesn't address many of these use cases, right? So it's like the religion doesn't have a position on vaccines. I mean, there are some religions that might. I mean, a Christian scientist would probably not get vaccinated. Don't you agree that if I'm a preacher, I find the story that I want to draw the parallel. Yeah, but I think you could probably do it either way. Like you could be against vaccines or pro vaccines. Correct. And how you pick and choose. But I get you to adhere by, I don't have to use authoritarian rule. That's my point. I don't have to do something top down. What religion allowed you to do was keep the sovereignty of the individual, especially if you're talking about a Christian religion, keep the sovereignty of the individual and yet get them to fall in line. It's really pretty genius where whether you do it because you believe in America and so you keep your freedoms, but you adhere to the mores that allow this amazing thing to exist that you're proud to be a part of.","nb_tokens":241} | |
| {"doc_id":"6KJhM7Pg5EA_102","video_id":"6KJhM7Pg5EA","content":"Religion serves the same function. But now as we get into weird, like cultish, new religion, wokeness, whatever you want to call it, something deranges. Well, so I think, what you want are principles here. One principle is I think we should be very wary of being driven by tribalism. Right now, it's not that tribalism is always in every case pathological. I mean, I think there's tribalism we can play at for fun. I mean, it's entertaining and it's not very deep and yet it can take up a fair amount of bandwidth and it's fine. So you can be a fan of a sports team. And we know what that looks like when you take it too seriously. I mean, when you're a South American soccer player and you lose the World Cup or you commit an own goal or something and you literally have to worry about getting murdered by your former fans, right? We know that it's gone too far. It's too much like religion in that case.","nb_tokens":212} | |
| {"doc_id":"6KJhM7Pg5EA_103","video_id":"6KJhM7Pg5EA","content":"But in the general case, you can play at tribalism or you can be loosely identified with some subculture and it can be fun and you can enjoy the diversity and the diversity can be somewhat antagonistic even as it is, let's say in sports, right? But no one, like it doesn't reach deep into a person's psychology and social network and political commitments such that they're making life and death decisions on the basis of how much more they like the Yankees than the Red Sox, say. So tribalism, deeper tribalism is I think something we just need to outgrow, right? I mean, because the truth is not tribal. The truth is universal. Even specific truths have some, there's some view from above where, you know, diversity of opinion is just a matter of our ignorance. And if we could really see those truths clearly, we would all converge on the same account of reality regardless of our background, regardless of our language, regardless of, I mean, we just don't, we don't have the right to be, to our provincialism anymore with respect to our basic epistemological commitments, whether those are scientific or ultimately ethical, right?","nb_tokens":240} | |
| {"doc_id":"6KJhM7Pg5EA_104","video_id":"6KJhM7Pg5EA","content":"So I would say that, you know, it used to be the case that we could agree to disagree about how to treat women in a society, right? Like, so yes, if you're in Afghanistan, you don't let them get educated. You force them to live in cloth bags. You beat them if they try to get out. You know, they can't be out in public without being accompanied by a male relative. You know, there's a list of taboos and most of them are killing offenses. And do we just agree to disagree there? Well, practically now, yes, because we lost that war. We're no longer there. We just don't have, we just, it's not worth sending our sons and daughters to die to defend those girls. But the ground truth is, if you're born a girl in Afghanistan, you are profoundly unlucky, right? That is just, and that disparity in luck should be galling to all of us, right? Like, it's just not a good status quo.","nb_tokens":213} | |
| {"doc_id":"6KJhM7Pg5EA_105","video_id":"6KJhM7Pg5EA","content":"Ultimately, if we got our shit together as a species, some subset of women and girls would not be forced to live in cloth bags as they are in Afghanistan at this very moment, right? So ultimately we will converge and tribalism is precisely the wrong algorithm to use if you want to converge on the deeper truths, whether they're scientific or ethical or, you know, I would argue even spiritual, that we should organize our beliefs about reality and how to live within it, right? And that's what we're trying, we should recognize that that's what we're trying to do. We are trying to navigate in the space of all possible experience, individually and collectively. And we're just, we're trying to figure out what to do next, right? This is politics, what should we do next? We've got $100 billion to spend this year in the state of California or whatever it is, you know, I actually don't know what our budget is in California, but we've got this money to spend, what should we do with it, right?","nb_tokens":217} | |
| {"doc_id":"6KJhM7Pg5EA_106","video_id":"6KJhM7Pg5EA","content":"And then we have diversity of opinion and in some cases, you know, radical diversity of opinion about what is important and what is even decent to focus on. But, and I agree with you that a basically free space of conversation is the way we will orient and resolve those disagreements, right? So we need, I do agree that in most cases, we need the conversation just to run long enough and to be uncoerced enough so that most people, most of the time can notice that the better ideas are surfacing and the bullshit is being moved to the sidelines. But there are still, you know, obvious cases where the topic is specialized enough or the knowledge you need to just get us, to have a valid seat at the table is deep enough that not all, not everyone gets to air their opinion with, you know, not everyone gets to air their opinion at that particular, in that particular conversation or if they do, we're all wise to just have very little patience for that particular opinion because it just, it's obviously incredible, right? It's obviously, it doesn't have, the person doesn't have the right background. They're not playing the language game appropriately. They sound crazy.","nb_tokens":245} | |
| {"doc_id":"6KJhM7Pg5EA_107","video_id":"6KJhM7Pg5EA","content":"They have these, they're telegraphing their other ideological commitments that are distracting and not convergent with the actual truth at hand. So it's like sort of, you know, you bring Alex Jones to the physics conference, it's not gonna take him too many minutes to sort of disqualify himself as a expert, a relevant subject matter expert on physics, right? Or anything else. And so we live with that tension that, yes, it's in fact true that a Nobel laureate on any given topic can discredit himself with his very next sentence if the sentence is obviously wrong, right? And somebody who knows basically nothing can be right in a debate with this guy by just pointing that out. Like you just, that doesn't make any sense, right? And it is true from a scientific point of view that we don't, we take authority, scientific authority very lightly, right? Like it's not good enough that you're a Nobel laureate. That's not the thing that's gonna make you right, right? And on some level, you're only as good as your last sentence, right? Like even if you have a Nobel prize.","nb_tokens":236} | |
| {"doc_id":"6KJhM7Pg5EA_108","video_id":"6KJhM7Pg5EA","content":"And that's how we do, you know, so a Nobel laureate is given a lecture in, you know, again, it could be on his narrow area of expertise. And at the end of the lecture, hands go up and it could just be a lowly undergraduate who embarrasses him or her on the, again, not even on an adjacent topic, on the very topic on which that person became an expert. And that's just because truth is, in fact, orthogonal to any given person's reputation or educational and career achievements or like it's just, it doesn't matter who you've been. Like it matters what you're saying right now and why you're saying it and whether it is connected enough to a chain of reasoning and a chain of evidence that anyone should take it seriously, right? So that's all true. And yet as a time-saving device, if we have to figure out whether, you know, a certain chemical is toxic, we don't wanna hear from Alex Jones. We wanna hear from the real chemists, right?","nb_tokens":215} | |
| {"doc_id":"6KJhM7Pg5EA_109","video_id":"6KJhM7Pg5EA","content":"Yes, we don't wanna hear from the chemists who are working for Monsanto if this is a compound that Monsanto is marketing that they stand to make a billion dollars on. And we know we don't have good regulations that would force them to do the relevant toxicology and really safeguard human health, right? We know that a lot of the incentives are misaligned such that some of the time, even someone with the right educational background is either lying or impressively self-deceived and we're getting bad information. And this is, again, this is what I come back to. What we need in every case here when things matter are institutions and regulations and procedures and alignments of incentives that we can actually trust because they're trustworthy, right? Because they are actually reliably keeping bad information out and surfacing good information. And I would admit that we have a highly imperfect system but the system we have is way better than no system, right? And I would just take, this is very easy for people to see when you move it out of science and certainly out of medicine and put it into areas of like, just like straightforward engineering, like on an airplane, right?","nb_tokens":235} | |
| {"doc_id":"6KJhM7Pg5EA_110","video_id":"6KJhM7Pg5EA","content":"So like there's not, people don't tend to be iconoclasts with respect to engineering. Like when you get on a plane, you don't wanna be doing your own research. You don't wanna, you didn't wanna, you don't want your, you don't wanna be doing Google searches about plane replacement parts, right? But you just wanna know that the FAA has it, right? You wanna know that the regulations work. You wanna know that the pilots for United don't wanna die, right? That they're not gonna get on the plane if they think it's unsafe. You wanna know that the mechanics are not getting bogus parts because they can shave a profit. They're incentivized. Like you don't want a system of incentives where we tell the mechanics at Boeing that if you can figure out how to get parts from Malaysia cheaper, right? We're gonna let you keep pocket half of the difference. You know, if you save us a million dollars, you get to keep 500,000, right? So get us a landing gear that just came, that somebody 3D printed in another country, right?","nb_tokens":233} | |
| {"doc_id":"6KJhM7Pg5EA_111","video_id":"6KJhM7Pg5EA","content":"If we found out that that was how we were incentivizing mechanics, we would go nuts, understandably, right? But presumably we're not doing that. We have to discover as a species all the ways in which we're doing dumb things at a systems level, right? In institutions and in the systems of incentives that connect institutions, we have to defrag all of that such that mere apes like ourselves can be making, reliably making better decisions than individuals can tend to make on their own because the systems are so good. And so again, this is not, we're not gonna solve this in podcastistan, right? Or substacistan, right? Like I'm not saying we don't want podcasts and substac newsletters, but- I think what you can do is delineate how to think about the problem because here's the last thing on this, and then I've got so many more things I wanna talk to you about. But I think part of, because I agree with you, as you break down what it should look like, I agree with you.","nb_tokens":217} | |
| {"doc_id":"6KJhM7Pg5EA_112","video_id":"6KJhM7Pg5EA","content":"The problem is that the example that you gave that I think really freaked people out was like, this thing isn't going well with the timing of the Trump thing, the Biden laptop, the Trump thing is so serious. I'm gonna just real fast break the system to make sure that this doesn't go forward. And that sets everybody's alarm bells off. But I wasn't, but again, just to be clear, I was not advocating to break anything. I said that Twitter was wrong to de-platform the New York Post. Right. The New York Times, I think, was probably, again, and I put it explicitly in these terms, it was a total coin toss for me, journalistically, whether you decide to do a front page story on the Hunter Biden laptop with 10 days left, when there were valid concerns that this could be Russian disinformation, and you had the previous example of an election seeming to get derailed by something similar. But the second you say that like, there might be reasons, but somebody is making, a human is making a judgment call.","nb_tokens":222} | |
| {"doc_id":"6KJhM7Pg5EA_113","video_id":"6KJhM7Pg5EA","content":"And certainly the way you present it is, your take is, if it were my call to make, that's probably what I would do. I think that's the thing, that's certainly the thing that made me uncomfortable of like, whoa, that feels like you're running a much higher risk scenario. Let's make it even more realistic, because now, what am I doing now with respect to the laptop, right? Like I have not done a podcast on the Hunter Biden laptop yet, even yet, right? It's been now with us for years. It's conceivable that I could, I mean, I still don't find the topic interesting enough, given the political environment that I care all that much. I mean, again, because for me, it was a very straightforward calculation. Here we have a sitting president, who I knew to be unqualified in all kinds of ways, but the specific problem for me at that point was, we have a sitting president who is not committing to a peaceful transfer of power, right? That was a five alarm fire politically. I mean, that was just, that was as bright a line as I needed to say, this is an emergency, right?","nb_tokens":245} | |
| {"doc_id":"6KJhM7Pg5EA_114","video_id":"6KJhM7Pg5EA","content":"This guy can, this is, now it's not an emergency such that we could do anything to stop him, right? I'm not saying that the New York Times should have printed lies about him, right? I'm not saying that it absolutely did not require lying or even a shading of the truth. It's just, here's a guy who on multiple occasions has been asked point blank on television, will you commit to a peaceful transfer of power? And he, in so many words, he said, no. It's like, if I win, it will be a valid election, right? That's basically what he said. So let me ask, what do you think about, people want him elected still. Like he's still, theoretically, as we're recording this is the prime contender for the Republican nomination. And that's, so that just to close the loop on what I just said, that's why I'm not, among other reasons, that's perhaps, I haven't thought much about it, but that is why I'm not so motivated to spend a lot of bandwidth or any bandwidth trying to figure out what's so wrong with Biden and the Biden family, right?","nb_tokens":242} | |
| {"doc_id":"6KJhM7Pg5EA_115","video_id":"6KJhM7Pg5EA","content":"Now I have no doubt there are politically inconvenient embarrassing, even shocking things to discover. I mean, certainly in Hunter Biden's life and in his behavior, I mean, that's, I'm sure there's no end to embarrassment there, but even some degree of implication with President Biden, is that possible? Is it conceivable? Is there something there that I just haven't freed up the bandwidth to pay attention to coming out of that laptop? I'm sure there are many people in Trumpistan who could speak for an hour about all the things they think we know based on that laptop, but I certainly doubt some of that. But why am I not motivated to pay more attention to that? Because just as you said, Trump could very well come back in 2024. Like I think that I really, maybe I'm just not explaining it well. I don't think that's where people get the friction. Where they get the friction is the sense of, it's one of the earlier questions that I asked.","nb_tokens":205} | |
| {"doc_id":"6KJhM7Pg5EA_116","video_id":"6KJhM7Pg5EA","content":"I think you either believe that the people can sort through this themselves and figure things out and you put the trust in the hands of people, or, and I think your position is clear, and so tell me if I'm getting this wrong. So either the people en masse, just give them the information, they'll sort it out. Or we need experts, which people are going to read elites, right? Which is not a charitable interpretation, but that's how they hear it. Or we need a group of elites that are better than us plebes and go figure it out. I think that's what they hear when you say that. Now, I get what you mean about experts, but I've so, I know that even the most well-intentioned expert has a propensity to be wrong, that I just feel like the mistake I would rather make, going back to my trifecta of evil, the thing I'm most afraid of is authoritarian rule. So in that moment, I go, oh God, these are both terrible situations. But I really feel like you have to put the hands in the people, you have to leave it with them.","nb_tokens":236} | |
| {"doc_id":"6KJhM7Pg5EA_117","video_id":"6KJhM7Pg5EA","content":"If they let them see all the information, and yes, I know it's calculated. But there is no seeing all the information, right? There is no unmoderated, pure, just fire hose of information. I mean, the information doesn't exist as a unitary object that can be contemplated in its totality, always in proportion to what it is in fact in reality. It makes me a little nervous. You do have, it is so specific, a laptop. Maybe it's Russian disinformation. Turns out it wasn't. But maybe, but you have this thing. It becomes so concrete and so tangible. I think that's why there's so much attention on that thing. But so I just want to get to your principle versus my principle, because I don't, again, I don't know that either of us are right. I just want to know what the hell. So my principle here is that, again, I mean, I stand by everything I said on that original podcast. I just didn't say it especially well there. And so people are genuinely confused about what I was recommending.","nb_tokens":228} | |
| {"doc_id":"6KJhM7Pg5EA_118","video_id":"6KJhM7Pg5EA","content":"Can I say it so I know if I understand? Yeah, yeah, yeah. That what was going on is it was a real emergency. You had a real emergency. You have a president who was not committing to the peaceful transfer of power. Our democracy was truly at risk. Our democracy is the most important thing in this scenario. A laptop comes out. First of all, it could be Russian disinformation. We don't know yet. And so it would be foolish in the same way that if the Russian guy that sees the five nuclear weapons getting shot at him, for him not to pause and go, this just doesn't make sense. I'm not going to do it. In that moment, it was far wiser to not put this in front of the public, but instead to go, the risk reward ratio is off. Hold off. There was no rush. There's still no rush. Again, I still haven't done it. But I want to make sure, did I accurately convey how you think through that problem?","nb_tokens":211} | |
| {"doc_id":"6KJhM7Pg5EA_119","video_id":"6KJhM7Pg5EA","content":"But the crucial thing is people took from that podcast clip, people took away the impression that I was advocating that we lie about Trump, or that we say that we- It felt that way. So as somebody watching the whole thing, not the clip, the whole thing, I walked away going, okay, I get where Sam is coming from. If you really believe that this is an emergency, that this will disrupt, honestly, if all of that were true, emergency, he's going to steal an election. It is going to jeopardize our democracy. And all I have to do is hide the laptop or by time, create a smoke screen. If I really believe that all of that was true, man, I'd be very tempted. Now, it's just my obsession with this trifecta books. And there's a rule that makes me- So if it's a sufficient emergency, you should want the guy assassinated, right? I mean, like it goes all the way. Like if this guy's Hitler, well, then we all wish Hitler got assassinated, right? Now, I don't think Trump is Hitler or anything like Hitler.","nb_tokens":236} | |
| {"doc_id":"6KJhM7Pg5EA_120","video_id":"6KJhM7Pg5EA","content":"So there's a- And can you pre-cog him? That's where I get nervous. Like everybody's so quick to say that he really is Hitler. And it's like- No, he's, I know, well, I don't know how much harm he could ultimately do, but he shows no sign of being ideological in any way. And it shows no sign of wanting to take on a kind of world building or dismantling project. But the people want some people. And that makes my radar. People want what? People want him. So this may illuminate the difference. So because some people want to elect him, I'm like, damn, is there something I'm missing? And so because I know I could be flawed, I'm just like, then you have to let the people decide. Well, no, you have to let the people decide. I would argue we still don't entirely know what's up with that laptop, right?","nb_tokens":196} | |
| {"doc_id":"6KJhM7Pg5EA_121","video_id":"6KJhM7Pg5EA","content":"It's like, I know there are people who think they know, but I don't actually know what sort of forensic analysis has been done of that laptop and how reliable that is and what the scope of fraud is there really. And I'm still unaware of anything that has surfaced from that laptop that is clearly a smoking gun that implicates Biden in corruption. There's new information coming out in recent weeks. I don't know what the relationship that is to the laptop, but if there's a 20 megaton scandal in that laptop, it still hasn't reached me and it's been over a year, right? But again, I default back to my original position, which is the fact that Trump wouldn't commit to a peaceful transfer of power, and we in fact didn't have a peaceful transfer of power and he's now running again, that to me is so disqualifying that I'm not inclined to do anything that could possibly increase his chances of getting elected, right? So again, he's not Hitler, but I think he's someone who is totally committed to subverting all the norms of our democracy for purely personal avarice and just his malignant narcissism.","nb_tokens":239} | |
| {"doc_id":"6KJhM7Pg5EA_122","video_id":"6KJhM7Pg5EA","content":"He really is a pure case study in that, but again, not ideological, not especially ambitious in any of the ways that somebody like Hitler or Stalin was, but it's so corrupting of our politics and so destabilizing of the institutions we should care about in our democracy that I think having him for a second term could well be a total disaster, and it's just such an awful precedent to have someone who didn't commit to a peaceful transfer of power, basically saw to it that we didn't have one, worse still, really did try to steal the election all the while claiming it was being stolen from him, right? I mean, the stuff he was trying to do behind the scenes, the pressure he was putting on Mike Pence, all of that was a genuine effort to steal an election he knew he had lost. I mean, all of the people, his attorney general, people behind the scenes got it through to him that he had actually lost and he was still willing to just bluff his way back into the presidency. That's so disqualifying and should be so disqualifying from my point of view is that, yeah, do I wanna do three hours on just how awful Joe Biden is?","nb_tokens":245} | |
| {"doc_id":"6KJhM7Pg5EA_123","video_id":"6KJhM7Pg5EA","content":"No, right now, I don't think Joe Biden should be running for president. He's way too old, right? He's obviously passed his, not just his prime, it's just like, it's a disaster, right? And I think Kamala is, I mean, I can't see a scenario in which she's electable. So like if he dies or if anything happens to his health, it's so catastrophic that he's no longer the candidate and she is, I think that's just, that's just a red carpet rolled out for Trump or really anyone to become the Republican president. So I think it's totally irresponsible and dangerous that the Democrats have put us in this position, that we're running Biden with Kamala Harris being his VP with no alternative, really, I mean, maybe there would be, maybe if he died today, then maybe Gavin Newsom or somebody would step up and we would have a different race. But the fact that we seem to be running Biden by default with Kamala Harris really set to some significant degree, half the country will be seeing her as the person who's running because they plausibly wouldn't expect him to survive his term.","nb_tokens":243} | |
| {"doc_id":"6KJhM7Pg5EA_124","video_id":"6KJhM7Pg5EA","content":"All of that's a disaster. All of that is well worth criticizing. I don't wanna touch it because what's the alternative? Like, I mean, if I could, if I saw an alternative that I could advocate for, right? That would, could it all be effective? If I saw an upside in criticizing Biden validly, then I would do it. But this is a pure pragmatic case where I'm deciding first do no harm, right? And it comes exactly back to the, some fat people are healthy principle, right? If you're at a moment where something really is gonna turn on people getting their head straight around diet and health and exercise and body image and the clock is ticking, right? We have to, we have got 10 days to get this right. You know, it's like, and a lot hangs in the balance. Do you really wanna do a podcast on, here are all these fat people who we've just tested them and they're actually just, they're as healthy as any Olympic athlete, right? They got the right, their lipids are perfect. Their VO2 max is great.","nb_tokens":231} | |
| {"doc_id":"6KJhM7Pg5EA_125","video_id":"6KJhM7Pg5EA","content":"They look fat, but you know, this is not what it seems, right? No, and what about, let's do a hundred podcasts on that topic, right? Which is what people have done with around COVID and ivermectin and mRNA vaccines, right? Like, you know, Brett Weinstein literally did a hundred podcasts in a row on ivermectin and mRNA vaccines, right? As though there was no other topic in the world worth paying attention to. That seemed at the- It made me feel like I was getting all the information. I didn't just assume he was right, but it really helped me feel, and I watched a lot of those podcasts. It really made me feel like, okay, at least somebody's talking about this. It felt like pirate radio. And as we're talking, I think I now understand, one, I think it's very important that I love about you that you say what you believe and it doesn't matter whether I or somebody else would love to nudge you in another direction.","nb_tokens":214} | |
| {"doc_id":"6KJhM7Pg5EA_126","video_id":"6KJhM7Pg5EA","content":"But truly as somebody who thinks you're amazing, I will just say that I think now through this conversation, I realized what I want your particular mind to do because you are so good at this. What I would rather have seen is the, okay, I'm going to look at this laptop and whatever it says, it says, and I'm going to break it down and I'm going to explain all the stuff you just went through about Kamala. This is crazy. In no uncertain terms, I want them to win, but you can't hide from information. Let's just pull this out into light. Let's pull Trump out into the light. Look, guys, in the final analysis, the laptop is fucking crazy. It does seem to indicate that there's some connection to whatever you find, right? I'm just, I'm riffing here, not saying this is actually what it says. And then, but look, the Trump thing is a thousand times worse. This one feels like a real emergency. And then I'm like, oh, that's the Sam that I know, who's just like coldly dispassionate about this is this, this is this.","nb_tokens":241} | |
| {"doc_id":"6KJhM7Pg5EA_127","video_id":"6KJhM7Pg5EA","content":"You can weigh these things. I am being coldly dispassionate. I'm just, and I'm being completely transparent. You're being also strategic. And that's the part where I think it gives people that sense of. But it's not, but it's not, it's not a hidden strategy, right? Like it's just, I'm just telling you why I don't, I don't see an upside in talking about certain things. Because again, there's, there are asymmetries here that are really strange, but they're incredibly powerful. Like, so there's. Can I tell you what the upside about talking about it? But let me just add this one piece. There's, there's almost nothing you can say about Trump that is true and awful that his supporters care about. That's crazy. Right? So, and yet, so he functions by a completely different, different reputational physics. And I think many people in that ecosystem do too. Like, again, I, you know, I mentioned Tucker.","nb_tokens":214} | |
| {"doc_id":"6KJhM7Pg5EA_128","video_id":"6KJhM7Pg5EA","content":"It's like, he's not paying a penalty with his audience the way I would pay a penalty with my audience if similar revelations came out about me. And, and over here you have somebody like, you know, Barack Obama, literally it was a 48 hour scandal when he wore a tan suit, right? I mean, like that was the level where he was getting dinged. You know, Trump is a completely different situation. So it's, it's someone, again, coming back to the fad analogy, we know that there's a, that there's an appetite to, to eat junk food. We know most people, certainly most people who have not already made it a habit to exercise. They're hard to motivate. They're hard to get into the gym. You know, most people join gyms and then they lapse. Not everyone gets addicted to, to working out. We know that there's a center of, of gravity to where people are stuck. We've got a problem with something like, 40% of Americans are actually officially obese and like 60% are overweight, something like that, right?","nb_tokens":232} | |
| {"doc_id":"6KJhM7Pg5EA_129","video_id":"6KJhM7Pg5EA","content":"So it's like, we know that it is, it's hard to get through to people. And even if you get through to them, it's really hard for them to change their behavior, even if they decide they want to change, to make these changes. So then you have to ask yourself, okay, just how sexy do we want to make the message that some fat people are as healthy as anyone alive? I get it, man, but there's second and third order consequences. So my thing is- I'm not saying you lie about it. No, no, I didn't hear you say that. I'm just saying like, do you want it to make your next, your next project is to get the message out on that topic. Of all the messages, you could, you could be dealing with child trafficking. You could be dealing with climate change. You could be like, you could, like you could be dealing with, you could be helping people actually get fit. I'm not arguing whether you should do a podcast about it. So if that's what people have been pushing on you, not at all what I'm pushing on.","nb_tokens":236} | |
| {"doc_id":"6KJhM7Pg5EA_130","video_id":"6KJhM7Pg5EA","content":"They think I should talk to RFK Jr. They think I should have platformed all these COVID skeptics. In fairness, I wish you would talk to RFK Jr. And I'll maybe give you insight into that. You probably already get it. But I want to outsource some of my thinking to you because I think you think through the world in a really interesting way. So rather than me have to go do the research in RFK Jr., I'd rather you do it. So it's a factor of trust. And just, I look at other humans, people may fucking hate this, but I look at other humans as like a really specific AI. And I'm like, okay, I'm a specific AI to other people, right? But you're a specific AI that I use to think through certain problems. And so RFK just happens to be one of the problems I would love to see your AI go think of. Now you have to go do all the research and all that shit and combat him and bring the expert and all the things that you don't want to do. But that's why people would love to see you do that.","nb_tokens":237} | |
| {"doc_id":"6KJhM7Pg5EA_131","video_id":"6KJhM7Pg5EA","content":"And so that's where I'm like, oh, the Sam Harris AI that I want to use just gives me all the facts about that laptop, gives me all the facts about Trump. And then just as more persuasive that Trump is going to be the bigger problem. But I know that certain bells can't be unrung, right? And- That's the part where, speaking for myself, I'm like, uh, I don't know what I'm thinking. But I know that there's super stimuli, right? Like I know that if I got on my podcast and said, my daughter has a vaccine injury, right? And I don't care what you think about me, she's never getting vaccinated again. And I'm done with all this vaccine. Like, that's not science. That's not like, it doesn't matter if you get 10 people, 10 prominent podcasters to tell 10 different stories just like that. That's not a sampling of the data space, right? And yet it is so powerful, right?","nb_tokens":214} | |
| {"doc_id":"6KJhM7Pg5EA_132","video_id":"6KJhM7Pg5EA","content":"It's so, and so you just have to, you have to be aware of the rhetorical effect of kind of shining the light of your attention on certain things. And you have to be aware that though you are making, you are going to make a best effort to keep this information in proportion, right? Or honestly convey the proportion that you think in fact exists in reality. If you frame in a certain way, or even if you speak about two things in the same context, that project becomes impossible. Like you just know that people are gonna come away thinking, you know, I forgot the details of that podcast, but I do remember that vaccine is just dangerous. Like Sam Harris said, it's just dangerous. I get it, you know, I get it. So my takeaway is just, I don't know what comes of it. I think it's always better to say what is true. And there's- True and so I would filter, I totally agree with you. True and useful is the filter for me. I mean, that's just like the Venn, it's not- I think- Truth is just too big.","nb_tokens":233} | |
| {"doc_id":"6KJhM7Pg5EA_133","video_id":"6KJhM7Pg5EA","content":"I mean, the Venn diagram, the circle for truth is so vast that we can't possibly- But useful to what? Useful to making sure Trump doesn't get elected is where you spin people out of control, which fine. You're, in this you have been, I think, hyper consistent. I understand your position now completely. Right. And now my only thing is, I think you already understand it so I can just wrap. I think you know why it bothers some people. Well, let's talk about those people. It certainly bothers the people who don't understand how shocking and untenable it was to have a sitting president not commit to a peaceful transfer of power. Yes. There are people who just don't even know he did that or don't think it mattered. There are people who think that January 6th was a non-event. There are people who think that the election was actually stolen from Trump. So there's lots of confusion around all of this. Some percentage of those people are just frankly confused and if they had the right information they would see it the way I do. Most of those people are essentially in a personality cult, right?","nb_tokens":238} | |
| {"doc_id":"6KJhM7Pg5EA_134","video_id":"6KJhM7Pg5EA","content":"It's a pure expression of tribalism. It's not Republican. It's not establishment Republican tribalism but it's a populist awakening on the right which is not the right we are used to and it's not even conservative in many respects. That's why I refer to it as like Trumpistan but it's a kind of personality cult which, yeah, I can't reason with those people. I've said enough. If they want to understand what I think is true there's 20 hours on my podcast where I explain what I think is true about all that and they're very likely not going to agree for reasons that impressively resemble the birth of a new religion. This is like me talking to Muslims about how the Quran is probably not the direct word of the creator of the universe. We're not going to agree. I lost them in my first sentence and so does the Christians and Jews and everybody else. But essentially, so you mentioned AI.","nb_tokens":193} | |
| {"doc_id":"6KJhM7Pg5EA_135","video_id":"6KJhM7Pg5EA","content":"One thing AI could in completely destabilizing everything else it could somehow resolve this very much in my favor in that what it might do, let's forget about existential risk and the other deeper concerns but just it could in the near term could so fully pollute our information landscape with just fake information, right? So deep fakes and fake journal articles and fake sources to things that people will write seemingly totally compelling articles about everything mRNA vaccines and everything else and they'll be sourced with stuff. None of it exists, right? It's just a pure confection of AI gibberish that we might all have to default to just very straightforward old school gatekeepers of information. Otherwise, we're going to recognize that the internet is completely broken and we just don't know what's real. So like in a world of endless deep fakes, I'm really going to have to rely on the New York Times or Getty Images or Apple or somebody with just way more resources than I'm ever going to have on my own to tell me what's real. If I see video of Putin saying that he's just launched his tactical nukes, right?","nb_tokens":229} | |
| {"doc_id":"6KJhM7Pg5EA_136","video_id":"6KJhM7Pg5EA","content":"Or he's going to do it tomorrow at four o'clock and I have to worry about a world and I think we do now and if we don't now, it's four months from now we're going to have to worry about this. A world where basically anyone who wants to can produce a perfectly compelling video of Putin that will be undetectable by me as a fake. What are we going to do with that? I think we're all basically going to declare something like epistemological bankruptcy and just say, I don't know what's true anymore. I'm not going to react to this video. The fact that Elon tweeted it and it's just raw video on Twitter or it's got, you know, it came from, you know, like it aired on a Dallas, you know, news station, the local news station and it's like, I just have to wait to see what the real gatekeepers say about this. I'm going to give this 24 hours before I even think I know anything and how am I going to know anything?","nb_tokens":216} | |
| {"doc_id":"6KJhM7Pg5EA_137","video_id":"6KJhM7Pg5EA","content":"Is it going to be me with my, you know, blockchain algorithm that got democratized by either I read about on, you know, on some blog where I'm now figuring out whether this video has the right watermark, you know, so it's got digital provenance or I'm just going to very likely that there's going to be a few institutions that prove that they can figure out whether a video is real, right? Now, maybe this particular use case is going to be fully democratized and we're all going to just have a plug into our browser. It better be. So here's it. So one, I think that the way that it will really play out is the platforms that show video and images will build into their infrastructure the ability to read the blockchain signature and so you'll very quickly know, like, is this authentic from the source? And then the other part will be a community notes like function where people can say, yes, it's real but here's the context that you need so that you're not manipulated. Now, both of those speak to the wisdom of the crowd and the right place for something to be truly democratized.","nb_tokens":236} | |
| {"doc_id":"6KJhM7Pg5EA_138","video_id":"6KJhM7Pg5EA","content":"But the crowd, the LLM-ification of the crowd is going to, the crowd's going to get so much larger and... Because you think there'll be a lot of bots? Yeah, I mean, like they could be, the crowd could be literally 99% AI at a certain point. It will be tough if you're spinning up what Elon has done and you charge whatever, eight or nine dollars, it's suddenly a bot farm. Almost nobody's doing that, right? Like, what, it's like 500,000 people who are paying for Twitter and out of 300 million? Yeah, but when you think about what defenses we have when things really start to break, right now they think he's just being a dumb ass and he shouldn't have bought it and so they're not going to pay it just because they're stubborn. Right. But if they realize, oh, he actually wasn't fucking around, the bots really are a problem and by spending seven dollars, I can verify that I'm a real human and now we're back in business, then I think people are far more likely to do it.","nb_tokens":232} | |
| {"doc_id":"6KJhM7Pg5EA_139","video_id":"6KJhM7Pg5EA","content":"But I think the avalanche of fake things that are coming are going to come in so hot and so fast and it's not just going to be people like me and you of thousands of hours of us out there. People have already cloned my voice. You can hear me speaking in Portuguese and I think Italian. I didn't do it. Somebody else did it and it literally sounds like me. So that's going to happen. But it's also going to happen, revenge porn, where a disgruntled boyfriend makes porn from his ex-girlfriend and it is indistinguishable. And so everybody very fast is going to have a reason to care. Now, the moment I worry about the whatever, six to 12 months it will take to embed the infrastructure in each of the things to read the watermark and to say this is real, not real and to filter out things that aren't real. But that will, barring that sort of naked year, you will very rapidly, because it will be so detrimental to just each individual, people will adopt that technology, I think, pretty fast. I just worry that this all happens right in time for the 2024 election. Yeah, yeah, yeah.","nb_tokens":243} | |
| {"doc_id":"6KJhM7Pg5EA_140","video_id":"6KJhM7Pg5EA","content":"No, I'm worried about that too. Seems like the right time frame for it. It's crazy. I mean, it makes me feel like I'm going to see it. A year of chat GPT or GPT-4, maybe five. And yeah, no, it's 2024. It could be all too interesting. Yeah. No doubt. How do you think about preparing for that? How do we get ready? Well, who's we and what is ready? Americans so that we're thinking well through the problem. Well, I hope that, I mean, I can imagine this is a major priority of people currently in government that we're doing everything we can to ensure that the election is run in such a way that there's the least opportunity to worry about election fraud. Now, I don't think election fraud is, I think most concerns about election fraud are generally imaginary, but I think we need a system where there's just no scope to worry that the election was not run properly.","nb_tokens":207} | |
| {"doc_id":"6KJhM7Pg5EA_141","video_id":"6KJhM7Pg5EA","content":"The fact that we can't figure, the fact that we're finding that that's so hard to figure out to the degree that we are, I'm actually not close to current efforts to shore all that up, but I got to imagine, that has to be the number one priority. Whatever happens on election day, we should not have a significant number of Americans credibly alleging that the election was stolen, right? And that's just so sanity straining and shattering of democratic norms that it's just, we have to get over that hurdle and we have to stay over it. There can't be some new concern that surfaces that you can hack our voting machines. I mean, we just, that has to be, the integrity of elections has to be the paramount concern. If we solve that, then at least we have, okay, then we're at the mercy of whoever we ran and whoever won, right? And there, I just think you have, yeah, if Trump is in fact the candidate, I think we have to, I think it would be a terrible precedent to reward someone who's behaved as recklessly as he's behaved and as dishonestly as he's behaved with a second term in the White House.","nb_tokens":249} | |
| {"doc_id":"6KJhM7Pg5EA_142","video_id":"6KJhM7Pg5EA","content":"I mean, it just would be insane that we have, if in fact we have a majority of Americans who would want to see that happen. I mean, it just- Do you think long form podcasting could change the landscape of who gets nominated? Yeah, because podcast, I mean, many podcasts have audiences that are larger than any other form of media. I mean, certainly Rogan's does. By a country mile. Yeah, but again, but I think Joe and everyone else in a similar position, even at whatever fraction thereof, anyone with a significant platform like that needs to be more responsible than most people are tending to be. Again, it's like, I mean, Joe may think he's just shooting the shit with friends, but he's actually not. He's educating or miseducating tens of millions of people on every topic he touches, right? So there's a responsibility that comes with that. And it's not, so I think it's, and I don't think Joe has been, I mean, I think he's been less careful than he should have been on specific topics.","nb_tokens":228} | |
| {"doc_id":"6KJhM7Pg5EA_143","video_id":"6KJhM7Pg5EA","content":"I mean, I think that's definitely, it was true during COVID and it's true, it's been true on certain political points, but I mean, generally speaking, I think his heart is in the right place and he's not, his format is such that the people who are going to be, I mean, people are given ample opportunity to discredit themselves in that context, right? So there's just, but I do think he's, if he were going to take seriously the impact he's having and can have, I think he'd be more careful on specific topics than he has been, right? And I think it would be a good thing for him to be more careful. And then there are people who have similar platforms, like Elon, who I think are being totally reckless, right? And I just think his behavior on Twitter has been unconscionable in how he has amplified bad information, pseudo information, lies, and denigrated real information. And it's just, and it's not, again, I don't put this on him, it's not in a systematic way, it's just in a reckless way.","nb_tokens":232} | |
| {"doc_id":"6KJhM7Pg5EA_144","video_id":"6KJhM7Pg5EA","content":"He's not even paying attention to what he's breaking or what he's signal boosting. It's like he's not, it's like an adolescent attitude toward the safeguarding of real things. It's like, you're like, like we have a world where the difference between our succeeding in this common project of building a civilization that works and our failing, is like that gulf is so enormous. And given that basically all of our problems are the result of failures of human cooperation. I mean, like everything that's just not an asteroid that's gonna cross the path of Earth. And even there, even with an asteroid, an Earth-crossing asteroid, human cooperation is the answer to that problem. There's almost no problem we could have that in the limit we can't, I mean, if it's compatible with the laws of nature for that problem to be solved, I think our understanding the problem and collaborating in its solution is going to solve it. Now it may not, conveniently it may not, we may not have the time we need to solve it, right?","nb_tokens":218} | |
| {"doc_id":"6KJhM7Pg5EA_145","video_id":"6KJhM7Pg5EA","content":"Like if we find out about an asteroid and it's 15 days away, we don't have enough time to get up there and divert it, right? But if we had 15 years or 30 years, presumably we would have the time we needed to solve this problem. Have you read Ian Bremmer's book, The Power of Crisis? No, but I've spoken with Ian. I mean, I think I probably spoke with him before that book came out, but he's been on my podcast several times. So I have the gist of his thoughts on this topic. Yeah, so he unnerves me a little bit. I had him on the show and he was great and I was very honored to do it. But it unnerves me a little, the idea that we need some sort of crisis, what he calls a Goldilocks crisis, that's big enough to be really devastating, but not so big that we can't overcome it. No, I hope that's wrong, yeah. I mean, I don't think we need that.","nb_tokens":217} | |
| {"doc_id":"6KJhM7Pg5EA_146","video_id":"6KJhM7Pg5EA","content":"What I'm saying though, is what we need are, we need adults in the room and we need the most powerful, we need the luckiest, most powerful, most influential, the people who command the most resources and the people who command the most of our bandwidth, right, the people who command most human attention at the moment to behave responsibly, right? Elon is not doing that. And again, I'm not talking about the decisions he's made as CEO of Twitter. I'm talking about his behavior on Twitter, right? It's just, it is, it's very Trumpian, right? It's just very, it's just, it's like all for the lulz, right? It's just, he's just shitposting. He's just spreading memes. He's just fucking around, but he's touching real things. Like, you know, when, when he speculates that his, his former head of trust and safety is a pedophile, right? And just kind of freewheels on Twitter about that. He completely deranges this guy's life.","nb_tokens":221} | |
| {"doc_id":"6KJhM7Pg5EA_147","video_id":"6KJhM7Pg5EA","content":"I mean, I think this, I think Yoel Roth had to move as a result of all the death threats he got, right? That's, it's, it's complete, that, that is completely predictable. I mean, the reason why I thought Trump should have been kicked off Twitter long before he was, was not because of his politics or how I viewed his presidency or anything. It was, he was doing this on Twitter. He was, he was singling out specific citizens for abuse when it was absolutely predictable given his platform and given the nature of his fan base. It was absolutely predictable that those people would then have just excruciating security concerns, possibly for the rest of their lives, right? It's just, it was just like death threats and people doxing them and people showing up at their houses and at their kids' schools. And it was just going to be, they were just, they were just, it was such a massive fuck over of every one, every single person he mentioned by name. And he knew this, right? And he had to know this. Elon has to know that about anyone he puts on blast on Twitter.","nb_tokens":238} | |
| {"doc_id":"6KJhM7Pg5EA_148","video_id":"6KJhM7Pg5EA","content":"He's got whatever, 130 million people following him and some percentage of those people are crazy, right? Guaranteed to be crazy, right? 1% of any audience is crazy, right? So he got 1% of 130 million people. You got, and I would, and I would bet it skews worse than that in his audience, frankly. And it certainly would skew worse than that in Alex Jones' audience, right? Alex Jones, if Alex Jones didn't know it initially, he knew it ultimately. He spent, I think it was at least a year putting the Sandy Hook families on blast, knowing it was documented what was happening to them, right? Given the craziness of his audience, given the craziness of the claims he was making about them. We can't have the most powerful, connected people in our society. Certainly not someone like Elon who can decide whether or not to put satellites over Ukraine, you know, in the middle of a war. Right? Just fucking around the way he's fucking around on Twitter. I get that it's what he wants to do.","nb_tokens":226} | |
| {"doc_id":"6KJhM7Pg5EA_149","video_id":"6KJhM7Pg5EA","content":"My point is, if he had an ethical compass, he wouldn't want to do it. So how do we get that? That feels to me, honestly, like the thing that's missing. We don't have an anchor anymore. We don't have a national story. We don't have a religious story. We have hyperfragmentation. Algorithms pull us into these super narrow little niches. Um, how do we get a unifying dogma? I just did an interview yesterday, in fact, where I wanted to compare and contrast Andrew Tate with Marcus Aurelius. And it's pretty interesting in terms of when you really look at their sort of mirror images of each other. You've got one guy, narcissistic, totally self-obsessed, sees himself as the greatest to ever do it, whatever it might be. And then you have the other guy who's reminding himself, don't become purple-dyed, you know, so that you think that your royalty has the guy walk around whispering, remember one day you're going to die. Like just always looking at the ways that he could be fallible and not letting the power go to his head.","nb_tokens":239} | |
| {"doc_id":"6KJhM7Pg5EA_150","video_id":"6KJhM7Pg5EA","content":"And you've got right now, kids really looking up to somebody like that. I'll let Andrew Tate be a stand-in now that the potential allegations or the allegations hanging over his head. But he represents like the flashy, tough, fast cars, access to women. That's what I want. I want to have that kind of fast, easy fame. And then Marcus Aurelius is about being a good person, being a decent man is extraordinarily difficult work that you have to focus on every day. You do it in the shadows, you do it when you're alone. And that just doesn't get the airtime. And so given that reality- Yeah, but there you're making an argument which I totally agree with for signal boosting Marcus Aurelius in whatever way you can. And when you meet some semblance of a Marcus Aurelius sort of person, that's the person you want to give a platform to. That's the style of argumentation. That's the obvious ethical compass. It would be way better for the world for Elon to be much more like Marcus Aurelius, right? It would be better for Elon, be better for his life personally.","nb_tokens":236} | |
| {"doc_id":"6KJhM7Pg5EA_151","video_id":"6KJhM7Pg5EA","content":"But that aside, it's like that would be, to model that would be so much better, objectively better for everyone involved. Like those are the virtues you want to spread. And yes, it's the Andrew Tate-ification of everything that we're suffering under. And I think in large measure, the business model of the internet has something to do with that. I mean, the fact that we anchored it all to ads and to the dynamics of viral spread. But it's also true that in any, I mean, even if it was all subscription and so you get what you pay for, you need, things still need to be entertaining. It's like, you can't just be and eat your vegetables culture, right? Like, so you need, we need captivating stories and we need it to be fun, right? So like in Elon's defense, he would say, you know, just get a sense of humor and just, this should be more fun than it is, right? Like it's like, if it's not fun, it's not worth it, right?","nb_tokens":221} | |
| {"doc_id":"6KJhM7Pg5EA_152","video_id":"6KJhM7Pg5EA","content":"That the line between fun and real ethical transgression is, I mean, it's not always immediately findable in real time, but it's usually pretty clear, right? And there's a kind of callousness, there's a kind of just not caring about the casualties that is so obvious in most of the cases, most of the examples I just gave, right? I mean, so, you know, it's frankly, so obviously I don't know Tate, I don't know whether any of the allegations against him are real, but, and, you know, and maybe he's gonna grow up at some point, I mean, he's what, he's 35 years old, I mean, 20 years from now, he may be a very different sort of person, but right now he's obviously an asshole, right? It's like, I mean, his ethical center of gravity is just so displaced from what it should be to be a valid model of successful manhood for that you would want, you know, a hundred million teenagers in America to be following. And it's just like, it's just, yes, he needs to read Marcus Aurelius.","nb_tokens":241} | |
| {"doc_id":"6KJhM7Pg5EA_153","video_id":"6KJhM7Pg5EA","content":"He needs to, like, there's just, he's not messaging any, I mean, he's messaging some wisdom, right? Like the wisdom of getting things done, the wisdom of getting out of your own way, the wisdom of realizing that the dynamics of competition between people and just, you know, and protecting yourself, right? Like all of that, but it is so self-directed, it's so selfish in principle, he is so selfish, he's so narcissistic, he's so turned inward, it's so, there's such an ambience of bullshit about him, right? Like just, it's all spin, there's no self-reflection, it's, the superficiality of what he cares about is, like, there's no awareness of the deeper project of living a durably happy life where you have real ethical engagement with the world, with important causes, with people, where you care about other people, really, and even care about other people more than you care about yourself in many instances, right? Where your happiness is born of making others happy and reducing unnecessary suffering, right? Where it's like, where compassion is really what animates you.","nb_tokens":240} | |
| {"doc_id":"6KJhM7Pg5EA_154","video_id":"6KJhM7Pg5EA","content":"It's like, there's none of that, I mean, I haven't seen all his stuff or even much of his stuff, but I've seen enough to know that the kind of the center of the message is, like, you know, if you check these boxes, if you've got a Bugatti and you can fuck as many women as you want, you've basically solved the problem of being a man, right? Like, there's no way you're doing much wrong if you've checked those two boxes, right? Like, that's just bullshit. It's just, I mean, it's not only bullshit, it's completely backwards when you're talking about what's really worth caring about and prioritizing in this life. I'm not saying that wealth isn't important, I'm not saying that relationships aren't important, I'm not saying that status isn't important. I mean, there are very few people who can sort of get past the general concern about status, right? So status is very high leverage with respect to people's sense of their own well-being and whether their lives are working.","nb_tokens":226} | |
| {"doc_id":"6KJhM7Pg5EA_155","video_id":"6KJhM7Pg5EA","content":"You know, the story they tell themselves at four in the morning is very likely a reflection of how they feel they're functioning in some kind of status hierarchy. I get all that, but, you know, like my status hierarchy includes so much more than Bugattis and hooking up with new women. And in fact, it doesn't, like, if that's what I was doing, I would be convinced I had just gone off the rails, right? Like, so it's just, you know, nothing against Bugattis, but it's like, I don't want one, right? As if by magic, I don't want a Bugatti. You know, it's, so yeah, I would agree with you. There's something, something has gone wrong in our culture that we don't have a long list of people who are very much like Marcus Aurelius, each more captivating than the next, who are getting their own reality TV shows, who have figured out how to, I mean, or forget about just the media. I mean, look at the 2024 presidential campaign, right? Like, where are the shades of Marcus Aurelius to choose from, right?","nb_tokens":244} | |
| {"doc_id":"6KJhM7Pg5EA_156","video_id":"6KJhM7Pg5EA","content":"Like, how is it that we, I mean, I'm not the only person to have marveled at this, but how is it that in a nation of 340 million people, these are our choices? Where we've got this laptop from hell, you know, waiting to discourage all of these completely unseemly relationships that, you know, the president's son has spun out in multiple countries. And we have to worry about some scandals, you know, wafting out of that and, you know, destroying his prospects for, and his prospects are only important because he's the precarious object put in place of a former president who truly desecrated the office of the presidency. I mean, just, he literally shattered the most important norms we have in our democracy. I mean, I don't know what to put above a commitment to a peaceful transfer of power. I mean, it is the, you know, I mean, Ronald Reagan, you know, who people right of center, you know, used to care about.","nb_tokens":212} | |
| {"doc_id":"6KJhM7Pg5EA_157","video_id":"6KJhM7Pg5EA","content":"Single that out as just the kind of the central miracle of our society, that we had that, you know, with all, whatever else is happening and whatever the depth of our political differences, the fact that we could rely on a peaceful transfer of power every four years, right? That was an absolute miracle. It's the thing about us that is most astounding to all these other societies that can't manage it, right? In any generation, they either don't even have a system that even purports to manage it, or even having one, they can't keep that together, right? We haven't had that problem historically, and yet we have it now, and we had it last time because of Trump. How do we begin to unwind this stuff? So if there's something, it seems something broken in culture to me. I think culture is downstream of the individual. That was why I wanted to contrast the two different people. What that got me thinking about is what is the animating philosophy of everybody's life? And I think for most people, they never take the time to define what their animating spirit is. They don't have a life philosophy.","nb_tokens":237} | |
| {"doc_id":"6KJhM7Pg5EA_158","video_id":"6KJhM7Pg5EA","content":"They're just engaged in the day-to-day river of algorithms that sort of pull them along and confront them with the things they need to do, the things they find funny, the things that they find outraging. But when I really stop and think about what people need to do, I come back to the thing that Jordan Peterson has been circling around. This has been really interesting for me. So Jordan goes on his dad arc, when he really first burst onto public fame. I was completely blown away by how much he was helping people. He then gets sick and he comes back and he's super religious. And I don't know what to make of it. And for a long time, I was very confused. And then I started thinking, he might just be ahead of his time in that what I think he has his finger on is that all of us have a God-shaped hole inside of us. You have to fill it with something.","nb_tokens":192} | |
| {"doc_id":"6KJhM7Pg5EA_159","video_id":"6KJhM7Pg5EA","content":"And what I think, and I'm very much putting words in his mouth, but what I think Jordan is putting his finger on is the Christian text is the way to anchor people to a set of beliefs and values so that we have something that we can point back to. So that in times like these, where people are going astray, you can point out, does your behavior make sense? Yes or no? You think yes, because you're getting a bunch of likes on Instagram. That's ridiculous. You should think yes, because you're hewing close to the words of the Bible, which are really deep mythological stories about the truth of the human condition. Now, again, I've not spoken to him about this. I don't know that he would agree with that assessment, but that's my gut instinct. Unless he really now is like, I am a believer, but he even publicly tweeted at Richard Dawkins and said, basically he was, I think, saying something about atheism. And he was like, this is a mistake. I will debate you anytime about it.","nb_tokens":223} | |
| {"doc_id":"6KJhM7Pg5EA_160","video_id":"6KJhM7Pg5EA","content":"So even if he doesn't believe in the literal word of God, he is really convinced that it is a necessary thing to help people orient themselves to a life well lived. Yeah, yeah. So as you know, Jordan and I have debated this topic ad nauseum. I think we had four public debates. We did two or three podcasts, and then we had a bunch of live debates that were fun. And I don't know how much his thinking has changed since. Then he got sick, and then he's probably, I'll take your word for it, I haven't seen much of his stuff of late, but he- When was the last time you guys connected? Well, I was on his podcast, certainly during COVID. But it's been, it's probably been at least a year, I think, since I've connected with him in any way. Maybe there was an email or so, but I don't think it's, I would be surprised if his thinking has fundamentally changed. I mean, yes, as you say, he thinks that religious stories and in particular a Judeo-Christian story is really indispensable for Western civilization, and we should recognize how much we owe to that story.","nb_tokens":245} | |
| {"doc_id":"6KJhM7Pg5EA_161","video_id":"6KJhM7Pg5EA","content":"And it's in the absence of that recognition that you have this eruption of weird political commitments on the left that seem to have a kind of religious fervor. I think there's a bunch of half-truths in there that I would sort of agree with, but generally speaking, I think that's just a mistaken diagnosis of our problem for a bunch of reasons. One is, I'll break this into kind of two layers. The most important thing, I think, to recognize is that stories aren't good enough. We need more than stories. Well, what genuinely ails us is at a level psychologically that isn't remedied by just having a consoling string of thoughts to think again and again and again, a story to tell yourself, a story to tell your kids, a story to have them pare it back to you, a culture of stories that just ramifies all of these ideas. That's not good enough, right? It's not the thing that allows you to recognize the real sacred depth of the present moment.","nb_tokens":209} | |
| {"doc_id":"6KJhM7Pg5EA_162","video_id":"6KJhM7Pg5EA","content":"I mean, it's not the thing that you encounter when you really know how to meditate or take the right psychedelic at the right moment with the right guidance, with the right set and setting, and have a real breakthrough into a landscape of mind that transcends your sense of egocentricity, right? To really get over yourself, to really be available to self-transcending love and connection and ethical commitments is a deeper move than any new set of thoughts is going to engineer for you. And it is, in fact, it requires an insight into the superficiality of thought itself, right? So it's like, it is, you have to recognize what the mind is like prior to thought, prior to identification with thought, prior to being continually spellbound by the voice in your head that is telling you one thing or the other. It's telling you you're great and everything's working perfectly, or it's telling you you're a failure and nothing worked out. I mean, yes, on the relative level, on the level of being identified with thought, it matters what story you tell yourself.","nb_tokens":225} | |
| {"doc_id":"6KJhM7Pg5EA_163","video_id":"6KJhM7Pg5EA","content":"It's much better to feel like everything's going great, if in fact it is, than to feel morbidly and masochistically self-critical and self-doubting and depressed. So you can get a lot of leverage from stories, but you can't get the thing you really want to get at the end of the day, spiritually and contemplatively and ethically by just telling yourself a new story. So that's the deepest claim I would want to make. So like the baby in the bathwater of religion that we should want to save, you know, what it would take to really be like Jesus, what it would take to really be like Buddha, that's not a matter of endorsing any particular story, right? It's just, there's a deeper engagement with the reality of the present moment and that's just the mechanics of one's own attention that's required for that. But in addition to that, even if we were just concerned about stories and having the best stories, the best stories are not in the Bible, right? The best, the Christian story, the Judeo-Christian story is not the best story. It's not the most life-affirming story.","nb_tokens":242} | |
| {"doc_id":"6KJhM7Pg5EA_164","video_id":"6KJhM7Pg5EA","content":"It's not the clearest ethical compass we can engineer. In fact, it's a very, I mean, in moments it has its own, I mean, in moments it has its moments. I mean, if you have a kind of a Jeffersonian, you know, a la carte attitude toward the Bible, yes, you can get some great wisdom there, but it is also chock full of modernity annihilating bullshit and you have to push all that away and you have to find some principle by which you would disavow that stuff. The very real hatred of homosexuality, right? Like literally homosexuality is a killing offense in the Bible and nowhere in the New Testament does it cease to be a killing offense. In fact, it pretty clearly is in Paul's letters. So, I mean, even the most basic religious ethical test of sanity slavery, like what's our policy on slavery? You don't get a good one from the Bible. That is as pure a defeater of ethical omniscience as you could ask for, right? Is this the best moral document we have? Well, let's check the index. What does it say about slavery?","nb_tokens":237} | |
| {"doc_id":"6KJhM7Pg5EA_165","video_id":"6KJhM7Pg5EA","content":"Oh, it gets slavery wrong. There's no way it's the wisest book we've ever produced, right? So it's just, that's where we are with the Bible. That's quite inconvenient for Christians and Jews who really wanna make that tradition that kind of the sole repository of wisdom for us. I think what should obviously be true to us is that every book we have, the Bible included, the Quran included, was at some point the product of merely human insight and intelligence, right? It's like people wrote all of our books. We do not have a single book that was not written by a person, leaving, you know, chat GPT aside. So all we have is the totality of human insights and human conversations to draw from, right? So what religious, what traditionally religious people seem to recommend is that we limit ourselves to the insights and conversations of a previous age. Now, whether you wanna walk that all the way back to the 7th century or, you know, 1500 BC or, you know, 1st century AD, or that depends on which religion you favor, or some people will just wanna go with L. Ron Hubbard, right?","nb_tokens":244} | |
| {"doc_id":"6KJhM7Pg5EA_166","video_id":"6KJhM7Pg5EA","content":"We'll go with the guy with bad teeth whose driver's license we can literally inspect, but he's compelling enough for us to just stop there. It's like he got it right, you know, in Dianetics, and we need to look no further. What I think should be obvious is rather than feel like we're entitled to any kind of religious provincialism, we should just want the totality, I mean, very much in the spirit of what you were recommending earlier, we want the totality of human insights and conversations available, and then we wanna just see what survives contact with reality. We wanna pressure test it in each present generation in the presence of new technology. I mean, like, what is gonna give us guidance? What, you know, what in our prior conversations gives us real guidance when we decide to build more and more powerful AI? We're like, what should we believe about the totality of everything that's been said before? It's provenance. What equips us to make a truly wise decision in the present with respect to this emerging technology?","nb_tokens":221} | |
| {"doc_id":"6KJhM7Pg5EA_167","video_id":"6KJhM7Pg5EA","content":"Now, I would argue that you get, you know, close to nothing in the Bible to equip you to actually navigate this appropriately. And so you just, again, we have these challenges, some of which are quite foreseeable, but some of which aren't, some of which has come out of the blue, and we just have to recognize that all we have collectively is conversation by which to navigate. And again, I do think it's helpful to continually view all of this, again, you know, collectively and also just personally, as a navigation problem. We're constantly faced with the question of what to do next, what to physically do next, what to do next with our resources, what to pay attention to next, what to talk about next, what to think about next, what kind of laws to write next. We're constantly tacking in the wind, and all we have is human intelligence, and human insight, and human conversation by which to do that. And so persuasion is important, you know, understanding the dynamics of all that is important, but to default to some prior century and to say that, you know, these are the last words that are relevant on the deepest questions of human life.","nb_tokens":246} | |
| {"doc_id":"6KJhM7Pg5EA_168","video_id":"6KJhM7Pg5EA","content":"They can never be improved. They can never be superseded by anything. All of their internal contradictions are something that we have to pretend to have worked out. And in most cases, we're better off just ignoring them because, you know, who can understand the mind of God, right? It's like, well, let's default to mystery there and the unknowability really of truth there. But no, there's very specific truths we can know, like yes, homosexuality, that's forbidden, right? So we know that. And it's just not, I mean, view it in terms of software. It's like, we know we have to keep improving it. Culture is software. Culture is an operating system. We know it's continually showing its bugs. We know it's continually failing us. We know it's throwing up new challenges that we, you know, kind of emergent behavior that we have to correct for. We can't just say this 2,000-year-old legacy code is perfect. It so clearly isn't perfect. It was not perfect at the time.","nb_tokens":222} | |
| {"doc_id":"6KJhM7Pg5EA_169","video_id":"6KJhM7Pg5EA","content":"You know, and it was possible at the time to know that slavery was wrong. It's not like 2,000 years ago, everyone thought slavery was okay. No, it's just the people who wrote the Bible thought slavery was okay. It's like, it was possible to be wise enough as a human being. You brought up Marcus Aurelius. There is so much more wisdom in his meditations. I'm not saying they're perfect. They're not everything. There is so much more wisdom in that book than in most of the Bible, right? And there's so much less wrong with his meditations than is wrong with most of the Bible. I mean, you know, if you're gonna take one book to guide your life, you could do a lot worse than Marcus Aurelius. I mean, and it's so modern in so many ways, right? It's like you don't have to go through this tortured translation, like what he really meant. You know, he didn't mean keep slaves.","nb_tokens":209} | |
| {"doc_id":"6KJhM7Pg5EA_170","video_id":"6KJhM7Pg5EA","content":"He meant, you know, he's, it's a very modern set of insights into, I don't know if he said anything about the ethics of slavery. Maybe there's something in there that is inconvenient. But I mean, the parts of Marcus Aurelius and Stoicism generally that are so serviceable and so modern is that there's this basic insight into your mind being basically all you have. I mean, whatever you have in the world, whatever you have in your life, whatever you're being confronted with, the layer of experience is mind. And what you do with your attention, what you choose to focus on, how you choose to frame the thing that seems to have happened in the world, that is the cash value of the world and of your life in it is what it convinces you to do with your mind, right? And if you can just seize those reins deliberately, you can be happy in objectively terrible situations. And conversely, if you fail to understand anything about those mechanics, you can be miserable in objectively wonderful and truly fortunate situations, right? I mean, you can have all the luck in the world and not enjoy any of it.","nb_tokens":237} | |
| {"doc_id":"6KJhM7Pg5EA_171","video_id":"6KJhM7Pg5EA","content":"Do you ever worry that given that all that we really have is our mind and attention, that AI ends up coming along and playing the role of God? It focuses your attention. It tells you what to look at. It makes sure that you feel X, Y, Z way, but that it ends up being able to either through culture or something far more individualistic, it ends up being able to shape your values. Oh yeah, yeah. I mean, I'm very worried about the deepest questions of the AI alignment. I think that's a real problem. And I'm amazed that there are many people fairly close to this technology who either don't think it's a problem or just figured that out like last week after working in the field for decades. I mean, I'm truly mystified by the people who don't think it's a problem. As you might've heard, I had Marc Andreessen on my podcast and we debated this and he's super smart and super close to the tech and just thinks that this is pure science fiction to worry about AI alignment. I mean, there's just no reason to worry about it. I spent whatever it was, two hours talking in his direction.","nb_tokens":243} | |
| {"doc_id":"6KJhM7Pg5EA_172","video_id":"6KJhM7Pg5EA","content":"He's totally unconvinced by anything I had to say. Everything I have to say on the topic is really, I don't think there's anything original from me on that. I mean, I've just been very informed by people like Stuart Russell, who is also very close to the tech. He's a computer scientist at Berkeley. But then people who are more peripheral to the field who just have made very compelling arguments about the problem of alignment like Nick Bostrom or Eliezer Yudkowsky or Max Tegmark. I mean, there's a lot of smart people who are just, they're not actually doing the AI research. But then you have somebody like Geoffrey Hinton, who's like the father of the most current tech, deep learning, and he wakes up three weeks ago and he realizes we got a problem on our hands, right? So I don't understand why that took so long. But that aside, even in success, or even not reaching anything like a catastrophe of misalignment, just our engagement with machines that are smarter than ourselves and the way in which that can be deranged.","nb_tokens":230} | |
| {"doc_id":"6KJhM7Pg5EA_173","video_id":"6KJhM7Pg5EA","content":"I mean, there's so many examples of the way it could derange us, but just, I mean, I recently re-watched the film Her. I don't know if you saw that recently, but it lands differently now. I sort of forgot what I thought about it 10 years ago. I saw it when it came out, but now it just seems like, okay, this is pretty damn interesting. It was not consciously a very dystopian film. I mean, it kind of split the difference between dystopia and something more benign. But you can see, just imagine all of us, I mean, even the model of success here, we all have a kind of a superhuman AI tutor who understands us better than anyone in our lives and understands us better than our friends or our spouses. It has literally noticed everything we've paid attention to for years, right? It's followed, it's like it's caught everything we've forgotten. Oh, you said in that email that you were gonna tell Sam X, you never told him, you wanna tell him now, right?","nb_tokens":222} | |
| {"doc_id":"6KJhM7Pg5EA_174","video_id":"6KJhM7Pg5EA","content":"Like it's reading everything you wrote, it's reading everything you read, and it's doing that to a billion other people fairly similar to you and drawing insights from them and then propagating that back into its understanding of you. So it's understanding you in ways that you can't even understand yourself, right? And so now you're in dialogue with this thing. Now, I'm not saying there isn't some good that could come of this. I mean, it's just imagine just being in relationship to the smartest and wisest oracle you could ever have access to. That's what's not to love about that. But then you just imagine as in the film, Her, that we all have a different version of this thing. And it's slightly different because we're different, right? So it's a fun house mirror and our culture is fragmented. Like we don't have a shared reality because the AI is tuning itself differently. It's like, I think Jaron Lanier gave this example once, not so much for AI, but for just the disorienting capacity of social media. It's like, imagine if Wikipedia was different for every person who went and read an article there.","nb_tokens":244} | |
| {"doc_id":"6KJhM7Pg5EA_175","video_id":"6KJhM7Pg5EA","content":"It's like, you would go read the article on the American Revolution, and it's bespoke just for you given the kinds of things you have signaled that you like in the past, right? And so no one has a common understanding of the world really because we're all sort of drifting off into this conversation with more and more compelling information tools. I mean, again, if this thing coughs up a cure for cancer next year, the pragmatics of the moment are gonna be such, I'm gonna say, all right, well, let's at least acknowledge that we really wanted that cure for cancer, right? I'm really happy we got that. I'm not so worried about the misinformation problem today given that I and everyone I know now know we're never gonna die from cancer, right? So let's get our priorities straight. But it really is easy to see how it can bend us in ways that will not be functional. And yeah, I mean, I hope we equip ourselves to realize that in time as these advances roll out. No kidding. All right, man.","nb_tokens":221} | |
| {"doc_id":"6KJhM7Pg5EA_176","video_id":"6KJhM7Pg5EA","content":"I think even at the end of this amazing conversation, we still all have a lot of work to do in terms of figuring out what our compass is, how to sift through all the information. There's no letting us off the hook. But now that you're no longer on Twitter, where can people engage with you? Well, just say wakingup.com. It has all my stuff on meditation and really applied philosophy. And samharris.org is my website. So anything I do will be announced from there. So yeah, and if in the age of deep fakes, I mean, this is one thing I've thought about. It's like at a certain point, if something hasn't come from one of my channels, I don't think you can be sure that I said that thing or if it's me saying it. And so it is with you or anyone else with the platform. I mean, it's just, it's really strange. But yeah, that's where I am. Awesome. All right, everybody. If you haven't already, be sure to subscribe. And until next time, my friends, be legendary. Take care. Peace.","nb_tokens":237} | |
| {"doc_id":"6KJhM7Pg5EA_177","video_id":"6KJhM7Pg5EA","content":"If you enjoyed this episode, check out this deep conversation with Donald Hoffman about reality and consciousness. What we are are avatars of the one. The one awareness is exploring all of its possibilities through different avatars. So somehow there is this field of awareness.","nb_tokens":52} | |
| {"doc_id":"IQefdkl8PfY_0","video_id":"IQefdkl8PfY","content":"What we are are avatars of the one. The one awareness is exploring all of its possibilities through different avatars. So somehow there is this field of awareness that is in some sense deeply and fundamentally who you really are. What do you think about the AI scientists that signed the paper saying that we need to slow AI down because, and I had one of them on the show, because it passed a touring test faster than they thought, it's just moving faster than they expected and they're very worried. Do you think that AI will ever become conscious? I'm actually not too worried about AI right now myself. So I'm not one of the alarmists that says we need to stop and worry about it. The thing that would alarm me more would be if there were some kind of law that criminalized most people from doing it and let a few people do it, a few companies do it. That alarms me. So if there's going to be any kind of laws, they should be universal and no one should be excluded. But why aren't you worried about AI? It's pretty easy even with ChatGPT to give it questions it can't answer right now.","nb_tokens":238} | |
| {"doc_id":"IQefdkl8PfY_1","video_id":"IQefdkl8PfY","content":"It's basically a good statistical analyzer. It's not deeply intelligent. It will find things that humans won't find in medical searches and so forth. But that's because it just can handle more data and do more statistical analysis than we can. But it's not deeply intelligent. And the founders would tell you that. It's fairly straightforward kinds of algorithms. And in terms of consciousness, there is no theory right now of any kind that can start with physical systems like circuits, software, and explain even one specific conscious experience how it arises. So I'll be very, very clear. There's no theory on the planet today that can start with an artificial intelligence and a description of some kind of circuit or some kind of software pattern of activity and can give you a specific conscious experience like the taste of chocolate or the smell of garlic, where you would say this pattern of activity must be identical, must be the taste of chocolate. It could not be the smell of a rose. There's nothing on the table and there's nothing even close. So if AIs can be conscious, there are no theories right now at all that could explain how that could possibly be and nothing that makes it even plausible.","nb_tokens":242} | |
| {"doc_id":"IQefdkl8PfY_2","video_id":"IQefdkl8PfY","content":"So I'm not too worried about AIs being conscious. I think that they will eventually outperform humans in most everyday activities, but simply because they'll have more compute power and can search more deeply than we can. Will, so for people that don't know you, I'm going to give a super brief synopsis and by all means put in where I go awry here. But you believe that this is all a simulation. We are living in a simulation. None of this is real. Space-time itself is not real. We are effectively living inside of what you call the headset, that everything you've ever known or ever experienced is all effectively an illusion. It is a computer video game by way of analogy. Given that, and audience listening at home, you will notice he did not say no. And this is something I have forever just dismissed out of hand that we're living in a simulation. And I say dismissed out of hand because I don't have any evidence to back it up. And I've heard all the arguments from a mathematical perspective that if you believe that humans are capable of creating photorealistic simulations and you give any rate of progress whatsoever, we will eventually create a simulation.","nb_tokens":243} | |
| {"doc_id":"IQefdkl8PfY_3","video_id":"IQefdkl8PfY","content":"We certainly with AI and how rapidly it's been advancing, I think people now really have a sense of, whoa, we really are going to be able to do this. Apple Vision Pro certainly gives an indication like you will really be able to create some very compelling, very realistic things inside of a visor. So I think people more now more than ever could see how we could get into a simulation, a simulated world that's convincing. I'll leave it at that. And if that's true, then why would we then once we create that simulation not create another simulation? And I will just tell you as somebody, the t-shirt that I'm wearing is literally about this. We're building a game that we hope over time will be a truly simulated world that people will go in, they will have an identity inside that game. Okay, so if we know that loop exists, then once the game inside the game gets powerful enough, it will do another simulation. Once the game inside that game inside that game gets powerful enough, it will do a simulation.","nb_tokens":216} | |
| {"doc_id":"IQefdkl8PfY_4","video_id":"IQefdkl8PfY","content":"And so you end up in this point where just mathematically, it would make more sense to believe that you're in one of those, you know, conceivably infinite recursive loops of a simulation then that you're in base reality. But it just always seemed weird to me to say, no, no, no, we're in one of the simulations. But the more I research you, the more I'm like, maybe we really are in a simulation. And to that point, you talk about consciousness as being fundamental. And so I'll need you to explain that for people that that will be so jarring, it will take them a while to really grok that, but that consciousness is fundamental. So couldn't AI ever become a window into what you call a conscious agent in the same way that a human child is or a dog is or whatever? That I think is possible. Absolutely. So if you don't mind, walk people through how it could be possible that physicality, everything they see, touch, taste, the loves that they have, all of that is a simulation and not fundamental, meaning it arises out of something else. But consciousness is the fundamental, yeah, the foundation.","nb_tokens":246} | |
| {"doc_id":"IQefdkl8PfY_5","video_id":"IQefdkl8PfY","content":"The foundation. Well, there are two arguments for the idea that what we see is not an objective reality that exists independent of us and is there prior to when we look at it. So in physics, the Nobel Prize last December was given to three physicists for the experimental testing of a clean prediction of quantum theory that something called local realism is false. Local realism is the claim that physical objects like electrons have definite. So realism is the claim that electron has a definite value of position, momentum and spin when it's not observed. And locality is the claim that those properties have influences that propagate through space time no faster than the speed of light. And the conjunction of those two claims, the properties exist even when they're not perceived, even when they're not measured. And they have influences that propagate no faster than the speed of light. That's local realism. And local realism is false. How did they prove it? So that's why you get a Nobel Prize. So John Clouser, Anton Zeilinger and Alan Aspik. Over decades, there's a string of experiments that were tighter and tighter. Each experiment closed loopholes in the previous ones.","nb_tokens":235} | |
| {"doc_id":"IQefdkl8PfY_6","video_id":"IQefdkl8PfY","content":"So the experiments have to deal with, they're complicated experiments. I mean, Zeilinger was actually using photons from outer space to get entangled particles that they could use that you couldn't argue that they were somehow, you know, being connected or correlated in some deep way. But basically, the experiments are set up to show that properties like position or momentum or spin, typically they like to use spin. Um, in principle could not have definite values until you actually measured them. So one way that they do this mathematically, are there these bell inequalities. And so if, if the statistics of the correlations between the particle spins, you have two different particles that you're measuring the spin axis, for example. And if they had definite values, even when you weren't observing, you'd have certain pattern of correlation. And if quantum mechanics is right, and those values don't exist until you measure them, then you have a different pattern of correlation. And so that's what they do. They have to look at a bunch of different measurements, look at the correlations, and the correlations come out to be what quantum theory predicts and not what our classical intuitions would tell us.","nb_tokens":242} | |
| {"doc_id":"IQefdkl8PfY_7","video_id":"IQefdkl8PfY","content":"And so the, this was done by Clouser decades ago, but it's so counterintuitive that people were going, okay, well, there must be a loophole here. So then they closed a series of loopholes. And finally, they started getting photons from like distant galaxies where the photons couldn't possibly have certain within space time, um, causal connections and close that loophole. And, um, so that's one, one, one direction. So physicists tell us that local realism, at least for microscopic, you know, subatomic particles recently, they've gotten up to groups of 700, um, atoms, I believe. So it's, it's starting to, they're, they're showing that these effects, um, the super position effects of quantum theory are not just at the very, very small end of things. So local realism is false. Now one can still try to say, well, but that's for really tiny things, but at the macroscopic level, maybe look, local realism is true.","nb_tokens":210} | |
| {"doc_id":"IQefdkl8PfY_8","video_id":"IQefdkl8PfY","content":"And that leads to a problem because there's no principle distinction in quantum theory between the microscopic and the macro, you can't say a 10 to the minus, you know, 20 centimeters. That's, you know, that's, that's the limit. There's no boundary between micro and macro. So, and this is a well-known open problem. So that's one direction. I'll just go with that. Now the, um, the, the other direction of argument is from evolution by natural selection, where you can ask a technical question. Evolution shapes sensory systems to guide adaptive behavior. So that means to keep you alive a long, long enough, um, to reproduce, right? So you, you have vision and touch and hearing and smell, and they've been shaped so that, um, you're able to get the food you need, mate, and stay alive at least long enough to reproduce and pass your genes onto the next generation. That's the standard story of evolution. Many theorists also think that evolution shapes our sensory systems to tell us truths about objective reality. Like when I see an apple, that's because there really is an apple.","nb_tokens":239} | |
| {"doc_id":"IQefdkl8PfY_9","video_id":"IQefdkl8PfY","content":"And the red color and the shape really exist even when they're not perceived. And so that's, notice that's a step beyond just saying that our senses evolved to guide adaptive behavior. They want to say more than that. They want to say that if you guide adaptive behavior, you're going to see the truth. So, so I decided with my colleagues, Chetan Prakash and Manish Singh and Robert Prentner and others, um, my, some graduate students, Justin Mark and Brian Marion, um, to, to test this. Um, you know, evolution is a mathematically precise theory. We have evolutionary game theory. So there's a technical question. What is the probability that, um, evolution, but natural selection would shape any sensory system to see truths about objective reality, the structure of objective reality? And, um, it's straightforward to prove.","nb_tokens":181} | |
| {"doc_id":"IQefdkl8PfY_10","video_id":"IQefdkl8PfY","content":"Um, what, what we do is we look at various kinds of so-called fitness payoff functions, um, maybe payoff functions that are, that are, and we can ask, do these payoff functions preserve certain kinds of structures in the world, like, um, orders, a total order or, or a partial order or a metric or a topology or, or a measurable structure. So we can say, we don't know what objective reality is, but suppose it had this structure. What is the probability that fitness payoffs, which govern our evolution, would actually have information about that structure in the world so that we could actually be evolved to have some insight into that structure of objective reality? And in case after case, the answer is, um, the probability is zero. The, there, there are payoff functions that would preserve the structure, but those payoff functions have probability zero in the set of all payoff functions. So, so that means if you're a betting man, um, you would bet long odds against it. So it doesn't mean that it can't happen. It's just that the probability is, is zero.","nb_tokens":230} | |
| {"doc_id":"IQefdkl8PfY_11","video_id":"IQefdkl8PfY","content":"And so I take this as a convergence between two of our big theories in science, evolution, binatural selection, and quantum theory, quantum field theory. Both are telling us that local realism is false. And so, so I think a good metaphor then is, as you were saying, um, like a user interface or a video game where you render on the fly what you need. So I'm looking at you, I'm rendering a Tom face, and I look away and I'm not rendering it. Someone else might be looking at you and they're rendering their Tom face, but, but their Tom face is not the same as mine. It's going to be at a different angle and so forth. So we render on the fly. And that's what physics is telling us, basically, that local realism is false. We render on the fly. And so the, where you're taking that from is the quantum uncertainty principle. Basically, everything has a probability of being in a given state. And the reason that it's just a big question mark, uh, is because nothing's looking at it. So it does not need to render that.","nb_tokens":234} | |
| {"doc_id":"IQefdkl8PfY_12","video_id":"IQefdkl8PfY","content":"It doesn't need to decide the system, which is the simulation, um, which people think of as space time, but they're almost certainly I've interviewed you so many times and I know how hard it is to escape, uh, this matrix, but they're thinking of things within space time being real. But once you start looking at space time as purely a simulation and that the, then rendering only happens when you look at something. So that to me makes a hypothesis that I think your data backs up, which if that were really the case, then, um, I understand why big things would adhere to what seemed like a different set of rules where things are static and small things would not, because you're far less likely to observe a first order consequence of something microscopic. You may be observing a second or third order consequence, which raises questions for me that I'm sure we will get to at some point, but just to close the loop on that. So first order consequence, I can look up and see the moon. I see planets, I see stars.","nb_tokens":217} | |
| {"doc_id":"IQefdkl8PfY_13","video_id":"IQefdkl8PfY","content":"And so for that to be persistent, which is going to be a big thing in our discussion today, this is like the prime thing I want to talk to you about is persistence and what that means. But big things will need to be persistent. And therefore there has to be, there is a constant collapsing of its probabilities, uh, because there are so many things that require, even if it's just its effects on gravity, there's so many things, quote unquote, witnessing that or measuring that. So I get why those would be stable, but then things where they're so small that there's very little that hinges on that, that, that would need to be directly rendered. That would need to, cause you can get away with sort of the probabilistic rendering of the big things and their, um, influence by these smaller things, but you don't need a direct representation of the spin, for instance, uh, of a particle that, that all things that will quote unquote, measure it. Don't see, don't interact with or whatever, because nobody's effectively looking at it. It does not need to be rendered. Right. So I go to, so that'll feel right.","nb_tokens":246} | |
| {"doc_id":"IQefdkl8PfY_14","video_id":"IQefdkl8PfY","content":"Just, uh, no, that's a great question. And so great question. I was not asking a question. I was stating a hypothesis about crazy or does that make sense of the macro to the micro level? Well, it, it does, but I think a good analogy here that might help clarify the issue is, is, so in say Grand Theft Auto, right? I look over, I'm playing with somebody who's, you know, in Canada and somebody else's in Europe and someone else's in China. We're all playing a remote version of it and virtual reality. And I look over and I see a red Porsche to my right. And so I say, is there a red Porsche on my right? And the guy in China says, oh yeah, I see a red Porsche. And the guy in Canada agrees. And the guy in Europe agrees as well. So of course, each of them is rendering their own red Porsche. So there is some reality that's coordinating all of these perceptions, right? So the guy in Canada didn't see a red Porsche until he looked.","nb_tokens":224} | |
| {"doc_id":"IQefdkl8PfY_15","video_id":"IQefdkl8PfY","content":"But when he looked, there was this whole world, you know, of circuits and software that you don't see. There's some supercomputer that's coordinating the whole thing. How's it coordinating? In that particular metaphor, right? The, there's a supercomputer that's, that's taking the inputs from like your headset. What, what direction are you looking with your headset? Maybe you've got a body suit. So it's looking at your arm movements and so forth. And it's feeding all that into a supercomputer where it's got a model of the game. And in that model, there's some red Porsche model. Of course, there's no red Porsche in the computer. And it knows then how to coordinate and send the photons to your headset in Canada and my headset in Irvine and someone else's headset in, in China. So that we have this notion of a persistent reality of a Porsche, even though individually for each one of us, local realism is false. The Porsche doesn't even exist until I render it. And there's no red Porsche inside the supercomputer.","nb_tokens":224} | |
| {"doc_id":"IQefdkl8PfY_16","video_id":"IQefdkl8PfY","content":"So that's sort of the idea is that space time is just a headset and there's behind space time, there's going to be an incredibly complicated realm to explore. That's as least as complicated, more complicated as like the supercomputer is to my little headset. Headset is sophisticated, it's beautiful technology, but the supercomputer is, you know, really, really powerful thing. And the same thing will be true of space time. It's just our headset. But if we look beyond that headset, we're going to be finding a realm that's far more complicated. So in some sense, science, up till now, has only studied our headset, we've studied inside space and time, we're taking our first baby steps to start to explore, we've, we've cut our teeth in science, on studying our headset, we learned the tools in the last three or 400 years about experiments and clean mathematical theories and the loop between experiments and theories. But we thought we were studying objective reality, we were studying our headset. But now we have the tools to actually take a first step beyond space time, and start to find structures beyond space time, and their projection back into space time.","nb_tokens":245} | |
| {"doc_id":"IQefdkl8PfY_17","video_id":"IQefdkl8PfY","content":"And so from that point of view, our view that objects in space time, we've taken that to be the fundamental reality will look sort of parochial. Hopefully, in just a few decades, we'll, I think the next generation where many people will have spent a lot of time in virtual reality. My generation didn't spend a lot of time in virtual reality. So this is a hard concept. But if you don't, I've heard you say that before, I don't think that's going to get people where you think it's going to get them. Maybe not. But in this episode, I want to try to explain why I think that and get your take. So here's what I think we need to do first. And then we'll go even deeper. There's two things we need to do in the near term. One, I think we need to, in our previous interviews, we spent a lot of time dealing with the headset. So for anybody that's sort of confused on that idea of you're living in a simulation, everything that you know, and love, and touch, and have ever experienced, it is all a simulation.","nb_tokens":238} | |
| {"doc_id":"IQefdkl8PfY_18","video_id":"IQefdkl8PfY","content":"You have never existed outside of the headset. So if right there, your brain breaks, go watch the other episodes. We spent a tremendous amount of time building that up. But for now, what I want to do is say, okay, I'm going to assume that you get it, that your whole life is basically Grand Theft Auto. And people understand it. You've been in there playing the game, and they understand the difference between playing the game and the computer rules and things that give birth to that game. And so that's the difference. What I want to do now is map that one layer back. So I want to take that idea of your life is Grand Theft Auto, but there's this thing called spacetime that's outside of it, and get to what you're actually saying, which is that same relationship, but move back one very profound level. Because what it does is it inverts everything. And what it says is that the universe, the universe, spacetime, is an emergent phenomenon from consciousness. That consciousness is in this, to use that analogy, just to map it back, that consciousness is the, quote unquote, computer and rules of the system.","nb_tokens":243} | |
| {"doc_id":"IQefdkl8PfY_19","video_id":"IQefdkl8PfY","content":"And then the simulation is what we all think of as real life. Okay, so that's where we're mapping. So one, does that track for you, that we can move that analogy sort of one rung deeper is probably the word you'd be most comfortable with? Right. So absolutely. A model in which we take consciousness as fundamental, and we have a mathematical model of consciousness, and we then try to show how spacetime gets rendered from that. Okay, perfect. You can reboot your life, your health, even your career, anything you want. All you need is discipline. I can teach you the tactics that I learned while growing a billion dollar business that will allow you to see your goals through. Whether you want better health, stronger relationships, a more successful career, any of that is possible with the mindset and business programs in Impact Theory University. Join the thousands of students who have already accomplished amazing things. Tap now for a free trial and get started today. So now in this interview, instead of making our references to Grand Theft Auto, unless we need to for whatever, for an anchor point, I want to talk about spacetime like a simulation. Okay.","nb_tokens":240} | |
| {"doc_id":"IQefdkl8PfY_20","video_id":"IQefdkl8PfY","content":"I want to talk about spacetime like it is Grand Theft Auto, because researching you this time, I want to sit with it for a while before I start saying I'm 100% behind it. And I mentioned one of our previous interviews that I do revert to the mean after I spend time with you. But each time you're shifting me farther where my mean is sort of closer to you, this time, at least in the research, I had a real sense of he's right. I don't know about the consciousness is the only part that we may disagree, but that you really gave me an internally consistent set of logic points for why spacetime is the simulation. And when I grant you a few base assumptions that we'll go through, my own worldview makes more sense. Okay. And so I realized for the first time, again, fully acknowledging that I may revert to the mean once I've interviewed three or four other people on totally different topics. And this has already cleared my system. But right now, as we do this, I really felt like you improved what I consider a prediction engine. I think of the human mind as a prediction engine.","nb_tokens":236} | |
| {"doc_id":"IQefdkl8PfY_21","video_id":"IQefdkl8PfY","content":"And the closer you get to baseline truth, the more you're able to predict the outcome of your behaviors. What I'm watching happening with AI, which is why I wanted to start there. I can't make sense. I don't. When I think about a hallucinating AI, I'm like, I don't understand. When I think about AI pulling patterns out of noise, I don't understand. When persistence is difficult for AI, I don't understand. And then I research you and click, click, click. Those pieces fall into place when I assume that it's all already a simulation and that AI is simply revealing to me how the simulation works. But the fact that we disagree, or maybe we don't, I think AI will be windows into consciousness. I think AI is leveraging your own theories to create AI right now as we're talking about it. I think I'm a lay person. Everybody needs to take this with a huge grain of salt. Trust me, I am well aware of my limitations.","nb_tokens":208} | |
| {"doc_id":"IQefdkl8PfY_22","video_id":"IQefdkl8PfY","content":"But I think right now that what we're witnessing with things like stable diffusion, where AI is creating an image out of the infinite possibilities that exist within the possibility space of noise. Okay. For people that don't understand how stable diffusion works, that's how it works. Is it dips into the noise to find a pattern and then solidifies that pattern to reveal. Is this what you wanted? And what I'm saying is when I research you, I realize, oh my God, that's precisely what your theory predicts in the idea of Gödel's incompleteness theorem, which I have struggled with so hard in the previous interviews. I feel bad for everybody that has to watch me go through that. But the more I feel like I can grasp why you keep coming back to it and why this sort of infinite possibility space is so important to understand, when I watch AI pull a static image out of infinite possibility, I'm like, oh my God, that's exactly what you've been trying to describe. Okay. Put a pin in that. Okay. Because what I want to talk about now is consciousness as fundamental.","nb_tokens":228} | |
| {"doc_id":"IQefdkl8PfY_23","video_id":"IQefdkl8PfY","content":"Because this is the part, if people are really paying attention, this is the part that will change your worldview. To get into the space-time as a construct, as a simulation, you first have to understand that you think that's born of consciousness itself. And please, dear audience, stick with this, because this point is going to be very important as we piece together the predictions that your own model is going to make. But they have to understand this first. So how is it possible that consciousness, the thing that I think everybody intuits, comes from stacking neurons, neurons, neurons, neurons, neurons, and you pass through a cricket, an ant, a mouse, a cat, a dog, a dolphin, a gorilla, and humans? It just feels like, oh, just stack more neurons. And then you're ultimately going to get these more sophisticated neurons, which give you a more sophisticated consciousness. That seems so self-evident. And you're, to me, but you're saying, nope. No. And by the way, I'll just, on the pin, I'll just mention that I agree with you that AIs could actually give us a window into consciousness.","nb_tokens":245} | |
| {"doc_id":"IQefdkl8PfY_24","video_id":"IQefdkl8PfY","content":"But they won't create consciousness. That was all I was saying. Interesting. So I think we disagree about that. OK. So you're so much more thoughtful and so much farther ahead. When we get there, I will lay out my ignorant perspective. So on consciousness being fundamental, meaning that's all there is. That's right. So the idea would be, and this is, by the way, in some sense, not new. Leibniz, in his monadology, had the same idea. So I really appreciate that you assume I know what that means. And from context, I can tease it out. But can you tell us what that means? Oh, so Leibniz was this genius, contemporary of Newton, sort of antagonistic. They both invented calculus. Roughly the same time, there was a question about who was first and so forth. And they were sort of at each other. But they were contemporaries. But Leibniz had this idea that consciousness couldn't emerge from physical systems.","nb_tokens":213} | |
| {"doc_id":"IQefdkl8PfY_25","video_id":"IQefdkl8PfY","content":"He has a famous argument of the mill where he, in one paragraph, basically dismisses the idea that objects inside space and time, like neurons, for example, could create consciousness. For him, it was so obvious that he spent a paragraph on it and moved on. And then he's got a book called The Monadology, where he was proposing, essentially, that consciousness-perceiving entities are the fundamental reality and that they were interacting. All right. If I break down the words monadology? Monad, so M-O-N-A-D is a technical term for him. Got it, got it, got it. It was a new term for him. Monadology is then the book's name, Monadology. And it was basically, it was a dynamics, it was a strange dynamics. We called it pre-established harmony, where God, so he brought God in on his thing, I believe, to sort of coordinate all the perceptions of these. So meaning God was the first mover, the fundamental thing. Yeah, the fundamental, right. OK, but he saw it as a creator, touching things with like a divine spark of consciousness?","nb_tokens":233} | |
| {"doc_id":"IQefdkl8PfY_26","video_id":"IQefdkl8PfY","content":"Yeah, but his ontology was that the fundamental reality beyond space-time was these monads, these perceiving entities, basically. But God, I think, was the deepest reality for Leibniz. There, I'm less secure. I'm not sure exactly what his thoughts were on God, but I believe that's what he said. So I just brought that up just to say that we're not the first to have this kind of idea. Centuries ago, Leibniz, with his monadology, had an idea that perceiving entities, experiencing entities, could be more fundamental than the physical space-time world. All right, you talk about conscious agents. Do you mean exactly that same thing? That's right. So conscious agents are a mathematically precise statement of what we mean by consciousness, right? So as a scientist, it's not enough for me just to say, OK, there's consciousness beyond space-time, and it's fundamental. I have to write down a mathematical description of what I mean by that. So what aspect of consciousness do I take to be fundamental, and what's the mathematical description?","nb_tokens":231} | |
| {"doc_id":"IQefdkl8PfY_27","video_id":"IQefdkl8PfY","content":"So if you think about it, when you think about consciousness, there's, of course, experiences. There's learning, memory, problem-solving, intelligence, maybe free will. There's lots of things, the notion of a self, all these things that you might think a theory of consciousness needs to incorporate. I'm so sorry, and I should have done this before, and that apology goes to the audience. If you're new to Donald, it's probably worth just a quick sentence about what consciousness is. Oh, well, so I would say consciousness is the ability to have experiences, like the taste of chocolate, a headache, emotions. So this thing feels like something. Yeah, the way a lot of philosophers will talk about it is to have conscious experience. There's something it's like to be a conscious entity. There's something it's like to have a headache. There's something it's like to have a nice cup of coffee or something like that. Okay, and so let's call that qualia. Again, me stealing directly from you, but just so we have words, because qualia is going to become very important as we get into your paper and all of that.","nb_tokens":243} | |
| {"doc_id":"IQefdkl8PfY_28","video_id":"IQefdkl8PfY","content":"Okay, so back to conscious agents. So what we decided to do was we don't want to throw the kitchen sink in our mathematical definition, so we took what we felt was the bare minimum starting point. There are experiences, like the taste of chocolate, smell of garlic, and so forth, and those experiences affect the probabilities of other experiences occurring. So there are experiences and probabilistic relationships among experiences. That's it. So we're not bringing in the notion of a self, learning, memory, problem-solving, intelligence, none of that. What we're saying is, yeah, all that stuff is important, but we have to prove how it arises from just experiences and probabilistic relationships among experiences. So as a scientist, you try, it's what we call Occam's razor. You want to have the minimum number of assumptions at the start of your theory. Every theory has assumptions. There are the miracles of the theory. We want as few miracles as possible, right? So our only miracles are, well, it's a big miracle. There are experiences and probabilistic relationships among experiences. And we formalize that.","nb_tokens":230} | |
| {"doc_id":"IQefdkl8PfY_29","video_id":"IQefdkl8PfY","content":"The experiences, we just write down what's called probability spaces. We can, if you want, we can talk about probability spaces. And the relationships among experiences are what we call Markovian kernels. And we get what's called Markov chains. So it's very simple dynamics. So we'll explain what Markovian dynamics are in a second. I don't, now that I finally have at least a tiny bit of a grasp, I don't know how important it is that people understand that. Sure. But I do want to know how important is it that one bit of qualia impacts other qualia? Like, does that relationship play heavily into the idea of consciousness as a fundamental agent? Yes. We stipulate that as a fundamental property that experiences aren't in a vacuum. Experiences probabilistically lead to other experiences. Okay. It's very interesting that you said, not in a vacuum, because that, my whole thesis is that the construct of space-time, the simulation, let's just be very clear. The simulation that is this real world. Sorry, that's a terrible use of the word real.","nb_tokens":229} | |
| {"doc_id":"IQefdkl8PfY_30","video_id":"IQefdkl8PfY","content":"The simulation that everybody lives in and experiences is required. This is my pitch. The simulation is a required constraint in order to give context that something can be like anything, but that for consciousness to explore the possibility space of qualia, you have to have a rule set. And the rule set that we're all in, which may be one of a gazillion headsets, but the rule set that we're all in creates the possibility for the subset of qualia that we as human beings or lizards or whatever experience. But without that rule set that is space-time, we would not have enough limitations to give us the context in order to feel a certain way. Exactly. That's a very good way to put it. So that a lizard presumably sees things very, very differently than I do. Pigeons have four color receptors. We only have three. Pigeons have four? Yeah, that's right. So they see more color than we do. Birds and bullshit. I feel cheated now. I knew 15% of women do. I did not know pigeons. Yeah. The mantis shrimp has more than 10.","nb_tokens":233} | |
| {"doc_id":"IQefdkl8PfY_31","video_id":"IQefdkl8PfY","content":"Photoreceptors? Yes. That's right. Different kinds of, or pigments that are used for the photoreception process. So we may be cheated in many, many ways. That's for sure. So yeah, we don't, for example, perceive polarization of light. And birds and maybe bees do as they can perceive the polarization of light. We can't directly experience electric fields. And there are animals in the water that can do that. So some that see infrared, some that see ultraviolet that we can't. So we have a very, very small window. And other animals are not restricted to the windows in which we see. So I like your idea that there's an infinite space of conscious experiences to explore. And when we look at different animals, we're seeing different explorations with different headsets. And different, as you say, different constraints. And it's in some sense consciousness exploring all of its possibilities. All the possible ways to explore. So in some sense, we're here for the ride. And we should enjoy the ride. We're exploring. We thought this was the final reality.","nb_tokens":230} | |
| {"doc_id":"IQefdkl8PfY_32","video_id":"IQefdkl8PfY","content":"No, this is just one of countless possible headsets. Just one of countless. And we'll enjoy this ride. And then consciousness will then, it's looking through other headsets. So I like your idea that there's some kind of consistency, some kind of coherence. But it's a subset of the experiences. There's an infinite number of experiences to explore. So this ride never ends. Okay. So when I think about consciousness as fundamental, I cannot help but imagine a blob that then takes shape in the form of a human or a lizard or an avocado, whatever. Help me understand what... Do you have an image in your head of what consciousness is? Is it just completely non-physical? Well, maybe the closest I can get that would be, the way that we communicate to people would be if you go into an entirely quiet room, shut off all the lights, close your eyes and get very, very still and don't think. Good luck. That's right. Usually letting go of thought is not easy.","nb_tokens":210} | |
| {"doc_id":"IQefdkl8PfY_33","video_id":"IQefdkl8PfY","content":"But if you can go for a few seconds or a minute with absolutely no thought and now you're just aware, you realize, yeah, I can be aware without being aware of anything in particular. I am fundamentally awareness. And into that awareness right now are coming a cup, a microphone, a table. I can close my eyes and those are gone from awareness. So somehow there is this field of awareness that is in some sense deeply and fundamentally who you really are. It seems like your theory would say that's false. Well, it's going to say that the... So the reason why I talk about this awareness is that when we talk about all these specific conscious experiences, we have to write down something that's called a probability space first. We're required mathematically to do that. So we write down a probability space in which... Probability of qualia. That's right. Probability of qualia. So you have to write down the space of all the potential qualia that this particular conscious agent could experience. So here is this space and there's the mathematical structure. It's just sitting there prior to any particular experience happening. It's just sitting there.","nb_tokens":237} | |
| {"doc_id":"IQefdkl8PfY_34","video_id":"IQefdkl8PfY","content":"It's just sitting there. And it took me a few years to ask myself the question, what is that space? I had to write it down. I couldn't do the math. I couldn't write down my Markovian dynamics until I wrote down the probability spaces. But the way we do it is we just... Of course, you have to write that down so you don't even think about it. You write down the probability space and you go on to the fun stuff. You write down now the dynamics and so forth. But a few years later, I came back and go, well, wait a minute. I went too quickly on this first part. I had to write down a probability space. What does that mean? Because this is a space prior to any specific conscious experiences happening. And so the best I can say right now is that perhaps is the mathematical counterpart to what I was just describing, which is the awareness that you can experience prior to having any particular specific conscious experience arise in that awareness. So that's why I talk about it in that way.","nb_tokens":219} | |
| {"doc_id":"IQefdkl8PfY_35","video_id":"IQefdkl8PfY","content":"Can I just restate that to make sure that I understand and linger on it for a second for the audience? So you're using words that I know you know are dangerous, that Annika Harris has warned you about letting people carry the sense of self into all this, because you said you are the awareness, but really consciousness is the awareness that animates me in some way, or it needs my constraints in order for it to experience the qualia. I think that's the right way to think about it. And so in those moments where either through meditation, I get to true, where I am simply aware of the qualia of being aware. But when it's not aware of anything in particular, so I'm not aware that my foot hurts. I'm not aware that my stomach is churning on food. I'm not aware of something I need to do later in that day. I am just the potential to point that awareness at something is the thing that I'm sitting in, that that's who we really are. So that feels right, but I know it's retrapping me in my sense of self that I am a real thing.","nb_tokens":234} | |
| {"doc_id":"IQefdkl8PfY_36","video_id":"IQefdkl8PfY","content":"Your whole thing clicks into place for me when I realize that according to your theory, and this makes a lot of things make sense in my own life. I am simply one instantiation that creates a set of what I call biological limitations that then once I have those constraints, now the fundamental element of consciousness can begin to explore its qualia, the different things that like, oh, in this human form, I can experience these things with all the context that this person has. He responds to this thing in this way. Agreed. There are some deep complexities with that, but we'll push those off for later. So if that's where we're at, my fundamental question is, why does consciousness, why is it compelled to explore these qualia states? That's the $64,000 question. I don't know, but of course, that's the very natural question to ask. And I agree with what you just said. I don't want to reify the self. What we are are avatars of the one effectively. And the one consciousness is, the one awareness is exploring all of its possibilities through different avatars. Why?","nb_tokens":232} | |
| {"doc_id":"IQefdkl8PfY_37","video_id":"IQefdkl8PfY","content":"There, I think there may be some deep mathematical reasons. So it may be that, I mean, there are theorems to the effect that no system can completely know itself. It's impossible. Because, for example, if I have a computer and I want the computer to explore itself, how is it going to know itself? Well, it's going to have to build a model of itself and write down what, well, in the very process of building a model of itself and writing into its memory things about itself, it's becoming more complicated. It's changing itself. So now, to really understand itself, it's going to have to now describe what it just did. And now to, so you get this infinite loop. And so there are problems with self understanding. It's not possible. In many cases, provably not possible to have a complete understanding of yourself. You get into this infinite loop of, now I have to be more complicated to understand myself after I just understood myself. And so that's one direction of this. Another direction is there's a whole hierarchy of infinities.","nb_tokens":226} | |
| {"doc_id":"IQefdkl8PfY_38","video_id":"IQefdkl8PfY","content":"So the integers, like, so 1, 2, 3, up to infinity, that's an infinite number of integers. We call that a countable infinity. Or aleph zero, the Hebrew letter aleph. And zero just meaning the smallest infinity. But there are other infinities. So the next, if you take the set of all subsets of integers, so like 1, 2, and 1, 5, and 2, 3, 4, look at all the possible subsets of integers. And ask, how many subsets are there? How many subsets of integers can you come up with? It turns out that, of course, there's an infinite number of these subsets. Because every number is divisible by an infinite number of subsets. No, we're just grouping them together. So I'm saying, think about the group 1 and 2. So that's a group. Now 1 and 5. Got it. So we can group an infinite number an infinite number of times. So those are called all the different possible subsets of the integers. Got it.","nb_tokens":230} | |
| {"doc_id":"IQefdkl8PfY_39","video_id":"IQefdkl8PfY","content":"And there's, of course, an infinite number of them. Because 1 is a group, 2 is a group, 3. So we already know there's an infinite number. But there's more than that. How much more? It turns out it's a bigger infinity. So the- It's a bigger infinity. It's a bigger- Say what? Well, that's what mathematicians said when Cantor, the mathematician who first came up with this, when he first proved this. Feels a bit like my speaker goes to 11. Why not just make 10 louder? But this one goes to 11. This one goes- It's actually a different size of infinity. And so- How's that possible? I literally can't wrap my head around that. There is something called Cantor's diagonal argument. So there's a simple diagonal argument where you can actually show on paper, pen and paper, that it's impossible to capture all the power set, this bigger infinity with the smaller infinity. So he gives what's called Cantor's diagonal.","nb_tokens":222} | |
| {"doc_id":"IQefdkl8PfY_40","video_id":"IQefdkl8PfY","content":"So if people want to check me on this, you just look up Cantor and Cantor's diagonal argument for a proof that there are these bigger infinities. And you can actually- I think most people can actually follow the proof. I mean, it's mind-bending, but you can follow it. Well, there's not just one bigger infinity. That's ALF1. This is the bigger infinity. Now take the power set. So by the way, taking the set of all subsets is called taking the power set. So the power set is all the possible subsets. So now I've got ALF1, which is the bigger infinity, which is all the power sets of ALF0. But now I can take all the power set, the power set of ALF1. That gives me ALF2. Take the power set again at ALF3, ALF4, and this goes forever. So infinity is not one thing. There's an infinite, unending hierarchy of ever larger infinities. So we have to, in my view, take this into account in our theory of consciousness.","nb_tokens":231} | |
| {"doc_id":"IQefdkl8PfY_41","video_id":"IQefdkl8PfY","content":"All of these different infinities are valid directions for projection of this one deeper consciousness. And so we're going to- So the answer to your question may again be, because Cantor's hierarchy never ends, this exploration never ends. The exploration of the possibilities of consciousness, of qualia, is in principle never ending. So again, I would just say, I'm in deep water here and I'm maybe over my head. Fair enough. This is the fun part of exploring this, is what are the predictions that are made based on the hypothesis, right? So every hypothesis makes a prediction and then you have something you can test and it becomes verifiable. So this is where it gets very interesting to me, is what the predictions are that it makes. So going back to the hypothesis that I have that, okay, maybe this really is all a simulation because as we go to build the next simulation, it actually tells us more. It gives me a better way to understand what's already happening. Now, again, I'm a lay person, so I may be way out of my own depth here, but I think people will be able to follow the internal logic.","nb_tokens":239} | |
| {"doc_id":"IQefdkl8PfY_42","video_id":"IQefdkl8PfY","content":"So this is what I was stating earlier about AI. So the way that AI works is there is an infinite possibility space in noise. So you can just think of it as a screen. And that screen can have, think of every conceivable pixel that's there. And depending on what color you make, any one of those pixels, if you have like a grand enough resolution, meaning enough pixels in a finite space that you can recreate any image that's ever been seen or created, or even just what's possible. So if anybody's seen what they call an AI hallucination, where the AI will just continually like push into itself. And every time it pushes in and a pattern begins to emerge, it then crystallizes that pattern and basically says the most likely shape to emerge out of this would be a staircase. But as you push in, the most likely shape to emerge out of that would be a cathedral. And it just keeps going and going and going and going. And it never runs out of sort of most likely things to emerge out of this pattern is, because it's looked at all of these things. And so it will create things that it's seen before.","nb_tokens":237} | |
| {"doc_id":"IQefdkl8PfY_43","video_id":"IQefdkl8PfY","content":"So the Mona Lisa would be one representation that is very predictable, especially given how many times the Mona Lisa has been replicated. So one of the things in the possibility space is the Mona Lisa, is a Rembrandt, is David, is you looking at your wife this morning is one of the possibility spaces that it could eventually draw out of this thing. So it's constantly searching for what is the next potential pattern. Now, my whole thing is, what really starts to make this interesting, and the reason that I think that the simulation isn't something to be brushed aside as being trivial, but is critically important, if you're right, that what consciousness is doing is it has some motivation for some reason that neither of us know why, but that it is cycling through all of its permutations. If that's what's really happening, then to do that, you need a set of rules. And so what I realize is I'm building the, going back to the Grand Theft Auto. So we're building a simulated world. And I realized as we build it, all I'm doing is making the most detailed if this, then that statements.","nb_tokens":232} | |
| {"doc_id":"IQefdkl8PfY_44","video_id":"IQefdkl8PfY","content":"And so I'm trying to create these algorithms that then not trick you, but they give you a set of rules by which you now must adhere. But by doing that, by actually limiting the possibility space, I can make a game that's quote unquote fun. So it is in the limitation. It's in the setting of rules that this becomes a useful space. So what I want to know is you, you talk a lot about like, Hey, we want to get out of the headset. Do you really, do you want to get out of the headset or do you want to manipulate the headset? Well, when I say we want to get out of the headset, that's as a scientist trying to look for a deeper theory. So as a scientist, I mean, we've sciences, let me ask you. So the reason that Einstein, his breakthroughs were so useful is within the headset. They let us do something. Are you trying to do something in the headset? Or so if you understand how the headset works, you can either manipulate the like Einstein bend space time, right?","nb_tokens":224} | |
| {"doc_id":"IQefdkl8PfY_45","video_id":"IQefdkl8PfY","content":"You can create GPS, which if you didn't understand relativity, you would not be able to do. And that made the atom bomb possible. It made nuclear energy possible, made GPS possible. His breakthroughs. Are you trying to do a breakthrough that has headset implications? Or are you searching a breakthrough that has a get out of the headset implications? Both. So what I want to do is, is get a theory of what's beyond, at least a baby step beyond the headset. Presumably, as I mentioned, there's a cantor's hierarchy of infinity. So we have infinite job security going beyond the headset. That's, it's literally an unending job, but to take a step entirely outside of the headset. Then as, as you point out, as a scientist, I need to make predictions back in the headset because that's the only place we can do experiments. To prove that you're right.","nb_tokens":189} | |
| {"doc_id":"IQefdkl8PfY_46","video_id":"IQefdkl8PfY","content":"Well, to, to, I don't, you can never prove that you're right, but, but to, to sort of what we'd say, scientists would say to, to get confirmation of your theories, which is not proof, but to, to say, um, you're not stupid. You seem to be on the good track. It predicts the things that we already understand. That's right. Hopefully makes novel predictions about things that we don't currently understand. That's right. We should be able to get quantum field theory back as a special case. We'll get Einstein's theory of general relativity as a special case. Evolution by natural selection as a special case. We should, or generalizations of these theories within space-time. So, so yes, we're, we're going for the first baby step outside of space-time in terms of a scientific theory, but of course we have to project it back into space-time where we can do experiments in a better look, um, like evolution by natural selection and quantum field theory or understandable generalizations of those theories, um, or we're wrong. Right.","nb_tokens":230} | |
| {"doc_id":"IQefdkl8PfY_47","video_id":"IQefdkl8PfY","content":"So, so you might say, well, yeah, if you go outside of space-time, you can do anything you have all the fun you want. You can do anything you want to. Um, no, you can't, you can, you need to tie it back to what we can perceive inside our headset. So that, that's where we're headed. But, um, as I said, there's infinite job security. And so I view myself as, as just looking for a first baby step outside of the headset. Science for centuries has only studied our headset because space-time is our headset. But in the last 10 years, physics has gone beyond, we've talked before about the amplituhedron and decorator permutations and other, other structures that physicists are finding. These are not the final word. Again, these are the first baby steps outside of our headset and they will be, of course, refined and eventually superseded. All right. So there's one of these things that I think I've, I've grasped enough that I can present it to people as one of the first baby steps.","nb_tokens":230} | |
| {"doc_id":"IQefdkl8PfY_48","video_id":"IQefdkl8PfY","content":"So in physics, one of the things that they're constantly doing is smashing particles together to try to see what happens when those particles collide in the hopes that it will reveal smaller and smaller elements of the building blocks of the universe, which will then help us understand what the, the sort of fundamental makeup of space-time is. And as they look at this data, what they found is that there are patterns in that data that replicate endlessly. And you smash these together and the, the collisions, there's so much data. At first, it seems impossible, just so much data to wade through. We'll never understand anything. And then all of a sudden you realize, wait, there's only so many patterns once you take those, like once you group those shatters, like if you think of it this way, if every time you broke a mirror, it broke into the same pattern, you'd be like, wait a second. And am I understanding it correctly that that's what happens when you collide particles? Statistically, yes. Right. So it's not exactly, but, but you, you can use statistics to show that there are these statistical commonalities to the interactions. Absolutely.","nb_tokens":244} | |
| {"doc_id":"IQefdkl8PfY_49","video_id":"IQefdkl8PfY","content":"Okay. Walk us through that. And why does that matter? Well, for physicists, of course, this is some of their most fundamental data. So there, what are particles? Particles, Eugene Wigner taught us are what he called, you know, irreducible representations, unitary representations of the group of symmetries of spacetime, what they call the Poincaré group. Essentially, particles are like the, the simplest things allowed by the symmetries of spacetime, the simplest entities allowed. And so in some sense, by studying these particles, we're really studying the nature of spacetime itself and the structure of spacetime. And so when they, for example, in the Large Hadron Collider, they will smash protons together or they will, they're, they'll also, you know, sometimes have an electron and smash it into a proton at, at high energies. And when you do that at high enough energies, you destroy the proton. It actually falls apart. And you see all these particles scattering up, things like quarks and gluons and mesons and so forth.","nb_tokens":228} | |
| {"doc_id":"IQefdkl8PfY_50","video_id":"IQefdkl8PfY","content":"And so you can look at the angles that these particles are spraying out at and look at, for example, do they have, you know, a spin, a magnetic charge? What's their, do they have a mass? So you can sort of, you can look at all the, and then when, when you start looking at all the data, you begin to see patterns in the data. And, and so we see, you know, for example, it was a big surprise to physicists that inside the proton, there were these things that they now call quarks, but the quarks in some sense, at least at the energies that are available to us, can't be on their own. You can't have like quarks flying out on their own. There's something called quark confinement. And that was a big, big discovery. So quarks, like in a proton, there are three quarks, two up and one down. A neutron has two down and one up.","nb_tokens":203} | |
| {"doc_id":"IQefdkl8PfY_51","video_id":"IQefdkl8PfY","content":"But if you, if the quark escapes, it's trying to get away, the force of attraction between two quarks grows with the distance and the energy, well, the force doesn't grow, the energy. So the force doesn't, normally we think of the force, the force, so the force doesn't grow, the force remains constant. And so the energy, the potential energy, it keeps growing and growing as you move these particles apart. And so at some point, they snap and you create, all that energy goes and creates a new quark, say. So then they pair off. So it's very, very strange, this quark confinement thing. So one reason we do experiments is because, I mean, who ordered that? We wouldn't have like guessed, you know, quark confinement. But we found quark confinement and it's still being studied. I mean, trying to understand that. There's a theory that if we get really, really high energies, they won't be confined. But those are energies that we currently are nowhere near. And we have no analytic proof right now of quark confinement for what are called non-Abelian gauge theories.","nb_tokens":243} | |
| {"doc_id":"IQefdkl8PfY_52","video_id":"IQefdkl8PfY","content":"So one of the big open questions in physics is to actually prove this analytically. That so they have lattice gauge models of this that show it. And they have other cases where the experiments and the theory convince them it's the truth, but we don't actually have the final analytic proof of this in what's called non-Abelian gauge theories. So that's still an interesting open question. But that's why physicists are doing this. These particles are really probing, in some sense, the fundamental nature of spacetime itself. And so they look at patterns. They look at the cross sections for interactions. So this was, for example, way back in the early studying of the atom. So there was a plum pudding model of the atom, right? So electrons were these negative point particles inside a positive field. And then this one experimenter started shooting particles at atoms. And the plum model would say that most of these particles would just go straight through. And most of them did. But every once in a while, one would bounce back, a very, very small percentage of the time. And so that gave them the idea, OK, there are point-like particles.","nb_tokens":240} | |
| {"doc_id":"IQefdkl8PfY_53","video_id":"IQefdkl8PfY","content":"We now call them protons and neutrons. These particles that they were hitting, they were a very, very small space within the atom. So the atom was mostly empty space. The electrons were way far away, so to speak, from the much smaller protons and neutrons. But then we look inside the protons, and we find that the proton itself and the neutrons are composed of even smaller particles, quarks and gluons and so forth. And who knows? Even the quarks and gluons might be composed of smaller particles. But we don't have the resolution in our colliders right now to test that. We can only go to 1,000th or 10,000th the diameter of a proton, I think. And at that resolution, the quarks and gluons still look like point-like particles. What's up, guys? It's Tom Bilyeu. And if you're anything like me, you're always looking for ways to level up your mindset, your business, and your life in general.","nb_tokens":214} | |
| {"doc_id":"IQefdkl8PfY_54","video_id":"IQefdkl8PfY","content":"That's exactly why I started Impact Theory, a podcast that brings together the world's most successful and inspiring people to share their stories and, most importantly, strategies for success. And now it's easier than ever to listen to Impact Theory on Amazon Music. Whether you're on the go or chilling at home, you can simply open up the Amazon Music app and search for Impact Theory with Tom Bilyeu to start listening right away. If you really want to take things to the next level, just ask Alexa. Hey, Alexa, play Impact Theory with Tom Bilyeu on Amazon Music. Now playing Impact Theory with Tom Bilyeu on Amazon Music. And boom, you're instantly plugged in to the latest and greatest conversations on mindset, health, finances, and entrepreneurship. Get inspired, get motivated, and be legendary with Impact Theory on Amazon Music. Let's do this.","nb_tokens":177} | |
| {"doc_id":"IQefdkl8PfY_55","video_id":"IQefdkl8PfY","content":"It doesn't seem self-evident to me that just because, again, I'm granting you the conceit that consciousness is the fundamental thing, but it does not seem self-evident to me that even if consciousness is the fundamental thing that gives rise to this constricting rule set, as I describe it, that we call space-time, that you couldn't have a theory of everything regarding space-time. Why do you think we have failed to get a theory of everything? In space-time. In space-time. Knowing that it's the simulation, but going back to Grand Theft Auto, it feels like even if I just said, oh, all I can tell you is cause and effect, that when this pixel goes here, it has this effect, and so now I can play everything forwards or backwards. And you could in Grand Theft Auto. It has a set of rules, and it adheres to those rules, period, plain and simple. And so even though it is the headset, a computer program, assuming that a simulation acts like a computer program, space-time in this case, it adheres to rules.","nb_tokens":229} | |
| {"doc_id":"IQefdkl8PfY_56","video_id":"IQefdkl8PfY","content":"And so when you get a quote-unquote bug, it is what the program is programmed to do. You just didn't intend to program it that way. Well, in that framework, yes, I agree with you. I think we could get a complete theory of space-time. Not a complete theory of everything, but a complete theory of space-time. So the theory of everything, for me, would be space-time as a trivial aspect of everything. Right. So but absolutely, I think we can get a complete theory of space-time, and we'll see its limits. It falls apart at 10 to the minus 33 centimeters in 10 to the minus 43 seconds. So we'll see that, and we'll understand that. Yeah. So it's quite possible. I would say, though, and I like your idea about the program and the rules and setting up a framework in which you can explore experiences. I'll throw in a little wrinkle. You're writing computer programs. And so Alan Turing is sort of one of the fathers of modern computer science. And Turing machine is the first really good theoretical framework for computer science.","nb_tokens":234} | |
| {"doc_id":"IQefdkl8PfY_57","video_id":"IQefdkl8PfY","content":"And the universal Turing machine that Turing described in some of his papers is sort of our notion of a universal computer. But there's a well-known limit to what Turing machines can do. Take, again, all the integers. You know, 1, 2, 3, up to infinity, also minus 1, minus 2, and so forth. And think about all the functions from the integers to the integers. For example, the square function. So the square of 2 is 4. The square of 4 is 16, and so forth. How many functions are there? It turns out it's a bigger infinity. It's not accountable. It's a bigger infinity than the integers. But Turing proved that the set of computable functions is countable. So when you're programming, you're using only computable functions. But they're a much smaller infinity than all the possible functions. So right now, in our current technology, when we build these computer simulations, we should know that we're using a probability zero subset of all the functions that are actually available.","nb_tokens":223} | |
| {"doc_id":"IQefdkl8PfY_58","video_id":"IQefdkl8PfY","content":"And maybe later on, we'll figure out how to do something more interesting with all these other functions. But then, as we go, again, Cantor's hierarchy, I think that, in other words, the kinds of rules are going to be very, very hard for our heads to understand. You can write down, if you take a class in theoretical computer science, you can study non-computable functions. And almost every function is non-computable. Okay, as I just said, the computable functions are probability zero. The set of all functions is, most of those functions are not computable. But in a theoretical computer science class, you will actually spend some time actually studying how to construct and prove that a certain function is not computable. Like the halting problem is not a computable function, it doesn't. But it's really hard for us, even though almost every function is not computable, almost every function we can think of is computable. So here we are stuck with the limitations of our headset. And so thinking out of the box in this simulation idea is really going to be mind-numbing.","nb_tokens":233} | |
| {"doc_id":"IQefdkl8PfY_59","video_id":"IQefdkl8PfY","content":"Because to really think out of the box, you're going to have to learn how to think about non-computable functions. And that is not trivial. That's not... But that's... So I just wanted to throw that out there to just open up how complicated this can be. And why the exploration could be... To get a theory of even just the everything of space-time, we have to get into non-computable functions? I don't know if we will or not. That's an open question, but we should be open to that possibility. Very interesting. And certainly to explore consciousness. I see no reason why we should... A priori, I would say this. If someone claimed that the computable functions were all we need, I would say the burden of proof is on you. Hmm. Talk about something I have not even considered. I don't know that I can wrap my head around that one yet. I have a hard time. I mean, I took a class and I looked at that non-computable function, the halting problem.","nb_tokens":220} | |
| {"doc_id":"IQefdkl8PfY_60","video_id":"IQefdkl8PfY","content":"And you have to really... I mean, you have to be sober, you have to be well-rested, and you have to think really hard. At least with my apparatus, you have to think really, really hard to even grasp it. It's not trivial. Intense. Okay. So when we have a hypothesis that makes predictions, we need to be able to solve... We were talking about this a few minutes ago. We need to be able to solve problems, or our hypothesis needs to predict outcomes of things that we can observe but not yet explain. I can't remember if you mentioned this in your paper, but I have heard you talk about this. So dark matter, dark energy, we don't know what the hell it is, but we know that the universe would not hold together if it wasn't for that, or it wouldn't be racing apart at the way that it's racing, whatever. It wouldn't function the way that it functions now. What does your consciousness as fundamental agent tell us about dark energy? Well, nothing specifically, right? So that's a big open question.","nb_tokens":226} | |
| {"doc_id":"IQefdkl8PfY_61","video_id":"IQefdkl8PfY","content":"In fact, one of my collaborators is a student working right now on dark energy experiments, a brilliant student named Ben Knepper. Because he thinks it will yield results tied to consciousness as fundamental? No, I think it's just because it's a good thing to do at this stage in your career to get that kind of experience and actually spend time hunting with real experiments for dark matter so you learn the ropes. So he's doing that. And who knows? Our current techniques may or may not find dark matter. We just don't know. But it's no surprise from a point of view that says that space-time is not fundamental to say that there could be influences on our headset that are not explicitly represented by the headset itself. They're only seen as influences on the headset. And so one way that we're going after this in our own mathematics is we have this Markovian dynamics of these conscious agents. Can you take a second to explain to people what Markovian dynamics are? Yeah, Markovian dynamics is fairly simple in concept. It says that what you do next, so suppose I'm on just, say, a sidewalk.","nb_tokens":234} | |
| {"doc_id":"IQefdkl8PfY_62","video_id":"IQefdkl8PfY","content":"And there are different, I could either step one step to the right or one step to the left. And there's some probability, maybe I choose to step to the right with probability of two thirds and to the left, probability of one third. And so you can see where would I go over time. But the key thing about it is that the step I'm going to take now only depends on where I am now. So where I'm going to end up next only depends on where I am now. So there's a finite memory. I don't have to know everything I've done in the past to know what's going to happen next. I only need to know where I am now. And that's the key Markov property, that you only need to really know the current state. Don't have to know the whole history to have all the information about the probabilities for what's going to happen next. An analogy that I heard that was really helpful in understanding is if you think of it as airports, some airports have more connections to other cities than other airports.","nb_tokens":218} | |
| {"doc_id":"IQefdkl8PfY_63","video_id":"IQefdkl8PfY","content":"So if you're asking, let's say that there's five airports in question, one is isolated and one is a hub to all the rest. And then the other ones only have one or two links, whatever. Going back to your idea of if I'm on the isolated airport, there's only one option. So you don't need to know where I was before all of that. If you know I'm in the isolated one, you know I'm flying back to the only thing it's connected to, which is the other hub. Now when I'm at that hub that has, let's say, five options, now it's just a probability curve of which one I'm going to go to. But once I go to another one of those airports, then it's like, okay, well, I could go to Cincinnati, I could go to New York, I could go to LA, or I could go... Let's say those are the only connections. But when I'm in Hawaii, if Hawaii forces me to route through LA, then you know where you're going to go.","nb_tokens":223} | |
| {"doc_id":"IQefdkl8PfY_64","video_id":"IQefdkl8PfY","content":"And I was like, okay, that at least gives a simple understanding of, oh, this is a relatively simple concept that sets aside all the history. And so from a computational standpoint, that becomes very important. Because when people talk about booting up a simulation of the universe, you very quickly detract every element that could possibly interact with... If everything could interact with everything, it becomes impossible. And you would have to have a computer the size of the universe itself in order to track like a one-for-one atom, basically. But I think I'm understanding this right, that Markovian dynamics eliminates a lot of that computational need, because I don't have to... There is a small set of things. And once I know the probability distribution, over time, it completely stabilizes. And so I know if I'm at airport C, I know the exact probability of where they're going to go next. That's right. So Markovian dynamics help simplify things. Help simplify things by demanding only a finite memory, instead of an infinite memory of the past history of what you've been doing. But you can make the memory as big as you want.","nb_tokens":237} | |
| {"doc_id":"IQefdkl8PfY_65","video_id":"IQefdkl8PfY","content":"So it's really not too much of a limitation either. So it's a nice formalism. Why do we care about it? Well, most of us don't have to deal with infinity anyway, in terms of past history. So we can just use finite histories, and that's quite good. And another reason to be interested in Markov dynamics is, we talked about computable functions. Well, Markovian kernels are computationally universal. So anything that can be computed with a neural net, or with a universal Turing machine can be computed with Markovian kernels. So they give us a nice network kind of modeling for dynamics, but they also give us universal computational abilities. And they're not limited to computable functions, because the sets on which the probabilities are defined need not be computable sets. So they actually give us a window toward going beyond computation. I'm not there right now, but that window is there in the future if we need to go there. Hopefully that will go there. So our current model is a Markovian model of conscious agents.","nb_tokens":219} | |
| {"doc_id":"IQefdkl8PfY_66","video_id":"IQefdkl8PfY","content":"And then what we have to do is, we can then show that space-time is just a projection of this dynamics. And so you only, there's a lot of states- Really fast before you move on. So just re-anchoring people, that these conscious agents, the states that they can be in are coffee, elation, desire, headache. So when we're talking Markovian dynamics, we're talking about moving from one of those qualia states to another, a human headache versus a dolphin headache, et cetera, et cetera. So help me understand why that's important that I can, like if I'm in the state of blissed out coffee taste, that I have a certain probability of going somewhere else. That feels counterintuitive. It feels like my wants and desires are really what's going to drive the next state, not the state that I'm currently in. That's right. So now we're just talking about the consciousness, not about space-time for this question. Yes. Right.","nb_tokens":212} | |
| {"doc_id":"IQefdkl8PfY_67","video_id":"IQefdkl8PfY","content":"So there, when we write down a Markovian kernel and say, okay, whatever your conscious experiences are now, this Markovian kernel describes what your next conscious experiences will be probabilistically, and also how you're influencing the conscious experience of others. So now we can ask the kind of question you're asking. So- That's happening outside the headset? This is all outside the headset, right? This is all- So the probability of what I do next is determined outside the headset by Markovian dynamics. That's why we're going to get to this dark energy and dark matter stuff. You are breaking my brain right now. So that's why I brought this up, is because your question was about dark energy and dark matter. So what we have to get at that from this point of view, what we're going to say is, look, most of the states of this dynamics are states that are not represented in space-time. They're dark. So there are these influences that you're not going to see.","nb_tokens":210} | |
| {"doc_id":"IQefdkl8PfY_68","video_id":"IQefdkl8PfY","content":"When you count up all the matter and all the energy that you can see inside space-time, you're going to be missing all the stuff that didn't project into space-time. So in fact, probably the dark energy and dark matter is much more than we've discovered so far. So that's why it's important. So, okay, hold on. This all really does start to feel weird when I remind myself that this is about qualia, the sense of it being like something. And so I'm going to make something up. Dark energy is the energy created. This is why I don't understand how it could be energy, but dark energy is the energy of a qualia that I will never be able to experience. So it's something like an alien drinking blood wine, making that up, but it has to be qualia. So it's got to be something to be like that thing. Is that right? Well, it's even more complicated than that. It's not just one qualia. It's probably who knows how many countless infinities of qualia. But it would be things like that, right? Exactly right.","nb_tokens":234} | |
| {"doc_id":"IQefdkl8PfY_69","video_id":"IQefdkl8PfY","content":"That are interacting and affecting the dynamics that we perceive inside of our space-time headset. But notice that among the qualia are, for example, the qualia that you are about four feet from me. So your position, there's a quality. I mean, it's very, very different to experience you four feet from me than four inches from me. Those are very, so depth and space is qualia. And in fact, our qualia there, it sort of compresses. If I look at a distant mountain and the moon rising over that mountain, the moon looks a little further than the mountain, but not much, right? Yeah, the moon's a little further. But if you were to, that mountain might be 20 miles from me. The moon is a quarter million miles from me. So that means you have no idea that it's like orders of magnitude further away. So our qualia space of depth is quite compressed compared to what we might call the measured world. So like when you actually, and you see that in your, like a Grand Theft Auto, when you're actually looking around, you only see the roads around you in a little bit.","nb_tokens":240} | |
| {"doc_id":"IQefdkl8PfY_70","video_id":"IQefdkl8PfY","content":"But the Grand Theft Auto world, you might be able to drive thousands of miles in a really complicated simulation. You don't see thousands of miles in any one time. You only see a little bit that your headset allows you to see. But because you use that same headset and you're not stuck in that world, there's actually a supercomputer that has a much bigger world than your headset, right? Than what you see right now in your headset. But it's rendering a little bit in your headset right now. So that's why the mountain and the moon look about the same because they're headset. We can now, of course, when we go to the moon on a rocket, now it's like going through Grand Theft Auto with your headset on and going places that you couldn't see because they were too far away in your current headset view, but you can get there eventually. And so that also is pointing to a world outside of your headset. Your headset is just what the little bit of that world that you're rendering at any one time. Now, dark energy and dark matter- You're not really getting outside of your headset to go to Mars.","nb_tokens":236} | |
| {"doc_id":"IQefdkl8PfY_71","video_id":"IQefdkl8PfY","content":"You're getting outside of what you rendered previously. Well, so at any moment, you're only seeing in your headset, right? But if I go to Mars, I'm still seeing in my headset. Yeah, and in Grand Theft Auto, for example, there might be a Porsche that's a thousand miles away and you're gonna have to drive like three hours in the game to get there. So you're not gonna see it. So it's in the simulation outside of your headset right now. To get it in your headset, you're gonna have to do all this work to get it inside your headset. But it already existed in the software and the computer prior to that. You just don't see it in your headset. Understood. So all the stuff inside space-time, the galaxies that we see that are far away from us and so forth, that's not dark matter and dark energy. That's more like the headset stuff that you see in Grand Theft Auto if you go far enough within the game.","nb_tokens":207} | |
| {"doc_id":"IQefdkl8PfY_72","video_id":"IQefdkl8PfY","content":"But then there's this deeper notion that there are some states in the computer that you'll never see in Grand Theft Auto, but they could subtly influence what you are seeing in Grand Theft Auto. Doesn't your thesis necessarily... No, you're not gonna say yes to this, but I'm gonna finish. Doesn't your thesis necessarily mean that that is some element of the... I like to think of it as a blob that is consciousness cycling through... Why would it be in the same simulation? Cycling through different qualia, but then I don't understand why it would be in the same simulation if it's gonna be something I could never possibly interact with. Right. I mean, almost everything that the real consciousness is doing is not in our headset. What we're perceiving is probability zero of what's going on. It's basically... If you ask of all the things that are being experienced in consciousness, what percent of it do we experience? Zero percent. Zero percent. Yes, understood. But I am, in a way, experiencing dark energy because it is the thing that makes the universe the way that it is now. So I'm just trying to understand.","nb_tokens":237} | |
| {"doc_id":"IQefdkl8PfY_73","video_id":"IQefdkl8PfY","content":"So the thing that I'm sort of debating in my own head is, okay, when I grant you that consciousness is fundamental, then there's all this internal logic to the space-time continuum that I know and love. But I don't know that it's the only way for me to apply the sort of same rationale that you use of whether it's Markovian dynamics, Gödel's incompleteness theorem is probably the more important because that's the one that really helps me understand AI and what AI is doing. So I'm wondering, okay, if I, for a second, say you have touched on something that's really important, which is that space-time is the simulation. But I don't need to draw the conclusion that consciousness is the fundamental thing. That just becomes a debate about whether consciousness can emerge or not. It could be that there, and this feels more right to me when I try to imagine it, but I fully admit what I'm about to say simply pushes God farther down. It kicks the can. So what feels intuitive to me because it's what I'm doing is that I exist in somebody else's simulation that exists in the real world.","nb_tokens":238} | |
| {"doc_id":"IQefdkl8PfY_74","video_id":"IQefdkl8PfY","content":"And that person, they still need God or something. I have not in any way, shape or form explained that I've kicked the can. But then all the sort of, there's a set of rules. They seem like they're a little too perfect. They're a little too finely tuned. You've got the Fermi paradox, which I'll probably ask you about later. All these things are like, no, this is a little sus. The way that this whole space-time is trying to hang together just doesn't really quite complete the circle, including the so much of the energy that makes the universe work is this dark stuff. God, don't worry about that. Feels like a 13-year-old programmer hand-waving it away, telling the teacher like, I just needed something in order to make all of this work. And when I do that, everything also falls into place. Where I'm like, oh, wow. Okay, so I get how they're rendering all this in real time using the same principles that I'm now seeing AI use, pulling things out of the possibility space.","nb_tokens":226} | |
| {"doc_id":"IQefdkl8PfY_75","video_id":"IQefdkl8PfY","content":"Because as somebody developing a video game, I will just tell you, the hardest thing is creating the art assets. So they need something that can render this stuff on the fly and creating the art assets that look good, but are also optimized for the rendering engine because the rendering engine just gobbles resources. So it's like, when I take that view and instead of going, there's this magical thing called consciousness, I'm like, oh, I'm still dealing with God. There's a God somewhere doing something, whatever. There's a thing I don't understand. But space-time being born of a 13-year-old just trying to, like you could literally go to the Unreal Engine store and be like, give me Einstein's physics. Right. And you plunk them in and it would work. He wouldn't even have to know how to program it. Right. He just took it, you know, whatever. Give me what they understood in 2023 and I'll drop it in. Right, right. You know, we'll see what happens. Like, that still works. Exactly, I agree.","nb_tokens":229} | |
| {"doc_id":"IQefdkl8PfY_76","video_id":"IQefdkl8PfY","content":"So what is it that gives you the confidence that the thing that is giving birth to all of this is consciousness itself? Oh, I'm not confident at all. So is it your leading theory? It's just my leading theory. Why is it your leading theory? First, I would agree with you that we could just say that there are some kind of dynamical entities outside of space-time and be agnostic about the nature of those entities, just write down their dynamics and then show how it projects into space-time and we could be good. Absolutely. The reason I'm going after consciousness is two things. Very personal first. I mean, we all have headaches and we have conscious experiences. And so we want to understand what consciousness is. Right. And the standard view right now among my colleagues in the neurosciences is that consciousness is something that's created by brain activity or embodied brains, or perhaps if we're lucky, AIs and so forth. But physics is fundamental, physical stuff is fundamental, and consciousness is a latecomer. If space-time is doomed, if space-time is not fundamental, that whole story of consciousness is out the window.","nb_tokens":235} | |
| {"doc_id":"IQefdkl8PfY_77","video_id":"IQefdkl8PfY","content":"Does physicality go out the window? Let me see if I can answer my own question using your words to see if I understand this. Is physicality out the window if space-time is doomed? You would say yes, because local realism is proven that it isn't. There is no local realism, that all of this is fake. Everything you see and experience, it's all just quote unquote rendered in real time as you engage with it. Therefore, at least in what we experience, because local realism isn't true, physicality cannot be true. That's right. To put it very simply, I don't have neurons right now. If you looked inside my skull, you would see neurons, you would render them. But there are no neurons, right? So neurons do not exist when they're not perceived. So neurons couldn't create consciousness because they're not even there to do it. And nor could particles. Particles don't exist when they're not perceived. Here's where limited minds like mine get tripped up.","nb_tokens":211} | |
| {"doc_id":"IQefdkl8PfY_78","video_id":"IQefdkl8PfY","content":"Because your analogy is so profound and feels so right, and for this to be a simulation, I say to myself, something has to be running the simulation. And I can't get myself outside of that. Something somewhere is going to be physical. That's a hard one for me, too. By the way, I have all the same knee-jerk emotional reactions that everybody else has to this stuff, even stronger. So maybe that's why it's good for someone like me to be doing this, because my emotions don't believe any of this. They don't believe it at all. It's literally only the mathematics pushing me, kicking and screaming at each step. So you have to go with mathematics and what the theories are saying. But I don't find it that intuitive. Maybe I will at some point, but I don't find it that intuitive. So yeah, you could say, we don't need to talk about consciousness. There's just some dynamical entities outside of space-time. Why can't consciousness be a part of the simulation? For all I know, it may be.","nb_tokens":223} | |
| {"doc_id":"IQefdkl8PfY_79","video_id":"IQefdkl8PfY","content":"So maybe this thing that I called awareness, where this prior to any particular conscious experiences, now there I'm completely in over my head. I have no idea what to say about that thing. I literally have nothing intelligent to say. What if awareness is just the qualia of being rendered, of your process being run by the central computer? That's as good an idea as I've ever had, but I don't feel very confident in this area at all. The closest we can personally get is the kind of thing I suggested, go into a quiet room, turn off the light, let go of thought, which is not easy, let go of everything and try to just be aware of awareness. Be aware of being aware and try to sit there with that. And what you find is it's a profound experience. The more you just sit there being aware of awareness without thinking about, you're not, see, the whole point about not thinking is, thinking you're back into the small computational realm. You're back into this really tiny, out of all the infinities, you're back in this little tiny infinity.","nb_tokens":229} | |
| {"doc_id":"IQefdkl8PfY_80","video_id":"IQefdkl8PfY","content":"So letting go, so this is not- Well, we know the headset is computational, right? Well, we don't know for sure. Our current models are, but we haven't proven that- Does local realism not being real mean that it has to be computational? No, it doesn't entail, I mean, so it doesn't entail that at all, no. Now I'm broken again, I don't know how to make sense of that. Right, so how can anything, how, this is interesting, here's my base where I realize I don't know how to escape this. I feel like for qualia to exist, it must be processed. I will even grant that the processing is simply the Markovian dynamics of moving from one thing to another, the switching of states, fine, but it is moving from one state to another, which I will call that processing. Right, it's just not a physical process. And it doesn't have to be a computational process even, it could be functions that are not computational. Yeah, I still- I try not to kill the audience with the things I just can't remember.","nb_tokens":234} | |
| {"doc_id":"IQefdkl8PfY_81","video_id":"IQefdkl8PfY","content":"Well, it hurts me too, I mean, I'm telling you these things, but not because it's easy for me, my head hurts too thinking about these things. Do you have an example of something that's non-computational? I think you gave one earlier, but I forget. Well, so the standard story that you, if you take a computer science class and study the theory of computation, they'll tell you about something called the halting problems. So this is like one of the big problems that, and Turing, I believe, posed it and and showed that it was not computational. The question is this, if you, a Turing machine is like a, a universal Turing machine is like a universal computer, you can give it a program. Turing thought about putting a tape with some punches on it, essentially. So you have this tape reader, and the Turing machine would look at one square on the tape and read that symbol, and then it would change state, and then move left to right and write a symbol. And that's all the universal Turing machine could do.","nb_tokens":222} | |
| {"doc_id":"IQefdkl8PfY_82","video_id":"IQefdkl8PfY","content":"And so the question that Turing asked was, suppose we asked the question, will the Turing machine stop after a finite number of moves? Will it halt on arbitrary sets of these tapes that you're giving it, programs? That's called the halting problem. Will, the question is, is there a Turing machine that can decide, so is there an algorithm that can decide whether this Turing machine will halt or not for any particular given input? So can you tell the Turing machine to stop? Is that the- Well, no. So I should say one more thing about Turing machines. So a Turing machine is going back and forth and changing its state. And when it's done, when it actually is like computed, the square of a number or whatever it is that it's doing, it halts. It goes into what's called a halt state. And so that, when it goes into a halt state, that means it's done. It did the computation. But there are some computations that go on arbitrarily long. I don't understand why. You never come to the end of it. There's some sort of recursive loop in it, by its nature.","nb_tokens":236} | |
| {"doc_id":"IQefdkl8PfY_83","video_id":"IQefdkl8PfY","content":"In fact, probably most. So the question is- So when you say non-computational, you mean something that ends up in that loop? Yeah, where the Turing machine never halts. You give it an input- It never thinks it's done. And it never thinks it's done. So the halting problem is- And most things are like that. I would guess that, yeah, most tapes are probably, you wouldn't halt, would be my guess. But that's not an important point here. I think that's the case, but it's not a central point. The fact is that many won't halt. And so the question that Turing raised was something like this. So is there a Turing machine that can tell you, if it says, given this Turing machine and all of these inputs, whether this Turing machine, which one of these inputs will it halt? And it turns out that there's no Turing machine that can do that. So it's not a computable function. There's no Turing machine that will know which one is going to halt?","nb_tokens":220} | |
| {"doc_id":"IQefdkl8PfY_84","video_id":"IQefdkl8PfY","content":"There's no Turing machine that can tell you that whether this other Turing machine will halt or not on all these inputs. Interesting. So it can never understand it without running the calculation itself? Well, and the Turing machine itself would never halt. The one that was trying to do this would never halt. So it's called the halting problem. So when you take a computer science class, you'll get a much better explanation than I've just given you. But basically, you'll see that there's no algorithm that will tell you whether a particular Turing machine will halt or not on any possible inputs. So when somebody says it's Turing complete, does it mean that it halts appropriately? Or is that something else entirely? That's something else entirely. Got it. Okay. That's crazy. Persistence. Yes. So this is, I think, a key part of my thesis, which is persistence is the hard problem for AI right now.","nb_tokens":192} | |
| {"doc_id":"IQefdkl8PfY_85","video_id":"IQefdkl8PfY","content":"And when I look at the thing that holds AI back from being something that people can implement into their workflows today, it's because it can give you really amazing stuff, but it cannot give you really amazing stuff over and over from different angles and different setups. People are working on it. And by the time this comes out, I'm sure it'll be even better. And a year from now, it'll be a solved problem. But that feels like part of the rule set that you need inside of the headset is to create this sense of persistence. So I wonder if, again, going back to the idea of the headset becomes necessary because you have to create persistence in order for the qualia to be explored, you have to have that. Do you agree with that sense of persistence being a necessary tool of consciousness to explore qualia? First, I'll just say, I think, a concrete example of the persistence is, like, I look up at the moon, and then I look away. And I say, is the moon still there? And you look up, and you say, oh, yeah, the moon is still there. And then you look away, and I look.","nb_tokens":242} | |
| {"doc_id":"IQefdkl8PfY_86","video_id":"IQefdkl8PfY","content":"And so every time I look back, I still see the moon where I expect to see it. That's what I mean by persistence here. And I don't think that we need to have that kind of persistence to have a headset. I think we do. We have that. For example, there's E. coli bacteria. The way I understand, what I've read is that it swims along, and there's some amino acid or something that it's eating. And as long as there's a good gradient of that thing, it keeps going in the direction it's going and eating the stuff. But if things start going south and it's not getting the amino acid or whatever it is it's south and it's not getting the amino acid or whatever it is it's eating, this flagellum that it's using to move forward, it turns it in the other direction, which makes it it's like a random turn. So it just rotates the other way, and that gives it like a random new. So it's like a random orientation generator. It orients. It's a completely new generation, a new direction. And then it starts going.","nb_tokens":236} | |
| {"doc_id":"IQefdkl8PfY_87","video_id":"IQefdkl8PfY","content":"And if it's good, then it goes. So that's a search mechanism. It's a very stupid, but it works for the E. coli. Now, does E. coli necessarily have persistence? I don't know. Yeah, 100%. It must. So right before we started rolling, I had the very good fortune of introducing you to another one of my favorite people, Eric Weinstein. And one of the things that he said to you was that you said, I don't have neurons. And he was like, what? And he had earlier made a statement that you couldn't because you had never met him before. There's no way for you to render him upon entrance because he remained consistent to himself, to me. And that's what I mean by persistence. So if I look at E. coli, let's say I'm the first person to discover it. It will look a certain way. If somebody else, without knowing I discovered it, also discovers it, it will look the same way. If a person... Well, I agree with you on that. My question was different.","nb_tokens":226} | |
| {"doc_id":"IQefdkl8PfY_88","video_id":"IQefdkl8PfY","content":"From E. coli's perspective, I was thinking through the headset of E. coli. So E. coli has its own headset. And I'm just wondering for E. coli, see, it may not need to have this persistence notion because all it needs to know, I'm happy, I'm eating. Wow. So this shows the importance of defining terms. So what I mean by persistence is that you will look the same. So when you look up at the moon and then look away and it gets trash binned in your headset, and then you ask me, is it still there? And I look up and I'm like, yeah, it's still there. Every time I look at the moon, it's going to be the same. Every time you look at the moon, it's going to be the same. And if somebody were to take a photo of that, we would both recognize that photo as being accurate. I completely agree with all that. If I'm building out a simulation, I don't go, here is marker for moon, represented differently to you, but consistently, represented differently for me, but consistently, I go, make the moon persistent.","nb_tokens":240} | |
| {"doc_id":"IQefdkl8PfY_89","video_id":"IQefdkl8PfY","content":"The moon will always look like this. And that way, no matter who discovers it, they would describe it the same. They would see it the same. Rather than me have to be like, oh, you're calling it red. And I have to remember that red is different for this guy. And so it's like, how do you know that red is the same? If this is all simulation, it's obviously the same. Because otherwise, you would have to like program the shit like a thousand different ways. Now, you may experience like additional layer of sentiment about a thing that makes the qualia different. And this sort of gets into your hierarchies of infinity. That fine. But going back to neurons, if I smash somebody's head a million years ago, maybe that's too far because the brain's changed. A hundred thousand years ago, neurons would look the same, even though I don't know what they are. I'm just like, meh, that's when you smash a head, this is what you see. If I smash that same head today, I'm going to see the same thing.","nb_tokens":231} | |
| {"doc_id":"IQefdkl8PfY_90","video_id":"IQefdkl8PfY","content":"Because even if this is all a simulation, there is a level of persistence. And I completely agree with you on that. I was just raising the question, could we come up with a game that was so simple? It was so trivial that in some sense, persistence was irrelevant. I mean, you either are told bad or good. That's all you're told, bad or good. And you do something random. That's what I'm saying. The E. coli- Yeah, you're talking now about behavior. Okay, which- Right. So if we're in agreement on persistence- Yeah, I agree on the persistence. That the, just to say it another way, the simulation is a set of rules, descriptions, assets, like art assets for just an easy way to explain it. And so there's going to be uniformity across everything that uses a headset. They're all going to be the same. So I don't have to like create all these individual things. I agree. Yeah. Then you have a very separate notion, which is the behaviors. And we were talking about this earlier.","nb_tokens":227} | |
| {"doc_id":"IQefdkl8PfY_91","video_id":"IQefdkl8PfY","content":"This still really, I don't know how to understand it. In your paper, and it's probably a good time to now get into the paper. So the paper felt like as a lay person who's interacted with you in an interview format, but never having, I had your book, but again, that was more inviting people into popular science, whereas the paper was like deep mathematics. Felt like a step forward in your guys' certainty of at least how to explain what you think. But one of the ideas in the paper is this action potential. I don't, I can't remember if that's how you described it. So I want to go back to this idea of the, and this is where I sort of started thinking, this makes more sense to me as a 13-year-old programming set of rules than it does a consciousness giving birth to a set of limitations in order to experience qualia, because then every computation has to be about qualia, which I may have said earlier, but I want to say something that I think you actually state in the paper. Okay.","nb_tokens":223} | |
| {"doc_id":"IQefdkl8PfY_92","video_id":"IQefdkl8PfY","content":"If this really is consciousness is the fundamental layer, and all consciousness is trying to do is run the Gödel's incompleteness theorem against all of the qualia that it could experience, and that the headset and our biological experience, which is really just the thing inside the headset, are simply constraints for it to express qualia. All math is, all math is, is the representation of the different elements of qualia. So whether that's probability of given behavior, likelihood of moving from one thing to another, one state to another, that's all math is here to compute. And in the paper you touch on, I'm calling action potential, but that could be my poor memory. I feel like I have free will. I think it's an illusion, but I feel like I have free will. But all of this qualia, if it is true that that's what's really happening, and this is just consciousness running through all the different qualia, it doesn't feel like that to me.","nb_tokens":205} | |
| {"doc_id":"IQefdkl8PfY_93","video_id":"IQefdkl8PfY","content":"So there's some element of the simulation that makes it feel like I'm living a life, and that the qualia is born out of me living a life, not born out of, I don't live a life so that I can experience qualia. But your hypothesis, I think, mandates that my life is the consequence of cycling through qualia and not the other way around. And that's the Markovian dynamics of the likelihood of me going from this state to that state that dictates, that forces my life. Is that accurate? Well, not quite. So there's this complicated dynamics of consciousness going on. And the coin of the realm of our experiences, and that's the hypothesis. So experiences are being shared and triggered. Think like the Twitterverse, right? But what you're tweeting are experiences, what you're receiving are experiences. The consciousness must break into a just metric shit ton of separate entities for this to work. That's right. So we're gonna have this, it's like the Twitterverse is huge, millions of users and so forth.","nb_tokens":218} | |
| {"doc_id":"IQefdkl8PfY_94","video_id":"IQefdkl8PfY","content":"If you look at my Twitter page, right, there's only a small number of people following me and a small number that I'm following. So I'm getting a tiny picture of Twitter. So there's a big social network, a lot going on. If you look at the projection onto Hoffman's little thing, it's just a small little, and if that's all you saw, you wouldn't get a feel for everything that's going on in Twitterverse, because I have very specific interests. I mean, you'd think that everybody likes consciousness and mathematics and is a geek, and they're not. So you would get the wrong picture about what really is the Twitterverse. And so I would think that all the headsets are just projections, like taking the Twitterverse onto one person's Twitter account, they're projections onto a consistent, as you point out, to keep persistence. You might want to have a whole group of them that see the same thing and can both agree that they all agree that there's a red Porsche or something like that in the game. So you could have a bunch of them that have similar projections of the one bigger conscious dynamics.","nb_tokens":237} | |
| {"doc_id":"IQefdkl8PfY_95","video_id":"IQefdkl8PfY","content":"Oh, maybe I should just stop there and see if that's addressed to your question. It has not yet. So what I'm trying to figure out is about action. So I feel like I'm living my life. Oh, am I actually making a choice? Yeah. What do you think, does my life arise out of me taking action and having wants and desires? In fact, that's probably the base way. I would predict, based on how it feels, that the 13-year-old, because I probably make that my things fit better for me if I just assume that you've got a 13-year-old who pulled Einsteinian physics off the shelf to put into the program, and they're just running it based on a set of rules. But it doesn't really matter. But we get to, here's how it feels, that I was given a set of wants and desires. And here's where evolution comes in. So I want to survive long enough to have kids that have kids. And then everything in my life is just an echo of that.","nb_tokens":218} | |
| {"doc_id":"IQefdkl8PfY_96","video_id":"IQefdkl8PfY","content":"It's like a hilariously limited amount of rules that you have to give to me, sort of based around how I stay alive, the desire to stay alive, what I want to quench, hunger, thirst, sexual desire, so on and so forth. And then you just let me go. And when you think of a human as a character in a video game that has certain stats, so you marry those wants and desires with those stats, and then you just let them go. And you see who they bump into and, oh, you're a child of trauma. And so that's going to change your stats. But it's like, you just watch how all that plays out. And so you get, and I think this is why people are really going to struggle with this, isn't an emergent phenomenon. Because when I think about building the game, I am just beating it into the head of the team. We want the community to create emergent phenomena that rises out of the nature of the rule set and the technologies. So I'm not trying to create the emergent phenomena and then hope that the technology is born of that, which is basically what you're pitching, I think.","nb_tokens":245} | |
| {"doc_id":"IQefdkl8PfY_97","video_id":"IQefdkl8PfY","content":"And so I can get behind it when I think, oh, this is just a girdle's incompleteness theorem. So there's an infinite number of things to cycle through. And as long as I grant you that consciousness for whatever reason has a desire to cycle through all of that, then everything does make sense. It plugs in and it works. But then I'm like, wait, the only part of that that then I don't know how to conceptualize, because it could just be that I'm trapped in my headset and I just I'm not thinking about it right. But what I don't know how to conceptualize is that I am living a life. And so to your point that whatever exists outside of the headset has got to explain what's in the headset. And I am living my life. I'm not just cycling from random qualia to qualia to qualia. The qualia that I experience seem mapped so perfectly to the actions that I take, which are clearly influenced by how I feel that I get. But it manifests as I'm feeling tired. Therefore, I go to bed.","nb_tokens":228} | |
| {"doc_id":"IQefdkl8PfY_98","video_id":"IQefdkl8PfY","content":"Therefore, I have the experience of the softness of the sheets versus the consciousness saying to itself, I would like to cycle through the softness of sheets now. So either this is the consciousness has like an agenda and it knows how to create the simulation in a way that's going to yield the best outcome. And so it like sat there like, oh, what would be the best way? Like how it creates humans in the way that it creates humans. It creates life in the way that creates life. It creates day night cycle, which already creates like so many limitations on us and shapes our fundamental evolution and all of that. I'm just like, do you really believe that's consciousness? That set all that in motion? Or is that emergent phenomena out of a simpler thing that consciousness, like if consciousness just gave birth to the laws of physics, then I'd be like, word, this all makes sense. Consciousness just becomes God. Fair enough. But if consciousness in your explanation is anything other than God, I think I'm confused. So great, great question on the free will and then the nature of the origin of this headset.","nb_tokens":234} | |
| {"doc_id":"IQefdkl8PfY_99","video_id":"IQefdkl8PfY","content":"And is it just all pre-programmed or is there room for exploration? That's not quite what I'm saying. What I'm saying is I know it's pre-programmed because the headset, which you have agreed with, has a set of rules. Right. Well, yeah, that does have a, well, a set of probabilistic rules. Yes. But to get there, you need rules. You need rules of probability. You need at a minimum math. Right. So something somewhere, either math is fundamental or consciousness created math as a way to create a set of rules in order to experience qualia, which that is hard to wrap your head around. But is that assumption correct? That assertion, I think, is a better way. Is that assertion correct? I'm not sure. These are deep waters now. So that's why I'm myself now having some difficult trouble. So I would say the free will question first. When I look at our mathematics, I could interpret the Markovian kernel for a given agent as representing the free will choice of that agent. I could interpret it that way.","nb_tokens":228} | |
| {"doc_id":"IQefdkl8PfY_100","video_id":"IQefdkl8PfY","content":"But if I do that, I look at all the others and it's being affected by all the other conscious agents. So my probability space is being impacted by the other conscious agents. That's right. But you could say that just my qualia are being, but my free will is not. But here's the trick is that groups of conscious agents that satisfy certain conditions are also a conscious agent. So that means if I think about all the individual smaller agents as having free will, then this new agent also has, if I think about having free will, I would need to have a new notion of free will that's really quite an interesting one. It's going to be a scale, in some sense, a scale-free notion of free will that can go for- What is a scale-free notion? That it'd be true at all scales, no matter how many conscious agents I put together to make a big conscious agent. I would still be able to talk about this agent has free will, but all of the constituents also have their own free will.","nb_tokens":214} | |
| {"doc_id":"IQefdkl8PfY_101","video_id":"IQefdkl8PfY","content":"My guess is that that might be able to be made to work so that the question is, if I say, is it only the one big consciousness that has free will and we're all puppets, or do all the little consciousnesses have free will, the answer might be both. But there'd be this new mathematics that shows, in some sense, that the free will of the one is made of all the genuine free will choices of the individuals. And so it's not like an autocratic god saying, you must do this. It's rather a god exploring all of its own possibilities, so to speak, freely through all of the components which are also freely interacting. But their free interactions are all part of the one freedom of the one. In other words, I think that there could be a mathematically consistent notion of free will that doesn't say either or, but both and. So we get this scale-free notion. I haven't written it down yet, but that's why I'm saying that these are deep waters. And this is where we're going to have to, to answer your question, we're going to have to go after some deep mathematical theories of what we mean by free will.","nb_tokens":247} | |
| {"doc_id":"IQefdkl8PfY_102","video_id":"IQefdkl8PfY","content":"My guess is that it's possible, but we'll have to see, that we could have genuine free will at the smaller agent level, and that's not incompatible with free will at higher levels, and even the free will of whatever the super, I mean, I can't even describe the one agent. It transcends any mathematical description. So we could never actually get this mathematical model in the final limit that I'm describing, but could we get it in smaller infinities that we can deal with and show that it works there? We can't get to a left infinity, but we can go maybe in smaller infinities and see if it works there and get some hint. Ultimately, I mean, the reason why I said I'm in deep waters is because I know that ultimately I can't answer you. Ultimately, I can't get to a final description of the one agent. I mean, it literally, our mathematics says it transcends any description. So I have to halt and say, I can't tell you, I can only tell you about projections of that one. And from the projections, the mathematics points to the one, but our analytical tools fail us.","nb_tokens":240} | |
| {"doc_id":"IQefdkl8PfY_103","video_id":"IQefdkl8PfY","content":"We can't actually go there. Can you walk me through how the data, how the projections point to the one? And the one being like a, the one God, consciousness, it's like a thing. Yes? Well, again, that's a good question because, I mean, I'm not saying that the data we have uniquely determine this theory, right? Absolutely not. So I would say they point me as a scientific theorist toward this hypothesis. Here I am with conscious experiences, interacting with others that I think have conscious experiences. My physicalist framework can't explain them at all. And so I'm proposing that there are these conscious experiences that give rise to space-time as a interface. And when I write down the most simple mathematical model that I can do for that, all of a sudden that mathematics, I wasn't intending it, but the mathematics points to a single major consciousness that I can never describe. So that's the sense in which I say it was sort of pointed to that.","nb_tokens":205} | |
| {"doc_id":"IQefdkl8PfY_104","video_id":"IQefdkl8PfY","content":"And I would guess that other conscious agents with either interfaces that are not even like our space-time interface, but have mathematical skills, and are looking, coming up against the limits of their own interface and starting to realize, oh, I thought this was real, but this is just the interface, might, under the hypothesis that consciousness is fundamental, might run into the same thing and then get pointed by their own mathematics to a universal consciousness. But again, these are deep waters, and I'm not secure here at all. But I would say that the free will, I mean, I've had good discussions with Annika Harris and so forth about free will. And free will, is it standardly understood? Probably not. But free will in this new sense in which I'm saying that there could be a scale-free notion, a new mathematical model of free will that's scale-free, quite possibly there. And to your point about, it's not dictated, there's exploration, real exploration going on.","nb_tokens":203} | |
| {"doc_id":"IQefdkl8PfY_105","video_id":"IQefdkl8PfY","content":"I would, again, agree that there's real, to the extent that I'm talking about all these little agents having their genuine free will, there's genuine, real exploration going on, even though it's not contradiction to say as well that the one has the free will. See, in other words, in some cases when we think about things, we think it has to be this or that, but when we look at it more closely, we realize that there's a deeper way of thinking about it in which both can be true, and we hadn't thought about it that way. Okay, so if those are deep waters, I'm going to drag you to the bottom of the Marianas Trench on this one. Does consciousness have a form? I would say awareness has no form, but assumes all sorts of conscious forms. Does, I'm trying to sneak up on an idea here, and I'm not sure the right way to ask this, but it's like when you talk about the headset is a simulation born of consciousness itself, it is emergent from consciousness.","nb_tokens":219} | |
| {"doc_id":"IQefdkl8PfY_106","video_id":"IQefdkl8PfY","content":"Because the headset is so specific and acts in a very specific way, and as I think about AI and the way it pulls images forth out of the possibility space, it does it in a certain way. You can create different kinds of AI that do it in slightly different ways, and they yield different outcomes. For the headset that we all experience to be the way that it is, it requires consciousness to be a certain way. What I'm trying to get to is when there is no physicality, how does it ever become a certain way? Because the way that consciousness could act would have to pull from a probability space. But if I'm right about that, then math comes before consciousness. And if I'm wrong about that, I don't understand what sets consciousness moving in a specific direction. Well, I think that there are countless ways that consciousness can create headsets, and it does them all.","nb_tokens":183} | |
| {"doc_id":"IQefdkl8PfY_107","video_id":"IQefdkl8PfY","content":"And so one thing that we have to do to answer your question, and I'm very interested to do this, but it's going to be hard work, is to actually use the Markovian framework of conscious agents and actually write down a dynamical system of conscious agents that constructs our space-time framework, our space-time headsets. Right? So that's how would you, because if there's an infinite number of potential headsets, how would you begin to narrow it down to the headset we actually have? Well, so what we're going to have to do is think about a really large dynamical system of conscious agents, which will never be close to the big one that we really need to get to. So we'll always be starting with a system that's big for us, but trivial compared to the one, but that's all we can do as scientists. So I'll have to start with something that's big for me and then show that it has its own dynamics, which is quite complicated. Now I'm going to make a smaller headset projection of it using part of the agents that are available in it to create that.","nb_tokens":231} | |
| {"doc_id":"IQefdkl8PfY_108","video_id":"IQefdkl8PfY","content":"So there'll be, maybe I'll have like a trillion agents interacting, but I arrange for dynamics of say a billion of them to be creating a particular space-time headset. And then what I would do, so I know because Markovian kernels are computationally universal, I can do that. I can use the whole language of conscious agent dynamics to create a projection into like a space-time headset. I know that they're computationally universal, so I can do that. Now the question is, once I've got that dynamical system and I have some of the agents creating this headset, what happens when I turn that headset and have it look at the whole agent system, and in particular the part of the system that creates that headset? So I'm taking a bunch of agents and their dynamics is creating a space-time interface, but now I use the interface to look back at the only thing that's available, which are agents. That's all that's available to look at. But I want to look at the agents that were particularly interested, that were involved in the creation of the interface. What will that set of agents look like? They'll look like neurons and brains.","nb_tokens":239} | |
| {"doc_id":"IQefdkl8PfY_109","video_id":"IQefdkl8PfY","content":"In other words- Why would they need to look like neurons and brains? Well, for us. In other words, I'm saying- I thought they didn't map like that. Remember neurons are just artifacts of the interface. They're symbols in the interface. Yeah, but pulling from our earlier interviews, and so we definitely haven't talked about it this time and maybe your thinking has changed or maybe I misunderstood your thinking previously, but it was my understanding. I think I was asking you specifically about the moon and I was like, but there's gravitational concerns. It can't not represent something underlying. And you said, Tom, you're making a mistake. This is all a simulation. Gravity is a simulation. The moon is a simulation. You don't need the moon there to simulate gravity, to move tides or whatever. They can just be program rules and that's just how it happens. And I was like, whoa. So why then would the things that create consciousness and thinking look like neurons in my brain? It doesn't seem like they would need to map like that. Well, right.","nb_tokens":226} | |
| {"doc_id":"IQefdkl8PfY_110","video_id":"IQefdkl8PfY","content":"So the moon doesn't need to exist, but there's going to be a systematic relationship between the symbols in your headset and whatever the software is, right? There's going to be a systematic relationship between them. So that tells me, God, I'm really trying to guess how you're going to say this. That tells me, I know this is wrong because I know you don't believe in this, but that tells me that there is physicality to consciousness, that wherever it is, that there is some parallel representation, but that for there to be a physical... God, am I... Help. I can keep making guesses, but I know that I'm hitting dead ends of things that you disagree with. So what am I getting wrong right now? Yeah, I'm not sure yet. So keep guessing then. So what I'm trying to figure out is for there to be a corollary of producing consciousness to actually look like neurons or that... I'm hung up on the word look like. Will it actually look like neurons? Well, so consciousness won't look like neurons, but one could build... I'll put it this way.","nb_tokens":234} | |
| {"doc_id":"IQefdkl8PfY_111","video_id":"IQefdkl8PfY","content":"You could build an interesting interface such that when the interface looks back at the whole conscious agent network that created it, it would see that as if it were neurons and brains in projection. Because that's all projection. It's all projection. So I'm not saying it's necessary, but I'm saying I could easily see making that happen. So when we in the headset smash a brain, look at neurons, we are seeing the representation of what is going on at a deeper level. Outside of space-time. Outside of space-time or a deeper level of the simulation? Outside of space-time, which is a deeper level of the simulation, right? I hope we're using language the same way. Probably not, but you're much more comfortable with that things are not physical even outside of space-time. I see it as it's a maybe different set of rules or something, but that it's still physical, but I accept that. Well, there are rules. There are going to be rules. Physical, I mean, made out of matter inside space and time. That's what I mean by physical. Something that's made out of particles in space and time.","nb_tokens":236} | |
| {"doc_id":"IQefdkl8PfY_112","video_id":"IQefdkl8PfY","content":"My hypothesis, the conscious agents are not inside space and time at all. So they're not physical in that sense. They are rule-governed, and I can say that they exist. Even if I don't perceive them, I could say that they exist. Whereas stuff in the headset is only there when I render it. So maybe we're not disagreeing. And I'm not saying it's necessary that when you use your headset to look at the agents that create the headset that you will necessarily see neurons. I'm saying that we could easily set up a situation, or with some effort, we could set up a situation in which that was the case. In other cases, you might see only a single neuron, for example, if you're a very simple thing, or some other structure. Depends on the nature of your interface. But for an interface like ours, so another way to put it is, here's what I think neurons are. Neurons are our interface looking at the conscious agents that are constructing our interface. That's what neurons are.","nb_tokens":216} | |
| {"doc_id":"IQefdkl8PfY_113","video_id":"IQefdkl8PfY","content":"They're the interface symbols, headset symbols, that our headset gets when it looks at the conscious agents that are constructing the headset. Awesome. So. Okay. So I asked a variant of this question earlier, but I don't think we ever got to the answer. So if, as we make all these breakthroughs, would you stay inside the headset? If you, if you could, there were two paths before you. Path number one is you completely exit the headset. And inside the game world, the simulation, you, your avatar falls over and basically appears dead. But you are now like out chilling with the consciousness. You return to the consciousness as maybe you become aware of your oneness with the consciousness. That feels like the right way to sum up the way you see it. Yes? Yeah, I think that that idea is, can't be dismissed out of hand. I think it's a very interesting idea and I don't have a better one right now. So, so yes, it, the, it feels to me like, um, I'm not my body. My body is just an avatar. If you're in virtual reality.","nb_tokens":235} | |
| {"doc_id":"IQefdkl8PfY_114","video_id":"IQefdkl8PfY","content":"You don't feel that. No, I would. Well, I think that I'll say that I'm very much attached to my body. And if something hurt my body, I would, I would be panicked and so forth. So, so I don't feel like I'm not my body. Absolutely. But, but when I'm, you know, thinking intellectually and coolly about things, if something actually happens to me, if I'm in a car wreck, it's a different story. But just thinking intellectually about it. And maybe if I meditated more, I would actually feel that way. But, but I don't. But just intellectually, it seems, I don't know, I'll have to, I'll just leave it at that. Yeah. So I, I asked that part of it, because what I'm really trying to get to is if you could return to oneness with consciousness or stay in the matrix, but be like Neo, where now, you know how to bend it to your will. Would I? Which, which would you prefer?","nb_tokens":221} | |
| {"doc_id":"IQefdkl8PfY_115","video_id":"IQefdkl8PfY","content":"Well, my, my guess is at death, we take off the headset and maybe we lose a lot of stuff that was in the headset, but we don't, but we're still aware. But we're, we're just not tacked into the headset anymore. That's my, my best guess. And so there I'm completely open to being wrong, deeply wrong. But, you know, there are near death experiences that, that may or may not point to that kind of thing that people have. I'm going to be doing, being part of a, a part of a film where they discuss near death experiences. And so I talk about that possibility in the film from, from this point of view. And, and so, so if I were a physicalist, it's real clear there, you know, if the brain is somehow creating consciousness, then when the brain is dead, there's no consciousness. This other view that says consciousness creates space, time, and brains as, as just headsets has opened to it that my consciousness, my end quotes, the consciousness that's looking through this avatar does not perish when the avatar perishes. That's certainly open to this point of view.","nb_tokens":246} | |
| {"doc_id":"IQefdkl8PfY_116","video_id":"IQefdkl8PfY","content":"That's not what motivated the point of view, but it, but it certainly is open to it. So intellectually, I'm open to the point of view. Emotionally, I fear death. So even though intellectually, it seems quite reasonable, I have the Darwinian fear of death that's, that's wired into me and that's part of the, part of the game. So there's two buttons before you, one, rejoin the consciousness. And let's say for now, that really is what happens. So you would maintain a sense of awareness, but all of your sense of self has gone forever. Um, or you stay in the matrix knowing that it's fake, knowing that you're in the headset, but you have special powers. Which button do you press? Um, I would probably go for the new stuff. I would probably three dimensions of space. One dimension of time feels quite confining to me. I feel like we got a cheap headset and then this is a fairly cheap simulation that we're in and I would love to see what else is on offer.","nb_tokens":223} | |
| {"doc_id":"IQefdkl8PfY_117","video_id":"IQefdkl8PfY","content":"For example, when I'm trying to solve these math, some mathematical problems, I can imagine a three dimensional shape, but I can't imagine a four dimensional shape. And we had to do some of the problems we're solving. We have to look at the geometries of things in six or nine or more dimensions. And we can't just sort of imagine it and, and figure out what's going on. We, we have to crawl our way up to the geometry by theorem proof, theorem proof. We actually have to prove our way. One, so we're like blind men filling the elephant with theorems and proofs to understand the geometry. I would love to have a headset where I could just see in a glance everything about nine dimensional space. And you can't do that with our current headset. And why stop at nine dimensions? Why not be able to just see in 30 or a thousand or a billion dimensions? Do you though think that inherent in the way that you think about that, it still requires you to be you? Cause I, I'll think about this a lot.","nb_tokens":224} | |
| {"doc_id":"IQefdkl8PfY_118","video_id":"IQefdkl8PfY","content":"If you've ever seen the movie Freaky Friday, uh, I think about this a lot with my wife. Like I really, really want to change bodies with her for 24 hours so that she can see what it's like to be me. And I can see what it's like to be her. I think I'd be a much better husband if I really understood, but the reality is the second you change bodies, I would be her and she would be me. There wouldn't be her as me, me as her. And so I, my, even if you're right, here's what I think would happen if you, when you take off the headset, the headset is everything you think of as you. And that even if you're right, that you can meditate your way to moments like that, where you're just pure awareness. One, if you're right, all that the consciousness lives to do is cycle through other qualia. So you would either be reincarnated, meaning that you would just pop back up in a new headset because that's what the consciousness is meant to do is cycle through all this qualia. And so you would refragment yourself back off.","nb_tokens":245} | |
| {"doc_id":"IQefdkl8PfY_119","video_id":"IQefdkl8PfY","content":"You would pop up, you'd be reincarnated, you'd live life again. Or you would return to the borg, the beehive, the ant colony, however you want to think about it. You would be re-instantiated as just pure awareness and all of that loving and clinging and hating and attachment and precious moments and distance and all that, poof, gone. And I find that when people explore these ideas from a religious perspective, they are forgetting that they're mired in the gruesome reality of the human experience. And that to transcend that and be in heaven, for instance, and never experience pain again or whatever, you would be so different. You wouldn't recognize or relate to anybody in the same way. And so I have yet to hear any theory whatsoever other than regrowing your biological organs, where you actually end up cheating death. Everything else is you die, all of the things you love, poof, go away. Maybe you're exchanging them for something better, but make no mistake, everything goes away. Well, these are deep waters again, but here's another take on it.","nb_tokens":231} | |
| {"doc_id":"IQefdkl8PfY_120","video_id":"IQefdkl8PfY","content":"And that is that if you and I are just the one looking at itself through avatars, the one is learning whatever it needs to learn through these avatars, and that's not lost on the one. It is now part of the one. That's in some sense, eternal. And so the reason I would, given the choice that you're asking me to make here, is that my own predilection would be to say, let's go for something entirely different now. Because in some sense that, partly because I'm inquisitive, and I would like to, what is it like to live in a five-dimensional world? What is it like to have 20 dimensions of color and 1,000 dimensions of emotion instead of just a few that we have? What is it like? My feeling is that we have the training wheel set version right now of this stuff, really, really small. And so my guess is, one possibility is that, look, you and I really are this infinite intelligence, this infinite consciousness. That's what we really are. We're peering through, in this case, very, very simple avatars with very, very simple interfaces.","nb_tokens":241} | |
| {"doc_id":"IQefdkl8PfY_121","video_id":"IQefdkl8PfY","content":"And maybe it's the one saying, this is fun. But when I answer your question this way, maybe it's the one saying, yeah, this is great and this is fun, but there's so much more to explore in different dimensions. So I haven't lost whatever I learned in this little interface, and I'm happy for the relationships and the friends and all the things I learned about war and hate and religion and all that other stuff, all the things that go on here. But that's only a mere, in some sense, trivial projection of this entire Cantor's hierarchy of infinities of potential. This is trivial. And the potential is mind-bogglingly infinite. And so my attitude, let's get on with it. Nothing is lost by moving on. And everything is to be gained. You can see, but again, these are very, very deep waters. I'm not talking theorem and proof here. I'm now speaking very intuitively based on the sciences as it is in the very initial steps. I should be very, very clear. I mean, all of science has been about the space-time interface until the last 20 years or so.","nb_tokens":241} | |
| {"doc_id":"IQefdkl8PfY_122","video_id":"IQefdkl8PfY","content":"We're taking our very, very first baby steps outside of space-time. And so almost surely all of the ideas that we're having are going to look very naive a century or two from now. They'll look back and go, yeah, great generation. They were the generation that stepped outside of the space-time interface. Hats off to them. But boy, were their ideas so parochial. They were shedding the interface, but boy, they didn't really understand what they were really doing. That's my guess. All right. I actually want to spend more time in the intuitive. But is there anything from the paper, any sort of grounded mathematics that you think will ground people in your theory more in a way that will keep the intuitive exploration from just spinning off into la-la land? Well, yeah. So I'll just say in the paper I gave you, and it'll come out on June 24th, it's going to be made. And I'll tweet it when it comes out. If you made it this far in the interview, read the paper. Yeah.","nb_tokens":221} | |
| {"doc_id":"IQefdkl8PfY_123","video_id":"IQefdkl8PfY","content":"So it'll be available June 24th, and I'll tweet it when it comes out. It might be a couple days before that. I would say that one of the interesting things we're doing in that paper is we're showing how specific properties of the Markov dynamics of conscious agents map to specific properties of particles like mass, spin, momentum, and energy. And so I'm not saying we're right. But we now have mathematically precise proposals. So I mean, these are words that won't make sense, but mass is the entropy rate of recurrent communicating classes of conscious agents. And just to be clear, what you're saying you can predict now is particle scattering. This is going to be for particle scattering. And by the way, the reason I'm going after particle scattering is not because I have some fetish for high energy physics or something like that. That's the simplest place that we can make our first connections with the interface. Particles are the most elementary things that our interface has. That's why I'm going there. They're the simplest thing. I'm not going for brains first because those are countless quadrillions, trillions, whatever of particles.","nb_tokens":241} | |
| {"doc_id":"IQefdkl8PfY_124","video_id":"IQefdkl8PfY","content":"And so that's not the place to start. Let's see if we can get the mathematics and the experimental data for individual particles. So our paper is proposing, and maybe just so the people can show that we're wrong, we'll see. But we say that mass is so-called entropy rate of the recurrent communicating classes. And that then tells us what are massless particles and what are massive particles. And so we're getting very specific predictions that we're going to be making about momentum and spin and energy and mass. So this is where rubber hits the road. I'm talking all this highfalutin stuff about consciousness leading to the interface. Well, the right questions are, so what is the mass of an electron? What part of your conscious agent dynamics is going to map into what we call mass? What is the spin? Why is there a hyperfine structure in the energy levels of the orbitals of electrons and so forth? We're getting hints at answers to those kinds of questions about the hyperfine structure. So it's really quite interesting.","nb_tokens":215} | |
| {"doc_id":"IQefdkl8PfY_125","video_id":"IQefdkl8PfY","content":"So again, I would be stunned if we're right, but at least we're precise so that we can now begin the whole process of saying, OK, at least these hypotheses are precise. So now we can show their limits, try to prove where they reach their limits, and then move on. Or to show that this is just fundamentally wrongheaded. There's nothing worthwhile. Maybe our definition of mass is just plain wrong. We'll see. But it's intriguing. It's intriguing enough that I have a particle physicist who put his name on the paper with us. It doesn't mean it's right. It doesn't mean that he's convinced that we're right. But we have a real particle physicist who thinks that if it's wrong, it's not obviously wrong, and it's worth pushing on. Right. Yeah, I mean, I hope anybody listening to this understands how the scientific method works. I am constantly trying to tell my team, hey, you need to be fearless in the predictions that you make because you shouldn't hold yourself accountable to always being right. You should hold yourself accountable to always learning and getting a little bit better.","nb_tokens":234} | |
| {"doc_id":"IQefdkl8PfY_126","video_id":"IQefdkl8PfY","content":"So the fact that you're willing to make a precise prediction, your paper is full of mathematics, and it's there for anybody to check. So people will be able to help you find the edges, which is something I've heard you talk about and I really respect about you, is that one, you obviously approach everything with humility. But two, you actively want people to find the edges of your hypothesis, your theory, so that you know where it's wrong so that you can adjust and get more right, which is far more interesting, especially if you sincerely want to understand what's outside of that headset. It's like, well, I would rather realize I'm wrong, find out how to get right so that I can actually begin to explore that possibility space versus think I'm right, but really I'm wrong and nobody ever helps me come to understand why. I really like that and I hope everybody listening takes that on in their own life. I think that that's really important.","nb_tokens":201} | |
| {"doc_id":"IQefdkl8PfY_127","video_id":"IQefdkl8PfY","content":"Okay, so I wanted to make sure that you had a second to lay out the grounding there, that this is something that you're seeing in particle physics, that there really is a there there to pursue, because the intuitive space for somebody like me who's not a mathematician, who while I use the scientific method in business, I definitely do not consider myself a scientist, but pursuing the intuitive things, pursuing the thought experiments feels true to Einstein's encouragement to all of us lay people to focus more on imagination than knowledge, right? To really understand how to begin to think through these things. So one of his famous thought experiments was that in a falling elevator, you would feel like you were weightless. And that ends up being, it took him years, but he ends up finally putting that together with some other ideas that he had intuited, including if you're traveling at the speed of light and you turn on the flashlight, what happens? And in that spirit, you said something as you were describing the consciousness and you as an instantiation of that, only to go back to the one. And you said, well, the one is still learning what it needs to learn.","nb_tokens":240} | |
| {"doc_id":"IQefdkl8PfY_128","video_id":"IQefdkl8PfY","content":"And I am like a dog with a bone with that idea. What do you mean needs to learn? Like when I think about a human, it needs to learn things to stay alive, because it's been given these drives by evolution. But what has set up the consciousness that isn't physical to need anything? My guess, again, we're weighing over my head, but Mike, here we are. The joy of exploration. It's just pre-programmed how it is. It's just, yeah, that the one is the only thing that there is, but it's infinitely changing, infinitely, it's self-exploration. It's really infinite self-exploration and looking and enjoying and ever expanding its understanding of itself. That would be my guess. So you conceptualize it as still moving towards pleasure. Well, that pleasure is just, in some sense, it's different than an evolutionary thing. So an evolution, and I should say also concretely why it's different. This dynamics of conscious agents does not need to have an arrow of time. So there's, that's really interesting. Tell me why, because that doesn't seem true. Okay.","nb_tokens":239} | |
| {"doc_id":"IQefdkl8PfY_129","video_id":"IQefdkl8PfY","content":"The entropy, one can write down a Markovian dynamics in which the entropy does not grow. Straightforward. But it's a theorem, three-line proof, trivial proof, that any projection of that Markovian dynamics that has no arrow of time, any projection of it that loses information, say by conditional probability, it will give you new dynamics. It'll be a projected dynamics of the original dynamics, and that new dynamics will have an arrow of time because of the loss of information. So the arrow of time, so here's my view. Our experience right now of an arrow of time and of the universe with the big bang and then maybe a big crunch or whatever, or entropy death at the end, that whole arrow of time is not an insight at all into what lies beyond space-time. It's an artifact of the projection. And from an evolutionary point of view, right, time is the fundamental limited resource, right? If I run out of time before I get my next meal, if it takes so much time to get my next meal, it's over. If it takes so much time to get my next drink of water, it's over for me.","nb_tokens":239} | |
| {"doc_id":"IQefdkl8PfY_130","video_id":"IQefdkl8PfY","content":"Time is my most fundamental limited resource. So that limited resource of time is not an insight into reality. That's an artifact of projection from a timeless conscious agent dynamics. And that also suggests all the other limited resources, that's all artifacts. So evolution with natural selection is a beautiful theory, but it's the theory of all the artifacts that you see when you do a projection from a realm in which there are no limited resources, there is no competition. But what looks like evolution with natural selection in this projection, it looks like there's an arrow of time. So all of our intuitions right now about learning new stuff, it's going to be very hard for us because our intuitions are deeply shaped right now by our interface where there's an entropy arrow. And in this realm beyond, there need not be an entropy arrow. And so wrapping our heads around what it's like to have the notion of exploration where there's no entropy arrow. Now, I'm not saying I wrap my head around it, but I do know that the mathematics is there that the Markovian dynamics does not have to have an arrow of time in the sense of an arrow of increasing entropy.","nb_tokens":241} | |
| {"doc_id":"IQefdkl8PfY_131","video_id":"IQefdkl8PfY","content":"So, and that's, again, one of the points of doing science with precise mathematics. I get emails quite often from people that I think are very, very bright and have really good ideas, and they don't know how to take them and make them precise. And as a result, you can never surprise yourself. You can never, like Einstein, when he had his idea about, you mentioned the falling elevator and so forth. And so he had that in 1907 or something like that, 1906. And it wasn't, he worked for years to take that idea and make it mathematically precise, 1915. And he learned tons and tons of what at the time was state of the art, fairly new math. It was hard for him, sleepless nights, pulling his hair out, really working hard. He was really working hard to take his good intuition and turn, so he finally wrote down in mathematics in 1915. And a year later, a guy named Schwarzschild wrote back to Einstein and said, here's a solution to your equations. And they predict what we now call black holes. Now, Einstein didn't foresee that.","nb_tokens":240} | |
| {"doc_id":"IQefdkl8PfY_132","video_id":"IQefdkl8PfY","content":"He didn't like it. He didn't believe it. He disbelieved in black holes. He wanted to get rid of them. So Einstein's theory came back and surprised him. And that's why it's so important for us to do science, because what we do is we take our best ideas that we have right now, and then we make them mathematically precise. And then the mathematics comes back and it slaps us in the face and says, here are the implications of the ideas that you started with, implications that you simply couldn't think deeply enough about on your own. But the mathematics can take you where your own just consciousness wouldn't necessarily go. And so here's one of those directions with this notion of conscious agents. The dynamics need not have increasing entropy. And so our whole intuition about an arrow of time need not hold in this realm. So when we talk about the notion of explore, consciousness exploring for the joy of it, we're going to have to rejig how we think about the notion of, for us, exploration is something that happens in an arrow of time. What does it mean for us?","nb_tokens":232} | |
| {"doc_id":"IQefdkl8PfY_133","video_id":"IQefdkl8PfY","content":"Can we wrap our heads around the notion of exploration where we let go of an increasing entropy kind of thing? I don't know if we can. Maybe you just have to let go of this headset altogether to really get that. But is it possible while we're under the limits of this headset to wrap our minds around it? To wrap our minds around it, we can at least get pointers to that idea. Our mathematics led to this pointer. And I would never even gone there unless the mathematics took me there. So I would say that it's just like the amateur astronomer with a pair of binoculars could be brighter than the guy with the James Webb Space Telescope. But he's never going to beat the guy with the James Webb Space Telescope because the guy's got better tools. And that's what science does for you. You may be smarter than Einstein. But if you don't actually put yourself using the tools of mathematics and so forth, that genius will never actually flower in the sense of reaching all the potential implications of what it means. And so that's why we do science the way we do it with mathematical precision because for two reasons.","nb_tokens":234} | |
| {"doc_id":"IQefdkl8PfY_134","video_id":"IQefdkl8PfY","content":"If our ideas are good, we probably don't understand all their implications. And so the math will come back and it'll be our teacher. And second, certainly our ideas have their limits. And it's hard for us to understand what the limits are. And in good cases, the math will come back and tell us what those limits are. So for example, Einstein's theory of gravity together with quantum field theory tell us 10 to the minus 33 centimeters and spacetime is over. It has no operational meaning. Who could have guessed? Could you have guessed? Could Einstein have guessed? Oh, yeah, I have an idea about spacetime. But at 10 to the minus 33 centimeters, it's going to fall apart. Not even an Einstein could guess that. That would only come through taking your ideas, making them, doing the travail. I mean, Einstein really, it was a birthing process. It was apparently very, very hard to give birth to general relativity. And many mathematicians working in physics and so forth say the same thing. You're working in the dark. It's hard. You're struggling.","nb_tokens":235} | |
| {"doc_id":"IQefdkl8PfY_135","video_id":"IQefdkl8PfY","content":"And then all of a sudden, if you're lucky, you get that breakthrough and you see things. But then it comes back and you learn the limits of the basic concepts that you started with. And then you reboot from a new set of assumptions. It's interesting that you say about the set of assumptions. So as we explore this topic, I realized that I think we still have, we each have slightly different assumptions, though. I think that we're talking well about the topic. But take the arrow of time, for instance. So the thing that I find fascinating about the hypothesis that you put forward is for me anyway, I don't have the math to back it up. This is definitely land of intuition. But what I find fascinating is if you're correct, and it's just consciousness is the singular thing. It is for whatever reason, joy, need to pursue, desire to learn, whatever. It's running through all of these qualia. And that the tool it uses to do so is this headset. There's an infinite array of headsets.","nb_tokens":217} | |
| {"doc_id":"IQefdkl8PfY_136","video_id":"IQefdkl8PfY","content":"But the one we're in has learned that there's only certain qualia that can be achieved when there is an arrow of time. And that's why I'm saying when you first said that, I was like, I don't know that that's true. Meaning inside the headset for at least certain types of qualia, it is clear. In fact, the only thing we know is that the qualia that we have access to requires the arrow of time. We presume that there are infinite headsets that provide just unimaginable, unknown types of qualia. But the type that we have directly experienced all require the arrow of time. That's right. And we've been shaped basically by our headset to think that way. And if I ask you to imagine a new color that you've never seen before, you can't do it. I mean, again, it's not because there aren't. I mean, pigeons have four color receptors. Presumably pigeons are experiencing colors that no human could even imagine. And maybe the Manchishrimp is seeing stuff that the pigeon can't. You know, and then the birds that see polarization of light.","nb_tokens":236} | |
| {"doc_id":"IQefdkl8PfY_137","video_id":"IQefdkl8PfY","content":"I mean, they're seeing something that I, what is it like to see polarization of light? I don't know. What is it like to have infrared vision like certain pit vipers? What is it like to actually experience an electric field, to sense an electric field for some fish or creatures underwater? I mean, I have no, what is it like to be a bat doing echolocation? I don't know. I literally have no idea. So these are pointers to me that's, I mean, in the headset, we get all these hints of realms of qualia utterly outside anything that I can completely imagine. So talk to me about near-death experiences. And then I want to get into psychedelics and whether they are simply another form of qualia of what it's like to be a human who's having that experience or whether that's actually melting the human away and revealing something closer to being the one again. But what can we learn from near-death experiences? Do you think it's like a sort of half return to the one or is it just, well, that's what happens in the headset to the brain when you deprive it of oxygen?","nb_tokens":238} | |
| {"doc_id":"IQefdkl8PfY_138","video_id":"IQefdkl8PfY","content":"Well, from a physicalist framework, clearly the latter is the case, right? So from a physicalist framework, space-time is fundamental and consciousness is a product of the brain. And so any experiences of transcendence of things going beyond the headset have to be just the brain malfunctioning in its final throes of death or something like that. But if space-time is doomed, as the physicists tell us, and it's not fundamental, then that leaves open the possibility, it doesn't dictate that near-death experiences are genuine insights into some conscious experiences that transcends our space-time interface. But it certainly is compatible with that point of view. And so I think it's worth, on that framework, to explore the possibility that there are some insights. And I would take any of those reports like we take any kind of eyewitness testimony, right, with a grain of salt. And you try to get corroboration and discount it. But on the other hand, you don't want to just ignore the data either, right? So there's the fine line to be open, to get the insights, but not to jump on anything just because it sort of fits your preconceived conceptions.","nb_tokens":242} | |
| {"doc_id":"IQefdkl8PfY_139","video_id":"IQefdkl8PfY","content":"Most of our preconceived conceptions are deeply wrong. We thought the Earth was flat. We thought the Earth was the center of the universe. We thought space and time were fundamental. Wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong. So we're batting poorly. So anything that, even if we think that consciousness will survive death, what we think about that, the way we think about it is probably wrong. And so what we have to do is, again, be—so that's why I'm being—when I say we're in deep waters here and I'm being very, very careful, it's—these are things that my theory—our theory suggests, but I don't want to be at all a doctrinaire. I think what I should do is make bold proposals, but they're just proposals. And the goal is to be precise so we can figure out whether the proposals are wrong. So yeah, so in that spirit, yeah, near-death experiences may have some good data about transitions out of this interface in that spirit. Are there commonalities of what people bring back? Yeah, there are some commonalities.","nb_tokens":231} | |
| {"doc_id":"IQefdkl8PfY_140","video_id":"IQefdkl8PfY","content":"There's a lot of reports of going through a tunnel, a light tunnel. Some of like a—I think Ray Moody or something like that is famous for categorizing a lot of the similarities in near-death experiences. A life review. And then, of course, the reports we have are of people who came back, so then they came back and so forth. So there are—but there are also some that report, you know, horrific. You know, it's just not all—not all reports are great. So someone that we know personally had a near-death experience and was very, very pleasurable and came back and has no fear—she claims to have no fear of death now. So I don't know. So yeah, I'll be part of the film that's exploring these near-death experiences. It's put out the—I think it's the Langone Medical Center in New York. There are some cardiologists who are—you know, they work with patients who die. But with new cardiology techniques, they can keep the heart and the body from deteriorating for quite a long time now, you know, an hour or so, or maybe longer.","nb_tokens":235} | |
| {"doc_id":"IQefdkl8PfY_141","video_id":"IQefdkl8PfY","content":"And then they can bring these people back. And so this film is partly directed by a cardiologist who's seeing so many of these experiences that he wanted to document what he's seeing in the ER. And again, you know, I'm not going to be doctrinaire about it, but I think it's data that shouldn't be ignored. And how we should interpret it, we should be very careful. Mm-hmm. So if that stuff is real, the prediction that that seems to make is that not only is there a sense of consciousness that remains, but that there is sensory perception that holds out for quite a while. Because at least from the things I've heard, people come back with a sense of either it's peaceful or whatever. But that means that they were able to experience that and retain it. That's right. That's right. Yeah, this gets back— It's quite fascinating, yeah. Again, this is exactly the right scientific way to think about it. This is data, maybe. If it is data, what does it entail about letting go of the headset and what kind of experience we might have afterwards?","nb_tokens":233} | |
| {"doc_id":"IQefdkl8PfY_142","video_id":"IQefdkl8PfY","content":"And is that just a transitional thing, or is it more permanent and so forth? Right. Dude, that is so fascinating. Everything that we've talked about today, the research, all of it has really made me start to question my own thoughts around this idea. The paper's amazing. Where can people follow along with you as you continue this journey? Well, yeah, so I do post on Twitter. My handle is at Donald D Hoffman, H-O-F-F-M-A-N, all one word lowercase. And every time I publish a paper, I put a link to the actual journal article. And then also talks like this, podcasts, anything that comes up, I will post those. So there, you can also, if you're a scientist, of course, you can just go to Google Scholar and type in my name. If you just, Donald D Hoffman, Google Scholar, you can get directly to roughly 120 publications. Awesome. All right, everybody, if you haven't already, be sure to subscribe. And until next time, my friends, be legendary. Take care. Peace.","nb_tokens":225} | |
| {"doc_id":"IQefdkl8PfY_143","video_id":"IQefdkl8PfY","content":"If you want to really go deep into this theme, check out this compilation of my best moments with Donald Hoffman. This gives us possibly a chance to have a language which, for the first time ever, we might be able to formulate a precise hypothesis about what we mean by the word God.","nb_tokens":59} | |
| {"doc_id":"sl3XhHs6ggs_0","video_id":"sl3XhHs6ggs","content":"Yeah, you tell a story in the book about Elon walking in seeing him all long-faced and saying what's wrong. Walk me through that moment. So I was amazed. So I've known Elon for 23 years now. And when Falcon 1, which was their first vehicle, failed on the first time, the second time, the third time, and it succeeded on the fourth time, they miraculously, and timing is everything, got a contract for the Falcon 9, which was a billion-dollar contract. And had they not won that, they may not be here today. But they did. And Elon made an incredible decision that took guts. He shut down the rocket line that just began flying. And there were very few successful operations. He said, focus on Falcon 9. Falcon 9 is our future. And so that went on for some number of years. And I was coming into SpaceX in Hawthorne to have lunch with him. And he was kind of, like you said, long-faced. And I'm like, what's up? And he goes, I just figured out Falcon 9 had been up and operating and doing damn well.","nb_tokens":237} | |
| {"doc_id":"sl3XhHs6ggs_1","video_id":"sl3XhHs6ggs","content":"It's the most successful launch vehicle on the planet by a huge margin. It's like very few, no countries compete with him. He's like the number one spacefaring power. And I said, what's wrong? He goes, I just figured out the Falcon 9 is not going to get us where we need to go, meaning to Mars, right? He's driven by this MTP, this massive transformative purpose, making humanity multiplanetary, getting humanity to Mars. And I need to start afresh. And so that has become Starship. And then he goes on to make a comment that when Starship begins successfully operating, he's going to shut down the Falcon 9 line. Which again, I don't know what the analogy is, but it's like you're the most successful at the top of the heap and you're about to shut down that entire revenue flow. Now, whether or not he does or does not, that was the statement he made. But it's that mindset of focus, of absolute focus. I'm going to do whatever it takes. Dedication to the big goal. Yeah. Okay.","nb_tokens":233} | |
| {"doc_id":"sl3XhHs6ggs_2","video_id":"sl3XhHs6ggs","content":"So as somebody who knows this intimately from the inside of the need to disrupt yourself or somebody else is going to do it, the willingness to look at something and go, okay, we're going to have to start this all over. How do you get your organization on board with that? Because the normal human is going to rebel against that massively. Yes, you don't. You don't. So the only model we found that works at all is to go to the edge of your organization and build a new capability aiming into an adjacent area or a totally separate area. So I remember one of the events, Larry Page came to me and said, hey, I was the head of innovation at Yahoo before building out Singularity. And he came to me and said, hey, your unit at Yahoo is successful. Should I do an incubator model at Google? And I said, no, you'll have this immune system response. The more disruptive an idea we came up with in this incubator, the less Yahoo could handle it. And you're like, my job description is not workable.","nb_tokens":222} | |
| {"doc_id":"sl3XhHs6ggs_3","video_id":"sl3XhHs6ggs","content":"And so part of the result and lots of other inputs was Google X, which is separate going into it. They use hardware to go into adjacent spaces, Google Car, Google X, contact lenses, et cetera. The master of this model of going to the edge and doing something different is actually Apple. And yes, they have a great design capability and a technology supply chain. I argue that Apple's real innovation is organizational. Because what they do, unlike anybody else, is they will form a small team that's really disruptive, put the team at the edge of the company, keep them secret and stealth, and they'll say to them, go disrupt another industry, whether it's watches or retail or payments or glasses or whatever now. So they have a portfolio of teams looking at different industries at the edge in secret. And when they see something, they go into it, and that becomes the new gravity center. And there's hundreds of examples of this. Nestle for years tried to run Nespresso as a line of business, and it just failed. Finally, they set up as a separate entity on its own. Boom, every hotel room in the world has an Nespresso machine.","nb_tokens":243} | |
| {"doc_id":"sl3XhHs6ggs_4","video_id":"sl3XhHs6ggs","content":"And so that's the only model that we've ever seen. There is one more, which is the dictator. It is the larger than life leader who says, this is what we're doing. If you don't agree with me, leave. Do we have a good example of that? Well, Elon and Bezos as well, Steve Jobs, for sure. It's the founder leader. It's very hard to do it in an older legacy company that's hired a CEO. But people, when you have a strong enough MTP and the visionary has a strong enough MTP and they come to work for you, when they come to work for this vision, then they will have faith in you to make those right turns. All right, going back to mindset, how does somebody cultivate that in themselves? If you want to become that guy or gal, what do you do? What is it that an Elon has or a Steve Jobs has that other people can replicate? We close out the book with mindset, and it's the area I'm spending most of my time. I'll phrase it like this for everybody listening.","nb_tokens":228} | |
| {"doc_id":"sl3XhHs6ggs_5","video_id":"sl3XhHs6ggs","content":"If you look at the most extraordinary leaders on the planet, Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Elon Musk, Steve Jobs, Jeff Bezos, I don't care who's on your list, and you asked, what made them successful? Was it the cash they had, the friends they had, the technology they had, or was it their mindset? I think almost everybody would say it was their mindset. Your mindset is how you deal with challenges and opportunities. It's your reaction. It's how your neural net is wired. The question is, if you agree that mindset's the most important thing a leader can have, an entrepreneur can have, what mindset do you have first and foremost? Where did you get it? Then ask yourself the question, what mindset do you need for the world ahead? I posit there's a few key mindsets, and these are what I teach in my Abundance community. First off, a curiosity mindset is fundamental. I know you believe this through and through. Aggressively. Can you go into a little detail on that? When you say curious, what do you mean?","nb_tokens":228} | |
| {"doc_id":"sl3XhHs6ggs_6","video_id":"sl3XhHs6ggs","content":"Curious is a willingness to actually dig and ask and have conversations. In the ChatGPT world, it's everything. It's like, how do I use ChatGPT? Open it up and ask it, and then ask the next question, the next question, the next question. When you have a kid who is asking you questions, go to your 8-, 9-, 10-year-old self in that and just be openly curious and asking as many questions as you can and going down the rabbit hole. Steve Wozniak calls it tinkering. We're in the organization. Can you just tinker and play? What stops people from tinkering or being curious? Time constraint. Quarterly targets. Yeah, doing stuff that they were told is important, not having the time, and I think falling into ruts. A curiosity mindset, especially if you're an entrepreneur, is one of the most important things that you can incubate and have. The second mindset for me is an abundance mindset, and the abundance mindset is there is nothing truly scarce.","nb_tokens":217} | |
| {"doc_id":"sl3XhHs6ggs_7","video_id":"sl3XhHs6ggs","content":"We can talk about this also as first principle thinking, and this is one where Elon and I have had lots of conversations about abundance and that there is nothing truly scarce, that your ability as an entrepreneur to take something that was scarce and make it abundant is what entrepreneurs do great. The perfect example is energy. We used to kill whales on the ocean to get whale oil to light our nights. Then we ravaged mountainsides for coal. Then we drilled kilometers under the ocean. Then we fracked natural gas, but we live on a planet that's bathed in 8,000 times more energy from the sun than we consume as a species. Here's the key point. The energy is there, just not in a useful form yet. Technology takes whatever was scarce and makes it usable. Water is another example. We live on a water planet, for God's sakes. Two-thirds water, but 97.5% is salt, 2% is ice. We fight over half a percent, but there are technologies transforming scarcity into abundance. First principle thinking, I wrote about this in Future is Faster Than You Think.","nb_tokens":229} | |
| {"doc_id":"sl3XhHs6ggs_8","video_id":"sl3XhHs6ggs","content":"When Elon decided to make Tesla, he basically looked at what was the spot price of lithium and nickel and could you get the cost of batteries down from first principle thinking. The answer is yes, we can get it there. Therefore, the cars don't have to be that expensive. That led him to go forward. Long story there. That's abundance thinking. If you have a pie, my favorite example, you have a pie and friends are coming over for dinner. Instead of slicing the pie into thinner and thinner slices, which is a scarcity mindset, you bake more pies, which is an abundance mindset. We're living in a world where you can bake more pies. Everything can be abundant. My whole mission on extending the healthy lifespan is about making time more abundant for people. I'm probably going to take pies out of that equation. An exponential mindset, a moonshot mindset, a purpose-driven mindset, and a gratitude mindset. Other mindsets I speak to, and we could talk forever about those, but there are mindsets that are important for us in this day and age. Yeah, I want to go back to curiosity.","nb_tokens":230} | |
| {"doc_id":"sl3XhHs6ggs_9","video_id":"sl3XhHs6ggs","content":"When I think about what derails my team, I love them to death, but one thing that I've encountered over and over is when people's ego gets tied up in being right and they're not just obsessed with finding the right answer, it's because I think they have not yet accurately identified the way the world works, which is that if you are obsessed with being right, you will be wrong most of the time. If you're obsessed with identifying the right answer, then you can actually make progress. This was certainly the trap that I fell prey to in my early 20s that is like a demarcation line in the sand my life before I realized that if I built my ego around being willing to stare nakedly at my inadequacies and figure out what the right answer is, instead of trying to position myself to look smart, that I could actually move forward. That switches everything because there's not only no emotional friction to admitting that you're wrong, there's like a little twinge of excitement of like, oh, I've gotten this far being wrong and now somebody's going to remove the scales from my eyes. Now I really can make this forward momentum.","nb_tokens":240} | |
| {"doc_id":"sl3XhHs6ggs_10","video_id":"sl3XhHs6ggs","content":"But man, I really like, I, for all the time that I spend on camera telling people how to think in this way, I find it very hard to get somebody who isn't ready for that to like hear it, make that switch and change. If you guys have the magic words, I'd love to hear. So actually, this is music to our ears in a sense, because organizationally, individuals are pretty good. We have a lot of tool sets for transforming individual thinking, Tony Robbins, NLP, psychedelics nowadays, etc., to change your own mindset. But the groupthink that comes inside an organization is really hard to change. And what we found in EXOs, the characteristics that add up to an exponential organization, by default, have it be embracing of this mindset. So one of the ways we talk about what we've done, in the same way that a Tony Robbins, you go in there and you completely change your subconscious state from A to B, right, from a scarcity to an abundance, whatever, we're able to do that at the organization level. We can take an organization that is old thinking, stuck in particular markets, etc.","nb_tokens":240} | |
| {"doc_id":"sl3XhHs6ggs_11","video_id":"sl3XhHs6ggs","content":"And you open it up using a combination of these characteristics, the mindset, the MTP, etc. So we've learned how to do- Introduce ideas, but how do you get them to actually- Let me give you the hack. I learned this from Astro Teller. I had him on stage at A360 a few times and he shared with something that I love. You're in the midst of developing a product. Everybody's absolutely sure of what's going on and how you're going to launch it, how it's going to work. And you hand out a piece of paper to everybody and you say, listen guys, it's six months from now and the product has just failed and you know why it's failed. Write it down. You know exactly why it's failed. Write it down right now. And you are incentivizing someone to actually flip their situation and look at the flaws and elevate those. And then you go around the room and review why people say it's going to fail. And if you've got two or three people saying the same thing, maybe you've got to look at that. Test that one first. Yeah.","nb_tokens":235} | |
| {"doc_id":"sl3XhHs6ggs_12","video_id":"sl3XhHs6ggs","content":"The other one we've come across that's a great hack is Amazon. They created something called the institutional yes. Have you ever heard of this? So they realize in any big company, it's really easy to say no. One of 20 people can say no, it'll kill the idea. Whereas if you're in a startup and you go to one investor and they say, yes, you're off to the racist side, you deal with that impedance mismatch. So they came up with a policy so that if you're inside Amazon, you come to me with an idea and I'm your boss, I'm not allowed to say no. My default answer must be yes. If I want to say no, I have to write a two page thesis as to why it's a bad idea and post it publicly, right? So they've created friction and embarrassment to say no. It's much easier for me to go, go ahead, you'll fail at the next level anyway. And actually one of the outcomes of this policy was Amazon Web Services, nothing to do with their strategy, not on the roadmap, but nobody could figure out how to say no to it.","nb_tokens":238} | |
| {"doc_id":"sl3XhHs6ggs_13","video_id":"sl3XhHs6ggs","content":"And now it's one of the most successful products of all time, delivering I think 75% of their global profits. Because nobody could figure out how to say no to it, right? So we found a collection of little hacks and cultural transformations and companies that allow you to basically operate in this new modality, being very curious, purpose driven, constantly testing assumptions, using small agile teams, operating at the edges as autonomously as possible, and then getting the business of the organization done. Wow. I love that so much. I've taken a lot from Bezos over the years, like he's got some really amazing ideas. I do have to chuckle a little bit that this business genius still got taken down by dick pics, but just the human mind is absolutely hilarious. You're all frail. But yeah, none of that, look, I don't even throw shade at the guy, get it, live your best life. But that's really brilliant. And I will implement that immediately. Yeah. We've had the luxury of watching hundreds of big companies deal in different ways, right? And it used to be the big companies were terrible at this.","nb_tokens":237} | |
| {"doc_id":"sl3XhHs6ggs_14","video_id":"sl3XhHs6ggs","content":"And then about five or seven years ago, they got started getting better. So instead of Google or Yahoo or somebody saying, we're just going to compete with that little startup, they would just buy them. Zuckerberg saw that he was going to get disrupted by Instagram and WhatsApp, et cetera, bought them instead. And in general, you should leave them alone. Over time, the corporation can't handle it, gets as grubby finger as mess, and then they tend to typically kill it. But we're starting to learn now. If you look at, say, Google with LLMs, they were actually too scared to release them. And Amazon just went, let's just go for it. And boom. And I was like, open eye. Oh, sorry. Microsoft. I was like, Amazon? Sorry. Sorry. Microsoft. What about Bard? What do you guys think about Bard? How's it going? Very impressive. I haven't touched it. We've been playing with it. It's very impressive. It's early days yet.","nb_tokens":217} | |
| {"doc_id":"sl3XhHs6ggs_15","video_id":"sl3XhHs6ggs","content":"I'm finding fun doing stuff on OpenAI and at Bard at the same time and comparing them. And there are a few places where OpenAI failed and Bard succeeded and vice versa. So they're both useful. And what I'd like to mention, if I could, just because I want to go back to the thesis on the book. Again, our mission is to give people who are running large scale companies who want to survive the next 10 years a series of, this is what you should do if you want to reorganize your company. And if you're a startup, this is what you should do to be able to thrive in this decade. Because the world has changed. Fundamentally, how you start a company today and how you succeed today is very different than 30 years ago. It's very different than six months ago. True. That's crazy. It scares me. We've really just lived through the most disruptive six months. Nothing has ever more instantaneously impacted my business model, the way that I approach my employees ever than the release of AI. I mean, no, honestly, that did not impact my business nearly.","nb_tokens":235} | |
| {"doc_id":"sl3XhHs6ggs_16","video_id":"sl3XhHs6ggs","content":"It did like the day to day as you're not seeing people, but the fundamental way that we ran our business. I mean, we're in a world right now where every doctor in the world is freaked out if they see this and every lawyer in the world is freaked out. Every teacher in the world is freaked out. I love the fact that OpenAI, ChatGPT passed the US medical licensing exam two months after it was launched. And the bar exam. That's crazy. It passed the Turing test. That was the one I didn't see coming, the signing of the, hey, let's slow down letter. And so I had Yoshua Bengio on the show. He's considered the godfather of AI. And I said, hey, your name was on that. What made you sign it? And he said, in no uncertain terms, I did not expect it to pass the Turing test as fast as it did. That set off every alarm bell that I have and pumped the brakes. This is the thing that we find most interesting because we've known Imad and all these guys for a while.","nb_tokens":232} | |
| {"doc_id":"sl3XhHs6ggs_17","video_id":"sl3XhHs6ggs","content":"They are blown away by the success of these models. So that's really fascinating that the folks themselves are just blown away. And it's still early days. Ladies and gentlemen, it's still early days. We're going to see so much more coming and the recursive nature of self-improving capabilities. I showed this work done where a group of physicians were shown these case studies to diagnose a patient. And it was like they took 55 minutes and got 60% right. And the AI took like 12 minutes and got 85% right. And the physicians are going to change next year, but the AI will get much better and will be seconds and 100% right. Bro. Yeah. Yeah. This is where this gets really interesting. So I know you have another company, Fountain Life. You guys are using AI. Are you open to talking about this? Yeah, sure. So longevity, I couldn't be more obsessed with the idea. And so as you were talking about it, my first question is, how are you guys going to start getting the patterns down? Because to me, this is the big thing.","nb_tokens":232} | |
| {"doc_id":"sl3XhHs6ggs_18","video_id":"sl3XhHs6ggs","content":"You talk to somebody like Peter Attia and he's like, look, it is just next to impossible to do really good studies on diet and nutrition. What works, what doesn't work is just too many confounding variables. And I was like, AI is going to answer that. Like it can pull a pattern, anything that can be reduced to a pattern, they can figure it out. Regardless of like amount of variables, if there is a pattern to be had, it will suss it out. And given that we have some people that live to 120 and some that don't, there is a pattern. Yeah. Yeah. And I'll put it this way. You, there's a lot of interesting things. Not only are there some people who live to 120 and some people who make it to just 65, there are large species on this planet, like the bowhead whale that lives to 200 years or the Greenland shark that lives to 500 years. And my question is, if they can live that long, why can't we? And I said, it's either a hardware problem or a software problem. All right.","nb_tokens":235} | |
| {"doc_id":"sl3XhHs6ggs_19","video_id":"sl3XhHs6ggs","content":"And we're going to understand that this decade is the decade we're gonna understand that it's going to be AI and quantum technologies that give us that insight. Check out this interview with my friend, Peter Diamandis about AI and the future of business and technology. So every part of your team, right? There's going to be AI supporting sales and marketing. We're all going to have in the near term, an AI co-pilot and AI that helps you do your job better. And we're all going to have in the near term, an AI co-pilot and AI that helps you do your job better. And we're all going to have in the near term, an AI co-pilot and AI that helps you do your job better. And we're all going to have in the near term, an AI co-pilot and AI that helps you do your job better. And we're all going to have in the near term, an AI co-pilot and AI that helps you do your job better. And we're all going to have in the near term, an AI co-pilot and AI that helps you do your job better.","nb_tokens":236} | |
| {"doc_id":"sl3XhHs6ggs_20","video_id":"sl3XhHs6ggs","content":"And we're all going to have in the near term, an AI co-pilot and AI that helps you do your job better. And we're all going to have in the near term, an AI co-pilot and","nb_tokens":45} | |
| {"doc_id":"60U-wLfB8iU_0","video_id":"60U-wLfB8iU","content":"Panic is not any kind of mode to be in if you actually want to solve issues. Climate change is a problem, but it's not going to be the end of the world. You wrote a book called Best Things First. And we'll definitely get into the specific things that you recommend. But even more importantly than that, what I liked about the book is that you're helping people take a new way of thinking, which I think is incredibly important. So I want to linger for a second on the strategy that's being deployed right now. I think you and I agree that for the most part, I'll be very generous and say I think people are well-intentioned, but it does not seem to be working. So I want to, what do you think is their point? Are they trying to scare people more and more and more because they think that's the only way to get people to act? If you listen to all those stories, you would be panicked. I totally understand why people think, oh my God.","nb_tokens":210} | |
| {"doc_id":"60U-wLfB8iU_1","video_id":"60U-wLfB8iU","content":"But what you need to understand is that if you actually look at the data, most things are getting better and better around the world in pretty much all kinds of ways, both in obvious ways. We live longer, not shorter. We're better off. We're better educated, all these things. And there's still lots and lots of stuff that needs to be done. We're not nearly well educated enough. We're still dying needlessly from lots of different things. And yes, climate change is a problem, but again, not the end of the world. How many people die from climate-related disasters? Well, we have pretty good data over the last 100 years for people dying from floods, droughts, storms, and wildfires. If you look at how many people die, it used to be about half a million people each and every year on average in the 1920s. Today, that number is down to around 18,000. So we've seen a reduction of about 97% in deaths. This has very little to do with climate, but everything to do with the fact that we've become much smarter. We've become much more resilient.","nb_tokens":238} | |
| {"doc_id":"60U-wLfB8iU_2","video_id":"60U-wLfB8iU","content":"We've lifted a lot of people out of poverty. And that means they can actually afford to make sure they don't die from these very preventable problems. And that's, of course, the crucial point. Climate change will create more problems, but it'll create more problems in a world that's headed in the right direction. It'll simply slow progress slightly. That's a very different kind of thing than saying it's the end of the world. So I think these guys, so Greta Thunberg and others, are just simply scared because they see this in the media picture. You also ask, why are a lot of other people pushing this agenda? If your thing is global warming or something, you want people to spend money on that. And so you're going to push all the stories that give you more leverage on that front. So hold on, because there's an assumption that you made there, and I think this is part of the problem. So what I want to tease out, and honestly, I'm talking to myself as much as I'm talking to anybody. I have lately become very paranoid about AI.","nb_tokens":230} | |
| {"doc_id":"60U-wLfB8iU_3","video_id":"60U-wLfB8iU","content":"I'm normally a super optimistic guy, and I can just feel the pull of my concern. And I have a rule in my own life where I distrust my own emotions. And when I, the reason I distrust my own emotions is I know that I have a negativity bias. I know that I am going to be way more likely to believe that something negative is true. I know that I'm way more likely to click on a link that says that we're all going to die. Like, I get it. And as somebody building a YouTube channel, I know that if I put a way more, like, doom and gloom, terrifying headline that people are going to click on it. But going back again to your book, Best Things First, the thing that draws me to you, and I really do want to stay on this point for a second about the way that people think, how to get them to take action, what the right actions are to take. I think it is important to understand why we are where we are first so that people can begin to unwind it. Okay, so I'm talking to myself.","nb_tokens":228} | |
| {"doc_id":"60U-wLfB8iU_4","video_id":"60U-wLfB8iU","content":"What I'm trying to say is, okay, look, you have a negativity bias. People are going to try to rile you up through the negativity because that is the thing that's going to get you to take action. But what you just said, if you're somebody who's really gotten sucked into this, your mind is taken over by the panic and you think, I want people to spend money on my problem. That, to me, is where this breaks. And this is where, as an entrepreneur, I, in fact, I just tweeted out today, I'm not trying to motivate or inspire people. I'm trying to empower them with goal-oriented solutions that actually work. And so it's that that actually work thing that I think we have to tease apart. So my point here is, I don't think, I really hope that people don't want you to spend money on something. I hope that money spent for them is a proxy for that's how we get results. And I think the very problem is we have to get people to stop talking about, this is where I want you looking, this is where I want you spending money and asking themselves what actually works.","nb_tokens":242} | |
| {"doc_id":"60U-wLfB8iU_5","video_id":"60U-wLfB8iU","content":"Does that make sense? Yeah, it totally makes sense. And this, of course, is exactly the way that I would think as well. You know, it's about where do you get the biggest bang for your buck? Where do you actually get a lot of efficiency for every motivation and time and money spent rather than where you don't. But I think, so what I was trying to talk about is if you've sort of gotten engulfed in this one thing that's gonna doom mankind, and that could be climate change, or it could be AI, then clearly you think there's a big meteor hurtling towards earth. There's nothing else that matters. So I get that idea. And that's why I think we need to sort of take a time out and say, well, that's not actually the case. Certainly not for climate change. I would actually, I don't know if you know those guys. There's a, it's an existential threats center at Oxford University. They've looked into this and they would probably agree with you a lot more with AI. This is not at all my thing, but that is actually something we should be concerned about.","nb_tokens":239} | |
| {"doc_id":"60U-wLfB8iU_6","video_id":"60U-wLfB8iU","content":"Toby Ord makes a very sort of rough, what is gonna kill mankind this century. He has a climate change, probably has a one in a hundred chance of doing that. AI could be a third, you know, 33%. That's a pretty big thing. So clearly over the century, we should probably be spending more time looking into that. I have nothing smart to say about that. That's just not my thing. Well, so I'll beg to differ with you on that. So I have often heard people in my position that are on camera for a living say, look, the way that I protect myself is I just never talk about things I don't know about. And I think that's the wrong approach. So the reason I believe that, so I, for a while, I was teaching a business class that I called business decision-making. The reason that I taught that class, because it is hard to convince people that that is the class they need. Because if I said copywriting, a hundred million dollar copywriting tactics, people will sign up for that class all day long.","nb_tokens":225} | |
| {"doc_id":"60U-wLfB8iU_7","video_id":"60U-wLfB8iU","content":"Now, the reason I don't teach that class is that you can hire somebody else to do that. But if you wanna be an entrepreneur, you have to be able to think through novel problems. So meaning not only a problem you've never thought about before, a problem no one has thought about before. Now, correct me if I'm wrong, but what I see you doing in your shift, because everything that I know about you up until Best Things First is climate, climate, climate. But Best Things First does not read like a climate book at all to me. So I was like, ooh, here is a guy that, again, I'm gonna put words in your mouth for a second, and then you can speak for yourself. So here's how it feels from the outside. And for people that don't know, you and I met 90 seconds before we started rolling. We do not know each other at all. But reading your book, watching a ton of interviews, all of that, the thing that I put together is you beat your head against the climate thing for ever and ever and ever, and it didn't work.","nb_tokens":234} | |
| {"doc_id":"60U-wLfB8iU_8","video_id":"60U-wLfB8iU","content":"And you now have stepped back to say, the point I've been trying to make this whole time is you just have to prioritize. And so I think, so going back to just to tie these ideas together, I don't think you should at all worry about talking about a subject that you don't know, as long as you're approaching it from a framework of thought perspective. Here is how I would approach that problem. Because my gut instinct is that trying to tell people that there isn't an asteroid hurtling towards Earth in the form of AI, in the form of climate change, whatever, that's a losing proposition. People are in the grips of panic. So now my thing is just like, cool, there's an asteroid hurtling towards Earth. It is climate change. Now, what do we do about it? Now, I understand the nuances of your argument well enough to know the reason that you're trying to deescalate people is because when panicked, you make short-term decisions because if you think we're only going to be here for five years, you only think about solutions that can be enacted in five years. So I get that.","nb_tokens":235} | |
| {"doc_id":"60U-wLfB8iU_9","video_id":"60U-wLfB8iU","content":"But I want to stay at a 30,000 foot view on the way to think through a novel problem first, and then we can sort of get sucked into the weeds. For people listening, we are going to go through the 12 things. We're going to talk about what you need to do. But I want to do it as an example of how to apply your framework of thought against incredibly difficult novel problems. So one, how does that sound in terms of beat my head against the wall with climate forever and ever, and now I'm just switching my pitch up. Instead, I'm going to get you excited about things that will actually work. And it is a bit of a magic trick of like, okay, I'm just going to take you over to the thing that is going to hopefully get you excited about saving millions, potentially billions of people with way easier solutions. So there's a lot of truth to this. I should just say, I've actually been doing both. So I've both been talking about climate for the last 20 years, and I've been talking about all the other problems like tuberculosis and education in the third world for at least 18 years or thereabouts.","nb_tokens":245} | |
| {"doc_id":"60U-wLfB8iU_10","video_id":"60U-wLfB8iU","content":"So, but the point is everyone in the rich world only ever want to talk about climate change because that's what interests people in the rich world. Whenever I talk in the poor half of the world, they all want to hear about all these solutions. So in that sense, I'm just happy that best things first is the first real chance I've gotten to make this argument for everyone else as well. So I've been trying to do both things at the same time. And I think it's the same, it's the flip side of that coin. Look, climate change is a real problem, but we shouldn't let that dominate so much that we end up only spending money or primarily spending all of our resources there. Just like TB and, sorry, tuberculosis and education and all of these other things are big problems, but they shouldn't suck up all our attention. They should suck up some of our attention and we should spend it correctly. And so I'm basically trying to say, worry less about climate, but be smart about it. And there are some amazing ways you can actually help fix climate change, but likewise, be maybe a little bit more concerned about tuberculosis and education than we are right now.","nb_tokens":246} | |
| {"doc_id":"60U-wLfB8iU_11","video_id":"60U-wLfB8iU","content":"Oh, but there are really, really smart ways to do that and here are some of them. So I think it's the same sort of approach as simply to say, what works? What do we know actually work? And I think that's probably the difference between what I've been talking about in the book and I've been talking about the last 20 years. There are a lot of things we know either work or don't work. On the AI side, I'm a little worried. And again, I'm talking a little bit out of my field, but my sense is we don't know what works and what doesn't work in the same way. So it's much more sort of a probing place. And that's, yeah. So I like to sort of basically support myself on all these other smart guys who've actually already looked across the field and said, you know what, that policy in climate doesn't work. You know what, that policy for tuberculosis is incredible. But I haven't seen anything that says in AI, this is what stupidly doesn't work or this is what really works.","nb_tokens":227} | |
| {"doc_id":"60U-wLfB8iU_12","video_id":"60U-wLfB8iU","content":"It seems more like a nebulous kind of, we worry, but we're not quite sure what to do. And then I'm not the right guy to come because I basically just try to say, here's a lot of peer research that shows us this is dumb, this is smart. Let's do the smart stuff first. Yeah. So that's why I think you're the guy to talk to. And I get it. Look, I get the impulse that maybe one day I will get drugs so much in the public sphere that I'll be like, I give up. But business has taught me one immutable truth. You must learn to think through novel problems, which means you need a rubric by which you think through things you have not yet encountered. So I would not expect you or right now, quite frankly, anybody to know what the answer is to AI for sure, maybe not even to climate change. But I would very much expect there to be a bifurcation between people that know the data and then people that simply know how to approach the problem.","nb_tokens":218} | |
| {"doc_id":"60U-wLfB8iU_13","video_id":"60U-wLfB8iU","content":"And so I beseech everyone watching this interview, you may not know the data on a subject, but if you can build a rubric by which you know how to approach a problem, then you really have something. So that's what I want this interview to be that you and I are going to approach these very difficult problems so that we can expose the way you think. Again, I don't know you personally, but you have quickly become one of the people where I'm like, whoa, I see the way by which you approach problems and I find it very, very useful. One of the things you've said that I think will be a big theme as we talk today is data is my religion. I don't even know if you remember saying it because it was like an offhanded comment to somebody that was like trying to push you in a different direction. You were like, I don't know anything about religion. Data is my religion. I was like, oh word. So I took that note and I was like, yes. So as an entrepreneur, if your data, if data isn't your religion, you will fail. Like that is just a guarantee.","nb_tokens":242} | |
| {"doc_id":"60U-wLfB8iU_14","video_id":"60U-wLfB8iU","content":"Okay, so framing the problem within that idea, I want to start building the basis by which I think people ought to approach hard problems and you let me know if this makes sense to you. So first and foremost, I don't think you can have a conversation about solving any problem until you say what I'll call your North Star. What is your North Star? Meaning what are you optimizing for? Because earlier you were saying, I just want to do what works. What do you mean works? So like you have to define that. So one I would like to know, what is your North Star? And when you say do the best things first, the best for what? Yes, that was a very good question. That is really the fundamental point. So what I really try to get people to think about is there is a methodology that has been used for at least half a century, which is called benefit-cost analysis. That basically tries to look at how much does a solution or a policy or something cost and how much good does it do? And I'll get back to just defining what exactly is good.","nb_tokens":226} | |
| {"doc_id":"60U-wLfB8iU_15","video_id":"60U-wLfB8iU","content":"But it sort of makes sense if you just think about it without probing too deeply. We all do this in our private lives. And if you run a business, clearly you need to ask, how much is this going to cost? How much good is it going to deliver? And then get a ratio. That's why we typically talk in sort of, you spend a dollar and you get how many dollars of good for the world back. So the basic is really, really simple. Then the question is, what is the good? The cost is typically fairly obvious. That's often that you actually have to hand out dollars. It's also that you have to spend time. You have to spend other people's time. You have to inconvenience them in a lot of different ways. And we have a lot of ways that we try to calculate that. But mostly it's just cost. But the benefit side is a different thing. And that's where you say, good, good for who? What is it that works? And there, again, economists have spent a long time on doing this.","nb_tokens":222} | |
| {"doc_id":"60U-wLfB8iU_16","video_id":"60U-wLfB8iU","content":"It's not the same thing to say that they're all right or this is the only way to think about it. But I think it's a pretty reasonable way to try to estimate it. So we say, look, there are three important things in most people's evaluation of what's good. It's good if you can save people's lives or save them from having pain or suffering in some way or another. That's the social impact, if you will. Then it's good if you can save the environment. That is, you have more wetlands or you have less pollution or something that you don't kill off species, those kinds of things. So environmental benefits. And then it's good if you get people out of poverty, if you give them more resources, they have more opportunity. That's economy. Or as the UN likes to say, it's people, planet, and prosperity. So it's a way to try to say there are these three different areas. And we try to model those very specifically. So for instance, for people, we try to estimate what is the value of saving, on average, one human life.","nb_tokens":233} | |
| {"doc_id":"60U-wLfB8iU_17","video_id":"60U-wLfB8iU","content":"Now, very clearly, most people would tend to say, but that's infinite. But if you actually, if you're going to spend money and try to see, if I spend money here, I can save, on average, one life. And if I can spend money here, I can save three lives. Then it's kind of obvious. I should probably do the three lives. But if you could also spend that money, say, on education or something else, and make people $30,000 richer, then what should you do? Well, we probably all agree, well, you should save three lives rather than make $30,000. But what if it was $30 million? Would that be better? At some point, there's going to be a changeover, certainly $30 billion. We'd probably say, yeah, we should probably do the $30 billion. And we do this all the time in public works, for instance. You have states deciding. I come from a place here in Sweden where the state runs a lot more. So excuse me if I'm running a little afoul of some of the US-centric ways of thinking about it.","nb_tokens":239} | |
| {"doc_id":"60U-wLfB8iU_18","video_id":"60U-wLfB8iU","content":"But the state will go in and say, here's a pretty dangerous traffic area where there's an intersection. And there's quite a number of people that die. If we put in a roundabout, or do you call it a traffic circle? We do. We call it a roundabout. But we basically don't have them. So I'm married to a Brit, so I'm very familiar. But the average American is like, what? Yes. But so you drive around in a circle instead. It slows you a little bit down. But it also pretty much excludes all accidents. So you can save people's lives putting in a roundabout or a traffic circle. But it also has cost. It has cost in actually putting it up. And it also slows people down. There's a very clear trade-off. And lots of people, the Department of Transportation in the US and many other places, actually have very clear routines for how much are they willing to pay to put up this roundabout or put a center divider into a busy road so people don't accidentally go into the opposing traffic and cause huge traffic.","nb_tokens":227} | |
| {"doc_id":"60U-wLfB8iU_19","video_id":"60U-wLfB8iU","content":"Let me ask you something, though, that I think some people are going to be thinking. Is it not evil to put a price on human life? It feels evil. It feels like surely you shouldn't be doing that. But not doing that. And I think that's back to your sort of 30,000 feet view. Not putting a price on human lives, just saying everything is important, gives you no direction. Because what we're really trying to do is to give you a sense of how much good will you achieve if you spend a dollar here, where you'll have some people that are lifted out of poverty, some environmental benefits, and some lives saved, compared to this other place where you can get the same sort of things but in different proportions. How are you going to compare those two if you don't actually make it into an explicit conversation about how much are you willing to do? And I think it's also important to say, we all do this individually. One way to say that is if people take more dangerous jobs, they ask for a wage increase. This happens universally.","nb_tokens":224} | |
| {"doc_id":"60U-wLfB8iU_20","video_id":"60U-wLfB8iU","content":"But people are also happy to do a more dangerous job if you get what the Brits call danger pay. If you get a little more money, all right, then I'll take a little more risk. Or perhaps the best way to look at it, you're willing to cross the street to buy a candy bar. But crossing the street has a non-zero risk of death. You're essentially saying, I'm willing to take on a slight risk of death to have candy. And we do these things all the time. I am a freak for efficiency. So let me tell you, I am always on the hunt for clothes that can work in any setting. The bad news is most traditional pants do not have that kind of versatility. But bird dogs were designed to meet that exact need. They were created to be your go-to pants for any and every activity. Bird dogs are made with a cloud knit fabric that looks just like khaki, but stretches with your every move. And their built-in liners use anti-stink sweat-wicking fabric that I know a lot of you boys are gonna need to keep cool and dry all day long.","nb_tokens":231} | |
| {"doc_id":"60U-wLfB8iU_21","video_id":"60U-wLfB8iU","content":"With bird dogs, you can go out, work out, meet with clients, kung fu fight, go to an event, whatever. They've got you covered and you can do it all without having to stop and change. Go to birddogs.com slash impact or just enter promo code impact for a free Yeti style tumbler with your order. You won't wanna take your bird dogs off. We promise you that. So I'm obsessed with something I call frame of reference. So we all have a frame of reference that is built of our beliefs and values. Those are the two biggest ones. But usually people build their frame of reference entirely by accident. It's based on where they grew up, what their parents celebrated, the potential lover that scorned them, whatever. You end up crafting a view of what is true about yourself in the world and what ought to be true about usually the world. So you craft this framework but you don't realize you've done it. You don't realize that you're making all these trade-offs all the time.","nb_tokens":217} | |
| {"doc_id":"60U-wLfB8iU_22","video_id":"60U-wLfB8iU","content":"And when you go to, especially in a political realm, when you go to campaign for a policy or something like that, no one ever talks about this idea of the North Star. I am optimizing for this. And in business, you learn real quickly, you've got to talk about some gnarly things because it's like we just have to ruthlessly prioritize. We just, I'm going to do this. I'm willing to spend that because when I think about my own product, for instance, so one of the things that we sell is education. And I'm like, why don't we give it away for free? And the answer is because my employees won't work for free. Why won't my employees work for free? Like if they could really do good. But it's a self-evident question. But nobody stops to go, okay, I get how this whole chain works. I get that nobody's going to work for free. And that's okay. And so beginning to pull all these things into the light, stop letting them be invisible assumptions, invisible values.","nb_tokens":223} | |
| {"doc_id":"60U-wLfB8iU_23","video_id":"60U-wLfB8iU","content":"And this is why I think you have to ask the question, is it evil to put a price on a human life? Your answer is correct. You can't do anything unless you know what your trade-offs are. But, and now this is where I know your punchline is that there, I forget the group, the UN, put out 169 sustainable goals, right? And gave ourselves 30 years to get there? 50, yeah. 50, okay. That's 15, yeah. We're halfway there. That's exactly right. And we have basically made no progress. And so that's where it's like, well, we spent a lot of money, but we haven't made the demand that we get results. So again, this is why I say you have to pull your North Star into the light. Now, the one thing is you gave me three and this is part of where I think people go awry. So I'm very curious. So we've got people, planet, prosperity.","nb_tokens":210} | |
| {"doc_id":"60U-wLfB8iU_24","video_id":"60U-wLfB8iU","content":"I love those, but I, people are going to have to knowingly bring that balance out of the realm of the, just sort of, we assume we're not really talking about it into let's talk about it. Like, where are the breaking points? Because I, so I have a North Star. Everything I do in my life is about increasing human flourishing and decreasing human suffering for as many people as possible, while at the same time, I'm the center of my life, right? So I don't give everything away to become a popper to make sure that everybody else is taken care of. Maybe that makes me a worse person. I'm perfectly willing to entertain that argument, but I'm at least honest with myself about what I do. So for me, human flourishing is already sort of this balanced equation between people and life, I think is a less easy way to remember it maybe, but life, so you're not dying, and prosperity. And I think, I don't know if everybody will agree with this, but to me, the environment is merely people sort of groping around for what helps with life and prosperity.","nb_tokens":232} | |
| {"doc_id":"60U-wLfB8iU_25","video_id":"60U-wLfB8iU","content":"And I think they go to, well, if the planet isn't here, if we're damaging it, and we diminish our ability over time to live and be prosperous. So that one to me is already sort of, that's a maybe path to these two things, but these two things are ultimately the one that we have to pull into the light and focus on. Agree or disagree? I mostly agree. I think you're absolutely correct. If you think, for instance, about air pollution, the most damaging part about air pollution is that you die. So again, it's really just down to that. And likewise, you just mentioned, if there are no life forms, we're all gonna die because of that. So that's why we would sort of selfishly really want to preserve them. But I do think that the environment conversation goes further than that.","nb_tokens":176} | |
| {"doc_id":"60U-wLfB8iU_26","video_id":"60U-wLfB8iU","content":"So once you're out of extreme poverty and you sort of get into the middle class or the rich part of the world, you can also start saying, I'd actually like to know that there are whales out in the ocean, even though I'm never gonna meet them and I don't really care about them and they're not in any reasonable way gonna impact my life or not. I just like the fact that they're there or I like the fact that there's a lot of tropical jungle in Brazil, even if I'm never gonna see it and it's certainly not really gonna impact my life. So we also have this value that it's just good stuff is there. And so I think it's more a way of really making sure that everyone comes into this conversation, that we're saying, we're actually valuing all of these things. So not just, it can come across as a little crass and very human-centered. Look, if the penguins really don't do anything for me, you know, kind of thing, but we can actually like the fact that they're just penguins and it's cool that they're there and I'm willing to spend something.","nb_tokens":239} | |
| {"doc_id":"60U-wLfB8iU_27","video_id":"60U-wLfB8iU","content":"Remember, we're not willing to spend everything, right? We certainly care more about making sure that our own kids and our own surroundings are well done, but I think it's fine to bring in all of them. But obviously, for most people, it's more about life, then it's about prosperity and then it's about environment. Okay, so as you begin to try to prioritize those things, what is the methodology that you look at? It seems that cost-benefit analysis, which is where you started, is one of the sort of big pillars for you. So given, because I want to acknowledge, this is incredibly complicated. And even as we pull our North Star into focus and we can all say, we can debate obviously at the level, I don't expect everyone to share my breakdown of what I think the North Star ought to be, but at least then we can debate it because it's a known quantity.","nb_tokens":189} | |
| {"doc_id":"60U-wLfB8iU_28","video_id":"60U-wLfB8iU","content":"But whatever anybody comes up with, actually implementing that when you have whatever, eight and a half billion people that all have sort of competing ways of going about something, competing views, et cetera, et cetera, competing levels of awareness, it gets incredibly complicated very, very fast. So again, going back to the framework for the conversation for me is how do we begin to untangle these very difficult situations? Okay, so North Star, we've got it. You've laid out yours. I've laid out mine. That next thing then becomes, how do you, and I'll put words in your mouth again and tell me how close I'm getting. You use cost-benefit analysis as the way to not decomplexify, but navigate the complexity of the real world, which we probably have to talk about. Because I think present in your thinking is the assumption that implementing fixes is brutally difficult. And so having fantasy like, wouldn't it be great if we could X, Y, Z is nonsensical. And I feel like that's what you're approaching with the idea of doing the best things first. Yeah, I hear that.","nb_tokens":236} | |
| {"doc_id":"60U-wLfB8iU_29","video_id":"60U-wLfB8iU","content":"I'll get back to that in just a second. So I want to pull back a little bit and actually say cost-benefit analysis is not very complicated in principle. It's of course, very, very complicated if you actually have to do the Excel sheet. Yes. But fortunately, you can sort of say, look, I trust that really smart guys have done this. I'd like to just look a little bit over their shoulder and see some of the things that have gone into the mix. But then I can sort of see people doing that. But the simple part, the sort of conceptual part is actually fairly simple. And that is all there is to this conversation for me. And again, remember that this is not how I live my life. I'm not saying that's the only way you should live your life, but that's the way that I'm trying to help the policy conversation of what should we do as a community or as a nation or as philanthropist or whatever. This is being helped by looking at the costs and the benefits.","nb_tokens":215} | |
| {"doc_id":"60U-wLfB8iU_30","video_id":"60U-wLfB8iU","content":"And in some sense, we compare this a little bit to saying, imagine going into a restaurant and getting this big menu of all the things that you can get, but there's no prices and no sizes in there, right? You have no idea what you're going to pay for all these things that you might order. And you have no idea what size you're going to get. So when you order a pizza, you have no idea if it's a dollar or a thousand dollars for this pizza. And you have no idea if it's like, you know, this tiny little pizza or this, you know, the big thing that'll feed your whole group and more. You need to know. So we're basically trying to put prices and sizes on society's menu. We're going to tell you it'll cost this much based on a lot of evidence and stuff, and it'll do this much good. Now, at the end of the day, you might still then end up saying, look, I get that you're telling me, spinach is incredibly cheap and it's good for you, but I don't like spinach. I'm just not going to buy. And that's fine.","nb_tokens":243} | |
| {"doc_id":"60U-wLfB8iU_31","video_id":"60U-wLfB8iU","content":"We can then sort of go through that menu afterwards and say, no, I'm not going to have that. But at least we'll give you some direction to make smarter choices. I think that's how we think about it. And the cost and benefit analysis is really just a very simple way of giving us something where we can see, ooh, this gives a lot of bang for the buck. This gives a very small bang for your buck. Maybe we should do the big bang for the buck first. On that, then comes some of those sort of things that go into the mix of how do we do that. One is, as we talked about, what's the value of a human life? And there's a lot of legislation and analysis of this in the US. For instance, in 9-11, there was that whole question of what should you compensate the families of the people who died in 9-11? How much should they be compensated? And should people who made more money be compensated more because they didn't have as much? They've lost... Yeah, this is a big sort of philosophical, but very clearly a very big issue here.","nb_tokens":239} | |
| {"doc_id":"60U-wLfB8iU_32","video_id":"60U-wLfB8iU","content":"What most people would say is that most of the value, there's certainly some value in lost income in the future, but most of the value is simply a value that we ascribe that all human beings have, that all human beings are in some sense equally worth. And so in the US, that number, both from the Environmental Protection Agency and from Department of Transportation and many others, and it also comes out of that whole thing of how much are you willing to get paid extra for a dangerous job, that sort of suggests that it's about $10 million per life. This does not mean that you would imagine anyone being willing to sort of sign off their life for $10 million. That's not what that means, but it means that we as a society sort of say, look, if we can save one life for less than 10 million, we'll probably put up that roundabout or that center divider or whatever. If it's going to cost us a lot more than 10 million, we'll probably not, if it'll just save one life. That's how, that's about the cutoff point. And this is going to make people feel uncomfortable, but there has to be a cutoff point somewhere.","nb_tokens":247} | |
| {"doc_id":"60U-wLfB8iU_33","video_id":"60U-wLfB8iU","content":"Now, if you're willing to spend a million, sure, a hundred million, no, we're not going to do it. Somewhere in between, there has to be that cutoff point. And that with a lot of research seems to be about $10 million. Now, it's important before we go on that this is true for a very wealthy country like the U.S. Not true for really poor countries. One way you can see that is if you go to the U.S., everybody drives fairly safe cars and they'll just have one person in each seat and they'll have a seatbelt and all kinds of stuff. And they'll have airbags and stuff. Go to India or another much poorer country and you'll have people sitting all over trucks with no airbags and no seatbelts and stuff. And it's not because they don't want, they care less about dying than we do. It's just that they can't afford to care as much because they have many other competing demands. And so it turns out that in India and many other places, the value of a human life where the cutoff point is much, much lower.","nb_tokens":234} | |
| {"doc_id":"60U-wLfB8iU_34","video_id":"60U-wLfB8iU","content":"And so in our estimates for the poor half of the world, the low and lower middle income countries, is about 120, sorry, I should know this number and now I'm getting old. I'm getting uncertain about it. It's $128,000. That feels very unreasonable. Surely it should be the same in the rich and the poor countries. But no, if it was, if we really meant that, we would spend all of our healthcare spending, all of our money that we're currently spending in the US, we'd be spending it in India and we're not. Because again, as we talked about, most people in America care about people in America. Most people in Sweden care about people in Sweden and so on. And there's nothing wrong about that. We just got to be honest. And putting this out in the open is both going to make it very honest and obvious, but it's also going to be a little uncomfortable. Okay, so to that point, I think this is a big part of the strategy of panic. And I don't want to be naive. I know that there are some people that use panic as a power grab.","nb_tokens":239} | |
| {"doc_id":"60U-wLfB8iU_35","video_id":"60U-wLfB8iU","content":"So if they can get you worried, they can get you controlled under their thumb and doing what they want. But again, for the sake of this conversation and just for my own sort of sanity and worldview, I'm going to set that aside and just assume that people have good intentions. So to wrap that idea up, we have people that, and I want to steel man the argument for a second. So you have people that are, they really believe that there is an asteroid headed towards Earth. And again, I don't care what they think is the worst thing. Nuclear war, AI, climate is irrelevant. I think you think through the problem the same way. So there is an existential threat that we're facing. And the only way to get people to pay attention and to act is by really getting them worried. They understand that we have a negativity bias. They understand that. I mean, I can triple quintuple views on a video just by putting a fear-inducing headline, which to anybody that follows me, hey, we are doing our best to back way away from that. But that is, it's really effective.","nb_tokens":231} | |
| {"doc_id":"60U-wLfB8iU_36","video_id":"60U-wLfB8iU","content":"And so they look at that as a tool and they say, look, I have their best interests at heart. Hey, everybody, I'm trying to help you sincerely. And I'll say you put them in an fMRI machine and they pass. Like they really are trying to help you. Their empathy centers are lit up. Their compassion centers are lit up. They are trying to do good in the world. And so in an effort of trying to do good, they want to panic you. And then when that gets them, let's say 10% of where they want to go, they go, oh, I need to panic you 10 times more. And so they just keep like really freaking people out. So I actually understand the tactic. So what I want to understand is, do you think a little bit of panic is good and it's a spectrum and it breaks? Do you think that that's just fundamentally the wrong way to think about it? How do we, because as we get into best things first and the specifics, I think you have sort of abandoned that strategy altogether. Yes. So I guess my answer would be twofold.","nb_tokens":237} | |
| {"doc_id":"60U-wLfB8iU_37","video_id":"60U-wLfB8iU","content":"So I certainly try to not deal in panic. Because as we started off talking about, it's very hard to imagine that actually helps you make smarter decisions. But also I think in some ways, it's not like me saying we shouldn't panic and we should take that panic out, that there's not going to be a lot of panic in the world anyway. So I tend to see the world very much as a marginal conversation. And I'm simply trying to set out some unpanicked advice that in a pretty panic world can help us be a little smarter. And I think that's the right way to do it. So I'm basically saying, look, if you look at this world and look at it without panic, but simply ask, what kind of things can you do? And how much will they cost? And how much good will they do for people, planet and prosperity? And then you have a sense of, ooh, that might be the right thing to do. Now, again, if you're then looking at the menu and I've said, oh, these are very cost effective and these are terribly cost ineffective.","nb_tokens":232} | |
| {"doc_id":"60U-wLfB8iU_38","video_id":"60U-wLfB8iU","content":"Maybe you've just heard about, did you hear about this? Aspartame is now giving you cancer, which is, I don't know if you saw, FDA actually came out and said, come on guys, this is very unusual. It's just one of those many things that you get health advice, but maybe you're going to be looking at my menu and say, oh, but that has aspartame in it. So that's the only thing I'm concerned about. Fine, if that makes sense for you, but at least I'm trying to give you unpanicked advice. And I think that that's helpful. And if it helps some people move to what's smarter policies, that's great. Okay, so that makes a lot of sense to me. I want to take a biological approach to this. I think it's very important for people to understand you're having a biological experience. If you can understand yourself through the lens of biology, you're going to be able to make way more rational decisions. The reason I think panic in the final analysis is not the way to go, is you're triggering the sympathetic nervous system.","nb_tokens":235} | |
| {"doc_id":"60U-wLfB8iU_39","video_id":"60U-wLfB8iU","content":"You're putting people into fight or flight. Like even looking, and I am but a headline reader when it comes to climate in general, and really just a headline reader when it comes to Greta. But seeing the really emotional outpouring, the fear of like, I don't have a future, and crying, and really expressing a lot of distress. Again, assuming that that is all really sincere, and I have not seen anything that makes me believe she is anything but 100% sincere. The blood is leaving your prefrontal cortex, which is the seat of higher level cognition. So you've moved yourself into an incredibly emotional state, which will get you to act, but it won't get you to be rational. It won't get you to do cost-benefit analysis. And as somebody who really believes my mission in life is to empower people with goal-oriented things that actually help them, that work in the real world. Lesson, maybe not lesson number one, but lesson number two or three is you must get control of your emotions. You must be really skeptical. Emotions are necessary. We can't make decisions without them. I'm not saying be a robot.","nb_tokens":241} | |
| {"doc_id":"60U-wLfB8iU_40","video_id":"60U-wLfB8iU","content":"Some of the most amazing things in life are driven by emotion. But you really have to have a skeptical eye towards what emotions do to your physiology, and whether that puts you in a position where you're making the best decisions or not. And I'll put it to people like this. Let's say you're on national television and you have to win at a game of Jeopardy, whatever. Do you really want to be crying hysterically during that? Do you want to be anxiety through the roof? Or do you really want to be rational, calm, at ease? And I think part of what makes your message struggle for the kind of attention, I will say, I watched a debate with you where the audience got to vote on who was most persuasive. From your opening, there were three of you, you were the most, I would say, just sort of rational. Like, hey, we need to do things to improve the world and we just have to be cost-benefit analysis about it. And the other two were some variation of you need to be really worried, and this is either sort of a middle problem or this is like full-blown panic.","nb_tokens":238} | |
| {"doc_id":"60U-wLfB8iU_41","video_id":"60U-wLfB8iU","content":"And it just ranked full-blown panic, and it just ranked full-blown panic had the most votes, middle panic had middle votes, and then your column rational was in third place. And the more you guys talked, the more it just settled into those three positions. And so the reason that I think that you aren't in positions like that, you don't just naturally spring to the top, even though I found your arguments the most compelling, is because it isn't putting people in an emotionally heightened state, but is also more likely to get a more thoughtful, useful path to execution. All right, anything I said there that feels incorrect for where you're at and how you see things? No, no, no, I totally agree. And again, I also think I get the idea of saying I'm certainly not going to win any popularity contests with just sort of making a very rational and calm argument.","nb_tokens":185} | |
| {"doc_id":"60U-wLfB8iU_42","video_id":"60U-wLfB8iU","content":"But I think when a lot of people, and I hear this a lot, when you sort of give people this alternative view, then when you've calmed down, because you can't be in panic all the time, you start sort of to think about, well, maybe that guy who just had that calm argument, that's not totally off. And again, my point is simply to take a world that's pretty panicked and make us slightly smarter. And I'm all happy if that helps a little bit, if we push ourselves in the right direction. I write in the book, and this is also my think tank, one of our sort of core ideas, our goal is not to make everything right, although I'd love that, but it's about making the world slightly less wrong. So I'm simply trying to push in the right direction, and anything I can do to help that, then I'm happy. No, I love that. One thing that I am very troubled by because of my own limited cognitive abilities is another issue with the rational arguments that we're gonna go through here in Best Things First, is holding a nuanced position is very difficult in that it's just hard to explain.","nb_tokens":244} | |
| {"doc_id":"60U-wLfB8iU_43","video_id":"60U-wLfB8iU","content":"It's hard to explain to other people, it's hard to explain to yourself, but it's very easy to say AI is gonna kill us all. It's very easy to say that we're not, all the ice caps are gonna melt and the sea level is gonna rise by six feet and we're just gonna all be obliterated. And those are easy positions to hold on to, right? Like I saw a headline that said, hot takes in a world that's heating up or something like that. And I was like, oh, that's just so linguistically clever and it's easy to hold on to those ideas, but it's far more difficult to walk people through the nuanced position of, well, innovation is really gonna combat a lot of that. And for a while, I don't know that it's still true, but for a while, actually, global warming was causing more ice to form in Antarctica. So in the Arctic circle, it was melting, but in the Antarctic, it was freezing. It didn't, I don't think last for very long, but it's like you get these very complicated things. So that's hard, whereas the other side is easy.","nb_tokens":243} | |
| {"doc_id":"60U-wLfB8iU_44","video_id":"60U-wLfB8iU","content":"And again, I'm talking to myself here. Like I understand, I'm over here taking notes because ideas will pop into my head and be, oh God, if I don't write this down, that sort of nuanced understanding of this moment will pass me by. And so I'm saying all of this because I really want people to begin thinking through how is it that I, Timmy, Sally, Jimmy, Jerome out there, how do I make decisions? How do I think through these different things and really begin to crystallize that in a way that allows them to think well through problems. Okay, so with that setup, you end up going from being known for or having written books about climate to now you're writing books about this other side that you said that you've been dealing with already for 18 plus years, which highlight your North Star as being, you walked us through it. So people, planet, prosperity are the words typically used around these things. It feels like it sits pretty well with your view. So how did you come up with the 12?","nb_tokens":219} | |
| {"doc_id":"60U-wLfB8iU_45","video_id":"60U-wLfB8iU","content":"I know the 12 aren't in any particular order, if I remember correctly, but what was the criteria for the 12 that you chose? And if you can, even just run us through a handful of them to orient people to what this is. Yes, so let me just take the background for this first. And that was what you mentioned with the 169 targets. So the UN has actually set targets for all kinds of things for 2030. This is a well-intentioned list of saying we want to make for a better world. So it runs from 2016 to 2030. So this year we're at halfway to these, sorry, we're at halftime for these goals, but we're nowhere near halfway. And that's basically the point because the UN ended up basically promising everything to everyone. So they talk about, we should get rid of poverty. We should get rid of hunger. We should get rid of corruption and war and climate change. And we should fix infectious diseases. Oh, and chronic diseases too. And we should also make sure that there's no want for any other kind of thing. And we should have better university education.","nb_tokens":240} | |
| {"doc_id":"60U-wLfB8iU_46","video_id":"60U-wLfB8iU","content":"We should have good jobs for everyone. And we should have organic apples for everyone and community gardens and the whole thing. And you're sort of like, really? Yes, of course. I would love this world where we had everything to everyone. But clearly if you're promising everything to everyone, you have no priorities. You're literally not giving any direction. You're just saying all good things in apple pie. But why is that bad? So that sounds amazing. And I think part of people's hangup is what's the problem? Like that sounds awesome. Yes, let's do it. And Bjorn, there are so many people in the world. There's so much wealth. Like, come on, come on. Can't Elon Musk solve these problems by himself? So I can put it to you in a way I love, which is just numbers. So if you try to cost how much this is going to cost, it'll probably cost an additional 10 to $15 trillion. To give you a sense of proportion right now, the global tax intake of all governments in the world is $15 trillion.","nb_tokens":229} | |
| {"doc_id":"60U-wLfB8iU_47","video_id":"60U-wLfB8iU","content":"So we basically have to double global taxes. I don't think anyone is going to vote for that. We just don't have enough money to do all of these things. So hold on, because I think we have to attack some of the common misconceptions. I think people are OK with that. And I think that they would say, yeah, I'm middle class. So this doesn't really apply to me. But tax the corporations, tax the rich, and we're good. Like, I don't think if you were to pull the world, for whatever that means, I think they'd be like, yeah, double taxes. Ah, OK. That's certainly not my... But that's interesting because I haven't actually asked people that question. Of course, you would end up paying at the end of the day. Given that the global GDP is only this large, about $100 trillion, this is 15% of global income each and every year. This is going to have to go out from something else that you otherwise would have had. So this is real money that is not going to be available to you.","nb_tokens":230} | |
| {"doc_id":"60U-wLfB8iU_48","video_id":"60U-wLfB8iU","content":"That's why I'm simply trying to make the point of saying, we don't have enough resources to deliver everything to everyone. And so we are going to end up making hard priorities. But if we don't talk about them, they'll end up being priorities that are set instead by some things grabbing a lot more attention in the global sphere. And they get some funding. And then lots and lots of things get very little attention. And hence, we don't end up spending any money on it. That's, of course, why we're failing on all of these targets. So the UN Secretary General, they've been pushing this for a very long time. They came out with what I thought was a surprisingly honest report a couple of months ago and basically said, we're failing on all of these targets. We're failing. They didn't say this. But we're failing because we've tried to say, let's do everything, which means there's no direction. What should you spend on next? OK, so I want to pause you there for a second. And then we'll certainly get into why priorities matter. But I want to address directly the taxing.","nb_tokens":238} | |
| {"doc_id":"60U-wLfB8iU_49","video_id":"60U-wLfB8iU","content":"So whenever you can solve something with a thought experiment, do. And so I think in the answer that you just gave, we've already run the experiment of whether more taxes are going to solve the problem. So if we're trying to tackle a certain subset of these problems with enough resources that we still aren't getting the desired outcome, and so pouring more money into the problem is not going to create the solution that you want. And I can't remember if I read this in the book or if I've just heard you talk about it in interviews. But there was a South American country that doubled their investment into education. And it did not yield. Indonesia, excuse me. Walk people through that as but one example of how oftentimes, not always, but oftentimes, the answer isn't more money. It's better strategy or better priorities. Yes. So this goes for education. And almost everyone in the world would agree that education is incredibly important. And there's a huge lack of education everywhere. But of course, most crucially for the world's poor half.","nb_tokens":218} | |
| {"doc_id":"60U-wLfB8iU_50","video_id":"60U-wLfB8iU","content":"So we have about half a billion, almost half a billion kids in primary school in the poor half of the world. And while they're in school, and they're at least technically learning to read, they can't actually process really, really simple sentences. So give them a sentence that says, Vijay has a red hat, blue shirt, and yellow shoes. What color is the hat? Now, the answer is red, right? But 80% of these kids cannot answer this after having read this sentence. They can sort of process the individual words, but it just doesn't glue together. In their native language? Yes, this is in their native language, yes. Whoa, whoa, whoa. How big of a sample size? Is this one country? This is just Indonesia? This is UNESCO. I believe it's about 40,000 or 50,000 kids from across the poor half of the world. So we're very sure of this. In multiple countries? Yeah, yeah, yeah. In many different countries. We're very sure of this. Yes.","nb_tokens":224} | |
| {"doc_id":"60U-wLfB8iU_51","video_id":"60U-wLfB8iU","content":"What that means is you've taught them to be able to say red hat. Okay, red hat. But they haven't actually learned to glue that together into a sentence that they can sort of make meaning of. If you say it to them, of course they can actually solve the problem because they're well aware of how to navigate a world where you tell them stories, that kind of thing. But they don't read a sentence. They read the individual words, right? And this is one of the many, many problems. These kinds of indicators. So there's a lot of really, really, there's a lot of people with really, really poor education that's technically learned stuff, but they don't actually have that ability. And that, of course, hugely affect their own futures. And it also affect their country's futures because this is what makes you rich. If you're well-educated, you can actually process a lot of stuff. You can become incredibly productive. That gives you a salary, but also makes your country rich. And that's why this is so important.","nb_tokens":220} | |
| {"doc_id":"60U-wLfB8iU_52","video_id":"60U-wLfB8iU","content":"So Indonesia as one of many, they actually put their wallet where their voices were and said, look, we really care about education. So we're going to double our spending in education. So they went from 10% of the state budget to 20% of their state budget. So they basically made a lot more money available. Remember their economy has also grown. So it's actually more than a doubling. But what they basically did was they hired another more, a little more than a million extra teachers. So they dramatically reduced class sizes and they doubled the spending, sorry, the pay for each teacher, which is incredible. Imagine that you actually have all that available money. And because of the way they did it, so they did it in different regions at different times, you can actually do a pseudo random control trial study. Basically looking at where they did it first, you should see the impacts first. And then where they did it later, you should see the impact later. And there's this very famous study that's been hugely cited that tried to do exactly that.","nb_tokens":219} | |
| {"doc_id":"60U-wLfB8iU_53","video_id":"60U-wLfB8iU","content":"And it's called, and you can sort of tell the outcome from the title, it's called Double for Nothing. So what they found was that despite doubling spending on education, there was no outcome. There was no change in the educational outcome. Now the teachers were happier, which of course is nice thing, but presumably not your primary objective from spending more money in the educational system. And we already knew that. And again, this goes back to, we have lots and lots of information about what works and what doesn't work. More money for teachers is great for teachers, but it doesn't have much impact or any impact at all. Class sizes are only very little impact. There are lots of things that don't work in education. There's a few things that do work. And so what I'm trying to basically push is to say, look, we have this, so the World Bank has put together a huge list, a very, very large, it's a paper, but it really is a book of all the things that we've ever tested in education. And they find that half of all the things that you think work, don't.","nb_tokens":235} | |
| {"doc_id":"60U-wLfB8iU_54","video_id":"60U-wLfB8iU","content":"Most of the other things almost don't. And then there's a few things that do. And so what I'm trying to say is, well, if you wanna do education, do the stuff that really works. Yes, it's not the thing that's gonna get, obviously teachers would like doubling pay for teachers to work. I totally get that. But parents also like to have smaller class sizes because it feels like that should really work. And yes, it does work a little bit, but it's very, very costly because you need to hire a lot more teachers. So what we try to emphasize is, there's an incredibly effective way to do education. Let's do that first. And that's where the best things first come in. It's simply to say, there's a way to spend fairly little money and get huge impacts. There's also a way to spend lots of money and get very little or no impact. I think we should do the first one first. All right, so now talk to me about the nature of prioritization. Why is it problematic to try to do a lot of things at once?","nb_tokens":230} | |
| {"doc_id":"60U-wLfB8iU_55","video_id":"60U-wLfB8iU","content":"Assume that the 169 things were just, we had all the money and the resources in the world, would we then be fine? Or no, still having 169 things is gonna be problematic. No, I think, so look, a sort of general working assumption for an economist, I should just, I'm a political scientist, I'm a pretend economist, right? But the sort of standard argument for economists is, you can fix anything with enough money. Now, we could take everyone to the moon if we wanted to, it'd be fantastically expensive, but in principle- Do you actually believe that? Well, I say that as an argument. No, we would probably need someone back down here, but yeah- Sorry, not the moon part, that with enough money, you can solve any problem. I actually don't think that's true, personally. So that simply, so for an economist, that would be a more sort of an argument of saying, that just redefines what enough money means. Some things, so can you make everyone happy? For instance, probably not.","nb_tokens":224} | |
| {"doc_id":"60U-wLfB8iU_56","video_id":"60U-wLfB8iU","content":"I'm not gonna talk about sort of very subjective kind of things, although I would imagine we could make a sort of simulation machine that could make people happy, or drugs that would just make them think that they are happy, that kind of thing. But certainly all sort of outcome-oriented things, we can get to any sort of level of eradication if we're just willing to throw enough money at it. So yes, my assumption would be that. Yeah, let's not move on- It's certainly marginally true. I'm not sure whether it's true out in the extreme, but I'm looking forward to your counterexample. Yeah, when you say marginally true, what do you mean? So I mean, for the next year, for a realistic sort of, if you had an extra trillion dollars, which is a large amount of money, but not a hundred trillion dollars, which is the whole global GDP. For an extra trillion dollars right now for the next year, we could solve any kind of problem within a trillion dollars, right? Obviously we couldn't do more than that, but you tell me what you wanna fix, and we could in principle do that for a trillion dollars.","nb_tokens":244} | |
| {"doc_id":"60U-wLfB8iU_57","video_id":"60U-wLfB8iU","content":"But we couldn't do it for a trillion trillion dollars just simply because that money is not there, we wouldn't know how to do it, we wouldn't be able to, can you eradicate? So Bill Gates has this conversation about getting rid of the last polio. I don't know if you know, he's trying to eradicate polio, which would be a wonderful thing to do. But unfortunately, there is a little bit of polio in Pakistan and a few other countries. And these countries are very worried about vaccinations, partly because we actually cheated with Osama bin Laden about, we said that it was a polio thing. Do you remember they wanted to make sure that it was Osama bin Laden who was living in that compound? So they actually had someone go there and say, pretend to be a polio expert, and they were gonna test people for whether they had polio. That was how we got the DNA to know that it was Osama bin Laden. But of course, that has a really bad side effect that people think maybe it's just the CIA coming to try to kill you kind of thing. And there's a lot of other things.","nb_tokens":236} | |
| {"doc_id":"60U-wLfB8iU_58","video_id":"60U-wLfB8iU","content":"They think that it's Christians trying to limit the population of Muslims, that kind of thing. So there's a lot of, and when you get down to, you're trying to inoculate the last three people and you don't know who they are kind of thing, that gets really hard and maybe money just can't solve that problem. So I bet, and again, my sense is if we gave everyone in Pakistan a billion dollars each, we could probably do it sort of thing, but not with realistic money. Okay. So here's my take on that. So one, you and I both subscribe that data is the right religion when talking about things like this. And so I don't have the data on this. So this is my gut instinct based on more than 20 years as an entrepreneur. The more capital you have, the less disciplined people tend to be. So as you pour money into a system, I think you begin to break things. I don't think that you just go, oh, this is a resistant problem, pour more and more money into it. But that does not mean that money isn't an effective solution when coupled with intelligence.","nb_tokens":237} | |
| {"doc_id":"60U-wLfB8iU_59","video_id":"60U-wLfB8iU","content":"And so that's where this really becomes an issue. And so you need only look at different countries, right? Different countries have had wildly different outcomes. Is it culture? Is it the people that run for either elected office or dictators, just not the wisest, most compassionate, intelligent person ends up being the leader or the leadership class? Like that is certainly gonna be a big part of this. And look, not to denigrate myself, but if you've got an extra trillion dollars laying around, I would highly encourage you to give it to Elon Musk and not to me as he just has a track record. I'm over here like killing myself to run one company and Homeboy has like seven companies and they're all multi-billion dollar companies. So there are people that are either better, he would say that he's better at engineering than me and I would completely concede that point. So there are people that are better with capital allocation or they're better at engineering their way out of a problem, whether that's computer engineering or physical engineering, like they just have a different skillset.","nb_tokens":222} | |
| {"doc_id":"60U-wLfB8iU_60","video_id":"60U-wLfB8iU","content":"And so given that skillset is not evenly distributed and that different people are gonna be good at different things, different people are going to pursue public office, running a company, solving a problem, whatever. And that just throwing money at it has not seemed to solve this problem. You've got corruption and a whole host of well-meaning people that, oh, pay teachers more, it's just the wrong solution. So you really need a sustainable feedback loop. It's what I call the physics of progress. I think it's the only way to move forward. And the physics of progress was something I thought I had come up with and then I realized it's just a scientific method recontextualized for business. And you come up with your best guess, your hypothesis on this is what we would need to do to solve this problem. You turn that into a thing that you can do. So an experiment, you run that experiment. And before you start the experiment, you need to know what is your desired outcome and what is the predicted outcome of this particular test. And so when you run the test, you look at the results. And this is where most people fall down.","nb_tokens":240} | |
| {"doc_id":"60U-wLfB8iU_61","video_id":"60U-wLfB8iU","content":"They either don't know how to accurately analyze the data or if the data tells them that their approach was inadequate, ego kicks in and they just aren't willing to see the truth that is right there before them. And I mean, if you're in politics, you are highly incentivized not to be wrong. So, ooh, lo and behold, the data says exactly what we wanted it to say, even though we're not making any progress somehow. So you get that data, you basically further educate yourself. You now have a more enlightened hypothesis, a better experiment, and you just run it. And so you live in that loop. And as far as I can tell, it is the only path forward to solve these incredibly large challenges. But when I've seen incredibly bright, well-meaning people still struggle to effectively run the physics of progress, I'm like, this is where it seems like things fall apart to me and why the solution isn't more, more, more, more money. It really is.","nb_tokens":208} | |
| {"doc_id":"60U-wLfB8iU_62","video_id":"60U-wLfB8iU","content":"Like, how do you get the brightest people you can possibly find in that area with as much usable data as humanly possible in a loop where they can fail and get smarter on this sort of continually improving spiral? No, I totally agree. I'll just say, I think maybe I came across a little wrong because I was asking that or answering that very sort of hypothetical, can we, if we had enough money, solve any one problem? And I think, yes, you get worse and worse at it, but you can't, you know, you could certainly solve polio if you just had enough trillions because we could just give a trillion to everyone and make sure they got vaccinated kind of thing. And then everyone, even the most hardened sort of Muslim crusader would say, okay, that sort of thing. And likewise, you can solve any one problem with sufficient money, but I'm not arguing that we should be doing it because it will be very, very bad. And that's, of course, what we're essentially trying to do is to say, there are some things we know work really well. There are some things we know don't work.","nb_tokens":238} | |
| {"doc_id":"60U-wLfB8iU_63","video_id":"60U-wLfB8iU","content":"Let's do the ones that work really well. And furthermore, your whole point about how you need to progress and find more knowledge. That's absolutely true in business because it's very unlikely that you can just come in and do what others already do and make a lot of money on it. No, you have to be better than everybody there. But for global problems, it turns out that we actually already know some of the smartest things. We're just not spending money on them because they have bad PR or because nobody really cares, that kind of thing. So I don't even have to be particularly smart. I mean, I'd like to believe that some of the people that we work with are really, really smart. But fundamentally, I'm not coming here and saying, here's a fantastic innovation. It's just simply saying, it turns out that with an education, there's been at least a couple of thousand education economists over the last 50 years trying to work on what works and what doesn't. And they've found out, no, it's not about doubling the spending on teachers or having lower class ratios mostly. It's about these very, very simple things.","nb_tokens":241} | |
| {"doc_id":"60U-wLfB8iU_64","video_id":"60U-wLfB8iU","content":"So I don't even have to sort of, we say innovate the deep plate or reinvent the, yeah, that's probably the case. Reinvent the wheel, I know. But wherever you were about to go to the deep something. Make the deep plate instead of the flat plate. But you know, that. It is not an American saying. How about that? But yeah, that's not an American saying. Anyway. So, but yeah, we're simply basically saying, here's stuff we already know is great and we've done the numbers and this is how great they are. Okay. So when you guys were rolling up to come up with the things you were going to do, and I'm guessing you didn't set, did you set out to say like it needs to be a dozen? I'm guessing that. So yes, that was actually a question. Sorry, I totally took it in a different direction. How do we come up with the 12?","nb_tokens":200} | |
| {"doc_id":"60U-wLfB8iU_65","video_id":"60U-wLfB8iU","content":"So we started with the UN's 169 promises and basically said, look, let's try and look at how effective can all of these be if you do them in the smartest possible way. Now, it turns out if you read them, about half of them are just simply impossible to even operationalize. They're more sort of aspirational, nice things to do, but we really tried our best. And what we found, and this was back in 2014, 15, because we're actually trying to advise the UN to not set 169, but just set the very most effective ones. And we completely failed because, you know, I met with most of the UN ambassadors who set these targets and they were like, oh, this is very interesting what you're doing, but we're not actually, they didn't say this very, very loud, but they said, we're not actually trying to make the best targets. You know, when I spoke to the Brazilian ambassador, he was saying, I'm trying to get Brazil's five points in there. And, you know, the Norwegian ambassador was trying to get Norway's four points in there.","nb_tokens":238} | |
| {"doc_id":"60U-wLfB8iU_66","video_id":"60U-wLfB8iU","content":"And that's how we ended up with 169 things. It was basically just what all the capital thought would be wonderful to have in this wonderful big document for the whole world. But that meant that we could actually see which one were really effective and which one weren't. And so we said, this was on Nobel Lawrence, we said, we're going to call everything that delivers more than $15 back in every dollar a phenomenal outcome. And so we just wanted to focus on the most phenomenal outcomes. Of course, there's no magical limit where 15 sort of turn, you know, if it's 15.5, it's great. If it's 14.5, we should never do it. It's just sort of a way to calibrate what are the very, very best things we wanted to do. So this time we went back and reanalyzed all of the studies that we did. We also talked to a lot of economists to find out are there other things that we should be looking at now that we didn't look at back then?","nb_tokens":218} | |
| {"doc_id":"60U-wLfB8iU_67","video_id":"60U-wLfB8iU","content":"And also are there some of the things, for instance, cell phone coverage turned out to do $17 back on the dollar because it increases economic growth in the country. So it might actually be a good idea for a country to make sure. Fundamentally, if you have no coverage, you have a very ineffective distribution of goods and services in the country. So we know empirically back then, so this is data from the early 2000s, if you get more, and for most poor countries, it's almost all cell phone coverage. So cell phone, both that you can talk and that you get 3G, that's basically it. That actually increases your growth rate. And because it costs, say, hundreds of millions or maybe a billion or so to increase it, but your economy, if this can increase your growth rate by a couple of tens of percentage points, that's a great investment. But this is no longer the case because this has all happened. Going from 3G to 5G, nice, you get better view on Netflix, but it's not gonna dramatically change your spending anymore.","nb_tokens":230} | |
| {"doc_id":"60U-wLfB8iU_68","video_id":"60U-wLfB8iU","content":"It was much more, those people who, so this is one of the studies that we made. If you're a fisherman and you have the opportunity, you've just caught fish, you're still out in the, away from two different harbors, you can go online and see where can I get most for my fish, which is really which harbor has the most demand or the most need for my fish. That actually increases societal production. But whether you have 3G or 5G, it doesn't really matter. So this was one that we recommended back in 2015, but not anymore. And so we went through them and that was how we ended up with 12. These were simply the 12 that made the cut of delivering 15 or more dollars back on the dollar. On average, they actually deliver $52 back on the dollar. So it's just a fantastically huge bang for your buck. And there's certainly more out there. It would be very, very surprising if we caught everything in the whole world, but we believe that we've really scoured it. So it's probably most of what we should have in there.","nb_tokens":238} | |
| {"doc_id":"60U-wLfB8iU_69","video_id":"60U-wLfB8iU","content":"So the 12, there's probably a real 14. I don't know what the last two are, but these are 12 amazing ideas. And these 12 ideas are really amazing. And we have very, very good reason to believe that that's true. Very interesting. So I thought it was gonna be something like, we took an 80-20 approach. What are gonna be the 20% of things that yield 80% of the value? But instead what you guys did is just set a marker. If we get a one to 15 return, then we'll call that a win. And let's just see how many things settle out. And it happened to be 12. Yes. And also remember we had really smart people. So again, I'm not the guy who's, I'm just a sock puppet who talks about all the smart stuff that other people have done. But in reality, we had some really smart education people work on the education solutions, nutrition people and nutrition and tuberculosis people and tuberculosis.","nb_tokens":213} | |
| {"doc_id":"60U-wLfB8iU_70","video_id":"60U-wLfB8iU","content":"So these are all the people who've done this for decades of their lives, worked with a lot of the other people who've done similarly, who have all the knowledge of what works and what doesn't and seen all the results. And then they have done the estimates of how much will this cost? And there we include all the stupid stuff that's going to happen. So we always include that some of this is going to go to corruption. Some of this is going to go down with just general incompetence and so on. But what is realistic? If you spend this much money, how much can you realistically get out? And what will that impact be in terms of saved lives and more prosperity and better environment? That's very interesting. Are you familiar with the guys that wrote the book Freakonomics? Yes. I'm curious. So when you were talking about the phone and the internet having this big impact on, you didn't say GDP, but I interpreted it as GDP. That is very interesting to me. And that rang that same bell that Freakonomics rang, which is the outcome that you get from doing things can often be very surprising.","nb_tokens":234} | |
| {"doc_id":"60U-wLfB8iU_71","video_id":"60U-wLfB8iU","content":"And I'm really curious on the phone one, what's the fundamental thing there that's happening, do you think? And I'm sure it's a confluence of a few things, but is it that I now have access to the internet and so I can get ideas very rapidly? Is it communication? So I can get the price for my fish and I know where to go. Is it I can just reach out and talk to somebody to do business deals and I no longer have to worry about the infrastructure of the company, all of the above? What is the principle at work there? So again, these are mostly studies that have just been done across a wide area of economies where you see that the more internet you get, and this again is the early 2000s, you get higher growth rates. So they don't actually separate it out. My reading of the literature is that to a very large extent, it's that it becomes easier for you to make optimal choices.","nb_tokens":200} | |
| {"doc_id":"60U-wLfB8iU_72","video_id":"60U-wLfB8iU","content":"So for the fishermen to find out where to go, but also for you to get a good loan, if you want to have a loan, if you live in a village, you go to the guy who lend out money and you sort of have to either accept it or decline it. But now you can go on your phone, this is like a decade later and basically ask for a loan and find out how much it's gonna cost and get a much cheaper loan. And again, the guys who want to lend out money were stuck with the people that they were close to. Now they can actually lend out to the best people with the best ideas around the whole country and so on. So it's simply an efficiency multiplier, the fact that you suddenly got a lot more information. So I think this was again, the idea was that when you have no information or very little information, and it's very hard in most of these countries to get a landline because that's controlled by the bureaucracy and it's really hard to use. And obviously, even if you have a landline, you have to call someone who will then help you find this information.","nb_tokens":234} | |
| {"doc_id":"60U-wLfB8iU_73","video_id":"60U-wLfB8iU","content":"Now, suddenly you have this information straight up and just makes life much easier. Also for many poor countries, it's just simply a question of having banking access. So you may know in Kenya, for instance, they had basically money on their cell phone. And the people who sold cell phone minutes were the ones where you could also go and pay in, say I have 10 bucks or something, instead of having it rolled up in my sock and worry about being mugged at night or that I lose it in some way, I give it to the guy who sells the cell phone minutes and he puts it into my phone. And then I can actually pay with my phone by basically doing a text, someone else $3 or the equivalent of local currency, and then they can get it on their account and so on. So you basically have banking for the really poor and that means that they can become much more effective. It's also a wonderful way of reducing crime. It also means a lot of people would spend a long time to when you had sufficient resources, like 100 or $200, you'd actually take a bus to the big city to deposit in a bank and you no longer need that.","nb_tokens":244} | |
| {"doc_id":"60U-wLfB8iU_74","video_id":"60U-wLfB8iU","content":"So there's a lot of these kinds of things. And I think it's all of these things accumulating. Mm, it's really interesting that basically the book is a snapshot in time. It's these are the things right now, but like you were talking about back in 2015, it was a different set of things. So because I've been on my sort of doomer arc with AI, I am a huge believer in AI. I'm just trying to work through myself. There are also things coming our way that if we're not thoughtful about, we're not gonna navigate well. But I have a feeling that in the not too distant future, as you re-up everything that gives a one to 15 return, part of that is gonna be deploying AI to the poorest places in the world if your assessment is correct that what this really is about is the efficiency of markets so that the guy with the fish knows where to go. Because that's actually gonna change from day to day for sure. It could change from hour to hour. And when I think about Waze, I don't know if you guys know what that is. So it was bought, I think, by Google.","nb_tokens":244} | |
| {"doc_id":"60U-wLfB8iU_75","video_id":"60U-wLfB8iU","content":"But Waze was and is a technology that would say, okay, based on where you're going, where you're at in your car, go here, turn right here, turn left here. It would take you in some of the weirdest ways possible. But not only was it responding to traffic, it was controlling traffic. And so it would know, ooh, I'm gonna divvy things up in this way. And so AI will be the same. Like, hey, if you're gonna get to the fish market by 12.05, go to this fish market person. If you're gonna get there at 12.15, make sure that you go to this person because this is what we've seen over time. The price has changed based on timing and all that, day of the week, whatever. And AI will just be able to crunch so much data. Going back to data is really the thing that we need to understand. All right, anyway, utterly fascinating that this becomes like these snapshots that are rolling and what is gonna be useful in one pretty narrow window will change relatively rapidly. Okay. I should just say, it's not that rapid.","nb_tokens":240} | |
| {"doc_id":"60U-wLfB8iU_76","video_id":"60U-wLfB8iU","content":"So we had 16 things, four of them we dropped. And this was one of them with the internet because it's now been built out. Some of it was because they become new data. And then one of them we actually brought on. So, sorry, we dropped five and then we brought one more on, which is basically controlling heart medication. So a very large part of the rich world of old people are in heart medication. And it's one of the... Remember heart disease or cardiovascular disease really is the biggest killer in the world. And we have dramatically reduced... It's still the biggest killer but we've dramatically reduced it in the rich world basically because we've learned how to control blood pressure for old people. And we do it with very cheap medication. We need to do that in the poor part of the world because they're also increasingly getting old. And one of the things we tried to do was when we did this in 2015, it was fairly expensive still to do mostly because it was really... You have to have a lot of doctors involved and semi-annual tests and all that stuff. And they found a smarter and more streamlined way to do it.","nb_tokens":240} | |
| {"doc_id":"60U-wLfB8iU_77","video_id":"60U-wLfB8iU","content":"And now it delivers $16 back in the dollar. So this is one of the things. But most of these things are just simply good ideas and they're gonna be good ideas still in most of the 2020s. So it's not like tomorrow all this knowledge is gonna be useless. It's gonna be pretty stuck for the 2020s, I think. I hope you're wrong because the angle I was coming at it from is that, hey, we actually are... In fact, here's something that's important. We are lifting people out of poverty at an almost alarming rate. It's really exciting. And in terms of taking the opposite tack of instead of trying to panic people, really getting people optimistic, hopefully only realistically because I don't want to make the exact same mistake in the opposite direction. I'm gonna lie about how good it is and just try to get people excited.","nb_tokens":184} | |
| {"doc_id":"60U-wLfB8iU_78","video_id":"60U-wLfB8iU","content":"But if when we do things like get cell phones in people's hands, or I know one of the things that you guys, I think if I remember correctly is on the list, it's just like a little breathing apparatus that gets babies that something like 5% of all infants, just they fail to breathe immediately. And if you breathe for them a couple of times, then it jumpstarts and all as well. So that if we actually do these things, there really is a noticeable consequence of that. Okay, so let's talk about the actual things that people can do. What was the biggest bang for buck on your list? So if 1 to 15 was the cutoff, what was the one that was like 1 to 30 or whatever? So we try not to do that because it's not a competition between these. These are just simply all amazing. But given that you've asked for it, and it's not surprising that that's what happens. The thing that is in some sense, the smallest is most likely to have the biggest bang because it's easier to have a big bang if you're really small.","nb_tokens":231} | |
| {"doc_id":"60U-wLfB8iU_79","video_id":"60U-wLfB8iU","content":"So one of the things we've also tried to emphasize, well, think of it this way. If you were just talking about, how can I spend $1? You can spend $1 in a particularly silly situation and make a huge difference. But it's harder to do that with a billion dollars. But obviously it's not really interesting to write a book about how you can spend $1 because once you spend $1, that's no longer interesting. And so we tried to do this for pretty big problems. But given that you've asked me, what is the biggest one? It turns out the biggest one is what's called e-procurement. And it sounds incredibly boring. But if you think about it, corruption is a huge problem in the world. So we estimate, but for obvious reasons, we don't know how big of a problem corruption is because there's nobody who answers correctly on those surveys. But it's probably at least a trillion dollars of cost from corruption. And it's very likely much more than that. And there's very little that you can do about corruption.","nb_tokens":223} | |
| {"doc_id":"60U-wLfB8iU_80","video_id":"60U-wLfB8iU","content":"It's actually one of the places we talk about how I believe that you can just spend money and get rid of it. But obviously corruption is actually one of the places where you can't spend money and get rid of it because you're just gonna sort of generate more corruption with most of the things that you could do something about. But it turns out fast amount of corruption is associated with procurement from states. This is governments basically buying anything from pens to roads. But obviously the roads are much, much more expensive. So it's mostly infrastructure, that kind of really expensive spending. That is hugely corrupt. But it turns out that there's a really great way to deal with this. And that's e-procurement. It's basically putting the procurement on eBay, if you will. Right now in many countries, this has happened in most rich countries. So we are actually doing this. But there's still about 70 countries out of the 200 countries in the world who still haven't done it. So there's a huge opportunity to do this. And we did work, for instance, in Bangladesh, where they've taken over some of the British rules.","nb_tokens":236} | |
| {"doc_id":"60U-wLfB8iU_81","video_id":"60U-wLfB8iU","content":"So they had very elaborate rules of how you bid for contracts. So the local government will say, we want to build this road. They'll publish it in an obscure journal or obscure newspaper somewhere. Then people will hand in sealed envelopes with their bids. And then they're presumably going to pick the lowest bid. But the reality often is that the ruling elite have already decided who's going to get the bid. And then they literally put up goons outside the office where you have to hand in your sealed envelope. So you physically can't get in there. And so what happens is, if you put it online as on an eBay kind of service, then suddenly it becomes much harder. You can still do this. You can make sort of the equivalent of goons. But it's harder to do. It's more visible if you try to do it. And also you get many, many more people to hear about this. It's not in some obscure place. And you can also do it faster. So what it turns out is that when you do this, so we worked with the Bangladeshi government.","nb_tokens":227} | |
| {"doc_id":"60U-wLfB8iU_82","video_id":"60U-wLfB8iU","content":"They actually implemented 4% of all the spending that they had on e-procurement. And we could see the difference in spending, both in quality. So you typically get higher quality and you get lower prices. This is not surprising. Everyone who's gone on eBay will know that when you ask lots of people how much you're going to pay for this, you'll end up with a lower prices. You'll basically get a better quality. So this is great. We found that this could save Bangladesh about $700 million each and every year. And the cost of doing this is trivial. It's in the tens of millions of dollars once. So it's a really, really great setup. And you can actually get, we estimate $125 back on each dollar. Now, the reason why it doesn't happen, of course is, and we, the Bangladeshi finance minister, he went all in and said, I'd love, of course he'd love to have $700 million extra. But all of the people just below him wouldn't because they're the ones who get all the bribes. And so obviously they're sort of like very resistant to this.","nb_tokens":240} | |
| {"doc_id":"60U-wLfB8iU_83","video_id":"60U-wLfB8iU","content":"So there's a lot of work that goes and you need to put in a lot of political will to do it. But ultimately this will be great for your country. And so we estimate for about $76 million. So everything else I'm gonna be talking about is billion dollars. But for $76 million, you can basically build these protocols. You can build the computer systems. They could also take them from other countries, but they typically don't. And build these, do more development with all the officials who have to do it. And you will end up saving about $10 billion each and every year on average for these other 70, for these remaining 70 countries. So for trivial amounts of money, we can do an amazing amount of good. And this is one of the reasons why we think this is certainly one of the 12 best things we should do. We can really make all governments provide more for less and with higher quality. You can reboot your life, your health, even your career, anything you want. All you need is discipline. I can teach you the tactics that I learned while growing a billion dollar business that will allow you to see your goals through.","nb_tokens":241} | |
| {"doc_id":"60U-wLfB8iU_84","video_id":"60U-wLfB8iU","content":"Whether you want better health, stronger relationships, a more successful career, any of that is possible with the mindset and business programs in Impact Theory University. Join the thousands of students who have already accomplished amazing things. Tap now for a free trial and get started today. Yeah, so where this really starts to get interesting to me is that when you really step back and you look at, okay, what is the problem we're trying to solve? So going back, people, planet, prosperity, there's a real consequence to prosperity. And a lot of these, I don't know if you would make this through line, but when I was going through all the different pieces, one of the things that kept coming back up is as humans thrive, they begin to prosper. And then there's a real knock-on effect to that prosperity. So before we go through some more of the 12, I'd like to ask directly, what are the consequences of taking someone out of poverty?","nb_tokens":198} | |
| {"doc_id":"60U-wLfB8iU_85","video_id":"60U-wLfB8iU","content":"I think we almost can't imagine because you and I, and most who are probably listening to this, just simply because they are on the internet and have several hours to spend on listening on this, are just so far removed from absolute grinding poverty, where you really don't know whether your kids are going to survive, whether you're going to have enough money to make it through the day, let alone next month. And you're forced to, so about 700, sorry, 680 million people live for what most people have heard of, less than $1 a day. That's actually $2.15 per day now because of inflation. That's way too many. But when I was a kid, that number was a lot bigger. Yes, yes. And that was also what you said. We've had amazing progress in dealing with poverty. One of the things that I actually write about in the book, if you take over the last 25 years, each and every day, we have lifted as a human collective, the world has lifted 138,000 people out of poverty each and every day for the last 25 years. Jesus, man. It is just astounding.","nb_tokens":241} | |
| {"doc_id":"60U-wLfB8iU_86","video_id":"60U-wLfB8iU","content":"And so again, it also goes to your point of saying, we hear a lot about this. The world is terrible. And yes, there are problems out there. But each and every day, every paper in the world could have it as a headline. Over the last 24 hours, the world lifted 138,000 people out of poverty. And we could have had that every day. And we don't because it's not a news story. It's not sexy or interesting in the same way as, oh my God, this airplane crashed or something. But we should recognize that this is a huge achievement. And this is what means that it's possible for people to start making slightly longer term decisions. So we know, for instance, when people start to have a little bit of capital, and this will often just be a goat or a couple of chickens or something that they can actually sell, they start thinking more about how can I make sure that my kids regularly go to school so that they can learn more, so that they can become more prosperous and be even more productive than I am and make their kids' lives even better. So it has this knock on effect.","nb_tokens":239} | |
| {"doc_id":"60U-wLfB8iU_87","video_id":"60U-wLfB8iU","content":"Education, that's exactly what I want to talk about, these knock on effects. So one of them is education. What else is a consequence of pulling people out of grinding poverty? That they can avoid dying from easily curable infectious diseases. If a country has more than $10,000 per person per year and GDP, there's no malaria. So fundamentally, once you get sufficiently rich, you as an individual can afford to buy the medication, which means that you won't have the malaria parasite in you. That's good for you because then you survive or you make sure that your kid gets this medication. But it also means that, you know, nobody has gotten rid of all mosquitoes, unfortunately. So there's still mosquitoes, but if they bite you and you don't have malaria, it can't get malaria to me because it doesn't have the malaria mosquito to go around. It needs to bite other people who have malaria in order to transmit this.","nb_tokens":195} | |
| {"doc_id":"60U-wLfB8iU_88","video_id":"60U-wLfB8iU","content":"And so what happens is you both have people buying this medication and then the society that sets up regulations and also drains the swamps and make sure that you spray those places that are really pesky and make sure that when somebody comes in, we have this a couple of times a year, somebody comes in with a disease from a poor country, they come into Sweden, then we treat them because we can afford to. So once a country gets sufficiently rich, you don't die from easily curable infectious diseases. And of course, lifting everyone else up is both great because you can actually do a lot more good, but it also means you stop dying and your kids stop dying. Yeah, so this through line that I think you intended, but certainly that I took away from your work, okay, as we start tackling these things with the People Prosperity Planet as a North Star, we're looking at what does the most good as benchmarked against those three things. As we begin to do this, there becomes a self-reinforcing loop.","nb_tokens":211} | |
| {"doc_id":"60U-wLfB8iU_89","video_id":"60U-wLfB8iU","content":"Now, I often heard you talk about this in terms of climate change, but I thought it was a really brilliant rejoinder to, hey, I get it, you're trying to address all this stuff at the level of climate, but if you address this at the level of remove people from poverty, you're actually solving for the thing I think you all actually wanna solve for, which is that humans are able to deal with climate better than they were before. Because one of the sort of counterintuitive things that I've heard you say that certainly doesn't get talked about is that it used to be some ungodly number, I think 500,000 people a year were killed by climate-related devastation. And now that number is like 11,000. And so that's a 99% reduction in the thing that people are really worried about. And I was like, how the hell is that possible? Like, what are we doing? And then you were like, you should get them out of poverty.","nb_tokens":207} | |
| {"doc_id":"60U-wLfB8iU_90","video_id":"60U-wLfB8iU","content":"And some of these things just become, and I should stop, I'm really couching it because I think that there is a sense, and of course I am very biased because I have done very well for myself, but there's this sense of like, people that have generated wealth are evil. And I want people to understand, like, we want everyone to be wealthy instead of everyone being poor. Like, if we're trying to make things equal and we wanna see people all on an even playing field, I would really encourage people to look at things you can do to lift people up rather than knock people down. Because they become more resilient. Because their kids are more likely to survive. Because they're more likely to get educated. And some of the things, in fact, one of the things that we should probably address head on is do you believe the world is fundamentally better off with less people? All right, so I just wanna answer the other part or comment on the other part. I think that's exactly right. This is a question of saying, if you can make people better off, they will become better off in so many other ways. I think most people don't have a clear picture.","nb_tokens":245} | |
| {"doc_id":"60U-wLfB8iU_91","video_id":"60U-wLfB8iU","content":"200 years ago, so in 1820, it's estimated that 90% of everyone living on the planet were below a dollar a day or the $2.15 today. We were extremely poor except for a very, very small class of people who all wore those fancy ropes and lorded over the rest of us. And we've basically gone from a world where 90% were poor to a world where 90, or actually 92 or 3% are not poor. That's a fantastic world. And that is really a world that's worth going for. And so that just emphasizes your argument. Now, a lot of people will say, if we had fewer people, we would have less pressure on the environment. It's typically sort of an environmental problem, a sort of argument. And technically that's obviously true. All other things equal. If you had fewer people, there would be less air pollution, there'd be less pressure on nature because we wouldn't have to grow as much food and so on. The problem with that argument is really just, sorry, who is gonna stop being there? It's not like there's billions of volunteers.","nb_tokens":237} | |
| {"doc_id":"60U-wLfB8iU_92","video_id":"60U-wLfB8iU","content":"Or who's gonna stop having kids, man? Yeah, yeah. So when you sort of probe people a little bit on this conversation, it's typically, you know what, there's a little bit too many of you and just enough of me. Which sort of comes across as a little hypocritical. The real answer of course is, it's not like we have a lever where we can say, you know what, we're 8 billion, but now we're gonna turn it down to 2 billion. Or at least not without going into some really, really nasty ways to reduce those numbers, right? So the reality is what we can discuss is what kind of future would we like? Would we like a world where there's 12 billion people? Or would we like a world where there's 9 billion people? Or would we like a world where there's 7 billion people by the end of the century? And that's something that we, to a certain degree, can decide on. And I think what we know reduces the number of people is getting more opportunities for women and getting more education for women.","nb_tokens":229} | |
| {"doc_id":"60U-wLfB8iU_93","video_id":"60U-wLfB8iU","content":"So that is women can get better educated and they can actually get a job. They can have businesses. And if they have those things, it typically means they will want to have fewer kids because the alternatives just got better, right? And I think everyone would agree those are good things, education for women and opportunities for women. And that will sort of automatically reduce the load. Nobody's worried about the sort of runaway population, which I think is really the backbone for much of the conversation about, well, we should have fewer people that we'll end up with 20 or 30 or 100 billion people. That's just not in the cards. And I think we also need to recognize, and this is, I think, still an unsolved question, to what extent is a society where you end up with fewer people? We're seeing that in many rich countries today, not in the U.S. still, because you're having a lot of people immigrate into the U.S. But for instance, Japan, Russia, very clearly, although Russia is sort of an outline, so many other ways, let's look at Japan.","nb_tokens":231} | |
| {"doc_id":"60U-wLfB8iU_94","video_id":"60U-wLfB8iU","content":"Countries where you have women deciding to, on average, if you had sort of a repopulation, a permanent, sorry, a stable population, the average woman would get 2.1 kids. So two to replicate the man and the woman, and then 0.1 because some of these kids are gonna die before they get old enough to get their own kids. So 2.1 is the sort of stable level. In many of these countries, so South Korea, many others, you have just over one, and that will lead to dramatic depopulation. That means suddenly your house is no longer as much worth, especially if you're in the countryside, because nobody will be living there in 50 or 100 years. It means a lot of your infrastructure is gonna be outmoded. It also means that there'll be a lot fewer people to take care of you when you get old. And now we imagine that robots and that kind of thing could take over for some of that. It's crazy that that's real talk now. That's nuts. Although I'm a little concerned about, you know, my old age just being cared for by robots.","nb_tokens":240} | |
| {"doc_id":"60U-wLfB8iU_95","video_id":"60U-wLfB8iU","content":"But yeah, who knows? Maybe that could be very nice. But it has a lot of potential downsides as well. And then, of course, there's that overarching argument of saying fewer people means less innovation. So there's a real cost, and the way it's often been argued is that an extra person means an extra mouth, which is a problem because you need to feed that mouth. But it also means an extra pair of hands that can actually work and an extra brain that can come up with a brilliant new idea. And the sort of outcome of those things is not settled. I think it's probably arguable that it's not overall good to have a lot fewer people. But again, my argument is much more of a marginal point is not to say, do you want to go from the eight billion we have now down to a billion now? Because there's no way to do that without killing a lot of people. And I don't see anyone being actually willing to do that. But the real question is, how do we want to get it in 2100? And honestly, this is just not something that we can precisely engineer.","nb_tokens":235} | |
| {"doc_id":"60U-wLfB8iU_96","video_id":"60U-wLfB8iU","content":"We should get women better opportunities, and that will mean fewer kids. And that will probably mean that we'll be more likely to end nine or maybe even seven billion by the end of the century. And then I think we will start having that conversation about saying, how do we get women to have more kids? Which is going to be a whole other kettle of fish. Well, we're already there in some places for sure. I know that there have been incentives in Japan and I think Korea. China as well, I think started, well, they had a, would they tax you if you didn't have enough kids? I don't remember. So forgive me on that. But there are incentives that are being rolled out now in different countries because the population is far, not only is it far more likely to collapse, it is already decreasing at some pretty dramatic rates. And this is math. You can't raise a kid faster. It takes nine months to make one and then you got to raise them to maturity and give them some time before they have their own kids. So once that starts declining, that's a pretty slow reversal.","nb_tokens":231} | |
| {"doc_id":"60U-wLfB8iU_97","video_id":"60U-wLfB8iU","content":"It takes multi-generations to get that moving in the opposite direction. And so far, at least in rich countries, to my knowledge, the incentives just to have more kids have not worked well, if I am tracking. They work a little bit, as you'd imagine, you know, all the things equal, you're more likely to have more kids, but they only work marginally. So, you know, instead of having 1.2, you might, you know, squeeze people up to 1.3. So it's going to be a little bit of the solution, but it's not the main part of the solution. And again, this goes to a lot of other things. And now I'm going to pull that card of saying this is not my expertise. But in some ways, my point is I'm trying to trade in on stuff we know works. So we know that e-procurement is something we should do. The number of kids is almost the opposite kind of argument. We have no clue on how to make that number move dramatically. And we have no idea whether that's actually a really good or a really bad thing.","nb_tokens":239} | |
| {"doc_id":"60U-wLfB8iU_98","video_id":"60U-wLfB8iU","content":"And people will have varying views on this all across the spectrum. And that's why I would say, look, this is an interesting conversation. I think it's very unlikely that we will have a huge impact on this in any short or medium term. And what we want to do is to make sure that women have better opportunities. And that will have a very predictable outcome of saying we're not going to end up at the 10, 20 billion people by the end of the century. So we can sort of lay that panic to rest. All right, let's get back to some of the things at work. So we've so far talked about e-procurement, the baby breathing thing. I certainly mentioned that briefly. What are some other ones that have big impacts? So let me actually just take you up on that one, because that's just a very, very small part of it. It's helping moms and newborn kids just around pregnancy. It's a terribly dangerous thing. It used to be very dangerous for women in rich countries to be treated to be pregnant. Almost a percent of all women in pregnancy would die. This is terribly dangerous.","nb_tokens":236} | |
| {"doc_id":"60U-wLfB8iU_99","video_id":"60U-wLfB8iU","content":"It was actually more dangerous for rich women back in the 1800s, because they would be more likely to go to hospitals. And in the hospitals, the doctor would just confront from amputating a leg and then, you know, come and mess around and give you a purpural fever. I'm not sure what that's called in English. But, you know, the thing that you die from. So the idea here is we've gotten that under control, but still about 300,000 women die each and every year in pregnancy. And about 2.3 million kids die in their first 28 days in life. And we know how to fix this. This is not rocket science. It is basically about getting women into institutional birth. So when complications arise, there's an opportunity to do something about it. And then that you have those very basic emergency obstetric opportunities. And this is a package of things. One of the things that you mentioned is this mask that you give kids. So as you mentioned, 5% of all kids come out and mom and don't breathe.","nb_tokens":226} | |
| {"doc_id":"60U-wLfB8iU_100","video_id":"60U-wLfB8iU","content":"And you basically need to put a mask on them and pump in air into their lungs. And then they start going and then they're safe. And you need that in poor countries. But even if you come into a birth facility, many of them won't have this little mask. It costs, what, $75? And over its three-year lifetime, it can probably save about 25 lives. That's an enormous effective thing. Now, I'm not arguing that everybody should go out and do a GoFundMe thing just for that, because this is about getting all of the structure in there. So it's about getting the moms into giving birth in institutions. So about two-thirds do that now. We're arguing we should get like 90% of all women in there. And then these institutions should have a lot of different things. They should have disinfectants. They should have clean water. You'd imagine these were obvious things, but they're still not implemented. We've identified how much would that cost. Much of this is also just simply when the hospital administrator decides what should you buy with your budget.","nb_tokens":228} | |
| {"doc_id":"60U-wLfB8iU_101","video_id":"60U-wLfB8iU","content":"A lot of them end up with buying the machine that says ping, if you remember that one from Monty Python. Only because of you. But yes, I am well familiar. It's a skid where, you know, they have all the doctors, all the machines in there because the administrator is coming and they want to show the most expensive machine that says ping. And that's all we ever learn about it. But, you know, they're still like, oh, there's something. Oh, we're missing the mom, right? So they realize John Cleese is doing most of the talking. It's a very fun skid. But, you know, fundamentally, you get the idea that nobody, no doctor is going to be excited about getting this mask. I mean, how's that fun? I'm not going to go to conference and say we have a mask for $75, right? You want to be able to have, we have the newest MRI scanner or whatever it is, right? But we need to get hospital administrators and everybody else to spend money on boring old stuff that will actually save a lot of people.","nb_tokens":234} | |
| {"doc_id":"60U-wLfB8iU_102","video_id":"60U-wLfB8iU","content":"So we estimate that the total cost is going to be about $5 billion. A lot of this is cost for the women. So it's almost $2 billion of that cost. It's the cost in terms of lost income for the women. Typically, you'll work right up to the day and possibly even some of the day where you give birth. And then the day after you'll go back to work. But here, if you go into an institution, you'll actually have to take some days off. And that has a huge cost. And when we're doing this for 27 million women every year, that actually adds up. So $3 billion in actual cost and then $2 billion in extra cost for the women. That total cost will save about 166,000 moms and it'll save 1.2 million kids. Each and every dollar will, on average, deliver $87 worth of good. That's just one of those many amazing things we could do. So, you know, again, we've had some of these people do all of the math, look at all of the costs in all of the different countries.","nb_tokens":233} | |
| {"doc_id":"60U-wLfB8iU_103","video_id":"60U-wLfB8iU","content":"And of course, this is not true in a total metaphysical sense. It's not like all the cents and dollars are going to tally up exactly. But it's the best knowledge that we have or what our best models show what this increase would cost and how many people this would save. It's just a phenomenal policy. OK, so for whatever reason, this one just hit me in terms of, OK, going back to climate, no one here, certainly not I, and I know not you, is saying that climate is... We are saying climate is a problem. It needs to be addressed. But when you go back to people, planet, prosperity, and you're taking the balance of those, if you're only losing 500,000 people to climate problems now and what you're just talking about, getting women into institutions for birth, getting them the sanitization, getting them the little breathing thing, if that's saving over a million people, you're already 2x of when climate was the worst in terms of the number of people that it was killing, which was 500,000. It's now, whatever, 11,000.","nb_tokens":237} | |
| {"doc_id":"60U-wLfB8iU_104","video_id":"60U-wLfB8iU","content":"So compared to even what climate is now, it's just massive, massive, massive, massively more impactful in terms of saving lives. But it does beg the question. So if I'm somebody that's really, really... The climate is the meteorite streaking towards Earth that is going to just cause mass extinction, basically. I go to the movie, The Day After Tomorrow. Did you see that movie? Yes, I did. Okay. So that was really sobering. This thought that, okay, everything is just so delicately balanced. And if we fall out of balance, then this cascading thing can happen that basically brings an ice age effectively overnight. And even if that happened, say, over 12 months, it would just be unimaginably devastating. So it begs the question, is there anything that we see in the data that leads us to believe that let's just assume we do nothing for climate and everybody just keeps doing their thing and we keep making people richer? China keeps bringing on coal plants, like just every... Bad, bad, bad, bad, bad. Could it get that kind of catastrophic?","nb_tokens":229} | |
| {"doc_id":"60U-wLfB8iU_105","video_id":"60U-wLfB8iU","content":"So if you just ask the could it, is there a non-zero probability that it could be catastrophic? Yes, of course. There's a non-zero probability for everything. Redhead women could take over the world tomorrow. That's a non-zero probability, right? So that's not really the question. The question is, is it realistic that this would happen? And no, the answer is no. So in almost all of the UN climate panel... Yeah, this is what I was going to ask. Based on the data, it's a no? Well, no. You can't base this on data because you're talking about the future. So you have to base it on models because we don't have data for the future. We're worried about the future. So we have to ask, what do the models indicate will happen in reasonable worst case outcomes? And almost everything that the UN climate panel shows is that this is a problem, but that it's not by any means sort of end of the world or anywhere close to that.","nb_tokens":212} | |
| {"doc_id":"60U-wLfB8iU_106","video_id":"60U-wLfB8iU","content":"So the only climate... So climate economics have spent a very large time trying to estimate, not just what is the bad things that could happen, but try to give that an economic estimate. So, you know, get a sense of proportion, how bad will this be? And so the only climate economists to win the Nobel Prize in climate economics, William Nordhaus from Yale University in 2018, his model show, but many other models show reasonably the similar outcomes show that if we do nothing, and again, nobody's suggesting that that's the right outcome, that that's the right policy decision. But if we just let everything happen and just let sort of global warming get worse and worse, then by the end of the century, all the negative impacts and all the positive impacts, remember there's both negatives and positive, but the negatives outweigh the positives. That's why it's a net negative. The net negative will feel like we're 4% less well off than we otherwise would be. So it's a 4% problem. That's basically what he won the Nobel Prize for. And that's certainly a problem.","nb_tokens":230} | |
| {"doc_id":"60U-wLfB8iU_107","video_id":"60U-wLfB8iU","content":"Now, remember by the end of the century, the UN estimate that we will be much richer than we are today. They actually estimate on a reasonable sort of middle of the road scenario that the average person in the world will be 450% as rich as he or she is today. So that's a phenomenally much better world. That's the one where we've lifted a lot of people out of poverty as well. There'll be no poverty, no $1 a day poverty. Of course, then we'll be worrying about, you know, $100 a day poverty instead or $10 poverty, whatever. But fundamentally, so on average, we expect that we'll be 450% as rich by the end of the century. But because of global warming, unmitigated global warming, it'll feel like we're only 434% as rich, 4% reduction to that, right? So 434% as rich is not the end of the world. It's a much better world, but it's a slightly less better world than it otherwise would have been, which is why- That must be very controversial. Is Nordhaus a controversial figure? Because obviously he's become controversial.","nb_tokens":244} | |
| {"doc_id":"60U-wLfB8iU_108","video_id":"60U-wLfB8iU","content":"He's become controversial. Pretty much everyone in climate economics agrees with him. You can find people that can sort of come up with these really, really unrealistic, it might be even 10%, but it's not going to change the argument. You need to get up to, you know, 80, 90, close to 100% for this really to hit home. And nobody can show these sorts of numbers. There's some people out there who say that, but they have no good evidence for why this would be the case. And they're not well-respected. Is there any model from a crackpot or otherwise, I mean, a player in the space, but a player in the space, even if they're considered like, mm, I'm not so sure about this guy. Is there anybody that has models that put that kind of number on the board that this would be an 80 to 90% reduction in the growth rate? No, no, no. The worst that's out there, and I think most people would agree this has pretty well been debunked.","nb_tokens":223} | |
| {"doc_id":"60U-wLfB8iU_109","video_id":"60U-wLfB8iU","content":"And I can walk you through that, but that'd take quite a while, is sort of, is it 23%? And it's just simply wrong in many different ways. But that's a period study that has been referenced a lot. But even that would not generate this. It would be sort of a decade worth of economic growth that we'd lose out on over the century, which obviously would be tragic and would be better to not have that. But it's not going to be, by any realistic sense, the end of the world. And it's not gonna be such that we'll be worse off, we'll be less well, we'll be less better off than we otherwise would have been. And that's the crucial bit. That's the sort of the missing conversation in this. If it's the end of the world, it makes good sense to say, you should throw everything in the kitchen sink at this. If it's a problem, you should obviously, and Nordhaus sense a 4% problem, you should be, if you can throw 1% or 2% at it and fix all of it, that's great.","nb_tokens":237} | |
| {"doc_id":"60U-wLfB8iU_110","video_id":"60U-wLfB8iU","content":"But if you throw 5% to 10% at it and fix a little bit of the 4%, that's really stupid. And so that's the conversation that you really need to have. And unfortunately, much of the policy conversation is, let's throw a 5% to 10% at it and only fix part of it, which turns out to be a very poor use of resource. It doesn't mean we shouldn't fix it, but we should fix it much smarter. Yeah, okay. So if I were to channel the people, because there is a... I don't want to get sucked into all the debates, but I do want to be fair to some of the things that are out there and at least their frame of reference. Nobel Memorial Prize winner Joseph Stiglitz said it would be outright dangerous for people to be persuaded by Bjorn Lomborg's arguments. So if I'm going to put that hat on and I'm going to channel him for a second, I want to make sure that we start teasing these things out. So one, you said that Nordstream... Nordhaus. Nordhaus, thank you, that he's become a controversial figure.","nb_tokens":243} | |
| {"doc_id":"60U-wLfB8iU_111","video_id":"60U-wLfB8iU","content":"So I want to make sure everybody understands there's a lot of debate around this stuff. And so if I channel the guy that we were just talking... Stiglitz, thank you. If I channel him, what I would say is, hey, look, I can't help but notice that climate is not on your 12 things. So you say, let's do something about it, but you wrote a whole book about let's do these 12 things first. And we've just spent the last 30 years finally getting people to pay attention to the only thing that really is existential. I love it. I love the idea of pulling, getting women to have birth in hospitals. I understand that, but that's never going to be existential. So why are we wasting even a second on things that are just sort of incremental improvement when we have this thing that could truly be cataclysmic hurtling at us? So I've already heard you, and you've said it multiple times in this interview, and you've definitely spent a lot of time saying it to other people, that this just isn't world-ending.","nb_tokens":230} | |
| {"doc_id":"60U-wLfB8iU_112","video_id":"60U-wLfB8iU","content":"And without getting into a full-blown bringing somebody else on to challenge all the points, I just want to plant for people that, okay, this is where we get into sort of this is a debated thing. But what I hear you saying, and this is what I found compelling but let me know if I'm making a leap too far here, that when we look at that 250% better, we are specifically talking about the kind of things that are in the 12, or maybe exactly the 12, like those are the things that are actually going to have the impact on prosperity and people, so lives and prosperity that we want. And by raising those two things, you will very intentionally, but it's just a second-order consequence, take care of the climate. Is that your stance? Um, somewhat. So let me just, first of all, I have a whole rebuttal of Stiglitz, and Stiglitz is not a climate economist, but you know, he's a smart guy. And he's certainly very- So what's the difference? Because he won a Nobel Prize for something with climate in the title. No. He- Sorry, Nobel Memorial Prize.","nb_tokens":245} | |
| {"doc_id":"60U-wLfB8iU_113","video_id":"60U-wLfB8iU","content":"Okay, so I don't know. He won his Nobel on models of signaling, essentially his most famous models on why it's really hard to sell used cars, because you know whether it's a good or a bad car, a lemon, but other people don't. It's a very good paper. It's a fun point. We've debated it several times. I think Stiglitz is in way over his head, and he knows that that's what I think. But that's a conversation for a different time. Nordhaus is only controversial, not among economists, but among all the people who want desperate, strong climate action, because obviously that's not compatible with what he's actually found. And so I think it's mostly sort of a reasoned argument that I don't like his conclusions, so he must be wrong, which is not a terribly strong scientific argument. But that's a whole different kind of conversation. But I think it's a very crucial point. Why don't I have climate as one of these 12?","nb_tokens":212} | |
| {"doc_id":"60U-wLfB8iU_114","video_id":"60U-wLfB8iU","content":"And the simple answer is, it's because there is no climate policy that has a substantial sort of spending that delivers at least $15 back on the dollar. Now, most climate policies that we do in the West, so for instance, the Paris Agreement, delivers about 10 cents back on the dollar. That is, it actually destroys value. It costs a lot of money and it delivers a little bit of good for climate. So it's a bad idea. Now, you can have a lot of conversation. A lot of people would be very angry to hear that. I think we have very good academic arguments that it's less than a dollar back on the dollar, but 10 cents exactly, who knows? It could be 30 cents. There's some people who would even argue, if you really sort of tune all the characters to get the right politically right result, you might make it one and a half dollars back on the dollar. That is it, it's a good investment, but it's nowhere near as good an investment as these other things. So that's the simple argument.","nb_tokens":223} | |
| {"doc_id":"60U-wLfB8iU_115","video_id":"60U-wLfB8iU","content":"I'm gonna ask a really gross question and now I am way over my head, but this is very much, hey, thinking through novel problems. A guy that I know called Tom tells me, you should just go ahead. Yep, that's where I'm at. Ooh, am I gonna perhaps rue the day? I don't think I've ever uttered this name in the podcast, maybe once or twice, but Trump pulled America out of the Paris climate agreement, whatever, I'm not sure how to frame it. Was he right? I think he was possibly right for the wrong reasons. I mean, his argument was basically, this is costing America a lot of money and it's not doing very much good, so I'm gonna pull it out. It's not gonna do America a lot of good. Remember, the reason why we care about global warming, presumably, is because this will affect all of the world. It'll actually not affect rich countries all that much, partly because rich countries are typically fairly high latitude countries, so more warmth. I come from Sweden, right?","nb_tokens":222} | |
| {"doc_id":"60U-wLfB8iU_116","video_id":"60U-wLfB8iU","content":"I mean, not like we're gonna be sorry that it gets a little better weather, but if you live closest to the equator, that is actually a problem. Partly when you're richer, you're also more resilient, so you have less problems with more storms or more floods, that kind of thing. So I think there's some truth to this. I would never just go ahead and say, Trump was just right on this and good for him. It's more sort of, the way I heard it was that he got part of it, but it was not, the right way to deal with this would have been to say, we should do something else. And we actually did that all the way back to our start of our conversation. We not only did this for all the really smart things to do in the world, which is the best things first, we also did a similar process where we said, if you were to spend money on climate, how would you do that in the best possible way? So not say anything else, just say we wanna spend money on climate. Where do you get the biggest bang for your, biggest climate bang for your book?","nb_tokens":239} | |
| {"doc_id":"60U-wLfB8iU_117","video_id":"60U-wLfB8iU","content":"And it turns out by far the best investment is in innovation. And if you think about it, it really makes sense. Back in the 1950s, Los Angeles was a terribly polluted place mostly because of cars. The solution was not to tell everyone, I'm sorry, could you walk instead? Because that would never convince anyone in Los Angeles, right? But the solution was instead innovating what was known as the catalytic converter, a little gizmo innovated in 1978 that you put on a car tailpipe and it basically getting rid of most of the pollution. This is the air pollution part, but that's why you can drive a lot longer and much cleaner. I'm not saying Los Angeles is great or anything, but it's much, much cleaner than it was in 1950s mostly because of that innovation. Yeah, it has a cost of a couple hundred dollars, but we basically convinced everyone in the world for a couple hundred dollars, sure, I'll do that in order to not cough. And we've gotten everyone in the world to do that.","nb_tokens":223} | |
| {"doc_id":"60U-wLfB8iU_118","video_id":"60U-wLfB8iU","content":"That's how we solve global warming, not by telling everyone to be worse off, but by telling people, if you invest a little bit of money and we're talking about $100 billion there for innovation and research and development and green energy, you will innovate the technologies that are going to be so cheap faster so that everyone will eventually switch. And let me just give you one example and then I would love to go back to the other things. But Craig Venter, the guy who cracked the human genome- I actually met Craig Venter. Yeah, no, I know him. Oh, cool. Yeah, yeah. Don't know him well by any means, but... He seems like a very interesting guy. I don't know. But he has a lot of slightly crazy ideas, but also really, really interesting ideas. So one of his ideas is, imagine taking a gene-modified algae that basically takes sunlight and CO2 and transforms it into oil. Then we just put it on the ocean surface. We grow our own Saudi Arabia out there. It'll soak up all the CO2.","nb_tokens":223} | |
| {"doc_id":"60U-wLfB8iU_119","video_id":"60U-wLfB8iU","content":"So then we'll harvest all the oil and then we'll keep our entire fossil fuel economy, but driven on this oil that we just produced out in the ocean surface. So it's CO2 neutral. How cool is that? Right? You can make it work in principle, but it's not anywhere close to commercially viable. But, you know, let's give that man a couple of million dollars to see if he can make this work a lot cheaper and a lot better. If he can, he'll be the richest guy in the world and he will make every one of us much, much better off because we'll have, you know, basically infinite energy without the CO2 problem. That'd be fantastic. Now, there's a very good chance this won't work, but we should invest in a thousand things like that. And we really just need one or a few of them to come true. And those are the ones that are going to power the 21st century. Right now we're instead saying, no, no, no, let's make it more costly to cut back on CO2. It's going to cost these trillions of dollars.","nb_tokens":237} | |
| {"doc_id":"60U-wLfB8iU_120","video_id":"60U-wLfB8iU","content":"Rich countries are sort of saying they want to do it, but poor countries, China, India, Africa, no, not going to happen. And so in reality, we're spending a lot of money and we're very likely to not achieve anything. And that's why I'm arguing that was what our economists showed. And we had three Nobel laureates involved in this. And they basically said the very best long-term solution is to dramatically increase our investment in green energy R&D. So we should definitely do that. But what we found was that was $11 back in the dollar. So had we set that target at 10 instead, but that's just historically not what we've done. It's not because we want it to sort of skew. This is just because we didn't want to have, if we'd set it at five, we'd have what 40 or 100 different ideas. It will also be much harder to know whether we've gotten all of them. And that's why we've historically set it at 15. So that's why green innovation is not in there.","nb_tokens":224} | |
| {"doc_id":"60U-wLfB8iU_121","video_id":"60U-wLfB8iU","content":"But fundamentally, it's just simply a question of saying, where can you spend the money and do the most good? But it necessitates that you stop believing, oh, but if we don't fix my favorite problem first, nothing else matters. And a reasonable number of people will say, look, there'll still be poor people in 2030. But if we don't do something about climate, it'll be the end of the world. And I get that if that's your frame of mind, that actually makes perfect sense. It just happens to not be correct. Right. Okay. So going back, we've got e-procurement, we've got mothers going into hospital sanitation, babies breathing, that's two. Hit us with number three. So take some of these very, very simple diseases like tuberculosis and malaria. Tuberculosis is what killed a fourth of everyone in the 1800s. If you watch Moulin Rouge, it's a team. Oh, I'm going to give away the ending. Spoiler alert, she dies again, right? And she dies from tuberculosis. Everybody died from tuberculosis. This was a huge killer.","nb_tokens":236} | |
| {"doc_id":"60U-wLfB8iU_122","video_id":"60U-wLfB8iU","content":"We estimate over the last 200 years, about a billion people died from tuberculosis. It was a tsunami of death over much of the rich world. And then we got antibiotics. We used to send people in sanatoria. Now we fixed it with antibiotics. We're fine. We don't have tuberculosis, or essentially don't have tuberculosis. There's a little bit of tuberculosis with the HIV epidemic from the 80s onwards, but it's still very, very little in rich countries. And it's mainly a knock-on effect of HIV. It's not actually tuberculosis. It's just the thing that kills some of the people with HIV. So the reality is we fix in the rich world, but we haven't done that in the poor part of the world. This is simply about making sure that people keep taking their medication. And one of the reasons why that's hard is you actually have to take your medication for half a year. If you've ever had your doctor prescribe you two weeks of antibiotics for something, after you get well after the first week, it's kind of hard to remember to do it the other week, right?","nb_tokens":231} | |
| {"doc_id":"60U-wLfB8iU_123","video_id":"60U-wLfB8iU","content":"And imagine doing this for a whole half year. So there's lots of, you know, you gamify, you get people on apps, you get Tuberculosis Anonymous, where you meet once a week or a month and say, yes, I took all my medications, and, you know, that kind of stuff. You give people a little prize to do it. And it feels a little wrong that you have to give people a prize, you know, like a juice carton or something. But if you think about it, if you make sure that these people don't have tuberculosis, they don't get to pass it on to 10 to 15 other people. That's how you stop an epidemic. So it has huge societal benefits. And then there's also a very large number of people that have tuberculosis that never get discovered. So three, four, five million people each year. We need to go out and screen those much more. In Bangladesh, again, they had old, typically widows that would have 15 families in their neighborhood, and they would go every once in a while and listen to them and say, hey, has anyone been coughing for a long while?","nb_tokens":243} | |
| {"doc_id":"60U-wLfB8iU_124","video_id":"60U-wLfB8iU","content":"And if the answer keeps being yes, then they make sure that that person gets in and get checked up on tuberculosis. Those kinds of things. Yes, it has a cost. We estimate it would cost about $6 billion in total, but then we could long-term avoid almost a million people dying each and every year from tuberculosis. This is simply something, again, we should do. Every dollar spent will deliver $46 of social benefits. This is just an incredible investment. Likewise with malaria, I'm not going to go into that, but it's basically about getting more mosquito nets out. We used to have lots of malaria. Malaria was endemic in 36 states in the US. It was so endemic in India, for instance, that many places in India, we believe in the early part of last century, were unlivable. But now we've eradicated many different places, mostly in the rich world. It's almost gone in most other places. But in Africa, mostly because they have a mosquito that only bite people, whereas we have mosquitoes that'll bite people. And livestock.","nb_tokens":223} | |
| {"doc_id":"60U-wLfB8iU_125","video_id":"60U-wLfB8iU","content":"So if you have lots of livestock, there's a lot less chance that you're actually going to get the malaria. And they also have a worse kind of malaria, a more deadly kind of malaria. So they're just simply, they have the unlucky draw. But if we get more mosquito nets, insecticide-stripped mosquito nets, we could save about half of the... There's about 600,000 people die each year. For about $1.1 billion, we could save about 200,000 lives each and every year again. So the benefit-cost ratio is about 48. So these are boring things. TB, tuberculosis, or malaria, not sexy things that we talk about, but they just happen. Pretty rad if your kid is the one that has the tuberculosis. So let me tell you. Exactly. They're incredibly important for those people. And of course, also, we believe that not only is malaria terrible for the people who die, but most people actually don't die from malaria. They're just terribly, terribly ill.","nb_tokens":215} | |
| {"doc_id":"60U-wLfB8iU_126","video_id":"60U-wLfB8iU","content":"And so we believe a lot of people in Africa are actually employed such that you need to have two employees because one of them is going to be as likely to be sick with malaria. And that's, of course, terribly inefficient. So you could also make the societies much more effective and hence richer and more resilient and more prosperous if you got rid of malaria. So this is just one of those no-brainers that we should be doing. All right. So I think it would be useful to go through all of them. I don't know if you can pop them off just off the top of your head. Can I just give you one more? Because we talked about education at first. I think it'd be great to just finish that up. It's the most expensive thing that we're suggesting. And it's also one of the most impactful of all of these things that we're talking about. So as we talk about, there's a huge dearth of good education in the world. So we work really, really hard in getting all the people in the poor part of the world into school. They're now in school, but they're not learning very much.","nb_tokens":238} | |
| {"doc_id":"60U-wLfB8iU_127","video_id":"60U-wLfB8iU","content":"So the right answer is not to, you know, double teachers' pays or build lots more schools or that kind of thing. Yes, it has some benefit somewheres. And some countries actually have a lot more kids coming in. So they will have to build schools. But it's not the way that you actually solve this problem. The way you solve it, and so we asked a lot of the world's top economists, education economists, they all said the same thing. There are two ways that you solve this. One is to teach at the right level. I'm just going to tell you what that is. So don't separate by age, separate by skill set. Well, yes. So, you know, everywhere in the world, we have all the 12-year-olds in the same class, all the 13-year-olds in the same class. But especially in poor countries, these 12-year-olds are widely different abilities. Some of them are way ahead of the teacher, many of them have no clue what's going on in the class. Ideally, that teacher should teach each one of those kids at his or her own level.","nb_tokens":235} | |
| {"doc_id":"60U-wLfB8iU_128","video_id":"60U-wLfB8iU","content":"But of course, you can't do that if you have 50 kids in your class. But what you can do, and we know this from lots and lots of experiments, and large-scale experiments with hundreds of thousands of kids, if you put these kids, say, in front of a tablet one hour a day, this tablet has educational software on it, it'll very quickly find out where your exact level is and start teaching you at that level. So, your whole day will be seven hours of boring old classes that don't really work, and then one hour of this where you actually get to interact with the tablet. Are you familiar with the XPRIZE? They did a prize around learning on this. Is that part of what you guys looked at? I know that it's there, but no, this is research that's been going on for at least 10, 15 years, where they have investigated these sorts of educational softwares and found out how much does it cost. Also, one of the things you need to recognize is that some of these tablets will be stolen. Some of them will be corrupt. Some of the teachers won't know how to do it.","nb_tokens":241} | |
| {"doc_id":"60U-wLfB8iU_129","video_id":"60U-wLfB8iU","content":"You also need solar panels to make sure that you have electricity if you don't have power out in the middle of nowhere. You also need lockers so you can lock in the tablets at night. There's a lot of things that can go wrong, and we've estimated all of these things. Also, and crucially, this is why you only have it one hour a day, that the kids don't get the tablet. It turns out that that's a really bad thing because then they mostly just end up watching Netflix and doing all kinds of other things. So funny. Really fast on this, because this is where our worlds collide a little bit with my obsession with AI. So, I brought up the XPRIZE. They did a prize around this. They wanted to make sure that all kids were getting educated. Imad Mostak won that prize. He's the guy that went on to found StabilityAI, which gave us stability diffusion, which at one point accounted for like the top 10 apps on the app store for iPhone were all built on the back of stability diffusion. So, his obsession is how do we use AI to educate people?","nb_tokens":235} | |
| {"doc_id":"60U-wLfB8iU_130","video_id":"60U-wLfB8iU","content":"How do we make it open source? How do we get it in the hands of all these kids? There were two things that happened around the XPRIZE. I don't know where the borders are. So, what I'm about to say, I think was Imad, but I'm not entirely sure, but it was definitely tied to the XPRIZE. They went into some just ridiculously impoverished village. There was like a border fence. They cut a hole in the fence and they affixed effectively an iPad, a tablet. And they did not say a word. The tablet wasn't even in the native language. They just affixed it with an internet connection. And something like three weeks later, they had 12 year olds teaching themselves molecular biology because they were just navigating around and finding this stuff and finding videos and things that they were interested in. And I was just like, that is insane. And to me, it speaks to this idea of when you get somebody who can learn at their own pace, you will be shocked at how quickly they like find that lane of like, okay, I comprehend at this level.","nb_tokens":230} | |
| {"doc_id":"60U-wLfB8iU_131","video_id":"60U-wLfB8iU","content":"And then they just go ham because to your earlier point about 3G and getting people access to phones and the internet, the world's knowledge is at your fingertips the second you have access to the internet. It's really pretty incredible. I was not at all surprised to see education on your list. Now, and the reason why we are advocating this particular technology is partly because if you do one hour a day, you can partly, you can spread out the usage of the tablets with lots of other kids. So the cost of the tablet becomes less of cost per kid. It's also that you need teachers buy in. Not surprisingly, teachers are worried that AI or technology will basically take over their job. And so by making sure that the teacher will sit with the kids for that one hour, ostensibly to help them with technology problems, but really to say, this is part of your job. So they're not worried about this as the way to make sure that teachers will actually embrace this sort of solution, making it possible to start this conversation. And also this is what we've studied. We've studied this particular thing. We know this is incredibly good.","nb_tokens":235} | |
| {"doc_id":"60U-wLfB8iU_132","video_id":"60U-wLfB8iU","content":"It's possible that there's an even better thing out there, but this is pretty good already. So what we find is for about $21, you can get a kid one hour a day for a whole year on this tablet. So the tablet will be spread out over, I think it's three or four years. The solar panels for 10 years, the boxes also for 10 years. You also need to build a new classroom where you can do this. And that's also spread over 20 years. And obviously the software is almost all up there, but it's very, very cheap when you have to do it for millions of kids anyway. And so if you look at that total cost is about 31, sorry, $21 for one kid for one year. But it means that for one year going to school, so seven hours of boring school, one hour of actually learning lots of stuff, you end up having learned as much as you normally would in one year over three years. Sorry, I said that badly, right? Every year you go to school, you learn what you normally would have learned in three years. You're simply three times as good.","nb_tokens":240} | |
| {"doc_id":"60U-wLfB8iU_133","video_id":"60U-wLfB8iU","content":"And that matters. Yeah. And then when you go out and you become an adult, you will be more productive because now you actually have learned a lot more stuff, much better. And that means, and we know this from a lot of research, that reflects in your hourly wage. You'll simply have a higher hourly wage. And so we've estimated what's that value over time in all of these countries. And what we find is that for about 10 billion dollars, so this is going to cost about 10 billion dollars to ramp this up to a lot of places. So get 90% of all kids and the poor half of the world this opportunity. But the benefit is that these kids will each and every year make $600 billion more in good, in higher income. Remember, they'll actually make six trillion, but this is far off. And so we're discounting it back to today. It's worth less because it's far into the future. So it's about $600 billion. And that means for every dollar spent, you'll do $65 of good. I should just say, this is not the only way that we're talking.","nb_tokens":238} | |
| {"doc_id":"60U-wLfB8iU_134","video_id":"60U-wLfB8iU","content":"There's also, and you actually mentioned that, you could also do without the technology. So you just simply, one hour a day, you take all the kids who should be in first grade and put them in to a first grade. You take all the kids who should be in second grade and put them into a real second grade. It has a lot of social problems because you end up putting six years old and 12 year olds. And you also kind of point out, yeah, Steve here, not the prices of those bunch kind of thing. You're not going to have the kind of adherence, yeah. But it's much cheaper because you don't need the tablets. And it's less effective, but it's also much cheaper. So we actually find it's also a really good idea. They do it in India, for instance. So we're suggesting that could be part of the solution. The last part is teachers are really bad. Teachers are poorly paid in most places around the world. And they are struggling. Many of them are just a tiny bit better than the kids that they have to teach.","nb_tokens":227} | |
| {"doc_id":"60U-wLfB8iU_135","video_id":"60U-wLfB8iU","content":"And so if you give them structured or what we call semi-structured teacher plans, so you basically make an outline of what you should teach today and tomorrow, every hour for the whole year. If you do that and then take them in on some courses, and this has been done, Kenya is now taking this out to the whole country after having done it for about 10% of the population. So we know this works. It costs very, very little and it can make the teachers become better teachers. And then you send out text messages to them every week, oh, this week you're gonna be teaching this, this and this. And it just simply makes the teachers teach better. And so you can both get the kids to learn better. That's the learning at the right level. And you can get the teachers to teach better. And what we say is, we don't know what countries are gonna pick. So we're simply saying one third of each of these three, if you do that, it'll cost $10 billion, but the benefit will be about $600 billion. This is definitely one of the things we should do. Yeah, no joke.","nb_tokens":238} | |
| {"doc_id":"60U-wLfB8iU_136","video_id":"60U-wLfB8iU","content":"That one feels like the beginning of a virtuous cycle. And again, I'm at the risk of beating a dead horse with how I've interpreted what you've put together here is the sense of all of the problems that we really care about are downstream of a few things. Keep people alive. That's one. Make sure that when they're born, that they survive, that the mother survives so that she can have the next kid and that she can raise them well. And then getting them educated is gonna create this upward spiral. So imagine for a second that you're getting them that tablet, they're getting more educated, then even if you spread this out over generations, which I don't think you need to do as you conceptualize this, but even if you did, a more educated parent is going to have a more educated child. And then that's just gonna compound and compound and compound. And this is part of how the West becomes the West. It's not like intellect is unevenly distributed. It's that there are oftentimes geographic things that create this sort of early disadvantage for some people or like malaria and things up.","nb_tokens":231} | |
| {"doc_id":"60U-wLfB8iU_137","video_id":"60U-wLfB8iU","content":"Just you've got a bad draw of the lottery on mosquitoes, which is impossible to think that it can have that kind of consequence, but you just walked us through the math. It obviously does. And so by getting them in this educational spiral, you get them moving upwards. The GDP goes up. They're more wealthy. They can afford more education. They start having fewer kids, more attention on the kids that they do have, pouring more resources into those kids. And so it was just like, you just get richer and richer and better and better. And that's really, really interesting. And I just wanna hammer a point home because- You're also able to handle all other problems better. Right, great point. So your whole thesis around, you become more resilient. So again, just climate being a gravitational center for you because so much of your life has revolved around this, that people are far more likely to survive climate catastrophe or be able to avoid climate catastrophe if they are wealthier, because there are just so many of the knock-on effects we've been talking about.","nb_tokens":221} | |
| {"doc_id":"60U-wLfB8iU_138","video_id":"60U-wLfB8iU","content":"And so going back, one thing that I've heard you bring up many times, but I never hear the interviewer push on this. I just wanna highlight, you spend an hour a day on the tablet and you get three years worth of learning in one year. And what happens if you're on the tablet for all eight hours of the day? I'm sure it's not completely linear, but man, it's gonna be even better. It's crazy. I even think here in the Western world, we would be a lot farther ahead if we standardized the lesson plans, again, always based on data. So what teacher, where, created what lesson plan that yielded what outcome. Now you standardize that across as many people as you can get to take it in. And then it becomes a battle of curriculum, right? So right now we do that effectively at the national level. So it's nation versus nation. But man, we really, I'm going back to AI. With AI, we could really begin to track this stuff.","nb_tokens":211} | |
| {"doc_id":"60U-wLfB8iU_139","video_id":"60U-wLfB8iU","content":"So the people in this class with this curriculum using this software, got this outcome on standardized tests, track them over time, do this well in high school, do this well in college, make this much money. Like now you can really, really start to optimize this stuff. It becomes really incredible. I totally agree. I want to put down a few flags here, which is just, there's a lot of stuff we don't know well. So we don't know what the impact would be of eight hours of tablet use. My suspicion is that kids would be tired of it. COVID was a good example of distance learning is really, really hard because what is going to keep the kids there? They also learn a lot of other things in school. So I would love to do some tests and actually find out is one hour the right answer. And it probably isn't. The reason why it's done is because it's much more acceptable to teachers. It's much less sort of disruptive of the whole educational model. And I think that's probably right if you want this to happen in the real world first.","nb_tokens":226} | |
| {"doc_id":"60U-wLfB8iU_140","video_id":"60U-wLfB8iU","content":"But yes, of course, we should actually have a conversation about, should we do this a lot more? But then also look at what are the potential negative side effects. One obviously is one of the outcomes of going to school is that you learn to navigate a social setting. But the main point here is, again, to say that there are other things you need to learn and we need to make sure that we don't just get so excited with technology that that's the only thing out. One thing is, so do you remember the one laptop per child? That was a very, very common thing like 10, 15 years ago. And everybody loved the idea. But everybody that I knew would be saying, but we haven't actually tested. And when you started testing, it turned out it was not good at all. It actually, and that's why it turned out that it had no impact on learning. And it turned out that teachers were saying that it actually made the kids less attentive in class. So what we know from the evidence is that this is, you don't just give them a computer because what happens is they're gonna end up watching Netflix, right?","nb_tokens":240} | |
| {"doc_id":"60U-wLfB8iU_141","video_id":"60U-wLfB8iU","content":"But what you want to do is to make sure that you put them in structured situations where they learn a lot using the tablet. And maybe one hour is as much as you can handle a day. And I could certainly imagine I would get really bored if I had to do this eight hours a day, even if there was somebody sitting over my, breathing down my neck and saying, you have to stay on this target. The other bit I just want to mention was, we actually don't look at the compound effects of saying, so now we've gotten richer. Now that means the kids, this kid when he or she grows up will be much better educated. So their kids will be even better educated and they'll leave this virtual site. I think it's right, but we don't have the data to prove it. It's just way too hard to do. So this tells you something else, namely that it's very likely that most of the things I've just presented to you are underestimates of how good they are. Because when I talk to the tuberculosis people, they will tell you how many people don't die from tuberculosis because they're doctors and that's how they think about it.","nb_tokens":244} | |
| {"doc_id":"60U-wLfB8iU_142","video_id":"60U-wLfB8iU","content":"But the fact that this will, so tuberculosis typically hit people in their 30s, 40s, just when they become parents. And so this means you lose a mom or a dad and the whole family sort of careens out of control. We don't know what that has of an impact, but it's very likely not good. So the real benefit of this is probably much, much higher, but we don't include that because we don't have good enough models to it. Most people don't. So in education, we only look at the income impact because that's how education economists think about the whole world. But clearly learning more also means that you will probably, at least to a certain point, be happier. You'll be more likely to experience successes in other things. You'll probably be a better democratic citizen. There are all kinds of better outcomes that we haven't included. So many of these, I suspect, are vast underestimates of the real benefits.","nb_tokens":201} | |
| {"doc_id":"60U-wLfB8iU_143","video_id":"60U-wLfB8iU","content":"But again, I don't feel like I have, you know, if we get 52 back in the dollar, I don't think we have to sort of say, but it might actually be even better than that. Mm, yeah, no, for sure. Okay, so I admittedly, I think I'm a bigger believer in how valuable the time of the technology would be, but I'll let that go for now. I want to make sure that we at least give people a headline on the remaining, I think, eight that we still have to go through. Let's go through them all and then we'll pick a couple to really dive into. And then there's another really important question I want to ask. So I'll just go through the list here. So we look at nutrition. Obviously, hunger is a big problem. It turns out it's kind of hard to give out nutrition because if you give out food, it's hugely potentially corrupt. And so that's why we don't have a really good solution. We have some reasonably good solutions for nutrition. It gives $18 back in the dollar.","nb_tokens":229} | |
| {"doc_id":"60U-wLfB8iU_144","video_id":"60U-wLfB8iU","content":"It's actually one of the lowest, but we estimate you should spend $1.4 billion there and you can do some really good. Chronic diseases, sorry, but there's another way to fix nutrition, which is agricultural research and development. So if you remember what really, we were worried back in the 60s and 70s that a lot of people would just simply die from hunger. People estimated that India was just a basket case and we just had to triage and let India go kind of thing. There's just not enough food for everyone and it would just get worse and worse. Instead, we had what was known as the green revolution, which basically made seeds much more productive. So you had, you planted a rice seed or a wheat seed or a corn seed, and it simply produced two or three times the yield per acre. That's simply, it's just magic out of the box. And that's what basically saved a lot of human beings. The guy, he got a Nobel prize. He's prized for doing this and he's credited for saving a billion people. So, you know. It's crazy how like that, nobody knows that guy's name.","nb_tokens":242} | |
| {"doc_id":"60U-wLfB8iU_145","video_id":"60U-wLfB8iU","content":"No, no. And this is where our negativity bias is. And as I have one too, but it drives me crazy that like, there's not statues of that guy. Yes. But, you know, it is very easy to get people to panic about what might happen, but it's hard to get them to celebrate what actually happened. Yes, exactly. But we should just mention his name, Norman Bollock. Everybody should know his name. But yes, so, but we need a green revolution for the poor half of the world, because this was for rice, wheat, and corn, which is mostly rich country crops. We need it for sorghum and cassava and all these other things that you've never heard of, but also could use with much higher productivity. That would both mean that you would produce more, which is great for farmers, but you'd also have lower prices, which is great for urban consumers of these food products. And it would also mean lower hunger. We'd get about a hundred million people, fewer starving. So we estimate spend $5.5 billion there and you get a bang for a buck of about 33.","nb_tokens":238} | |
| {"doc_id":"60U-wLfB8iU_146","video_id":"60U-wLfB8iU","content":"So we should definitely do that. Chronic diseases, you know, you can't avoid people dying. That's just not going to happen. But chronic diseases is something that hits us when we stop infectious diseases, and we can stop that from happening too soon. So that's typically heart disease and cancer. Cancer turns out to be much, much harder to do something about, but we should get people those pills, which we talked about earlier, for lower heart pressure and a few other things. And you can do this. And it turns out it costs about $4.4 billion. The average bang for your buck is going to be 23. You can save one and a half million lives. The reason why it's not bigger is because these are all people that we're saving. Unlike people we save from tuberculosis or from malaria, which are typically much younger people, saving older people means you only save them, say six or seven years. That's nice, but it's not as nice as saving a life all the way through. Then we should do land tenure security. So a lot of people don't know- Why do you guys call it that?","nb_tokens":235} | |
| {"doc_id":"60U-wLfB8iU_147","video_id":"60U-wLfB8iU","content":"That's such a weird way of saying own your shit. Like land tenured security. I don't think our academic people would have allowed us to say that, but that is very, very true. Own your shit. And this is mainly a question of saying that you are not certain that you own your land. This matters a lot if you're a farmer. If I don't know if I have this land in five or 10 years, I'm not going to invest in digging up all the stones and improving the soil or getting irrigation or planting an orchard that will only start giving fruits in five or 10 years. I'm going to just do the quick and dirty thing because that's the only thing I know will pay out while I'm still there. And that, of course, lowers productivity. And likewise, if I have a house in an urban setting or an apartment, I'm not going to change my kitchen. This is actually not the main thing that you do, but this is sort of a first world way of thinking about it.","nb_tokens":215} | |
| {"doc_id":"60U-wLfB8iU_148","video_id":"60U-wLfB8iU","content":"I'm not going to change the kitchen if I don't know if I can sell it and get that money back eventually, if I might just get replaced. Actually, about a billion people out of five billion people they asked in the world think that it's very likely that they will be evicted from something they think they own in the next five years. This is just a step. And so it's about making sure that you get the structure set up. So you need to have, for instance, cadastral surveys, basically land maps that show who owns everything. And then suddenly you start realizing that you and your neighbor don't agree on what I actually own. No, no, no, my grandfather actually said it went here. But then you work it out with the elders and then you need to have some of this go to court, but it will dramatically improve efficiency in your society because a lot of these societies are very based on agriculture still. That's a great way to do it. So we estimate the net bang, it's going to cost $1.8 billion.","nb_tokens":220} | |
| {"doc_id":"60U-wLfB8iU_149","video_id":"60U-wLfB8iU","content":"But also from a capital standpoint, the property you own is typically people's most, their biggest investment, the thing they can borrow against, the thing that allows them to extract value from their own efforts. Anyway, we could totally derail on that, but that one is huge. Yeah, huge. Yes. So there's two left. I'm just going to talk very briefly about skilled migration, which is something a lot of economists would argue. If you look at someone who works at, you know, say McDonald's in Ethiopia and the very same job done in the US, the pay is about 15 times higher, right? You're just simply much more productive in most places where you have lots of other smart people around you. That's just basically how it is. And one argument that a lot of economists would actually make is, there's a huge misallocation of work in the world. So a lot more of the world's poor should actually be working in rich countries. That would be great for them. And obviously that would be great for inequality. However, this would also be hugely politically problematic.","nb_tokens":225} | |
| {"doc_id":"60U-wLfB8iU_150","video_id":"60U-wLfB8iU","content":"A lot of people would not like to see a couple of billion people move to the rich West. It's also unlikely that this would actually work out as well as a lot of economists argue. But what we find is, if you focus on skilled migration and if you're focused on a small amount, so you basically say, imagine 10% more skilled migration than you already have. So that means a country like Canada that has lots of immigrants would take 10% of a fairly large number, but countries that are very skeptical would take 10% of a very low number. If you do that for really skilled, so that's doctors, engineers, STEM workers, generally, you could actually move these people and make them much more productive than their new countries. And that would have huge benefits. It would even benefit the poor countries. Yes, they would lose their doctors in the short while, but what it would mean would, that it would be more advantageous to learn to become a doctor because you have an opportunity to actually go to a rich place as well. And it would also mean that you would have remittances that would more than outweigh the loss that you would see from losing your doctor.","nb_tokens":244} | |
| {"doc_id":"60U-wLfB8iU_151","video_id":"60U-wLfB8iU","content":"So overall, we find that those would cost $2.8 billion, but the benefit would be 20 times that. The last one, and this is the one I just want to spend a little more time on, is free trade or more trade. We've known for a very, very long time that one of the real reasons why we get richer is that we trade with each other. You do what you're best at, I do what I'm best at, then we trade, and that means we both get a better outcome than if you've done everything yourself and I've done everything myself. This is old knowledge back from Adam Smith and Ricardo and many others. And we used to have a very, very strong understanding for most of the elite in the world that more trade was actually good. We also used to neglect the fact that it's not good for everyone. If you sewed T-shirts in the 1970s in the US, you would lose out when you started opening up for Bangladesh, right? Because they can just simply sew T-shirts better and cheaper in Bangladesh, so you would lose out your job.","nb_tokens":230} | |
| {"doc_id":"60U-wLfB8iU_152","video_id":"60U-wLfB8iU","content":"And that was what happened to a certain extent, and the Rust Belt is a good example of that. There's actually people who lose out to free trade. And so economists have been very, very bad at addressing this. What has happened is, because a lot of people have sort of almost weaponized that Rust Belt, that's what's happened with Trump and many others, that we've made this into, maybe we shouldn't have free trade or we should at least have a lot less of it. We should make sure we embargo China. We should make sure we embargo a lot of different places. That actually makes all of us less well-off, but it will help these people in the Rust Belt. So the argument has been, maybe that's a loss that's worth taking to make sure that these people can still work in shipping, where you build shipyards, or that kind of thing, instead of just sending all of it to South Korea and now on to Vietnam and other places.","nb_tokens":201} | |
| {"doc_id":"60U-wLfB8iU_153","video_id":"60U-wLfB8iU","content":"Well, so that's going to end up being a very politically challenging problem, because if that's a large enough voting constituency, because one thing I don't want to be Pollyanna about is a lot of the things that you're pitching are like, hey guys, we're already in the wealthy West. And so if you're struggling in the wealthy West, a lot of these things don't really apply to you. And so I have a feeling they're going to be less receptive and they're going to be like, that's not making my life better. So why would I ever vote for that? So what we've done here is, and I think this is the first time it's been academically done, is to try and estimate what is the benefits of free trade? That is, we all get richer, but also what are the costs to free trade? That is, the people who work in import exposed industries will have a risk of losing their jobs or receiving lower pay or just simply being essentially dropping out. They're pushed out of the marketplace. Yes, pushed out of the marketplace, much better.","nb_tokens":228} | |
| {"doc_id":"60U-wLfB8iU_154","video_id":"60U-wLfB8iU","content":"And we've done that model and then done it with a standardized trade model and then looked at what would happen if we increased global trade by 5%. And it turns out that for rich countries, that is where most of the costs are going to come. That's of course why rich countries now have gotten, ooh, maybe we're not all that sure about free trade. It turns out that for rich countries, trade is still overall a great thing. It turns out that the benefits of an extra 5% trade is about $8 trillion. But the costs are about a trillion dollars. So you get seven times as much good out of it as the cost, but the costs are real and significant. And that's why we need to be much more aware of saying, look, if you're going to have trade, you also need to make sure that you do something for the Rust Belt. That's more education. It's more opportunity to move to other sectors where they can then be competitive again. And maybe just straight out that we also subsidize them at least for a couple of years, you know, unemployment benefits of some sort.","nb_tokens":233} | |
| {"doc_id":"60U-wLfB8iU_155","video_id":"60U-wLfB8iU","content":"This is not going to solve all the problems, but it's certainly addressing, there's a real issue. But even for rich countries, this is a great thing. We can do $7 of good for every dollar we end up losing. That's a great thing. And there's certainly enough money to go around to make sure that we compensate the losers. But for the poor half of the world, it turns out the benefits are astounding. For every dollar spent, that is jobs lost, they will gain $95 of benefits. And that's basically because all of the trade that they're going to be doing is the stuff that they can do better. So the poor half of the world will do amazingly good with us. The rich world will also do good, but not nearly as good. So we have to be more clear on our understanding that we're going to address the downside, the Rust Belts of the world. But fundamentally, free trade is just a way to make everyone richer, but we have to be aware that there are trade-offs and we have to be cognizant of that.","nb_tokens":224} | |
| {"doc_id":"60U-wLfB8iU_156","video_id":"60U-wLfB8iU","content":"But I think the study helps us say, maybe we shouldn't be quite as gloom and against trade. We should just recognize it has downsides, but we can actually afford to do something about it. So that's the last one. It's going to cost $1.7 billion, but it's going to generate $166 billion of benefits for the poor half of the world, or $95 back on the dollar. Man, that one's very interesting. So I want to take head on what the potential challenges would be. And this is where I'm going to speak directly to my climate concern brothers and sisters out in the world. Okay, so I keep drawing this direct parallel. I feel like maybe you don't agree quite as fervently, and you'll let me know here, that as we lift the poor half of the world out of poverty, they will, as a matter of course, they will... And the problem is they're going to pass through a period where they're worse for the environment, but they're going to then get to a point where they're better for the environment.","nb_tokens":226} | |
| {"doc_id":"60U-wLfB8iU_157","video_id":"60U-wLfB8iU","content":"And so if we take a longer view, and this is where we just keep coming back to, if you believe the world is ending in five years, we've got real problems. And so you constantly have to... I mean, you've been very clear about what your thoughts are there, but man, I'm realizing as I even try to explain this now, that it really does hinge on, can we, one, are you right that we don't have this really near-term catastrophe staring us in the face? I am not knowledgeable enough in this. This is where I go to, I can tell you how I think through the problem, but I cannot at all give you data. But if we understand that like California in the 50s, yes, or China today, which China is both bringing on more green energy, I think, than anybody else, but they're also bringing on more coal plants than anybody else. And so it is this sort of mixed bag, but that you want to push people up into a much more wealthy place as fast as humanly possible.","nb_tokens":220} | |
| {"doc_id":"60U-wLfB8iU_158","video_id":"60U-wLfB8iU","content":"Because with that will come the innovation, will come the fewer children, will come the bigger investment into those kids, will become the more education, all that. And as we do that, the data shows that they will care far more about the future. Thusly, they will care far more about the environment and they will be better stewards, which feels like the way through if we can get everybody to understand that we don't have a near-term, we have a problem, we have a problem that needs to be addressed and we should be addressing it right now today, but that we do have more time maybe than people think. Okay, but with that, we get back to, you're going to get a lot of people pushing back on that. You weren't in America when this was popping off, but there was like this whole weird moment that I really got caught off guard by, which was, hey, AI is going to take over trucking jobs. Everybody thought that was going to be the first thing and trucker, sorry, you're just out of luck. And people said, well, they should learn to code.","nb_tokens":231} | |
| {"doc_id":"60U-wLfB8iU_159","video_id":"60U-wLfB8iU","content":"And I was like, yeah, word, they should learn to code because the reality is I don't think it's wise for people to just say, oh, I'm facing a change. I don't know how to code. That's for people smarter than me. I give up, right? But you would get banned off of Twitter at one point. You would get your video delisted on YouTube if you said the phrase, learn to code. And I was like, what? Like, I get it. Not everybody's going to do it. Not everybody's going to be willing, whatever. But to say you can't even say it, like that just doesn't make any sense to me. I'm very dizzy by that. But I accept now that that is a reality. So you're going to run into people who are like, hey, do not open free trade. We tried that, terrible. We become over-reliant on China. People have leverage against us. We outsource our infrastructure. We strip our jobs. You get Rust Belt. You get Detroit. Like, just all bad things.","nb_tokens":229} | |
| {"doc_id":"60U-wLfB8iU_160","video_id":"60U-wLfB8iU","content":"What on earth are you doing? Is there any argument other than cheaper goods, which is, I'm guessing, where you're saying that we get the value. So is there any argument other than cheaper goods? And hey, you're helping the world's poor. And that makes them care more about the future. And therefore, they'll be better for the environment. Are those the only two opportunities we have to convince people? Or is there anything else? So I want to get back and answer your question. But I think I actually first want to take this a step back. If you remember, I was saying, I'm simply saying here's a menu with prices and sizes. These are 12 great things. I'd be very surprised if everyone will take all 12 of them. And that's great. If most people end up taking six of them, I'm all happy and excited about this. So I'm not. Then let me ask you one quick point on that. When you guys came up with the 12, were you like, oh man, free trade made the list. Damn it. And the environment didn't.","nb_tokens":233} | |
| {"doc_id":"60U-wLfB8iU_161","video_id":"60U-wLfB8iU","content":"Were you kind of like, why couldn't the environment be a $55 return? So yes, I would have liked. So we actually had another one. I'm a very brief story on coral reefs that we estimated delivered $24 back in the dollar. But since then, there's a new study out that showed that one basic problem that was missing was that when you restrict fishing for a while, that makes more fish and that makes more tourism and it makes more ecological value, which is all great. But it also restricts the local fishermen. And if it has to have a real impact, it actually has to have a real cost. And that cost was not included. And so what we found was, well, this is actually not a terribly great investment. It's probably two or three, but it's not 15 and it's not 24 either. So that's one of the things we pull out. Yes, I was really annoyed because I would love to have had it. It's a great thing. But you can't argue with us. We have to cut it the way that we see it and the best evidence that's out there.","nb_tokens":236} | |
| {"doc_id":"60U-wLfB8iU_162","video_id":"60U-wLfB8iU","content":"The main point here, again, is to say, if we take the total of everything we've just talked about, it'll cost $35 billion a year. This is everything, all 12, $35 billion. All 12, $35 billion, and it'll save 4.2 million lives and it'll generate $1.1 trillion for the world's poor half. This is just an outstanding opportunity. And remember, while I don't think you have, and I certainly don't have $35 billion, I don't have $35 billion in my back pocket to just finance this. But on a global level, this really is couch change. Of all the different things that we're spending on, I'm simply saying, let's do these best things first. This does not mean that you can't argue for your favorite thing, and that could be climate change or AI or any other thing. I'm simply saying, we are so rich that we at least should do these 12 incredibly cheap and incredibly powerful things first. So just to give you an example, right now, the world spends about $1.1 trillion on climate.","nb_tokens":235} | |
| {"doc_id":"60U-wLfB8iU_163","video_id":"60U-wLfB8iU","content":"We can probably spend $35 billion and then get back to spending almost $1.1 trillion in this. Every year, the world spends $2 trillion in military. Maybe we should just take out the $35 billion and then get back to spending $2 trillion on military, and so on. So my argument is not to say that you can't also be engaged in all kinds of other things. It's just that the argument seems to tell us that when you do the analysis, these 12 things are so good that it's almost immoral not to just get those 12 things done. Now, there's reasons why these don't happen. For instance, the tuberculosis, it doesn't happen because if you're rich, in a rich country, you don't get tuberculosis. But also if you're rich in a poor country, you don't get tuberculosis. These are poor people in poor countries, often without a voice. They're the migrant workers or the mining industry or prison population, those kinds of places. And they don't get you a lot of votes.","nb_tokens":217} | |
| {"doc_id":"60U-wLfB8iU_164","video_id":"60U-wLfB8iU","content":"But we should get this word out that this is actually a great thing to make sure that people don't die from these things and make sure that their local governments spend more money on, that philanthropists and USAID and others spend more money on. And likewise, with all these 12 things. So I'm simply making the argument, these are best things first. Let's just squeeze that little $35 billion in there and then get back to all the other things that we would constantly debate. And given the very small size of this, it's really not a big conversation. I'm not asking for us to spend, as we talked about with the 169, I'm not asking us to spend another $15 trillion. Which would be hard to do. But $35 billion, which is like 500 times less. That's crazy. Now, one thing when I was taking notes, I only got nine things. So there was something that I have put together into a couple of similar ones or mashed together. But anybody that took notes like I did might be going 12, I've only got nine. So I want to make sure that we get them all.","nb_tokens":239} | |
| {"doc_id":"60U-wLfB8iU_165","video_id":"60U-wLfB8iU","content":"Here's what I have. E-procurement, the baby breathing, mother giving birth in institutions. We've got infectious disease solutions. Education. So that's two, that's tuberculosis and malaria. I wondered about that. So that takes us to 10. Then we've got education, nutrition, hunger. Is that two different ones? Nutrition is one. So that's about getting vitamins to pregnant mothers and calcium to pregnant mothers and to get feeding. But it's only one line item is what I'm saying. Yes, that's nutrition. The other one was agricultural research and development. These are very different communities, but they both address nutrition. Yes. So now we're up to 11. Yep. So then we've got chronic diseases, land tenured security, skilled migration, free trade. So there's still one that I can't account for. And that is right. I've missed that. That's childhood immunization. So it's basically, we've immunized a lot of the world, giving them vaccines against measles and many others. And it's been a phenomenal benefit.","nb_tokens":225} | |
| {"doc_id":"60U-wLfB8iU_166","video_id":"60U-wLfB8iU","content":"We estimate the saves somewhere between four and possibly as many as 7 million kids each and every year. This is just, we should definitely be doing this. You can have all the conversations about vaccine for COVID, but vaccines against measles, which is no works and is incredibly effective. It'll cost more to get the last 10, 15% that are missing in the world. But even with that, for about $1.7 billion, you can save half a million extra kids. And it means that for every dollar spent, you'll do $101 back on the dollar. And it's really, really incredible. This whole thing has blown my mind. And I just wanna thank you for giving a conceptual framework that people can follow. I think it's really brilliant way of thinking through hard problems, prioritizing and truly doing the best things first. Where can people follow you to get more of this very wise way of thinking? So on Twitter, Bjorn Lomborg is my Twitter handle. So the Copenhagen Consensus, my think tank who's organized all of this. So copenhagenconsensus.org is where you can see it.","nb_tokens":232} | |
| {"doc_id":"60U-wLfB8iU_167","video_id":"60U-wLfB8iU","content":"And then of course you can read the book. I just wanna show you the book because we actually published the conclusion on the cover and most people don't see it right in front, but it actually has this line is it says benefits here. And that has the cost down here. So you can literally see it has this tiny bit of cost. I have that book and didn't even notice that that's what that was. There you go. So the conclusion is in the cover. You just have to watch the cover and then you're done. Amazing, man. Thank you so much for joining me today. Boys and girls, if you haven't already, be sure to subscribe. And until next time, my friends, be legendary. Take care. Peace.","nb_tokens":155} | |
| {"doc_id":"gzNLzqI5oTE_0","video_id":"gzNLzqI5oTE","content":"My heart absolutely aches for all the people out there that feel lost and inadequate. People try to look good on Instagram, but they don't really worry about who they actually are. I want to compare and contrast two people. Okay. One being Andrew Tate, who many people consider the pinnacle of modern masculinity. The other being Marcus Aurelius, known as the last of the five great emperors of Rome. Who should people be looking up to? And most important, why? Well, I think it's hard to be a man in the world these days where, as we have corrected mistakes of the past, some of the things that sort of would have been reassuring or purposeful or even just mooring, like tie you to who you are and why you're here for men, has gone away, right? Less people go to church than ever before. Less people work at the same job their whole life than ever before. You know, all these things that would explain who you were, how you should be, why you mattered, those have fallen away.","nb_tokens":216} | |
| {"doc_id":"gzNLzqI5oTE_1","video_id":"gzNLzqI5oTE","content":"And so I don't, I'm not surprised by the fact that from that sort of emptiness or vacuum, people would be attracted to someone who both tells them what they want to hear and sort of sets down kind of an aspirational model where, yeah, you're good with women, you're financially successful, you seemingly emanate power and confidence. I get why all that's attractive, but I find him to be repulsive. Why? Well, I mean, first off, he's a sex trafficker. What if he was proven innocent? Because I would love to set that aside because if he is that, and God knows some of the things I've seen make it seem like it probably, it's dark no matter what, and it may be just unbearably heinous, but I want to address the part that made people like go to him because I think that will break the spell. If it ends up being true, I think he'll just disappear. But prior to that, there was the sense of strong, could fight, very articulate, tons of money, seemed to be the kind of guy that people wanted to be around.","nb_tokens":235} | |
| {"doc_id":"gzNLzqI5oTE_2","video_id":"gzNLzqI5oTE","content":"So I'm using him as a stand in for hyper masculinity or the modern model. Yeah, and I think you make a good point. Let's say perhaps he's innocent. It still doesn't change the fact that the business model from which his wealth has been derived is about the sort of a modern form of prostitution or pimping, right? Like this is I don't think this is the Stokes don't have any problem with making money. Right. Being financially successful. Seneca says, what does it matter if the philosopher is rich insofar as that his money is not stained by blood? Right. And so I think it's great to be successful, to make money. But I think how you made that money is more important than how much you have or don't have. Right. So I find I find the enterprise to be repulsive. Let's let's I just want to stipulate that. But if we're sort of contrasting some of the sort of hyper masculinity, manosphere, red pill, kind of maleness with some of the ideals in stoicism, I think that's a fascinating contrast because there was actually a recent maybe it was the American Psychological Institute.","nb_tokens":240} | |
| {"doc_id":"gzNLzqI5oTE_3","video_id":"gzNLzqI5oTE","content":"There was some medical institution that was sort of laying out what they thought the primary attributes of toxic masculinity were. And one of them is stoicism, like they're laying out stoicism as a non-emotional, as in an emotional, invulnerable, sort of suppressive, which I think is obviously a fundamental misreading of stoicism. But but I do think that the contrast between those two things is interesting. There's like maybe what people would call lowercase stoicism and uppercase stoicism. I'm obviously interested in in the sort of the actual philosophy of stoicism, the Marcus Aurelius version of stoicism. It's interesting. You pointed him out as one of the five great emperors. Actually, the historical term there is he's the last of the five good emperors. Interesting. Which which I think is an important distinction because he is great. I mean, you don't become the most powerful man in the world without some form of greatness there. You don't stay the most powerful man, but he was just appointed. So you definitely you could his son, for the love of God, was a tyrant psychopath.","nb_tokens":234} | |
| {"doc_id":"gzNLzqI5oTE_4","video_id":"gzNLzqI5oTE","content":"But what's interesting about Marcus is how he gets there. But pointing out that great and good are not the same thing. And then a lot of people aspire to be great, but don't really care if they're good in the process. And I think to me, what's truly impressive, what true greatness is, is both. It involves both being talented and masterful and powerful and successful, but also fundamentally decent and generous and honest and fair and kind. All these other attributes that can sometimes get lost in a cutthroat, ambitious real world scenario. Right. But Marcus's story is so interesting because he's more than just appointed. Right. So what's so fascinating about the five good emperors is basically for five consecutive emperors, there is no male heir. I think we all agree a hereditary monarchy is not a great system. It doesn't tend to create good leaders. So why do you have five in a row? It's because the emperor was not simply naming his eldest son, his successor. So what happens is Hadrian, who is two emperors before Marcus, is without a son.","nb_tokens":230} | |
| {"doc_id":"gzNLzqI5oTE_5","video_id":"gzNLzqI5oTE","content":"He's probably gay, you know, sort of an eccentric, interesting guy. He's a pretty good emperor. He's flawed in a lot of ways, but he's a good emperor. Right. No one would say he's a great, a good man, but he was a he was a great emperor. And he's starting to look around. Who's going to succeed me? And he looks at this boy. Marcus Aurelius is pretty young then. He doesn't come. They're not related in any way, but he is from a prestigious Roman family. And there's something about this kid that strikes Hadrian. He nicknames him Verismus or the truthful one. So he has some fundamental honesty or decency to him that makes Hadrian think like this kid has potential. He's smart. He's philosophically inclined quite early, doesn't want to be emperor. Right. Which is, I think, also a positive sign in a leader like the leader that wants the power. The most is the one you have to be the most worried about. So Hadrian decides, hey, there's something in this kid.","nb_tokens":231} | |
| {"doc_id":"gzNLzqI5oTE_6","video_id":"gzNLzqI5oTE","content":"But he also knows that the worst thing you could possibly do is make a kid a king. You know, and so he has to set in motion some training program that would make this kid a great emperor. And so he realizes he needs like a stopgap. He needs like a placeholder before Marcus is ready. And Marcus not having a male relative who could do this. Hadrian settles on this guy named Antoninus, who's the most powerful politician in Rome at that time, who's sort of worked his way up through the ranks, honest, decent, good. And Hadrian's considering maybe he's the successor. And the story is that he notices one day Antoninus helping his stepfather, his elderly stepfather, up a flight of stairs. No one's watching. And he just sees this moment of kindness or goodness in a person who is otherwise a very talented, ambitious, powerful politician. So what Hadrian does is he names Antoninus his successor. In exchange, Antoninus has to name Marcus Aurelius his successor. And so Hadrian probably thinks that Antoninus will reign for three or four years or 10 years, right? Life expectancy there is not super long.","nb_tokens":241} | |
| {"doc_id":"gzNLzqI5oTE_7","video_id":"gzNLzqI5oTE","content":"And Antoninus ends up ruling for like two decades. And he and Marcus have this incredible relationship where he seems to actively be interested in teaching Marcus and modeling good behavior for Marcus. And Marcus, in turn, doesn't see this adopted stepfather as a rival in any way, as an impediment in any way, but as someone to learn from, someone to model himself on. And so for 20 odd years, Antoninus leads while preparing this kid to succeed him. And that's what ultimately ends up happening. And I think a testament to Antoninus' tutoring and to Marcus' learning and inherent decency, the first thing Marcus does when he becomes emperor is he names his stepbrother co-emperor, right? So the first thing he does with absolute power is give part of it away, which is unprecedented in the annals of history. And so all of this is to say what makes Marcus great is not just that he's a great leader, he's a great military campaigner, that he's smart, that he's good at communicating, that he knows how to broker compromises, but that sort of fundamentally there is a decency there, a goodness there, a sense of community-mindedness in it.","nb_tokens":246} | |
| {"doc_id":"gzNLzqI5oTE_8","video_id":"gzNLzqI5oTE","content":"In meditations, he talks about the common good 40 or 50 times, right? Like what's in Marcus that makes Marcus, I think, a worthy model for young men and for young women is that, you know, he's not corrupted by the power that he has. He doesn't feel the need to prove anything to anyone. He has this sense, this inner code that he's trying to live by, and he wants to be great, but he doesn't necessarily want to do it through the piling up of wealth or honors or accomplishments, but by, you know, making a positive difference in the world. All right. What I want to talk about is that inner code. So what I find interesting about this whole setup is, all right, so I don't know a lot about Andrew Tate, but it does seem like he had quite a dysfunctional relationship with his father. Yes. Fatherlessness is tied to a lot of bad outcomes. Part of the question becomes, and that's for boys and girls, part of the question becomes why, what's that dynamic?","nb_tokens":221} | |
| {"doc_id":"gzNLzqI5oTE_9","video_id":"gzNLzqI5oTE","content":"But what I find interesting in life, if it's all predetermined and you either are just born a good person and you're going to be fine or you're born a sociopath and nothing that happens to you is going to make any difference, legitimately close my company, quit, because the whole point. What's the point? Yeah, yeah. For me, literally, it's called impact theory because I really believe that there are a set of ideas that you can give to people, and if they deploy those ideas, it will make their life better. And so all I am trying to do is actually articulate these ideas. Now, they get extremely complicated. You and I were talking before we started rolling. For me, this has really gone in three phases. This is kind of how I want to walk through this today. So phase number one for me was the inner code. So I needed to build a belief system, and that was the beginning of my show, which is that I was just trying to help people cobble together what I called mindset. If you get the right mindset, which I now probably refer to as frame of reference. So you build a frame of reference intentionally.","nb_tokens":241} | |
| {"doc_id":"gzNLzqI5oTE_10","video_id":"gzNLzqI5oTE","content":"Most people do it completely on accident, but I would want them to take control of that process. So you're building a frame of reference from beliefs and values. What is, what do I choose to believe is, and then what ought to be. Yeah. Then once you have that, you go into phase two, which is deploying it in your immediate life. So I'm going to deploy it in my relationships, in my career, in my personal finances. I'm sure a lot of the things, because honestly, I came to stoicism, not by reading stoicism, but by going, what works? Yeah, sure. And so you end up, and then you hear it for the first time. You're like, whoa. Like, this is exactly the kind of thing that I've been steering myself towards. And then phase three becomes what I'll shorthand to the reality distortion field portion of your life. You get to the point where, okay, I've built the right lens through which to view the world and myself. I've deployed it in my immediate region. And now I want to see how much I can really push this out into the world.","nb_tokens":239} | |
| {"doc_id":"gzNLzqI5oTE_11","video_id":"gzNLzqI5oTE","content":"Now, originally, I would have thought of it as creating the world that you want. But as the modern world ratchets up and throws more temptations, more ease at people, I find that a lot of what I think about is knowing what to resist, what not to do, what to turn away from. So walk me through, what is that inner code that somebody who's aiming at the, I'm going to call the ease of Tate, right? Get rich quick, fast and flashy, not necessarily about long-term relationships. And then comparing to somebody like Marcus Aurelius, that's really about self-denial, anchoring, not giving into power. I remember, I understand that position very well because it wasn't that long ago that I was there. I remember I was 19 years old. Someone had recommended that I read Marcus Aurelius's meditations. I was sitting in my college apartment. It arrived in the mail. I went and I got it. And I sat down and I read it.","nb_tokens":209} | |
| {"doc_id":"gzNLzqI5oTE_12","video_id":"gzNLzqI5oTE","content":"And here you have the thoughts of the most powerful man in the world sort of explaining his code, how a person should be, what a person should do, what greatness was, what goodness was, what virtue was. And I remember being struck so much by this sense that no one had ever talked to me this way before. My dad hadn't talked to me about this way. I hadn't really heard that in church or in school or on TV. There is this sense, I think, that kids will just figure it out. People will just figure it out. Or that it's obvious and it's not obvious. People need guidance. They need structure. They need advice. It's absurd that you would just expect them to figure this stuff out by trial and error because you can end up going down these blind alleys. It could take you years to find out that, hey, this trait you picked up, this way of living isn't actually the right one or isn't working for you. It's not as meaningful as you think it was.","nb_tokens":214} | |
| {"doc_id":"gzNLzqI5oTE_13","video_id":"gzNLzqI5oTE","content":"So what so struck me about the Stoics was that it answered this same question that I think people are feeling like the Andrew Tates or random YouTubers or TikTokers are answering, which is like, how should I be? What is the good life? What do I need to do in the world to get ahead or how do I prevent myself from being taken advantage of or being weak or failing? How do I deal with this hole that I have inside me? And I think it's a shame that we don't think of philosophy as a way to address those existential questions because that's fundamentally what philosophy was from the very beginning. Today we think of philosophers as like somebody who works in the philosophy department at Harvard or we think of some unpronounceable German name. But Socrates is walking around trying to answer the questions about knowledge and wisdom and insight and goodness. Diogenes famously walks around with his lantern and he says, show me a good man. He's looking for that kind of person. The founding of Stoicism, Zeno is this successful young merchant. He inherits the family business, suffers a shipwreck.","nb_tokens":233} | |
| {"doc_id":"gzNLzqI5oTE_14","video_id":"gzNLzqI5oTE","content":"He washes up on shore in Athens having lost everything. And he walks into this bookstore and the bookseller is reading the works of Socrates, one of the dialogues of Socrates. And he says, he walks up to the bookseller and he goes, where can I find a man like that? And the bookseller points to this cynic philosopher named Crates. And that sets Zeno on this mission, right? He's lost everything. He doesn't know where to go. He doesn't know what to do. And philosophy is that light. It is that North Star. And so I really put a point on that for a second because as I was researching this episode, I took a whole bunch of sort of journal style notes on the idea of philosophy. So I think that we all have a God shaped hole in us. And it has been, I'm not even sure how to categorize what's happened to religion because in some ways we're like becoming more religious. But in other ways, it really does feel somewhat empty and it feels like there's a huge fragmentation.","nb_tokens":223} | |
| {"doc_id":"gzNLzqI5oTE_15","video_id":"gzNLzqI5oTE","content":"And so there is no one galvanizing sense of who you ought to be and what you ought to become. And religion is political now as opposed to a guide to living in the world, which is what it was supposed to be, you know, 2000 years ago. You think of the Ten Commandments, right? It's like, do this, don't do this, right? And philosophy and religion were intertwined, right? Aren't they one and the same? Of course. It's just one is backed up by a deity and one is not. I mean, what I mean is more literally like Paul is known as Paul of Tarsus. St. Paul was known before he becomes St. Paul as Paul of Tarsus. And Tarsus is the center of Stoic philosophy. It leaves Athens and it goes to Tarsus. And he studies Stoic philosophy, right? And Christianity absorbs a bunch of the ideas from Stoic philosophy, which I think, because I lost the thread a little bit. But like you said, what is the code, right? What is the code for living that philosophy teaches us?","nb_tokens":235} | |
| {"doc_id":"gzNLzqI5oTE_16","video_id":"gzNLzqI5oTE","content":"Well, so we're back with Zeno. He's been on the shipwreck. The reason that I wanted to really drill that point home is. So I started this by saying my heart bleeds for the people that feel lost and inadequate. And why does my heart bleed for them? Because I've been there. I know intimately what that's like. For me, I found Taoism and then business forced me into something probably more like Stoicism. But when you begin to create a category of thought in your mind about how things ought to be, how you ought to be, and you start steering towards that, then you can create meaning and purpose in your life. And so now all of a sudden, and I mean, this is a straight quote from the Stoics, you can't control what happens to you, but you can control how you react. And so that's what's so fascinating about that moment is you've got this guy that had everything, loses it in a shipwreck.","nb_tokens":206} | |
| {"doc_id":"gzNLzqI5oTE_17","video_id":"gzNLzqI5oTE","content":"And whether it's apocryphal or not, like he's I imagine dripping wet as he walks into the bookstore and is like, how do I reconceptualize of my life now? Yeah, it's the moment in Fight Club when his apartment gets blown up and he loses everything. And he's having to look at life with new eyes for the first time. And Zeno would say later, he would joke, he says, you know, I lose everything. He says, I made a great fortune when I suffered a shipwreck because he lost everything financially. He lost everything as far as his identity goes, his work, his sort of family's legacy. And what he finds, his philosophy, he finds this code of living. And Zeno is the first of the Stoic philosophers to articulate the four virtues which Stoicism is built around. Courage, self-discipline, justice and wisdom, which also any Christian would recognize as the cardinal virtues. So Stoicism and Christianity share the same underlying operating system, if you will. One says that God gave it to us and maybe the Stoics would say it's from the gods.","nb_tokens":235} | |
| {"doc_id":"gzNLzqI5oTE_18","video_id":"gzNLzqI5oTE","content":"Or they would say it's from, you know, our ruling reason, our rational sense. I think it doesn't really matter. What matters is that those are four traits, four bedrock values that you can build a great and a good life around. Courage, self-discipline, justice and wisdom. Every situation, good or bad in life, every moment, big or small, one or all of those virtues is appropriate, is demanded, right? Everything the Stoics would say is an opportunity to practice one of those virtues. So, you know, famously when Marcus Aurelius is talking about how the obstacle is the way, he's not saying that, hey, this shipwreck is awesome. He's saying that this shipwreck is an opportunity to practice one or more of the Stoic virtues. This betrayal by your business partner is an opportunity to practice one or more of these four Stoic virtues, right? This loss of a family member, this horrible war you're in the middle of, right? Also, this incredible success. You just become the emperor of Rome. Courage, self-discipline, justice, wisdom.","nb_tokens":231} | |
| {"doc_id":"gzNLzqI5oTE_19","video_id":"gzNLzqI5oTE","content":"All of that and more is demanded of you. And so, like, Stoicism isn't a list of commandments, do this, don't do that. But it is these sort of four bedrock values, which you're supposed to build your life and your decisions and your individual actions around and towards. You can unlock ad-free videos, downloads and background play with YouTube Premium. I am a psycho for this. I use this all the time. I cannot recommend it highly enough. With YouTube Premium, there's nothing getting in between you and your favorite channels. You won't have to wait for ads. You can keep your videos going in the background and download them to watch anytime, anywhere. Plus, you also get premium access to the YouTube Music app, where you can play all the music you want ad-free, offline and in the background. Get everything you love about YouTube with background play, downloads and no ads. Try YouTube Premium today. Click the link in the description. If you click the link, I may get a commission.","nb_tokens":212} | |
| {"doc_id":"gzNLzqI5oTE_20","video_id":"gzNLzqI5oTE","content":"The thing that I find, so I don't believe in God, but I so relate to the idea of that sense of there is a hole in me and I need something to fill it. And for me, I think all of this, whether it's religion, whether it's philosophy, what it's trying to get at is evolution has planted these drivers, algorithms in your mind. And there's just no escaping them. And the reason there's no escaping them is they are the things that you have to do in order to survive long enough to have kids that have kids. And so the epitaph on my tombstone ought to read, you're having a biological experience. And what I want people to understand is- Death is a biological experience. A hundred percent. And whether God gave us evolution in the body, whether this is all a simulation, none of it matters. Sure. What it boils down to is the way that you interface with life, the way we interface with each other. Most importantly, the way we interface with ourselves is pre-programmed. Like you are going to feel some kind of way. You are going to be prone to love.","nb_tokens":236} | |
| {"doc_id":"gzNLzqI5oTE_21","video_id":"gzNLzqI5oTE","content":"You are going to be prone to jealousy. You are going to be prone to envy, joy, all of it. The human experience, as varied as it is, is so narrow when you compare us to other animals and what they go through. And once people realize that and you realize, okay, there is no way to escape certain pressures. And so now whatever philosophy that you have ought to align with the things that are going to make you, I would say, fulfilled. So I'll round it to human flourishing. So to me, something you've said and the note that I took even before we started is you need a North Star. There needs to be something that you're aiming at. And so I hold up Andrew Tate and Marcus Aurelius as two potential North Stars, as a bundle of ways of approaching the world, of deciding what to value, of deciding what to believe. But which one of those you choose, one is going to be more aligned with the algorithms that you already have running in your mind and thusly are going to lead you to a life of more fulfillment. That's probably worth me defining what I mean by fulfillment.","nb_tokens":234} | |
| {"doc_id":"gzNLzqI5oTE_22","video_id":"gzNLzqI5oTE","content":"So to me, fulfillment is the only neurochemical state that is pleasant and can survive something like grief. Because joy or happiness does not survive grief. You cannot be joyful and grieving at the same time. But I think, curious to see if you agree with that. I think that you can be fulfilled and grieving at the same time. So I think fulfillment has a recipe. And that recipe is you must work really hard. Like that nature is going to ensure that you work really hard and that that is pleasurable and that you have a sense of dis-ease if you don't, because otherwise you're going to die in an evolutionary context. So you must work really hard to gain a set of skills that you enjoy, for whatever reason, that allow you to serve not only yourself, but the group. Yeah. And so that recipe, to me, is everything, whether it's Stoic, whether it's Taoism, whether it's Christianity, Islam, whatever. It's the one that's going to win is going to be the one that most aligns you with the things that make you feel grounded, like you have meaning and purpose. You feel secure and worthwhile.","nb_tokens":240} | |
| {"doc_id":"gzNLzqI5oTE_23","video_id":"gzNLzqI5oTE","content":"All the things that I lament for people that feel lost and inadequate. It's interesting how timeless this discussion we're having is. I mean, Marcus would have recognized it himself, right? In Meditations, Marcus Aurelius talks quite a bit about the other emperors who come before him, right? This is an elite club he's in. Some are more famous than others. But, you know, he talks a lot about Alexander the Great, right? Who was sort of the historical model for manliness and greatness and success and ambition. He's the greatest conqueror that ever lived. You know, one of the great military minds. How far before Aurelius was he? Alexander the Great dies not long before Zeno makes his way to Athens. So it's a long time. And we're talking 500 years or so. It's interesting how we tend to think like the ancient world is so compressed. Marcus Aurelius quotes poets in Meditations that were further away from his time than Shakespeare is from ours. Whoa. So this goes back. This is a long tradition. And the debates about greatness and ambition and power, it's there.","nb_tokens":236} | |
| {"doc_id":"gzNLzqI5oTE_24","video_id":"gzNLzqI5oTE","content":"You know, the Xerxes, the Persian king who wanted to conquer the world. Alexander the Great, who does conquer the world. You know, Alexander the Great, he is this great, brilliant conqueror. And, you know, he makes it to the end of the earth. And his men finally rebel. We want to go home. We've been doing this for, you know, 20 years. And he says, what are you going to? He's like, are you going to go home and let it be said that you left Alexander the Great alone to finish conquering? And they were like, yeah. And there's some argument that his men killed him. But Marcus Aurelius tries to talk to himself in meditation. You can't compare yourself against this guy. He goes, he's like, it's important that you remember that Alexander the Great and his mule driver both died. And they were both buried in the same earth. Right. That death is this great equalizer that you don't get to take these accomplishments with you.","nb_tokens":217} | |
| {"doc_id":"gzNLzqI5oTE_25","video_id":"gzNLzqI5oTE","content":"And so to be insatiable in life is really a kind of an emptiness, kind of a torture that that doesn't pay off the way that you think it does. And so in the ancient world, they were constantly looking at these figures. And there's this famous exchange. I mentioned Diogenes earlier. Diogenes is this great philosopher, sort of a predecessor of the Stoics. And he meets Alexander the Great. Alexander the Great's a big fan. He's a he's a student of philosophy himself. And, you know, he comes across Alexander. Alexander comes across Diogenes, who's, you know, like laying by the side of the road, just sunning himself. And Alexander the Great sort of walks over him and he says, hi, I am Alexander the Great. You know, what can I do for you? Thinking that, you know, he can bestow favors on this man and impress him. And Diogenes looks at him and he says, you can stop blocking my son.","nb_tokens":212} | |
| {"doc_id":"gzNLzqI5oTE_26","video_id":"gzNLzqI5oTE","content":"And the idea, the contrast, the reason the ancients would tell this story was was to say that actually Diogenes is greater than Alexander the Great. Because Diogenes is self-sufficient. Diogenes has reduced his needs to zero. Diogenes doesn't need to prove anything to anyone. And he had sort of taken a different path in life. And I think there's probably a middle ground between these two that we want to embody. But, you know, Stephen Pressfield, right? Yeah. Stephen Pressfield writes a great novel about Alexander the Great called The Virtues of War, I think. And there's a scene, a fictional scene between Alexander and Diogenes. And he sort of renders another one of their meetings. And I think it illustrates his tension. You know, Alexander the Great goes to Diogenes and says, I have conquered the world. What have you ever done? And Diogenes says, I have conquered the need to conquer the world. Right. And so I think it's great to be driven to try to do things.","nb_tokens":222} | |
| {"doc_id":"gzNLzqI5oTE_27","video_id":"gzNLzqI5oTE","content":"But the Stokes would say, are those things driving you or are you driving them? Right. What are you a slave to? Right. Who's actually in control of your life? And so I think oftentimes the people that we hold up as heroes or that we admire, if you actually get up close with them and you see that they're not as free as you think they are, they're not as powerful as you think they are. They're a slave to something or someone, even if it's just like their overscheduled calendar. And so, you know, what's beautiful about meditations is you have this immensely powerful man trying to get to the root of what it actually means to be powerful. And I think he settles on the idea of being in command of yourself is actually a rarer thing than being in command of an army or an empire or, you know, a great legacy or, you know, whatever one is after in life. Okay. So this idea of being a slave to the things that you're into, that's one of the things that I worry about a lot with the modern world. So you have porn beginning to skew people.","nb_tokens":237} | |
| {"doc_id":"gzNLzqI5oTE_28","video_id":"gzNLzqI5oTE","content":"The idea that you could see more attractive naked women in a single session than most men would have seen in their entire lives is pretty crazy. OnlyFans, which is a whole thing. I don't even know how to conceptualize that. That's when I had my head down and I was just working for, you know, whatever, two decades. I look up and OnlyFans is the thing that I don't necessarily... I'm fully grappled with what that means. Drugs, just food, like there are so many things. I mean, you can get on a plane for $200 and travel basically anywhere you want, right? At any time. It's wonderful how accessible and real, like technology and capitalism has made things, but it also makes it hard to be self-contained, to be self-sufficient, to be in control of your life and not controlled by the endless urges and temptations and distractions and pleasures that are out there. Are the pleasures bad? Well, the Stokes would say that pleasure isn't bad per se, but they would ask, you know, how do you feel the morning after, right? They would ask what regrets come from it, right?","nb_tokens":241} | |
| {"doc_id":"gzNLzqI5oTE_29","video_id":"gzNLzqI5oTE","content":"What negative consequences come from it? Masonius Rufus is one of the great Stokes. He's the teacher of Epictetus. He says, you know, when you work hard on something, it's painful, but the pain passes quickly and the virtue or the accomplishment remains. But he says, when you do something for pleasure, the pleasure passes quickly, but the shame remains. And so when I think about the things that people do, whether it's drugs or drinking or sexual stuff or just any of the pleasures that we chase, you know, it's fun in the moment, it's rewarding in the moment, but the costs come later, and you can't separate those costs. You can't go, I had an awesome time drinking last night, without integrating the morning hangover into that cost-benefit analysis. But that's kind of the problem that we do, right? It's like you're eating whatever you want, you're not exercising because it's hard. Well, you don't see the consequences of that until you look in the mirror six months from now, right?","nb_tokens":222} | |
| {"doc_id":"gzNLzqI5oTE_30","video_id":"gzNLzqI5oTE","content":"And vice versa, when you decide to work out and to eat clean and to push yourself and to be disciplined, you know, you don't see the benefits of that until later. And our inability to deal with that, I think, is a big part of why we're not the people we want to be the people that we can be. I have a thesis. Yeah. Many people need to be chased by a lion, you know, obviously as a metaphor, in order to have their life focused, take on meaning, because then you have a thing to deal with. You have a thing that provides that structure. And so when I look at the modern landscape, the thing that I really worry about is that there is no, like, you can in a modern context, you can live in your parents' basement until you're 35, and there's really no major consequence for that. Right. And what do you think about that? So, like, what do you make of something like OnlyFans, where when, you know, I've been married for 21 years, I will often give relationship advice or have relationship guests on the show.","nb_tokens":235} | |
| {"doc_id":"gzNLzqI5oTE_31","video_id":"gzNLzqI5oTE","content":"And one of the comments you will see in the thread is one person will be like, oh, I think you should listen to Tom's advice. He's been married for 21 years. And then somebody else would be like, yeah, he got married 21 years ago. There was no social media. There was no swiping right. Like one you'll see a lot is women. Women would settle back then. So I was like, thanks, guys. Yeah. You know, and like, what do you think about that? What is the thing that has broken, that has left men spending inordinate amounts of money. Yeah. On a woman they're never going to meet. Right. Who almost certainly is, you're not actually talking to them. You're talking to, like, probably a guy that's running their account. Yeah. All while, and here's where my brain broke, all while you could go get free porn. Yeah. So this isn't just about masturbating. Like there's free stuff that you could do. You don't have to pay for. What the fuck? Like what's happening?","nb_tokens":231} | |
| {"doc_id":"gzNLzqI5oTE_32","video_id":"gzNLzqI5oTE","content":"Yeah. I mean, I don't think one thing broke. I think a lot of things broke. Right. And so. What are those things? Well, I mean, first off, yeah, an unlimited amount of high definition pornography is an incredible temptation to any lonely person. Right. I get porn far more than I get OnlyFans. I mean, at a certain point, watching pornography is lonely and unrewarding because human beings desire and need connection and relationships. But if you have been left behind, like we talk about people have been left behind like workers, right? You're a factory worker. And now that job can be done cheaper in China or it requires way more education than you have. You're left behind. But I think a lot of people are left behind when all of a sudden the dating market is so much more efficient. Right. Where the competition is so much more severe. Right. Where people don't have to settle, like you're saying, because they have access to unlimited fish in the sea.","nb_tokens":210} | |
| {"doc_id":"gzNLzqI5oTE_33","video_id":"gzNLzqI5oTE","content":"And so this means if you don't have your life together, if you're not taking care of yourself, if you don't have the emotional wherewithal and skills, like it's always been hard to be a person and to find your people. Right. By that I mean friends and I mean potential spouse or life partner. It's always been hard. But then, you know, what we ask of people today is so much greater. We demand emotional awareness. Like I have young kids. The emotional awareness and the load that I'm supposed to carry and the level of involvement I'm supposed to have in their lives is enormously bigger than my father had and incomprehensibly bigger one to two generations back. Right. And then you think about the technological prowess that a person has to have. You think about how expensive things like it's just hard to be a person. And so people are left behind. And so if suddenly you can fool yourself into thinking that this beautiful adult actress or sex worker is into you, that illusion is going to be more comfortable than facing the hard reality. Have you ever watched the MTV show Catfish? No.","nb_tokens":233} | |
| {"doc_id":"gzNLzqI5oTE_34","video_id":"gzNLzqI5oTE","content":"You know what Catfish is, right? Yeah, I'm very familiar with the concept. It's actually a really revealing show. Are they intentionally catfishing people? No, no. The show is people who think they're being catfished and then they come and help them investigate to see whether they are or not. And I think it's actually a really revealing look into what it's like to be one of these kinds of people in the world because... These kind of incels? What are we talking about? Incel is a strong word, but somebody who is struggling to find real people in real life, right? And invariably the person has fallen for someone that is not just out of their league, but obviously out of their league to everyone but them, right? It's like... And so cognitive dissonance is a powerful force. And so when this male or female model randomly slides into your DMs on social media and falls for you, an unemployed person working in your parents' living in your parents' basement, and they're really successful, but they don't have a phone that works, so that's why you can't FaceTime.","nb_tokens":237} | |
| {"doc_id":"gzNLzqI5oTE_35","video_id":"gzNLzqI5oTE","content":"They're not seeing what's obviously there because to see what is there would mean despair, right? To see that they have been wasting their life or that the world is unfair or unjust or much more difficult than they would like it to be, that's a hard truth to face. And I think it's easier to turn to illusions like falling in love with some random person who's tricking you and ultimately going to take money from you. And a lot of what's happening on adult websites or OnlyFans is just a slightly more ruthless version of that same thing. They're creating a parasocial relationship with someone where you feel like it's a two-way street and it's fundamentally a one-way street. And you would rather live in those delusions than go to the gym, go back to school, go to therapy, deal with the unfair or awful hand that life dealt you. But even if it is unfair, even if it is unjust, it doesn't change the fact that that's what you were dealt. You got to figure out what you're going to do with that. What would the Stoics say to an incel? I don't know. I don't know.","nb_tokens":240} | |
| {"doc_id":"gzNLzqI5oTE_36","video_id":"gzNLzqI5oTE","content":"I mean, it's hard to think about what that is because I think it's such a complicated, it's psychological and it's economic and it's the sort of radicalization of the internet. But I do think the Stoics would say, like, look, all the things that you don't like about the world, all the things you don't like about yourself, being mad at other people about them, resenting them, lamenting them, it's not going to make it any better for you. And so how do you focus on what you control here, on what you can do here? And I do think, you know, at the core of Stoicism, although it has this reputation for being sort of resigned, the core of Stoicism is this strong sense of agency, that you don't control a lot of what's happened before or in the future, but you control who you are right now, what you do in this moment. And the decision to be a responsible adult, Joan Didion famously said, you know, the decision to take responsibility for yourself and your own life is the source from which all self-respect springs. Facts. And... Facts. Totally.","nb_tokens":242} | |
| {"doc_id":"gzNLzqI5oTE_37","video_id":"gzNLzqI5oTE","content":"And the decision to go, this isn't my fault, but it's my problem, this sucks, but I don't want to live a sucky, shitty life, so I'm going to do something about it. I'm not going to blame other people for the fact that I am undesired, that I am unhappy, that I am unsuccessful. I'm going to do something about that. That is the first choice. That is the number one thing that is up to you. Let's say you're Quasimodo. Yeah. I don't know the Hunchback. I actually don't know the story, so I don't know what the punchline in the movie is, but because the Blackpill community, I've not engaged with much. I know very little about it. But when I think about these things, if I'm Quasimodo and it really is out of the cards for me, I am broken in a way that nobody is ever going to find attractive.","nb_tokens":204} | |
| {"doc_id":"gzNLzqI5oTE_38","video_id":"gzNLzqI5oTE","content":"I feel like, look, that's really brutal, and I would never want that to be true, but at some point you either say, okay, that part of my life is dead and I'm going to have to go find something somewhere else or it's going to drive you mad. I couldn't let that become the core of my identity. There's no doubt that that would be a part of it. You can't get away from that. You don't want to pretend that it isn't what it is. But at the same time, when I think about, again, this all comes back to frame of reference for me, what do you believe is true about the world and how ought the world be? And I would say, okay, what is in that moment, I'm not going to find a traditional relationship where physical attraction is the first thing that's going to lead me down that path. But the world ought to be such that people fill that need for love and being loved with something, with some kind of contribution. Like you need to go do something. Dude, go work at an animal shelter. It's not romance, but it is being loved and it is companionship.","nb_tokens":244} | |
| {"doc_id":"gzNLzqI5oTE_39","video_id":"gzNLzqI5oTE","content":"That's where my mind goes. You have to find an outlet for that. Otherwise you end up in despair, man. And when I think about people getting to the point where they believe they can never be happy again and suicide is the only option, it's like, whoa, whoa, whoa. Like I'm not here to say that there aren't major problems, but I am here to say, knowing what I know about how the mind works, you still can point your mind at something that will give you that sense of fulfillment, that recipe that I was talking about. You can get to that point, but it does require you to force that North star upon yourself. I mean, first off, I would say you're not Quasimodo. Like you're almost certainly not, right? Like so much of what I think people are down about themselves, when you look at people who are in true despair, they've written themselves off. There's ironically a kind of ego in it, right? It's this sense, like imposter syndrome, right?","nb_tokens":220} | |
| {"doc_id":"gzNLzqI5oTE_40","video_id":"gzNLzqI5oTE","content":"Imposter syndrome at the root of it is incorrect in the sense that it presumes anyone is thinking about you at all, right? Nobody is thinking about you. But there is this sense, I think, when you are down, when things are not working, when you're unhappy, that no one has ever felt the way that you've ever felt. No one has ever had it as hard as you have it and that your situation is unique and it's not. There's a great James Baldwin quote. He says, you know, you think you're suffering and your pain is so special and unique and then you read, right? And then you realize you are opened up to a world in which people have had it so much worse than you, right? Have been dealt incredible hands of adversity and suffering and disfigurement and loss and pain. And those people got out of bed every morning and tried and worked on themselves. And even the people that you are jealous of, that you think have it so good, are often dealing with secret pain and baggage and loss. And so the decision to go, hey, I'm going to stop making this so much about me.","nb_tokens":238} | |
| {"doc_id":"gzNLzqI5oTE_41","video_id":"gzNLzqI5oTE","content":"I'm going to stop making this so much on what has happened or what I am worried is going to continue happening. And I'm just going to focus on what I can do here. And I love your idea. You go work in an animal shelter, you get a job, you meet friends. Like you stop trying to get this one thing so bad and you just focus on things that are much more attainable and easy. And you find in life that momentum is an incredible thing. And that oftentimes we despair of some destination, some far off change or transformation because we don't see how we're going to get there when really we should be focused on what the most immediate, attainable, realistic next thing is. If you're 200 pounds overweight, imagining yourself ripped and yoked is probably inconceivable. But you could lose five pounds, you could lose 10 pounds, or you could get up and go for a walk. You haven't been touched by a member of the opposite sex in however long. Well, you can still say hi to someone in line. You know what I mean? You have to start so much smaller than you think.","nb_tokens":237} | |
| {"doc_id":"gzNLzqI5oTE_42","video_id":"gzNLzqI5oTE","content":"And the Stoics talk about this. They talk about how no one can stop you from doing that. They can stop you from some far off outcome, but they can't stop you from doing that immediate next right thing. And it accumulates. Zeno, we can imagine Zeno, he loses everything, right? It seems utterly hopeless. The idea that he would become this world-changing, world-famous philosopher. In his own life, he's sought after by kings and rebuilds his life and his fortune and his relationships. That was inconceivable to him at that moment when he's penniless and broke. But he says later, he says, well-being is realized by small steps, but it is no small thing. And if we can understand these small steps, these little things that everyone talks about that are very well-established, you know, just basic best practices of life, they add up in a big way and they create something that is big and transformative. What are the small steps of well-being? I just mean, you know, like some of them are cliches, but it's like, you know, wake up early, go to bed early, eat well.","nb_tokens":242} | |
| {"doc_id":"gzNLzqI5oTE_43","video_id":"gzNLzqI5oTE","content":"You know, like I try to do something hard every day, like physically hard every day. Why? Because I like the challenge of it. And more importantly, I like being a person who has a track record of doing hard things that I don't want to do. The Stokes talk about, they say, you know, we treat the body rigorously so that it's not disobedient to the mind. I want to cultivate the practice of, I'm a person who pushes through hard stuff. I'm a person who decides what I'm going to do and do it, right? And I wasn't always that way. No one is actually born that way. It's a culmination of doing it, of building the habit, building the practice, which becomes a ritual, which becomes an identity, which becomes a fact, right? Like those basic practices, like you could get it off any random Instagram account, any diet book, you know, any self-improvement. This is not rocket science, but it is hard work. And it's the work like of a lifetime.","nb_tokens":220} | |
| {"doc_id":"gzNLzqI5oTE_44","video_id":"gzNLzqI5oTE","content":"You know, waking up early three days in a row, that's not going to magically make you who you are, who you want to be. But the decision to wake up early, focus on what you eat, you know, to challenge yourself, to put yourself out there, to do the thing you're afraid to do. These are, you know, habits that compound and they, you know, they shape you as you are shaping them. Yeah, this is why I want people to understand they're having a biological experience. So I want to remove all the sort of hoity-toity-ness of why one ought to do that. The reality is there is shit in your brain that is messing with you and you are going to feel a profound sense of disease if you don't do hard things. Like the reason you should do hard things is not because it makes you a better person. It is because there is a subroutine running in your brain that is saying you're a piece of shit because you don't do hard things. Now, I wish that that thing wasn't there. Your life would be much easier if you weren't being chased by a lion that you could still be all right.","nb_tokens":244} | |
| {"doc_id":"gzNLzqI5oTE_45","video_id":"gzNLzqI5oTE","content":"But the fact is that it will just niggle at you because that is what evolution has had to program into us to make sure that back when you were going to get potentially eaten by a saber tooth tiger, that you still went out and braved it time and time again to move forward to make a better life. Dis-ease is a great word that you're using there. Ennui would be another one. There is this sense, it's not just that you dislike yourself because you're not doing hard things, but you also have an anxiety or an insecurity because you know things could get worse. You know things could happen to you at any moment. And because you haven't tested yourself, because you're not actually sure if you're strong, you're worried, right? You're worried about what tomorrow could bring. Seneca famously would practice poverty. He was very wealthy, born to a wealthy family, was successful, was powerful. And he would try to spend like one day a month, he would like wear his worst clothes, he would walk the streets, he would survive on bread and water.","nb_tokens":226} | |
| {"doc_id":"gzNLzqI5oTE_46","video_id":"gzNLzqI5oTE","content":"And his point, he said the purpose of this practice was to be able to look at like abject poverty and go, this is what you feared, right? Like he could go through life taking risks because he wasn't concerned about his ability to handle a reversal of fortune, right? And so when you do hard things, whether it's running or getting up on stage or lifting heavy rocks, like whatever it is, what you're cultivating is the kind of resilience and a kind of confidence. Like I have a cold plunge, right? And there's supposedly a bunch of health benefits to having this thing, right? I'm sure- What temperature do you set yours at? 39. Oh, that's cold. It is cold. It is cold. It's awful. We'll bump ours down to like 50, 52 and that shit hurts. It's awful. At 52, it hurts. 39 is like a whole nother level of suffering. It is an unpleasant experience, right? But there's all sorts of- You're making me feel like a wuss over here.","nb_tokens":225} | |
| {"doc_id":"gzNLzqI5oTE_47","video_id":"gzNLzqI5oTE","content":"There's all sorts of research that, it helps your circulation and it helps your immune system and it helps your whatever, right? You will feel different. And I trust, you know, that the research is legitimate, but I actually don't give a shit, right? Like- Yeah, it's not the reason to do it. It could all be disproven tomorrow and I would still do it. Facts. Because the benefit is the sliding in and the unpleasantness for the first minute or two minutes when you're like, this was a terrible mistake. This is deeply unpleasant. This is not natural. I shouldn't be doing this. And I go, no, I decide. I decided before I got in that I was going to do it and how long I was going to do it for. And that's what I'm cultivating. What do you do? Does your mind scramble when you hit the cold water? I feel like a flurry.","nb_tokens":193} | |
| {"doc_id":"gzNLzqI5oTE_48","video_id":"gzNLzqI5oTE","content":"And then one of the exercises that I'm practicing is, I want, if I'm going to do it for three minutes, it's not three minutes of gritting my teeth and just enduring something unpleasant, but I also want three minutes of presence. So like- Define that for me. Like I have my, you know, it's got a little arm. Meaning I am, are you, I'm hyper aware that I'm sitting in the cold or are you trying to be like, cold is just the thing. I don't need to sort of be captured by it. Well, one of the core things I'm trying to do in that moment is not look at my phone, which is telling me how long I've been in it. Right. Like I want to sit and just be for as long as I can, trying not to distract myself, trying not to count and to just actually be. So I try to, I try to combine the cold or the plunge experience with a couple minutes of sort of present mindfulness of just- So I want to know more about what present mindfulness is for you. So I'll, I'll give you a description of what I'm doing in the cold.","nb_tokens":245} | |
| {"doc_id":"gzNLzqI5oTE_49","video_id":"gzNLzqI5oTE","content":"Tell me if there's anything like what you do. So I hit the water and my brain, it is screaming danger. It's actually telling me you're being injured. Get out right now. And so there's a, almost a sense of electric confusion where I can't even tell what part of my body hurts anymore. It's just weird. Like I couldn't, it's almost like I'm blinded for a second because it's so confusing and it's so cold and it's just like, oh, I just want to get out. And so my thing is how rapidly can I get to the point where I feel at ease? Yes. So I'm not tense. I'm completely relaxed. I'm not trying to get out of the water. In fact, this is, what's that guy's name? Something's paradox. Who's paradox? Stockdale paradox. Stockdale? Stockdale. Stockdale. Yeah. Stockdale's paradox. He said the people, the Vietnam concentration can't know what did they call him? War camp, prison camp, prisoner of war, prisoner of war.","nb_tokens":226} | |
| {"doc_id":"gzNLzqI5oTE_50","video_id":"gzNLzqI5oTE","content":"So he's a prisoner of war in Vietnam. And somebody asked him like who struggles the most in a prisoner of war camp? And he said, oh, that's easy. The optimistic people, right? Cause they think I'm going to be home and then they're not. And when he was drifting down in his parachute, he's like, okay, I'm going to be here for years, like at least seven years. This is going to suck. I'm almost certainly going to be tortured. This is going to be very painful. And in that, like, okay, I just completely accept what's happening. And you sort of relax into it. Like admittedly, cold water is not a POW camp, but it's that same thing of like, this is where I am. And I'm going to force myself to be completely calm in the face of my lizard brain screaming at me to get out. Yes. It's a minor attainable way of practicing or flexing the muscle that people have had to flex in real adversity and real difficulty. Right?","nb_tokens":217} | |
| {"doc_id":"gzNLzqI5oTE_51","video_id":"gzNLzqI5oTE","content":"And so the sense, for instance, you know, when you get in the cold that it's going to be unpleasant and you're going to want it to be over quickly, but your mind is going to tell you that time is going faster than it is. Right? So if I'm sitting there and then I glance over and I'm expecting to be- It's like seven seconds. Yeah. Two and a half minutes through and it's actually been 23 seconds, you know, I'm going to be disappointed. I'm going to be crushed. It's going to be harder. So it's just the ability to sort of, you get in and like you said, your brain scrambles and then you want to reassert control, reinsert sort of presence. And then for me, the next step is not letting my mind wander or drift into something like work or a grudge I'm nursing or an anxiety I feel about some other thing or the sense that I need to finish this and then get in the shower and then I need to get home to beat traffic to do X, Y, or Z. Right? And to just beat.","nb_tokens":234} | |
| {"doc_id":"gzNLzqI5oTE_52","video_id":"gzNLzqI5oTE","content":"This is all I have to do for the next few minutes. It's going to be hard. It's going to be unpleasant, but I'm not going to die. I've done it before. I know I'm going to come out of the other side refreshed. So I'm going to just do what I have to do. And again- Where do you put your locus of attention while you're doing that? Or is it on, like for me, I do it on the breath. Yeah. And am I relaxed? It can be, it can be breath and sometimes like I'll cheat and I'll count, but not to record time or just like the counting of the in and outs of the breath. Right? And the reason I like this, again, health benefits, ancillary, secondary, it's just bonus. But the metaphor of this is also the process of starting page one of a book that I'm writing or learning a new skill or moving to a new place or anything that you have to do in life. The practice of it's going to be hard. It's going to be unpleasant. I'm going to doubt myself.","nb_tokens":235} | |
| {"doc_id":"gzNLzqI5oTE_53","video_id":"gzNLzqI5oTE","content":"I'm going to have dark nights of the soul, but I'm a person who pushes myself to do hard things. I don't give up. I don't cut corners. I don't make excuses for myself. I push through and I'm proud of who I am on the other side of it. That's the meta skill. That's the metaphor that you're trying to build in your life and in your mind because it's the most transferable and beneficial thing there is. So I like the, in fact, I looked this up, the definition of stoic, the actual word, did I put it down? It's the definition of stoic itself is the thing you were saying earlier that people weren't going to like. I'm convinced I have it here. Did you look it up? There it is. Oh, Axel. Yeah. So, sorry, read that again. A person who can endure pain or hardship without showing their feelings or complaining. Yeah. So I love that. I like the idea of being in control of my emotions.","nb_tokens":216} | |
| {"doc_id":"gzNLzqI5oTE_54","video_id":"gzNLzqI5oTE","content":"I don't want to, and people that only know me online, they don't know whether what I'm about to say is true or not, but it is true. I don't stuff my emotions down. I process them. I think it's very important to process pain and insecurity, hurt, all of it. Grief. Grief, for sure. You have to process it. When my dog died, as silly as that is, I was ruined for days. But at the same time, I want my emotions to have their place. Yes. And it is very important to me that I have a healthy distrust of my emotions. I don't just assume, when I get in cold water, that I need to leap back out. I don't assume when I'm starting something new and I feel like an idiot that I need to stop and give up. Yeah. I don't assume when I started this YouTube channel and we had to go around to the seven people in the company and say, hey, could you please subscribe because we only have four. There's seven of us and we only have four subscribers.","nb_tokens":229} | |
| {"doc_id":"gzNLzqI5oTE_55","video_id":"gzNLzqI5oTE","content":"So the awkwardness of being bad or not visibly successful at a thing is a very underrated skill. People want to be a famous YouTuber or be a best-selling author. I'll hear people, they want to hire me to consult on some book project. And I go, so show me some stuff that you have published. And they're like, well, they've never put a single thing out. Right? And so they want the outcome, but they're totally paralyzed and intimidated by the process of being a nobody at that thing for a long period of time, which is what it takes. Right? And that ability to be like, I'm going to start this channel, even though some people think it's weird, even though some people I went to high school with are going to be talking about it amongst each other and making fun of me. And to think, not only to do it because you think it will be successful in the future and you're just willing to put up with it. That is outcome dependent. I like it that you're doing it because you are interested in doing it. You want to get good at it. And you think it's important.","nb_tokens":240} | |
| {"doc_id":"gzNLzqI5oTE_56","video_id":"gzNLzqI5oTE","content":"Right? And that's a very important skill because you can't get good at anything if you're not willing to first be bad at that thing. Right? And people aren't willing to be bad at that thing. And so they would rather be on their couch, a lonely incel, than to go strike out trying to meet people. Right? They would rather continue to be the thing that's making them miserable than to experience some new form of discomfort or misery that is trying, that is failing, that is getting rejected. And you have to be willing to do that. You have to have the courage and the discipline, both of those things in concert with each other to be able to get better. What say you though to people that don't want men to be stoic? Like that's, you know, we started with that, that that's really become part of the definition of toxic masculinity. Yeah. Whereas I would say man or woman, if you are the slave to your emotions, that's just as bad as being a slave to social media or pornography or whatever. It's just the idea that the stoic is emotionless is to totally miss what the philosophy is.","nb_tokens":241} | |
| {"doc_id":"gzNLzqI5oTE_57","video_id":"gzNLzqI5oTE","content":"And I think there's a big difference between being emotionless and being less emotional. Right? Would you say is it less emotional? Because I will say it's about being in control of your emotions. Meaning if you have, if you spark rage, which let me just tell you running a company, there are times where someone will do something and anger wells up inside of me. Sure. Now, just because I'm feeling angry doesn't mean I'm going to act angry. Yes. And I don't think people have enough distrust of their emotions, like literal distrust that I shouldn't be angry right now. I shouldn't be hurt. I shouldn't be upset. I shouldn't be wanting to cry if I really want to get under somebody's skin. So, yeah, I think that you should be like, yeah, maybe this isn't a time to be weeping. If we can make the distinction between stuffing the emotion down and then processing it, I think we're in a great place. Right?","nb_tokens":206} | |
| {"doc_id":"gzNLzqI5oTE_58","video_id":"gzNLzqI5oTE","content":"I think people, if you think stoicism is you don't feel it, you pretend it doesn't exist, you think it's weak to have it, then yeah, I would, I would agree that's wrong. But if stoicism is the processing of the emotions, the questioning of the emotions, the talking through the emotions, the having the emotions for a brief period of time and then going, I'm done with that and I'm moving on, then I'm all for it. Right? Like there, we don't have a lot of stories about Marcus Aurelius. Right? Like not a lot of stories about who he was as a person, but we have three that involve him crying. Three. So we've got to imagine that this is not an utterly emotionless person. There's a moment early in his life where he loses his favorite teacher. His teacher dies and one of his stoic teachers goes to him and says, you got to stop crying. Like this isn't what men do. And Antoninus, his stepfather says, let the boy be human. He says, philosophy and empire don't take away personal feelings. Right?","nb_tokens":236} | |
| {"doc_id":"gzNLzqI5oTE_59","video_id":"gzNLzqI5oTE","content":"So he's letting the kid have this emotion. We know of Marcus crying while he mourns the victims of the Antonine plague. Millions of people die in this heinous tragedy. And then the other one in between these two, which I think is also really revealing. He supposedly cries when he learns he is going to become emperor. And... Sad tears? He's overwhelmed by the enormity of the responsibility that's about to be thrust upon him. And he doesn't know if he can do it. He was said to be crying at the thought of all the bad kings that had gone before him, which I think is important. Like if you're like, I obviously have this. I'm the best. I excel at everything. To me, that's a person who is almost certainly going to fail because they're not taking it seriously. They're not intimidated by what should be an intimidating thing. Responsibility is difficult. Being responsible for people is a scary thing. But, you know, so he breaks down. He cries about it. And then that night he has this dream.","nb_tokens":221} | |
| {"doc_id":"gzNLzqI5oTE_60","video_id":"gzNLzqI5oTE","content":"He has this dream, he says later, that his shoulders were made of ivory. To me, what that means is, and what he said it meant, is that he was stronger than he thought he was. He was stronger than he knew. So he has this moment and then he works through it and then he wipes away the tears and he goes to work. Do you know what I mean? So to me, that's the essence of what the philosophy is. You know, he didn't cry and run away. He didn't cry and try to wiggle out of the job, right? He didn't suppress the tears and then go get mad at someone or, you know, indulge in pleasures or distractions. Like, he was overwhelmed. He understood he was overwhelmed. He dealt with it and then he got back to it. And so, this idea that the stoic, you know, would never cry, I think that's an important one that we talk about because, like, it's funny, like we say, like men shouldn't be emotional. But we are very indulgent of men's tempers, right?","nb_tokens":231} | |
| {"doc_id":"gzNLzqI5oTE_61","video_id":"gzNLzqI5oTE","content":"Like, if you get so angry that you punch a wall, you have been overly, you've been utterly overwhelmed by your emotions, right? We don't tend to categorize that as weak or as the same weakness as crying because your dog died. And I would argue, I just put my dog down, my 16-year-old dog, and I wept like a baby. Like, not just because of the grief, but the emotion, the responsibility of having to make this decision for this helpless thing that was now lying there and was not going to be alive anymore. It was an emotionally overwhelming experience. I didn't run from that experience. You know, I did what I had to do. And there was regrets and, you know, mistakes, you know, caught up in it. Like, there was a lot of emotions, right? I had a lot of those emotions. And then I moved on. I don't need to have fewer of those experiences in my life, but I've never lost my temper and then been proud afterwards. Do you know what I mean? So it's funny that we tend to criticize.","nb_tokens":231} | |
| {"doc_id":"gzNLzqI5oTE_62","video_id":"gzNLzqI5oTE","content":"It's very gendered which emotions we sort of criticize as emotional. Other emotions, jealousy, rage, you know, lust, et cetera, we don't lump in the same negative category. But if I had to choose, I'd much rather someone, you know, feel sad than someone be an asshole because they're not in control of their temper. This is a very complex topic. So, one, I agree with you wholeheartedly that I am just completely unafraid to cry if that is what the moment deserves. Now, I'm not a big crier, so it's very rare, unless it's a movie. I will be honest, like movies can really get me. But it's very rare in my real life that I cry. But when something is traumatic like that, then of course. And when I say I don't even have a mild compunction about crying, like I'm not weird about that, does not bother me in the slightest. But at the same time, I get why this has become gendered and I don't want this to get lost. And this is where someone like Andrew Tate becomes complex.","nb_tokens":236} | |
| {"doc_id":"gzNLzqI5oTE_63","video_id":"gzNLzqI5oTE","content":"Again, I want to take him as an abstraction prior to the trafficking stuff. But when he first came on my radar, I was like, here you have a guy, 10% of what he's saying is bang on. And nobody is talking about the need to be tough, the need to strengthen yourself, to be ambitious is okay, to be aggressive is okay. And 90% of what he said, I'm like, he's just going out of his way to say it in the worst conceivable way humanly possible. And it could just be that he's dark, tetrad all day and he really is just a sociopath. But even if he's not, even if he's just playing a character, it's still dumb. And I don't want people to get lost in that. But I also don't, like I was really pushing back on what I'll call the hyper-feminization of men. And I think that that's also problematic. And so when I look at, okay, well, how did we end up here with these gendered notions? I think there's an, again, you're having a biological experience.","nb_tokens":237} | |
| {"doc_id":"gzNLzqI5oTE_64","video_id":"gzNLzqI5oTE","content":"So there's an evolutionary reason why, like, I don't know if this is the same in your house, but if somebody, like the number of times that our alarm has gone off in the middle of the night, my wife has actually fallen back asleep as I'm creeping around the house to see if somebody's really broken in or if it's a false alarm. And I like lock the door behind me and I'm like, you stay in here. I'm going to go do my thing. And that to me, like when you talk about how the world ought to be, that falls in my list of ought to be. Like, I think guys should be tough. I think that that a hundred percent is their responsibility. And part of that is meaning and purpose. Part of that is there is, I need a North star. I need to know, I mean, let's go back to the four virtues, courage, self-discipline, justice, wisdom, right? So I think regardless of sex, all four are bang on.","nb_tokens":213} | |
| {"doc_id":"gzNLzqI5oTE_65","video_id":"gzNLzqI5oTE","content":"But when it comes to physical danger or even just discomfort in my life, if my wife and I, if there was going to be hardship around food for one of us, for whatever reason, one of you had to suffer and not the other, 100 out of 100 times, I would want to be the one that suffers and not my wife. And it would really bother me if she stepped into the role to suffer on my behalf. Yeah. You know, I, so I have a six year old, he's a boy. And I, I feel like a lot of the traditional masculine stuff, it's just there, it's in the air, right? In the sense that I work hard, he sees me working out. He sees that I'm ambitious. You know, he trains in combat sports. He does Brazilian jujitsu, the sort of, you know, stereotypes of what a man should or shouldn't be. But we were going through, he just switched schools, right? And I said, you know, like, Hey, how are you feeling? Like, are you sad about not getting to see your old friends and your teacher anymore?","nb_tokens":239} | |
| {"doc_id":"gzNLzqI5oTE_66","video_id":"gzNLzqI5oTE","content":"And he was like, I'm fine. You know, like, I'm fine. And, and like, he may have been fine. But I wanted to, I wanted to make sure he knew it was okay to not be fine. Right. Do you know what I mean? Like, it's not like I'm trying to make him sad about something, but I, I was concerned that his impulse, maybe from me or from something else or some random stereotype or, you know, thing he saw on TV or YouTube video that he had internalized somewhere that it wasn't okay for him to be sad or to miss these people or to not like what happened. Right. So I want, I felt like I, I mean, I watched it have the impulse that it was, he was fine. Like he wasn't, shouldn't have the emotion that was there, but there needed to be the extra conversation about it's okay. Like if you feel sad, it's okay. And sometimes, you know, you, you watch this too. Like the kid will fall and they'll hurt themselves.","nb_tokens":225} | |
| {"doc_id":"gzNLzqI5oTE_67","video_id":"gzNLzqI5oTE","content":"And there's already at a very early age, some sense that like boys don't cry or cover it up or don't tell anyone. And I don't think that's a particularly healthy thing either. So I, I, I just like the, I just like the idea that you're trying to create a well-rounded person that has the full toolkit, the full experience, the full human experience. And, and, you know, it is funny. Like one of the early Stoics talked about how, yes, of course, there's some things that men and women are different at, but he said, you know, like you don't care. He says, you don't care what sex your hunting dog is, or the gender of your horse. You just care if it can catch the rabbit or run fast in the race. And I think overall, when I think of Stoicism as a philosophy, I do think about it as something that's not masculine or feminine, but that it's something human. And I think there are, you know, there are men who need the courage to be more vulnerable, right? About their emotions, right?","nb_tokens":235} | |
| {"doc_id":"gzNLzqI5oTE_68","video_id":"gzNLzqI5oTE","content":"As opposed to cultivating more martial courage on the battlefield. Maybe they already have that. And they, what they're struggling with is the pain they feel or the grief they feel or the inadequacy they feel in there. They're afraid to tell someone about it. Just as conversely, there might be a woman who needs the self-discipline or the self-command to, you know, deal with an over abundance of emotions, right? And what we're trying to get to is the sort of moderate or the apotheosis, the moderation or the middle ground, the golden mean of the best of both worlds. To me, that's what Stoicism is about. Very interesting. So let me ask you, I was playing soccer one day when I was a kid and the ball hit my thumb just right and broke it. Yeah. Cracked it right down the middle. And how should my father have responded? My dad was the coach of the team. Yeah. And I'll tell you in a minute what he actually did, but what in that moment? I come crying to the sidelines. I got hit. My thumb hurts.","nb_tokens":231} | |
| {"doc_id":"gzNLzqI5oTE_69","video_id":"gzNLzqI5oTE","content":"Well, I remember I fell off a skateboard when I was in fourth grade and I hit my wrist. I landed on my left wrist really hard. And I probably cried. I know I was in a lot of pain and I told my parents that it really hurt. And what my parents did in that moment was chastise me for going on a skateboard and then sort of not believe me that it hurt as much as it did. And they, you know, they like to save going to a doctor. They asked their doctor friend if it looked broken and he said, no. And, you know, a week later I'm like, guys, like this really hurts. Like I need to go. And of course it was broken. Right. And, and one of the things I took from that was not, Hey, you should be tough. You know, what I took from that is like my parents don't believe me. Right. My parents say they care a lot about me and they want nothing bad to happen to me. And then here I was in physical pain and they were thinking one of saving money or two of, you know, doubts. Right.","nb_tokens":237} | |
| {"doc_id":"gzNLzqI5oTE_70","video_id":"gzNLzqI5oTE","content":"So I don't know what your dad should have done in exactly in that situation. But I think it's really easy as a parent, as a person to get to, to not just focus on the individual instance in front of you, which is like this kid says their thumb hurts. Let's just figure it out. And to think, well, if I make too big a deal out of it, they're going to turn into a X, Y, or Z, right? Like there's a lot of extrapolation that I think is harmful for parents. One of the things I think about with my kids is I try to think about most things as individual instances, right? Like my toddler is throwing a temper tantrum. They're probably throwing a temper tantrum. Not cause they suck. Not cause they're bad. Not cause I'm bad as a parent, but because like we forgot to eat earlier or they're coming down with something. Right. And I'm just going to deal with this instance in front of me instead of going, well, if I reward this bad behavior, then they're going to turn into a kid who does bad things and thinks they can get away.","nb_tokens":242} | |
| {"doc_id":"gzNLzqI5oTE_71","video_id":"gzNLzqI5oTE","content":"Right. The extrapolation I think is so often the enemy of what is usually a pretty common sense, low stakes situation. So I'm guessing cause I think it's been the historical norm that your, your dad probably did not take it very seriously. Yeah. So it was walk it off. Yeah. Like go back in, keep playing. And the problem is that in that instance, what I walked away from it with was I told you so. And I told you it hurt. And I told you that you should take me out of the game. But as I got older and got into business and realized, oh, I give up too early. As soon as something hurts, as soon as something is difficult, my temptation is to turn and run. And so my journey of success has been one of getting tough. And so when I look back, I wish what my dad had done was take a more holistic approach to me as a kid and help me create a frame of reference around pain and suffering so that when my thumb is broken, I know, Hey, this isn't normal. You need to take me out.","nb_tokens":229} | |
| {"doc_id":"gzNLzqI5oTE_72","video_id":"gzNLzqI5oTE","content":"But because I whined and cried about everything, they couldn't know like cause I used to whine and cry just the same when the ball would hit my cold leg, which I grew up in Tacoma where it's like in the winter, it's actually cold. And so when that ball hits your leg and it leaves the imprint of the soccer ball, like that shit really does sting, but not remove me from the game sting. And so what I didn't understand as a kid and feel like, you know, when we think about stoicism, when we think about how ought one be, how, what should you be aiming at? It's like, you need to understand that things are going to get hard. You are going to suffer. If you want to do something great, you're going to have to push through this. And by all means, by the way, if you don't want to, if at any time you don't want to play, don't, but just be honest about why you don't want to play it. It hurts too much. You're not interested, whatever, instead of like, oh, this is some unusual amount of pain.","nb_tokens":240} | |
| {"doc_id":"gzNLzqI5oTE_73","video_id":"gzNLzqI5oTE","content":"And you should always move in the opposite direction of pain. That's something my wife and I talk a lot about. It's like, Hey, that is an important lesson that has to be taught. Is this actually the most appropriate or the most suitable lesson or opportunity to teach that lesson? Right. Like when, when you, when your kid wants to quit something, right. They're playing the piano. And then they come home one day and they go, I hate playing the piano. I want to quit. And you go, well, I got to teach them that you can't be a quitter in life, but when you have to zoom out and go, wait, did I force them to play the piano? Was the piano ever one of their interests, or is this something that I forced upon them? And now they are asserting themselves to want to get out of something they don't want to do to put energy towards something they do want to do. Right. And so, you know, is this an, is this actually an important opportunity or an appropriate setting to talk about whatever this sort of meta lesson or virtue or value that you're so concerned about?","nb_tokens":239} | |
| {"doc_id":"gzNLzqI5oTE_74","video_id":"gzNLzqI5oTE","content":"And again, I think about this with tantrums. It's like, yeah, of course you can't just throw a fit anytime, you know, you don't like something, but is that what's actually happening here? Are they actually thinking that the world revolves around them? And if they lie on the floor and screen, they'll get what they want or is this a four-year-old who has been overwhelmed by hunger or sickness or some other thing that they don't understand and they can't separate because they don't know what they're feeling from like wanting this toy. And the fact that their body feels like it's falling apart. Do you know what I mean? And realize that you actually do though. I try to just deal with the individual situation at hand, which is like let them freak out. Like let's say you're in a restaurant and they start melting down. Yeah. What, why do we need to be in this restaurant? Do you know what I mean? Like this, we don't need to be here. We don't need to do this. We can go outside and we can talk about this.","nb_tokens":231} | |
| {"doc_id":"gzNLzqI5oTE_75","video_id":"gzNLzqI5oTE","content":"And if we go outside and talk about this, you're not going to be as overwhelmed or embarrassed about what's happening. I'm not going to be feeling the pressure of, I don't want to be the kind of parent that has a kid that does this. Like I think so often what really hurts parents is not what the kid is doing or not the reality of the situation, but their perception of how other people are thinking about them or their, their sense of what, whether they're a good parent or not. And that's totally unfair. That's all baggage that you're bringing to the situation. Right? Like one of the, you know, nobody likes to be on a flight with a crying baby. Right. But one of the things you realize as a parent is like, this isn't a reflection of me. You know what I mean? This is the fact that I have a baby and the baby is crying. I'm not doing anything. It's not a credit or a discredit to me. If they're not crying because they slept the whole flight, that's not a sign that I'm a superior parent. That's just the luck of that situation.","nb_tokens":240} | |
| {"doc_id":"gzNLzqI5oTE_76","video_id":"gzNLzqI5oTE","content":"Right? And so when you stop caring so much about what other people think, anything to do with that, I mean, sometimes you do, I mean, you obviously chose to be on the plane or not, but like, sometimes the baby's upset. Sometimes they're not true. You yourself though have said a lot of people are a lot of people have kids, but not a lot of people are parents. Sure. I'll tell you a story, a flight child story. So, and this is an international flight. I am on my way to England. I am in coach bro. This is not current me. This is past me. And I am going to see Lisa who lives in England at the time. And this little kid I'm waiting in line to check my bags. And there's this family with his child kids, probably, I don't know, four or five and he's losing his mind, losing his mind, throwing himself on the luggage, knocking it over, shrieking, wailing. And they don't even say anything to him. And I was like, whoever has to sit next to that kid.","nb_tokens":232} | |
| {"doc_id":"gzNLzqI5oTE_77","video_id":"gzNLzqI5oTE","content":"Oh my God, I feel terrible. Okay. So get on the plane, you know, whatever, an hour and a half later. And I'm, I'm watching them come on the plane and they're like coming to her. I'm like, Oh God, Oh God, Oh God. Ends up sitting next to me. Now these motherfuckers, Ryan holiday, it goes, there's, these are the four rows, right? So goes, uh, dad, mom, mom, child me. I'm like, I'm sorry. What? Like it should go parent, child, parent me. Uh, but they put them next to me and he is losing his mind. Like losing his mind. Like what did somebody poke him with a, like a poker, like a hot poker. Like he's, he's just really going bananas. I just can't fathom. And they don't say a word, not to him, not to me. And then partway through the flight, I don't know. We're probably up in the air 30 minutes with him shrieking.","nb_tokens":227} | |
| {"doc_id":"gzNLzqI5oTE_78","video_id":"gzNLzqI5oTE","content":"And I'm like in, in at the time I would have said like my Taoist pose, I was just like, it's all good. I'm going to be totally chill. The little kid, nothing you can do. I can't go anywhere. There's nowhere else for me to sit. And he puts his head on my lap, holds my hand and goes to sleep. Doesn't say a word, not hi, I'm Timmy, nothing. And I'm just like, the parents don't say anything. And they let this child fall asleep on a stranger. And in that moment I was like, no bro parent. Like this is partly the parents are like the fact that they didn't put him in between them and that he felt comfortable with me. He leaned on me. He didn't lean on them. And so I was like, Whoa, like this kid does not feel comfortable with them for whatever reason and does with a total stranger. And then he ends up being an angel through the whole flight, man. It was surreal. Well, you realize with kids that 90% of it is hungry or tired, right?","nb_tokens":236} | |
| {"doc_id":"gzNLzqI5oTE_79","video_id":"gzNLzqI5oTE","content":"Like it's one of those two things. And so one of the things I've taken out of being a parent is just so much more empathy for other people, period. Right? Like, it's like, I know my kid is fundamentally decent and good. So when they're not being good, right? The expression is like your kid's not giving you a hard time. Your kid is having a hard time. That's right. But this is also true for all people in the world, right? Like, you know, your kid is acting this way because you skipped nap or, you know, they got woken up in the middle of the night or whatever, but maybe that's why the person in front of you in line is being rude. Right? And, and so the practice of looking for a reason or looking for something to understand or pity even in other people is a practice I've taken out of being a parent. And it's helped me in the world, right? To just understand people are going through stuff. Kids especially are going through stuff and then it's hard to be them.","nb_tokens":226} | |
| {"doc_id":"gzNLzqI5oTE_80","video_id":"gzNLzqI5oTE","content":"And so, yeah, to take from your story, like, man, what, what must it be like to be a kid who's not comfortable around their parents? That's awful. And that's not their fault. That's not something that they can do anything about. And so how can I, I can't change that. I have no legal recourse or it's not appropriate for me to intervene in that situation, but I can let that open me up, make me better, more understanding, more patient, more understanding of both this individual and then also all individuals. And so I think being a parent has changed me in that way. It's made me more empathetic, more patient, more understanding, more present, you know, in the sense that I don't extrapolate everything out or go, if I just let this person cut me off in traffic, well then am I the kind of person that just the world walks all over and does what, you know, it's like, none of this matters. This is an individual instance, which is forgettable in the bigger picture of things.","nb_tokens":225} | |
| {"doc_id":"gzNLzqI5oTE_81","video_id":"gzNLzqI5oTE","content":"And so I'm going to treat it as such, or I'm going to go, this person is going through something. This person is struggling. This person is not winning. They may be cutting me off here, but I have a way better, I'm getting a way better end of this deal and that I get to be me and they have to be them. And that, that has helped me just as a human being in the world. Where do you draw the line though? How do you know that that isn't just cope and you're not really being a doormat? Like, do you have a line? Yeah. I mean, I think there is some line, but it's almost always never the thing that you are getting triggered by or upset by. Do you know what I mean? Like, are you ever going to meet this person again? Is anyone watching, you know, how fragile are your values, you know, that like letting this thing go? I don't know that people's values are fragile. I don't think they define them. I don't think people know what their values are.","nb_tokens":230} | |
| {"doc_id":"gzNLzqI5oTE_82","video_id":"gzNLzqI5oTE","content":"Like when are you being petty and when are you having a standard? You can reboot your life, your health, even your career, anything you want. All you need is discipline. I can teach you the tactics that I learned while growing a billion dollar business that will allow you to see your goals through. Whether you want better health, stronger relationships, a more successful career, any of that is possible with the mindset and business programs and impact theory university. Join the thousands of students who have already accomplished amazing things. Tap now for a free trial and get started today. Yeah. Look, I think about this as a writer, right? Like you get your notes back and my first reaction is always like, who the fuck are you, you know, or how dare you, you know, because like, I'm good at what I do. I've slaved over this and you're going to return it to me, like covered in red ink. And then, you know, I sit with it and I think about it. And with time I come to accept that actually the vast majority of the notes have merit.","nb_tokens":227} | |
| {"doc_id":"gzNLzqI5oTE_83","video_id":"gzNLzqI5oTE","content":"Some of them are incorrect in substance, but they're in the ballpark of something being wrong. And I'll, I'll take, I'll take the fact that this was flagged and I'll come up with my own solution to it. And then there's the other percentage of those notes, which I have to have the confidence and the sense of self or this, the sense of what I'm trying to accomplish to go, you think I should cut this chapter, but actually this is the most important chapter of the book. And without it, none of this other stuff works or without it, it doesn't mean to me what I want the project to mean. And so I'm going to be comfortable, just reject, you know, like, so you accept some of the things and you reject other things and, and knowing what, yeah, what's important and what isn't. I mean, that's the, that's the hardest thing to do in life. You know, being the person who is principled and strict about what matters and what's right and wrong is important, but also so is compromise in collaboration. Right.","nb_tokens":230} | |
| {"doc_id":"gzNLzqI5oTE_84","video_id":"gzNLzqI5oTE","content":"And I think most successful, talented people probably are already over indexed for control and like wanting things to be a certain way and having a strong opinion about that. You're almost always needing to correct in the other direction. Yeah. This is, this is where a lot of this stuff gets really complicated. And I think people struggle is they don't take the time to even Mark out what their value system is. Yeah. When you, when you don't have a target, you're going to miss it every time. And so this is why phase one of a mindset, trying to make your life better is always going to be defining that stuff. Like actually writing down what are your beliefs? What are your values? So that you have something to aim at. Yeah. And, you know, when I think about where we started this conversation and where I want all of this to go, there, there is a milieu that people are in now in the modern world where we don't really know what to aim at. Things get very distorted on social media. The way that information, in fact, here's, here's a, a concept I'm trying to get my head around.","nb_tokens":240} | |
| {"doc_id":"gzNLzqI5oTE_85","video_id":"gzNLzqI5oTE","content":"Maybe you can help me. There's something about the rapidity with which ideas transmit now that I think has a deranging effect where something will start as a good idea and it rapidly becomes like a cliche. And then it becomes like a postmodern, Oh God, what do they call it? Deconstruction, you know, of all of it. And so then like everything becomes cringe and you know what I mean? Like there, there suddenly isn't a, a sincerity to wanting to be better or be good. Or there's some term of value like, uh, or, or of worth like gaslighting and now everything is gaslighting, right? It's, it gets used and used it repeated and, and its meaning stretches, uh, its definition stretches to the point where it has no definition. It has no meaning. And so, yeah, I agree. It's, it's, it's confusing. It's confusing from everything actually means this, or then someone saying it means the opposite of this. And it's very difficult to keep, to get and keep your bearings.","nb_tokens":226} | |
| {"doc_id":"gzNLzqI5oTE_86","video_id":"gzNLzqI5oTE","content":"And, and so when I was trying to be empathetic to like what it's like to be a young man today, I, that's one of the things I go like, it's disorienting. It's confusing. And one of Seneca's great lines is, uh, if you don't know what port you are sailing towards, no wind is favorable. And I think this is other line is he says, you know, uh, you're on this path and he says, you know, tranquility and peace and greatness is, is, is the sense of that path. And he says, not being distracted by the past that crisscross yours. He says, even from people who are hopelessly lost. So if you don't know what your values are, if you don't know what you stand for, if you don't know what you're trying to get, and then you're just scrolling on your phone and the algorithm is just serving you up, what's most engaging, what's most provocative, what other people are looking at. It's really easy to go down rabbit holes to get red pilled or whatever that is. And you don't want that to happen.","nb_tokens":245} | |
| {"doc_id":"gzNLzqI5oTE_87","video_id":"gzNLzqI5oTE","content":"It's disorienting. It's, it, it, it can take you very far afield from where you want to get where I think another great example is like, if you don't know what you're working towards and why you're doing it, like you don't know where you're trying to end up as a human being, you just default towards what makes the most money, what other people respect the most. You know what everyone else is doing, what's popular right now. And that's probably not a good longterm prescription for either success or happiness. Like, why not? Well, first off, if everyone's doing it, the chances of there being a longterm viability in it, it's probably low. Right. And most of the things that you do in life solely optimizing for the financial return, you know, are probably not the right things. And it's probably not actually sufficient motivation or purpose. You know? I talked to people and they're like, you know, I want to write a book. I go, Oh, that's awesome. Why?","nb_tokens":223} | |
| {"doc_id":"gzNLzqI5oTE_88","video_id":"gzNLzqI5oTE","content":"Well, it'll be good for my speaking business or, you know, Oh, they don't say that. Yeah. They don't say it's when you, when you ask, when you start to look at what they're evaluating that success as, it's not, I wrote something that matters. I did my best. You know, I made something that had real impact there. They're just thinking, how many copies did it sell? How big was my advance? Was my advance bigger than some other person that I heard got an advance? And those are not great North stars, right? The great North star is, this is what I was put here to do as a human being. No one has done this thing before. This needs to exist. This will help people, right? And if, if, if all you're doing, what you're doing for is money, the chances of you ever getting enough are very low. And the chances of you meeting someone who makes you feel very small, for what you have is very high.","nb_tokens":214} | |
| {"doc_id":"gzNLzqI5oTE_89","video_id":"gzNLzqI5oTE","content":"You know, you could work your whole life, be incredibly successful at what you do and meet someone who made in one day, what you have made in your entire life. You know, you could meet someone who inherited more money than you will ever have. And then are you going to let it, if, if the money was why you did it and what constitutes success, then all of that was just taken from you. Yeah. It's crazy, man. So I live in a ridiculous house that I earned and I can still fuck myself up with a single YouTube search of like the coolest houses in America. And you're like, Oh, those houses are cool, man. Mine's like, whatever it is. So ridiculous. It is so self evident to me that it's ridiculous, but nonetheless, I'm like, wow, there really is like some bizarre lizard part of my brain that cannot help, but compare myself to others. And whenever that comparison comes up empty, like it, it takes conscious effort to reorient myself.","nb_tokens":211} | |
| {"doc_id":"gzNLzqI5oTE_90","video_id":"gzNLzqI5oTE","content":"But it's in those moments that I realized if I did not have a North star that I can write down and be like, this is what I'm trying to do. This is what I choose to judge myself against. Uh, I would be in despair. Yeah. And I'm very grateful that I learned quite early that money didn't change my insecurities. Sure. And that you can't fix external, you can't fix internal feelings or inadequacies or doubts or insecurities with external accomplishments or accumulations just will not happen. And it is very hard to recognize that without going through it yourself, which is the sort of hilarious thing about life. But once you learn that, then you can start putting yourself on a better path. But my punchline is there is a better path, but no one's going to end up on it by accident. Yeah. You know, Gabor Mate, right? All right. So I want to go back to the idea of addictions and how people end up getting trapped. Because if I can get trapped that easily and comparing my house to other people, uh, I know how easily other people are going to be getting trapped.","nb_tokens":240} | |
| {"doc_id":"gzNLzqI5oTE_91","video_id":"gzNLzqI5oTE","content":"Sure. Gabor Mate talks about addictions in life. They are covering up a trauma, just period. End of story. Yeah. I don't know that I agree with that. I think that there might be something deranging in culture. And look, I think life has always been hard. So I don't, I'm not saying this is a uniquely difficult time. I just think it's difficult in a unique way, if that makes sense. Yeah. And so no matter, in fact, I would rather be born now than any other time in human history by a country mile, despite AI and all of the insecurities and everything that we're going to now. But having said that, I do think that there are these sort of weird deranging things that lead to things like death of despair, drug addiction, only fans part, uh, um, social media, doom scrolling. My question is what is that thing? Like, do you subscribe to Gabor Mate? This is trauma. And you're just trying to mask, uh, mask it, or is there something else going?","nb_tokens":224} | |
| {"doc_id":"gzNLzqI5oTE_92","video_id":"gzNLzqI5oTE","content":"And to really complicate this question, do you know about Ibogaine? No. Okay. So we'll get to that in a minute, but so what, what do you think leads people to these modern addictions? Both explanations are probably simultaneously true, which is that everyone has some kind of hole or trauma that they're trying to address and fill. And then we also have biological urges, uh, an evolutionary desire to accumulate, to experience, to do that. It makes sense that evolution would turn on and evolution never really had to worry about how and why to turn them off, right? Like, um, evolution would create in an Alexander, the great desire to conquer, right? Because this would have all sorts of benefits to one's, uh, evolutionary success. But would it have a reason to ever make him feel enough, right? Uh, to go, this is sufficient. I have gone far enough. No, not really. Cause for probably most of evolutionary history, you died before you ever got to that point. Also that guy that has that push, like you're just going to keep going.","nb_tokens":228} | |
| {"doc_id":"gzNLzqI5oTE_93","video_id":"gzNLzqI5oTE","content":"I not a conqueror obviously, but in business, I have that same sense of it's just, and I don't think this is bad, but it's never enough. And you, I've heard you quote, I forget what language it, what language it is. I think it might be Haitian where it's like beyond the mountain is only more mountains. Yeah. Well, I think that's true in life in, in not just about like, uh, opportunities. It's also just, there's always difficulties, right? I think to me, that's what that proverb means. But I, I think even with an Alexander, the great, there's the, Hey, this is why one is compelled to become a conqueror. But then also he's got daddy and mommy issues. Uh, his dad is King. His mom is ambitious. His dad neglects him. His mom smothers him with affection. It creates a cock, a potent cocktail that creates an extraordinary person, but also probably a person that you would not actually want to trade places with. And so the work of my life has been, look, I have this set of skills.","nb_tokens":239} | |
| {"doc_id":"gzNLzqI5oTE_94","video_id":"gzNLzqI5oTE","content":"I have these interests. I have these ambitions the same time. How can I try to be as good as I am capable of being without being a slave to those things? How can I be a normal person inside of those things? And by normal, I, I, I mean sort of what we were talking about earlier. Can you be good and great at the same time? Right. Um, have you heard the term in art monster from you? But yes, it's easy to be an art monster in the sense that you turn off all the other things and you only leave the drive, the ambition, the, the talent on. And I think that's, that's not just a, an unbalanced way to be. I don't, I don't think when you look at the lives of those people, you're like, it's fun to be them. There's a, there's a Roman general named Marius who was like the conqueror of conquerors. He was the Rome's leading politician. And Seneca says about him, he says, you know, Marius commanded armies, but ambition commanded Marius.","nb_tokens":232} | |
| {"doc_id":"gzNLzqI5oTE_95","video_id":"gzNLzqI5oTE","content":"And his, his point was that the end of the day, this guy's not actually in charge. Like the, the, the demon is in charge or the drive is, is, is, uh, is in charge. And I think self-sufficiency be operating under your own power. That's a, that's a better place to come from. I think it actually creates better work. I think it creates less harmful consequences to the, the outside world. Right. Alexander, the great Napoleon, Europe is littered with the bones of the victims of those men, right? Like their inability to, to just deal with the fact that dad was never proud of them. Sacrifices hundreds of thousands of people in these pointless wars, right? It's not a consequence list decision to be insatiable as much as you think it is. It hurts other people. What's the barometer. So if we're trying to craft a North star, if I'm a young guy and I'm trying, I'm, I'm listening to this debate. I've got Andrew Tate on one shoulder. I've got Marcus Aurelius on the other shoulder.","nb_tokens":236} | |
| {"doc_id":"gzNLzqI5oTE_96","video_id":"gzNLzqI5oTE","content":"Um, what's the barometer. Like Andrew Tate has Bugatti's and women and is having sex with whoever he wants. Theoretically as multiple kids all over the place and women that are willing to stay with him, even though he's unfaithful and he's a high value guy and makes tons of money. The, at one point the most searched person on planet earth. Um, but you know why he's the most searched person on planet earth. You know why his stuff blew up online, right? It's not cause it's good. His stuff blew up cause he started a, a pyramid scheme that incentivized young kids, mostly like young boys to upload hundreds of his clips to the internet. So he makes viral content that is provocative and challenging and, you know, sometimes speaks to hard truths that people do need to hear. A lot of it also confirms biases and prejudices and sort of plays to our lowest common denominator, you know, kid narcissism. Yeah. Which, which is attractive. And, and, uh, do you think narcissism is attractive or just plays reads as confidence?","nb_tokens":227} | |
| {"doc_id":"gzNLzqI5oTE_97","video_id":"gzNLzqI5oTE","content":"I think it reads as confidence, but it's also, there's, there's a, we, we like bad boys. We like people who say F up things that, you know, uh, we wouldn't say we, we'd like mischievousness. We like antiheroes, right? So he makes content that people want, but then he took hundreds of thousands of dollars or millions of dollars, other people's monies, uh, other people's money. And then in exchange tricked them into propagating his content. Right. And so, like, I think one of the tricky things about narcissists and egotists is that it's not an accurate picture of reality. You know, I'm sure you have, I've met some extremely wealthy, extremely successful, extremely powerful people. I don't see them driving Bugattis. I don't see them bragging about how many people they're sleeping with. Um, I don't see them anywhere actually, right? Like most of the powerful, the truly powerful people in the world want to keep as low profile as possible. Right. Your boy, Elon Musk homeboy is like out there.","nb_tokens":239} | |
| {"doc_id":"gzNLzqI5oTE_98","video_id":"gzNLzqI5oTE","content":"I, I would, uh, argue that something broke in that guy's brain and that I wouldn't, I wouldn't want to trade places with that guy for all the money in the world. Um, you would get all the money in the world if you trade a place with him. So it's true. Uh, I don't want to lose sight of the barometer. What's the barometer? So if it isn't money in women, yeah, then it's, yeah, it's, are you making, I think, I think a couple of things. I sort of evaluate my life or measure my life built around a couple of things. One, am I realizing my potential, like what the unique DNA circumstances, experience talents, I have as good as you can possibly get. Yes. What is the thing you were put here to do? And can you extend that out as far as it can reasonably go? Right. Um, am I making a positive impact on the world? Right. Like if everyone was doing what I was doing, uh, would that, would that work? Right. You know what I mean?","nb_tokens":233} | |
| {"doc_id":"gzNLzqI5oTE_99","video_id":"gzNLzqI5oTE","content":"Am I part of the problem or my part of the solution? That's kind of one of the metrics that I look at, right? Like, but even that makes a huge leap, uh, around this barometer. So making the world a better place. So just to keep challenging this idea, I don't know if he actually believes it, or again, if he's playing a character, but, uh, Tate is going to tell you that he has made the lives of countless people better. Sure. But if in, if it balances out with the fact that you keep women locked in a house and, uh, you know, take a percentage of their sex work or sex, you know, sex worker earnings, you know, see, that's where I think we can get really specific. So the, the thing that makes Tate all an illusion for me and why I just do not encourage people to listen or to follow that path is that the, the thing that he monetizes is vice Laden in and of itself.","nb_tokens":209} | |
| {"doc_id":"gzNLzqI5oTE_100","video_id":"gzNLzqI5oTE","content":"And so when you think about, okay, like is only fans going to be the thing that you want to help people get better at knowing that the people that are using it are in the darkest place possible in their life. Yeah. And so if I step back and look at that, that's where I go, okay, my internal barometer is, um, take for instance, what we did at quest. It was like, I was showing up every day for my mom and my sister. They had been morbidly obese my entire life. I wanted to make food that they could choose based on taste and it happened to be good for them. And I made sacrifices that cost me a lot of money to make sure that if they ate those products, that they really were going to be moving in a better direction. And that was hugely important to me. And it became the way that I really looked at things. Same thing at impact theory, right? I've always said, look, I'll slide to neutral because I want everything that we put out to be empowering, but I would slide to just entertainment if that meant I could avoid going out of business.","nb_tokens":237} | |
| {"doc_id":"gzNLzqI5oTE_101","video_id":"gzNLzqI5oTE","content":"But I would never go to the point where I felt like if somebody takes the advice, and this is just how I think about it. If you take the advice of one of our mentor characters, it should make your real life better. Yeah. And if, if that is anything other than neutral, like you're not going to see me do stories about somebody where if you were to emulate their behavior, your life is going to be trash. So at some point, like you have to have a thing that is like, okay, this is my barometer of whether I'm doing the thing that I wanted to do. In fact, here's how I explain it in business, boys and girls at home. Hear me when I say that you have to, when you're trying to do something grand with your life, you must call your shot and say, I'm trying to do this thing. Yeah. And this is the metric by which I will judge whether or not I have done that thing.","nb_tokens":203} | |
| {"doc_id":"gzNLzqI5oTE_102","video_id":"gzNLzqI5oTE","content":"You need to say it ahead of time so that you don't fool yourself and start bullshitting yourself about whether you're doing that thing or not, because it's very easy if you're failing and you didn't lay out a metric. Am I really failing? Because I didn't have a metric, you know? So for me, it's like impact theory is here so that if you take our advice, the advice of our mentor characters on the entertainment side, or in these interviews that it will actually improve your life as determined by that formula that I laid out for fulfillment. Yeah. I think this is another part of it. It's not just in my part of the problem or the solution, but like, am I acting with honesty, good ethics, decency, you know, how am I doing what I'm doing? Right. Another problematic character, but I was at American apparel for a long time and I remember someone was proposing to Dove that he could like move the factory overseas and, you know, make more money or something. And he said, if all I cared about was making money, I would have become a drug dealer. And I remember thinking about that because it's true.","nb_tokens":244} | |
| {"doc_id":"gzNLzqI5oTE_103","video_id":"gzNLzqI5oTE","content":"Like you chose what you chose because you cared about something other than just making money. Right. Or you would have chosen the kind of things that make the most money. Right. Like for me to choose to be an author, I've already made a decision that like making lots of money is not my number one priority. And then to write about an obscure school of ancient philosophy, I've now doubled down on this choice. Right. I'm not saying I can't be successful at what I do. I have been successful at it, but, but there are, I made a bunch of choices that put a fine already that put a large financial ceiling on what I'm, what I'm doing in a way that I'm totally good with, because to break through that ceiling would require me to do things that I'm not comfortable with that I don't think are right. So I have like a little note card on my desk.","nb_tokens":189} | |
| {"doc_id":"gzNLzqI5oTE_104","video_id":"gzNLzqI5oTE","content":"So it's, it's what's unusual about what I do is I write about this ancient philosophy that I did not create, that I don't have any ownership of, and that I don't see myself as adding anything new to, but as, as explaining and popularizing and, uh, making accessible. That's what I feel like I'm good at doing. Right. I'm not, I'm not trying to read Marcus realist and I couldn't, but I've read your books and they're super helpful. That's what that you, what you just described as me succeeding at what I set out to do. So that means a lot to me more than selling lots of copies or getting a large advance. That's what I had an experience with. This is meditations that touched me personally. And I thought, I want to give people that experience that, that they couldn't get by me just saying, read this book. Right. And so I have a note card on my desk and it says, am I being a good steward of stoicism? Yes.","nb_tokens":220} | |
| {"doc_id":"gzNLzqI5oTE_105","video_id":"gzNLzqI5oTE","content":"So the videos that I make, like there's videos I can make that I know would do better than the videos I am making. I don't make those videos because I don't think it's appropriate. It's not what I want to do. It's not what gets me excited. I could have people on my podcast or I could write my books in a certain way, or I could sell things or price things at different ways that would allow me to make more money, but would not be being a good steward of this thing that I, I wouldn't say I was entrusted with because no one gave it to me, but that it has fallen in my lap. And so I think about this with like, who makes the products that I make? Where, what, where is the factory, right? How much am I charging? What am I, what is the pitch, right? Like, am I, am I hitting triggers that manipulate people into doing what I want? Or am I just persuading them to do something that's good, right?","nb_tokens":215} | |
| {"doc_id":"gzNLzqI5oTE_106","video_id":"gzNLzqI5oTE","content":"Like there's all these ethical questions about how one does what they do, not simply what they do and how much they're trying to do, but, but how you do what you do. And I think that's a really important part of the barometer because you could do things that make you more successful, that make you more well-known, but you're eroding your sense of self in the process. You're eroding your ability to look in the mirror and go, I'm proud of who I am and what I do. And I think that's a, that's a short-term trade-off with real long-term consequences. Let's look at it in terms of the, building a YouTube channel is a great example since we've both done that. So before we started rolling, we were talking about audience capture and how quickly you can become a servant to the algorithm. Or a parody of yourself. Or a parody of yourself. Wow. Really well said. I have frustrated my team three times now, as I've moved from phase one of mindset to phase two, and now into phase three, because it, it really does like the algorithm gets confused. Who are you making content for?","nb_tokens":243} | |
| {"doc_id":"gzNLzqI5oTE_107","video_id":"gzNLzqI5oTE","content":"And in any one time, the headline and thumbnail that we might've created, especially as we moved into phase three, it became very easy as I became truly obsessed. Like I'm not faking in any way, shape, or form. I think we are going through the most disruptive time since world war two. And I think most people are going to get caught off guard and they are going to get left behind. And there is going to be a tremendous wealth transfer as the new world order takes place. And whether that's a rising China, whether that's a move to Bitcoin, whether it's AI taking over, whatever, all of these things together, I am, I see myself in the following way. I cobbled together a bunch of ideas that ended up being Taoism meets stoicism basically. And through business was like, Oh, this is how you take control of your life. And in doing that, I realized, Oh, when I, the, so I taught a business course for a while in impact theory, university called business decision-making.","nb_tokens":216} | |
| {"doc_id":"gzNLzqI5oTE_108","video_id":"gzNLzqI5oTE","content":"The reason that I taught that course, I know it's the worst title of all time is because what people think they need is the $100 million copywriting course. But the reality is if you want to be an entrepreneur, you have to be able to solve novel problems. That's it. Like that that's life, man. So what, what is impact theory? The show, what is impact theory? The video game that we're working on all of it, it is trying to teach people the set of ideas that will allow them to solve novel problems, not just problems that they've never encountered before problems. No one has encountered before like AI. Yeah. So anyway, in, in building up my YouTube channel and moving into phase three, we were like every title was negative and they were crushing. Yeah. And in any one, I was like, yeah, that actually is my feeling on that. I'm worried about this, that, or the other. And then as I stepped back and looked at my channel, I was like, Oh, it's, it's like really making me uncomfortable that it's just getting so negative. Yeah.","nb_tokens":236} | |
| {"doc_id":"gzNLzqI5oTE_109","video_id":"gzNLzqI5oTE","content":"And so you get into the, if it bleeds, it leads thing. So how does one avoid falling prey to that? How do you not become a parody? How do you not become audience captured? How do you not become a servant to the algorithm? Yeah. Every once in a while, I'll write something, I'll send it to the email list and someone will be like, why did you say this? You must've known this was going to piss people off. Or why did you have to get political or why did you have to touch this, you know, third rail or whatever. And, and sometimes I reply, you know, if I'm feeling cheeky about it, I just go, I didn't build this audience to not say what I think. I built the audience by saying what I think, what I think needs to be said and that's what I have to keep doing. Otherwise I don't have the audience. The audience has me, right? Like do I make YouTube videos or does YouTube make me make videos? You know, like I make what I'm interested in, what gets, what lights me up, what excites me.","nb_tokens":240} | |
| {"doc_id":"gzNLzqI5oTE_110","video_id":"gzNLzqI5oTE","content":"Obviously I then think about what is the way to, to have that reach the most people? What is the way that, um, will, you know, not be forgotten or missed like you, you do have to understand marketing and promotion and public relations and just presentation, like an author that goes, don't judge a book by a cover, by its cover. That's an author who doesn't sell very many books because like the cover is there to be judged, right? That's what its job is and the thumbnail and the title and you know, the description, these are, these are rules of a medium or of a platform. You don't have to be a slave to them, but you do have to understand them. And so I kind of, I try to start with what lights me up with what's exciting to me, what I think needs to be said. And then, then I try to translate it in the medium that it is. I do, you know, sometimes I'll find myself, I was being emotional. I was reacting to something in the news. I was being petulant or judgmental about something.","nb_tokens":232} | |
| {"doc_id":"gzNLzqI5oTE_111","video_id":"gzNLzqI5oTE","content":"And when I go back and do the edits or read it for the podcast, I go, this is probably more incendiary than it needs to be. Right. And so I can adjust that. So I'm not needlessly alienating people that I want to reach. Um, but then once I have confidently done that, I also have a wall around me that makes it. So I am insulated to a degree from the feedback. I'm not reading the comments. The emails are not going to my inbox. I'm not constantly refreshing to see how many retweets or likes or comments, something got, because that's going to mess with my barometer with my compass. Like those people don't know what I'm trying to do. Those people aren't consuming the whole of my work. They're just getting this one snapshot of a thing. And what ultimately matters is my sense, the path that I'm on, not all these people, crisscrossing me or not what other people are doing. That's the other mistake. It's not even a feedback that you've gotten. It's you're doing this.","nb_tokens":230} | |
| {"doc_id":"gzNLzqI5oTE_112","video_id":"gzNLzqI5oTE","content":"And then you look over here and you see someone else is doing it differently. And then you go, should I not be doing this? Should I be doing that? And one of the things I'm a big, heavy metal fan, a quote that I heard very early in my career, that's sort of formative for me, the lead singer of Iron Maiden, which is this unique band that makes kind of weird music. That's never been super popular, never been sort of of the moment, but somehow is they've sold a hundred million records. All over the world. They're almost 50 years into this as a band, totally sort of independent ownership. He said, you know, like he said, we have our field. And he said, you can only plow one field at a time. So it doesn't matter what the neighboring farmer is doing on theirs. Right. And so if you go, yeah, it doesn't matter that other people are doing it this way, or these people are doing this way. How do I think it should be done? What's working for me? What are best practices?","nb_tokens":231} | |
| {"doc_id":"gzNLzqI5oTE_113","video_id":"gzNLzqI5oTE","content":"And then I leave everyone else to what they're doing. You know, like I can't look at what some other author, even if they're a friend of mine, even if I really respect their work, I can't go. But Mark Manson sold this many copies the first week. I mean, we write totally different things in a totally different style. We put out things at different times. Right. The idea that I would judge myself against him is not fair to me or to him. And so you got to be able to go, this is what I was trying to do. This is the long-term race that I'm running and I tune out everything else. How, how do you frame that? And I'll give you some context of where, what I'm trying to get to. I want to be the greatest that ever lived at whatever I approach. And I have the receipts to back up that I'm very, very, very good at what I do. Yeah. I'm not the best at anything. And so before me is the temptation to think less of myself because I'm not Elon Musk or because I'm not Joe Rogan.","nb_tokens":236} | |
| {"doc_id":"gzNLzqI5oTE_114","video_id":"gzNLzqI5oTE","content":"There's always somebody who isn't a little ahead of me. They're way ahead of me. And so I realized that I'm, you know, in the grand scheme of things so far, my career, while impressive from somebody that hasn't achieved what I've achieved, it's going to be forgotten. And so that requires me to do framing of my pursuits. So now I think I have the bulletproof way around it, but I'm very curious to know what you do. I mean, first off, it's all going to be forgotten. Everyone is going to be forgotten. And if you aren't, it doesn't do you any good, right? Mark's realistic meditations, he goes, remember, you won't be able, you won't be around to enjoy your posthumous fame. And he says, it's also worth pointing out that people in the future will be the same idiots that are alive now. Right. Like different idiots, but the same. Right. And so the idea that you have to create this monument of greatness to impress people in the future to last the longest to have the most is a false race.","nb_tokens":235} | |
| {"doc_id":"gzNLzqI5oTE_115","video_id":"gzNLzqI5oTE","content":"So what I think about is I don't go, hey, does Elon Musk have more money than me? Has insert author sold more books than me? Is so-and-so married to a more beautiful person than me? You know, is to so-and-so have a nicer house than me? I think I was dealt a hand. I was born to certain parents at a certain moment in time with certain, you know, unique DNA, with unique interests. I've had unique experiences. I was drawn to a unique lane. And the vast majority of that stuff was not in my control. What is in my control is, did I get the most out of that hand that it was possible to get out of that hand? Right. Elon Musk was born to a dad who owned an emerald mind. Were you born to a dad that had an emerald mind? You know, were you born with his natural genius at science or math? Right. A whole bunch of things. So it's it's insane that you would be comparing yourself to this person, not just because you started at different places, like you didn't start at the same finish line.","nb_tokens":234} | |
| {"doc_id":"gzNLzqI5oTE_116","video_id":"gzNLzqI5oTE","content":"You didn't start at the same starting line, but you're also aiming at different finish lines. Right. And so what I think about what I think the race is, it's to realize your potential. It's to make the most out of what you have. So I think success is or you think about your tombstone. It's like he did everything he could with what he had, you know, and you have. You know what I mean? Like, are you going to compare yourself against someone who has a bigger podcast but didn't start a multibillion dollar nutrition company? You know, like that's a great that. But that's insane. That's true. That's insane. Right. You're comparing all of what you're comparing part of what you've done to someone who's only done X. Right. And that's that's not what you were optimizing for. That's not the race you were running. It's interesting. I don't get that. My wife reminds me of that all the time and I don't get any alleviation of my drive from that. So here's how I look at it.","nb_tokens":233} | |
| {"doc_id":"gzNLzqI5oTE_117","video_id":"gzNLzqI5oTE","content":"OK, so I I make a moral judgment that if you're going to do something, you ought to strive to be the you ought to strive to be the greatest of all time, knowing that you almost certainly are incapable of becoming that. So to avoid that from being a torture chamber, you have to separate out the willingness to to play at that level from the outcome. So, one, even if you become the greatest of all time, it will be a miserable experience. Case in point, look at Michael Jordan, who I don't know him. I cannot say for sure, but I'm pretty sure he's an alcoholic. Like just looking at the jaundice of his eyes and stuff like that. I don't know about that, but I think he would stipulate that he got a great gift and a great burden in that greatness. It's been hard to be him. It's not all been sunshine and roses and victory parades. He has a thing that makes him great that he also cannot turn off. Yes. And what I think happens to people like that is they let their their ability to love themselves, to like themselves, be tied up in the outcome.","nb_tokens":240} | |
| {"doc_id":"gzNLzqI5oTE_118","video_id":"gzNLzqI5oTE","content":"And so the one thing that I told myself I learned very early on, the success can't be guaranteed, but the struggle can. And so if I reward myself for playing all out, leaving it all out in the field, trying to make the most of my hand, playing this as well as humanly possible, 100xing my talents, knowing that I have different limitations that I think of it from a biological standpoint. So I look at Elon Musk, the Emerald Mind, whatever, like he's just brilliant at understanding first principles, thinking, engineering, et cetera, et cetera. I don't like to put limits on myself, but I've never found that engineering comes easily to me. Mathematics is very much like a black box that I don't understand. So what I what I judge myself by is did I show up and sincerely pursue the thing? Not did I get the outcome that I wanted? Not did I become the greatest of all time? And this is part of why I don't let myself think about legacy. People ask me, what legacy do you want to leave? I don't think about legacy. I think about living right now.","nb_tokens":239} | |
| {"doc_id":"gzNLzqI5oTE_119","video_id":"gzNLzqI5oTE","content":"I think about optimizing for fulfillment right now. I think about doing something that positively impacts the lives of other people, partly because of how that makes me feel. And just it feels awesome. I think about my marriage right now. I don't think about like, and this is part of why I don't have heartburn over not having kids. I don't think about like what that will be like beyond me. I don't need my DNA to go into the future. I won't lie that I don't think most people should follow me in that path. I think it is a way higher risk path to walk. I think having kids is better for a whole host of reasons. But because I don't think about legacy, because it's not part of how I value myself, it hasn't been the troubling decision that I think it would be for, especially people that can't have kids. Yeah, I think that's right. I mean, did you leave anything? Did you hold yourself back in some way? Did you not do something that you could have done because you were afraid, because you didn't think you were adequate, because you didn't want to learn something?","nb_tokens":240} | |
| {"doc_id":"gzNLzqI5oTE_120","video_id":"gzNLzqI5oTE","content":"To me, those are things that are in your control, right? Whether you were born in the right moment, whether it was appreciated, you know, when you did it, those are all things that are not in your control. And so what are you going to focus on? I think that's the ultimate question. And I try to focus it on that. I think what's interesting is like, it's inherently subjective who is greatest of all time anyway. Like, Michael Jordan doesn't have the most rings. He doesn't have the most wins. You know, he has some records, but he doesn't have all the records. He doesn't have the most points, right? There's a whole bunch of facts. So you're already saying it's some intangible, ineffable, subjective thing. The idea that you would compare yourself against other people or that it's somehow a ranking, you know, it's a dead end. It's just a dead end. I mean, like, again, we're talking about money. Like, if you go by whether you have the most money in the world, well, that's not a known fact, right?","nb_tokens":239} | |
| {"doc_id":"gzNLzqI5oTE_121","video_id":"gzNLzqI5oTE","content":"This is like, what are you relying on? You're relying on the Forbes list or something, which other people are lobbying. Like, this is like the anecdotes about rich people upset that they're at seven instead of five, or the financial shenanigans that they show Forbes to try to get higher on the list. Like, this is a very well-known thing, just like my version of that is the bestseller list, is not at all representative or a remotely accurate depiction of who is selling the best. Basically the Bible and Harry Potter. Yeah, and it's not even a reflection of who is selling the best over a long period of time. It's who's a reflection right now, which is irrelevant the second it happens. And so, you know, deciding what metrics you use to measure whether you're succeeding at what you do is a really critical decision. And then the ability to, once you have made that decision, to tune out the things that are not part of that decision, to be kind to yourself in that regard, to not go, well, I know I said this is important, but I'm insecure because so-and-so has more, you know, that's a recipe for misery.","nb_tokens":247} | |
| {"doc_id":"gzNLzqI5oTE_122","video_id":"gzNLzqI5oTE","content":"Why do you have kids? If the point isn't to be remembered, if you know you can't enjoy your posthumous fame or the posthumous love of your children, why make such a sacrifice? I don't necessarily see it as a sacrifice. What? In the sense that, like, what it's cost me isn't that meaningful to me. Like, I still get to do all the things that I like to do. And I also get this wonderful experience that's opened me up in so many ways, that's challenged me to get better in so many ways, that's forced me to be responsible both to and for something. I just haven't experienced any part of it, and this could change, I mean, my kids are young, but I haven't experienced any part of it that hasn't been a net positive. And the things that I lost were things that were not actually that important or I wasn't really doing anyway.","nb_tokens":194} | |
| {"doc_id":"gzNLzqI5oTE_123","video_id":"gzNLzqI5oTE","content":"So to me, the meaningful thing about having kids is the opportunity it presents for you to give what you didn't get, to be better than the people or the generation that came before you, to try to make someone a good, decent, contributing member of society is a profoundly meaningful and difficult and heart-wrenching thing. But it's just been incredibly rewarding and beneficial in all these ways. When you think about stoic life or putting together a philosophy that's going to allow, because ultimately all of these philosophies are about the self, society becomes downstream of the self, which I think is really important, it's a big thing I want to get across to people. Where does kids fall in that? Is that an intentional thing that you think most or everybody should do? Like, how do you craft that well-made life? There was this stoic named Hierocles who said, you know, every person is born self-interested, born selfish. You care about yourself, you care about surviving, you care about advancing. And then he said, that's like sort of the first circle, the first ring. And then there's the ring of your family members, your offspring.","nb_tokens":242} | |
| {"doc_id":"gzNLzqI5oTE_124","video_id":"gzNLzqI5oTE","content":"There's the people who live near you, the people who look like you. You know, there's your country, there's the continent you're on. There's these sort of concentric circles that get bigger and bigger. And he said, the work of philosophy of life is about pulling these outer rings inward, right? About caring about and contributing to more and more as you go. And I found that to be really meaningful and purposeful. That, yeah, you have this inherent selfishness, this biological urge towards self-preservation and self-advancement. And you could build your life around that, I guess. I don't think that works out super well. I don't think that gets you where you want to go. The decision to have kids or to be a – there's many ways to sort of have a family, right? They don't have to be your biological children. They don't have to be children at all, right? But the decision to go like, these are my kin. And then to also expand the definition, to expand the circle outwards, to include more and more, to include animals, to include nature, to include unborn generations.","nb_tokens":241} | |
| {"doc_id":"gzNLzqI5oTE_125","video_id":"gzNLzqI5oTE","content":"That is the work of stoicism. And that's where this key virtue of justice comes in. You owe something to those people, to that future. That's kind of how I think about it. What do we owe them? To leave it better than you found it. Have you heard that Greek expression, a society is great when men plant trees in shade they will never know? Did you kick the can down the road or did you plant a tree that would make things better for the future? I kind of think about it like that. How do you navigate when people don't agree on what a better future looks like? So you've got somebody like Elon Musk who wants to go to Mars and they think interplanetary species, absolute must. Then you have other people that are like, how the fuck can you justify thinking about going to Mars when we have issues to solve here on planet Earth? We've got people starving to death and you're spending billions of dollars trying to get us to another planet. What the hell? I think one thing we have figured out is why we live in a free market capitalist system. The worst best system is that you need a portfolio theory.","nb_tokens":240} | |
| {"doc_id":"gzNLzqI5oTE_126","video_id":"gzNLzqI5oTE","content":"You need a lot of people working on what lights them up on what they think the solution is. And that collective distributed process or collaboration is the way that we have breakthroughs, the way that we solve problems. The top down singular person knows what's best for everyone. The central planning authority has solved it, has not worked well historically. And so if that's what he thinks he should be doing, that's what he should be doing. And if you think raising money to distribute malaria nets in Africa is the best way to alleviate human suffering and you have a talent or affinity for doing that, that's what you should be doing. And I know what I feel like I should be doing, and I hope everyone can figure out what they think they should be doing. And that's what we need everyone to be doing. That's the only way you can screw up is by doing the opposite of what you deep down know what you should be doing or you don't do anything. You feel like you don't have a person. You do. It's a great quote along those lines. I forget who said this, but ask not what the world needs.","nb_tokens":235} | |
| {"doc_id":"gzNLzqI5oTE_127","video_id":"gzNLzqI5oTE","content":"Ask instead what makes you come alive, because what the world needs is more people who've come alive. That's right. I thank my students a lot in Impact Theory University with that line. I'm just so grateful that they come there to invest in themselves, that they're trying to find that thing that lights up their day and that they spread that. Now, what do you think about the divide in the country where we're getting the sense of like, no, no, no, the way I think is right, the way you think is wrong, and there's this real sense of othering? Yeah. I mean, I guess that's probably always been there. I think that's why we have a political system that makes it very hard to get an overwhelming majority. Right. And what that's supposed to force is compromise. Right. It's supposed to create the need for coalitions and compromising. And it's supposed to create a system that doesn't stagger to the left when you have a Democratic president and stagger the opposite direction to the right when you have a Republican one. But that for all the changes, it actually stays pretty stable.","nb_tokens":234} | |
| {"doc_id":"gzNLzqI5oTE_128","video_id":"gzNLzqI5oTE","content":"And I think the founding fathers were very, very genius. Like gridlock is a feature and not a bug of the American system. And I think you saw during COVID the flaws of the American system. But then over a long enough timeline, we did pretty good. I'm sure it was easier for China to do certain things, but then it made it harder for them to do other things. And I've come to understand that that's how the American system works. And that there has basically been no moments, excepting a few very grave crises, where it ever really worked in the sense that like it's easy to pass laws, easy to make changes, easy to reimagine and change things. It's not supposed to be that way. Now, there are, I think, some very real problems and we are facing a real erosion of democratic norms. I mean that in the not in the political party sense, but in the sort of fundamentally how the system is supposed to work and what some of the unwritten rules are. And what good faith in that system is, even when one has disagreements, I'm worried about and alarmed by for sure.","nb_tokens":234} | |
| {"doc_id":"gzNLzqI5oTE_129","video_id":"gzNLzqI5oTE","content":"But I also have some faith that over a long enough timeline, it corrects. Why did Socrates hate democracy? Socrates lives in a time of 30 tyrants, right? Basically, Athens is at war with Sparta. Sparta ultimately wins this war. It's a topsy turvy time. It didn't have the evidence that we have now of not just the flaws of the other system, but the sort of long term durability and viability of the democratic system. That it is the best worst system, you know. There is something fundamentally crazy about democracy that says, hey, everyone, brilliant people and idiots deserve an equal say in how things go, right? That's crazy. I'm writing about Harry Truman right now in the book that I'm working on now. Really? Harry Truman is basically a regular ass dude from small town America that ended up the president of the United States. And it was a remarkable test of the system. Also a remarkable test of virtue. When was he the remarkable test? How did he become president? I mean, he basically was county judge. Then he ran for Senate. He's kicked upstairs.","nb_tokens":234} | |
| {"doc_id":"gzNLzqI5oTE_130","video_id":"gzNLzqI5oTE","content":"He basically is anointed to the Senate by a corrupt political boss who was tired of dealing with Truman's honesty at the local level. He thought, if I can get this guy out of Missouri, he will cause less problems for me than if he is here. So Truman gets sort of kicked upstairs to the Senate. He has a couple sort of moderately, you know, unremarkable moments. And then he's picked as FDR's running mate. He never went to college, had no formal training in anything. He's a veteran in World War I. He's still paying off his debts from a failed business when he's elected to the U.S. Senate, which he felt honor bound to continue to pay. He never takes a bribe, never is engaged in any sort of the corruption of the time. He doesn't cheat on his wife. He's just an honest dude. FDR probably picked him because he thought he wasn't a threat. And then FDR suddenly died. And now this guy is not only the president of the United States, he is the sole possessor of atomic weapons at the most pivotal moment in U.S. history. That's insane.","nb_tokens":240} | |
| {"doc_id":"gzNLzqI5oTE_131","video_id":"gzNLzqI5oTE","content":"Like the fact that Marcus Aurelius is, you know, the emperor and it's not what I just described to you about Harry Truman is not that much more or less insane than let's just pick the firstborn son of the current leader to be. You know what I mean? It's insane. It's insane. And yet it seems to work less bad than the other ways of doing it. But I just think it's important when we look at the ancients and we look at their political theories, like these were people who had not yet come to the conclusion that we didn't come to here in America until the 1860s, that it's wrong to own another human being or that women are equal to men, which took like another hundred years. Right. Or that, you know, people should be able to say what they think without fear of consequence or that people should be able to do what they want to do with their life, like that you shouldn't have to do what your dad did, that you should be able to move where you want and live how you want and love how you want.","nb_tokens":227} | |
| {"doc_id":"gzNLzqI5oTE_132","video_id":"gzNLzqI5oTE","content":"It's important that we realize, although the philosophers sometimes hinted at, these were like hard won, hard fought innovations. Like we didn't become a true multiracial democracy in this country. And I know we're not technically a democracy, but we didn't become anything close to a one person, one vote, you're free to do and live and be how you want until the passage of the Civil Rights Act. And if you were a gay person, you know, much later than that, we're talking like within the last 10 years, could you legally marry the person that you want to marry or within the last 20 or 30 years have access to certain kinds of birth control or move and live how you want? This is an ongoing process. It is a procession of torch passing and breakthroughs and changes that is shockingly new and continues. And it's not necessarily a straight line. I mean, we stagger backwards and fall. And I think if we see it that way, it also becomes imperative for us to be engaged and involved. I was just going to ask, that's sort of the culminating thing.","nb_tokens":231} | |
| {"doc_id":"gzNLzqI5oTE_133","video_id":"gzNLzqI5oTE","content":"So part of the takeaway that I have with Socrates and why he hated democracy was they voted to kill him. So that's obviously you're going to have certain beef with a system that can do that, where it can create a little bit of mob rule, especially if it's a true one to one democracy versus like a representative democracy like what we have. So as far as I can tell, his beef was like, wait, if you're going to vote on something, you need to be educated on that. So if I'm right and culture is downstream of the individual, going back to sort of what is that ideal life, what do we educate ourselves on? Is education sort of a moral obligation? How do we make sure that that's done well? Well, the teaching of philosophy and the propagation of myths and stories and morals was the one thing that they got pretty well in the ancient world. And that tradition, that great conversation, I do feel has atrophied. We don't study the greats. We don't know these myths. When you would watch Shakespeare, you would understand he was borrowing from Plutarch.","nb_tokens":232} | |
| {"doc_id":"gzNLzqI5oTE_134","video_id":"gzNLzqI5oTE","content":"And when you would listen to Lincoln, you would know that he's alluding to and making references to lines and ideas from Shakespeare and from the Bible. There was a common set of texts and ideas and shared assumptions. Now, was it predominantly sort of Western and Christian? Yes. And there were benefits to that in the sense that everyone was on the same page. But it was also insufficient and artificially constrained in that Eastern wisdom was either suppressed or unknown. Right. And the stories were overwhelmingly male and overwhelmingly white and overwhelmingly X, Y or Z. And it's actually wonderful that it's expanded because we have more to choose from and more to learn. But if there isn't a shared sense, if there isn't a shared familiarity with a core set of ideas or principles, it does make it hard to have both the individual barometer and the collective social barometer. Yeah, I think this is a big part of what we're going through now. This is a big part of why I asked the starting question is, you know, in a lot of ways, what Tate represents is the hyper fragmentation, the breakdown of any sort of shared morals or sense of how things should be.","nb_tokens":240} | |
| {"doc_id":"gzNLzqI5oTE_135","video_id":"gzNLzqI5oTE","content":"And when that all begins to break down, then you get this unmooredness of people not knowing what they should be aiming at. We not having a common sense of things ought to be this way. And part of what I worry about in the modern world is, is that velocity of ideas that I was talking about. So when you get a breakdown of religion, which, again, I'm not religious, but I recognize the danger in not having shared narratives. So you get a world where ideas travel with hyper velocity. They very quickly become sort of cynical takes on. And I don't. Maybe there's a name for what you're talking about earlier. But that sense of everything has a name. And by giving it a name and I can put it in a neat little box, I feel like I understand it. But in reality, I've given a headline to something that's actually truly nuanced. And by cramming nuance into a headline, there's a breakdown of something that I haven't quite wrapped my head around, but that I really worry about. And as somebody who feels like my lot in life, the hand that I have been dealt is that of Solieri.","nb_tokens":242} | |
| {"doc_id":"gzNLzqI5oTE_136","video_id":"gzNLzqI5oTE","content":"Do you know the. OK, so my poor listeners have heard me talk about this so many times. There's a movie called Amadeus, which is about Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. And he had a contemporary. This is a real guy. And Solieri in the movie anyway, he laments to God. And the fact that, you know, Mozart, but you don't know Solieri, that that already sets you up. Especially when I tell you that I'm the guy that wants to be the Michael Jordan. So Solieri laments to God and he says, why have you made me just good enough to realize I'll never be as good as Mozart? Why couldn't you have made me bad at music so that I could be like everybody else and just love Mozart or be as good or better than Mozart? But to make me just good enough to realize I'll never be as good is like this deeply troubling, dissatisfying thing. And so when you get this idea of, OK, there's all this tremendous nuance in the world. We are all grappling with trying to understand the nuance. But if you're like me, you're Solieri.","nb_tokens":241} | |
| {"doc_id":"gzNLzqI5oTE_137","video_id":"gzNLzqI5oTE","content":"And so you're just good enough to realize. I don't know if I can comprehend all of this nuance and I'm cramming things into headlines and in cramming things into headlines, it becomes easier to hold on to. But it becomes more difficult to navigate the real world, which is truly complicated. And so as I think about this, you know, phase three of how I am really trying to handcraft a life that is fulfilling. And just to really put a fine point on it, you constantly butt up against reality. And we've talked about a lot of these things. So you're building a YouTube channel. You don't want to become a parody of yourself, but at the same time, you want to get as much reach as humanly possible. So how do you master the algorithm while still maintaining true to what you're trying to put out? And for people that don't know, you wrote a book called Trust Me, I'm Lying, which is actually how I came across you. And it's about media manipulation.","nb_tokens":214} | |
| {"doc_id":"gzNLzqI5oTE_138","video_id":"gzNLzqI5oTE","content":"And so seeing you, I'm sure, you know, still be a thoughtful marketer, but yet abandon some of those less savory tactics from your youth. And so just because you can doesn't mean you should. Yes, very true. And so anyway, getting back to this idea of hyperfragmented, you've got the breakdown of religion, hyperfragmentation. You have headline, the headlineification of nuanced, complex ideas that manifest as these caricatures of somebody like Tate. So when you compare Tate versus Marcus Aurelius, to me, it's cram everything into a headline that's easily digestible in a clip on social media versus a guy that writes meditations, which is him writing to himself about how to be a better person.","nb_tokens":150} | |
| {"doc_id":"gzNLzqI5oTE_139","video_id":"gzNLzqI5oTE","content":"And so in the final analysis, for me, it's like all day, every day, I want to go back to this ancient wisdom of Marcus Aurelius to get back into the complexity of what real life is, to get into from my frame of reference, to get into the messiness of biology, to understand that I have these subroutines, algorithms, I'll call them, running in my own brain that really dictate what the outcome will be of the ways that I move in my life. And if I align them, and look, they're ancient philosophies, whether it's Taoism or Stoicism, those feel like they are somebody going, what are the things that make me feel calm and centered in myself, that I have been good, that I have contributed? And the reason I harp on the biology is the biology is the reason you want to do those things. Yeah. Because even if you look at a normal house cat, it will toy with a creature as it kills it. And then maybe it eats it, maybe it just leaves it for dead.","nb_tokens":220} | |
| {"doc_id":"gzNLzqI5oTE_140","video_id":"gzNLzqI5oTE","content":"Can you imagine going and doing that to a seven-year-old and be like, I'm just going to break his arm and drag him around for a while. And then when I get bored or he's dead or whatever, dude, you'd be the biggest sociopath in the world. And so knowing that we are there but for the grace of God go I, right? So we're like one minor step removed away from all that stuff. And so anyway, getting into the complexity of a life we'll live, knowing that you have these biological drives and understanding that we're living in a time that's pushing us towards an Andrew Tate, when in reality we need to find a way to get back to these anchored things that are in alignment with this sort of long arc of life, being a good person, being in alignment with your biology. Well, what I would say to someone who's young and sort of trying to figure out their place in the world, someone who's sort of dissatisfied, disillusioned, feels like the past generation is filled with hypocrites. It feels like the system is breaking down, feels like certain truths aren't true anymore.","nb_tokens":235} | |
| {"doc_id":"gzNLzqI5oTE_141","video_id":"gzNLzqI5oTE","content":"And you want purpose and you want meaning and you want guidance and you're trying to figure out who you should be and who you should listen to. Like some flashy random person on the internet is probably not it. What you need to know is that the smartest people who have ever lived have been asking themselves those same questions. And that all the things that you're feeling about this moment in time are not as modern or as rooted in technology or shifts or the economy as you think they are. This is what human beings have been wrestling with since the advent of consciousness. Since we crawled out of the trees and the bushes or the water or whatever and we're like, what? We have been wrestling with these existential questions about who we are, what we do with this life we're given, what does it mean to die? What does it mean to suffer? And what does it mean that people suck and are awful and are evil? That the good guys don't always win? That it feels like we're in decline? That is what they were talking about in the Renaissance. That's what they were talking about in the American Civil War.","nb_tokens":231} | |
| {"doc_id":"gzNLzqI5oTE_142","video_id":"gzNLzqI5oTE","content":"That's what they were talking about at the founding of America. That's what they were talking about in the Dark Ages. That's what they were talking about in ancient Rome, in ancient Greece. As long as there have been humans, there have been people asking these questions. And the great philosophical texts, the great thinkers have so much to teach you and you should avail yourself. Seneca says, you know, only those who make time for philosophy are truly alive. He says, and only they are truly wise because he says they annex into their own life all of the wisdom of the past. Right. Like you are struggling with these questions. You're not going to figure it out by yourself. And if you do, it'll take your whole life. You want to learn from the experiences and the struggles of others. And someone who's trying to get you into a pyramid scheme or telling you that it's going to be easy or that it's somebody else's fault. Like that also existed in the ancient world. They called them demagogues. Right. There were tyrants in the ancient world. There were liars in the ancient world.","nb_tokens":234} | |
| {"doc_id":"gzNLzqI5oTE_143","video_id":"gzNLzqI5oTE","content":"There were sophists in the ancient world, which were a kind of philosopher who could make clever, persuasive, attractive arguments. But they would argue one thing to one group and then the next day argue a totally different thing to a different group. And that this battle between truth and what you want to hear, what's easy and what's hard, you know, the higher self and the lower self. This is the battle of the human experience. And that philosophy is there to guide you towards dealing with that and towards human flourishing or the good life. Living in accordance with nature, like what you were meant to do, how you were meant to be. That's what philosophy is about. And that's what I try to popularize and make accessible in my work. But really what I'm doing is going to check out what these people said. Don't ignore the noise that's happening around you right now. Ignore, you know, the attractive, flashy, controversial thing right now and go to what's timeless and true and been, you know, wrestled with for centuries. Well said. Have you seen the TV show The Bear? Of course.","nb_tokens":233} | |
| {"doc_id":"gzNLzqI5oTE_144","video_id":"gzNLzqI5oTE","content":"So I'm not surprised you say of course. That to me really represents stoicism. The sequence, I think if you're not with me yet, you will be when I, are you caught up? I only watched the first season. Oh my God. No wonder you're not convinced yet. All right. Watch season two. Without giving away the episode, I'll abstract it. So I've often been asked, hey, Tom, I'm really struggling with my kid. Like they're 15, 16. They're just not doing anything productive with their life. Like, what do I do? And I'm like, look, there's only one way that I can think of to get somebody who's truly adrift and get them back on track. You're going to have to kidnap them. You're going to have to take them to a desert island or whatever. Put them with a group of people whose respect they want to earn. And then they will conform to the group. And if you can, for people that don't know The Bear, The Bear is an amazing show about the best chef.","nb_tokens":230} | |
| {"doc_id":"gzNLzqI5oTE_145","video_id":"gzNLzqI5oTE","content":"Basically the best sort of young living chef. He is at a three-star Michelin restaurant and his brother, this is all the setup to the story. So I'm not giving anything away. His brother passes away and leaves him his like sort of shitty local town restaurant. A family sandwich shop. Yeah, in like a terrible neighborhood in Chicago. And so he decides to go back and run it. And he then brings with him the discipline of an ultra upscale fancy restaurant, which you see and you're like, whoa, this is like really militaristic. But it starts dealing with discipline and all of that. And dude, season two is going to blow you away. If you like season one, you are going to love season two. You wrote a book called Discipline is Destiny. Yeah. Why? What you're talking about there is what I mean when I say discipline is destiny. It's not that discipline will make you great. It can. Right. If you are disciplined and dedicated and you work hard and you have high standards, it radically increases your chances of being successful.","nb_tokens":221} | |
| {"doc_id":"gzNLzqI5oTE_146","video_id":"gzNLzqI5oTE","content":"But what true discipline does, true mastery self-command does is it makes whatever you're doing great while you're doing it. Right. So there's a there's a story about, you know, this successful general who gets too powerful in Athens. And so they punish him by the people that fear and punish him by making him like head of the sewer system. And this is supposed to degrade and humiliate him. And he ends up taking to the job and he gives it everything he has. And he cleans up the whole system, gets it operating properly. And then then it becomes this highly coveted position. Right. Because it's a culture of efficiency and effectiveness. And people see the effect that it has on the health of the city and all this stuff. And basically the lesson, the philosophical lesson was, you know, a person, a job doesn't bring dignity to a person. A person brings dignity to the job. Right. And so how you do anything is how you do everything. What discipline is, is not a secret or a shortcut to success, although it is those things. Discipline is the end unto itself.","nb_tokens":229} | |
| {"doc_id":"gzNLzqI5oTE_147","video_id":"gzNLzqI5oTE","content":"I work very hard every day on my books. I'm getting better as a writer. I think that contributes to their success, but it's also great and meaningful. And why I get out of bed every day, independent of whether it leads to any outcome at all, because I could get hit by a bus tomorrow. But what matters is when I did I show up today and was the thing when I saved the draft and was done with it. Was it the best it could be with the time that I had for it? That's what discipline is to me or discipline at its most meaningful and important. It's not, oh, I eat well and I work hard, you know, or whatever. That's part of it. But real discipline is that. It's the command of oneself. Can it be built? Of course. Certainly we know it can atrophy, can be lost. Right. We see it happen. You can sense it in yourself. If you I can't sense it in myself, Ryan, you take that back. You can see it in the before and after pictures of just about anyone that's ever done anything.","nb_tokens":233} | |
| {"doc_id":"gzNLzqI5oTE_148","video_id":"gzNLzqI5oTE","content":"So, yeah, of course, of course. I think, is there a natural affinity for it? Sure. It's more impressive if it isn't how you were built or how you were wired. So how do you build it? Day by day, minute by minute, action by action. Aristotle says, you know, virtue is not any different than being a builder. You become a builder by building things. You become generous by being generous. You become strong by doing things that require strength. You know, you you become disciplined by making disciplined decisions. Little ones to lead to big ones, which add up in a big way. So what do you say to somebody in this modern world? They're doom scrolling. They've got six OnlyFans subscriptions. They're, you know, on porn instead of building relationships for people that are struggling. How do they pull out of that? How do they get it going in the right direction? I think you start small. You start with something. You start with something, you know, I'm going to stop this.","nb_tokens":217} | |
| {"doc_id":"gzNLzqI5oTE_149","video_id":"gzNLzqI5oTE","content":"Like, this is why I think, you know, sober January is so great. It's like, don't try to quit alcohol as a whole, which you may need to do. But I'm going to quit for one month. And then I'm going to first learn that I'm capable of quitting for a day and two days and three days and four days and five days until I've got a streak of 30 days. And then I'm also going to get the evidence, the information that says, hey, I feel better when I don't do this thing. I'm better at X, Y and Z when I don't do this thing. Now, obviously, look, there are certain people who have addictions or you're at rock bottom. You got to quit cold turkey right now. You don't have time for that. But I do think there's something about starting small and building, learning once again, the power of cause and effect and the power that you have to bring about cause and effect. And oftentimes when you see someone who is broken apart, who is failing, who is struggling, they have lost their faith in those, in that thing.","nb_tokens":240} | |
| {"doc_id":"gzNLzqI5oTE_150","video_id":"gzNLzqI5oTE","content":"You know, they have lost. It's been a long time since they had any evidence of their own human agency, their own power over their own life. And you got to start by reestablishing that somewhere, however small. I love it. Where can people follow you and drink up more of this wisdom? Daily Dad is the parenting thing that I write every day. So you can go, you can get that for free at Daily Dad or listen to it as a podcast. And then the Daily Stoic is the same thing free every day. It goes out to 600,000 people all over the world every single morning. And then if you're watching this on YouTube, we're at Daily Stoic. I love it. Yeah. All right, everybody, if you haven't already, be sure to subscribe. And until next time, my friends, be legendary. Take care. Peace. To explore these ideas even more, check out my most recent conversation with Sam Harris. There was a pretty gnarly one-two punch between COVID and Trump that I really think caused a sense-making apparatus to fall apart in some way.","nb_tokens":231} | |
| {"doc_id":"gzNLzqI5oTE_151","video_id":"gzNLzqI5oTE","content":"And when people act in a way that I don't understand.","nb_tokens":13} | |
| {"doc_id":"9I39boHZYjI_0","video_id":"9I39boHZYjI","content":"We are attracted to men that fulfill their potential. If your motivation for becoming rich is getting more women, you have to think about the quality of women. If it takes money to access her, you are replaceable. I want to start with a quote from you, if I may. What social media is doing, what this woke culture is doing, is destroying femininity and replacing it with narcissism and telling them that's feminism. Now, you've also said that modern dating is just training for divorce. Now, if you had to get specific, what problems is modern dating creating exactly? And if you could control the social media algorithms, what values would you want to present to people to make them better at romantic relationships? What an amazing question. Thank you for asking such an insightful question. I think what's happened, and I don't mean to blame the audience. The reality is we're not designed for this level of exposure to human beings as we are being exposed to in this current climate. We have social media, we have internet, we have dating apps. We have the ability to get webcam girls, pornography.","nb_tokens":228} | |
| {"doc_id":"9I39boHZYjI_1","video_id":"9I39boHZYjI","content":"We have such an exposure to humans that we've never been able to do or nor are we prepared for. So what's happened is when it comes to forming relationships, it's done the opposite. What it's done is made people crave connections, but have no idea where to start and how to connect. So the reality is what I mean when I say we've turned narcissism into and labelled it as feminism. Unfortunately, the advent of social media has accelerated the status of women far more than it has for men. What social media has done is allowed women a platform to kind of showcase their body, their preferences, basically put themselves on the marketplace. Men don't really have that same access. So we're creating that division between them. And what it's done is allowed women to leverage their beauty in a way that they've never been able to do before. Before, if you're a beautiful girl, you were just beautiful in your city and people would like you, but you'd marry the guy in the city and you'd have a great life. Unfortunately, now if you're a beautiful girl, you can be a beautiful girl to the world and you can have a million followers.","nb_tokens":241} | |
| {"doc_id":"9I39boHZYjI_2","video_id":"9I39boHZYjI","content":"So it makes every man disposable. Any man she's with essentially becomes disposable. So unfortunately, what's happening is women are learning that they become this almost like a deity in terms of beauty in a way that they've never had before. So that's what I think is happening for women. In terms of men, the main problem that's occurring is the access to pornography and the access to beautiful women. What that is doing is they're seeing all these beautiful girls thinking, I want those girls, but I don't want rejection. So what I'll do is find a way to access those girls. And it comes in the form of pornography or webcams or anything like that. So what's happening is we're distancing the sexist from each other through the advent of the internet. And if I could control the algorithm, I would wish there was a way of people being as honest and sincere as they possibly could be and removing the idea of trying to protect themselves in the form of idolizing money or sex. Because that's usually what people are doing. They're protecting themselves. They're going into relationships saying, I just want someone rich.","nb_tokens":231} | |
| {"doc_id":"9I39boHZYjI_3","video_id":"9I39boHZYjI","content":"Or a man is protecting his ego saying, I just want someone who's good at sex. They don't really want to get vulnerable with each other. I wish people could put that aside and put their true values of vulnerability and authenticity as a forefront. And then the algorithm could find them somebody along those lines rather than feeding their ego. It's an amazing breakdown of the problem set. What's the point of a relationship? I would imagine the point of a relationship is to kind of create a shared meaning and purpose. Now, throughout history, that's always been to create a family, like a shared meaning and purpose. But it doesn't have to be primarily a family. I've noticed in couples that don't embark on a family, they find a shared meaning and purpose in the form of a business or in the form of shared extended families. Maybe their brothers and sisters get on really well. Maybe they have nieces and nephews or whatever. They create a shared meaning and purpose. Now, relationships which lack a shared meaning and purpose in the form of either parenting or same values or anything, they tend to end up drifting apart.","nb_tokens":231} | |
| {"doc_id":"9I39boHZYjI_4","video_id":"9I39boHZYjI","content":"So the purpose of a relationship is somebody that you can enjoy life with whilst maintaining a shared purpose and meaning that is aligned to one another. I have a growing thesis about why modern dating is as problematic as it is. What is it about social media? I had never come to the conclusion that this is access to too many people problem. The thing that I worry about is that what the algorithms end up doing is they hyperfragment us so that whether it's OnlyFans or pornography, you're able to pick a very narrow thing that you want and you can indulge so deeply in that thing that you lose sight of what you're calling shared meaning and purpose. I always think of it as shared narratives. If we don't share an understanding of what the purpose of a relationship is, then we're approaching the problem with a distorted frame of reference. Now, my audience has heard me talk a lot about frame of reference, but just to set the table for this conversation, so your frame of reference is the distorted lens through which you view the entire world. There is no way for it not to be distorted.","nb_tokens":223} | |
| {"doc_id":"9I39boHZYjI_5","video_id":"9I39boHZYjI","content":"Without getting into postmodernism, while I violently disagree with the postmodernist interpretation of the world, I understand how they end up going down that path because identifying what is objectively true is very difficult when we have a brain that has to simplify the world. And to simplify it, it basically creates a simulation. And so we view the simulation and mistake it for objective reality. So the algorithms allow you to really unintentionally get this hyper distorted view of what the world is, what women is, what a relationship is, what sex is, but you don't realize it's happening. So you don't realize that you're coming to a conclusion about what a relationship is. It just happens. And so you get the red pill or you get the black pill, right? And you get people that have a very unhelpful setup in terms of if you're right and relationships are about shared meaning and purpose, I think you and I would both agree that the North Star, when you think about living your life well, is human flourishing.","nb_tokens":210} | |
| {"doc_id":"9I39boHZYjI_6","video_id":"9I39boHZYjI","content":"What is going to, it's not happiness, I call it fulfillment, but if you think of it as what's going to make me feel good in the widest variety of situations possible, that sort of gets you in the right direction. So this hyper fragmentation, creation of a distorted lens by which you value what relationships are, then lead people down a road where they don't flourish. So it's interesting that you singled in on this idea of shared meaning and purpose. So if we have access to too many people, how do we begin building shared meaning and purpose when we get together in relationships? Well, the thing is, unfortunately, we have to look at our values. And once we know what our values are, we have to start learning to reject rather than glorifying the one ingredient we like. So what I mean by that is, say, for example, I meet a man who just glorifies beauty. Having a beautiful partner, it monopolizes his brain. So what will happen is he might meet a beautiful woman and the beauty of her will allow him to kind of submit to all of her demands, no matter how unreasonable they are.","nb_tokens":233} | |
| {"doc_id":"9I39boHZYjI_7","video_id":"9I39boHZYjI","content":"So she might be asking for more money than he's prepared to give, or she might be disrespectful. She might be cheating on him. She might be doing this. They're forgetting all of what the ingredients a healthy relationship looks like and focusing on an egotistical desire. Similarly, if a man has money, a woman might ignore all of the other red flags and just glorify this one extrinsic trait. So what I would say is, if you want to start a healthy relationship, make sure you have a balance of values, what you really look for in a relationship, rather than what you look for to boost your ego. The people that glorify one ingredient tend to have lacked that at some stage in their life or lacked access to that at some stage. So they glorify it, and they allow all other behaviors to be ignored. But then it eventually leads to a divorce. It eventually leads to children's homes being broken down. It eventually leads to people being crippled in the future when it comes to starting relationships again. It's so destructive. So I would say, if you want a healthy relationship, have a look at your values and make sure that they are healthy.","nb_tokens":241} | |
| {"doc_id":"9I39boHZYjI_8","video_id":"9I39boHZYjI","content":"And is the person you're attaching to ticking all of the boxes, or are they just fulfilling an egotistical desire that you have at the moment? All right, I've heard you say that you actually understand the logic of arranged marriages. Yes. And if I understood correctly, because of this idea of shared values. Yes. What is the logic of an arranged marriage? Essentially, what psychology has always found is when two people come from similar backgrounds, they have a higher rate of them becoming successful in a relationship, only because they understand each other's norms and values in a way that nobody else can. If I understand that, you know, let's say, for example, silent treatment was given in my house. I know to give you silent, you're giving me silent treatment, we'll get back to normal. I understand that pathology in you. Or if I understand that, you know, it can even be in a toxic way. If I understand sometimes some people swear at each other, then you get back together. We understand each other's norms and values. What arranged marriages do is two parents will choose parents who are similar to them.","nb_tokens":234} | |
| {"doc_id":"9I39boHZYjI_9","video_id":"9I39boHZYjI","content":"So what will happen is they have children who have been raised relatively similar. So those two people, when they get together, tend to have shared norms and values. So there's an element of unspoken understanding that doesn't exist when two people in the real world are just meeting each other randomly. Especially now that we have dating apps and I can meet a man in Colombia and a Colombian man can meet a woman in Ghana. It's so different. So we're only going to end up attaching on egotistical desires, either because we like each other, the way each other's looks, or we might get on with the same music or might have the same taste in movies. But our actual upbringings are very difficult and different and norms and values are very different. So that's why I think I can understand the logic behind arranged marriages more now than ever before. Now, would you actually, like, would you like your parents to arrange your marriage? I always rebelled against it, but now I wish I listened. Yeah, sometimes I'm now like, oh, maybe I should have listened. Only because there was an element of you just assume you're losing your autonomy.","nb_tokens":241} | |
| {"doc_id":"9I39boHZYjI_10","video_id":"9I39boHZYjI","content":"But what you're actually doing is you're trusting the process a little bit more. So I think I could have probably made it work more if I was when I was younger. But at the time, because I felt so controlled in other areas of my life, this is the one area where they gave me some leeway. So I was like, you're not controlling that part. But had they been more lenient in other areas, I probably would have allowed them more insight into the partner I choose. That's interesting. Are you married? No, no. So it's not too late. It's not too late, but I am committed. Oh, so you're in a relationship. Now, how does he feel about you saying, maybe I should have let them? I think the thing is, because I'm so traditional at heart, he understands where this comes from. Obviously, like, we're lucky that we have the same norms and values, which is where we really, we got lucky. But because I have a very traditional mindset, and I don't know how or why. I grew up in London. I grew up in an entirely English school.","nb_tokens":239} | |
| {"doc_id":"9I39boHZYjI_11","video_id":"9I39boHZYjI","content":"I didn't have any Muslim or Pakistani friends. But for some reason, I kind of found myself orientated towards a traditional value system. And I really don't know where it came from. But I just internalized those traditional values from a really young age. And so now I can always see things from the lens of tradition rather than in the lens of modernism. And I don't know why. It's interesting. Were you traditional as, I assume the traditional values came from your family. And religion, do you know what it was? I naturally got attached to God from quite a young age. I don't know what it was. I started to feel like I couldn't trust people. So I started putting trust in God. And I think what happens then through life, I ended up looking at life through the lens of religion. And if it was acceptable by religion, then I probably would question it less. But if it was going against religion, I'd start questioning what's going on in society. And that led me to kind of have forming my own opinion.","nb_tokens":219} | |
| {"doc_id":"9I39boHZYjI_12","video_id":"9I39boHZYjI","content":"So I'd question things more, particularly because everything I was around was against what I was being told by God. So I'd end up questioning it, questioning it. And I found my own kind of rhythm with psychology. Very interesting. Okay, so I want to understand as you're taking on these traditional values, you're somebody who's very aware of the soup of life that you're in. For people that know your content, they've seen you talk a lot about, you are of the culture. Like you're from Dubai, not from Dubai, but you live in Dubai now. When you talk about modern dating, you're talking about it from that perspective. This is what it's like. This is what I see you coach in this area. So you definitely get the space. I would assume that's something you've always been good at. So I'm curious, as you were growing up, you're weighing sort of, okay, religion is telling me this. I see people doing the opposite of that. Were you looking at that and going, it doesn't seem to make them happy? Was that the thing that you checked it against? I think so.","nb_tokens":239} | |
| {"doc_id":"9I39boHZYjI_13","video_id":"9I39boHZYjI","content":"I think what happened is I had a choice, especially now like living abroad, away from the prying eyes of parents or anything. I had a choice. I could either live my life accordance to the rules of God, or I could be like, screw that. I'm doing the exact opposite of what I've been told by God, which is what a lot of religious people do when they finally find freedom. But when I looked at doing the opposite of what God prescribed, I found that it looked like mayhem. So, for example, I'm not allowed to drink. The opposite would be to get really drunk. But when I would see people doing that, it didn't look like something I would enjoy. Or I'm not allowed to have like sex and all this stuff on casual. When I looked at people who were enjoining in that, I saw the negative consequences of children, and then having the abortion debate and all these things. And I just thought doing the opposite doesn't look healthy psychologically. So I ended up going more towards a tradition while staying very alert and aware of what was going on in the real world, because all my friends do indulge and I'm not judgmental.","nb_tokens":244} | |
| {"doc_id":"9I39boHZYjI_14","video_id":"9I39boHZYjI","content":"So I ended up being really good friends with people who do, but I just realized it wasn't good for me personally. Ooh, do you really think it's just you personally, or do you not think it's pretty universal? I would say it's universal, but I don't want to put my views on it. But for me, I just feel no rule. And I know it's like a lot of people find my religion misogynistic and they find it really negative, but there was no rule. When I look at the opposite, did I think the opposite is better? For example, we might have as women have to cover. I know I don't, but we're supposed to cover. When I look at what the opposite looks like, the opposite might be like pornography, women only fans. The opposite doesn't look healthy to me. I'm sure there's a good middle ground but when we live in quite a polarizing universe, I know which side I'd rather be on.","nb_tokens":205} | |
| {"doc_id":"9I39boHZYjI_15","video_id":"9I39boHZYjI","content":"And so that's what made me always, every time I see the opposite, and because I live in a world now, because of technology, I can literally see what the opposite of religion looks like. It looks like only fans. It looks like lots of sexual promiscuity. It looks like getting drunk a lot. I just thought the opposite doesn't make sense to me. So it means that the restrictions actually might be healthy for me personally. It's interesting. So do you drink alcohol? I do occasionally, but not very often. It makes me feel like I'm suppressing the urge to dance on a table, which is wonderful. And I love that feeling. The reason I don't do it is entirely because it's brutal on the body. And so I don't like the way it makes me feel the next day. And I worry that it shortens my lifespan. But if it didn't, like if it didn't make me feel bad, I would have no problem doing it on the weekends and having fun. I'm a hyper-disciplined, goal-oriented person. So I'd never do it during the week. That's a whole different thing.","nb_tokens":238} | |
| {"doc_id":"9I39boHZYjI_16","video_id":"9I39boHZYjI","content":"Right. So I want to go back to religion. So I grow increasingly fascinated by the role of religion, why it lasted as long as it did, why it seemed to dip for a while and seems to be coming back. My hypothesis goes like this. I think it's something like religion was, humans are a storytelling species. That's what we do. We are all about simplifying the world, turning it into a meme that can be passed on. And religion is the ultimate meme spreader. Right. And so when something works and to, you're Islamic? Yeah. Okay. So to use a law that you guys put in place, don't eat pork. Yeah. Now, my gut instinct is that the reason that became true is because of trigonosis, I think is the thing if you undercook pork. Yeah. And so you don't necessarily, I mean, you don't have the scientific data to back up, but you know something's wrong. Yeah. And so you're like, ah, that's not a great idea.","nb_tokens":216} | |
| {"doc_id":"9I39boHZYjI_17","video_id":"9I39boHZYjI","content":"And in trying to explain it to people, it ends up becoming a part of oral tradition at first, of course, and then ultimately gets written down and that becomes the word of God. Yeah. And so it is a very useful tactic, whether on purpose or on accident. I don't know how this ends up forming, but it is a very useful thing to put it in the mouth of God and say, God says, don't do this thing. To like legitimize it. Yeah, exactly. So don't have kids out of wedlock. Why? Because they are less likely to survive. Yeah. So I think religion ultimately is basically the ultimate way to get a very good idea to cross over time. And that if one were to write the Bible today, it would say things like, don't do an OnlyFans account. You know, make sure that you have values as you go into your marriage, like whatever the things are that are going to lead to human flourishing in that moment. Yeah. And the reason that these ideas stay and cross through so much time is because they're so useful. Right.","nb_tokens":228} | |
| {"doc_id":"9I39boHZYjI_18","video_id":"9I39boHZYjI","content":"And that's where this gets really intriguing to me for people now. So going back to shared narratives. Yeah. Religion gave people shared narratives. Yes. They made it easier to make the right choices because you didn't have to reinvent the wheel. Yeah. So prescribed for you. Exactly. I think a lot about culture stacks, meaning I don't have to rediscover electricity. I'm born into a world that has electricity. I have to rediscover the printing press or the wheel. And as we invent things like the printing press and the internet, now all of a sudden ideas can travel fast. Right. My growing concern is that there's too much velocity of information now. We'll set that aside. But religion was sort of that initial way to get these ideas to, for the smart ideas in culture to be easily transmissible to the next generation so that they could stand on the shoulder of giants. So to make them concise and clear, so people know what they're doing, don't have to think. Exactly. Yeah. Just you follow the word of God and things are going to be better.","nb_tokens":226} | |
| {"doc_id":"9I39boHZYjI_19","video_id":"9I39boHZYjI","content":"But now if you had to abstract the values that people should be imbuing as they come into a relationship, instead of necessarily saying, because God said so, if you had to distill it to the values that just make humans thrive, what values are those? It would be, is my behavior going to lead to a long lasting, stable connection between the two of us? Now, if we always... You think that's better. So long lasting relationships. Long lasting relationships. Why is that good? Because I think what happens with long lasting, firstly, they're more likely to create a shared meaning and purpose. Also, what happens is you end up knowing that you start to learn to reject things. If I know I'm going to stay with you forever, what will happen is I reject maybe going to clubs every night because I know who I'm going to be home with. I reject dating multiple people at the same time. I reject sleeping around because I know where I'm ending up. But why are those good things? What I would say is the plethora of options reduces our satisfaction in anything anyway. So what monogamy does is it allows you to focus.","nb_tokens":238} | |
| {"doc_id":"9I39boHZYjI_20","video_id":"9I39boHZYjI","content":"It doesn't mean good or bad. But what I mean by this is if I'm only dating you and it's just you, at least in that two or three months where I'm just focusing on you, I either learn that you're the love of my life or I learn that you're terrible for me and I should never speak to you again. But if I dilute my experience with you by also talking to Tom, Dick and Harry, what will happen is I'm wasting energy not realising that you might be really bad for me. But I haven't noticed because I'm also seeing Tom, Dick and Harry. Or you might be amazing for me. Again, I haven't noticed. So the reality is it creates internal chaos. Whereas internal consistency will allow us to know what's good and bad for us and then remove ourselves or enjoy ourselves in what it is. But unfortunately, diluting the experience means that we end up being chaotic and we lose the ability to create an identity because we're almost spreading ourselves too thinly. So I think monogamy is a great way. It's a shortcut.","nb_tokens":226} | |
| {"doc_id":"9I39boHZYjI_21","video_id":"9I39boHZYjI","content":"It will either tell you we're gonna work out or it'll tell you we're never gonna work out. But at least I know through confining myself to that space. Okay, so limit your options. Limiting your options is a necessary thing for happiness. I would say not necessarily limiting but rejecting alternatives in order to like. I don't understand the difference. Well, limiting your options would be like you don't even pay attention to what the alternative could be and you just stick to what you know. Rejecting the alternatives is knowing what you have, knowing what the alternative would look like and having the strength to say, I don't want it. Okay, but how can you know the alternative? You talked about in the beginning, we just see too many people. Yeah. And that back in the day, it was easier because you didn't see as many people and you were pretty but you were just pretty in your hometown and you were gonna marry somebody in your hometown. Yeah. So if too many people is part of the problem set. Yeah. It doesn't seem like awareness of all the options is necessary for thriving.","nb_tokens":230} | |
| {"doc_id":"9I39boHZYjI_22","video_id":"9I39boHZYjI","content":"No, because it creates an illusion of options. What will happen is just like if you were to open a Tinder account. Luckily, you probably never had to do any online dating, right? Very fortunate. You are incredibly fortunate. But what it looks like is you go in there and you're overwhelmed. So what would happen is a person would go on there and any single person can be easily replaced by the next swipe and the next swipe. So you end up applying minimal investment to each person. Everybody becomes disposable. And then by the end of it, you don't wanna spend time with any of them because they've all just replaced each other. Whereas minimal kind of exposure means that I have the time and social battery and energy to invest in each person and then figure out who's right for me. But when I'm just swiping and there's millions of options, I don't actually realize what's good or bad for me. You can reboot your life, your health, even your career, anything you want. All you need is discipline. I can teach you the tactics that I learned while growing a billion dollar business that will allow you to see your goals through.","nb_tokens":238} | |
| {"doc_id":"9I39boHZYjI_23","video_id":"9I39boHZYjI","content":"Whether you want better health, stronger relationships, a more successful career, any of that is possible with the mindset and business programs in Impact Theory University. Join the thousands of students who have already accomplished amazing things. Tap now for a free trial and get started today. So I still wanna say, it sounds like you're saying that you do wanna limit your options, but that doesn't feel right to you. Why doesn't saying limiting options? Yeah, maybe I am saying it incorrectly because I think when people hear limiting the options, they think settling. They do. Yeah, and they- But is that not part of what you're saying? Well, you're saying arranged marriage makes sense. Yeah, I do think, do you know what it is? What they see as settling, they see as with a negative connotation. Yeah, they see settling- But are they right? No, because settling doesn't mean that you are compromising on what you truly want. It's just that you're recognizing what you truly want. So settling implies that you're not happy with what you've got.","nb_tokens":222} | |
| {"doc_id":"9I39boHZYjI_24","video_id":"9I39boHZYjI","content":"What I'm suggesting is you're so happy with what you got that you reject the alternatives and you'll only become so happy with what you got through being able to reject the alternatives. Interesting. So one, I think arranged marriages are a terrible idea, but I don't know that this is true, but I've heard something about divorce rates being lower in arranged marriages. Yeah, they're the lowest. All right, that's true? Yeah, that's true. Okay, this is one of those times, Axel, pull that shit up. I want to know if that's really true. If divorce rates in arranged marriages really are lower- Yeah, they should be. Then there is something, okay, the divorce rate for arranged marriages is estimated at 4%, while the divorce rate where people choose their partners is estimated to be close to 40%. I don't know that I believe this. Have a look at the divorce rates in somewhere like India or somewhere where the arranged marriages are prominent, but I promise you it's lower. But that could also, I want to preface that, that could also be because there's a stigma associated to divorce in cultures which practice arranged marriages.","nb_tokens":242} | |
| {"doc_id":"9I39boHZYjI_25","video_id":"9I39boHZYjI","content":"So it could be mitigated by that. But on the whole, I would like to think that from what I remember, arranged marriages have the lowest levels of divorce because people who engage in arranged marriages don't do it with the purpose of assuming that love is the glue that keeps you together forever. Okay, so love isn't the glue that keeps us together? Whereas when you go into a marriage- What is the glue? Well, I would say it's different for most people, but I would imagine that most people, what I would imagine is the glue is a duty to one another's well-being and the function of the marriage. I would imagine that the glue that keeps a relationship together is, even though we might have a rough year, a rough five years, a rough 10 years even, but your well-being matters to me and my well-being matters to you. And so therefore, making sure that we engage in a lifelong purpose of maintaining that and the duty that we created towards one another when we made our vows is more important than how we're feeling right now. It's a bit like if you signed a 10-year contract with a basketball team.","nb_tokens":237} | |
| {"doc_id":"9I39boHZYjI_26","video_id":"9I39boHZYjI","content":"If you're a basketball player, you might hate it some months, you might love it some seasons, whatever it is, but you're committed to the purpose and the duty that the contract suggested. This is very interesting. Okay, so a duty to one another's well-being. Why do you disagree with arranged marriage? Sorry to interrupt you, but why? Not at all, I love that you're here. Why do you disagree with arranged marriages? Okay, so you and I share a lot of values. If we were to lay out what values we think people need to have in order to have a successful marriage, I actually will be very surprised if they are at all different. Yeah. I rebel against authority so violently, you can't imagine. One of my primary values is autonomy. So I cannot live in a world where somebody gets to tell me who to love. I need to be free to be a moron. And it is un-for-me, it is authoritarian to oppose something like that top-down. Okay, did you rebel against your parents' authority when you were younger?","nb_tokens":222} | |
| {"doc_id":"9I39boHZYjI_27","video_id":"9I39boHZYjI","content":"What was it about the way that they relayed orders to you that you didn't like? They wanted me to do something I didn't want to do. My parents were incredibly loving. I have no beef. If you watched me, you would have thought I was a brat. You wouldn't have thought, oh, his parents are really mean or anything. Yep, I just don't do well with that. Which we could easily derail into why I think from an evolutionary standpoint, the tribe needs some people like me. They need some people like you, my wife, like they need all of it. I just had a conversation yesterday with Gad Saad and he was saying, oh, maybe I shouldn't be this way. And I was like, actually, I think it's good that the tribe has your style of communication, which can be very aggressive, very satirical, but it's good that we have that perspective. So I don't think as a tribe, we want uniformity. We want the only way to truly narrow in on what is true is to get a bunch of different perspectives, make sure everybody can speak up.","nb_tokens":233} | |
| {"doc_id":"9I39boHZYjI_28","video_id":"9I39boHZYjI","content":"So I think it's probably good that the tribe has people like me that just cannot deal with authority. Yeah. But that's why I don't like arranged marriages. It doesn't necessarily mean that arranged marriages won't yield more human flourishing. And so if I had time to really review the data, I may walk away going, hey guys, look, I wouldn't wanna do it, but the data's in and arranged marriages just work better. Yeah, usually from a psychological perspective, people who reject authority, growing up, they didn't trust their parents' authority either because they didn't have the same values or because they didn't like the method in which they relayed it. So they end up losing trust for their parents' authority and then that just extends through life. Whereas people who really trust and respect their parents' authority end up accepting authority later on in life. Do you think we're blank slates? No, no, I don't think so. I think a lot of it is blank slates, but I do think we have a natural temperament. Give me a rough percentage. I would say that we are 30% genetics and 70% environment.","nb_tokens":240} | |
| {"doc_id":"9I39boHZYjI_29","video_id":"9I39boHZYjI","content":"Interesting, okay. What would you say? 50-50 is what science ballpark says. Yeah, but I would say that your environment is pretty much everything. I personally think that my personality- Wait, wait, wait. Did you just say your environment is pretty much everything? Well, it's more so than your temperament because I believe that personally, the traits I hold, if I wasn't a woman and if I wasn't raised in the right environment, if I didn't have the parents I did, I would very much be a criminal personality. It's very criminal. Really? I'm fearless. I'm shocked by that. Yeah, I'm absolutely fearless. I have no fear. But why would that lead you to criminality? Because if I was growing up in an environment where money was scarce and poverty was real and role models were criminal, I definitely would indulge in it. I don't have a fear of repercussions. And it's such a strange thing for somebody who believes in God, but I naturally do not have a fear. I believe in God, but I don't have a fear of repercussions.","nb_tokens":229} | |
| {"doc_id":"9I39boHZYjI_30","video_id":"9I39boHZYjI","content":"So naturally, if I see a police officer and they annoy me, I'll say what I need to say. Now, if I was a man with that mentality and if I was somebody who was struggling for money with that personality, there's no way I'd still be on the streets. I'd be in prison or at least rehab. That's really fascinating. I'm shocked by that. Okay. So going back to arranged marriage, the value set. Yeah. Okay. So we understand why I don't like arranged marriage, but at the same time, human flourishing is my North Star. And I don't think there's anything in life that will give you more of the things that I would ballpark to human flourishing than a healthy, romantic partnership, which that word's very important to me. For people dealing with the modern dating world, I will just say, do not see your significant other as an adversary. You need to be looking for a partner. Yeah. So life has taught me, there's a reason I've been married for 21 years.","nb_tokens":216} | |
| {"doc_id":"9I39boHZYjI_31","video_id":"9I39boHZYjI","content":"Life has taught me that it's worth the investment, but I actually find, so I think you're picking up on my reaction as if I don't agree with you. No, I know. Because I've seen you in interviews before, you challenge the people that you still kind of fundamentally agree with. You just want to make sure you understood them correctly. Correct. Yeah. So duty, also, I think people are going to have a hard time with some of the words you're using. But what I like about you is you're unafraid to take your stance. So duty to one another's wellbeing. And I will say, when I got married, I tattooed four words on my arm as a reminder to me what this was all about, to make it work well. And they were love, passion, commitment, and respect. And commitment was, I was very aware that men are valued for their ability to acquire resources and women are valued for their beauty. And so I was like, ooh, as my value goes up in a traditional sense, my wife's will go down in a traditional sense.","nb_tokens":229} | |
| {"doc_id":"9I39boHZYjI_32","video_id":"9I39boHZYjI","content":"And there's a whole nother thing to life though, which is sharing a life with somebody. Now, in that very small set of words hides a lot, but I wanted Lisa to know, you never have to worry about me trading you in for an upgraded model. Right. The reason you don't have to worry about me trading you in for an upgraded model is not because I think you're the most beautiful woman in the world. I don't think you're the most beautiful woman in the world today. I'm not going to think you're the most beautiful woman in the world when you're 90. So I want you to understand I'm committed to you. Yeah. Because you make my life better and I want to share this life with you and I'm not the best looking guy in the world and I'm not going to be the richest guy in the world. I certainly wasn't the richest guy when we met. I will tell you that. So that was important to me that we both focus on that idea that we have a duty to one another's wellbeing. Yeah. And like, as somebody that hates authority. Yeah.","nb_tokens":233} | |
| {"doc_id":"9I39boHZYjI_33","video_id":"9I39boHZYjI","content":"I get why people don't want to submit to that. All right. Forgive me. Yeah. But the other day I was talking to somebody about, I'm not religious. Yeah. But I want something to kneel before. Right. And. Well, that's a really interesting desire to have for somebody who's not religious. I think every human being has that. Yeah. And I think that people don't acknowledge that. Yeah. And this is part of how people spiral out of control because we don't have shared narratives anymore. So people don't understand how to navigate life. Thankfully, I read a book called The Power of Myth by Joseph Campbell. I highly recommend it. Okay. And so I realized, oh yeah, I do want to kneel before something. And one of the things that I kneel before is my marriage, not my wife, my marriage. I love that. And so that idea of each of us are going to kneel before this thing that is greater than either of us individually. And we are going to protect it fiercely because we have a duty to one another's wellbeing.","nb_tokens":229} | |
| {"doc_id":"9I39boHZYjI_34","video_id":"9I39boHZYjI","content":"Why? Not because God told us to, but because that's what leads to human flourishing. Yeah. Which is why I think people say God tells you to. Yeah. I mean, the thing is, I think you're very true. Everybody has a need. And I think it's an involved need. We all have a need to worship. Now, the problem is because we've got no sense of God anymore, we've replaced the need to worship with either we're going to worship celebrities or we're going to worship like influences or we're going to start worshiping ourselves and our own egotistical desires. So that's why I think it's always good to submit to something. I personally submit to God, but it could also be your marriage. It could be also your parents. For some people, it could be whatever it is. But having nothing to submit to means that you will definitely submit to your own desires. Do you think people need to be very careful what they choose to submit to? I think, yeah, they do.","nb_tokens":214} | |
| {"doc_id":"9I39boHZYjI_35","video_id":"9I39boHZYjI","content":"They definitely need to be very careful because the thing is, whether we like it or not, we submit to the law, the systems of the law and the laws that we live in. Now, as we, even in our short period of being alive, we've seen the laws change drastically. Now, the reason why I don't recommend submitting completely to a culture or society or the norms and values of a culture is they're so changing so rapidly. So it leads to a fragile identity. Whereas what I like about religion is it creates a stable identity throughout the years. You'll never have to say, what does God think about this? You know. Whereas the laws and system, what could have been seen as offensive now would have been seen as normal practice 20 years ago. I just wonder what that does to people's identity knowing that what they once believed in now is the worst thing on the planet. And then it might be cool again. And then it might be, I don't know if it creates an internal dialogue that is steady. So that's why I recommend it. Now, you migrated from submit to kneel, or sorry, from kneel to submit.","nb_tokens":240} | |
| {"doc_id":"9I39boHZYjI_36","video_id":"9I39boHZYjI","content":"And so do you, I see a pretty radical difference between those two. What do you see as the difference? So I submit to the law, but I don't kneel before the law. And if the law were to get deranged, which I have extreme fears about right now, Yeah. I would oppose it. Right. Whereas my marriage, there are ways that it could become dysfunctional to the point where I would exit my marriage. So I'm not somebody who thinks no matter what. Yeah. But when I say that I kneel before my marriage, it is entirely my responsibility to make sure that it does not devolve to that. Okay. So taking it back to the law, I kneel before the ideals that, oh God, before I make this statement, I was going to say I kneel before the ideals, the ideals that this country was founded on. Yeah. I need to educate myself more deeply on that. I kneel before the ideals. I think this country was founded upon. That's probably the more true. I don't know enough, I'm afraid.","nb_tokens":224} | |
| {"doc_id":"9I39boHZYjI_37","video_id":"9I39boHZYjI","content":"But I'm sure there's something offensive in the, Is there? I don't know. Yeah, I don't know enough, yeah. But anyway, I draw a distinction between the law and the ideals that should be aimed at human thriving. I get what you mean by the difference between kneeling and submitting. One sounds more voluntary. The other one sounds like it is what it is, like it's more involuntary. So I understand what you probably mean, but when you say kneeling and submitting, they're not synonymous. Yeah, I get what you mean. Okay. So going back to the values that make a relationship work. So the four things that I, I think originally I was gonna get like nine tattooed and the tattoo artist was like, the writing will be too small. So it was an interesting exercise to force me to boil it down to those four. If you had to give people three to five things, values, like super succinct that are going to allow them to have that longevity, what would those be? I would say the first is honesty, even if it hurts.","nb_tokens":222} | |
| {"doc_id":"9I39boHZYjI_38","video_id":"9I39boHZYjI","content":"And the reason why I think honesty is such an important one is, even when it's something like, if my partner says, Sadi, you've gained weight. Yeah, as much as I might not like that, or, you know, your makeup doesn't look nice, as much as I don't like that, what it does is it redirects me into a way that will keep us connected. One of the reasons why so many people end up having affairs is they have this kind of unmet need, but fear of telling the truth to their partner because their partner is so fragile and easily offended. So there might be a man that feels like his wife has let go and doesn't want to tell her, but then will outsource sexual desire elsewhere. It might be a woman that feels like her man is not, you know, aggressive enough physically when they're making love and whatever. So she ends up never saying it to him and then outsourcing it elsewhere. So I would say honesty is important, but honesty without brutality. What happens is people who suppress it is that they don't say the truth, but when they get into a fight, they say the truth, but with venom.","nb_tokens":242} | |
| {"doc_id":"9I39boHZYjI_39","video_id":"9I39boHZYjI","content":"They say, this is why you're so shit, and this is why. They say it negatively. So you want honesty without brutality, honesty whilst you're on a good terms rather than just during a fight. So I'd say honesty is a really important one about what your needs are. Another thing is being, not doing anything behind your partner's back that you wouldn't do in front of their face. And what I mean by that is even if that means you talk- Can we call that integrity? Yeah, I would say so, integrity. Because even if, let's say, for example, he's texting a girl or I'm texting a boy, if that's something I would do in front of him, say I'm just messaging this person or I'm just talking to this person, there's nothing wrong with that. But you would do it the same behind their back as you would in front of them. That integrity is really important. You don't become a different person when they leave because the people who do that end up having two parallel lives. They live completely different lives. And I think it all kind of boils down to honesty, really.","nb_tokens":237} | |
| {"doc_id":"9I39boHZYjI_40","video_id":"9I39boHZYjI","content":"I would say, if anything, I would just say honesty is a really important one. Because it enables all the other features of a good connection to thrive. If I'm honest with you about what I like in terms of emotional intimacy, we create emotional intimacy. If I'm honest what I like in terms of physical intimacy, we create that. If I'm honest about what makes me less attractive to you, we create attraction. So I just say that honesty is a really important one. Would you add anything else to that one? So we've got honesty, integrity. Yeah, so mine are the four that I have tattooed on myself. What does respect look like to you? Because I know that's something that men always talk a lot about. But in literal terms, what would respect look like from a man's perspective? So respect is one of the reasons I chose that is a lot of things go into that. So for me, being honest with somebody is how you show them respect. If I'm lying to you, I am not respecting you. If I lack integrity, I'm not respecting you.","nb_tokens":227} | |
| {"doc_id":"9I39boHZYjI_41","video_id":"9I39boHZYjI","content":"The easiest way for me to explain respect though would be my wife went from a traditional housewife and I loved it because she took care of everything. It was amazing. In fact, at some point, we should talk about what it was like for the two of us to research and interview you on the same day because it was like had us asking each other questions. She mentioned something. Yeah, which is really, actually really fun. I really wish more people would do things like that. They should watch your episodes and then talk to each other. So that is when you have the respect of I know who my wife wants to become because she wanted to go from housewife to entrepreneur. And that was deeply uncomfortable for me. And I had to mourn the loss of my traditional wife. But I needed to respect that she wanted to become something else. And so the thing that occurred to me as we were going through this was I believe, I mean, going back, you really put great words around it, that I have a duty to my wife's wellbeing. And so the words that kept occurring to me were I want you to be the best version of yourself.","nb_tokens":236} | |
| {"doc_id":"9I39boHZYjI_42","video_id":"9I39boHZYjI","content":"And so I would never want to stop you from becoming who you want to be. And so she was very graceful in letting me mourn that I was losing something. And then I showed her the respect to help her, not only give her the space, but to help her become the person that she wants to become and not just be a cheerleader, but literally be a savage in the fight for what she wants. So there's a lot that goes into that. What did you miss about her going from traditional housewife to successful entrepreneur? Man, this is gonna be a big rabbit hole. Because she mentioned today that she was watching one of my videos. And me, I talk a lot about how men, I know it sounds so ridiculous, but they just love a meal from their wife. It doesn't even have to be home cooked, just her plating it or her knowing what he likes. Do you get why that matters to guys? I don't know if that's an evolutionary thing, if it's something that's in them. But I also think that because they're not so verbal, acts of service means a lot to them because they don't know how to express their needs sometimes.","nb_tokens":244} | |
| {"doc_id":"9I39boHZYjI_43","video_id":"9I39boHZYjI","content":"So somebody understanding their needs and predicting them before they have to say it. But that's why, for me. Now this is one where I'm not confident enough that this is universal. Please explain to me. Having somebody understand me so well, that they can anticipate my needs, and that I'm so important to them, that they wanna make that need go away before I have to deal with it. But there's a reason for that. Now, there's a lot of tension around what I'm about to say between my wife and I. This is so fascinating to me because this is, I think, my wife's fundamental misunderstanding of the nature of a man. And I am a savage for my wife. But everything I do, I do for my wife. I work as hard as I work for my wife. Now, here's the problem. My wife wishes I wouldn't work that hard. What do you do with that? So now my wife is crying out for me, please work less. You say you do this for me, but I need you to work less.","nb_tokens":221} | |
| {"doc_id":"9I39boHZYjI_44","video_id":"9I39boHZYjI","content":"And what I'm saying to her is, I need to be appreciated for how hard I'm working, which is what you show me when you recognize my needs and make them go away. I then feel like being a savage for you is being rewarded. It's being acknowledged. It's being appreciated. Appreciation is the right word. And ladies, I'm telling you right now, if you appreciate your man and make him feel powerful, that's it. It's a wrap. Which is why I always say that successful men have it the hardest. I'm not talking about you. I think, praise be to God, you have a very beautiful marriage. But generally speaking, successful men, I find, have the hardest time when it comes to being married. And it's because they create a life that it almost enables a lazy woman. Yeah, I mean, that hasn't happened for you. She's an absolute legend in her field. But the majority of very successful CEOs happen to have wives who then have nannies, cooks, chefs, so on and so forth.","nb_tokens":219} | |
| {"doc_id":"9I39boHZYjI_45","video_id":"9I39boHZYjI","content":"And what happens is that she doesn't have to rely on any instinct to predict her partner's needs because it's all taken care of. It's all kind of outsourced. But he still craves female attention. He craves his wife loving him. He craves his wife saying, oh, baby, your shirt is ironed. Or baby, your lunch is packed. I bought those stupid crisps that you love. It seems so small and effortless. Yet he doesn't get that. Whilst he's building an empire to help create a life that she loves, she sees it as childish to kind of do that for him. And we label what a man needs as childish. You can do it yourself. But we can do it ourselves. We can pay our own bills now. But we still love it when a man does it. So I think that's where I say the narcissism is coming through. Feminism has taught women that catering and appreciating and showing love for your man is babying him. And he should be a grown up and he should do it himself. But then how else does he feel loved?","nb_tokens":230} | |
| {"doc_id":"9I39boHZYjI_46","video_id":"9I39boHZYjI","content":"How else is he going to get it? The only other way to get it is sexually. And then that is replaceable. Any girl can have sex with you. But how many girls will know what you want in your sandwich? And if that's not your wife, then who's it going to be? So they start to outsource affection and they end up majority of the times with gold diggers. And they end up with escorts who they fall in love with. I've met so many successful, intelligent men fall absolutely head over heels in love with escorts. Because you've got to remember the market of an escort or a webcam. She deals with men with low self-esteem every day. Every single day. So she knows all she has to do is take an interest in him for five minutes and he's putty in your hands. So she will say, oh, I got you a jam sandwich. I know you love it. And he will be like, I'm in love. She knows what she's doing. So they end up falling into such a bad pattern because they're so starved of appreciation.","nb_tokens":228} | |
| {"doc_id":"9I39boHZYjI_47","video_id":"9I39boHZYjI","content":"So that's why I try and encourage women to prevent them going down that route. I think that's very wise. And it is hilarious to me how easy it is to manipulate men. Have you ever seen any side of that with working with successful men? Do you ever see it? Or do they not kind of tell each other what they do on the side? Yeah, guys are not going to be open about that kind of thing. Like what makes you putty in somebody's hands. I mean, you can sort of pick it up with some guys, but no. You don't see it as much, maybe because I live in Dubai. So I see the average 70 or 60 year old man walking around with a 24 year old model. And then you see what's happened. Like you see how he's got there. But what would have happened is years of feeling neglected or rejected. Now somebody just makes him feel alive. Although it's transactional, they're willing to pay that cost just to get that feeling. Yeah, I mean, it is utterly fascinating. Like people really need to understand men and women.","nb_tokens":232} | |
| {"doc_id":"9I39boHZYjI_48","video_id":"9I39boHZYjI","content":"This is one of the things that I found very interesting about you. And I have a feeling that there's going to be a lot of response. I don't know what the right word is. Rebound effect from how hard, like whatever fourth wave feminism has gone. And then the other side where women go, oh, wait, to get a man and to keep him happy. These are all the things that I have to do. And because I think there's so much evolutionary pressure at our backs to deliver in that way, I think, and look, everything is a cycle. And so if we go now into a sort of deeply traditional part of the cycle, there'll be a rebound against that later down the road. And this stuff will just cycle, cycle, cycle. But do you think that's where the red pill came in? Is that they found a space from that? Ooh, no, the red pill, I think, is a response to the velocity of information. People feeling very rejected. The algorithm starting to feed you somebody who's like, fuck these women. This is the truth. Look how they manipulate you.","nb_tokens":233} | |
| {"doc_id":"9I39boHZYjI_49","video_id":"9I39boHZYjI","content":"Wake up like, and now you see the truth of it and have painted women as adversaries. That's a real mistake. Because people are not thinking about what the, they've never defined for themselves. What's their North star? Your North star should be human flourishing. I am a firm believer that this is on average. Of course, gay people exist and they are capable of wonderful lives full of love and joy. But from an evolutionary standpoint, the male-female dichotomy in a relationship makes a lot of sense. And you really do from a procreation standpoint, you make a whole. And so together you're able to do something that you weren't able to do apart. Yeah. Do you think that applies to parenting as well? Does what apply? Having the dichotomy of a male and female? Oh, for sure. For sure. In terms of raising well balanced. Yeah, absolutely. I think so as well. I know that might be sound as controversial, but it's just, it's a fact of life. I think children end up benefiting from that masculine feminine dynamic.","nb_tokens":223} | |
| {"doc_id":"9I39boHZYjI_50","video_id":"9I39boHZYjI","content":"And unfortunately we've made it like, it's a sin to suggest how in sync those two energies should be because people who are trying to pit men and women against each other just get more views. And they get more kind of accolade on the internet. So unfortunately we're going drifting down that path. But does your audience and your realm, they all value marriage and value the connection? I don't know. It's a good question. So one of the exercises that I'm trying to go on now is really defining like what the through line of the show is for people so they can understand. For me, it's always been self-evidently empowerment, but the number of things that that will go through. So what we end up doing is our audiences around topics and they're totally separate. And so if I do an episode on finance, I can predict how it's going to do. If I do an episode on relationships, I can predict how it's going to do. And it's not the same people. And so what I really want people to understand is this is about empowering you to live life well.","nb_tokens":229} | |
| {"doc_id":"9I39boHZYjI_51","video_id":"9I39boHZYjI","content":"And there is one through line through every person that I bring on the show. But no, the people that would come to me for relationships are very different than the people that would come to me for finance, et cetera, et cetera. So I honestly don't know how they feel about marriage. How did you balance a healthy relationship while being so unbelievably successful? Because usually one gives, whilst the other one kind of suffers. But how did you manage that? I haven't seen that very often. So I'm very impressed by it. So one, my number one priority is my marriage. And so Lisa and I talk about that. But as I was just saying, she wishes I worked less. She would gladly trade in some percentage of our success for that. And so we've really had to communicate endlessly. And so communication is something we're extraordinarily good at. And then we know what each other's good at. And she will feel disconnected before me. And so I have said, okay, cool, you're empowered. If you feel disconnected, I will listen to you.","nb_tokens":225} | |
| {"doc_id":"9I39boHZYjI_52","video_id":"9I39boHZYjI","content":"And so we won't wait for me to feel disconnected because that will take way too long and you'll really be upset by that point. So speak up. When you say something, I will immediately adjust my behavior. So for instance, Quest ended up coming into existence because I was so unhappy at the company we were running before that. And she said, this is now damaging our marriage. You need to do something. And so that something was to quit, long story. That ends up becoming Quest and ends up being amazing. But that was really born out of my wife saying, okay, this is damaging the marriage. And me saying, hey, I said, if you ever said it, that I would make immediate change. So that's really important. Like you have to know- Where did you learn that skill? At 14, I started having a recurring nightmare that I was in a loveless marriage. Really? At 14. I'd never been in a relationship. Lisa's the only person I have ever said I love you to in a romantic way. Stop, really? Yes.","nb_tokens":224} | |
| {"doc_id":"9I39boHZYjI_53","video_id":"9I39boHZYjI","content":"So now at 18, my dad leaves and says he's been unhappy for 10 years. Right, makes sense. So now you can track it back. Oh shit, he's been unhappy since I was eight. And so there was something that I was picking up on that I never could have explained to you. Right. I was young, first of all. Yeah. But I'm recurring nightmare. That your energies of children, they pick up on their parents' happiness. And that it translates into, like I had no conscious awareness of it whatsoever. So anyway, one, I'm already, I'm deeply self-aware, I'm empathetic. And so I have this recurring nightmare. So I make a promise to myself, I'm okay never getting married. I'm not okay being with somebody that I actually don't like that much. And so I'm a very specific flavor. And so I learned very quickly that I would have to pretend to be something I wasn't around people. And so there's no mistake that Lisa happened not long after I said, I'm gonna start aggressively being myself.","nb_tokens":226} | |
| {"doc_id":"9I39boHZYjI_54","video_id":"9I39boHZYjI","content":"And if people don't like it, I don't give a shit. Right. And so, but coupled with, I won't be in a loveless marriage. It takes work. And I read Cosmopolitan a lot. So here, my mom told me the best piece of advice I ever got about women, because this shook my entire worldview. My entire worldview fell apart. This was so foreign to me. She said, almost as a throwaway comment, you know, for women to have an orgasm, they have to trust you. And I was like, what? I just need a location. Like that was so, trust. Like what could that possibly have to do with an orgasm? And so that sent me on a very detailed quest to figure out, okay, women think differently than I do. But you know, one thing I would say is I know women, I completely agree with your mom's statement, but we're almost taught that men can disconnect emotionally from sex. I really disagree with that.","nb_tokens":208} | |
| {"doc_id":"9I39boHZYjI_55","video_id":"9I39boHZYjI","content":"Because if you get a man to have sex with a woman who looks like she's not enjoying it and looks like she's in pain or looks like she'd rather not be there, his fulfillment is minimal. There's nothing there. Whereas when he would rather take a less attractive woman who looks like she's having the time of her life and looks like she adores him over an attractive woman who looks like she can't stand him. So there is something psychological in it for men as well. If it was just a human need and every hole is a goal, they wouldn't read a woman's expression so deeply. I know men that have become impotent because their wife has expressed such disgust when they've tried to be sexually active with her and they've literally lost their ability to erect. So I do think it's equally psychological. I just think men don't realize it's psychological because they're so usually so erect and ready to roll. But I do think it's psychological signals that determines their sexual pleasure. That is more true than you know. Is that true? Because it's just what I keep noticing. I will say that you're interpreting that through the mind of a woman.","nb_tokens":241} | |
| {"doc_id":"9I39boHZYjI_56","video_id":"9I39boHZYjI","content":"Yes. And so I will say that for a guy, neutral to positive, fantastic. Now, if the person is really into you, that's gonna be way more fun, way more fun. What if she's really not into you? I couldn't do it. There's no universe in which. It would activate the predatory fear in a man. You never wanna be feeling like a rapist. So I would imagine if she's not into, unfortunately. Much to my dismay will not be universal. Not universal, no. That is horrifying to me. But something tells me. Do you think that's pornography related or do you think it predates pornography? Yeah, oh God. So here we're now in territory. I have not looked at the literature. I don't know what the real answer is. But when you think about what was war historically, it was you had excess men in the population who did not have access to women. There was a massive Gini coefficient, meaning there was a huge discrepancy between the men that had and the men that did not have.","nb_tokens":220} | |
| {"doc_id":"9I39boHZYjI_57","video_id":"9I39boHZYjI","content":"So there's a hypothesis that Vikings were a society in which one man would monopolize many women. So you had a lot of guys that were like, well, how do I get a woman? You go to war. And there was some recent thing where like a tribe that's still alive, where they were like, when asked, why do you go to war? They said, oh, for women. Okay. And they were like, what other reason would you ever go to? Like they were so confused. They couldn't understand it. Yeah, yeah. Oh, wow. And so that's horrifying. Yeah, no. I'm very sad that that's a true thing. There's even like evidence of a particular fly that holds down the wings of the female fly, inseminates and runs away. Like rape is, it's in the animal kingdom as well. Doesn't justify it, but it does exist. But I just wonder like, is the advent of porn reducing the desire to rape because you're kind of getting access to it or does it kind of glorify rape? I don't know.","nb_tokens":228} | |
| {"doc_id":"9I39boHZYjI_58","video_id":"9I39boHZYjI","content":"I don't watch, so I don't know. But I'm wondering from a man's perspective, is it cathartic? Can you kind of get rid of that? That's not my kink. So that one I wouldn't be able to speak to. But my gut instinct is porn does sedate. And that whatever, it's not like it will keep ratcheting up, ratcheting up, ratcheting up until you go out and do something. I have a feeling, I've heard you talk about serial killers being addicted to porn. I have a feeling that that's correlation and absolutely not causation. You have somebody who is just, they are broken from an empathy perspective. And so their response to porn would be complete objectification. This person is an inanimate object and that's why it plays out in their sadistic sex. Where Ted Bundy, who I have read about because he unfortunately lived where I grew up. No way. Yeah, so I learned quite a bit about him. And so that feels more like somebody, a thing in their brain is broken.","nb_tokens":224} | |
| {"doc_id":"9I39boHZYjI_59","video_id":"9I39boHZYjI","content":"I do agree in that sense because in order to form an addiction to pornography, there has to be a level of emptiness and a brokenness in their soul to lead to that escapism and then coupled, and then it might go into other poor behaviors. So I don't think it's necessarily a cause. I think it's a pit stop on the destiny of becoming something evil, unfortunately. I don't know that. Becoming evil, yes, probably. There probably is a path. But this is where I will say, if we're 50% hardwired and 50% the environment, that man, I don't think you become Hitler or Ted Bundy unless part of the 50% that's hardwired is broken. Yeah, there has to be something prenatal in there. Yeah, because as somebody who's wired for empathy, I just can't fathom. Yeah. I can't fathom. Do you think empathy is the ingredient that's allowed you to be so monogamous and not be tempted? Okay, so this I've thought a lot about.","nb_tokens":222} | |
| {"doc_id":"9I39boHZYjI_60","video_id":"9I39boHZYjI","content":"No, I don't think that's the thing because if you said to me, hey, she'll never find out. Yeah. Never ever. No pain. Yeah, no way. She is never gonna know. Like this is guaranteed by God, not gonna happen. And that's very doable in this day and age. Yes. Would you cheat? Hell no. Okay, then why not? Yeah. I think there's two reasons. One, I am, my brain, literally, if you were to do a biopsy of my brain, I have a feeling you would find that I have massive amounts of receptors for vasopressin and oxytocin. The sense of intense bonding I get with my wife is fucking crazy. And so I feel bad because that means I just have a leg up. Like part of why I've been able to- Me too. I agree. I don't feel like it's any virtue in me. I think it's something just in me that makes it impossible for me to be simultaneously with two people. I don't think it's because I'm virtuous or moralistic.","nb_tokens":229} | |
| {"doc_id":"9I39boHZYjI_61","video_id":"9I39boHZYjI","content":"I think I just can't be with, I can't get pleasure from two people simultaneously. Well, now we're asking a different question. Because if my wife was like, no, no, no, be so hot, have sex with someone. Okay, word. So that is very different. But I would never want to be in a relationship with two people. Right, okay. But men really do have a pull for novel sexual encounters. And especially a novel sexual encounter with a woman who finds me attractive, that would be rad. Right, okay. Super rad. Yeah. Now the only reason I don't do that is because my marriage is my highest priority because that gives me way more than a bunch of novel sexual experiences would give me. But when I decided to propose to Lisa, I literally made a pros and cons list. And one of the cons was, I'll never sleep with another woman again. And am I okay with that? That was not an easy, like, yeah, I'm okay with that. I was like, ooh. And you were super young. Yeah. So that was a sacrifice.","nb_tokens":231} | |
| {"doc_id":"9I39boHZYjI_62","video_id":"9I39boHZYjI","content":"And that's part of why our marriage has lasted because I've thought a lot about what will make this marriage worth that kind of sacrifice. So can I ask, like a lot of women come to me and I'm always a little bit, and I've asked my partner this as well, and he hasn't really given me much, but some women will come to me and say to me, like, I've been, my husband just doesn't crave me anymore. He just doesn't want to sleep with me. I think it's me. Like I know all I ever see on movies and stuff is how the man always wants to have sex. But really, I'm the one that's always initiating and I'm the one that has to do it. And I don't know what it is, why my husband just won't initiate or won't want to be with me sexually. What do you think? I always say that maybe you're not nurturing other needs of his outside of the sexual relationship. So I always wonder, I ask, have you cooked for him recently? Have you, that's their foreplay. Have you cooked for him?","nb_tokens":234} | |
| {"doc_id":"9I39boHZYjI_63","video_id":"9I39boHZYjI","content":"Have you made sure that his, you know, maybe his clothes are ready or whatever it is. Have you thought about his life before he has to think about it outside of the bedroom? That's usually my answer, but I could be wrong. So I was just wondering. You could also be right. I could be. That to me is a huge part of it. Yeah. Also feeling emotionally connected. Yeah. And I really, really believe that men can be, of course we're complicated and all of that. And the wonderment of being in a long lasting marriage is to go way beyond the two things I'm about to say. Yeah. But honestly, honestly, if you don't get these two things right, you are dust. Right. You have to appreciate him and all the things that he does, like for real, for real. And you need to exude that. Yeah. If you exude appreciation, you work so hard. Thank you for everything you do. You make all these sacrifices. You do it for the family. Because I can pretty much guarantee you that at least in the beginning, he did that.","nb_tokens":233} | |
| {"doc_id":"9I39boHZYjI_64","video_id":"9I39boHZYjI","content":"And the only reason he may no longer work with that in his mind is because you made him feel unappreciated. Yeah. And so if you appreciate him for that, huge. Make him feel powerful. Right. Make him feel powerful. And what if he's not powerful? Oh God. Okay. So now one of my questions I wrote down, how do you tell your wife that she's gotten fat? So how do you tell your husband he's gotten weak? Yeah. I guess here's the thing. Well, I think with both, whether you tell your wife she's gotten fat or you tell your husband he's weak, instead of highlighting she's fat or he's weak, you highlight the time where they were the opposite. And you might say something like, do you remember the days when you used to play rugby? Oh, you just came across so powerful. You should get back into that. I loved seeing you like that. Or it could be a thing like, oh babe, do you remember you in that red dress and stuff that day we met and stuff? Oh, you looked amazing. You looked amazing.","nb_tokens":232} | |
| {"doc_id":"9I39boHZYjI_65","video_id":"9I39boHZYjI","content":"It doesn't even have to be I want you back to that because some women are so hypersensitive. But the problem is when they don't tell her, they allow her to become a woman they're no longer attracted to. And you have to tell your wife. And I know I get a lot of backlash because I get told I'm fat shaming. But here's the thing. In my experience, when you gain a lot of weight, you start not liking yourself. And when you don't like yourself, you don't want to have sex with people. You don't want your husband to see you naked. You don't want him to touch you. So you end up just being okay with having very minimal physical contact. And then you drift apart. Whereas when you keep on top of yourself, you're looking forward to physically connecting. So I think it's really important to keep on top of your body while you're married. I know there's kids. I know it's difficult. But life is difficult. You just have to eat less. If you can't work out, at least eat less. Yeah.","nb_tokens":229} | |
| {"doc_id":"9I39boHZYjI_66","video_id":"9I39boHZYjI","content":"So eating less, yes, unfortunately, is reality. But also what you eat is extraordinarily important. Are you careful with what you eat? I'm psychotic about this. So going back to part of the reason I want to do the show is to get people to understand you are having a biological experience. You must get sleep. Sunlight. Your diet needs to be right. And so look, the reality is men and women alike, you need to be attractive. You need to do things to be attractive to your spouse. You can never neglect that. You can't take it for granted. And by the way, so the thing I will add to what you said is what I do is when my wife does something that I want more of, I lavish her with praise when she does it. And I learned very early- What kind of things does she do that makes you like- That list is so long, but it could be she wears something she knows I love. And so I'm like, oh man, thank you. I love those pants so much. Oh my God, you know how much I love those, right?","nb_tokens":230} | |
| {"doc_id":"9I39boHZYjI_67","video_id":"9I39boHZYjI","content":"So rather than when she wears a shirt I don't like, I'm not like, oh, I hate that shirt. No, if she asked me if I liked it, I would tell her no, to your point about honesty. But so the list of things that my wife does for me that I want more of is very long. She's very thoughtful and very- Just today, she said out, I forgot to take chicken out for myself. And I had mentioned the other day that I wanted more avocado in my life. And so today there was a little sticky note with chicken thawing for me and an avocado that says, I took this out for you. And so, yeah, I would encourage that behavior. But that's easy stuff. The hard stuff is for women, physicality. And so with that, let's say that she's- My wife's always been so on top of her physique. But one thing that I do is I'm like, let's say she just had her 44th birthday. And I'm like, hear me when I say, woman, you're so hot at 44.","nb_tokens":231} | |
| {"doc_id":"9I39boHZYjI_68","video_id":"9I39boHZYjI","content":"Most people don't get a woman that's attractive at 24. And so I wanna thank you. You didn't have to do that and most people don't. And I know that it's mostly for yourself, but I really appreciate it. It really means a lot to me because I know one day we all turn to a bag of wrinkles. And so I've always reminded myself to appreciate your youth and beauty while I have it. And the fact that you've worked so hard to extend that just objectively hot and attractive as long as you have, I'm super grateful. And I even encourage women to be grateful when their partner's faithful. Because the thing is a lot of women will say, but that's a given, we're married, of course he's supposed to be faithful. But unfortunately that's not an of course anymore. It's not- Even if it is, it is not wise to take it for granted. No, it's not wise. It's never wise. It's never wise. In fact, now you have something that's easy that you can point to all the time and like cherish your partner for that.","nb_tokens":233} | |
| {"doc_id":"9I39boHZYjI_69","video_id":"9I39boHZYjI","content":"And be like, wow, it, for instance, in fact, I'm gonna say this to my wife later. Thank you. Literally, if I opened my wife's phone and there was a file that said dick pics and it was four terabytes, I'd be like, wow, that's crazy. I wonder how four terabytes of dick pics got it. I wouldn't even think to be weird about it because she makes me feel like I'm the center of her universe. And because I feel that in my bones, it's not just a thing she says. Like I feel it in all the weird little small ways that a person can feel it. I feel it. And so what I'm really thanking her for, thank you for making me feel safe emotionally. Like you make me feel emotionally safe and that is an awesome feeling. Yes, an amazing feeling. It allows you to then go on to do bigger and better things outside of the relationship. So many people are stunted because their partner doesn't make them feel safe. They can't progress at work. They can't fulfill their potential in the gym.","nb_tokens":230} | |
| {"doc_id":"9I39boHZYjI_70","video_id":"9I39boHZYjI","content":"They just can't fulfill their potential in other relationships because they're stunted. But once your partner makes you feel safe and secure, you can almost go out and conquer the world as you guys literally have gone out and done. Isn't that amazing? It's interesting. I read a quote once and said, the people that take the biggest risks have the most stable home life. Now, things like that. So a lot of people have just heard me say that. But what I did when I heard that was I went home and I said, babe, I just heard this fact and it really made me think of us that the people that have the most stable home life take the biggest risks. Thank you. Because this was when she was still a housewife. Thank you for doing what you do and allowing me to go take these big risks. And I mean, at one point when Quest was a huge question mark and nobody knew if it was gonna work, she let us put our house up as collateral. Like that's real shit.","nb_tokens":211} | |
| {"doc_id":"9I39boHZYjI_71","video_id":"9I39boHZYjI","content":"And so because both of us will routinely say in our darkest moments, as long as I have, for me, it's her, as long as I have Lisa, everything else can go wrong and I'm good. And I really mean that. And because I feel that, it really does let me take these big chances. But going back to what started all this, you need to take the time to go thank your spouse for those things, to not take those things for granted, to really reward them for behavior you don't want. And now if I may light the comments on fire with rage and anger, you have to then punish the things that you don't want. How would that, what would that look like? You tell me. Or tell me that I'm crazy. Yeah, do you know what I would say? It's punishing the things that you don't like. Maybe I've never really perfected this. What ends up happening in my personal experience when I punish what I don't like, I end up creating a new wound because I'm so tactless with it. I'm so like, oh, and I can get mean and I can get brutal.","nb_tokens":239} | |
| {"doc_id":"9I39boHZYjI_72","video_id":"9I39boHZYjI","content":"Now, do you think it's the nature of punishment or is it the delivery? It's my insecurity that is so projected into what I'm saying that I, it doesn't become a fruitful conversation. So what would be something I don't like turns into I'm going to put the relationship on the line now. And I'm going to wound you because I feel wounded in this moment. And it's something I've gotten better at over the years, but through the partner being so secure, they kind of walk your hand through it. But it's not something I've ever perfected. So I don't, if I could learn from you, how would you punish what you don't like without causing any additional wounds? Yeah, so this is one that is, you have to be extremely careful with. So rule number one, if you want to quote unquote punish, because I'm known for using language, it's meant to grab people's attention. It's not like I'm being cruel or mean, because if you do that, you are done.","nb_tokens":215} | |
| {"doc_id":"9I39boHZYjI_73","video_id":"9I39boHZYjI","content":"So number one, if you want to punish a behavior, you have to have made so many deposits, made them feel so loved and so secure that when you say, hey, when you do that thing, I don't like that. And so let's just say that your partner likes to drink and you don't want them to drink anymore. This is not a problem. Lisa and I had, but let's just say, I would say, hey, it's your life. You have to do you. The last thing I want is to be your parent. I'm not your parent, I'm your spouse. But when you're doing that thing, I'm not going to be around you. So by all means, do it. But just know, once you've sobered up, come back, we'll hang out. But when your spouse cherishes quality time, now all of a sudden it's like, oh, when I go do this thing, they have set a clear boundary. They're not mean, they weren't cruel. They're not saying I'm a bad person for doing it.","nb_tokens":227} | |
| {"doc_id":"9I39boHZYjI_74","video_id":"9I39boHZYjI","content":"They're just saying, I don't like it and I don't want to be around it. And so now it's my choice. I can go do it as much as I want, but they've been very clear. I am doing that because I know you want time with me. And so it is a punishment. But I'm not being a dick. I'm not being cruel. I'm not making it up. I really don't like it. And I really don't want to be around it. You set your boundary rather than like, it's not literal, I'm punishing. Is it more just I'm setting a boundary? It is punishment. It's just that boundaries are a way to create a penalty for that behavior that you don't want to see more of in a way that doesn't create a wound. Yeah. Because the thing is what you're describing is very effective boundaries. What boundaries basically are, it's not like, okay, you did this by, I'm never speaking to you. That's almost a self-sabotage, which is something I used to definitely indulge in.","nb_tokens":229} | |
| {"doc_id":"9I39boHZYjI_75","video_id":"9I39boHZYjI","content":"A boundary is simply, here's a behavior I don't like. If you're going to continue with it, I'm going to withdraw this particular behavior in response. But you're most welcome to be back in my life if you can abide by this particular rule. And so boundaries actually keep people in your world. They teach people how to love you effectively. So it's a semi-punishment, but more effectively it's teaching your partner how to love you properly. Yeah, it's interesting. People are going to hate the word punish. Yeah. And I think they're going to struggle in life because they don't understand that you really are drawing that line as a penalty. But the certain behaviors need a punishment. Yes. And you have to be very careful. Remember, I'm saying this within the context. What would a punishment look like? What could Lisa do to you that would look like a punishment? What could she withdraw? It's a really good question. So time would be one for me, for sure. Let's say that if I'm working too much and she's like, I'm not going to enable that anymore.","nb_tokens":234} | |
| {"doc_id":"9I39boHZYjI_76","video_id":"9I39boHZYjI","content":"So instead of making sure that your food is out or whatever, you're going to have to do that yourself. And if you take time off, I'll cook for you. Right. Oh, now it's like, okay, that's fair. Like I get. Yeah. So she's not rejecting me. She's not pushing me away. But she's saying, hey, this thing, I'll do one up. I'll make it even better. But I want to get the thing I want as well in exchange. Now, remember, we're going to communicate this to each other. So in fact, the thing I told my wife is the only trick I'm ever going to play on you is that I will always tell you what I'm doing. Right. Now I'm telling you what I'm doing because I know it will make it work better because you don't feel like a chess piece being moved around. You don't feel like you're being manipulated. But by putting it out in the light, being completely honest with you and doing it in a way that's smart. So it's not creating a new wound.","nb_tokens":232} | |
| {"doc_id":"9I39boHZYjI_77","video_id":"9I39boHZYjI","content":"It's we call giving the keys of the kingdom. I'm telling you exactly how to be successful. I'm saying when you're not doing that thing, then I'm going to make time for you. And then P.S. going back to the reward side, if she then stopped doing the thing I didn't want, or let's just use me. So she wants me to work less. Okay, cool. So let's say that she said something like either, hey, if you stop working early on a Wednesday night, I'm going to light some candles and it's going to be sexy time. Okay, interesting. Because now that might be something that I would make a change in my pattern for because I want that thing. So now it's like, oh, whoa. Right. Okay. Now you've given me like a really cool incentive. Yeah. And what she's, she's being honest. I want more of your time. I understand how important it is for you to accomplish. You've always said that the marriage is more important. Here's something that I think could really bond us. Yeah.","nb_tokens":230} | |
| {"doc_id":"9I39boHZYjI_78","video_id":"9I39boHZYjI","content":"That's how we talk. Yeah. So now. And I'm sorry, so sorry to interrupt. But in my, because I deal with people who suffer in relationships, I completely agree. And I'm in a very healthy state. So I understand that would work really well. But there are people that come to me and say, when I would draw quality time for my partner and say, you know, I'm not going to spend time with you. Or even if I would draw physically, it doesn't shake them. It doesn't bother them. In those cases, I do say that if your withdrawal doesn't seem to affect them, then unfortunately the relationship has lost its bond. There's no bond left anymore. It only works when two people want what you're, when the person wants what you're depriving them of. Would you say that's? I would, but I'll also send people back to your earlier statement. We have a duty to one another's wellbeing. Yeah. And so the reason that this works is when, if my wife were to say, hey, I need more of your time.","nb_tokens":229} | |
| {"doc_id":"9I39boHZYjI_79","video_id":"9I39boHZYjI","content":"I'm not like, hey, you need to get on board. Like I told you I was going to work this much. I'm like, whoa, okay. So you feel disconnected. That's why we've made you the holder of the key. So when you tell me you need more time, I'm going to make more time. Yeah. And so that's the part that I want to make sure that people are hearing. It has to be the underlying thing. Because if you don't have a duty to their wellbeing, why are you with them? Well, I could answer that question. You're with them because you're getting something advantageous out of the relationship. But to your point that that can quickly become an egotistical, I think is the word you used. Yeah. That you're satisfying an ego drive rather than a human flourishing drive. And so this is why, again, going back to values, you have to have a set of values that you live by. I live by my values. Yeah. Especially when they're inconvenient. I find your values so in line with religion.","nb_tokens":227} | |
| {"doc_id":"9I39boHZYjI_80","video_id":"9I39boHZYjI","content":"So really, I'm sorry to bring it back to that. But sometimes I come across people who are more Muslim than I am or more religious than I am. And I always admire people who have found those values independently. How did you get there? Okay. So I often get made fun of for something, which is that in business, I was trying to explain what makes me a good entrepreneur. And I came up with this whole thing and I handcrafted it and I wrote it down and I read it to my team. And my team went, oh, that's the scientific method. And I was like, really? Now you can make as much fun of me as you want for not knowing the scientific method. I didn't fucking study science. Or you can recognize that when people triangulate on the same thing from different disciplines, that it probably means you've reached base truth. And the reason that a lot of my values probably sound like religion is because I found values that work towards human flourishing. And if I'm right, that religion is just memes meant to lead you to human flourishing. Then if we didn't converge on things, one of us is almost certainly wrong.","nb_tokens":240} | |
| {"doc_id":"9I39boHZYjI_81","video_id":"9I39boHZYjI","content":"But you know, like becoming so successful as a man and then being able to access, if you wanted to, you could just go live wherever you want, go any woman or anything like that. What made you be like that? None of that tempts me. I'm good just succeeding and women just isn't part of it. Because the red pill space, you're bombarded with men that are kind of taught that the moment you become successful, you have to have a plethora of women. They have to look like this. They have to do that. And that's what makes you happy. What advice would you give to them? As a man who's made probably double than they'll ever make. This is not to put anybody down, but it's like you're a freakishly successful both of you. So yeah, what advice would you give to people all from that mind frame? The only thing that matters in life is how you feel about yourself when you're by yourself. That's going to be determined by the evolutionary algorithms running in your brain and the values that you choose to adopt in your life. And I know how I want to feel.","nb_tokens":236} | |
| {"doc_id":"9I39boHZYjI_82","video_id":"9I39boHZYjI","content":"And so I've built a value system that I think will make me feel that way. And I update my values constantly when something isn't leading me to that path. And I believe in love. And I believe in love. I use, whenever I use the word love to my wife, I always capitalize the L. And it is the thing before which I kneel. So I don't just mean love like romance. I mean love like when you're fucking vomiting or you're afraid, like I might be dying right now. There's one person you want with you. And when that person is your best friend and the person who you trust and the person you know will run through a fucking wall for you, life does not have anything better to offer you. Now, if I'm right about that, thinking of that person as your adversary, someone that you need to trick is ludicrous. Now, hear me boys. When I say, I used to show up on the first date with a custom written poem for that person and flowers. I was the caricature because I really believed that's what was going to work.","nb_tokens":228} | |
| {"doc_id":"9I39boHZYjI_83","video_id":"9I39boHZYjI","content":"And then I asked this guy that I knew was getting laid left, right, and center. And he was gorgeous, by the way. He's like the model. He's the guy that, I forget what they call him, Chad's. He was a Chad. He was broke, but he was a Chad. Back then in- Chads don't need to be rich. They just had some- Okay, perfect. So he was a Chad. And I was like, what is the key? And he said, you have to treat him, be an asshole. I think it was his exact quote. And I was like, this is fucking stupid. I was like, there's no way. This is so fucking cliche. And I know him, he's not an asshole. So I was like, okay, what does he actually mean? And I realized, oh, what he means is be confident. I remember in high school, there was this girl, I really liked her a lot. And we would be friends and she'd be into me. We'd start dating and then she wouldn't be into me anymore.","nb_tokens":232} | |
| {"doc_id":"9I39boHZYjI_84","video_id":"9I39boHZYjI","content":"And I remember asking her one time, why? And she's like, when we're just friends, you're confident. And when we start dating, and she probably wasn't this eloquent, but the punchline was when we start dating, you fear losing me and you change. And so when he said be an asshole and I put it together, it was like the sixth sense. And I played my life back to what she said. And I was like, oh my God. So then I was like, okay, I'm gonna be me. And I'm never again going to have fear of loss with a woman. Yeah, so be you with the willingness to walk away. Because here's the thing, I see a lot of the advice online is treat him mean, keep him keen. And I know so many men that follow that advice. It's terrible advice. And the reason why it's such terrible advice is the reality is if you play this game of treat him mean, keep him keen, you'll only attract a broken woman. A secure, healthy woman is not attracted to men who treats her mean.","nb_tokens":229} | |
| {"doc_id":"9I39boHZYjI_85","video_id":"9I39boHZYjI","content":"She's attracted to a man who has a willingness to leave if she misbehaves too much. And I don't mean that as a child, just like... No, no, no, 100%. So you have to, one, everybody out there, you have to become worthy of the person that you want to be with. So all 10 fingers pointed back at you, why do you not have the girlfriend that you want? Because you've not earned that person. But then it's not about being an asshole. It's not about treating the mean, but you absolutely must have enough confidence. So you're like, this is how I want to be treated. This is how I want to feel. And hey, if I'm not your guy or I don't make you feel the way you want to feel, I fully respect that and I'm gonna walk away. You will be shocked if you treat somebody well and then call them up fucking real short if they treat you poorly. Like I remember I had a girlfriend and she started pulling away from me. And so I was like, okay, cool, I got it.","nb_tokens":231} | |
| {"doc_id":"9I39boHZYjI_86","video_id":"9I39boHZYjI","content":"And so I pulled back and she came up to me and she was like, at the time, I was thinking about moving to New York, long story. But she comes up and she's like, you didn't even tell me that you were planning to move to New York. And I was like, you made it clear that you wanted more distance. And so I'm cool with that. I want you for this to be comfortable for you, but don't expect me to lean in as you're leaning out. And she was like, oh, damn. And so- It's super attractive. Yeah, and the thing is that relationship ended. It was like, word, I just did not have a problem. And so if you can't, like if you have insecurity in yourself where you're like, as they're leaning away, you lean in, oh my God, you're gonna be in for a rough time. Unfortunately, and this is what a lot of men do, particularly in this generation, the younger generation. They'll pick a woman with all the red flags because she might be physically their type. So she might be posting lots of pictures that they don't like online.","nb_tokens":243} | |
| {"doc_id":"9I39boHZYjI_87","video_id":"9I39boHZYjI","content":"She might be going out drinking a lot and all these things. And what they'll do is take her and then try and exert their dominance and be like, you can't go out. You can't post like this, blah, blah, blah. But the reality is when she knows that you don't have the willingness to walk away, she labels you as insecure. The guy that she's saying is insecure and the red pill men will say, oh, we're not insecure, we're setting boundaries. No, no, no, secure men don't need to micromanage. They leave. If they see that you're doing a behavior that's terrible, they simply leave. Insecure men- I hope they communicate it. I hope they communicate it, yeah. So here's going back to if my wife had a four terabytes of dick pics. I, I'm not insecure. I don't, one, I'm not a jealous person by nature. So I do have that advantage. Have you ever been? Never? Oh, that's amazing. That's, I mean, maybe when I was young.","nb_tokens":229} | |
| {"doc_id":"9I39boHZYjI_88","video_id":"9I39boHZYjI","content":"I don't have any memory of ever being jealous. It's not my nature. But it's not like it, I couldn't get in that position if I were feeling insecure. But the thing is you want to, as someone does something that makes you feel insecure, you want to speak up. Yeah. So my wife and I have a rule that we speak in insecurities when we're arguing. Right. So when somebody gets mad, their insecurities have been triggered. Of this I assure you. Yeah. And so now it's a game of how quickly can you admit that you're insecure? Now, if you're with somebody that will weaponize your insecurities, leave. Yeah. So my wife and I have a rule. You never, and I mean never. I don't care how mad you are. I don't even care what that person does to you. My wife could have an affair with an entire football team. And I will never be cruel to her. This is not who I want to be. I'll break up with her. Yeah. I will never speak to her again.","nb_tokens":227} | |
| {"doc_id":"9I39boHZYjI_89","video_id":"9I39boHZYjI","content":"Are you like that in general with other people outside of the relationship? I have a huge belief. You need to be who you are in divorce and in marriage. Yeah. There's a quote that I heard that I have let really dominate how I am in life, not just in my marriage, but that you don't divorce the same person that you marry. Right. Which tells me that people code switch. And I don't fucking play that game. Right. I am who I am. Amazing. And, but again, that's all for me. In general, like you don't speak mean to people, like say if you're fighting with your mom or your sister or something like that, you wouldn't be, you don't step out of line and stuff. I can be very aggressive. Let me be very clear. There are people who would say that I have been mean, but if you ask them to repeat what I said, you'd probably characterize it as aggressive. Right. Because I can be very aggressive.","nb_tokens":209} | |
| {"doc_id":"9I39boHZYjI_90","video_id":"9I39boHZYjI","content":"And what I mean by that, cause I'm not a yeller, I don't scream, but I will boil things down to its simplest thing. And that can often make people very uncomfortable when I'm like, so you're saying X, Y, Z. And when you unvarnish something, you can make people very, very, very uncomfortable. Okay. But- But in fights with Lisa, it will never get cruel. No, never. Literally never. Cause you can't come back from that. Yeah, it's true. And so this is why people have got to build these, you have to build your value system before you get into the relationship. Yeah. And what advice would you give to people who get so anxious and then they get mean and stuff like that? What do you usually tell them? That's a you problem. It definitely is a you problem. Yeah. Because there's nothing that can't be communicated effectively and calmly. If you are going hostile, chances are you've picked up a fighting system from your parents that involved hurting, that involved going below the belt.","nb_tokens":226} | |
| {"doc_id":"9I39boHZYjI_91","video_id":"9I39boHZYjI","content":"And then you're bringing that into your relationship and unfortunately punishing them for a system that they didn't help create in you. So if you have that nature, try your best to work on it, but also try not to partner up with somebody who also does that because then it turns physical at some point. Yeah, unfortunately. That has to be completely awkward. It does. This is, people have got to decide what kind of person do you want to be? Not only think about it vaguely, write it down. What are your values? Like Lisa told me at the beginning of our relationship, if you ever cheat on me or beat me, I'm gone. Yeah. And she was like, hard line, no second chances, no discussion, gone. And knowing how stubborn she is, that would be that. And so I'm just like, first of all, I'm not drawn to either of those, but I was just like, okay, yep, totally understood. But also- What were your deal breakers with her? I never had like big things like that, but cheating would be a deal breaker.","nb_tokens":229} | |
| {"doc_id":"9I39boHZYjI_92","video_id":"9I39boHZYjI","content":"If she ever cheated on me, that'd be the end of the story. Would you say if she hits you, if a woman hit you, would you leave? I know it's unfortunate. I actually recommend men to draw a line when it comes to physical hitting. But they usually don't. So here is how I would think about that. So one, I want to be very thoughtful because the reason I wouldn't is I don't have an ounce of fear with my wife. If I was scared of her and no judgment, if I was scared of her, then it might be very different because I would not stay in a relationship where I was afraid of the other person. I have a lot of men that have physically abusive wives, that hit them and stuff. Let me be very clear. Hit me once, doesn't mean I'm going to divorce you. Hit me twice, we have a fucking problem. We have a problem and it's not because it's pain. Because we will have talked about that shit. And the thing is, it's not because of the pain.","nb_tokens":222} | |
| {"doc_id":"9I39boHZYjI_93","video_id":"9I39boHZYjI","content":"Of course you can handle that, but there's a level of disrespect and an emotional volatility in people that hit. And we almost give women a pass with it. And I can imagine once in a blue moon, something, she over-erupted and I can imagine a pass with that. But some women do it as a form of conflict resolution. And a lot of men don't speak up about it, but I do think- That's crazy. It's crazy, isn't it? Yeah. I would never put up with that for the emotional reason. Yeah. That you are out of control. Yeah, you're just not ready for a relationship. It's you're just, you can't regulate yourself. Yeah, and self-regulation is very much, that is a tenet in my life. I would not be with a woman that cannot emotionally regulate. Yeah, and it's something that's underspoken about. But it is, again, it's part of the... When I talked about narcissistic women, it's because we've tilted it, where women are automatic victims. And sometimes they are the narcissist in the relationship.","nb_tokens":236} | |
| {"doc_id":"9I39boHZYjI_94","video_id":"9I39boHZYjI","content":"I'll always have women come to me for therapy and they say, my ex was a narcissist. And when you read her story, it might be that she was cheating on her husband with a guy and saying that her husband's a narcissist or the guy that she's cheating with is a narcissist. And their perception of what a narcissist looks like is so skewed because they're so holding onto the idea that they're a victim in the relationship. They just want to find a reason. So I do think that if you are with a woman who uses that word a lot and a woman that uses physical aggression, be mindful. Yeah, just because it doesn't hurt doesn't mean it's not a deal breaker. Yeah, it's very interesting. People... Unfortunately. People need to pursue emotional stability. One of the things that I think has made Lisa and I's relationship work so well is she has a slightly more masculine temperament than most women and I have a slightly more feminine temperament than most guys. And so that brings us both closer to the middle, which really, really works. Yeah, you understand each other better. Very much.","nb_tokens":233} | |
| {"doc_id":"9I39boHZYjI_95","video_id":"9I39boHZYjI","content":"And we just... She is very emotionally regulated, does not swing wildly with her cycle, and so it makes her far more predictable for me. And then I'm hyper communicative. I'm very in touch with my emotions. I have no problem speaking about my insecurities. So things like that certainly help. But one thing you've been very clear about is that people selection is really everything. How do we get selection right? Unfortunately, and it's sometimes things that are out of their control, but one good indicator is their upbringing. And that doesn't mean it has to be perfect, but there was an element of some stability, some level of emotional stability. Now, when it's totally, totally chaotic, unfortunately, and I always say to men that your competition is not other men, it's her childhood. If it's totally chaotic, no matter how much stability you provide her, she'll find it very, very difficult to settle into that stable relationship. But if there was... Of course, there's up to now, very few people escape childhood without some trauma.","nb_tokens":219} | |
| {"doc_id":"9I39boHZYjI_96","video_id":"9I39boHZYjI","content":"But if it was on the whole, she understood that love existed and connection was always there, what will happen is she'll appreciate those things about you. But when it's so chaotic, unfortunately, there's so much work to undo. And if she hasn't started it, you can't finish it. So I recommend that looking for somebody with some level of emotional regulation is really important. But the other thing about selection is recognizing what you consider a deal breaker. If I consider sexual promiscuity a deal breaker and I'm with a partner who's really addicted to pornography, really wants to experiment, so on and so forth, there's nothing, no amount of love I can give them that will change their core needs and desires. And I shouldn't expect that. I shouldn't expect him to contort himself to fit my needs. So you look at what your deal breakers are. Now, if she or he is displaying them, don't be narcissistic enough to think that your love is enough to undo it. Unfortunately, they're allowed to be the person they want to be. You're allowed to be the person you want to be.","nb_tokens":234} | |
| {"doc_id":"9I39boHZYjI_97","video_id":"9I39boHZYjI","content":"But almost watching all the red flags and going for it anyway, it's masochism. You're going to end up, you know, micromanaging. You're going to end up like holding them by the throat, getting them to behave when really they should be allowed to be the person that they showed you they were from the beginning. So selecting according to your own deal breakers is really important. If somebody had a bad childhood, are they just damaged goods? No, no, they're definitely not damaged goods. But one thing I would say is we underestimate the impact, particularly about the person that comes from a damaged childhood. They seem to think that it's fine, it's not, but if they recognize that they have areas to work on and they have abandonment wounds, they are easy to be with. But if there's somebody who's in denial about that and genuinely believe that you're the cause of their emotional pain, unfortunately, no matter what you do, that emotional pain, that wound that predates you is always going to be inflamed and they're always going to blame and expect you to soothe them.","nb_tokens":231} | |
| {"doc_id":"9I39boHZYjI_98","video_id":"9I39boHZYjI","content":"So it's always good to be with somebody even if they've got a damaged childhood, recognizes that damage, that then you're onto a healthy relationship. How do you advise people to identify and deal with their insecurities? Recognize that are you having a disproportionate reaction to the event? If, for example, my partner hasn't replied to my message and I'm starting to get really panicked or really angry and so-and-so and really hostile, I'm having a disproportionate reaction. So that's an insight into there's an insecurity there. I'm making assumptions and I'm causing myself emotional pain. So how you recognize it is your disproportionate reaction and then how you cope with it is either soothing yourself or communicating with your partner and letting them know that you're having a disproportionate reaction and allowing them to soothe you. But just simply reacting to your emotions and then expecting and causing more chaos is only going to exasperate your existing insecurities, unfortunately. And that's why having a healthy partner is so important because they recognize that you have these issues and they offer you soothing. But having an avoidant partner will see that your insecurities as a you problem and then just not want anything to do with your issues.","nb_tokens":246} | |
| {"doc_id":"9I39boHZYjI_99","video_id":"9I39boHZYjI","content":"And then you end up just driving yourself insane. So it's very difficult. My wife Lisa struggled profoundly with her gut health and experienced debilitating stomach pain. So I focused my energy on learning everything I could about the human gut. Viome is on the cutting edge of this growing area of study with their at-home gut intelligence test. Just two to three weeks after sending in your sample, you can see your results on 20 integrative health tests that mea |
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