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Just to take one example. Now
we have this chat GPT and already students

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are using it to write their papers
and professors are using it to write their

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lectures. Right, so it's like
two machines talking to each other, you

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know. Or for example, you
know, there are these programs so you

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can speak into it and then I'll
translate it into Spanish or something like this.

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So but every step that we take
in that direction, are human capacities

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like reading, writing, and so
forth begin to sort of rust and disuse.

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Yeah, not only do they rust
and disuse, but at some point

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there'll be a kind of cannibal element. Once they reote open chat GBT and

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it starts to now continue to analyze
what's coming in terms of writing and in

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terms of it'll start to eat its
own children. Yeah, and it'll create

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a cannibalistic monster that will start to
devolve because it's going to be basically cycling

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back its own its own output.
This is Jonathan Pejel. Welcome to the

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Symbolic World. So hello everyone.
I am very excited to be back with

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Jacob Holland. He has been on
the podcast before. He is the provost

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of the University of Austin, and
he is an expert both on ancient thinking

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in terms of the ancient Greeks,
but also biblical thinking as well and rabbinical

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thinking. So this is going to
be a great conversation. We want to

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talk about the question of technology and
all the way leading up to the issues

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of AI and all of that.
So, Jacob, you're exactly the person

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I want to have this conversation with. Well, thanks, I feel the

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same way. So my big question, my first question for you is have

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you thought a bit about the different
narratives about technologies that we find both in

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ancient thinking, whether mythological or philosophical, and the that the Bible portrays the

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question of technology. Let's say,
yeah, I mean, you know,

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I think that a lot of the
issues that we're confronting today were already identified

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by both of those traditions. And
maybe one way to put it is,

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if we go back to the Platonic
texts, Plato makes a distinction between acquisition

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and production as sort of kinds of
sciences or arts, and philosophy is categorized

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under acquisition. And what does that
mean? The acquisition of knowledge, which

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is a kind of openness or receptivity
to the world, right so there's a

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kind of anthropology behind this. Human
beings are these souls that relate fundamentally to

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reality, and our job, if
you will, is to register those realities

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and to take them in. Now, production is I mean the Greek word

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is poisis, which could also be
translated poetry, but it just means production

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making. And the thing is that
there's no pure receptivity. I guess I

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would say if you're doing philosophy,
for example, and this is really the

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ancient sort of pistemology, you register, right what is there, and then

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you articulate it. There's no philosophy
without articulation. But that always has a

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productive dimension. You're using the tools
that you have generated, for example language,

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you're selecting which of those tools you're
going to employ. I mean,

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you could represent reality mathematically or poetically
or whatever, and so there's always this

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kind of productive element. You're adding
to what it is that you've taken in

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technology from the Greek perspective, and
I think this applies to the Bible as

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well. Is obviously productive because we're
making stuff, we're transforming nature, we're

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building, and the danger there is
that it can interpose itself between us in

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reality and that ultimately, if we
sort of follow the line of technological development

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far enough, and here I would
sort of flag AI, we might create

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a kind of virtual reality, that
is to say, a humanly produced reality

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that substitutes for the world, to
which this philosophical and I would say biblical

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anthropology suggests that we are fundamentally meant
to be open and to order ourselves.

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Mind. Yeah, I think that
that. So, you know, one

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of the things that I read even
in college, also because of post modernists,

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really is the Plato'sphedra where Socrates talks
about writing itself as having that problem,

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which is something that a lot of
modern people would be surprised because we

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we actually like beyond writing. It's
like whatever effects writing had on the civilization,

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and we're way beyond it. But
in some ways it was exactly that

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problem, which is that we as
humans are living spirits, right, we

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are breathing living spirits that manifests me, that take in meaning. And but

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there's a kind of organic dance to
that. Right whereas as soon as you

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fix something then it on the one
hand, it makes it more powerful,

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because right, you can send your
text out, you can send emails out.

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But on the other hand, it
does, in fact, it can

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in fact interpose itself the way you
said, it's a supplement, it's an

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it's an adding to language. And
then it can become a kind of opacity

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to what it is that you're that
you're saying. You know, if we're

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talking, you know, you and
I face to face and you don't understand

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what I'm saying, you know,
you can ask me and I can answer,

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and then we can have this kind
of back and forth where we're tuning

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in and we're tuning closer to what
we want. But if you read a

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text, that's what it is,
that's it, like, that's what you

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have and so so. On the
one hand, it makes it possible for

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me to access the thoughts of people
that I that I can't meet. But

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it also at the same time creates
that difficulty, which is that you know,

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it's like this, these fixed words
are my vision of what it is

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that's coming down to me. You
know, it's a means, let's say,

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But it can it can become something
of an idol, like because if

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you lose its connection to what it
originally is, then it then it somehow

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has a life of its own.
You could say. And it's interesting because

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a lot of the postmoditors that's actually
what they want to do. They want

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to like liberate the text from the
author in some weird way, like make

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it have a kind of life of
its own, where there is no there's

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no like thread that goes back to
the to the person, but rather it

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becomes almost something that you play with, you know, just that on at

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its own level. Yeah, I
think that's right. You know. The

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features is really interesting because I mean
there are these interesting kind of contradictions.

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So this is a written Platonic dialogue. Yeah, thank goodness, it's written

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because we have access to the thinking
of plat out. But the little story

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there is to Egyptians. One is
the pharaoh and one's a god, right

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talking, and one of them is
displaying the arts that he's produced and finally

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gets to right. And the objection
that the other registers is that this will

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not be a tool of memory.
That is to say, when writing is

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introduced, the idea is we're not
going to forget stuff because we've written it

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down. Increase memory, it'll increase
the is the is the argument of the

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of the god, and the god
is like a he's almost like a hephacedis

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figure. He's like a kind of
dark god of technology, yes, right

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version, yeah, exactly. Yeah. Oh, And I mean, as

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a side note, it's interesting that
this takes place in Egypt, because I

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would suggest that Egypt, with its
man god, it's Pharaoh, it's magicians

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who exercise some kind of TECHNI right, in causing little miracle, a little

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you know, strange like unnatural events
to occur, and so forth. It's

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enormously impressive technological achievements, by which
I mean, for example, the Pyramids,

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or I mean I was in Egypt
a number of years ago, and

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I have to say I've never seen
more exquisite jewelry. I mean just the

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you know, and when you take
sort of the sarcophag guy and all these

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things. But what's interesting is so
Egypt devoted tremendous social resources to the production

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of these kinds of items and obelisks
and huge things like this. What were

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they for? Primarily they were to
honor and be stuffed in the tombs of

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dead man gods. Okay, I
should say incidentally that Egypt was also a

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kind of symbol in the ancient world. I mean, Plato associates it with

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death, with a kind of desiccation
lack of life. Okay, And I

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would want to connect that as a
long discourse perhaps, but with technology as

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a kind of substitute. Okay.
So anyway, the God points out this

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will actually be a tool of forgetfulness, and the suggestion is and what he

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means by there is is, or
let me put another way, it will

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suppress recollection in a philosophical sense,
which I would take to mean something like

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a living openness to the fundamental things
that need metaphysically, religiously and so forth

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to be remembered by us, to
be taken into our souls. So you're

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absolutely right writing that serves is a
kind of mediation, right. And obviously

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today where young people and maybe not
even that young people have sort of learned

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not to answer the phone but to
use text and so forth, they're all

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kinds of further layers of mediation between
human beings. So Socrates favored this face

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to face discussion like we're having now, And I do think that, you

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know, if we look at again
artificial intelligence, just consider the levels of

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mediation that are involved in when I
sort of look at my smartphone or something

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like that, or when I'm relating
to a glowing electronic screen. What's happening

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there. Human beings are observing the
world, they are representing it in language

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or mathematics or something. They're then
encoding it into data zeros and ones,

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and then that is being presented to
us. Right, So there's a kind

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of I mean, we've taken writing
and kind of amplify I put it on

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steroids, if you will. So
I think this is a really important issue,

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definitely, And all the imagery that
happens in Fedris is related to this,

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and it's actually very similar to the
one that you find in the Bible,

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that the way that Egypt is represented
also in this text, with all

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of the other symbolisms that are brought
about in Fedris, it's similar to the

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way Egypt is represented in scripture.
Because Fedris and Socrates leave the city.

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They cross they leave their city and
they cross a river. You know,

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it's like when you cross a river, you know what that means, Like

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you're either going out into the wilderness
or you're coming into the into into your

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home, you could say. So
they cross a river, and then there

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are all these weird things that Socrates
does, like sometimes he talks, he

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covers his face and talks through a
veil, and there's all these these kinds

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of weird symbolic things that Socrates is
doing. And it seems to manifest what

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I've talked about quite a bit in
Scripture, which is the garments of skin.

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I think that the imagery of the
garments of skin in Scripture is very

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much akin to what is happening in
this idea of the supplement that Plato is

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trying to help us see, which
is the garments of skin. On the

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one hand, what they do is
that they increase your capacity to live in

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a world that's hostile to you,
right, But that's what they do.

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But at the same time, they
are made out of death, first of

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all, and they are also a
weakening of you at the same time,

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because you're always putting yourself in more
danger as you're moving out. So that's

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what and that seems to be what
technology does in general, and has to

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do with recollection as well. So
think about think about the example I'd love

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to use all the time is fire
making. So my ancestors could spend a

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lot of energy. They knew how
to make fire, but it would take

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forever, and they would use a
string and a bow or whatever they would

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use, and they could just kind
of and even that they needed the string

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in the bow, but they could
they could make fire. It's like I

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don't have to think about that.
I just have to flick a lighter.

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I have fire, So I'm a
million times more powerful than my ancestors.

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But if I don't have that lighter, I'm going to dive cold in the

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forest pretty much. And so it's
like think of technology if you think of

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technology that way, which is that
we've increased our power to the extent that

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we can move out and go into
space. And you know, I can

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live here in Quebec where there's like
eight months of winter, so it makes

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me more powerful, but it also
makes me closer, brings me closer to

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death, and makes me more fragile
at the same time. And that seems

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to be what technology itself does,
especially writing, and especially what we could

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call now information technology, which is
that I know I have access to more

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information than all my ancestors together,
but I don't have to hold it inside

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me in any way, so I
can pretend to be smart and be a

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complete idiot or not a total idiot, but I'm far less integrated than you

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know, the ancients would have been. But I also have all this access,

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so it can it can. It's
that duality of of of power and

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weakness, or or like using death
against death maybe is the best way to

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describe it. Yeah, it strikes
me that there there's some sort of optimal

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relationship between man, nature and technology. I mean, you know, you're

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absolutely right. So Adam and Eve
sin God prepares them close out of animal

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skins. Obviously, this then is
a fundamental divorce between human beings and these

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animals with whom they communed in the
garden, and also from God because they

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use it when they first put on
coverings. It's to hide themselves from God,

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right, So they hide themselves from
God, and then they buffer themselves

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from the animal, and they create
this like buffer between them and between God

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and the animal. They're like isolated
in the world, or amenated is the

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best way to word to use.
Maybe. So one of the things that

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left into my mind when you were
speaking was you've all Harari's Sapiens. In

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the beginning of that book, he
makes a rather strong case. I think

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that the hunter gathering age of our
existence was in some ways maybe the most

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intellectually stimulating and kind of rich compared
to for example, you know, I'm

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an accountant and I'm looking at a
computer screen all day. Why is that?

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Because individuals had to possess a range
of technical skills. Right, You've

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got to be able to kill animals, You've got to be able to skin

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them. You have to be able
to sow these garments. You have to

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be able to make fire. You've
got you know, you have to be

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able to identify plants, to pick
things, and to sort of respond to

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the clusive nature. Now they obviously
live much closer to nature. The thing

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about nature is that it's hostile.
I mean, we know this from the

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Bible, we know this from the
Greeks. It's not simply hostile, right,

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It's also beautiful and splendid and nurturing
and so forth. But we have

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to deal with the hostility element.
In fact, I would actually if you

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sort of ask me, like,
what's work, I would category work as

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sorting chaos, right, just kind
of getting sort of figuring things out so

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you can so you can survive.
Yeah, work is a good though in

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scripture too, it's weird because it's
like it's a consequence of the fall but

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it ends up being a way to
be saved from the fall, both personally

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in terms of your own soul,
but then also just because now you do

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have to work the earth to make
things grow, but right, that's also

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how you survive. Yeah, so
obviously we're not hunter gatherers. We've advanced.

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You know, it's interesting because people
still talk about progress, you know,

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and so what is progress? Well, progress is also regress, right,

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and now we rely on all sorts
of things that we have no idea

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how they work. I mean,
this is something Ortega, you guys said,

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writes about in the Revolt of the
Masses. It's something Freud writes about

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in Civilization and its discontents as well. He speaks about a technological man as

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a kind of prosthetic god. We
put out all our stuff and where you

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might think of like a you know
in the anime, were enhanced with an

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exoskeletons fit and stuff like this,
and technology obviously, you know, brings

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discontents. But what's interesting then is
that we are unable to reproduce the conditions

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of our own existence. In other
words, no single person can do that.

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I think your named rosenstock Husi once
said that A citizen is a person

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who, if need be, can
refound civilization. In the modern world.

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There aren't any citizens by that definition, if you see what I mean.

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I mean, well, there might
be citizens in the sense that there could

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be people with enough practical wisdom and
so forth to sort of refound political life.

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But if we're talking about civilization as
we now depend on it and we're

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utterly dependent, you're right, that
becomes very difficult. One last thing I

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would say here is that every technological
advance subtracts, and this is obviously implicit

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in what you were saying from our
own capabilities. I'm going to wave at

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artificial intelligence again, because just to
take one example, Okay, now we

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have this chat GPT, and already
students are using it to write their papers

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and professors are using it to write
their lectures. Right, so it's like

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two machines talking to each other,
you know. Okay, so why do

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I need or or for example,
you know, there are these programs so

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you can speak into it and then
I'll translate it into Spanish or something like

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this. So but every step that
we take in that direction are human capacities

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like reading, writing, and so
forth begin to sort of rust and disuse.

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Yeah, not only do they rust
and disuse, but at some point

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there'll be a kind of cannibal element
to the technology, because you know,

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chat GPT. Once they we owe
to open CHADGPT and it starts to now

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continue to analyze what's coming in terms
of writing and in terms of it'll start

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to eat its own children. Yeah, and it'll create a cannibalistic, cannibalist

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monster that will start to devolve because
it's going to be basically cycling back its

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own its own output. And so
it's like that, I don't see how

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they're going to solve that problem in
the in the long term because right,

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and but even the fact that we
know that it'll do that is an image

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of what it's also doing to us, which is ultimately a kind of diminishing

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of the human spirit as it as
it increases in power. Yes, look,

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this is this is already happening.
I mean, weirdly, Jonathan,

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I took some solace from the fact
that chat GPT is cannibalizing itself in a

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way. So just to be clear, right, what does chat GPT do.

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Well, it goes out there and
it and it kind of looks at

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all this data right goes to the
internet, right, which is not a

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particularly intelligent pool on the average.
I mean, you just you know,

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which is incidentally why chat GPT makes
stuff up because it obviously it sort of

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can't sort out what's true or what's
false, and so it kind of looks

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at things and makes these what things
are logical connections, but so that if

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you can just calculate some antic distance, right, I mean, there was

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there was a a professor told me
about a paper he'd gotten on Romeo and

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Juliet, you know, and it
was like Romeo, you know, and

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the calculates and the montaguess are worth
and then Julia catches a cab and she

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goes to you know, and so
I mean, because this is right.

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So so you kind of take this
low pool and you scoop it all up

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and you connect these things and you
spit something out and then that becomes part

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of the larger pool, which the
next chat GPT it, you know,

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looks at and so it's sort of
like consuming your own waist. Now,

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actually they cut they cut Jetchiepete off
from they stopped training it a few years

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ago. Oh, they've actually cut
it. It's only within itself, but

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they can't do that forever. Like
I know, they probably did it because

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they know the problem that they're setting
up in the world. But at some

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point they're going to have to reopen
it because they can't if they want chad

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GBT to keep up with what's happening, they'll have to reopen it so that

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it goes back and starts to to
to re calculate. So so I think

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they're maybe they're looking for a solution
for it, but they have, at

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least for now, they have cut
it off, which which is which is

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something Being hadn't done for a while. And that's why Being was like a

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psycho like Being would would just go
into psycho mode and just become like you're

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you're like your your your stalking ex
girlfriend or you know, turned into you

279
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know, like the the like passive
aggressive or whatever. Like they were all

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at all these personality default because it
was literally training on the internet. So

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that's that's really interesting. But let's
go back to your cannibalization thing. Uh,

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it sort of reminds me of,
you know, a pagan god.

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I mean, I think maybe in
an earlier discussion, we I observed that

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the biblical god feeds us right,
man in the wilderness or Christ you know,

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the Communion and so forth. But
the pagan gods really one could argue,

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and I won't do it right now, they sort of dying on human

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beings. I mean, you know, think of like the the Athena and

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these various gods you know at Troy
sort of sitting like vultures compared to vultures,

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and they're just so hungry to consume
the bad, the blood and so

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forth. Now what that means is
that again human beings are relating only to

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themselves, but now through the mediation
of this artificial intelligence, which is why,

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incidentally, I read somewhere that like
thousands of writers were suing open AI

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because it was training its language on
proprietarial works by these authors, which you've

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got to do because the movement,
like, if you just keep training on

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you know, the Internet, you're
going to get your start at a low

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point and you're just kind of going
to decline. It's going to be sort

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of mediocrity. But what that means
is it needs to cannibalize sort of living

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thinking, right, it needs to
like it needs these humans generating new stuff.

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And this is the large problem with
our society. I mean, even

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before these these kinds of artificial intelligence
advances, Hollywood was cannibalizing itself. Right,

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you know, I don't know such
and such iteration seven, right,

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00:22:12,519 --> 00:22:18,880
you know exact or something. But
think here, think, let me throw

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something out for you and see what
you think about this. So one of

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the so if you look at the
Matrix movie, so you have a situation

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where the matrix is this artificial intelligence
and it's feeding off of our energy.

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Right, So basically we're batteries,
but what they mean by batteries is something

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like the electricity we produce. There's
something a little naive about that. The

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the way that the AI actually works
now is it's it's actually farming intelligence from

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humans. So AI isn't intelligent.
But what it does is that we provide

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quality. We provide quality, We
provide judgment to the AI. So the

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way they actually train the I,
right, is that the I generates a

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bunch of junk, and then there
are people, actual people who have to

313
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look at that junk and say yes, no, yes, no, good

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bad, good bad. They'll use
like the capshas for example, you know,

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like when you're when you're answering a
Capsha and you're you're you're like telling

316
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it where the lights are. You're
you're training AI when you're doing that,

317
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because AI doesn't know the difference between
a traffic light and something else. But

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if you've got a million people telling
telling the AI, oh, that's the

319
00:23:25,400 --> 00:23:27,279
traffic light, that's the traffic light. That's the traffic light, then you're

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then the humans. You're literally farming
intelligence from humans. And so this weird

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thing where humans become like so now
you have these low paid you know,

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uh, farms of people that are
like living in horrible like offices, and

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all they do all day is tell
the AI, like what's even in terms

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of social media and stuff, like
what's good, what's bad? So you

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know, that's all you do even
for like the social media companies too,

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Like you have people all day all
they do is watch horrible content, you

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know, like and then all they
do is is rated and say this is

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bad, this is bad, this
is bad, so that Facebook can now

329
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catch it automatically. Right, so
you actually have the idea of this like

330
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monster, right, like this monster
that is eating our attention, our intelligence

331
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and like subjugating us to it.
But really, like, how can I

332
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say this swallowing our soul, like
actually swallowing our soul, and it's like

333
00:24:23,640 --> 00:24:29,119
it's happening in front of us.
That's that's quite amazing. And this brings

334
00:24:29,200 --> 00:24:33,000
up another thing, which is,
how does a child learn what a cat

335
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is? Okay, it encounters a
cat and then someone says, that's a

336
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cat, and it takes a couple
of iterations of this. All right,

337
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why can't AI do it? Because
human beings have what the ancients called intuition.

338
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What's intuition. Intuition is direct,
unmediated access to reality. Now let

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me stop. I can imagine the
skeptic listening to saying, oh wait a

340
00:24:56,000 --> 00:25:00,559
second, of course it's mediated,
right, your brain, opt nerves.

341
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This whole thing is extremely complicated.
We can struct, but let us say,

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okay, fine, it's all relative
on the scale of relativity. This

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is the most direct, unmediated thing, which is why, frankly, we

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have a critique of writing in Plato's
Fiedris, because again, writing is this

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00:25:18,319 --> 00:25:22,799
mediation, and what needs to be
preserved is this capability of immediate intuition.

346
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Aristotle develops this and talks about noisis, which is an intellectual intuition, right,

347
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yeah, in the in the Orthodox
tradition, the news and the idea

348
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of nuetic capacity is the highest form
of knowledge. Right, It's more than

349
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knowledge in the sense of the way
that we think of thinking or whatever.

350
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It is direct grasping and in the
Orthodox kind of mystical theology, the news

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is the capacity we have to also
be united with God, because it's the

352
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capacity we have to have first of
all direct grasping of the things around us.

353
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But then ultimately it's that which also
makes us possible to like, you

354
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know, enter into the embrace of
God, because it's a it's a type

355
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of knowledge that isn't just intellectual,
it's it really is like the fullness of

356
00:26:07,039 --> 00:26:14,359
your being, you know, joining
with something. Yes, and look it's

357
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not simply knowledge of God, but
knowledge of human beings. I mean,

358
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we don't do this in English,
but you know we've got say in German,

359
00:26:22,160 --> 00:26:25,880
someone might say, uh ken in
zy Jonathan pleasure, which means are

360
00:26:25,920 --> 00:26:30,839
you familiar with Jonathan? No one
would say viscen z Jonathan pleasure, which

361
00:26:30,880 --> 00:26:36,680
means do I have epistemic knowledge?
Do I have a scientific comprehension of Jonathan?

362
00:26:37,279 --> 00:26:41,920
U? Now, I would argue
that anything that poses as a scientific

363
00:26:41,960 --> 00:26:48,240
comprehension of Jonathan is not the best
kind of knowledge of Jonathan. So if

364
00:26:48,279 --> 00:26:49,559
I say, oh, he's a
good guy, or he's smart or something

365
00:26:49,599 --> 00:26:55,519
like this, this is a response
that is that that I have that has

366
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been elicited from me by my immediate
face to face presence with you. And

367
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human beings have a kind of inner
infinity like God, and that's something that

368
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we cognize sort of directly. So, but going back to AI and this

369
00:27:15,920 --> 00:27:21,839
cannibalistic stuff, one needs to raise
the question of what do we mean by

370
00:27:22,000 --> 00:27:27,640
intelligence. AI has intelligence in a
very specific sense. It's a kind of

371
00:27:27,720 --> 00:27:33,119
discursive intelligence. It goes across data
and it arranges it and moves it around.

372
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It lacks this intuition. So when
we relate to AI generated products,

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we are relating to something that has
lost its connection in some base or never

374
00:27:45,000 --> 00:27:51,160
had a connection, never had a
derivative it's derivative information necessary, which is

375
00:27:51,200 --> 00:27:56,720
why you know, there's a kind
of fundamental stupidity. You're you're rather harrowing

376
00:27:56,799 --> 00:28:00,559
picture of people sitting in us I
imagine aind of you know, windowless room

377
00:28:02,200 --> 00:28:07,559
typing in like cat cat cat cat, or suggests that you know like this,

378
00:28:07,200 --> 00:28:12,480
like what does it mean that that
is the foundation of artificial intelligence.

379
00:28:14,799 --> 00:28:18,759
I had a professor who very cleverly
said, I don't know why everyone's interested

380
00:28:18,759 --> 00:28:22,440
in artificial intelligence. I'm looking for
the real thing, right, real intelligence

381
00:28:22,519 --> 00:28:26,559
that's hard to have to find in
the world already. Yeah, exactly,

382
00:28:26,599 --> 00:28:30,440
So there's a kind of unmooring.
And again, if we go back to

383
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what I said at the beginning of
our discussion, that this kind of Biblical

384
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and Greek anthropology is the soul is
open to reality, both both the chaos

385
00:28:40,319 --> 00:28:45,160
and reality and the and the kind
of moral and intellectual measures, the you

386
00:28:45,200 --> 00:28:51,880
know, transcendent eternal things. If
that's the case, then relating to AI

387
00:28:52,079 --> 00:28:56,160
is a is a kind of shutting
down of that, because we don't even

388
00:28:56,240 --> 00:29:02,640
have like AI simply lacks any fundamental
connection or a direct connection with reality.

389
00:29:02,799 --> 00:29:06,400
Yeah, and I think that this
is this is a good place to talk

390
00:29:06,440 --> 00:29:11,160
about how there's a really a good
a good way to understand AI today is

391
00:29:11,200 --> 00:29:15,839
to understand the manner in which idolatry
was kind of understood also in scripture,

392
00:29:15,880 --> 00:29:18,440
for example. So if you want
to take the idea of technification, because

393
00:29:18,440 --> 00:29:22,440
you talked about like what's the right
balance of technology, like how can technology

394
00:29:22,440 --> 00:29:27,000
serve its proper purpose? So you
have two images in the Bible. They're

395
00:29:27,000 --> 00:29:30,599
close to each other because you know
they're in the same story, which is,

396
00:29:30,640 --> 00:29:33,920
on the one hand, you have
the golden Calf, which Aaron builds

397
00:29:33,960 --> 00:29:42,039
instead of the revelation, and people
end up worshiping the calf itself. You

398
00:29:42,079 --> 00:29:45,799
know, it's in worshiping the work
of their hands, you could say.

399
00:29:45,359 --> 00:29:48,759
And then the other one is the
revelation of the Tabernacle, which is a

400
00:29:48,799 --> 00:29:53,160
technical thing. Like the Tabernacle is
like a little city. It is civilis

401
00:29:53,319 --> 00:29:57,519
it is like a microcosmal civilization.
It's a microcosm of technicality. There are

402
00:29:57,519 --> 00:30:00,920
the use of metals of gold,
silver, and a bronze, you know,

403
00:30:02,160 --> 00:30:04,440
in a in a in a in
a hierarchy. There's this. There's

404
00:30:04,480 --> 00:30:10,400
a whole cosmic image in the Tabernacle
and later in the Temple, and that

405
00:30:10,400 --> 00:30:15,039
that seems to be the highest image
of what technology can be. Is an

406
00:30:15,160 --> 00:30:22,759
ordered, ordered supplementarity, but directed
towards the transcendence, directed towards the transcendent

407
00:30:22,839 --> 00:30:26,759
and not captured within its the fascination
with itself, uh, you know,

408
00:30:26,759 --> 00:30:33,160
and a kind of cannibalistic move where
you The fascination of the technical itself becomes

409
00:30:33,240 --> 00:30:38,480
the the or the capacity for power
itself becomes the motor which makes us engage

410
00:30:38,519 --> 00:30:44,759
with it. Yeah, this is
so a bunch of ideas popped into my

411
00:30:44,799 --> 00:30:49,119
head. Is as you were just
speaking. So the gold that made the

412
00:30:49,119 --> 00:30:55,960
Golden Calf, as you know,
was was jeweler's earrings and things like this

413
00:30:56,160 --> 00:31:03,039
taken from Egypt. Now it was
in ended for the adornment of the tabernacle.

414
00:31:03,559 --> 00:31:06,960
What's really interesting there, and this
just occurred to me, is that

415
00:31:06,960 --> 00:31:14,559
that story could be interpreted as an
answer to the question how do we reorient

416
00:31:14,720 --> 00:31:19,839
technology, how do we take it
in its really monstrous kind of exemplification in

417
00:31:19,920 --> 00:31:25,799
Egypt and reoriented toward I mean,
this is obviously something that probably has occurred

418
00:31:25,799 --> 00:31:29,400
to you. But so let's talk
about the Golden Camp for a minute.

419
00:31:30,079 --> 00:31:33,039
So Moses is up there on the
mountain communing with God. He doesn't come

420
00:31:33,079 --> 00:31:37,200
back. The Israelites say to Aaron, you know, the guy's not coming

421
00:31:37,240 --> 00:31:42,559
back. Make us this God.
And there's this weird ventriloquism that goes on

422
00:31:42,599 --> 00:31:48,039
because once Aaron makes the calf,
which is definitely a technical thing, right,

423
00:31:48,079 --> 00:31:49,839
he has to shape it and all
this kind of stuff. The Israelites

424
00:31:49,880 --> 00:31:52,640
say, this is the Lord,
your God, who took you out of

425
00:31:52,680 --> 00:31:56,400
the land of Egypt. So they
plagiarize God. There's there's another act of

426
00:31:56,400 --> 00:32:00,920
cannibalism, by the way, like
in some sensor know if that's exactly right?

427
00:32:00,960 --> 00:32:02,839
But and what is the what is
the calf? Well, there's a

428
00:32:02,880 --> 00:32:08,599
weird connection between the calf and what's
going on today? All right, what

429
00:32:09,240 --> 00:32:15,519
are like what why do say Americans
love? You know, digital stuff?

430
00:32:15,839 --> 00:32:19,480
Right? Well, I mean,
if you ask anybody, you know,

431
00:32:19,759 --> 00:32:24,119
what's the highest traffic on the internet? Porn? Right? Technology, by

432
00:32:24,160 --> 00:32:29,680
the way, will generate better and
better sex robots and things like this.

433
00:32:31,119 --> 00:32:36,799
The golden calf was I mean,
after they made the calf, this kind

434
00:32:36,799 --> 00:32:42,160
of well somehow it stimulated this back
an alien celebration the next day. So

435
00:32:42,359 --> 00:32:46,799
like the calf is connected with the
unleashing of these desires, which no doubt

436
00:32:46,839 --> 00:32:50,680
we're suppressed in eachypt. These people
were slaves, but here they are in

437
00:32:50,680 --> 00:32:52,839
the desert and they're like, the
master's gone. We compelled this guy to

438
00:32:52,880 --> 00:32:57,759
make the calf. Now we're going
to do our thing right, because now

439
00:32:57,759 --> 00:33:00,559
we're going to enjoy all those things
that we were never able to enjoy in

440
00:33:00,599 --> 00:33:06,759
our enslaved condition, and so we
got that the tabernacle. I think it's

441
00:33:06,799 --> 00:33:13,480
really interesting because what's happening there is
to try to present in an architectural space

442
00:33:14,519 --> 00:33:16,240
the possibility for the encounter with the
infinite. Right, so you've got this

443
00:33:16,319 --> 00:33:22,319
finite construction, and this is obviously
how icons work and so forth. How

444
00:33:22,319 --> 00:33:25,920
do you solve this problem? You
know? But it's a very interesting contrast

445
00:33:25,960 --> 00:33:34,240
because there is a proper place for
gold and silver and adornments and these technical

446
00:33:34,279 --> 00:33:39,279
products. Yeah, so I think
your insight is very is very strong.

447
00:33:39,640 --> 00:33:43,720
You know, there is a so
you could say, so think about like

448
00:33:44,119 --> 00:33:49,440
even in the garments of skin situation, it's very interesting because God gives Adam

449
00:33:49,440 --> 00:33:51,559
and Eve these garments of skin,
which, by the way, many,

450
00:33:51,599 --> 00:33:53,920
at least in the Orthodot tradition,
and I'm pretty sure in some Rabbidical traditions

451
00:33:53,920 --> 00:33:58,440
as well, it's kind of like
it's basically your biological body. It's like

452
00:33:58,720 --> 00:34:01,079
it's your biological body of death,
right, not that Adam and Eve didn't

453
00:34:01,119 --> 00:34:06,079
have bodies before the fall, but
that their bodies were more subtle. You

454
00:34:06,079 --> 00:34:07,840
could say, and that these bodies
of death that we're in, you know

455
00:34:07,880 --> 00:34:10,480
that you eat and then you excrete
and all of this and and all the

456
00:34:12,079 --> 00:34:15,320
desires that come with it, they're
they're related to the garments of skin,

457
00:34:15,880 --> 00:34:19,719
and so there's a relationship. And
what it does, it's an increase in

458
00:34:19,800 --> 00:34:22,880
power, right, body is an
increase in power, just like a guy

459
00:34:22,880 --> 00:34:25,920
who is buff and has big muscles
has more power. More you have body,

460
00:34:27,159 --> 00:34:30,000
more you have power. And so
it's it's an extension of that logic,

461
00:34:30,519 --> 00:34:36,000
which is that if I add more
body, I add more power.

462
00:34:36,039 --> 00:34:38,320
If I have if I'm strong,
or if I if I have a mecha

463
00:34:38,440 --> 00:34:43,239
suit on top, like you said, then that mecha suit makes me more

464
00:34:43,320 --> 00:34:49,800
powerful. But there's a connection between
that and the animality itself, right,

465
00:34:49,960 --> 00:34:52,920
a fall into animality, you could
say, which is also an abandonment to

466
00:34:53,000 --> 00:34:58,840
our desires and to to the to
the more you know, appetite aspect of

467
00:34:58,920 --> 00:35:00,719
who we are, and so like, if you think about it, it

468
00:35:00,719 --> 00:35:04,719
all kind of comes together. So
we tend to oppose, for example,

469
00:35:05,159 --> 00:35:07,800
the world of technology and the world
of animality because one is artificial, one

470
00:35:07,880 --> 00:35:12,360
is natural. But if you understand
it as this idea of increase in body.

471
00:35:12,800 --> 00:35:15,599
Then the idea of a metallic calf, right, a metallic animal,

472
00:35:15,920 --> 00:35:20,920
which is, you know, God
told Adam to name the animals, and

473
00:35:20,960 --> 00:35:22,199
now all of a sudden they take
the animal and they put it up as

474
00:35:22,199 --> 00:35:27,039
a god. They're basically doing the
opposite of what God told Adam to be,

475
00:35:27,840 --> 00:35:30,199
which is to be on top of
the animal that name them. And

476
00:35:30,199 --> 00:35:34,480
now they become subject to it,
subject to the body, subject to these

477
00:35:34,559 --> 00:35:37,159
kind of licentious desires, and so
all of this stuff kind of goes together.

478
00:35:37,519 --> 00:35:42,239
You know, in the Book of
Revelation, there's this image of the

479
00:35:42,320 --> 00:35:45,119
whore and the beast, right,
so there's a horse sitting on a beast,

480
00:35:45,719 --> 00:35:50,119
and the beast is civilization. You
know, there are different ways to

481
00:35:50,159 --> 00:35:52,760
understand that in the text, because
the beasts are related to the Book of

482
00:35:52,840 --> 00:35:57,360
Daniel and the perception of the different
civilizations that like, you know, the

483
00:35:57,360 --> 00:36:01,280
different animals, and so it's like
these two things go together, right.

484
00:36:01,480 --> 00:36:08,159
The technification and increase in power leads
to licentiousness and leads to us being having

485
00:36:08,480 --> 00:36:13,400
more. And you can think about
it just like just very practically, which

486
00:36:13,440 --> 00:36:15,320
is that if you let's say you
have a little let's say you have a

487
00:36:15,320 --> 00:36:20,079
little fault in yourself, right you
I don't know you you look at women

488
00:36:20,199 --> 00:36:22,760
or whatever. You have a little
thing. Then now I'm gonna get And

489
00:36:22,159 --> 00:36:24,920
that's kind of there. You're you're
trying to manage it, but you're struggling.

490
00:36:25,039 --> 00:36:29,480
And and I'll give you a million
dollars. Right, It's like,

491
00:36:29,639 --> 00:36:34,480
all of a sudden, your increase
in power becomes a door for whatever that

492
00:36:34,559 --> 00:36:39,280
little thing in you was to increase. And so technology does that, does

493
00:36:39,280 --> 00:36:45,079
that on steroids, especially something like
information technology, right, which is intelligent

494
00:36:45,199 --> 00:36:50,440
technology. So the relationship between Internet
and porn or Internet and all these things,

495
00:36:50,519 --> 00:36:55,159
this isn't something which is completely unavoidable, like you couldn't have it anyway

496
00:36:55,280 --> 00:37:00,920
else, or at least not easily. You know, it's not not accidental

497
00:37:00,000 --> 00:37:04,519
that these things develop the way they
did, just as it's not accidental that

498
00:37:04,599 --> 00:37:08,679
they developed towards porn and the military. It's like increase in power, increase

499
00:37:08,719 --> 00:37:13,679
in desire, increase in desire to
dominate, to consume. All these things

500
00:37:13,719 --> 00:37:20,440
are related to what technology is and
technology does. Yeah, that's very interesting.

501
00:37:20,519 --> 00:37:22,400
You know. One way to think
about these things, or at least

502
00:37:22,480 --> 00:37:25,960
one way that I think about them
is in terms of the categories of work

503
00:37:27,000 --> 00:37:31,840
and leisure. So human beings relate
to reality. Work is a kind of

504
00:37:31,880 --> 00:37:37,519
sorting of chaos. What's the point
of work? Well, let's go back

505
00:37:37,519 --> 00:37:40,400
to the Greeks, so Aristotle says, he's critiquing the Spartans. War is

506
00:37:40,440 --> 00:37:45,559
for the sake of peace, and
in peace we have business and we have

507
00:37:45,679 --> 00:37:50,880
leisure. Business is for the sake
of leisure. Now we need a sort

508
00:37:50,920 --> 00:37:54,719
of thick conception of leisure. So
I think here are productive conceptions of leisure.

509
00:37:55,440 --> 00:38:00,000
For Aristotle, what's leisure for?
He critiques the Greek so they said,

510
00:38:00,079 --> 00:38:02,920
they drink and they tell myths and
stuff. Although I think he's underestimating

511
00:38:02,920 --> 00:38:07,440
the importance of mythsdown and then the
symbolic richness and so forth. But what's

512
00:38:07,519 --> 00:38:15,800
leisure for? From the Biblical perspective, Let's take the Jews Sabbath Sabbath and

513
00:38:15,840 --> 00:38:19,719
what is that? That's an opening
again to the highest things. This is

514
00:38:19,719 --> 00:38:23,360
connected right with someone like Joseph Peeper, who, incidentally, you know,

515
00:38:23,400 --> 00:38:27,000
I mean, he has got this
wonderful book on leisure of the basis of

516
00:38:27,039 --> 00:38:30,320
culture, and he sees leisure as
a kind of plugging into the life giving

517
00:38:30,400 --> 00:38:37,559
forces of the divine of nature and
so forth. What's happened? So why

518
00:38:37,559 --> 00:38:42,639
do I mention leisure? Now I'm
thinking of AI again? Two things?

519
00:38:43,199 --> 00:38:46,199
Where can leisure have become confused?
So you were talking about the capture stuff,

520
00:38:46,280 --> 00:38:52,679
right, you're actually working for AI
when you're doing capture. But why

521
00:38:52,719 --> 00:38:57,039
are you entering capture? Because you
want to get to the good stuff,

522
00:38:57,079 --> 00:39:01,159
because you want entertainment. Or every
time I log into this or I'm like,

523
00:39:01,159 --> 00:39:04,400
I'm gonna have fun, I watch
this TikTok or something, they're getting

524
00:39:04,400 --> 00:39:08,199
information about you. So you're actually
working, but you're working for somebody else

525
00:39:08,239 --> 00:39:13,880
you don't even know it, but
you're enjoying leisure. What happens with leisure?

526
00:39:14,239 --> 00:39:16,360
Well, this is a very serious
problem. I mentioned Joseph Peeper.

527
00:39:16,920 --> 00:39:21,039
He's writing he gives us talk on
leisure The Basis of Culture, and another

528
00:39:21,039 --> 00:39:23,199
one called the Philosophical Act. It's
nineteen forty seven, forty eight, after

529
00:39:23,360 --> 00:39:28,920
World War Two. Europe is being
rebuilt. The emphasis in education is on

530
00:39:29,559 --> 00:39:31,440
you've got to have useful knowledge.
Right, it's all for work, and

531
00:39:31,679 --> 00:39:37,039
Peeper is worried about a world of
total work where we don't have exposure to

532
00:39:37,119 --> 00:39:42,719
leisure. Another person who're worried about
leisure is John Maynard Kaines, who wrote

533
00:39:43,239 --> 00:39:47,360
an article in the early thirties called
Economic Possibilities for Our Grandchildren and Kines this

534
00:39:47,440 --> 00:39:51,360
is a very important Kines said,
this is the beginning of the depression.

535
00:39:51,360 --> 00:39:54,000
And he says, basically, I'm
obviously paraphrasing. Look, readers, you're

536
00:39:54,039 --> 00:39:59,559
not gonna believe this, but here's
the good news. In one hundred years,

537
00:39:59,639 --> 00:40:04,159
we won't need to work, okay, because our productive capacities will increase

538
00:40:04,199 --> 00:40:07,039
and so forth. And then we're
going to confront the greatest problem in human

539
00:40:07,079 --> 00:40:10,000
history. What do we do with
our leisure? And the reason that's a

540
00:40:10,039 --> 00:40:15,760
great problem is we don't educate people
for leisure. Go back to Aristotle.

541
00:40:15,760 --> 00:40:17,159
He was critiquing the spartans. They
don't know how to be at leisure.

542
00:40:17,159 --> 00:40:22,079
All they know is how to win
wars. Yeah, so what happens with

543
00:40:22,119 --> 00:40:24,760
our leisure? Well, in leisure
you you know, I have a statement

544
00:40:24,760 --> 00:40:30,079
around here somewhere of the some the
world development organizations says something like AI is

545
00:40:30,079 --> 00:40:34,079
going to be awesome. It's going
to liberate all these human capacities. We're

546
00:40:34,079 --> 00:40:35,960
going to be at leisure because's going
to put all these people up, we

547
00:40:35,960 --> 00:40:39,159
won't have to work, right,
and you know, we're going to develop

548
00:40:39,199 --> 00:40:42,400
ourselves. We're going to paint,
we're going to have you know, learn

549
00:40:42,519 --> 00:40:45,679
languages and all this stuff. Well
much more likely, you know, you're

550
00:40:45,679 --> 00:40:50,760
going to have sexual robot. That's
right, most likely. So there's this

551
00:40:50,920 --> 00:40:53,599
kind of you know, we this
is why I think, I mean one

552
00:40:53,599 --> 00:40:58,440
reason why this is just profoundly destabilizing. But just to go back to your

553
00:40:58,440 --> 00:41:01,960
point, Okay, so we we
we our bodies are bigger, we have

554
00:41:02,079 --> 00:41:09,199
more control. It's a disordering because
the point of technology was to do the

555
00:41:09,239 --> 00:41:15,360
work part, and now the technology
is like, oh, we're going to

556
00:41:15,440 --> 00:41:20,000
give you the leisure stuff, but
you haven't ordered, like you've lost the

557
00:41:20,199 --> 00:41:23,199
order in some way. Yeah,
so that all oh man, that image

558
00:41:23,239 --> 00:41:27,880
is like, I think your insight
is perfect. It helps me understand even

559
00:41:27,920 --> 00:41:30,599
more like the idea of the hore
and the beast as these two radicals.

560
00:41:30,639 --> 00:41:35,760
Right, it's like this kind of
this work and this leisure that is that

561
00:41:35,920 --> 00:41:38,840
is licentious, licentious and loss in
terms of purpose, right, it's just

562
00:41:38,920 --> 00:41:43,960
kind of wasteful, and that there
is something about the days of the week

563
00:41:44,000 --> 00:41:47,840
in Sabbath, that the structural creation
itself, which are the proper relationship of

564
00:41:47,880 --> 00:41:52,119
all these things to all these things. So it's like, in some ways

565
00:41:52,119 --> 00:41:57,039
you could say the whole purpose of
the week is to lead to this moment

566
00:41:57,079 --> 00:42:01,679
of rest, like rest in God. So it properly aligns things where it's

567
00:42:01,719 --> 00:42:06,400
like the work is there towards so
you can imagine like a ritual, like

568
00:42:06,719 --> 00:42:09,480
a ritual in the in the tabernacle
or liturgy in church. Right, so

569
00:42:09,519 --> 00:42:15,440
it's like we're we're doing all these
things so that finally we come to the

570
00:42:15,480 --> 00:42:19,719
point where you know, we receive
the blood, the blood and wine and

571
00:42:19,760 --> 00:42:22,719
we kind of enter into this moment, this ten cented moment, and so

572
00:42:22,800 --> 00:42:25,599
it's like that would that's and then
we sit together and we eat and we

573
00:42:25,639 --> 00:42:30,079
have we feast. It's like that's
the leisure, Like the leisure is it?

574
00:42:30,239 --> 00:42:34,000
It's rightly ordered, right, So
then the leisure, instead of being

575
00:42:34,039 --> 00:42:37,880
the lowest thing, which it is
in our society, it becomes the highest

576
00:42:37,880 --> 00:42:42,119
thing. Actually becomes like a kind
of it transcends work in that way,

577
00:42:42,239 --> 00:42:45,559
like in the right way of thinking
about that. Yeah, and it's so

578
00:42:45,599 --> 00:42:52,400
important. So do we sit together
and we feast. Human beings are social

579
00:42:52,440 --> 00:42:59,639
and political animals. We we crave
even if we don't know it. The

580
00:42:59,760 --> 00:43:07,719
meaning that comes through through rich connections
with other human beings. Technology today is

581
00:43:07,760 --> 00:43:13,000
sort of driving us apart. I
mean again, as leisure today and anology

582
00:43:13,079 --> 00:43:17,159
and leisure today is actually fragmenting us. Yeah, that's right, all these

583
00:43:17,199 --> 00:43:22,719
forces of animization, even simply you
know. So I have a colleague and

584
00:43:23,039 --> 00:43:25,679
he said, well, let me
tell you my daughter. She's like seventeen.

585
00:43:27,239 --> 00:43:31,239
She had her iPhone and uh it
was ringing and it was her best

586
00:43:31,239 --> 00:43:34,840
friend. And she said to her
dad, what do I do? Like,

587
00:43:34,880 --> 00:43:37,679
why does she want to call me? And he says, well,

588
00:43:37,800 --> 00:43:39,840
you actually have to answer the phone
to figure that out. Right, I'm

589
00:43:39,880 --> 00:43:44,639
just telling this story because you know
now it's like text, right, so

590
00:43:44,639 --> 00:43:46,840
so, but you're right. Entertainment, I mean, what is entertainment.

591
00:43:46,840 --> 00:43:50,920
There used to be these things called
movie theaters where kind of cool things would

592
00:43:50,920 --> 00:43:54,119
happen sometimes, you know, with
audiences and the way people are reacting and

593
00:43:54,480 --> 00:43:59,320
just the buzz and all this stuff, and workplaces that are entering out people

594
00:43:59,320 --> 00:44:00,960
are going to be put out of
work. By the way. Many people

595
00:44:01,000 --> 00:44:07,159
will think this is some kind of
amazing blessing. So you were talking about

596
00:44:07,199 --> 00:44:09,559
money, I give you a million
bucks. My son had a teacher when

597
00:44:09,559 --> 00:44:14,159
he was in eighth grade who was
doing a documentary on what happens to lottery

598
00:44:14,199 --> 00:44:17,920
winners. Yeah, they all go
sour, they go nuts. And this

599
00:44:19,000 --> 00:44:22,840
is actually another problem that you know, we can discuss. That's a great

600
00:44:22,840 --> 00:44:24,239
image of what's coming. Like,
if it's true that I was going to

601
00:44:24,320 --> 00:44:28,119
make us not work, then look
at what happens to a lottery winners.

602
00:44:28,440 --> 00:44:35,920
Oh exactly. And it also comes
down to sort of fundamental questions, sort

603
00:44:35,960 --> 00:44:40,559
of moral questions, because if you
pull Americans, sixty seventy percent don't like

604
00:44:40,559 --> 00:44:44,920
their jobs. Okay, here's the
thing. Though, you go to work,

605
00:44:45,280 --> 00:44:46,639
you get a paycheck, you come
home, you put food on the

606
00:44:46,679 --> 00:44:50,760
table, You can buy your kid
a bike, you can you know,

607
00:44:51,320 --> 00:44:54,400
there's dignity. Your life has some
meaning. Now I just took that away

608
00:44:54,440 --> 00:44:58,679
from you, right, and I
took away from you. So the guy

609
00:44:58,719 --> 00:45:00,320
who wins the lottery, first think
he does, he quits his job and

610
00:45:00,400 --> 00:45:07,440
he moves right. All that structure
your friends who used to have the kind

611
00:45:07,440 --> 00:45:10,679
of basic architecture of your life is
gone. Yeah, now what are you

612
00:45:10,719 --> 00:45:15,400
going to do. Yeah, so, I mean these are really really fundamental

613
00:45:15,480 --> 00:45:22,239
problems. Yeah, and it's interesting. I was actually it's a funny cause

614
00:45:22,239 --> 00:45:23,280
we're talking about this. I just
came back from Greece. I went on

615
00:45:23,320 --> 00:45:28,920
this trip with Ralston College and we
kind of visited all the ancient sites and

616
00:45:28,960 --> 00:45:32,199
we also went to Mount Athos together. And you know, you look at

617
00:45:32,199 --> 00:45:37,639
the life of the monks, and
they probably have more leisure than any of

618
00:45:37,719 --> 00:45:42,079
us. You know, it's it's
bounded with a lot of work. So

619
00:45:42,119 --> 00:45:45,440
they have like a certain amount of
hours of work, and then they also

620
00:45:45,559 --> 00:45:49,239
have all this this you know,
they kind of have this this leisurely life,

621
00:45:49,239 --> 00:45:53,000
but their leisure is really directed in
that direction, like it's directed towards

622
00:45:53,679 --> 00:46:00,239
you know, self transcendence really like
you know, worshiping God and moving moving

623
00:46:00,320 --> 00:46:04,960
towards that which is h which is
the good, the true, and the

624
00:46:05,000 --> 00:46:08,920
beautiful, you know. And so
yeah, so so so there's an image

625
00:46:08,960 --> 00:46:13,119
you know, in the Book of
Revelation. I talked about the whore and

626
00:46:13,199 --> 00:46:15,360
beasts, Right, there's another image
in the Book of Revelation, which is

627
00:46:15,400 --> 00:46:19,320
the heavenly City, right, the
heavenly Jerusalem and heavenly Jerusalem is also a

628
00:46:19,320 --> 00:46:22,159
technical image, just like the tabernacle
or the temple. It's a city now,

629
00:46:22,199 --> 00:46:27,679
it's it's but it also has that
order you could say, where it's

630
00:46:27,679 --> 00:46:32,119
like everything is directed towards God.
And so it says that all the nations

631
00:46:32,159 --> 00:46:37,880
bring their glory into the city,
right, all the kings give up their

632
00:46:37,920 --> 00:46:43,360
crowns basically to that which is high. And so it's like civilization technology,

633
00:46:43,840 --> 00:46:50,360
but directed towards that which is good, serving and basically serving it and therefore

634
00:46:50,400 --> 00:46:53,840
making what they have meaningful. Right, And so there's a sense in which

635
00:46:53,880 --> 00:46:55,840
you know, I want to I
want to be careful with people, like

636
00:46:55,880 --> 00:47:00,679
I'm not anti technology myself, and
I'm sure you're not as well. That

637
00:47:00,840 --> 00:47:07,920
technology could be amazing, like of
course, if we were oriented properly,

638
00:47:07,679 --> 00:47:10,519
it could be. It could be
an amazing thing full of glory. But

639
00:47:10,559 --> 00:47:16,159
the difficulty we have is that we
approach technology like the ancient Israelites approach the

640
00:47:16,239 --> 00:47:21,360
golden calf or you know, like
something to or even how Adam and Eve

641
00:47:21,360 --> 00:47:22,800
approached the apple. It's like something
to take. It's like it's mine.

642
00:47:23,079 --> 00:47:28,480
I'm gonna I'm gonna make myself more
powerful. I'm gonna make myself more and

643
00:47:28,519 --> 00:47:31,119
in doing that already, like you
said, the problem is that that very

644
00:47:31,159 --> 00:47:37,639
mechanism makes it impossible for us to
approach the rest properly because like it's like

645
00:47:37,679 --> 00:47:40,159
we're trained to make more money now, right, It's like our whole is

646
00:47:40,400 --> 00:47:45,239
education systems, to become more powerful, make more money, develop technology.

647
00:47:45,440 --> 00:47:49,920
Everything is focused on that, but
nobody asked what it's for. Like nobody

648
00:47:49,960 --> 00:47:52,760
really is asking the question, like
what could this really be for? Yeah,

649
00:47:52,880 --> 00:47:58,599
look, of course I agree with
you. I mean I'm not anti

650
00:47:58,679 --> 00:48:04,480
technology. Whether I were anti technology
or not would be completely irrelevant because it's

651
00:48:04,519 --> 00:48:07,800
here to stay. We have to
live with it. It does make many

652
00:48:07,880 --> 00:48:13,599
wonderful things possible, this conversation right
here, or we're talking to each other

653
00:48:13,679 --> 00:48:17,880
in real time and others can listen
to us. I think it's really wonderful.

654
00:48:19,159 --> 00:48:23,559
But here, So maybe one way
to put this is in terms of

655
00:48:23,599 --> 00:48:28,079
the thought of Henry Adams. So
within the last year or two I read

656
00:48:28,320 --> 00:48:34,159
Henry Adams The Education of Henry Adams, and it was quite it's really an

657
00:48:34,159 --> 00:48:40,159
amazing book. So Henry Adams is
born in eighteen thirty eight and he's he's

658
00:48:40,199 --> 00:48:45,599
the grandson and great grandson of two
American presidents. Right, and so he's

659
00:48:45,679 --> 00:48:47,880
like high up there, and they
live in Boston, and he says,

660
00:48:49,880 --> 00:48:52,880
and he has this kind of moral
and religious education, and as a boy,

661
00:48:52,920 --> 00:48:55,679
he says, Boston had solved the
universe, right, like, look

662
00:48:55,679 --> 00:49:00,639
at these Unitarian clergymen, the wonderful
civic everything is wonderful. Fast forward to

663
00:49:00,719 --> 00:49:06,719
nineteen hundred. Right, you've got
you've got like adventure of electric lights,

664
00:49:06,760 --> 00:49:12,159
telegraphs, telephones, right, steam, mentionines, railways, finally airplanes.

665
00:49:12,239 --> 00:49:15,679
You know, you've got Darwinism,
Marxism, Freudianism. You have a radioactive

666
00:49:15,679 --> 00:49:20,400
decay. The atomic nuclei had been
discovered and so forth. And science is

667
00:49:20,400 --> 00:49:22,800
saying, oh, order is an
accidental product, Like it doesn't it's not

668
00:49:22,920 --> 00:49:28,559
natural, and human beings are like
vibrating balls of motion and stuff like this.

669
00:49:29,239 --> 00:49:35,320
And what Henry Adams says is in
this period, what he symbolizes as

670
00:49:35,480 --> 00:49:39,840
the Virgin had been eclipsed by what
he symbolizes as the dynamo. Okay,

671
00:49:40,239 --> 00:49:44,320
and he ran into the had these
big dynamos that like the Chicago World's Fair

672
00:49:44,360 --> 00:49:46,679
and stuff, and he saw these
things amazing. So he has this theory

673
00:49:46,679 --> 00:49:51,239
of history which is human beings.
And this is really relates to the ancient

674
00:49:51,280 --> 00:49:55,400
anthropology. We sort of are what
we pay attention to and direct our energies

675
00:49:55,440 --> 00:50:00,480
to. And for millennia it was
Christianity, right, it was biblical religion,

676
00:50:00,519 --> 00:50:05,119
and it produced you know, crusades
and cathedrals and music and all these

677
00:50:05,119 --> 00:50:08,599
wonderful things. Now it's the dynamo. So the version appeals works through the

678
00:50:08,599 --> 00:50:15,119
heart and the mind through love and
appeals to this higher element. The dynamo

679
00:50:15,199 --> 00:50:19,880
is something completely different. It promises
material solvation in this life, not salvation

680
00:50:19,920 --> 00:50:24,440
in the afterlife. And it's dynamic, it keeps changing. And so I

681
00:50:24,440 --> 00:50:29,599
guess I would say the problem is
that we relate to this moving thing.

682
00:50:30,079 --> 00:50:34,519
And then Adams has what's famously known
as the Atoms curve, which is he

683
00:50:34,559 --> 00:50:39,400
calculates he's doing coal production from eighteen
hundred on. Every decade the power of

684
00:50:39,440 --> 00:50:44,280
able to human beings technologically doubles.
Yeah. Now, so the rate of

685
00:50:44,320 --> 00:50:49,519
acceleration is saying, but the curve
at some point becomes super steepid like this

686
00:50:49,639 --> 00:50:52,880
think yeah, And so the problem
is we don't really know how to deal

687
00:50:52,920 --> 00:51:00,199
with it because its too fast.
It kind of explodes our life. Yeah,

688
00:50:59,679 --> 00:51:02,440
I don't know. It seems like
that can't go on forever. I

689
00:51:02,480 --> 00:51:07,960
don't know, because also just for
the for human capacity to deal with it,

690
00:51:07,000 --> 00:51:13,159
because at some point we'll also we
also go insane because the right also

691
00:51:13,199 --> 00:51:16,920
because we don't. It seems like
that curve. There also seems to be

692
00:51:16,960 --> 00:51:21,400
a trade off that humans make,
which is that, like you said,

693
00:51:21,519 --> 00:51:24,960
we are what we care about,
and so we also can't care about this

694
00:51:25,079 --> 00:51:30,519
dynamo at the same level as we
care about and care about wisdom at the

695
00:51:30,519 --> 00:51:35,280
same time. Like it's either with
the hierarchy. As soon as it's inverted,

696
00:51:35,320 --> 00:51:39,199
it's it's real. So as this
technological stuff improves our capacity for wisdom,

697
00:51:39,239 --> 00:51:44,320
our capacity to discern, you know, becomes less and less because the

698
00:51:44,320 --> 00:51:47,719
technological process makes it so. Right, A chip that increases the power of

699
00:51:47,760 --> 00:51:52,559
a computer doesn't care where it's used, right, it doesn't. It can

700
00:51:52,679 --> 00:51:55,400
be used to power video games,
or it can be used to power missile

701
00:51:57,119 --> 00:52:00,079
or you know, our weapon doesn't
matter. Well, and look you mentioned

702
00:52:00,119 --> 00:52:07,360
the computer chips so doubling every decade, well since nineteen seventy. The capacities

703
00:52:07,360 --> 00:52:12,199
and you know, memory storage and
stuff like this, and speed of processors

704
00:52:12,239 --> 00:52:15,760
has doubled every year or two.
And now we add artificial intelligence, whose

705
00:52:16,599 --> 00:52:22,400
curve or progression is literally unmeasurable by
human beings because we don't actually understand how

706
00:52:22,440 --> 00:52:25,239
it works. I don't even know
what's going on like a black bus.

707
00:52:25,360 --> 00:52:30,920
Right, So Henry Adams actually says, look, you know, at some

708
00:52:30,039 --> 00:52:35,159
point the human mind might just crack
up like a media or bouncing into the

709
00:52:35,239 --> 00:52:37,559
Earth's atmosphere. Right now, when
you add in, I'm just going to

710
00:52:37,599 --> 00:52:42,360
throw this out. When you add
in how technology is used today, social

711
00:52:42,440 --> 00:52:47,360
media and all these other things,
well, you know, a rapid increase

712
00:52:47,360 --> 00:52:52,320
in mental illness, like the crackup
is already happening. And because you also

713
00:52:52,360 --> 00:52:58,000
have you know, you know,
cyber bullying and all these other phenomena and

714
00:52:58,039 --> 00:53:01,000
so forth. And incidentally, hey
is is also being used. You know,

715
00:53:01,480 --> 00:53:06,880
Department of Defense and the National Science
Foundation are developing increased tools of manipulation

716
00:53:06,960 --> 00:53:10,039
and surveillance and propaganda and all these
things. So, yeah, whatever's happening

717
00:53:10,079 --> 00:53:15,519
in public, you know that there's
ten times more things happening right outside of

718
00:53:15,559 --> 00:53:20,239
our perception. Let's say that.
So if we add in like the ideological

719
00:53:20,239 --> 00:53:22,760
component of it too, which is
you know, you have your own thinking

720
00:53:22,800 --> 00:53:24,519
and you get shot down, so
you put your head down. I think

721
00:53:24,559 --> 00:53:29,280
it actually encourages the development of two
kinds of human beings. And let's use

722
00:53:29,280 --> 00:53:36,039
the image of hitting the like the
atmosphere, the hard, dense aerodynamic soul

723
00:53:36,559 --> 00:53:40,000
that's like gonna just you know,
like you know. And so my examples,

724
00:53:40,039 --> 00:53:45,440
like you know, Homosylvietica's you know, they have tremendous pressures of communism

725
00:53:45,440 --> 00:53:49,800
and these are the commissaris, you
know, but much more common today is

726
00:53:50,400 --> 00:53:52,280
hey, I don't want to crack
up on the atmosphere. I am going

727
00:53:52,360 --> 00:53:55,159
to be weightless, I'm going to
be empty, I'm going to throw over

728
00:53:55,239 --> 00:53:59,760
all my convictions. I'm just gonna
you know, because wherever the wind is

729
00:53:59,760 --> 00:54:04,079
blow, that's cool, right,
And so we see these kind of psychological

730
00:54:04,119 --> 00:54:08,719
reactions with this incredibly steep curve of
technology, with all the pressures that come

731
00:54:08,760 --> 00:54:14,280
with it. Yeah, it's it's
definitely going to it's definitely going to be

732
00:54:14,760 --> 00:54:17,199
interesting. You know. One of
the images again, sorry to keep coming

733
00:54:17,199 --> 00:54:21,159
back to the Book of Revelation.
Yeah, it's just because it's one of

734
00:54:21,199 --> 00:54:24,760
the best images. Because one of
the images that comes about there's two.

735
00:54:24,800 --> 00:54:28,360
Actually. One is, of course
the beast, the beast that speaks,

736
00:54:28,440 --> 00:54:30,679
right, the image of the beast
that speaks, and that's what seduces everybody.

737
00:54:31,199 --> 00:54:36,480
It's very fascinating. But the other
one is that at some point the

738
00:54:36,519 --> 00:54:39,880
beast kills the whore. Right in
the story, So the idea is that

739
00:54:39,920 --> 00:54:44,599
this horror and this hor is riding
this beast, and it's like everybody is

740
00:54:44,639 --> 00:54:49,119
putting all their seed into the whore. Like everybody's just like just just chaos

741
00:54:49,119 --> 00:54:52,639
and mixture and you know whatever,
all all the possibilities. But at some

742
00:54:52,760 --> 00:54:55,880
point, the beast kills the whore. And it's like because, like you

743
00:54:55,920 --> 00:55:02,800
said, at some point, the
the control aspect of the technology and the

744
00:55:04,000 --> 00:55:08,280
surveillance aspect, all of this stuff
is going to ramp up to a point

745
00:55:08,320 --> 00:55:15,159
where the very mechanisms that broad about
like the licentiousness, are going to turn

746
00:55:15,199 --> 00:55:20,760
into hard steel, right, and
they're just going to control everything. Because

747
00:55:21,000 --> 00:55:23,199
as things frey and I thinks,
break apart, and that's people's mental health

748
00:55:23,239 --> 00:55:29,480
breaks apart, there's no other solution
except to create top down structures that will

749
00:55:30,000 --> 00:55:34,760
hold things together. Because obviously,
you know, whoever holds the reins of

750
00:55:34,800 --> 00:55:40,440
these technologies. No, No,
there's no advantage for them for like anarchy

751
00:55:40,480 --> 00:55:45,400
to break out and things to kind
of to become chaotic. And so so

752
00:55:45,440 --> 00:55:50,800
it seems like the vision of AI
as becoming more and more just a use

753
00:55:50,840 --> 00:55:55,639
of tyrannical control seems like it is
an inevitable. And this is like you

754
00:55:55,639 --> 00:56:00,280
think, if you game theory it
out, you see that it plays out.

755
00:56:00,320 --> 00:56:04,599
There's almost there's almost no way around
it, which is because I've been

756
00:56:04,599 --> 00:56:07,639
talking to a lot of AI developers, I think, because I'm thinking about

757
00:56:07,679 --> 00:56:09,800
this, and and there are these
like cowboy AI developers, right, some

758
00:56:09,840 --> 00:56:14,400
of them that are saying like kind
of Elon Musk attitude where it's like,

759
00:56:14,440 --> 00:56:16,320
well, this is inevitable, what's
going to happen? So let's make us

760
00:56:16,360 --> 00:56:20,679
as powerful as possible. Let's put
the AI in your pocket, right,

761
00:56:20,760 --> 00:56:25,239
Let's make your phone powerful enough that
you can have open AI like independently in

762
00:56:25,280 --> 00:56:30,800
your phone and you are like as
powerful as any other other AI. And

763
00:56:30,840 --> 00:56:34,960
it's like, I get it,
but that's not going to work, right,

764
00:56:35,000 --> 00:56:38,599
because so either the either the powers
that be that hold the reins of

765
00:56:38,639 --> 00:56:43,280
our societies are going to use AI
to control us, or either we're going

766
00:56:43,360 --> 00:56:45,880
to be Cowboy AI people, and
it means that the terrorist is going to

767
00:56:45,920 --> 00:56:49,320
be as going to have it in
his pocket too, And it means that

768
00:56:49,400 --> 00:56:51,960
the punk rocker is going to have
in his pocket two, which means that

769
00:56:52,039 --> 00:56:55,360
the reaction will be the same.
Right that there's no other way, There's

770
00:56:55,400 --> 00:56:59,800
no like, there's just no other
way, uh, that it can play

771
00:56:59,840 --> 00:57:04,760
out. It has to transform into
into surveillance and control. I don't see

772
00:57:05,039 --> 00:57:07,480
if you if you have another way
to see it playing out, I don't

773
00:57:07,480 --> 00:57:10,039
see. It doesn't seem possible.
No, I don't. I mean,

774
00:57:10,519 --> 00:57:15,599
I hate to say it, but
I think you're absolutely right. And and

775
00:57:15,760 --> 00:57:22,280
there are so many forces that exacerbate
this. You know, there's there's this

776
00:57:22,360 --> 00:57:30,360
kind of feedback loop because the the
less we or the more adamized we become,

777
00:57:30,480 --> 00:57:35,280
the less we even remember what it's
like to be in a kind of

778
00:57:35,360 --> 00:57:40,000
local community, the more we look
at others through this lens of abstraction.

779
00:57:40,239 --> 00:57:44,760
You know, it's like it's like
Playo's cave image. You know, he's

780
00:57:44,800 --> 00:57:46,880
got this image of people sitting around
prisoners the cave looking at shadows. The

781
00:57:46,880 --> 00:57:51,440
difference between my being able to turn
my neck, which apparently you can't do

782
00:57:51,480 --> 00:57:55,119
in the cave image and look at
the other prisoner versus getting all my information

783
00:57:55,159 --> 00:57:59,480
about the guy who's sitting next to
me a shadow on the wall, Like

784
00:57:59,559 --> 00:58:02,320
we're not doing that face to face
stuff. This is a wonderful moment,

785
00:58:02,400 --> 00:58:07,599
right, somebody comes down and unchains
the prisoner and makes them stand up and

786
00:58:07,639 --> 00:58:10,199
turn around, and it's like the
first contact with a human being. You

787
00:58:10,239 --> 00:58:14,840
know what's going on? Right,
we have to somehow be able to do

788
00:58:14,880 --> 00:58:16,880
that. But I don't see how
that's going to work. So top down

789
00:58:16,920 --> 00:58:22,320
solutions, well, actually, even
let me let me go back. I

790
00:58:22,320 --> 00:58:27,320
said top down solutions. The word
solution. I almost want to excize it

791
00:58:27,320 --> 00:58:32,760
from the political vocabulary because politics is
a living, ongoing thing. It's a

792
00:58:32,800 --> 00:58:37,679
constant renegotiation. It's a constant putting
new and fresh energy in to the system.

793
00:58:37,760 --> 00:58:39,719
Like you're like you got to paint
your house, you know, you

794
00:58:39,800 --> 00:58:43,880
got to take care of them.
Yeah, it's a living organism really right.

795
00:58:44,000 --> 00:58:46,280
It has a kind of opponent processing
right aspect to it, where it's

796
00:58:46,280 --> 00:58:50,239
like you poof push you a little
harder this way this way? Like right,

797
00:58:51,599 --> 00:58:54,079
So who talks about solutions, Well, it's a technical notion right,

798
00:58:54,719 --> 00:58:59,760
it's almost like a mathematical thing.
And I you know, I kind of

799
00:58:59,760 --> 00:59:02,480
repea this race. It seems to
be that all political solutions, like real

800
00:59:02,519 --> 00:59:07,639
solutions, are final solutions, right, that is to say here, I

801
00:59:07,639 --> 00:59:12,920
mean it's it's death in some way, it'sident only Jonathan, I've been thinking

802
00:59:12,920 --> 00:59:16,480
about the thirty fourth canto of the
Inferno, where which actually begins with the

803
00:59:16,519 --> 00:59:22,719
line it's quoted in the Latin.
You know, the royal the banners of

804
00:59:22,760 --> 00:59:27,599
the King of Hell advance, right, so it kind of identify Satan as

805
00:59:27,599 --> 00:59:31,320
the king. And we have this
image of Satan, and remember that he's

806
00:59:31,599 --> 00:59:37,440
he's like stuck in the ice.
It's all frozen. It's all you know,

807
00:59:37,639 --> 00:59:40,960
none of the none of the condemned, can speak to Dante. They're

808
00:59:40,960 --> 00:59:45,599
frozen in these things. Right.
And then you have Satan, and one

809
00:59:45,599 --> 00:59:49,039
of the translators has calculated that he's
sticking up a thousand feet from the ice,

810
00:59:49,159 --> 00:59:52,519
like like tower of babble or something
like this, right, and in

811
00:59:52,559 --> 00:59:58,599
his mouth are you know, Judas
and Cassidus and Brutus. And as this

812
00:59:58,719 --> 01:00:02,400
same translator Johnson Claire mentions, these
are the guys who guys who served satan

813
01:00:02,440 --> 01:00:06,559
best. You know, they're the
guys who serve. But the revolution needs

814
01:00:06,559 --> 01:00:07,840
its own in a way, right, I mean, this rebellious angel fall

815
01:00:07,880 --> 01:00:13,039
down and crisses into the earth,
and so, I don't know, it's

816
01:00:13,119 --> 01:00:19,199
just it's it's a it's a very
rich image, but it's rich. It's

817
01:00:19,239 --> 01:00:22,280
rich in relation to what we're saying, which is that, you know,

818
01:00:22,360 --> 01:00:25,599
the the image of Aaron making the
golden calf. Yes, you know,

819
01:00:25,840 --> 01:00:31,719
there's there is a relationship between that
and the basic Promethean image of revolution,

820
01:00:32,239 --> 01:00:36,039
you know, and you see that, you know, the idea of taking

821
01:00:36,079 --> 01:00:38,360
that we think that we're used to
actually think of the Promethean story as something

822
01:00:38,400 --> 01:00:42,800
positive. You know. It's like
Prometheus goes up there, you know,

823
01:00:42,840 --> 01:00:45,440
those horrible gods. He takes the
fire, takes the technology, takes civilization,

824
01:00:45,840 --> 01:00:51,239
brings it down to the human,
to the humans. Uh. And

825
01:00:51,280 --> 01:00:55,519
then interestingly enough, Prometheus's punishment is
that his liver is eaten every day.

826
01:00:55,800 --> 01:00:59,760
And and for the in my understanding
that for the ancients, the liver was

827
01:00:59,800 --> 01:01:04,840
a an image of emotion or desire, the desiring part of the human right.

828
01:01:05,000 --> 01:01:07,519
And so it's actually an image of
this whore and this beast again,

829
01:01:07,559 --> 01:01:12,000
it's like if he brings technology to
the service of man and then falls into

830
01:01:12,039 --> 01:01:15,599
a cycle of desire that of his
like being eaten his own desire, being

831
01:01:15,639 --> 01:01:19,159
eaten and returning, and being eaten
and returning. You know, it's like

832
01:01:19,679 --> 01:01:23,079
the hunger of insatiability, you could
say, is it's a weird image of

833
01:01:23,079 --> 01:01:30,039
that, and so there is a
relationship between. So it's like if so

834
01:01:30,119 --> 01:01:32,800
once again, it's like, it's
not that the fire is evil, right,

835
01:01:32,920 --> 01:01:36,280
even in the story, the fire
is at first given by Zeus if

836
01:01:36,320 --> 01:01:39,320
I remember, and then taken away
at it because because people don't aren't offering

837
01:01:39,360 --> 01:01:43,800
proper sacrifice, then that the fire
is kind of taken away, and then

838
01:01:43,880 --> 01:01:46,840
Prometheus takes the fire, and so
think about that, Like that's what the

839
01:01:46,880 --> 01:01:50,760
story of Cain is the Cane,
the served Cane is so similar. It's

840
01:01:50,760 --> 01:01:55,760
like, because of an improper sacrifice, Cain has to steal that they make

841
01:01:55,880 --> 01:02:00,519
civilization. You know, he's alienated
from God. Then he creates the first

842
01:02:00,519 --> 01:02:04,960
city out of this, like I'm
going to do this for myself to protect

843
01:02:04,960 --> 01:02:08,119
myself from others, to protect myself. And then in the story of the

844
01:02:08,159 --> 01:02:12,119
Bible, what happens that God saves
that. You could say, it's like

845
01:02:12,159 --> 01:02:16,360
God redeems that through Story's like he
takes what Caine develops and then transforms it

846
01:02:16,400 --> 01:02:22,239
into the tabernacle, transforms it into
the temple basically. But this idea of

847
01:02:23,000 --> 01:02:27,360
this kind of and the frozenness is
perfect for that, right. It's like,

848
01:02:27,360 --> 01:02:30,360
because that's what technology is. It's
a fixing, right, It's like,

849
01:02:30,480 --> 01:02:34,480
let's fix these walls around our city. Let's make these limits, let's

850
01:02:34,480 --> 01:02:38,639
make these artificial limits around things.
And so, yes, your intuition is

851
01:02:38,679 --> 01:02:43,119
absolutely right that there's a relationship between
all of these things. Yeah. And

852
01:02:43,519 --> 01:02:50,599
actually it's a small detail, but
in Dante he compares Lucifer or Satan too.

853
01:02:51,239 --> 01:02:53,159
So he's got these bat wings basically, which are blowing, and the

854
01:02:53,159 --> 01:02:55,519
wings are you know, freezing,
you know, freezing the ice, and

855
01:02:55,559 --> 01:03:00,320
we all this water, so it's
like frozen chaos. He compares him to

856
01:03:00,760 --> 01:03:05,440
the wings to sails on a windmill. Okay, And then when he talks

857
01:03:05,480 --> 01:03:09,360
about Lucifer's teeth eating these guys,
because he's constantly eating these eating them,

858
01:03:09,480 --> 01:03:13,840
which is also, by the way, an image of insatiability, he compares

859
01:03:13,880 --> 01:03:16,519
it to what he calls it's a
hackle, which is some kind of agricultural

860
01:03:16,559 --> 01:03:21,480
tool. Okay, so there's this
kind of mechanistic thing Prometheus is. It's

861
01:03:21,480 --> 01:03:29,440
actually very interesting. God Zeus finally
gets back at the human beings by creating

862
01:03:29,480 --> 01:03:32,880
Pandora. Okay, and Pandora.
It's very interesting. So this is where

863
01:03:32,880 --> 01:03:39,079
we get a mixture of erotic desire
with technology. Why because what happens is

864
01:03:39,119 --> 01:03:43,880
Athena makes this beautiful garment for her. Okay, it's this lovely thing,

865
01:03:44,639 --> 01:03:50,320
and Hephaestus gives her a crown intricately
worked, and of course Hephaestus is the

866
01:03:50,320 --> 01:03:53,840
craftsman, got intricately worked crown on
which all the animals are represented. So

867
01:03:53,880 --> 01:03:59,679
it's like a whole cosmos microcosm,
right, and so here's man looking at

868
01:04:00,400 --> 01:04:04,320
who's going to be a source of
ill and trouble, and what's the attitude.

869
01:04:04,320 --> 01:04:10,320
The attitude is beautiful, attractive woman, sexually attractive and check out her

870
01:04:10,400 --> 01:04:14,840
crown, you know, the ability
to create at your own cosmos. Like

871
01:04:14,840 --> 01:04:18,760
there's a technological desire there too,
right. Heifestus is interesting by the way,

872
01:04:18,800 --> 01:04:27,400
because well in the Iliad, there's
a scene where achilles mother goes to

873
01:04:27,480 --> 01:04:32,199
him to make armor for Achille and
he makes this incredible shield. But Hephaestus

874
01:04:32,239 --> 01:04:38,639
has these robots, the first robots
in history, the little maidens, lifelike

875
01:04:38,840 --> 01:04:44,199
maidens running around helping him and stuff. So he's already associated fundamentally with the

876
01:04:44,239 --> 01:04:49,639
kind of technology we're developing today.
But he is the most humane and decent

877
01:04:49,800 --> 01:04:54,679
of the gods. He has been
thrown out of heaven, he's crippled,

878
01:04:54,719 --> 01:04:58,119
he's all this kind of stuff.
But you know, when Thetis, who's

879
01:04:58,119 --> 01:05:01,679
achilles mother, shows up, he's
like so welcoming to her because she saved

880
01:05:01,760 --> 01:05:04,960
him when he was thrown out of
heaven by her mother or maybe her father,

881
01:05:05,000 --> 01:05:08,480
because they both attacked him. You
know, I think it was her

882
01:05:08,480 --> 01:05:14,639
mother his mother, and she and
another nim for something saved him and nurtured

883
01:05:14,719 --> 01:05:16,920
him, and he made beautiful jewler
for them and so forth. So there's

884
01:05:17,880 --> 01:05:24,000
a suggestion there of what it would
look like to maintain ones and I know

885
01:05:24,039 --> 01:05:28,559
he's a god, right, but
like maintain his humanity and use technology,

886
01:05:29,079 --> 01:05:30,519
Yeah, and I think we can. It's really important for people to always

887
01:05:30,599 --> 01:05:34,400
understand, like when we talk about
these stories, to be careful of absolute

888
01:05:34,400 --> 01:05:41,079
moral judgment, because all of these
stories all have a flip side to them.

889
01:05:41,119 --> 01:05:44,039
It's like, you know, you
always have to be able to see

890
01:05:44,079 --> 01:05:46,199
both sides at the same time,
you know, which is exactly what you

891
01:05:46,239 --> 01:05:49,480
said. You know. It's like, for example, medicine is a good

892
01:05:49,519 --> 01:05:54,400
example, which is that medicine is
technology. It really is. But there's

893
01:05:54,400 --> 01:05:58,800
a sense in which medicine can be
the type of technology which is this the

894
01:05:58,880 --> 01:06:03,760
proper supplement, right, the type
of supplementarity and technicity which is there to

895
01:06:03,760 --> 01:06:06,960
to to help humans. And I
think that like the idea that you could

896
01:06:06,960 --> 01:06:13,440
represent Hephaestus as this incestuous, you
know, like freak that gets thrown out,

897
01:06:13,519 --> 01:06:15,639
and now because of that, he
kind of is He's the one who

898
01:06:15,719 --> 01:06:17,320
makes all the all the toys.
He's kind of like the guy in his

899
01:06:17,400 --> 01:06:20,360
basement, you know, the tech
the tech freak in his basement because he

900
01:06:20,480 --> 01:06:26,199
can't fit into society. Like that's
a proper image of him, for sure.

901
01:06:26,360 --> 01:06:29,480
But there's another image, like the
one you said, which is rather

902
01:06:29,599 --> 01:06:31,639
this this desire to help, right. You know, if you make a

903
01:06:31,639 --> 01:06:35,480
crutch for someone, you make it
because you want to help them, you

904
01:06:35,480 --> 01:06:38,719
know, And so there's a there's
a powerful image, like we have to

905
01:06:38,920 --> 01:06:42,440
always remember that Jesus does a tecton. You know, Jesus was the son

906
01:06:42,440 --> 01:06:45,800
of a tecton. Jesus was the
son of a technical person. And it's

907
01:06:45,800 --> 01:06:49,360
not a carpenter per se. It
really is a craftsman, you know.

908
01:06:50,199 --> 01:06:57,159
So so when I was on vacation
this summer, I read Paradise Loss,

909
01:06:57,159 --> 01:07:01,280
which I hadn't read before, and
it's quite amazing. In the very first

910
01:07:01,440 --> 01:07:04,480
book of Paradise Lost, we're looking
at Satan, he's down in hell,

911
01:07:05,400 --> 01:07:10,920
and Milton says something like, you
know, you guys, you human beings

912
01:07:10,960 --> 01:07:14,679
here, you take pride in things
like Babbel. He actually mentions Babel and

913
01:07:14,719 --> 01:07:16,320
you know, mining and all this. Constructor says, you should see what

914
01:07:16,360 --> 01:07:21,159
they built in hell. Like that
is, you know, there's no comparison

915
01:07:21,199 --> 01:07:28,880
between the technological capability of these fallen
angels and spirits and human beings. And

916
01:07:29,000 --> 01:07:32,239
it's really quite remarkable, right,
Like they excel at that in this hell

917
01:07:33,000 --> 01:07:36,920
where there's heat but no light.
You know, it's like this. So

918
01:07:38,599 --> 01:07:44,599
that's a really interesting warning. And
yeah, I mean, look, what

919
01:07:44,960 --> 01:07:49,639
has to happen today is that the
dynamo has got to be informed, Like

920
01:07:49,679 --> 01:07:53,360
we have to relate to the Virgin
as well as the dynamo. Just to

921
01:07:53,360 --> 01:07:55,880
put it very broadly, and I'm
not making a religious statement, he arrow.

922
01:07:55,960 --> 01:08:00,760
I'm just saying there's got to be
transcendence in some way, and only

923
01:08:00,800 --> 01:08:02,199
then can we control. And the
reason I want to say that is you

924
01:08:02,239 --> 01:08:08,559
mentioned medicine. Well, you know, if you come in and you've got

925
01:08:09,679 --> 01:08:12,800
blood poisoning or something, and I
can give you antibiotics or whatever, it

926
01:08:12,840 --> 01:08:15,720
is, right and I fix you
great. But now medicine is being used

927
01:08:16,319 --> 01:08:21,600
for you know, anything, sex
change, augmentation, whatever. It's because

928
01:08:23,119 --> 01:08:26,119
we've got the dynamo, but we
don't have the virgin so to speak.

929
01:08:26,560 --> 01:08:31,399
That is, we don't have we're
not guided by some kind of moral or

930
01:08:31,439 --> 01:08:35,840
spiritual measures that we could attune ourselves
to. Yeah. No, I think

931
01:08:35,920 --> 01:08:39,880
that's the right. I think that's
the right. I mean we saw during

932
01:08:39,920 --> 01:08:44,840
the time during COVID as well,
we saw medicine become a political tool and

933
01:08:45,039 --> 01:08:48,640
you know, become a strange,
a strange tool for control. Uh.

934
01:08:48,880 --> 01:08:54,359
And so all of these, all
of these supplements always have this duality to

935
01:08:54,439 --> 01:08:57,359
it. And you're right that in
some ways, I mean, the only

936
01:08:57,399 --> 01:09:01,239
thing we can do and this is
because it's like just paining this monstrous portrait

937
01:09:01,319 --> 01:09:04,239
of what of where we are in
the future. But I think that the

938
01:09:04,319 --> 01:09:08,319
thing we can do, which is
actually the way to anchor the dynamo,

939
01:09:08,560 --> 01:09:12,760
is to you know, is to
go to church, is to go to

940
01:09:12,800 --> 01:09:17,039
participate with your family, is to
re engage at the human scale, because

941
01:09:17,600 --> 01:09:21,399
that will reverberate. It's the only
thing that can really reverberate. You know.

942
01:09:21,479 --> 01:09:26,279
It's like, become a better person, become a loving father, become

943
01:09:26,520 --> 01:09:30,079
you become a friend. Like,
I know it sounds it sounds kitchy to

944
01:09:30,119 --> 01:09:33,239
say that, but I don't see
what else is possible. No, Look,

945
01:09:34,159 --> 01:09:39,800
what you're saying is we have to
engage in the practices and you know,

946
01:09:40,199 --> 01:09:45,239
like set the thinking aside, engage
in the practices, and the practice

947
01:09:45,439 --> 01:09:48,960
is a source of understanding. And
that's what we've gotten away from it.

948
01:09:49,000 --> 01:09:51,560
But here's the thing. We have
to be very deliberate about it. Yeah,

949
01:09:51,560 --> 01:09:55,880
that's right. We have to say, Look, you know, someone

950
01:09:56,000 --> 01:10:00,640
that which was the most natural for
humans, you know, thousand years ago,

951
01:10:00,079 --> 01:10:04,079
is now has to be the most
deliberate the behavior that we can that

952
01:10:04,159 --> 01:10:09,960
we can muster. That's exactly right. And that means that with regard to

953
01:10:10,000 --> 01:10:14,680
all of our institutions, say,
schools, they should be in person,

954
01:10:14,920 --> 01:10:16,880
they should be in a classroom,
they should be with a living, breathing

955
01:10:16,960 --> 01:10:20,239
human being. They should be you
know, and as great as zoom is.

956
01:10:20,520 --> 01:10:26,239
Uh. The difficulty is that you
know, you and I came of

957
01:10:26,279 --> 01:10:31,800
age before yeah, the smartphone,
uh and and all this stuff. So

958
01:10:31,960 --> 01:10:36,880
we actually have this anchor that we
can remember, you know, what happens

959
01:10:36,920 --> 01:10:42,720
when when that that's not there?
Right then we actually and I'm just thinking

960
01:10:42,880 --> 01:10:46,039
of the future here because you know, you you painted this unfortunately rather plausible

961
01:10:46,119 --> 01:10:50,640
scenario about kind of totalitarianism and so
forth. So how do we prevent that?

962
01:10:50,880 --> 01:10:55,560
Right? Well, we have to
educate for the future, and we

963
01:10:55,640 --> 01:11:00,800
have to. But so it's look, I mean, we each have to

964
01:11:00,840 --> 01:11:03,960
do what we can do, you
know. I mean, I know it's

965
01:11:03,960 --> 01:11:06,399
a sort of cliche, but it's
not for us to finish the work.

966
01:11:08,560 --> 01:11:15,159
We all have to do what we
can and and set an example for others

967
01:11:15,279 --> 01:11:20,239
and devote ourselves to trying to resist. I mean, I you know,

968
01:11:20,439 --> 01:11:24,840
I don't know. I mean you
can also run away and try to get

969
01:11:24,840 --> 01:11:28,359
off the grid and so forth,
And I think that's fine. Some will

970
01:11:28,399 --> 01:11:30,640
do that, and I think we
all have also our place. You know,

971
01:11:30,720 --> 01:11:32,840
you could say, I think I
think that there are people that are

972
01:11:32,880 --> 01:11:36,840
going to break off and form communities
off the grid and are going to create

973
01:11:36,880 --> 01:11:43,680
little you know, Rodreer inspired communities. That's for sure. I think that

974
01:11:43,760 --> 01:11:46,920
is that is almost inevitable, and
it probably should happen. But it's I

975
01:11:46,920 --> 01:11:50,960
think some people still have to stay
in the fray and and and continue to

976
01:11:51,600 --> 01:11:55,880
write, you know, and and
it's hard to know who will do who

977
01:11:55,920 --> 01:11:59,840
should do what. It's in some
ways that's between you know, that that

978
01:12:00,159 --> 01:12:03,399
you our own each of our of
our own story. But but but of

979
01:12:03,439 --> 01:12:08,720
course we also need to to have
at least I feel like I still need

980
01:12:08,760 --> 01:12:13,159
to have one foot in the matrix. Uh and and I often ask myself

981
01:12:13,159 --> 01:12:15,880
the question when when does it go
too far? Like when should you just

982
01:12:15,920 --> 01:12:18,520
step out? I'm not sure I
have that answer yet. At least for

983
01:12:18,560 --> 01:12:24,319
now, I feel like it's it's
it's important to stay connected to the machine

984
01:12:24,359 --> 01:12:28,880
to some extent. Absolutely, I
would be very unhappy if if you or

985
01:12:28,920 --> 01:12:32,279
people like you decided, you know, I'm not going to do the symbolk

986
01:12:32,319 --> 01:12:35,119
world. I'm not going to do
anything I'm not going to lecture. I'm

987
01:12:35,159 --> 01:12:40,640
going to go to Alaska and you
know, make my own you know your

988
01:12:40,880 --> 01:12:44,000
or something like that, and that
God bless you, right, but that

989
01:12:44,000 --> 01:12:50,479
that's that would be a withdrawal of
your best energies and intelligence from from the

990
01:12:50,520 --> 01:12:56,079
public space. And what we need
to do is enter back into the public

991
01:12:56,119 --> 01:13:01,039
space as living, thoughtful, creative, active individual and give what we can.

992
01:13:01,800 --> 01:13:05,439
Yeah. So Jacob, thanks,
thanks for this wonderful conversations, and

993
01:13:05,479 --> 01:13:10,640
thanks for your time and also all
the work that you're doing to yeah,

994
01:13:10,720 --> 01:13:14,960
to build some to read sow the
seed, you know, to kind of

995
01:13:15,359 --> 01:13:20,239
gather together the right minds to towards
the future. Thanks for your work as

996
01:13:20,239 --> 01:13:24,039
well on that front. Thank you
very much, Jonathan, It's been a

997
01:13:24,039 --> 01:13:28,359
pleasure. If you enjoy these videos
and podcasts, please go to the Symbolic

998
01:13:28,399 --> 01:13:31,159
World dot com website and see how
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999
01:13:31,159 --> 01:13:35,239
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1000
01:13:35,520 --> 01:13:39,920
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