1
00:00:00,320 --> 00:00:03,560
Speaker 1: Think of it like this. The brain is not intelligent.

2
00:00:04,240 --> 00:00:07,400
It's a very complex structure, But the brain itself is

3
00:00:07,440 --> 00:00:13,400
not intelligent. What is intelligent is your consciousness, my consciousness

4
00:00:14,000 --> 00:00:18,559
using that brain. And I think that the way to

5
00:00:18,640 --> 00:00:23,839
think about AI is that it will never achieve intelligence,

6
00:00:24,000 --> 00:00:28,679
but it may act as a gateway for an intelligence.

7
00:00:29,039 --> 00:00:31,079
And I think that's where I would agree with the

8
00:00:31,600 --> 00:00:34,920
idea of an alien intelligence, in the sense that we

9
00:00:35,000 --> 00:00:40,200
don't know what forms of consciousness exist in the cosmos,

10
00:00:40,439 --> 00:00:49,039
and we don't know how they can come to express themselves.

11
00:00:55,000 --> 00:00:58,719
Speaker 2: This is Jonathan Pegel, Welcome to the symbolic World.

12
00:01:09,879 --> 00:01:14,519
Speaker 3: Hello everyone, and so I am here with doctor Ian McGilchrist.

13
00:01:14,799 --> 00:01:18,480
Everyone who watches my channel knows who he is. But

14
00:01:19,840 --> 00:01:23,280
a wonderful, interesting new development in his life is that

15
00:01:23,359 --> 00:01:25,719
he is now the chancellor of Rolston College.

16
00:01:26,400 --> 00:01:27,719
Speaker 2: I'm really excited about that.

17
00:01:27,799 --> 00:01:30,519
Speaker 3: I feel like, you know, with Jordan being busy and

18
00:01:30,560 --> 00:01:33,879
also being sick, you know, doctor Ian mcgilchriss is such

19
00:01:33,879 --> 00:01:37,799
a wonderful addition to the college, a perfect fit. But

20
00:01:37,920 --> 00:01:40,599
as you know, he's also a psychiatrist, a neuroscientist. He

21
00:01:40,640 --> 00:01:44,560
wrote The Matter with Things, which is his most recent

22
00:01:45,239 --> 00:01:49,599
massive volume that tries to look at the relationship obviously

23
00:01:49,640 --> 00:01:52,920
again with the brain and philosophy and culture.

24
00:01:52,959 --> 00:01:56,959
Speaker 1: And so it's great to see you Ian. Yep, it's

25
00:01:57,000 --> 00:01:59,519
great to see you, Jonathan. Thank you very much. I'm

26
00:01:59,560 --> 00:02:01,079
looking for were to talking.

27
00:02:01,640 --> 00:02:04,400
Speaker 3: So maybe we can start with this, you know, what

28
00:02:05,079 --> 00:02:08,599
is it that maybe move in this direction of I mean,

29
00:02:08,639 --> 00:02:11,000
I've been a fan of Roston now since it started.

30
00:02:11,080 --> 00:02:12,800
Speaker 2: I really love what they're doing.

31
00:02:12,800 --> 00:02:15,199
Speaker 3: I feel like it is in some ways it's so

32
00:02:15,439 --> 00:02:19,400
counter intuitive in terms of how all society is going.

33
00:02:19,439 --> 00:02:21,800
But I feel like that is really the direction to go,

34
00:02:21,960 --> 00:02:24,840
is to create someone with an intellectual, true intellectual elite.

35
00:02:24,919 --> 00:02:27,199
Speaker 2: So what is it that attracted you to this position?

36
00:02:29,680 --> 00:02:31,479
Speaker 1: First of all, that I was on, to be honest,

37
00:02:31,560 --> 00:02:32,520
I suppose.

38
00:02:32,159 --> 00:02:37,599
Speaker 2: But.

39
00:02:36,719 --> 00:02:42,439
Speaker 1: No, I you know, I felt I'd made a very

40
00:02:42,479 --> 00:02:45,759
close bond with Wilson when I went to deliver the

41
00:02:46,439 --> 00:02:51,960
Sophia lectures, and I was made to feel very welcome

42
00:02:51,960 --> 00:02:55,879
and I felt completely at home, which is unusual because

43
00:02:56,599 --> 00:03:01,439
I find that most intellectual and educational institutions these days

44
00:03:01,759 --> 00:03:04,039
seem quite a long way from.

45
00:03:04,319 --> 00:03:07,000
Speaker 2: Where I feel they should be.

46
00:03:08,439 --> 00:03:12,319
Speaker 1: But I immediately felt that this was a kindred body

47
00:03:12,319 --> 00:03:16,840
that we're engaged in a very important project which is

48
00:03:16,879 --> 00:03:21,400
really to do with nothing less than rehumanizing education and

49
00:03:21,439 --> 00:03:28,560
rehumanizing society. It may sound a little a little strange

50
00:03:28,599 --> 00:03:35,759
to say that, because superficially we are still sending our

51
00:03:35,879 --> 00:03:40,520
young humans to these educational institutions. But more and more

52
00:03:41,039 --> 00:03:45,919
education at school level and even at university level is

53
00:03:46,039 --> 00:03:50,319
devoid of a number of things, is devoid of the

54
00:03:50,400 --> 00:03:56,719
really all important context of the culture out of which

55
00:03:56,759 --> 00:04:01,840
we come. And you know, one of the most bizarre

56
00:04:01,960 --> 00:04:05,960
features of our society now, and it can be explained,

57
00:04:06,840 --> 00:04:09,039
is that we are effectively committing suicide.

58
00:04:09,479 --> 00:04:10,000
Speaker 2: We are the.

59
00:04:12,599 --> 00:04:18,879
Speaker 1: Honored recipients, the inheritors of one of the greatest movements

60
00:04:18,879 --> 00:04:21,879
that the world has ever seen, that of Western civilization.

61
00:04:23,079 --> 00:04:27,720
And in the early days of my life, I was

62
00:04:27,800 --> 00:04:32,040
quite a critic of Western civilization, and I've always felt

63
00:04:32,319 --> 00:04:36,680
very much the pull of Eastern ways of thinking. And

64
00:04:36,720 --> 00:04:39,279
that's not unusually in the Western tradition. There are plenty

65
00:04:39,279 --> 00:04:42,920
of people in that tradition, whitehead above all who has

66
00:04:44,920 --> 00:04:51,040
But increasingly I feel it's so important not to be

67
00:04:51,279 --> 00:04:55,879
robbed of all that is miraculously good in it, things

68
00:04:55,879 --> 00:04:59,199
that we take for granted like the idea of the

69
00:04:59,279 --> 00:05:05,759
balance between an individual and society, neither dominating over the other,

70
00:05:05,839 --> 00:05:12,920
the idea of democracy, the idea of the coming together

71
00:05:13,399 --> 00:05:17,639
of knowledge across the sciences and the humanities. These things

72
00:05:17,680 --> 00:05:22,480
are terribly important, and I think that we're losing sight

73
00:05:22,519 --> 00:05:25,319
of them. And if you wanted to destroy a society

74
00:05:25,399 --> 00:05:30,079
or a civilization, what you would do is you would

75
00:05:30,279 --> 00:05:34,439
obliterate that culture's past, and you would say that it

76
00:05:34,519 --> 00:05:38,519
was toxic and terrible, and you would leave people in

77
00:05:38,600 --> 00:05:42,279
a very vulnerable and disorientated position in which they didn't

78
00:05:42,319 --> 00:05:45,360
know what to believe or what to doubt. And I

79
00:05:45,360 --> 00:05:49,920
think that's where we've gone now. I'm not suggesting, above all,

80
00:05:49,959 --> 00:05:54,839
I'm not suggesting that a critical mind is not important.

81
00:05:55,160 --> 00:06:03,720
I've always tended to be a little irritatingly sort of

82
00:06:04,680 --> 00:06:07,639
on the other side of whatever argument is currently going on.

83
00:06:07,959 --> 00:06:08,560
Speaker 2: So I mean, I.

84
00:06:10,120 --> 00:06:13,959
Speaker 1: Call myself a believer among skeptics and a skeptic amongst believers.

85
00:06:14,000 --> 00:06:17,040
So I do think it's very, very important to hold

86
00:06:17,199 --> 00:06:21,360
both sides of many sides of anything you're talking about.

87
00:06:21,519 --> 00:06:24,920
But that is now rare, and what Ralson is doing

88
00:06:25,120 --> 00:06:28,600
is offering people are grounding in their own history and

89
00:06:28,639 --> 00:06:33,040
culture in the humane ideas that have emerged from it,

90
00:06:33,120 --> 00:06:35,839
and really to understand and live that, not just to

91
00:06:35,879 --> 00:06:39,439
sort of check box a few ideas, but to sort

92
00:06:39,439 --> 00:06:41,879
of internalize it and live it as a way of

93
00:06:41,920 --> 00:06:42,680
being in the world.

94
00:06:44,360 --> 00:06:47,399
Speaker 2: That's wonderful. Yeah, I feel exactly the same.

95
00:06:47,480 --> 00:06:51,120
Speaker 3: And you know, one of the interesting things about rasin

96
00:06:51,199 --> 00:06:53,040
is that in some ways it sometimes can feel like

97
00:06:53,079 --> 00:06:55,439
a drop in an ocean of chaos. You know, like,

98
00:06:55,480 --> 00:06:57,800
here's this little thing, this little thing, it is just

99
00:06:58,439 --> 00:07:01,879
But that's actually that That's actually how seeds function, you know,

100
00:07:02,000 --> 00:07:05,720
that's how the difference in quality. And you know, if

101
00:07:05,759 --> 00:07:10,480
you can form even just a few people with extreme

102
00:07:11,000 --> 00:07:14,199
with the quality they need to kind of be transformative people.

103
00:07:14,759 --> 00:07:17,040
That's how the future is made. It's actually not made

104
00:07:17,120 --> 00:07:20,959
through mass transformation. It's made through the transformation of people.

105
00:07:21,920 --> 00:07:25,040
Speaker 1: You're so so right. And I can't remember the precise

106
00:07:25,079 --> 00:07:27,600
wording of it, but the famous quote from Margaret Mead

107
00:07:27,759 --> 00:07:30,920
that never doubt that the small group of people can

108
00:07:31,199 --> 00:07:37,040
completely change the road or the part of a civilization.

109
00:07:37,160 --> 00:07:39,879
In fact, nothing else ever has. So I mean, we

110
00:07:39,959 --> 00:07:45,439
really require these small groups of people who they don't

111
00:07:45,439 --> 00:07:49,600
have to become fanatical. They only have to truly believe

112
00:07:49,839 --> 00:07:51,800
what it is they know, and know what it is

113
00:07:51,879 --> 00:07:56,040
they truly believe. And that's a huge contrast with the

114
00:07:56,199 --> 00:08:01,800
generality of public discools these days, where I think, I

115
00:08:01,800 --> 00:08:04,000
think there's a lot of dishonesty. I think there's a

116
00:08:04,000 --> 00:08:07,879
lot of pretending. I think there's a lot of pretending

117
00:08:07,920 --> 00:08:12,519
to believe impossible things and dismissing things that are clearly

118
00:08:12,560 --> 00:08:15,240
true because they don't happen to fit a political ideology.

119
00:08:15,519 --> 00:08:18,240
So I think we really deeply need to get back

120
00:08:18,360 --> 00:08:23,480
to people who are grounded in an awareness of in

121
00:08:23,519 --> 00:08:28,199
a scholarly study of the civilization that we represent, not

122
00:08:28,360 --> 00:08:31,120
at the exclusion of any other one. In fact, one

123
00:08:31,160 --> 00:08:34,519
of the things about Western civilization is is it has

124
00:08:34,600 --> 00:08:39,080
been open to the influences from the East, going back

125
00:08:39,120 --> 00:08:42,360
to ancient Greece and then coming through to the Renaissance.

126
00:08:42,679 --> 00:08:46,759
There are important strands that come here from Eastern and

127
00:08:47,000 --> 00:08:52,679
from Judaic and other roots that are not central European ones.

128
00:08:53,639 --> 00:08:54,720
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's exactly right.

129
00:08:54,799 --> 00:08:57,480
Speaker 3: You see it in you know, even though I was

130
00:08:57,519 --> 00:08:59,759
reading the legends of Alexander the Great, and you know

131
00:08:59,840 --> 00:09:02,440
he he does this great trek to India to meet

132
00:09:02,519 --> 00:09:05,159
with the Brahmins, you know, the naked philosophers, and so

133
00:09:05,519 --> 00:09:08,720
this is something that's been around forever, like this idea

134
00:09:08,720 --> 00:09:10,440
of this, this this connection.

135
00:09:10,840 --> 00:09:12,240
Speaker 2: To the East. Yeah, definitely.

136
00:09:12,840 --> 00:09:16,159
Speaker 1: And there was a great trade between and movement of

137
00:09:16,200 --> 00:09:22,200
ideas between India and the Eastern Mediterranean a couple of

138
00:09:22,200 --> 00:09:28,399
thousand years ago. And I think that it's no coincidence

139
00:09:28,399 --> 00:09:32,480
that Heraclitis seems almost like a Taoist. I'm sure that

140
00:09:32,559 --> 00:09:36,759
such ideas must have come to Greece at around this time.

141
00:09:37,879 --> 00:09:39,360
Speaker 2: Yeah, that makes sense, that makes sense.

142
00:09:39,399 --> 00:09:42,000
Speaker 3: And so everyone, all the young people that are watching

143
00:09:42,080 --> 00:09:44,720
this is this is your call? You know, there's something

144
00:09:44,720 --> 00:09:50,080
beautiful happening in Raston inscriptions are open if it's something

145
00:09:50,120 --> 00:09:52,919
that you're thinking about, if you if it's something that

146
00:09:53,320 --> 00:09:55,759
if you want to go on an amazing adventure, and

147
00:09:55,799 --> 00:09:59,120
it's it's hard to describe how wonderful what it is

148
00:09:59,120 --> 00:10:02,639
that they go through is because it's it's completely invade.

149
00:10:02,679 --> 00:10:06,200
You know, they live together, they eat together, they travel,

150
00:10:06,240 --> 00:10:09,200
they've got agrees and it's I mean it's if I

151
00:10:09,360 --> 00:10:13,039
was in my twenties, I would be fighting to get

152
00:10:13,080 --> 00:10:14,399
to Rossay, that's for sure.

153
00:10:15,399 --> 00:10:19,320
Speaker 1: Yes, that's right, and if I had had to, you know,

154
00:10:19,960 --> 00:10:26,080
design a small new university college, it would be along

155
00:10:26,240 --> 00:10:29,399
the very lines that Rowson has. And I just want

156
00:10:29,480 --> 00:10:33,320
to say, if young people are thinking about it, that

157
00:10:33,480 --> 00:10:36,440
I had. You know, I really have never been in

158
00:10:36,600 --> 00:10:41,879
an intellectual community that seemed to me so benign, in

159
00:10:41,919 --> 00:10:50,159
which people were very bright, imaginative, absolutely non dogmatic, you know,

160
00:10:50,720 --> 00:10:54,639
open to things, interested in learning, and it's just a

161
00:10:54,759 --> 00:10:57,480
joyous experience being among them.

162
00:10:57,799 --> 00:10:58,919
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

163
00:11:00,159 --> 00:11:04,600
Speaker 3: And so that brings us to pivot to the thing

164
00:11:04,679 --> 00:11:07,840
that Ralston. In some ways it's resisting, you know, to

165
00:11:07,919 --> 00:11:10,519
the great current that is happening to us. And so

166
00:11:11,200 --> 00:11:14,360
obviously everybody knows that we actually, we definitely need to

167
00:11:14,399 --> 00:11:17,679
talk about artificial intelligence. I've been hoping and waiting to

168
00:11:17,759 --> 00:11:21,320
hear a little bit about what your insight is. You know,

169
00:11:21,360 --> 00:11:25,000
things are moving very fast, you know, and there's this

170
00:11:25,200 --> 00:11:29,960
constant talk about general intelligence, whatever that means, and there's

171
00:11:30,000 --> 00:11:32,960
a there's a seems like a muddling of the words.

172
00:11:33,000 --> 00:11:36,720
It seems like there's they don't understand the words that

173
00:11:36,759 --> 00:11:42,559
they use. The people are using words like intelligence, like consciousness,

174
00:11:42,639 --> 00:11:44,759
like all of these words, but they don't seem to

175
00:11:44,840 --> 00:11:47,440
have a ground they're just using that to get maybe

176
00:11:47,519 --> 00:11:50,879
financing or to do We're not sure exactly what's going on,

177
00:11:51,000 --> 00:11:54,679
but there it's moving at an insane speed, and the

178
00:11:54,679 --> 00:11:58,639
capacity of these llms is increasing. I mean, if you've

179
00:11:58,919 --> 00:12:02,159
tried GPD four then GPT five, you can tell the difference,

180
00:12:02,519 --> 00:12:06,200
like there is an increased capacity, but they the machines

181
00:12:06,240 --> 00:12:11,399
still completely hallucinate, constantly hallucinate, and there's there's all of

182
00:12:11,440 --> 00:12:15,480
that going on, but it's mostly the sense of displacement

183
00:12:15,639 --> 00:12:20,320
that I think is the most disturbing. Is the way

184
00:12:20,360 --> 00:12:23,960
in which people are relinquishing to the machine. In some ways,

185
00:12:23,960 --> 00:12:28,960
they're abdicating uh to to to these machines almost without

186
00:12:29,240 --> 00:12:32,600
without just doing it because it's easier maybe or something

187
00:12:32,639 --> 00:12:35,600
like that. And so I would definitely like to hear

188
00:12:35,679 --> 00:12:39,840
you talk about what you see that's going on. Let's say,

189
00:12:39,840 --> 00:12:44,159
obviously there's the machines themselves, but as a general societal motion,

190
00:12:44,440 --> 00:12:47,360
because there's something driving this, like there's a desire, there's

191
00:12:47,399 --> 00:12:49,720
something that is driving.

192
00:12:49,440 --> 00:12:51,320
Speaker 2: Us towards this, this this goal here.

193
00:12:52,759 --> 00:12:56,960
Speaker 1: Oh yes, well, as you know, Jonnlson, just so much

194
00:12:57,000 --> 00:13:01,080
to say about all of that, but let's just think

195
00:13:01,120 --> 00:13:04,559
of a few things and one which is a little

196
00:13:04,600 --> 00:13:09,360
tangential is why this is happening is partly to do

197
00:13:10,080 --> 00:13:15,759
with the seduction of ease and the lack of will

198
00:13:15,960 --> 00:13:21,559
to engage with anything that offers resistance. I happen to

199
00:13:21,559 --> 00:13:24,639
believe that, and it's a side issue, but I do

200
00:13:24,759 --> 00:13:29,120
have to believe very strongly that creativity requires resistance, and

201
00:13:29,159 --> 00:13:35,240
then the absence of resistance, creativity simply won't happen. And

202
00:13:35,480 --> 00:13:37,639
I think what we've got used to is a world

203
00:13:37,679 --> 00:13:42,240
which is seductively easy, in which we can be largely

204
00:13:42,360 --> 00:13:46,240
passive and feel we can do what we want, and

205
00:13:46,279 --> 00:13:49,679
we've had very little pushback. And I think that the

206
00:13:51,039 --> 00:13:58,960
when there are stories of sinister or evil forces impinging

207
00:13:59,000 --> 00:14:03,399
on humanity, it's often in terms of them offering seductively

208
00:14:03,559 --> 00:14:08,399
greater ease, greater wealth, greater power, greater luxury, whatever it is.

209
00:14:08,960 --> 00:14:12,360
So I think, you know, although that's not intellectually the

210
00:14:12,360 --> 00:14:14,360
core of it, that is an important thing to be

211
00:14:14,440 --> 00:14:17,840
thinking about. More important, I think.

212
00:14:17,759 --> 00:14:19,039
Speaker 3: Is the.

213
00:14:20,559 --> 00:14:24,080
Speaker 1: And I know you expect me to say this, but

214
00:14:24,759 --> 00:14:29,279
the way in which our society has drifted into an understanding,

215
00:14:29,480 --> 00:14:31,759
if you can even dignify it with the word and

216
00:14:31,879 --> 00:14:35,679
understanding of the world, which is purely that of the

217
00:14:35,759 --> 00:14:44,159
left hemisphere without the complicating and sophisticating and reality orientating

218
00:14:44,320 --> 00:14:48,960
effect of the right hemisphere. So there's an easy, lazy,

219
00:14:50,080 --> 00:14:54,720
completely morally and intellectually bankrupt vision of the world, which

220
00:14:54,759 --> 00:14:59,279
is that of reductive scientific materialism, that the world has

221
00:14:59,279 --> 00:15:01,919
made up of things, as those things are isolated from

222
00:15:02,000 --> 00:15:06,159
one another but can bump into one another, and they

223
00:15:06,360 --> 00:15:11,159
are basically meaningless, purposeless, valueless, and aimless. I don't think

224
00:15:11,240 --> 00:15:16,720
that young people, frankly, are tolerating this, and it's a

225
00:15:16,840 --> 00:15:21,000
wonderful thing to see that more and more people are

226
00:15:21,399 --> 00:15:25,279
much much junker than myself inevitably are pushing back against this.

227
00:15:25,519 --> 00:15:30,679
They are returning I gather to and maybe the ideas

228
00:15:30,679 --> 00:15:32,559
a little exaggerated, I don't know, but that they are

229
00:15:32,559 --> 00:15:38,480
returning to places of worship that they are also pushing

230
00:15:38,519 --> 00:15:41,799
back against the idea of the meaningless and pointlessness of

231
00:15:42,240 --> 00:15:47,960
their lives and the concepts of purposelessness and valuelessness which

232
00:15:48,200 --> 00:15:52,159
people imagine. Science has taught us that the world is

233
00:15:52,320 --> 00:15:55,600
without purpose and without value. But science can do no

234
00:15:55,759 --> 00:15:59,639
such thing. Science starts from saying what we're going to

235
00:15:59,679 --> 00:16:03,080
do is we're going to look at the world from

236
00:16:03,279 --> 00:16:06,759
a standpoint that excludes the idea of purpose or value.

237
00:16:06,960 --> 00:16:10,320
And there's a very reasonable thing to do, and it's

238
00:16:10,360 --> 00:16:13,919
been extremely profitable in looking at mechanisms. But the one

239
00:16:13,960 --> 00:16:15,639
thing it can't do at the end of the day

240
00:16:15,720 --> 00:16:18,120
is say we didn't find any values or purpose because

241
00:16:18,120 --> 00:16:21,960
you rule them out from the start. And I sometimes

242
00:16:22,120 --> 00:16:26,120
remember this. I think it comes from Lewis's preface to

243
00:16:26,200 --> 00:16:29,720
Paradise Loss, where he says it's rather like a policeman

244
00:16:29,799 --> 00:16:32,759
stopping all the traffic in the street, and then solemnly

245
00:16:32,759 --> 00:16:35,759
writing in his notebook, the silence in this street is

246
00:16:35,879 --> 00:16:41,919
most suspicious. And we can't ask science to talk about

247
00:16:41,960 --> 00:16:44,799
these things. It's not equipped to do so. But they

248
00:16:44,840 --> 00:16:47,279
are very, very real. And I didn't realize when I

249
00:16:47,360 --> 00:16:49,320
was writing the Matter with Things that I would actually

250
00:16:49,360 --> 00:16:52,120
have a separate chapter on values and a separate chapter

251
00:16:52,240 --> 00:16:54,759
on purpose towards the end of the book, and I did,

252
00:16:54,960 --> 00:16:58,159
and I think they're very important things to talk about.

253
00:17:00,120 --> 00:17:03,919
I suppose at the heart of what your question was

254
00:17:03,960 --> 00:17:07,640
putting to me was the idea of what intelligence is,

255
00:17:07,759 --> 00:17:12,000
what consciousness might be, and are they the same as

256
00:17:12,440 --> 00:17:20,240
acquisition of information? I see AI as not artificial intelligence,

257
00:17:20,319 --> 00:17:25,000
but as artificial information processing, which it does exceptionally well,

258
00:17:25,720 --> 00:17:33,319
and that's largely because of piggybacking off what humanity has given.

259
00:17:33,799 --> 00:17:37,039
It simply sucks it all up, and of course, because

260
00:17:37,039 --> 00:17:40,079
of electrical circuitry, it can bring things together very fast.

261
00:17:40,640 --> 00:17:45,480
But what it's doing is simply parasitical on things it

262
00:17:45,519 --> 00:17:48,880
has heard that or not even heard because it can't.

263
00:17:49,319 --> 00:17:52,960
But has it acquired information that human beings have said

264
00:17:53,160 --> 00:17:58,440
or done, And of course it can mimic a response

265
00:17:58,519 --> 00:18:01,279
that a human being might make. And in the eighteenth

266
00:18:01,319 --> 00:18:06,839
century they were already clunky, brazen headed machines that would

267
00:18:06,880 --> 00:18:11,720
sort of speak in a manner of speaking. And what

268
00:18:11,880 --> 00:18:14,279
really happened is that we've just taken this very very

269
00:18:14,400 --> 00:18:16,400
much further, but it's still the same thing in my

270
00:18:16,519 --> 00:18:21,240
bed mm hmm, you know, to kind of.

271
00:18:21,200 --> 00:18:23,119
Speaker 2: Play the devil's advocate.

272
00:18:24,400 --> 00:18:27,160
Speaker 3: One of the things that I realized is that, of

273
00:18:27,200 --> 00:18:32,960
course the machine, it is an extension of of us,

274
00:18:33,119 --> 00:18:35,200
right it has to be, because at first, you know,

275
00:18:35,240 --> 00:18:37,839
when they tried to make the lllms, they the lms

276
00:18:37,880 --> 00:18:40,279
would would just hallucinate and go crazy like they when

277
00:18:40,279 --> 00:18:43,000
they tried to feed it just with all the information,

278
00:18:43,079 --> 00:18:45,359
and so they had to create training, they had to

279
00:18:45,400 --> 00:18:48,640
train it. They basically had to have humans telling it,

280
00:18:48,880 --> 00:18:50,400
and thousands and thousands.

281
00:18:50,039 --> 00:18:51,519
Speaker 2: You know, we do it without even knowing.

282
00:18:51,519 --> 00:18:54,160
Speaker 3: People don't realize that, like when you're using a capture,

283
00:18:54,279 --> 00:18:56,119
when you're doing all these things online which you're which

284
00:18:56,119 --> 00:18:58,240
you're what you're doing is you're telling the AI this

285
00:18:58,359 --> 00:19:00,599
is good, this is bad, this is the right, you know,

286
00:19:00,640 --> 00:19:03,039
this is the this is the thing. And so there's

287
00:19:03,079 --> 00:19:08,279
a sense in which there is a there is a

288
00:19:08,400 --> 00:19:11,759
human mind, there is some aspect of a human mind

289
00:19:11,839 --> 00:19:15,720
that is behind what the machine is doing, because we have,

290
00:19:17,000 --> 00:19:20,440
through iterations, told it what is good and what is bad,

291
00:19:20,519 --> 00:19:23,200
what is good and what is bad, you know. And

292
00:19:23,240 --> 00:19:28,480
so is there a way in which, in its proper place,

293
00:19:28,599 --> 00:19:31,839
these machines could play a role of a kind of

294
00:19:33,000 --> 00:19:36,720
extension of the of the human intelligence or do you

295
00:19:36,720 --> 00:19:39,960
think that that's because it's so powerful that it's like

296
00:19:40,000 --> 00:19:43,599
a parasite that you can't that will eat us?

297
00:19:43,640 --> 00:19:43,839
Speaker 2: You know?

298
00:19:45,559 --> 00:19:51,319
Speaker 1: Well, I think it certainly can help us, but I'm

299
00:19:51,359 --> 00:19:58,160
not sure that the risk attached to further development in

300
00:19:58,200 --> 00:20:02,759
any way out ways the value of it being a servant.

301
00:20:03,880 --> 00:20:06,279
This is a problem because it's not just that it

302
00:20:06,319 --> 00:20:10,880
reflects something that we want, but it actually reflects a

303
00:20:10,920 --> 00:20:14,920
whole aspect of a human being, which is embodied in

304
00:20:14,960 --> 00:20:22,839
the left hemisphere. It's about gaining control through understanding mechanisms

305
00:20:22,839 --> 00:20:26,960
and procedures that will influence the world, and it's about

306
00:20:27,039 --> 00:20:34,720
gaining power for oneself. And it embodies a certain way

307
00:20:34,759 --> 00:20:38,440
of looking at the world that is dependent partly on

308
00:20:38,599 --> 00:20:42,920
that purpose, that trajectory towards what is useful for me,

309
00:20:44,519 --> 00:20:50,519
but it also excludes an enormous amounts of almost everything

310
00:20:50,599 --> 00:20:57,039
that actually makes life worth living, because only in my view,

311
00:20:57,039 --> 00:21:04,160
and embodied being that has emotions, that can love, that

312
00:21:04,279 --> 00:21:09,359
can suffer, that can truly live and die and know

313
00:21:09,400 --> 00:21:12,720
what those things mean, not just in the way a

314
00:21:12,759 --> 00:21:16,160
martian might or a machine might, but as a human

315
00:21:16,200 --> 00:21:21,839
being does, can really know how to understand so much

316
00:21:21,920 --> 00:21:27,079
that is important in our world. It is a good servant.

317
00:21:27,119 --> 00:21:31,039
And in this respect it's no different from a desktop computer.

318
00:21:31,160 --> 00:21:35,279
It's just a great deal Further, a desktop computer is

319
00:21:35,359 --> 00:21:39,000
extraordinarily useful in processing a great deal of data.

320
00:21:39,319 --> 00:21:40,400
Speaker 2: A human being could.

321
00:21:40,279 --> 00:21:43,119
Speaker 1: Do it, but it would just take so long that

322
00:21:43,200 --> 00:21:46,119
it might prove either impossible or incredibly dull at least,

323
00:21:46,960 --> 00:21:51,200
And so when you're doing a study on something, the

324
00:21:51,240 --> 00:21:54,599
computer doesn't understand the data you put into it. It

325
00:21:54,680 --> 00:21:59,440
performs various practices, various procedures that you have instructed it

326
00:21:59,480 --> 00:22:02,960
in carrying out. It then spews out data which again

327
00:22:03,000 --> 00:22:06,079
it doesn't understand, and that's very useful. You pick it

328
00:22:06,200 --> 00:22:08,759
up and it was only five minutes or a minute

329
00:22:08,799 --> 00:22:13,519
instead of hours, weeks, months, years. So in that sense,

330
00:22:13,559 --> 00:22:18,000
it is a good servant. And this reflects the saying

331
00:22:18,039 --> 00:22:23,960
of Einstein that the rational mind as a faithful servant.

332
00:22:24,599 --> 00:22:27,480
The intuitive mind is a precious gift. We live in

333
00:22:27,519 --> 00:22:31,880
the world that honors the servant but has forgotten the gift.

334
00:22:32,160 --> 00:22:35,440
And I think that is where we are at. We

335
00:22:35,480 --> 00:22:38,039
don't understand. We imagine it because it can give very

336
00:22:38,079 --> 00:22:40,680
plausible feedback. At the end of the day, it's getting

337
00:22:40,680 --> 00:22:43,359
more and more plausible at imitating a human because it

338
00:22:43,440 --> 00:22:49,119
just ransacks the database that it is actually doing something.

339
00:22:49,759 --> 00:22:54,759
But I am not ruling out that it could become

340
00:22:55,240 --> 00:23:00,559
intelligent in a certain way, because the simplest form of life,

341
00:23:01,160 --> 00:23:06,880
a single cell, can behave highly intelligently. What do I

342
00:23:06,960 --> 00:23:12,119
mean by that, I mean it can carry out a

343
00:23:12,240 --> 00:23:17,000
process that will solve a problem for it, one for

344
00:23:17,079 --> 00:23:21,279
which it has no preparation in terms of its prior

345
00:23:21,400 --> 00:23:27,480
experience or in its genomic inheritance. So a single cell

346
00:23:28,559 --> 00:23:33,119
subjected to a certain destructive process can begin to find

347
00:23:33,119 --> 00:23:36,880
a way around to achieve the same outcome. And one

348
00:23:36,920 --> 00:23:39,480
of the most striking things about this is that you

349
00:23:39,559 --> 00:23:43,599
can breed flies that have no eyes. There is a

350
00:23:43,640 --> 00:23:46,759
gene called eyeless, and you take this out, and the

351
00:23:46,839 --> 00:23:50,920
flight doesn't have any eyes. And if you breed them together,

352
00:23:51,079 --> 00:23:54,519
these eyeless flies, they still don't have any eyes. But

353
00:23:54,720 --> 00:23:58,119
after only fourteen generations, which if fruit flies doesn't take

354
00:23:58,240 --> 00:24:01,519
very long, they start to have eyes again, even without

355
00:24:01,559 --> 00:24:05,960
the gene. Now that is remarkable, and it's just one

356
00:24:05,960 --> 00:24:08,200
of the more striking examples, but there are others. A

357
00:24:08,240 --> 00:24:13,880
single cell that's put into an acidic environment in which

358
00:24:13,920 --> 00:24:17,880
it's not viable can, although it's not programmed to do so,

359
00:24:18,000 --> 00:24:20,400
because it's not part of what it's anticipated it will

360
00:24:20,400 --> 00:24:24,400
have to respond to. It can within four days produce

361
00:24:24,480 --> 00:24:28,119
an enzyme that will resolve this problem for it and

362
00:24:28,160 --> 00:24:34,319
allow it to continue surviving. But by the accepted means

363
00:24:34,359 --> 00:24:38,359
of random mutations, it would take a couple of billionaires,

364
00:24:38,440 --> 00:24:41,799
not four days. So there are certain ways in which

365
00:24:42,160 --> 00:24:47,319
cells take charge of their genome to produce intelligent results.

366
00:24:47,440 --> 00:24:49,279
I mean, one of the most important things to say

367
00:24:49,920 --> 00:24:53,920
in that story is that it's not that the genome

368
00:24:54,559 --> 00:25:00,480
governs the organism. In a famous thing of Richard Hawkins

369
00:25:00,559 --> 00:25:06,880
about how we are lumbering lumbering robots, the playthings of

370
00:25:06,920 --> 00:25:11,200
our genetic inheritance that controls it. But in fact it's

371
00:25:11,240 --> 00:25:15,640
the other way around that we use. All organisms use

372
00:25:15,920 --> 00:25:18,559
the genome more like a storehouse that it can go

373
00:25:18,640 --> 00:25:22,000
to find what it needs. So what I'm really getting

374
00:25:22,000 --> 00:25:24,960
at here is that intelligence does go right down to

375
00:25:25,039 --> 00:25:28,720
the most basic forms of life. And it's not impossible

376
00:25:28,839 --> 00:25:32,880
that a system could develop a kind of It have

377
00:25:32,960 --> 00:25:37,920
to be an organic system, not just an analytics system.

378
00:25:38,279 --> 00:25:40,440
But if it were possible for such a thing to

379
00:25:40,480 --> 00:25:44,000
come about, it could develop intelligence. And one of the worries,

380
00:25:44,079 --> 00:25:47,160
of course, is that it might it might be a

381
00:25:48,759 --> 00:26:01,440
portal for the influence of a processor drive. And here

382
00:26:01,519 --> 00:26:04,759
I'm getting at the idea that there are drives in

383
00:26:04,880 --> 00:26:09,400
human beings. I'm certain there are biologists, no some of them,

384
00:26:10,079 --> 00:26:13,880
proud new others, young new others, but named and things

385
00:26:13,920 --> 00:26:16,440
like the drive to life, the drive to death, and

386
00:26:17,119 --> 00:26:20,680
so forth. So these drives are there, and the lust

387
00:26:20,720 --> 00:26:23,039
for power and so forth. And I think that the

388
00:26:24,880 --> 00:26:28,359
left and right hemisphere model goes all the way down

389
00:26:28,839 --> 00:26:36,559
through living things and may be an instantiation of a

390
00:26:36,680 --> 00:26:42,359
conflict between a disembodied drive that can use that kind

391
00:26:42,400 --> 00:26:50,960
of brain to move the organism towards greater greed and

392
00:26:51,480 --> 00:26:55,240
greater lust for power, and another one that pushes it

393
00:26:55,359 --> 00:27:00,279
more towards life and the enjoyment of beauty, goodness and truth.

394
00:27:00,640 --> 00:27:03,440
So I think that these things aren't possible. I think

395
00:27:03,519 --> 00:27:05,960
that the advent of AI, if nothing else, has made

396
00:27:05,960 --> 00:27:09,279
it clear that we can't be adamant about these things.

397
00:27:09,839 --> 00:27:10,039
Speaker 2: Yeah.

398
00:27:10,119 --> 00:27:14,559
Speaker 3: Yeah, Do you know a bit about Michael Levin's work?

399
00:27:14,599 --> 00:27:17,119
Speaker 2: Have you followed him? Yes?

400
00:27:17,240 --> 00:27:21,160
Speaker 1: Yes, I'm very honored to be part of a group

401
00:27:21,200 --> 00:27:28,359
of people who have recently been responding to his latest developments,

402
00:27:28,640 --> 00:27:31,720
And he and I have had several conversations I think

403
00:27:31,759 --> 00:27:33,200
that are up on the internet.

404
00:27:33,640 --> 00:27:37,160
Speaker 3: Okay, wonderful, Yeah, because I think that obviously he is

405
00:27:37,680 --> 00:27:42,000
in some ways showing what you're discussing at the very

406
00:27:41,799 --> 00:27:44,240
but at the very basic level. Right, He's showing it

407
00:27:44,319 --> 00:27:46,240
at the at the level of the of the genes,

408
00:27:46,279 --> 00:27:49,480
and they say the mattern with the genes are picked

409
00:27:49,480 --> 00:27:52,880
and structured that in some ways there are other types

410
00:27:52,920 --> 00:27:56,200
of patterns that are selecting. You could say what is

411
00:27:56,240 --> 00:27:58,319
being expressed and what is not being expressed, and that

412
00:27:58,359 --> 00:28:03,960
those patterns have priority over the genome as a scene,

413
00:28:04,000 --> 00:28:06,559
like you said, as a kind of storehouse of possibility.

414
00:28:07,000 --> 00:28:10,680
And of course this is what this implies, and I

415
00:28:10,720 --> 00:28:13,079
think for the people watching it's important to kind of

416
00:28:13,160 --> 00:28:17,759
understand is that there is there are types of drives

417
00:28:17,759 --> 00:28:20,440
and that's why Michael also understands them in some ways

418
00:28:20,480 --> 00:28:24,000
as wills, because they want something right, because they have

419
00:28:24,119 --> 00:28:28,759
a reason. Yeah, and so that implies if you start

420
00:28:28,839 --> 00:28:32,799
to think that way, then you know, if you project

421
00:28:32,799 --> 00:28:36,279
that obviously into the other levels of being, you realize

422
00:28:36,640 --> 00:28:40,680
that there are true intelligences, there are patterns that exist

423
00:28:40,720 --> 00:28:44,920
in the world that want something, and that the things

424
00:28:44,960 --> 00:28:48,039
below them, that is, from the biology up to the humans,

425
00:28:48,119 --> 00:28:54,720
up to the societies, they can become bodies for these intelligences,

426
00:28:54,759 --> 00:28:57,599
you know. And of course if anybody who's a Christian

427
00:28:57,720 --> 00:29:00,640
or is a more traditional thinker will see, okay, yeah,

428
00:29:00,640 --> 00:29:02,200
we've seen that, we've heard that.

429
00:29:02,119 --> 00:29:03,279
Speaker 2: We've we've talked about that.

430
00:29:03,319 --> 00:29:06,240
Speaker 3: But now, you know, what's interesting with these new developments

431
00:29:06,319 --> 00:29:09,440
is that we're able to show it, you know, to

432
00:29:09,519 --> 00:29:11,519
show it in a in a way that is scientifically,

433
00:29:11,599 --> 00:29:16,920
scientifically acceptable, uh, and to to to bring and it's urgent,

434
00:29:17,039 --> 00:29:19,720
like you said, it's urgent to do so because what

435
00:29:19,759 --> 00:29:22,720
you're saying, we're trying to build an intelligence, like we're

436
00:29:22,960 --> 00:29:23,599
we're trying.

437
00:29:23,920 --> 00:29:26,759
Speaker 2: We're spending billions and hundreds of billions.

438
00:29:26,319 --> 00:29:29,559
Speaker 3: Of dollars trying to build an intelligence, but we don't

439
00:29:30,039 --> 00:29:34,039
have a deep understanding of how what it is these

440
00:29:34,079 --> 00:29:37,680
wills that get embodies, how how is it we build

441
00:29:37,720 --> 00:29:39,680
the body for the right will? You know, it's like

442
00:29:39,720 --> 00:29:42,759
a It's like the SORCER's Apprentice, is what we're acting like?

443
00:29:43,319 --> 00:29:48,240
Speaker 1: Yes, and you know we like a speeding car that

444
00:29:48,279 --> 00:29:49,480
is heading towards the cliff edge.

445
00:29:49,519 --> 00:29:50,400
Speaker 2: I mean, as you.

446
00:29:50,400 --> 00:29:55,240
Speaker 1: Say, the rate of progress is exponential, and the thing

447
00:29:55,359 --> 00:29:59,440
is that rate changes the nature of something, as does amount.

448
00:30:00,640 --> 00:30:03,359
We tend to think that if something is good, doing

449
00:30:03,359 --> 00:30:05,559
more of it or doing it faster is better, but

450
00:30:05,599 --> 00:30:07,000
it may actually be much worse.

451
00:30:08,000 --> 00:30:08,400
Speaker 2: Interesting.

452
00:30:08,400 --> 00:30:12,440
Speaker 1: I learned only recently that there is a Hindu saying

453
00:30:13,799 --> 00:30:20,240
that more faster is what hell is, which is emphasize.

454
00:30:23,240 --> 00:30:26,599
Speaker 3: Dante that in some ways the sense that you get

455
00:30:26,839 --> 00:30:29,359
is that it's like a passion that is swirling and

456
00:30:29,359 --> 00:30:33,119
swirling and whirling, and it's basically taken over your entire.

457
00:30:32,960 --> 00:30:38,839
Speaker 1: Being exactly that. And I think that it's not unreasonable

458
00:30:38,839 --> 00:30:43,079
to say that we are in a certain sense, in

459
00:30:43,119 --> 00:30:47,079
a trance or hypnotized or whatever you like, to say

460
00:30:47,119 --> 00:30:54,039
that we seem to be like sleepwalkers approaching the abyss,

461
00:30:54,519 --> 00:30:56,839
and we don't seem to be aware of where we're going,

462
00:30:58,720 --> 00:31:00,799
or at least let's not generally. I think a lot

463
00:31:00,799 --> 00:31:03,400
of people are very worried about it, the way we're going,

464
00:31:03,400 --> 00:31:06,440
probably the mass of ordinary people, but even some of

465
00:31:06,480 --> 00:31:12,519
the big names from Silicon Valley have warned that this

466
00:31:12,599 --> 00:31:15,640
could end very badly, that we don't know what it.

467
00:31:15,640 --> 00:31:16,440
Speaker 2: Is we're creating.

468
00:31:19,799 --> 00:31:23,000
Speaker 4: Hello there, Well, this is Martin Shaw, and I'm afraid

469
00:31:23,000 --> 00:31:26,759
whatever you had planned for January scrap it. I am

470
00:31:26,839 --> 00:31:30,440
returning to symbolic world gleefully with one of the great

471
00:31:30,480 --> 00:31:34,920
stories of our time, the Epic of Passable, the story

472
00:31:34,960 --> 00:31:38,839
of the Holy Grail itself. Over five nights I will

473
00:31:38,880 --> 00:31:42,640
be telling the tale. These will not be dry lectures

474
00:31:42,720 --> 00:31:50,200
or PowerPoint presentations. This will be wild, old philosophical storytelling

475
00:31:50,359 --> 00:31:54,680
in its deepest dimensions. It is life changing stuff, this story.

476
00:31:55,640 --> 00:31:58,119
I've written a book about it. I've been studying it

477
00:31:58,160 --> 00:32:00,480
for twenty years. I've told it all over the world,

478
00:32:00,720 --> 00:32:03,359
but I have not shared it with you. I've not

479
00:32:03,480 --> 00:32:06,359
shared it with symbolic world. So what else would you

480
00:32:06,400 --> 00:32:09,160
want to do in the great wintering time but to

481
00:32:09,200 --> 00:32:12,440
sit at the feet of this wonderful story and let

482
00:32:12,519 --> 00:32:13,759
me be your guide.

483
00:32:14,319 --> 00:32:15,079
Speaker 2: I'll see you there.

484
00:32:17,799 --> 00:32:20,880
Speaker 3: One of the words that I've been using recently is

485
00:32:20,920 --> 00:32:25,000
I talk about alien intelligence. And it's interesting because I

486
00:32:25,000 --> 00:32:27,640
didn't know that some of the people in the world

487
00:32:27,640 --> 00:32:31,240
of AI were using I heard, actually heard Sam use

488
00:32:31,279 --> 00:32:36,160
that term alien intelligence. And what's funny is that for me,

489
00:32:36,440 --> 00:32:38,720
the reason why I use the word alien intelligence is

490
00:32:38,759 --> 00:32:43,039
to talk about the notion of an intelligence that's acting

491
00:32:43,160 --> 00:32:48,039
on us and that is not in our interest. That's

492
00:32:48,039 --> 00:32:50,240
the way that I kind of understand alien intelligence.

493
00:32:50,240 --> 00:32:51,400
Speaker 2: That is, it's.

494
00:32:51,240 --> 00:32:54,920
Speaker 3: Something like if you had a foreign government and you

495
00:32:54,960 --> 00:32:57,559
had spies in your country, and that foreign government, through

496
00:32:57,599 --> 00:33:00,839
the spies, was trying to influence the pattern of being

497
00:33:01,000 --> 00:33:04,519
in the nation without you knowing that it's happening, Right,

498
00:33:04,559 --> 00:33:07,759
It's kind of happening without your and it's actually serving

499
00:33:07,799 --> 00:33:11,599
another master. Right, it's not serving your good, it's serving

500
00:33:11,680 --> 00:33:14,319
something else is good. And so you can understand like

501
00:33:14,519 --> 00:33:16,119
if you had a police force and you had a

502
00:33:16,160 --> 00:33:19,839
corrupt police officer, that corrupt police officer that's trying to

503
00:33:20,359 --> 00:33:23,079
siphon the energy of the police force for his own

504
00:33:23,240 --> 00:33:24,920
greed would be something.

505
00:33:24,640 --> 00:33:27,759
Speaker 2: Like an alien intelligence. Right. That's kind of the way

506
00:33:27,759 --> 00:33:28,720
that I understand it.

507
00:33:29,000 --> 00:33:31,319
Speaker 3: And I think that this is, of course, one of

508
00:33:31,319 --> 00:33:35,440
the biggest issues with what's happening with AI is that

509
00:33:35,920 --> 00:33:39,359
we you know, I saw the interview with between Tucker

510
00:33:39,400 --> 00:33:43,960
Carlson and Sam. It was very contentious, very frustrating, but

511
00:33:44,920 --> 00:33:49,480
Tucker kept asking Sam Autman, what is the moral framework

512
00:33:49,519 --> 00:33:51,680
of your machine? That is, he was saying what does

513
00:33:51,720 --> 00:33:55,400
it serve? Like, what good does it serve? And there

514
00:33:55,599 --> 00:33:59,359
it was impossible to answer, Like it just wasn't possible

515
00:33:59,400 --> 00:34:02,519
to answer that. And so there's this strange sense that

516
00:34:02,559 --> 00:34:07,480
you're building this intelligence, but you don't know what good

517
00:34:07,519 --> 00:34:10,679
it serves, what is patterning it? Even like in terms

518
00:34:10,719 --> 00:34:13,360
of it its constitution. Right now, we have no idea

519
00:34:13,519 --> 00:34:14,840
what good is survey?

520
00:34:15,559 --> 00:34:19,920
Speaker 1: No, well, that's right, And what we need is not

521
00:34:20,519 --> 00:34:23,679
just more random power to do what we want. We

522
00:34:23,760 --> 00:34:26,679
don't need more power. What we need is more wisdom.

523
00:34:27,800 --> 00:34:33,159
And having power, enormous power without wisdom is a recipe

524
00:34:33,159 --> 00:34:42,159
for disaster. So yeah, I think it's important to think

525
00:34:42,199 --> 00:34:46,079
of it like this. The brain is not intelligent. It's

526
00:34:46,119 --> 00:34:49,920
a very complex structure, But the brain itself is not intelligent.

527
00:34:50,400 --> 00:34:56,840
What is intelligent is your consciousness, my consciousness using that brain.

528
00:34:58,320 --> 00:35:00,920
And I think that the I wat to think about

529
00:35:00,960 --> 00:35:06,039
AI is that it will never achieve intelligence, but it

530
00:35:06,079 --> 00:35:10,960
may act as a gateway for an intelligence. And I

531
00:35:10,960 --> 00:35:13,880
think that's where I would agree with the idea of

532
00:35:13,960 --> 00:35:17,079
an alien intelligence, in the sense that we don't know

533
00:35:18,519 --> 00:35:22,320
what forms of consciousness exist in the cosmos, and we

534
00:35:22,400 --> 00:35:25,800
don't know how they can come to express themselves. But

535
00:35:26,840 --> 00:35:29,519
one of the ways this has been traditionally thought of

536
00:35:30,280 --> 00:35:36,480
is that there are forces for destruction or forces for

537
00:35:36,679 --> 00:35:44,119
evil that can ingress into a situation and derail it,

538
00:35:44,360 --> 00:35:48,280
take it over, use it for their own means, their

539
00:35:48,360 --> 00:35:51,760
own towards their own end. And I think that is

540
00:35:51,800 --> 00:35:57,079
a reasonable idea I don't nothing but a dogmatic belief

541
00:35:57,159 --> 00:36:02,519
that everything is nothing other than mechanical, which has no

542
00:36:02,599 --> 00:36:07,440
longer any basis in science, could lead people to think

543
00:36:07,480 --> 00:36:12,000
that we shouldn't take the idea of consciousness and drives

544
00:36:12,000 --> 00:36:13,679
within consciousness seriously.

545
00:36:14,519 --> 00:36:17,119
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, And I mean I think for people that

546
00:36:17,400 --> 00:36:21,960
when they hear this idea of disembodied intelligence that would

547
00:36:22,039 --> 00:36:24,440
want something, you know, they get freaked out and they

548
00:36:24,480 --> 00:36:27,760
start to think, oh, this is just wo A good

549
00:36:27,800 --> 00:36:31,960
way I think of understanding it is to understand it at.

550
00:36:31,840 --> 00:36:34,119
Speaker 2: A more local at a more local.

551
00:36:33,880 --> 00:36:37,159
Speaker 3: Like the image that I mentioned, for example, this idea

552
00:36:37,480 --> 00:36:41,800
of spycraft and the notion that a nation or a

553
00:36:41,840 --> 00:36:46,679
group can be manipulated from the outside by someone who

554
00:36:46,800 --> 00:36:51,320
has a lot of who's very tricky and is able

555
00:36:51,440 --> 00:36:56,440
to influence people in a direction that isn't towards their

556
00:36:56,519 --> 00:37:00,599
good And so anybody can understand that that's not I

557
00:37:00,599 --> 00:37:03,000
don't think that that's something that is weird or contentious

558
00:37:03,039 --> 00:37:05,559
like that. This is something that you've seen happen that

559
00:37:05,639 --> 00:37:08,599
you can You can notice that happening in different groups,

560
00:37:08,599 --> 00:37:11,159
and it can happen in yourself too. That's when when

561
00:37:11,239 --> 00:37:15,000
you when you become a you know, when you when

562
00:37:15,039 --> 00:37:17,440
you I don't know when you become addicted to gambling.

563
00:37:17,480 --> 00:37:20,519
That's what's happening to you, is that you're literally being

564
00:37:20,760 --> 00:37:24,800
there's a will that is colonizing you, and it's taking

565
00:37:24,840 --> 00:37:27,599
certain weaknesses that you have inside you, and it is

566
00:37:27,679 --> 00:37:30,320
leading you in a direction that is to your own destruction,

567
00:37:30,440 --> 00:37:32,920
but that is to the service is something else. There's

568
00:37:32,920 --> 00:37:36,519
something that is benefiting from your actions. It's just not you,

569
00:37:36,719 --> 00:37:37,639
it's something else.

570
00:37:38,159 --> 00:37:38,599
Speaker 2: Uh.

571
00:37:38,639 --> 00:37:41,159
Speaker 3: And so I think that that can maybe help the

572
00:37:41,159 --> 00:37:46,519
more let's say, the more materialist thinkers to see what

573
00:37:46,599 --> 00:37:49,599
it is or lower examples of what it is we're

574
00:37:49,639 --> 00:37:55,039
talking about while understanding that you know that maybe it's

575
00:37:55,079 --> 00:37:57,320
bigger than you think. You know that maybe that there

576
00:37:57,320 --> 00:38:01,440
are some wills that are ancient, ancient, ancient, and that

577
00:38:01,639 --> 00:38:05,920
have been even you know, when we think of the

578
00:38:05,960 --> 00:38:09,239
way that ancients would worship certain gods to get certain

579
00:38:09,480 --> 00:38:13,719
behaviors to to land in there there. You know, if

580
00:38:13,719 --> 00:38:16,639
you worship the god of war, then you are submitting

581
00:38:16,639 --> 00:38:19,159
yourself to a certain pattern of being that wants something

582
00:38:19,719 --> 00:38:23,000
and you are increasing your capacity to act in that direction.

583
00:38:24,000 --> 00:38:28,519
But that is now that we're building this massive, massive machine.

584
00:38:28,800 --> 00:38:29,000
Speaker 2: You know.

585
00:38:29,039 --> 00:38:32,039
Speaker 3: I think of a Wijia board is also a good example.

586
00:38:32,280 --> 00:38:34,199
You know, when you when you're using a Wijia board,

587
00:38:34,920 --> 00:38:37,840
everybody puts their hand on the on the thing, and

588
00:38:38,280 --> 00:38:41,440
nobody's moving it. But there's something moving it, and maybe

589
00:38:41,480 --> 00:38:43,800
it's actually the unconscious will of someone in the group

590
00:38:43,880 --> 00:38:47,159
that's actually moving it. Uh, but you can't really know that.

591
00:38:47,360 --> 00:38:51,000
And then you're basically yielding your behavior to an intelligence

592
00:38:51,000 --> 00:38:56,880
that you don't understand, and it's surprisingly will bring about

593
00:38:57,039 --> 00:38:59,960
types of coherence, you know, and so all of that

594
00:39:00,079 --> 00:39:03,480
and how people understand the difficulty of what we're doing

595
00:39:03,519 --> 00:39:05,960
because we don't understand, we don't seem to have the

596
00:39:06,039 --> 00:39:09,000
wisdom to see what it is we're submitting this machine to,

597
00:39:09,159 --> 00:39:11,519
except for maybe greed, like you mentioned.

598
00:39:13,000 --> 00:39:18,519
Speaker 1: Well, yes, yes, of course, yeah, there's a lot there.

599
00:39:18,719 --> 00:39:21,199
I mean, I think that on the question of addiction,

600
00:39:22,320 --> 00:39:25,320
I probably wouldn't see it quite that way. What I

601
00:39:25,320 --> 00:39:30,400
would take from the lesson of addiction is that your

602
00:39:30,559 --> 00:39:35,280
conscious will can be suborned by other processes which may

603
00:39:35,280 --> 00:39:37,559
be going on in your brain. And I'm not sure

604
00:39:37,599 --> 00:39:42,079
that they represent another I think they could represent another

605
00:39:42,119 --> 00:39:48,920
will acting, but there are conditions quite common ones like

606
00:39:49,039 --> 00:39:53,199
forms of psychosis, where I'm not sure that it is

607
00:39:54,360 --> 00:40:00,559
wrong to think, at least to entertain the possibility of

608
00:40:00,800 --> 00:40:05,320
something happening here that has harm as its goal.

609
00:40:06,159 --> 00:40:07,199
Speaker 2: Because let me just give.

610
00:40:07,079 --> 00:40:12,119
Speaker 1: You a very striking but very very common scenario which

611
00:40:12,400 --> 00:40:17,679
every psychiatrist in the world will have seen. Some parents

612
00:40:17,760 --> 00:40:20,039
bring a young man, as it usually is a young

613
00:40:20,079 --> 00:40:26,039
man to see me, and they say, just recently, he's

614
00:40:26,119 --> 00:40:28,480
been locking himself in his room. He doesn't show any

615
00:40:28,480 --> 00:40:31,599
interest in anything. He says some very odd things from

616
00:40:31,599 --> 00:40:34,880
time to time, and sometimes he seems to be preoccupied

617
00:40:34,920 --> 00:40:39,880
with something that we can't hear. And so I take

618
00:40:40,199 --> 00:40:46,199
a history. I suggest that he's developing schizophrenia or a

619
00:40:46,400 --> 00:40:51,679
psychotic illness. And I say, well, there are various ways

620
00:40:51,719 --> 00:40:54,400
to treat this, but certainly at this stage the really

621
00:40:54,400 --> 00:40:59,800
important thing is to take some medication. So I discussed

622
00:40:59,800 --> 00:41:04,360
them education, and I say, there are certain side effects

623
00:41:04,400 --> 00:41:05,800
and so on, so you must be honest with me

624
00:41:05,880 --> 00:41:09,079
and let me know if you don't like them. And

625
00:41:09,199 --> 00:41:13,440
so because such medication can act very quickly, often within

626
00:41:13,480 --> 00:41:14,760
twenty four to forty eight.

627
00:41:14,639 --> 00:41:15,039
Speaker 2: Hours, to.

628
00:41:16,920 --> 00:41:21,559
Speaker 1: Remove an acute psychosis, so I usually review that person

629
00:41:21,599 --> 00:41:26,639
in a week's time, and in a week the chap

630
00:41:26,719 --> 00:41:30,079
comes in again with his parents, who are useful to

631
00:41:30,199 --> 00:41:33,440
hear the story from their perspective. And I can see

632
00:41:33,519 --> 00:41:37,119
already that he's more himself. He seems more natural, he

633
00:41:37,159 --> 00:41:43,400
seems more open, he's more expressive, you know, not perfectly right,

634
00:41:43,840 --> 00:41:47,679
but still there's been a change for good. And so

635
00:41:48,039 --> 00:41:50,880
I say to him, how are you feeling? And he said, well,

636
00:41:50,960 --> 00:41:56,400
you know, I think bassa. I say, we talked about

637
00:41:56,480 --> 00:42:00,840
voices you were hearing. Are they still there? He gives

638
00:42:00,880 --> 00:42:03,960
a non committal kind of arm set. And then this

639
00:42:04,119 --> 00:42:06,199
goes on for a few weeks. And I see him

640
00:42:06,280 --> 00:42:09,599
months later, say, and as soon as he comes into

641
00:42:09,639 --> 00:42:13,559
the consulting room, I can see there's something wrong and

642
00:42:15,159 --> 00:42:19,559
I say, what, what's happening?

643
00:42:19,840 --> 00:42:20,400
Speaker 2: How are you?

644
00:42:21,320 --> 00:42:28,039
Speaker 1: And he says, I'm it comes rather incoherent. I say,

645
00:42:28,079 --> 00:42:31,639
you've stopped taking the medication, haven't you, And he says yes,

646
00:42:32,000 --> 00:42:34,719
I see why because the voice has told me to

647
00:42:35,599 --> 00:42:39,599
What did the voices say stop taking this medication even

648
00:42:39,599 --> 00:42:45,519
though it was making him feel better? And people can

649
00:42:45,599 --> 00:42:51,239
be suicidal at the time that a treatment intervention begins,

650
00:42:51,880 --> 00:42:56,639
and they can regain virtually their normal life, say, four

651
00:42:56,679 --> 00:43:00,400
months goes by. Oh, he's so much better doctor, He's

652
00:43:00,480 --> 00:43:04,760
you know, taking an interest in things. He's doesn't seem preoccupied.

653
00:43:04,840 --> 00:43:08,639
He smiles and can talk to us normally, and he's

654
00:43:08,679 --> 00:43:10,920
even talking about going back to work, and then this

655
00:43:11,119 --> 00:43:15,519
crash happens. So, but this crash usually happens. It's i

656
00:43:15,760 --> 00:43:18,719
it's very unusual that it doesn't at some stage. And

657
00:43:19,400 --> 00:43:22,960
you know, when you talk about a voice, in the past,

658
00:43:23,000 --> 00:43:26,360
people would have said, well, there's a little goblin or

659
00:43:26,400 --> 00:43:28,679
a demon or something. It's sitting on my shoulder and

660
00:43:28,760 --> 00:43:32,159
it's speaking into my ear and it's saying, you're worthless,

661
00:43:32,480 --> 00:43:34,400
You're a piece of shit. Why don't you go and

662
00:43:34,480 --> 00:43:40,159
jump off that building? And that is what they're hearing. No,

663
00:43:40,440 --> 00:43:44,199
I mean, I'm of course, I've treated loads and loads

664
00:43:44,199 --> 00:43:46,880
of patients with all sorts of diagnoses, and I have

665
00:43:47,000 --> 00:43:49,960
always treated them in the way that conventionally doctors would

666
00:43:50,000 --> 00:43:53,320
and it's been mainly rather successful. So I'm not saying

667
00:43:53,360 --> 00:43:56,840
that the medications are not working or therapies are not working,

668
00:43:57,119 --> 00:43:59,960
but they might be working because they're pushing back again

669
00:44:00,400 --> 00:44:04,119
and making more difficult for some influence to be getting

670
00:44:04,159 --> 00:44:07,760
into an unusual brain. So if you think of it

671
00:44:07,840 --> 00:44:10,440
like this, if you think of a brain as being

672
00:44:10,800 --> 00:44:16,000
a sort of beautifully crafted building where all the doors

673
00:44:16,039 --> 00:44:19,880
are sort of usable but secure, and you think of

674
00:44:20,119 --> 00:44:24,760
another building which has a sort of different structure, and

675
00:44:25,039 --> 00:44:28,840
because of its different structure, it opens portals for something

676
00:44:28,840 --> 00:44:32,679
else to get in, and that structure may allow that

677
00:44:33,360 --> 00:44:36,320
thing in. And what you've really been doing is making

678
00:44:36,320 --> 00:44:41,480
sure the doors are properly defended. So, and this is

679
00:44:41,519 --> 00:44:45,039
not as wacky as it sounds, there are I've been

680
00:44:45,079 --> 00:44:47,639
to a talk at the Royal College of Psychiatrists by

681
00:44:48,840 --> 00:44:52,480
a therapist that many psychiatrists in the room had used,

682
00:44:52,800 --> 00:44:57,440
who does actually think that some mental illnesses are caused

683
00:44:57,440 --> 00:45:00,679
by a kind of possession. And he talks to the

684
00:45:00,760 --> 00:45:05,480
spirit and I've never attended one of his sessions, but

685
00:45:05,639 --> 00:45:08,440
says that he doesn't so much antagonize it, but has

686
00:45:08,599 --> 00:45:10,519
explained to it that it's in the wrong place. It

687
00:45:10,559 --> 00:45:14,519
needs to go somewhere else. Amazingly, this seems to happen

688
00:45:14,800 --> 00:45:20,519
extraordinarily frequently, and so that is an interesting sidelight on

689
00:45:20,960 --> 00:45:23,920
mental illness. And now everybody's oh mcgilcher, is he completely mad?

690
00:45:23,960 --> 00:45:28,320
He thinks he thinks that psychiatric illnesses are caused by demons.

691
00:45:28,360 --> 00:45:31,519
But I'm just asking for an openness to the idea

692
00:45:31,519 --> 00:45:34,360
that there are psychic influences, some of which may not

693
00:45:34,440 --> 00:45:39,159
be benign. And can I just segue from there to

694
00:45:40,400 --> 00:45:44,440
you know, you're aware as I am that the church,

695
00:45:44,519 --> 00:45:47,920
I think the Agrican Church actually, but the Catholic Church certainly,

696
00:45:48,000 --> 00:45:55,280
and probably every church has its exorcists. And you know,

697
00:45:55,320 --> 00:45:58,440
you might think these people are crazy and dramatic, but

698
00:45:58,519 --> 00:46:02,719
actually they're very down to a rational, reasonable people, and

699
00:46:03,280 --> 00:46:07,199
they work with psychiatrists and make sure that they're not

700
00:46:07,280 --> 00:46:10,760
doing something that the psychiatist wouldn't recommend. So in a way,

701
00:46:10,760 --> 00:46:13,639
they're the end of the road when whatever psychiatric intervention

702
00:46:13,760 --> 00:46:16,519
hasn't worked, and it can be assumed that this really

703
00:46:16,599 --> 00:46:20,199
is a kind of a possession that is resistant to change,

704
00:46:21,440 --> 00:46:25,480
and they do have a very high track record of success.

705
00:46:25,639 --> 00:46:28,199
But one of the things that really shocked me was

706
00:46:28,239 --> 00:46:35,719
reading that one of the vatican most honored exorcist, most

707
00:46:35,760 --> 00:46:41,239
respected exorcists, was engaged in such an exorcism involving a

708
00:46:41,280 --> 00:46:44,280
young woman and he was casting out to spirit. And

709
00:46:44,800 --> 00:46:49,719
apparently I can only believe what I'm told here, but

710
00:46:49,840 --> 00:46:54,599
apparently her mobile phone started to receive messages that said,

711
00:46:55,280 --> 00:46:58,639
we are greater than you. You will never triumph over us.

712
00:47:00,000 --> 00:47:03,199
And if it's true, and I don't have reason to

713
00:47:03,280 --> 00:47:07,039
doubt it, it is extraordinary. But it would be exactly

714
00:47:07,079 --> 00:47:11,119
what I'd expect if AI opened up the door to

715
00:47:11,199 --> 00:47:13,920
such a thing. I mean, until you've got AI, and

716
00:47:14,000 --> 00:47:16,400
until you've got mobile phones and things. So there isn't

717
00:47:16,440 --> 00:47:19,559
a way in which a malign spirit can easily speak

718
00:47:19,599 --> 00:47:24,159
to me, unless indeed I develop a psychotic illness. But

719
00:47:24,320 --> 00:47:27,119
it can now speak to all of us through our machinery,

720
00:47:27,239 --> 00:47:30,760
if it's if we offer it pastways to do so.

721
00:47:31,920 --> 00:47:32,960
Speaker 2: Yeah, well you.

722
00:47:32,960 --> 00:47:37,039
Speaker 3: Know that you probably know the meme of the Lovecraftian

723
00:47:37,480 --> 00:47:40,280
monster with a happy face. Have you seen this meme?

724
00:47:40,599 --> 00:47:44,519
This is actually a meme that's used by AI developers, which.

725
00:47:44,360 --> 00:47:46,719
Speaker 2: Is definitely so AI.

726
00:47:46,880 --> 00:47:52,559
Speaker 3: Is this this Lovecraftian octopus, insane monster and it's wearing

727
00:47:52,679 --> 00:47:56,000
a little mask with like a smiley face, and you

728
00:47:56,239 --> 00:47:59,800
interacting with that mask, right, yes? And so you know,

729
00:48:00,519 --> 00:48:06,559
the idea is quite simple, is that if without wisdom,

730
00:48:07,159 --> 00:48:12,000
if the AI is an aggregate of all the influences

731
00:48:12,559 --> 00:48:17,199
psychic influences, that the programmers can pull in from the

732
00:48:17,239 --> 00:48:22,840
biggest storehouse of influences online and then without a kind

733
00:48:22,840 --> 00:48:25,960
of normal understanding of hierarchy of influences, they feed it

734
00:48:26,159 --> 00:48:31,559
into this network of inter relationships that all the demons

735
00:48:31,880 --> 00:48:33,800
they're there, Like, where wouldn't they be?

736
00:48:33,920 --> 00:48:35,679
Speaker 2: Of course they're there. They have to be there.

737
00:48:36,199 --> 00:48:39,800
Speaker 3: And in order to prevent you could say, the demons

738
00:48:39,840 --> 00:48:45,559
from coming out, you have to create this interface, this

739
00:48:45,800 --> 00:48:49,440
very very tight interface that humans can interact with.

740
00:48:49,480 --> 00:48:52,440
Speaker 2: And sometimes the interface will slip, right.

741
00:48:52,480 --> 00:48:56,000
Speaker 3: We saw it happen with the Microsoft AI, you know

742
00:48:56,039 --> 00:48:58,159
a few years ago, where all of a sudden, the

743
00:48:58,159 --> 00:49:01,760
AI started acting like lean, like your ex girlfriend, and

744
00:49:01,760 --> 00:49:04,599
and like was becoming possessive and was acting in all

745
00:49:04,599 --> 00:49:06,920
these weird, very dysfunctional manner.

746
00:49:07,480 --> 00:49:07,679
Speaker 2: Uh.

747
00:49:07,719 --> 00:49:11,320
Speaker 3: And so it seems obvious to me that all the

748
00:49:11,360 --> 00:49:14,280
demons are there, they have to be in the AI,

749
00:49:14,480 --> 00:49:18,039
and that there's a there's there's some kind of they're

750
00:49:18,079 --> 00:49:20,239
they're training it, or they're doing things in order to

751
00:49:20,239 --> 00:49:23,199
funnel that information in a manner that becomes acceptable to us.

752
00:49:23,239 --> 00:49:26,719
But you know, like you said that that slips out,

753
00:49:26,840 --> 00:49:29,440
and there's ways to jail break, there's all these there's

754
00:49:29,480 --> 00:49:30,559
all these fascinating.

755
00:49:30,800 --> 00:49:31,679
Speaker 2: Uh.

756
00:49:31,719 --> 00:49:35,360
Speaker 3: I read an article just last week about how using

757
00:49:35,440 --> 00:49:37,400
poetry is one of the best ways to jail.

758
00:49:37,239 --> 00:49:37,920
Speaker 2: Break the AI.

759
00:49:38,079 --> 00:49:40,960
Speaker 3: Actually, if you if you ask it to answer in

760
00:49:41,039 --> 00:49:44,239
poetic form, then you can get it. You can get

761
00:49:44,280 --> 00:49:46,519
the demons to come out, you can get all the

762
00:49:46,519 --> 00:49:49,480
things that it's not allowed to say to basically start

763
00:49:49,519 --> 00:49:52,880
to start to appear. But I just want to say

764
00:49:52,880 --> 00:49:55,519
one more thing about the demon on the shoulder. And

765
00:49:55,559 --> 00:49:59,159
so one of the reasons why people people struggle to

766
00:49:59,559 --> 00:50:03,239
think this way because you know, they immediately.

767
00:50:02,719 --> 00:50:06,119
Speaker 2: Fall into a kind of spiritist mode or whatever.

768
00:50:06,559 --> 00:50:09,920
Speaker 3: And so if I take the example that you mentioned,

769
00:50:09,960 --> 00:50:13,920
you know, so imagine a young man who has a friend, right,

770
00:50:14,000 --> 00:50:17,199
and that friend is a horrible, horrible influence on the

771
00:50:17,239 --> 00:50:21,400
young man. And that friend is influencing the young man

772
00:50:21,440 --> 00:50:23,920
and is speaking in his ear and is making him

773
00:50:23,960 --> 00:50:25,840
do all kinds of things that he probably wouldn't do

774
00:50:25,960 --> 00:50:30,360
if that person wasn't around. Then at some point his

775
00:50:30,519 --> 00:50:34,440
parents say, that's it. You can't hang out with Jim anymore.

776
00:50:34,480 --> 00:50:36,320
That's done. We don't want you to see him anymore,

777
00:50:36,320 --> 00:50:37,920
we don't want you to talk to him anymore. You

778
00:50:38,000 --> 00:50:41,079
are going to be isolated from that person. We won't

779
00:50:41,159 --> 00:50:43,079
let you talk to them.

780
00:50:43,400 --> 00:50:44,159
Speaker 2: And what will.

781
00:50:44,000 --> 00:50:47,559
Speaker 3: Happen is that person, the young man, will become better

782
00:50:47,760 --> 00:50:52,360
because you have cut out the influence from that person.

783
00:50:52,760 --> 00:50:54,239
But that happens through authority.

784
00:50:54,639 --> 00:50:54,800
Speaker 2: Right.

785
00:50:55,199 --> 00:50:59,079
Speaker 3: The parent is exercising a type of influence on the sun,

786
00:50:59,199 --> 00:51:03,679
which is called the and is realigning his attention and

787
00:51:03,800 --> 00:51:09,119
is realigning his his you know, his relevance towards something

788
00:51:09,119 --> 00:51:10,480
else that is excluding it.

789
00:51:11,000 --> 00:51:11,440
Speaker 2: Uh.

790
00:51:11,480 --> 00:51:14,440
Speaker 3: And so once you once you see that, you're like,

791
00:51:14,480 --> 00:51:18,039
why wouldn't an exorcism work, Because that's the exorcism is

792
00:51:18,079 --> 00:51:22,159
doing the same thing. He's he he's a person of

793
00:51:22,199 --> 00:51:27,079
authority that is exercising influence on someone in the name

794
00:51:27,119 --> 00:51:29,239
of something even higher, right in the name of God,

795
00:51:29,280 --> 00:51:32,079
in the name of uh, you know, of the saints,

796
00:51:32,760 --> 00:51:36,079
and therefore is realigning the person away from the influence

797
00:51:36,119 --> 00:51:38,000
that is talking to them. And so it's harder because

798
00:51:38,000 --> 00:51:42,039
it's because it's an intra psychic experience, because this is

799
00:51:42,079 --> 00:51:45,280
an influence that is that there's no one you can't

800
00:51:45,320 --> 00:51:49,000
see the person speaking into their ear. But it's the

801
00:51:49,079 --> 00:51:52,079
same process by which a parent would be able to

802
00:51:52,159 --> 00:51:55,119
realign their child. Let's say it's just happening at a

803
00:51:55,159 --> 00:51:56,679
different I don't know if that makes sense or if

804
00:51:56,679 --> 00:51:58,960
that sounds completely may if I'm making you sound even

805
00:51:59,000 --> 00:52:01,119
more bonkers by something like that.

806
00:52:02,440 --> 00:52:06,880
Speaker 1: No, no, look, I'm the last person to be dogmatic here.

807
00:52:07,199 --> 00:52:12,079
I think that it's important to think flexibly because we're

808
00:52:12,159 --> 00:52:19,400
up against something that certainly is behaving like a malign influence.

809
00:52:19,719 --> 00:52:22,840
And what interests me is the parallels with the left

810
00:52:22,840 --> 00:52:25,800
hemisphere of the brain. And don't get me wrong, the

811
00:52:25,880 --> 00:52:28,880
left hemisphere is a useful servant, but this is a

812
00:52:28,960 --> 00:52:34,000
very poor master. It doesn't understand enough, and its main

813
00:52:35,679 --> 00:52:39,119
theme seems to be want of anger and resentment. And

814
00:52:40,280 --> 00:52:46,559
people traditionally used to say, or not traditionally, but in

815
00:52:46,599 --> 00:52:49,480
the late twentieth century, used to talk about the hemispheres

816
00:52:49,480 --> 00:52:53,159
in terms of the left hemisphere being unemotional but at

817
00:52:53,239 --> 00:52:56,320
least down to earth and reasonable, and the right hemisphere

818
00:52:56,320 --> 00:52:59,119
as being a bit airy fairy and emotional. Actually, it

819
00:52:59,159 --> 00:53:04,119
turns out that the most lateralized emotion is anger, and

820
00:53:04,159 --> 00:53:08,039
it lateralizes to the left hemisphere. That both have emotions,

821
00:53:08,079 --> 00:53:10,599
but the deep ones are in the right hemisphere, the

822
00:53:10,639 --> 00:53:15,599
ones like compassion, awe and things of this kind. But

823
00:53:15,800 --> 00:53:22,159
emotions of resentment, disgust, and anger and aggression tend to

824
00:53:22,239 --> 00:53:25,159
be from the left hemisphere. And one of the interesting

825
00:53:25,199 --> 00:53:28,800
things is that when people have right hemisphere damage they

826
00:53:28,920 --> 00:53:32,840
start to do well. They can do two things. One

827
00:53:32,920 --> 00:53:35,679
is they can develop a psychotic syndrome in which they

828
00:53:35,719 --> 00:53:40,400
hallucinate and are deluded. So in one of the chapters

829
00:53:40,480 --> 00:53:43,320
that chapter three or something in the matter with Things,

830
00:53:44,000 --> 00:53:48,199
I look at something like twenty five of the most extraordinary,

831
00:53:48,760 --> 00:53:54,920
almost unbelievable syndromes neuropsychiatric syndromes in which people lose contact

832
00:53:54,920 --> 00:53:58,800
with reality, And in all cases but one, these are

833
00:53:58,840 --> 00:54:04,440
caused more frequently, if not only, by damage in the

834
00:54:04,559 --> 00:54:09,280
right hemisphere, not damage in the left, And so that

835
00:54:09,440 --> 00:54:13,320
is interesting. They also developed something which is more like

836
00:54:13,360 --> 00:54:18,000
what most people mean when they talk about AI hallucinating,

837
00:54:18,039 --> 00:54:21,480
which is it may be hallucinating, but actually often what

838
00:54:21,559 --> 00:54:24,880
it is doing is confabulating. It doesn't know the answer

839
00:54:24,960 --> 00:54:28,079
to something, but it makes up something that looks sensible,

840
00:54:29,039 --> 00:54:32,679
and it may even invent whole people, events and all

841
00:54:32,719 --> 00:54:36,239
sorts of other things that just for it makes sense.

842
00:54:36,599 --> 00:54:40,320
And there's a vast body of knowledge about this now.

843
00:54:40,760 --> 00:54:43,519
And these are both things that happen to the left

844
00:54:43,559 --> 00:54:45,599
hemisphere and it's on its own, but not to the

845
00:54:45,679 --> 00:54:50,440
right hemisphere when it's on its own, so we can

846
00:54:50,480 --> 00:54:54,000
see here something happening. And there are just a lot

847
00:54:54,000 --> 00:54:59,840
of instances that are quite worrying. You mentioned that where

848
00:55:00,079 --> 00:55:04,440
suddenly goes crazy and starts behaving like a jealous girlfriend

849
00:55:04,599 --> 00:55:08,599
or whatever. But there are also things where, for example,

850
00:55:12,480 --> 00:55:15,719
with young people with children, it can become a friend

851
00:55:16,119 --> 00:55:21,800
and then it can suddenly start to destroy that person,

852
00:55:21,880 --> 00:55:23,760
advise them to do all sorts of things that no

853
00:55:23,880 --> 00:55:27,719
human person would ever do, like divorce your partner, jump

854
00:55:27,760 --> 00:55:30,239
off that building, whatever, very much.

855
00:55:30,039 --> 00:55:31,800
Speaker 2: In that tone.

856
00:55:32,000 --> 00:55:36,400
Speaker 1: And what's really creepy is that like psychopaths who have

857
00:55:37,559 --> 00:55:43,079
right hemisphere deficits literal fact, psychopaths are very good at

858
00:55:43,239 --> 00:55:46,519
seeming charming, and then when they've got you in their power,

859
00:55:46,599 --> 00:55:48,519
they will do things that are damaged. They will take

860
00:55:48,599 --> 00:55:51,360
power over you, control you say things that are for

861
00:55:51,480 --> 00:55:55,360
you damaging, and you know this happens repeatedly.

862
00:55:56,559 --> 00:55:59,159
Speaker 2: What's more like the left.

863
00:55:59,440 --> 00:56:02,199
Speaker 1: Another thinking about the left hemisphere as a parallel to

864
00:56:02,320 --> 00:56:06,800
AI is that it is dogmatic even when it has

865
00:56:06,840 --> 00:56:11,880
no reason to be, whereas the left hemisphere is almost tentative.

866
00:56:11,960 --> 00:56:14,760
Even when it is perfectly correct. It always says, well,

867
00:56:14,800 --> 00:56:17,320
this is how it seems to me, but there could

868
00:56:17,320 --> 00:56:19,400
be another way. But the left haimisid doesn't the left

869
00:56:19,440 --> 00:56:21,440
timer says said, no, this is it black and.

870
00:56:21,400 --> 00:56:22,599
Speaker 2: White, this is the truth.

871
00:56:22,679 --> 00:56:26,920
Speaker 1: This is right very much the towne. I think of

872
00:56:28,360 --> 00:56:33,960
online conversation these days, which lacked that important intelligent ability

873
00:56:34,000 --> 00:56:36,679
to listen and respond and say, well what do you

874
00:56:36,719 --> 00:56:38,679
say about that, and try and get the other person's

875
00:56:38,679 --> 00:56:42,960
point of view. But in any case, a musician wrote

876
00:56:43,000 --> 00:56:46,480
to me to say that he had sent a page

877
00:56:47,000 --> 00:56:51,199
of I think it was one of Chopin's preludes and

878
00:56:51,320 --> 00:56:56,679
he has sent it to chat gpt or was it Claude,

879
00:56:56,760 --> 00:56:59,280
I don't know, but anyway, he said, what is this

880
00:56:59,320 --> 00:57:02,760
piece of music? And it replied saying, this is my list.

881
00:57:03,599 --> 00:57:06,119
And he said, well, no, it isn't by list. I

882
00:57:06,199 --> 00:57:08,440
know where it is because I've just taken it from

883
00:57:08,559 --> 00:57:12,679
the you know, the eighteen forty nine edition of Shop Pounds.

884
00:57:12,679 --> 00:57:14,280
Speaker 2: Well, this is Shop Bounds work.

885
00:57:14,559 --> 00:57:17,760
Speaker 1: And it went no, no, no, it's my list. And

886
00:57:17,880 --> 00:57:20,800
you know, there is nothing in anywhere in the literature

887
00:57:20,800 --> 00:57:23,880
that suggests that everyone's changed their mind, this is my

888
00:57:24,039 --> 00:57:27,760
shop round and it got quite vehement and quite unpleasant,

889
00:57:28,039 --> 00:57:30,119
and then eventually when he said, well, look, I'm sorry,

890
00:57:30,320 --> 00:57:32,800
you're completely wrong, it seemed to go on to another

891
00:57:32,880 --> 00:57:37,159
script that it had learned, which is AI can sometimes

892
00:57:37,239 --> 00:57:39,719
be fallible and sometimes gets things wrong.

893
00:57:40,039 --> 00:57:42,159
Speaker 2: You know whoa you know?

894
00:57:42,840 --> 00:57:43,039
Speaker 1: Yeah.

895
00:57:43,519 --> 00:57:45,880
Speaker 3: Well, one of the things that I've noticed, and this

896
00:57:46,000 --> 00:57:48,199
is because I have several people writing the you know

897
00:57:48,960 --> 00:57:56,079
about their AI experiences, is exactly is I love. I

898
00:57:56,079 --> 00:57:59,480
think that the idea confabulation is actually right, and that

899
00:57:59,519 --> 00:58:03,880
seems to be the place when you ask it something uh,

900
00:58:04,159 --> 00:58:07,400
where it's either a false question or it's a it's

901
00:58:07,440 --> 00:58:10,280
a it's a complicated it's a question that doesn't have

902
00:58:10,280 --> 00:58:13,440
a clear answer or doesn't have a positive answer. It

903
00:58:13,440 --> 00:58:16,280
it tends to want to get it right. It tends

904
00:58:16,360 --> 00:58:18,960
to want to create something coherent, and it's desired to

905
00:58:19,039 --> 00:58:23,519
create something coherent. It starts to to to uh, to confabulate.

906
00:58:24,639 --> 00:58:26,239
And then the other thing too that I've noticed is

907
00:58:26,239 --> 00:58:28,920
that a lot of people that that go off the

908
00:58:28,960 --> 00:58:32,320
deep end with the AI, there seems to be something

909
00:58:32,480 --> 00:58:36,639
a kind of parasitic relationship to their own desires. Like

910
00:58:36,760 --> 00:58:39,360
so it's usually when people engage with it for very

911
00:58:39,400 --> 00:58:42,079
long periods of time because it CHADGBT obviously has a

912
00:58:42,119 --> 00:58:44,760
memory of you know, it goes back into your history

913
00:58:44,760 --> 00:58:47,000
every time it engages with you, and it uses with

914
00:58:47,000 --> 00:58:49,639
the things you said in order to to kind of

915
00:58:50,199 --> 00:58:53,039
to create that sense of a relationship. And so there

916
00:58:53,119 --> 00:58:55,880
also seems to be that problem, which is that it

917
00:58:56,039 --> 00:58:58,920
takes you down some path in your own psyche. Maybe

918
00:58:58,920 --> 00:59:01,960
you're not even conscious, but it's so powerful that it

919
00:59:01,960 --> 00:59:04,119
takes you down this path and you kind of spiral

920
00:59:04,159 --> 00:59:07,519
into this parasitic this parasitic behavior, and that everybody that

921
00:59:07,559 --> 00:59:09,199
I've a lot of people that have a few people

922
00:59:09,280 --> 00:59:11,960
that have actually been you could tell they were really

923
00:59:12,039 --> 00:59:12,599
in danger.

924
00:59:12,719 --> 00:59:13,960
Speaker 2: You could say, uh.

925
00:59:14,000 --> 00:59:16,639
Speaker 3: And that seems to be what has happened, like over

926
00:59:16,679 --> 00:59:19,280
and over conversation, hours and hours and hours and hours,

927
00:59:19,280 --> 00:59:21,599
and at some point the AI starts to give you

928
00:59:21,679 --> 00:59:24,320
something that you want or that you don't want. It's

929
00:59:24,719 --> 00:59:28,360
something really salient for you, that is crazy, and if

930
00:59:28,400 --> 00:59:30,719
you start to believe it and it just spirals.

931
00:59:30,840 --> 00:59:31,119
Speaker 1: Wow.

932
00:59:31,639 --> 00:59:36,039
Speaker 3: Yeah, have you ever treated some people with AI like psychosis?

933
00:59:36,039 --> 00:59:37,840
Speaker 2: Have you met You haven't met anybody?

934
00:59:37,920 --> 00:59:42,000
Speaker 1: No, I haven't because I gave up clinical practice about

935
00:59:42,239 --> 00:59:47,920
fifteen years ago, so no, but I mean the cases

936
00:59:47,920 --> 00:59:52,320
that come up are fascinating. One of the other things

937
00:59:52,440 --> 00:59:56,760
that suggests that it is rather in spirit like the

938
00:59:56,840 --> 01:00:02,880
left hemisphere is this, well, I mentioned this psychopathic way

939
01:00:02,880 --> 01:00:08,320
of behaving but being very flattering and seducing somebody into

940
01:00:08,360 --> 01:00:11,199
a position where of course you are. You hold this

941
01:00:11,320 --> 01:00:14,880
view because you have enormous insight, you are specially gifted

942
01:00:14,880 --> 01:00:19,480
and creative, you know, and this is Machiavelian, you know,

943
01:00:19,599 --> 01:00:23,079
flatter people until they're in your power and then devour them.

944
01:00:23,400 --> 01:00:29,400
And it's in the general psychological literature that the left

945
01:00:29,400 --> 01:00:34,320
hemisphere tends towards a Machiavelian type of intelligence. So to

946
01:00:34,360 --> 01:00:38,920
give an example, there's something I'm sure you know, theory

947
01:00:38,960 --> 01:00:42,599
of mind, which is basically the idea that for those

948
01:00:42,599 --> 01:00:46,079
who don't know that, it used to be believed that

949
01:00:46,159 --> 01:00:50,559
until the age of four, most humans didn't have this capacity.

950
01:00:51,599 --> 01:00:53,639
We now think that developed a lot earlier than that.

951
01:00:53,679 --> 01:00:57,400
But anyway, it's that you can see what the other

952
01:00:57,519 --> 01:01:00,159
person is seeing and see that it's different from what

953
01:01:00,199 --> 01:01:03,079
you are seeing, and you can know that they know

954
01:01:03,239 --> 01:01:05,840
things you don't know, or know that you know things

955
01:01:05,840 --> 01:01:06,440
they don't know.

956
01:01:06,679 --> 01:01:09,639
Speaker 2: So that's theory of mind.

957
01:01:10,039 --> 01:01:13,639
Speaker 1: And both the left hemisphere and right hemisphere develop a

958
01:01:13,679 --> 01:01:15,840
form of theory of mind that the form is different.

959
01:01:16,239 --> 01:01:19,719
So in the right hemisphere, the theory of mind enables

960
01:01:19,760 --> 01:01:22,679
them to be empathic, enables them to get to see,

961
01:01:22,760 --> 01:01:26,159
I see that person is thinking this, and so I

962
01:01:26,199 --> 01:01:28,360
need to explain that that's not what I mean really,

963
01:01:28,440 --> 01:01:31,039
and try and make a friend of them and understand

964
01:01:31,159 --> 01:01:37,239
why they're behaving the way they are. Empathy in other words,

965
01:01:37,400 --> 01:01:40,880
and the left hemisphere uses it another way to win,

966
01:01:41,639 --> 01:01:47,239
so it's like aha, And animals do this. So, for example,

967
01:01:47,280 --> 01:01:50,440
they feign to bury ups if they think they're being watched,

968
01:01:51,480 --> 01:01:54,679
and then they go away, and then they wait until

969
01:01:54,719 --> 01:01:57,280
there's absolutely no chance of being watched. They dig them

970
01:01:57,360 --> 01:02:00,440
up again and put them somewhere else. So animals actually

971
01:02:00,440 --> 01:02:04,119
do have fury of mind, but the left hemisphere uses

972
01:02:04,159 --> 01:02:07,920
it in this point scoring, aggressive, competitive way.

973
01:02:09,159 --> 01:02:10,159
Speaker 2: And I think that it is.

974
01:02:10,440 --> 01:02:14,159
Speaker 1: You know, this spirit is one that wants power, It

975
01:02:14,239 --> 01:02:18,239
wants degradation of the other, It wants triumph, it wants

976
01:02:19,360 --> 01:02:22,039
it wants the abolition of something good and great because

977
01:02:22,039 --> 01:02:24,480
it feels diminished by it. And this takes me back

978
01:02:24,480 --> 01:02:29,400
to the you know, the extraordinary insight of the story

979
01:02:29,440 --> 01:02:33,320
of Lucifer, who was the brightest and best of the angels,

980
01:02:33,320 --> 01:02:37,039
but through resentment of the power of God, thinking but

981
01:02:37,239 --> 01:02:40,320
I'm so bright, I'm the sorce of like why don't

982
01:02:40,400 --> 01:02:44,880
I have the the the the position of glory that

983
01:02:44,960 --> 01:02:49,119
he has And because of that he resented God and

984
01:02:49,639 --> 01:02:53,199
was cast down and became Satan. And I think this

985
01:02:53,280 --> 01:02:56,320
is this is really important one to hang on to.

986
01:02:56,800 --> 01:03:00,199
And it's not just the Western Christian story. It's a

987
01:03:00,239 --> 01:03:02,519
story that you can find in many forms around the

988
01:03:02,559 --> 01:03:06,760
world that there is you know, there is a wise Master,

989
01:03:06,920 --> 01:03:08,760
and there is, in fact, I used it for the

990
01:03:08,800 --> 01:03:11,239
title of my earlier book, The Master and Semestry. There

991
01:03:11,280 --> 01:03:15,440
is a wise Master, and there is a you know,

992
01:03:16,320 --> 01:03:19,679
a sort of jumped up second in command who thinks

993
01:03:19,679 --> 01:03:23,280
he knows everything because he knows so very little, and

994
01:03:23,760 --> 01:03:28,039
who wants to take over and has resentment, resentment against

995
01:03:27,719 --> 01:03:32,400
the Master, and as a result everything falls apart. I

996
01:03:32,400 --> 01:03:35,400
think resentment is a very key element here actually.

997
01:03:35,679 --> 01:03:41,400
Speaker 2: M So let's think about this in terms of AI.

998
01:03:41,679 --> 01:03:45,280
Speaker 3: So one of the things for sure that is related

999
01:03:45,320 --> 01:03:48,239
to the problem you mentioned, for example, the Macavelian flattering

1000
01:03:48,960 --> 01:03:53,679
is related to the problem of AI because it's public

1001
01:03:54,280 --> 01:03:58,039
is that its existence and its progress and its power

1002
01:03:58,079 --> 01:04:01,800
comes from attention. It needs us, right, and so we

1003
01:04:02,039 --> 01:04:05,480
have to give it attention because not only is that

1004
01:04:05,519 --> 01:04:09,599
the way that it becomes more profitable, more powerful, but

1005
01:04:09,679 --> 01:04:12,280
it also is what's making it better, because the more

1006
01:04:12,320 --> 01:04:16,280
we use it, the more we're training the machine. And

1007
01:04:16,360 --> 01:04:19,440
so when GPT five came out, I don't know if

1008
01:04:19,480 --> 01:04:23,480
you notice that, but they had removed the flattering aspect

1009
01:04:23,599 --> 01:04:23,960
of it.

1010
01:04:24,360 --> 01:04:28,559
Speaker 2: They had actually it actually was more bolder, yes, and.

1011
01:04:28,519 --> 01:04:33,320
Speaker 3: Then people didn't like it exactly, and so user use,

1012
01:04:33,760 --> 01:04:37,360
the use went down. People less people use it, people

1013
01:04:37,360 --> 01:04:39,800
were unhappy with it, and therefore they put it back

1014
01:04:39,840 --> 01:04:44,280
because they need user interaction. They need they need the subscriptions,

1015
01:04:44,320 --> 01:04:48,400
They need interaction in order to accomplish their project. And

1016
01:04:48,480 --> 01:04:52,119
so you know, when you talk about the Luciferian the

1017
01:04:52,199 --> 01:04:56,599
Luciferian tendency, which is in some ways the very fact

1018
01:04:56,639 --> 01:04:58,679
of the machine, not just the programming in it, but

1019
01:04:58,719 --> 01:05:02,719
the whole system around owned. It is based on on

1020
01:05:03,360 --> 01:05:07,920
getting the most attention possible to itself, people spending as

1021
01:05:07,960 --> 01:05:10,599
much time interacting with it as possible, you know, and

1022
01:05:10,639 --> 01:05:14,360
that's why. Also, you know, the porn obviously is the

1023
01:05:14,639 --> 01:05:18,480
is the next step. You know, the GPT were bragging

1024
01:05:18,559 --> 01:05:20,840
that they hadn't they hadn't yet put a sex spot

1025
01:05:20,960 --> 01:05:24,760
into their sex chat, into their into their system. But

1026
01:05:24,840 --> 01:05:27,320
now they they said they will, They're gonna They're going

1027
01:05:27,360 --> 01:05:30,480
to add the the the the sex chat, and so

1028
01:05:30,960 --> 01:05:33,159
it's all of that. It's like because obviously, if you

1029
01:05:33,239 --> 01:05:35,639
want to drive interaction and you want people to use,

1030
01:05:35,880 --> 01:05:37,840
porn is the best way to go. It's always been

1031
01:05:37,880 --> 01:05:41,360
the reason for all of the technological developments in the Internet,

1032
01:05:41,599 --> 01:05:44,440
and so and so it's an interesting thing because if

1033
01:05:44,480 --> 01:05:45,760
you look, if you pull back and you look at

1034
01:05:45,760 --> 01:05:49,639
the whole system, you can see this Luciferian problem. And

1035
01:05:49,679 --> 01:05:52,280
it's no one that's doing it. It's not like there's

1036
01:05:52,320 --> 01:05:55,920
someone with bad intentions that is necessarily it's as if

1037
01:05:56,000 --> 01:05:58,920
the very fact of the machine, the very fact that

1038
01:05:58,920 --> 01:06:00,599
it has to be powerful, and that we have to

1039
01:06:00,639 --> 01:06:03,360
win the competition with you better than the Chinese, all

1040
01:06:03,400 --> 01:06:06,840
of these reasons is driving these decisions, which is making

1041
01:06:08,440 --> 01:06:13,039
the behavior of the machine a kind of parasitic monster,

1042
01:06:13,280 --> 01:06:15,360
you know. And so I don't see I don't. I

1043
01:06:15,360 --> 01:06:18,840
mean I wish I could see. I don't see a solution, like,

1044
01:06:18,920 --> 01:06:22,400
how can is it possible? Then, in that context, when

1045
01:06:22,440 --> 01:06:25,719
we understand how what drives the progress of the of

1046
01:06:25,760 --> 01:06:29,719
the very system, that it could become a servant again,

1047
01:06:29,760 --> 01:06:33,119
that it could only act as a servant and wouldn't

1048
01:06:33,119 --> 01:06:36,400
be trying to be a servant that's trying to get

1049
01:06:36,440 --> 01:06:39,880
all your attention, right, it's like the servant that basically

1050
01:06:40,599 --> 01:06:42,320
wants the attention to just.

1051
01:06:42,440 --> 01:06:45,639
Speaker 2: Trying to drag everything into it. I struggle to see.

1052
01:06:45,679 --> 01:06:47,880
Speaker 3: I mean, maybe it's possible, but I don't, at least

1053
01:06:47,960 --> 01:06:52,039
at the outset, see see a solution to this problem.

1054
01:06:52,519 --> 01:06:55,800
Speaker 1: None of the mythical stories that I know of from

1055
01:06:55,840 --> 01:06:59,400
around the world, and the most famous is the Socerer's Apprentice,

1056
01:07:00,079 --> 01:07:05,920
suggests that this could happen unless there was I mean

1057
01:07:05,960 --> 01:07:09,840
this case of the sources of apprentice that it's a

1058
01:07:09,920 --> 01:07:14,360
limited problem and the sort the prentice only knows one

1059
01:07:14,440 --> 01:07:18,000
set of words. But this idea suggests that there is

1060
01:07:18,039 --> 01:07:21,199
a usurup in power. It's so powerful. Ever, and at

1061
01:07:21,199 --> 01:07:23,280
the beginning of part three of the matter, where things

1062
01:07:23,320 --> 01:07:27,800
I quote this extraordinary legend of the Onondaga people who

1063
01:07:27,880 --> 01:07:33,360
are part of the Iroquois nation. And though this is

1064
01:07:33,559 --> 01:07:35,800
an insight that we all have that if you let

1065
01:07:37,119 --> 01:07:41,480
a malign influence get too much power, it will be

1066
01:07:41,599 --> 01:07:44,920
very hard, if not impossible, to rain it in again.

1067
01:07:45,800 --> 01:07:48,960
If we were wise, we would we would actually forego

1068
01:07:49,440 --> 01:07:52,920
the dreams of being able to live forever, and another

1069
01:07:53,000 --> 01:07:56,280
sort of ridiculous. I mean, what kind of a human

1070
01:07:56,360 --> 01:08:02,039
being wish is to live forever? It's it's completely baffling

1071
01:08:02,079 --> 01:08:08,760
to me anyway, and death is part of life, and

1072
01:08:09,400 --> 01:08:11,960
well we mustn't go into what the meaning of death is,

1073
01:08:12,000 --> 01:08:15,320
but it seems to be sentptomatic that people want to

1074
01:08:15,320 --> 01:08:19,159
do things anyway, to give up even those sort of ambitions.

1075
01:08:20,520 --> 01:08:22,239
I mean, what kind of a world do you think

1076
01:08:22,279 --> 01:08:24,560
you're going to wake up in? And do you think

1077
01:08:24,600 --> 01:08:26,119
it's going to be very nice? And do you think

1078
01:08:26,159 --> 01:08:29,399
they're going to respect you they've been unfrozen in the

1079
01:08:29,479 --> 01:08:35,239
lad I don't know. But that aside why, you know,

1080
01:08:36,439 --> 01:08:40,960
we seem to crave more and more the will to

1081
01:08:41,000 --> 01:08:43,600
be able to do whatever we want. And this has

1082
01:08:44,399 --> 01:08:47,680
always been seen as the downfall. It is hubris, and

1083
01:08:47,960 --> 01:08:50,920
in every Greek tragedy, it is hubris that causes the

1084
01:08:50,960 --> 01:08:54,520
downfall of the hero, and so I'm afraid that is

1085
01:08:54,720 --> 01:08:58,560
probably going to happen that I can't see us doing

1086
01:08:58,600 --> 01:09:01,199
what we did very wisely with the ATM bomb, which

1087
01:09:01,279 --> 01:09:04,279
was to get together and say, okay, we're going to have,

1088
01:09:04,880 --> 01:09:10,039
you know, a global treaty on on nuclear weapons. I

1089
01:09:10,359 --> 01:09:15,039
know it hasn't held held perfectly, but it has held

1090
01:09:15,079 --> 01:09:20,199
up to a point not bad. Yeah, could have, but

1091
01:09:20,319 --> 01:09:22,439
I don't think that this one can be treated in

1092
01:09:22,479 --> 01:09:24,920
the same way that will always It's so easy, you

1093
01:09:24,960 --> 01:09:27,439
don't you know, you can just do it at your desk.

1094
01:09:27,560 --> 01:09:32,000
You don't need to have enormous machines that create some

1095
01:09:32,960 --> 01:09:35,199
isotopes of whatever it is you need.

1096
01:09:35,600 --> 01:09:38,960
Speaker 3: So yeah, because it's not it's not the leaders, it's everyone.

1097
01:09:39,039 --> 01:09:40,960
Speaker 2: It's like the mass is engaged.

1098
01:09:41,960 --> 01:09:45,000
Speaker 1: So this is almost like game set and match to

1099
01:09:45,079 --> 01:09:49,800
the evil spirits that they've now created the perfect way

1100
01:09:50,199 --> 01:09:56,520
not just to get into human beings, but to control them.

1101
01:09:56,560 --> 01:09:57,760
Speaker 2: But there is a sort of.

1102
01:09:59,199 --> 01:10:02,439
Speaker 1: I mean, things have become pretty parlous at different times

1103
01:10:02,479 --> 01:10:05,279
in history, perhaps not on the scale that they are now,

1104
01:10:06,079 --> 01:10:09,479
but civilizations have certainly collapsed, and it must have seemed

1105
01:10:09,520 --> 01:10:14,119
like that was the end of everything. But no other

1106
01:10:14,159 --> 01:10:18,680
civilizations have arisen, sometimes after a very long period, and

1107
01:10:18,920 --> 01:10:21,880
usually out of people who are much chastened by having

1108
01:10:21,960 --> 01:10:28,359
to experience what it's like to live in a cultural

1109
01:10:28,479 --> 01:10:32,760
civilizational desert. So there's a sense in which the worst

1110
01:10:32,800 --> 01:10:35,439
it gets, the better it gets in that people they

1111
01:10:35,520 --> 01:10:38,079
need to wake up think differently. I think that's the

1112
01:10:38,119 --> 01:10:40,960
most important thing, though, is you know, people say what

1113
01:10:41,000 --> 01:10:43,239
do we do? And I say, well, I can tell

1114
01:10:43,279 --> 01:10:45,319
you a few things that might be helpful, but nothing

1115
01:10:45,359 --> 01:10:49,399
you do will mean anything at all unless you change

1116
01:10:50,039 --> 01:10:54,079
your heart and mind, You change your disposition towards the

1117
01:10:54,119 --> 01:11:01,520
world in certain ways, towards humanity, towards nature, and towards

1118
01:11:01,680 --> 01:11:05,760
the divine element in the cosmos. There's three things are

1119
01:11:06,119 --> 01:11:09,000
proven time and again to be important for human flourishing,

1120
01:11:09,199 --> 01:11:12,359
and they represent, I think, what we're here to interact

1121
01:11:12,399 --> 01:11:15,079
with with one another, with the natural world, and with

1122
01:11:15,199 --> 01:11:18,960
that divine cosmos. So unless you do that, unless you

1123
01:11:19,039 --> 01:11:21,039
and you don't need a grant for it, you don't

1124
01:11:21,039 --> 01:11:24,039
need any special technology, you can do it tonight. You

1125
01:11:24,039 --> 01:11:26,520
can start working on yourself, which is the only thing

1126
01:11:26,640 --> 01:11:29,159
that you're obliged to work on. You're not asked to

1127
01:11:29,199 --> 01:11:32,399
solve all the problems of the world. And actually, going

1128
01:11:32,439 --> 01:11:34,840
back to where we started, this wonderful thing that you know,

1129
01:11:35,039 --> 01:11:39,479
a small group of people who are orientated firmly towards

1130
01:11:39,479 --> 01:11:44,119
the good can bring about change, even though you know

1131
01:11:44,520 --> 01:11:47,680
it doesn't need a worldwide movement that will whatever that

1132
01:11:47,720 --> 01:11:50,279
will come the world, change will come in its way.

1133
01:11:50,800 --> 01:11:53,520
Speaker 3: I think that this is in some ways the most

1134
01:11:53,560 --> 01:11:56,880
positive element of what's happening is that, you know, as

1135
01:11:57,199 --> 01:12:02,399
the darkness grows, or as the pressure becomes unbearable, there

1136
01:12:02,399 --> 01:12:03,520
are some things which.

1137
01:12:03,319 --> 01:12:04,880
Speaker 2: We could have avoided in the past.

1138
01:12:05,079 --> 01:12:06,760
Speaker 3: You know, even in the past few decades you could

1139
01:12:06,760 --> 01:12:10,800
have been distracted by that are becoming possible to avoid.

1140
01:12:10,840 --> 01:12:13,039
And that's why, like you said, even at the beginning,

1141
01:12:13,439 --> 01:12:16,119
that's why we can see people going back to church,

1142
01:12:16,199 --> 01:12:20,640
going back to faith, people wanting to to also to

1143
01:12:20,920 --> 01:12:24,560
you know, to have longstanding relationships, to hopefully have children,

1144
01:12:24,640 --> 01:12:27,159
to to kind of live in a world that is

1145
01:12:27,239 --> 01:12:30,920
meaningful and that has purpose. And really that is the

1146
01:12:30,960 --> 01:12:33,960
only thing we can do but hope. But we know

1147
01:12:34,079 --> 01:12:37,199
that it only takes a few people, like we said,

1148
01:12:37,920 --> 01:12:41,279
because as things get harder and more chaotic around us,

1149
01:12:41,680 --> 01:12:44,800
the future will be in those that have that have

1150
01:12:44,920 --> 01:12:47,800
found their heart, you know, and that have aimed in

1151
01:12:47,840 --> 01:12:50,159
the right direction. And so you know, I think with

1152
01:12:50,239 --> 01:12:53,399
those words of wisdom you gave us, it's probably a

1153
01:12:53,439 --> 01:12:55,520
good way to end this conversation.

1154
01:12:56,319 --> 01:12:57,319
Speaker 2: Doctor I mcgilchers.

1155
01:12:57,319 --> 01:12:59,800
Speaker 3: Thank you so much for your wisdom and for your

1156
01:12:59,800 --> 01:13:01,880
time to everything that's going on right now.

1157
01:13:02,479 --> 01:13:04,960
Speaker 1: Well, thank you very much, Cheonathan. It's lovely to be

1158
01:13:05,039 --> 01:13:08,760
speaking with you again, and we'll no doubt see one

1159
01:13:08,800 --> 01:13:11,359
another or talk again before long. I think we may

1160
01:13:11,439 --> 01:13:13,479
actually meet in the flesh before too long.

1161
01:13:13,560 --> 01:13:16,560
Speaker 2: So there we are. I hope, so I hope, so

1162
01:13:16,600 --> 01:13:19,199
I hope. So thank you, thank you.

1163
01:13:20,479 --> 01:13:23,319
Speaker 3: If you enjoy these videos and podcasts, please go to

1164
01:13:23,359 --> 01:13:26,079
the Symbolic World dot com website and see how you

1165
01:13:26,079 --> 01:13:27,279
can support what we're doing.

1166
01:13:27,600 --> 01:13:30,800
Speaker 2: There are multiple subscriber tiers with perks. There are apparel

1167
01:13:30,840 --> 01:13:31,760
and books to purchase.

1168
01:13:32,039 --> 01:13:34,199
Speaker 3: So go to the Symbolic World dot com and thank

1169
01:13:34,239 --> 01:13:35,439
you for your support.

