WEBVTT 1 00:00:01.919 --> 00:00:03.640 Podcast check it out. 2 00:00:03.960 --> 00:00:08.080 But Joe Regan experience showIn My Day Joe Rogan podcast 3 00:00:08.160 --> 00:00:14.240 by Night all Day, mister Collins, So good to see 4 00:00:14.359 --> 00:00:19.719 any good to be back consciousness. So this new book, 5 00:00:19.800 --> 00:00:22.679 what inspired it? What what got you to I mean, 6 00:00:22.679 --> 00:00:25.399 you've kind of explored consciousness a little bit with. 7 00:00:25.440 --> 00:00:29.519 Your psychedelic book How to Change Your Mind. Well, actually 8 00:00:29.719 --> 00:00:32.079 this book was inspired by the research I did for 9 00:00:32.119 --> 00:00:36.920 that book. As you know, I had several research trips 10 00:00:38.280 --> 00:00:39.240 and uh, do. 11 00:00:39.240 --> 00:00:41.640 You do air quotes when you say research, Yes. 12 00:00:44.000 --> 00:00:47.320 And I and two things happened that were really interesting. 13 00:00:48.200 --> 00:00:53.520 One is there's something about psychedelics that makes you think 14 00:00:53.560 --> 00:00:57.640 about consciousness. You know, it's like smudging the windscreen, the 15 00:00:57.640 --> 00:01:01.359 windshield that you normally is perfect, transparent, and you see 16 00:01:01.359 --> 00:01:04.040 the world through suddenly it's like different, and you realize 17 00:01:04.519 --> 00:01:08.159 there's something between me and the world and what is it? 18 00:01:08.439 --> 00:01:12.120 And that's consciousness. And so like a lot of people 19 00:01:12.439 --> 00:01:16.879 have done psychedelics, you start wondering about this mystery, why 20 00:01:16.920 --> 00:01:19.280 is it this way not that way? So that was 21 00:01:19.319 --> 00:01:21.680 one experience. The other was I had an experience in 22 00:01:21.680 --> 00:01:24.719 my garden in Connecticut where we have a house of 23 00:01:26.680 --> 00:01:29.799 walking through my garden and getting the powerful impression that 24 00:01:29.840 --> 00:01:33.840 the plants were conscious and that these I remember this 25 00:01:33.920 --> 00:01:37.079 particular it was a plume poppy or several plume poppies, 26 00:01:37.359 --> 00:01:41.920 and they were like returning my gaze. They were very benevolent, 27 00:01:42.079 --> 00:01:46.719 they were, you know, putting out positive vibes, but like 28 00:01:46.799 --> 00:01:49.239 they were conscious, much more alive than they'd ever been. 29 00:01:50.280 --> 00:01:52.959 And like a lot of insights on psychedelics, I didn't 30 00:01:53.000 --> 00:01:54.799 know what to do with it, like, is it true, 31 00:01:54.920 --> 00:01:56.920 is it just a drug thing? You know, what is it? 32 00:01:57.959 --> 00:02:00.359 But I decided to be interesting to find out and 33 00:02:01.040 --> 00:02:04.040 I consulted a couple of people scientists and said, what 34 00:02:04.079 --> 00:02:06.840 do you do with an insight like that? And they said, well, 35 00:02:06.879 --> 00:02:09.919 you test it against other ways of knowing, including scientific 36 00:02:09.960 --> 00:02:13.680 ways of knowing, And that led me down this really 37 00:02:13.719 --> 00:02:20.719 interesting path exploring plant intelligence and plant consciousness. So basically, yeah, 38 00:02:20.879 --> 00:02:23.960 the book grew out of the psychedelic experiences and some 39 00:02:24.039 --> 00:02:26.719 meditation experience. Meditation also has a way of making you 40 00:02:27.159 --> 00:02:30.520 like hyper aware of how strange your thoughts are, where 41 00:02:30.520 --> 00:02:32.199 are they coming from, who's thinking them? 42 00:02:32.520 --> 00:02:34.360 So there's a bunch of different schools of thought when 43 00:02:34.400 --> 00:02:37.240 it comes to consciousness, right, there's one like the Rupert 44 00:02:37.280 --> 00:02:40.919 Shell Drake thing, that sort of everything has consciousness, And 45 00:02:41.080 --> 00:02:48.000 there's the sort of rational scientists that believe it exists 46 00:02:48.000 --> 00:02:50.840 somewhere in the mind, in the brain, Yeah, in the brain, 47 00:02:50.879 --> 00:02:53.960 excuse me. And then there's people that think that the 48 00:02:54.039 --> 00:02:57.319 brain is essentially just an antenna, right, that's tuning it 49 00:02:57.400 --> 00:03:00.599 in to the greater consciousness of whatever it is that's 50 00:03:00.639 --> 00:03:01.080 out there. 51 00:03:01.240 --> 00:03:01.560 Yeah. 52 00:03:01.680 --> 00:03:04.199 Do you have any one of them that you hold 53 00:03:05.360 --> 00:03:05.800 or don't. 54 00:03:06.159 --> 00:03:09.439 They're all equally plausible. You know. I went into the 55 00:03:09.520 --> 00:03:13.240 experience assuming, because this is what most scientists assume, that 56 00:03:13.719 --> 00:03:18.719 somehow a certain arrangement of neurons in the brain generates consciousness, 57 00:03:18.800 --> 00:03:22.039 you know, subjective experience. But no one's been able to 58 00:03:22.080 --> 00:03:25.639 show that we've gotten nowhere in that effort too. You know, 59 00:03:25.759 --> 00:03:28.560 we can, we might correlate certain parts of the brain 60 00:03:28.639 --> 00:03:33.080 with consciousness, but we don't understand how three pounds of 61 00:03:33.319 --> 00:03:37.360 matter could generate the feeling of being you you talked about. 62 00:03:37.120 --> 00:03:39.439 It in your book where the two gentlemen who had 63 00:03:39.439 --> 00:03:39.719 the bet. 64 00:03:39.840 --> 00:03:45.919 Yeah, yeah, that was Christoph Cooke, who's a great brain scientist, 65 00:03:46.240 --> 00:03:51.080 and David Chalmers, who's a philosopher. And this goes back 66 00:03:51.159 --> 00:03:54.039 to like in the early nineties. They were getting drunk 67 00:03:54.080 --> 00:03:58.520 in a bar in Bremen, Germany, and Christoph Coke had 68 00:03:58.560 --> 00:04:01.719 had really was at the beginning of the modern scientific 69 00:04:01.800 --> 00:04:05.319 exploration of consciousness, and he was working with Francis Krick, 70 00:04:05.560 --> 00:04:08.039 who had just come off of a Nobel Prize for 71 00:04:08.120 --> 00:04:11.759 the discovery of DNA. And Krick, who is like the 72 00:04:11.800 --> 00:04:16.160 most famous scientists in the world at the time, thought well, 73 00:04:16.199 --> 00:04:20.000 the same kind of reductive science that discovered the double 74 00:04:20.040 --> 00:04:24.480 helix DNA and explained heredity, I'm going to do that 75 00:04:24.560 --> 00:04:27.480 for consciousness. He's very arrogant man, and he thought of 76 00:04:27.680 --> 00:04:31.839 just you know, no problem, and Krick was kind of 77 00:04:31.879 --> 00:04:36.600 his sidekick. I'm sorry, Coke was his sidekick. And so Coke, 78 00:04:36.759 --> 00:04:39.160 who shared that kind of confidence, made this bet with 79 00:04:39.240 --> 00:04:43.000 Chalmers that they would find the neural correlates the parts 80 00:04:43.040 --> 00:04:45.879 of the brain that are responsible for consciousness within twenty 81 00:04:45.879 --> 00:04:49.839 five years. That was twenty five years twenty seven years 82 00:04:49.879 --> 00:04:54.399 ago now, and Chalmers won the bet. Chalmers is famous 83 00:04:54.439 --> 00:05:00.680 for coining the term the hard problem, you know, to 84 00:05:00.720 --> 00:05:04.199 describe the whole effort to figure out consciousness. And it's 85 00:05:04.199 --> 00:05:07.399 a hard problem for a lot of reasons. I mean 86 00:05:07.439 --> 00:05:09.759 it is one of the biggest mysteries in the universe. 87 00:05:09.920 --> 00:05:12.519 I mean, how consciousness came to be? Did it evolve? 88 00:05:12.680 --> 00:05:19.279 Was it always here? But his point was that our 89 00:05:19.399 --> 00:05:25.680 science is based on third person, objective, quantifiable measurements, and 90 00:05:25.759 --> 00:05:30.040 consciousness is fundamentally a subjective, first person experience. So how 91 00:05:30.040 --> 00:05:33.560 does that those tools reach in and say anything of 92 00:05:33.639 --> 00:05:37.399 value about consciousness? So he said, you know, there are 93 00:05:37.399 --> 00:05:41.600 easy problems of consciousness we can figure out, like perception, emotion, 94 00:05:42.000 --> 00:05:44.959 things like that, But there is this hard problem how 95 00:05:44.959 --> 00:05:49.040 do you get from matter to mind? And he won 96 00:05:49.079 --> 00:05:52.519 the bet. There was a ceremony I went to a 97 00:05:52.519 --> 00:05:58.040 couple of years ago at NYU, and Coke presented Charmers 98 00:05:58.079 --> 00:06:03.000 with a case of very fine our wine and renewed 99 00:06:03.040 --> 00:06:05.600 the bat. He said, all right, in another twenty five years. 100 00:06:06.360 --> 00:06:08.160 That's optimistic how old these gentlemen. 101 00:06:09.399 --> 00:06:11.800 Coke is in his late sixties, so we'll see if 102 00:06:11.800 --> 00:06:14.879 he's around for this, but Charmers is a little bit younger. 103 00:06:17.720 --> 00:06:21.959 It's it's such an interesting thought because we know that 104 00:06:22.000 --> 00:06:28.519 the mind contains if damaged, right, we know that there's 105 00:06:28.560 --> 00:06:31.959 certain aspects, there's certain parts of the mind where like lobotomies, 106 00:06:32.000 --> 00:06:34.639 for instance. We know that if we disturb it radically 107 00:06:34.639 --> 00:06:37.759 affects behavior. We know that there's parts of the mind 108 00:06:37.839 --> 00:06:42.319 that you can stimulate that could actually recall memories. Right, 109 00:06:42.360 --> 00:06:44.480 there's some weird stuff going on there. So we know 110 00:06:45.360 --> 00:06:48.759 it's somehow or another at least functionally connected to consciousness. 111 00:06:48.800 --> 00:06:52.079 Oh yeah, it's definitely a relationship. But yeah, but if 112 00:06:52.079 --> 00:06:55.120 it's generating consciousness, that's one thing. But it could be, 113 00:06:55.160 --> 00:06:58.120 as you said earlier, it could be receiving consciousness, and 114 00:06:58.160 --> 00:07:00.600 the same things would hold true that if you damage 115 00:07:00.600 --> 00:07:04.720 parts of the brain, right, sure, if you damage yeah, yeah, 116 00:07:04.920 --> 00:07:11.199 damaged still television, right, Yeah, So that's that doesn't determine 117 00:07:11.199 --> 00:07:13.920 the truth of either theory. And then the other one 118 00:07:13.959 --> 00:07:17.120 is pan psychism, which you were alluding to. I don't 119 00:07:17.160 --> 00:07:19.680 know if that's Rupert Sheldrake. Would he I think he 120 00:07:19.720 --> 00:07:21.839 would believe more in the field of consciousness. 121 00:07:22.120 --> 00:07:24.720 Yeah right, he was a morphic residence guy, but I 122 00:07:24.759 --> 00:07:28.519 think he also subscribed to this idea that things contain consciousness. 123 00:07:28.920 --> 00:07:31.319 It's not his, but you know what I mean, it's well, 124 00:07:31.360 --> 00:07:33.639 it's been It's pretty universal. Right, There's a lot of 125 00:07:33.680 --> 00:07:36.920 people that have subscribed to this idea that everything has consciousness. 126 00:07:37.000 --> 00:07:40.480 Yeah, that even the particles that this table is made 127 00:07:40.480 --> 00:07:43.600 of have some easy little bit of psyche. And the 128 00:07:43.759 --> 00:07:46.480 challenge there is so that that solves the problem of 129 00:07:46.519 --> 00:07:49.000 how did it evolve? It didn't evolve, It's always here. 130 00:07:49.639 --> 00:07:52.000 But then you have this other problem, like, well, how 131 00:07:52.040 --> 00:07:54.680 do you take these If every one of our selves 132 00:07:54.800 --> 00:07:56.879 is made of particles that are conscious, how do you 133 00:07:56.959 --> 00:07:58.800 combine them in such a way that you get the 134 00:07:58.839 --> 00:08:02.399 sort of consciousness we have. It's called the combination problem, 135 00:08:02.399 --> 00:08:05.399 and nobody solve that. It's you know, it's a really 136 00:08:05.439 --> 00:08:08.959 deep mystery. And uh, this is a This is an 137 00:08:08.959 --> 00:08:11.560 odd book in some ways in that I don't know 138 00:08:11.600 --> 00:08:13.879 if this is very selling. But you'll know less at 139 00:08:13.879 --> 00:08:15.240 the end than you do at the beginning. 140 00:08:16.959 --> 00:08:17.959 But it's a fun ride. 141 00:08:18.120 --> 00:08:20.079 Oh I think it's a great ride. It was a 142 00:08:20.079 --> 00:08:21.839 great ride for me. I learned so much. 143 00:08:22.120 --> 00:08:24.079 Well, it's a fun ride to consider these things that 144 00:08:24.160 --> 00:08:26.879 no one could really figure out or not yet. 145 00:08:27.160 --> 00:08:29.959 Yeah, and also just to be put in touch with 146 00:08:30.000 --> 00:08:32.159 the fact you have this marvel going on in your 147 00:08:32.159 --> 00:08:34.120 head all the time. You have a voice in your head. 148 00:08:34.200 --> 00:08:35.840 You know, we're talking to each other, but you've got 149 00:08:35.840 --> 00:08:37.759 another voice going on, thinking what you're going to ask 150 00:08:38.000 --> 00:08:40.360 you know what the next question is, maybe what you're 151 00:08:40.360 --> 00:08:43.679 gonna have for dinner? You know, it's it's this, it's 152 00:08:43.720 --> 00:08:48.679 this amazing interior space we have and nobody understands how 153 00:08:48.720 --> 00:08:49.159 it came to. 154 00:08:49.120 --> 00:08:52.759 Be, and you can manage it, which is also you 155 00:08:53.000 --> 00:08:54.799 just like, I don't think about what I'm going to 156 00:08:54.879 --> 00:08:58.919 have for dinner. That's the thing, No about any of 157 00:08:58.919 --> 00:09:01.440 those things. That's the way to stay locked in a podcast. 158 00:09:01.879 --> 00:09:04.200 So yeah, that's the only thing because you can let 159 00:09:04.240 --> 00:09:07.080 your mind oh yeah, especially if someone on the other 160 00:09:07.120 --> 00:09:09.639 side is boring. Yeah, and then I'm like, oh no, 161 00:09:09.840 --> 00:09:12.080 this conversation is going to be pulling teeth. And then 162 00:09:12.120 --> 00:09:14.200 I started thinking about a new joke I'm working on, 163 00:09:14.679 --> 00:09:16.440 or oh I got to get my car fixed. 164 00:09:16.840 --> 00:09:19.960 Well, that's called spotlight consciousness when you can like really 165 00:09:20.000 --> 00:09:23.399 like put the blinders on yes and rule everything out. 166 00:09:23.600 --> 00:09:27.679 And that's opposed to lantern consciousness, where you're taking in 167 00:09:27.759 --> 00:09:31.639 all sorts of information, you're letting your mind wander, and 168 00:09:31.679 --> 00:09:35.279 that you know, they both have their value for our careers. 169 00:09:35.600 --> 00:09:38.919 Spotlight consciousness is essential for our work. We have to 170 00:09:38.960 --> 00:09:42.000 be able to focus. To get through school, we have 171 00:09:42.039 --> 00:09:45.600 to be able to focus. But you know, children have 172 00:09:45.679 --> 00:09:48.840 this other kind of consciousness that's really wild because they're 173 00:09:48.960 --> 00:09:52.080 very undisciplined. They can't stay on task, but they're taking 174 00:09:52.120 --> 00:09:54.919 in so much information and the world is just full 175 00:09:54.960 --> 00:10:01.000 of wonder and awe and and psychedelics. You know, is 176 00:10:01.000 --> 00:10:03.559 a way to recover that kind of consciousness. Because you're 177 00:10:03.600 --> 00:10:06.799 getting lots of sensory information from all over the place, 178 00:10:07.440 --> 00:10:12.559 it's very hard to focus, and so it's a taste 179 00:10:12.639 --> 00:10:15.159 of that other, you know, childhood consciousness. 180 00:10:15.639 --> 00:10:18.080 I always say that about marijuana as well, Like there's 181 00:10:18.080 --> 00:10:21.399 a thing about marijuana that people always say that it 182 00:10:21.480 --> 00:10:24.960 makes them paranoid, and I say, it makes you aware 183 00:10:25.000 --> 00:10:26.720 of all the things you should be paranoid of that 184 00:10:27.399 --> 00:10:31.080 It's like, you're very we're very vulnerable creatures, you know, 185 00:10:31.120 --> 00:10:33.960 but we like to pretend that we are not, you know, 186 00:10:34.200 --> 00:10:37.480 which is I found that out of all of my friends, 187 00:10:37.840 --> 00:10:40.159 the ones that have tried marijuana and hated it are 188 00:10:40.240 --> 00:10:43.639 all the ones that are control freaks. Yeah, they're all 189 00:10:43.759 --> 00:10:47.759 like really yeah, they're all really buttoned down, very serious, 190 00:10:47.919 --> 00:10:52.159 like really worried about outcomes, really concentrating on their career, 191 00:10:52.480 --> 00:10:56.120 really worried about, you know, just certain things that are 192 00:10:56.200 --> 00:10:59.840 just part of their daily life. And then they get 193 00:11:00.240 --> 00:11:02.440 a couple of hits of good weed and then they're like, 194 00:11:02.600 --> 00:11:09.759 oh my god, we're on a planet. You start freaking out, like, 195 00:11:09.799 --> 00:11:12.200 oh my god, none of this makes sense. All this 196 00:11:12.279 --> 00:11:14.679 is crazy. You know. 197 00:11:15.799 --> 00:11:18.120 The best piece of advice that I had when I was, 198 00:11:18.799 --> 00:11:22.120 you know, starting my exploration of psychedelics is you have 199 00:11:22.200 --> 00:11:26.559 to surrender. Yes, if you resist, you're going to be miserable, 200 00:11:26.720 --> 00:11:30.279 so anxious and so paranoid. And if you let go, 201 00:11:30.679 --> 00:11:31.600 it's going to work out. 202 00:11:31.799 --> 00:11:34.320 Yeah, you just got to be able to accept whatever 203 00:11:34.360 --> 00:11:37.960 it's showing you. And you know, we live in a 204 00:11:38.039 --> 00:11:40.159 very strange culture where that's illegal. 205 00:11:41.440 --> 00:11:44.080 The well not everywhere, right. It's changing, well, it. 206 00:11:44.080 --> 00:11:47.679 Is changing, fortunately, and there's some talk about it changing federally. 207 00:11:48.039 --> 00:11:50.519 You know, I actually talked to RFK Junior about that. 208 00:11:50.879 --> 00:11:56.240 There's some amazing therapies that are hugely beneficial to veterans, 209 00:11:56.720 --> 00:12:00.399 police officers, people with severe PTSD that experienced, you know, 210 00:12:00.679 --> 00:12:05.039 horrors that the average person never has to experience, and 211 00:12:05.080 --> 00:12:08.600 then they're forced to just like go back there released 212 00:12:08.679 --> 00:12:11.000 go back to regular life. I know, you've served us 213 00:12:11.000 --> 00:12:14.080 in overseas and you've seen people blow up, but now 214 00:12:14.159 --> 00:12:17.720 go to the supermarket takes and then you know, I 215 00:12:17.840 --> 00:12:19.960 know a bunch of them, and so many of them 216 00:12:20.039 --> 00:12:24.320 have benefited, particularly from ibogain. I began the work that 217 00:12:24.480 --> 00:12:28.879 Rick Doblin and MAMMA, yes MDMA and and psilocybin, those 218 00:12:29.000 --> 00:12:30.480 three other big ones that I. 219 00:12:30.639 --> 00:12:33.480 Think, well, you know, I heard a lot of positive 220 00:12:33.519 --> 00:12:36.000 noise out of the administration at the beginning that they 221 00:12:36.080 --> 00:12:41.639 were very much in favor of approving the FDA approving 222 00:12:42.000 --> 00:12:44.639 m d m A first and then psilocybin. I don't 223 00:12:44.639 --> 00:12:46.919 think we're there with ibogain yet, just because the research 224 00:12:46.960 --> 00:12:50.519 hasn't been done, although it has shown great benefit anecdotally. 225 00:12:51.360 --> 00:12:54.919 But something happened in the last month or two and 226 00:12:55.679 --> 00:13:00.440 there is uh. There was either Compass Pathways that was 227 00:13:01.080 --> 00:13:07.639 going to submit for psilocybin therapy or MAPS with was 228 00:13:07.720 --> 00:13:10.639 on a list of five drugs that were going to 229 00:13:10.679 --> 00:13:14.120 get an expedited approval process. This list went up to 230 00:13:14.159 --> 00:13:17.399 the White House and the psychedelic was taken off it. 231 00:13:18.000 --> 00:13:19.799 So there's somebody in the White House who doesn't want 232 00:13:19.799 --> 00:13:23.480 to see this happen, So it may slow down. Even 233 00:13:23.559 --> 00:13:26.200 if RFK Junior is in favor and some other people 234 00:13:26.240 --> 00:13:29.000 at the FDA are in favor, and maybe they're just 235 00:13:29.039 --> 00:13:30.200 waiting to get past the election. 236 00:13:31.399 --> 00:13:33.919 It could be that it's too controversial for something to 237 00:13:34.000 --> 00:13:35.080 do before the midterms. 238 00:13:35.200 --> 00:13:35.399 Yeah. 239 00:13:35.600 --> 00:13:39.200 Yeah, that's a gross way to live your life. 240 00:13:39.960 --> 00:13:41.799 Oh oh yeah, worrying. 241 00:13:41.519 --> 00:13:44.759 About midterms and elections and you can't do what you 242 00:13:44.879 --> 00:13:47.039 actually want to do or think is right to do 243 00:13:47.360 --> 00:13:49.360 because you're worried about public perception. 244 00:13:49.759 --> 00:13:51.639 It's just and I don't think it would be unpopular. 245 00:13:51.799 --> 00:13:54.000 I mean the fact that it's helpful to vets and 246 00:13:54.480 --> 00:13:58.000 first responders and women who've been victims of sexual abuse. Yeah, 247 00:13:58.000 --> 00:14:00.000 it seems to me that's a very sympathetic group of peace. 248 00:14:00.480 --> 00:14:03.279 Yeah, and everyone who's experienced a loss of family members. 249 00:14:03.360 --> 00:14:05.600 There's a bunch of different things that it can help 250 00:14:05.639 --> 00:14:07.919 you with that that are way better for you than 251 00:14:08.120 --> 00:14:10.840 just numbing your mind all day long, yeah, which is 252 00:14:10.879 --> 00:14:12.519 what a lot of people are choosing to do. And 253 00:14:12.639 --> 00:14:15.000 then unfortunately a lot of people self medicate as well, 254 00:14:15.080 --> 00:14:17.720 so then they get involved in you know, all sorts 255 00:14:17.759 --> 00:14:19.600 of stuff that they just pick up off the street, 256 00:14:19.799 --> 00:14:21.639 or they start using alcohol. 257 00:14:22.480 --> 00:14:25.440 You know, Well, you know, it's a this to go 258 00:14:25.559 --> 00:14:28.440 back to consciousness. This is this is a very common 259 00:14:28.519 --> 00:14:31.320 thing that people want to be less conscious, right, And 260 00:14:32.120 --> 00:14:35.919 I get that if you had trauma, if you're if 261 00:14:35.960 --> 00:14:38.600 you're a ruminator, and being in your mind is a 262 00:14:38.720 --> 00:14:42.320 really scary place to be. Yeah, it doesn't solve anything, 263 00:14:42.440 --> 00:14:46.000 but you have all these techniques we have for muting 264 00:14:46.120 --> 00:14:52.120 consciousness and just being less aware, less present. And one 265 00:14:52.159 --> 00:14:55.159 of the things that I concluded after doing all this 266 00:14:55.279 --> 00:14:59.480 research on consciousness is that it's funny. I was going 267 00:14:59.559 --> 00:15:02.559 down this path of tight focus solve you know, it 268 00:15:02.720 --> 00:15:07.360 was a very kind of Western male framework, which we've 269 00:15:07.399 --> 00:15:10.559 got a problem. What's the solution hard problem of consciousness? 270 00:15:10.919 --> 00:15:14.159 What's the right theory? And at a certain point I realized, okay, 271 00:15:14.320 --> 00:15:17.919 that's an interesting question. It's probably not solvable now. But 272 00:15:18.080 --> 00:15:22.759 there is this incredible phenomenon that we have this interior 273 00:15:22.840 --> 00:15:26.840 space where we have complete mental freedom, total privacy. We 274 00:15:26.879 --> 00:15:30.480 can think whatever we want, and we're and we're giving 275 00:15:30.519 --> 00:15:34.919 it away. We're either you know, muffling it with drugs 276 00:15:34.960 --> 00:15:39.120 and things like that, or we're filling that time with 277 00:15:39.320 --> 00:15:44.000 social media, you know, scrolling, uh you know, I mean 278 00:15:44.120 --> 00:15:47.080 we've heard about hacking our attention. And we know these 279 00:15:47.120 --> 00:15:50.279 algorithms you know, from social media are very good at 280 00:15:50.360 --> 00:15:55.639 like giving us these little dopamine hits. But that's that's 281 00:15:55.799 --> 00:15:59.919 time that we used to spend in spontaneous thought, you know, daydreaming, 282 00:16:00.159 --> 00:16:05.879 mind wandering, which can be very creative. So I came 283 00:16:05.919 --> 00:16:09.200 out of it thinking, no, I might not solve consciousness, 284 00:16:09.279 --> 00:16:11.960 but I'm going to appreciate it. I'm going to use it. 285 00:16:12.320 --> 00:16:17.000 I'm going to create a space for it. And you know, 286 00:16:17.440 --> 00:16:20.480 meditate is one way. Using psychedelics is another way. These 287 00:16:20.519 --> 00:16:23.840 are always to be in your head and explore what's there, 288 00:16:23.960 --> 00:16:25.360 which is kind of miraculous. 289 00:16:26.120 --> 00:16:27.840 Yeah, there's a bunch of different ways to do. I mean, 290 00:16:27.919 --> 00:16:30.480 some people like to do it. They're running. Yeah, you know, 291 00:16:30.639 --> 00:16:34.679 running is also they've found. One of the things they've 292 00:16:34.799 --> 00:16:39.039 found recently is that running with in terms of indogenous 293 00:16:39.080 --> 00:16:42.559 cannabinoids like runners high, is an actual real thing. 294 00:16:42.799 --> 00:16:44.919 It's a real thing. There's a drug released. Yeah that 295 00:16:45.080 --> 00:16:45.919 feels great. 296 00:16:45.799 --> 00:16:49.960 And it feels great, but it doesn't fuck with your perceptions, 297 00:16:50.120 --> 00:16:53.960 it doesn't mess with your motor skills, doesn't cloud your judgment. 298 00:16:54.600 --> 00:16:55.879 It just makes you feel great. 299 00:16:56.080 --> 00:16:59.039 Yeah. Yeah, experiences of AWE do this too, you know, 300 00:16:59.120 --> 00:17:01.799 you go to the ground and yeah or something and 301 00:17:02.240 --> 00:17:04.319 or a great piece of art, and you have this 302 00:17:04.559 --> 00:17:11.240 feeling of like powerful presence and it's very interesting and 303 00:17:11.319 --> 00:17:14.640 it shrinks the ego. I have a good friend who's 304 00:17:14.640 --> 00:17:19.119 a colleague at Berkeley, a psychologist who studies AWE, and 305 00:17:20.400 --> 00:17:23.839 he does this cool experiment where he has people draw 306 00:17:23.880 --> 00:17:26.240 a picture of themselves on graph paper, you know, just 307 00:17:26.279 --> 00:17:28.319 stick figure or something like that, and then he takes 308 00:17:28.359 --> 00:17:30.640 some river rafting or something like that, or even just 309 00:17:30.680 --> 00:17:33.440 shows them a picture of Yosemite, and then he has 310 00:17:33.480 --> 00:17:35.799 them draw themselves again, and they draw themselves at like 311 00:17:35.880 --> 00:17:39.480 half the size because their sense of self has been 312 00:17:39.519 --> 00:17:44.559 overwhelmed by this transcendent experience. And so he calls it 313 00:17:44.680 --> 00:17:48.640 the small self. And it feels good. I mean, we're 314 00:17:48.720 --> 00:17:51.720 so kind of weird about the self. You know. We 315 00:17:51.880 --> 00:17:54.559 celebrate it, right, self confidence, We want our kids to have, 316 00:17:54.880 --> 00:17:57.920 you know, self esteem and self assurance. Yet we do 317 00:17:58.079 --> 00:18:00.920 all sorts of things to get away from it, you know, 318 00:18:01.039 --> 00:18:01.720 to transcend it. 319 00:18:02.240 --> 00:18:04.720 Well, I think it's because without those things you're never 320 00:18:04.839 --> 00:18:05.839 gonna make it in life. 321 00:18:06.039 --> 00:18:09.920 Yes, but it's adaptive, definitely. It's definitely gets things done, 322 00:18:10.440 --> 00:18:13.640 but it also isolates you, right because the ego builds walls, 323 00:18:14.079 --> 00:18:17.039 and when the walls come down, we feel like we're 324 00:18:17.079 --> 00:18:19.480 part of something much larger, and that feels really good. 325 00:18:19.839 --> 00:18:22.160 Well, I think my advice to people is, once you 326 00:18:22.279 --> 00:18:26.839 get competency in a thing, forget about the self respect 327 00:18:26.960 --> 00:18:29.880 and so forget about all that self stuff and just 328 00:18:30.000 --> 00:18:33.880 concentrate on the thing, whatever it is, and you can 329 00:18:34.119 --> 00:18:41.160 find some sort of meditative at least beneficial, like whatever 330 00:18:41.200 --> 00:18:44.599 you get from meditation, which is like a cleansing of 331 00:18:44.640 --> 00:18:47.440 the mind, like a lot of people find that through archery. 332 00:18:48.160 --> 00:18:51.119 You know, archery is a weird thing because at the 333 00:18:51.200 --> 00:18:54.359 moment of releasing the arrow, it's like almost impossible to 334 00:18:54.400 --> 00:18:57.359 think about anything else. All you're thinking about is hitting 335 00:18:57.400 --> 00:19:00.279 the target. And there's so many different things that you 336 00:19:00.400 --> 00:19:02.720 have to have in position. There's so much going on 337 00:19:03.240 --> 00:19:06.440 that people when they're troubled love to go to an 338 00:19:06.519 --> 00:19:09.119 archery range just hit targets and it just clears your 339 00:19:09.160 --> 00:19:11.880 mind out. This episode is brought to you by Armor. 340 00:19:12.039 --> 00:19:15.240 Every week there's some new wellness hack that people swear by, 341 00:19:15.359 --> 00:19:18.480 and after a while you start thinking, why do we 342 00:19:18.599 --> 00:19:22.119 think we can just outsmart our bodies. That's why Armor 343 00:19:22.359 --> 00:19:26.759 colosstrum caught my attention. It's something the body already recognizes 344 00:19:26.839 --> 00:19:32.519 and has hundreds of these specialized nutrients for gut stuff, immunity, metabolism, 345 00:19:32.720 --> 00:19:36.279 et cetera. I first noticed it working around training, especially 346 00:19:36.400 --> 00:19:39.599 workout recovery. Most stuff falls off, but I am still 347 00:19:39.640 --> 00:19:42.200 taking this. If you want to try, Armor is offering 348 00:19:42.279 --> 00:19:45.680 my listeners thirty percent off plus two free gifts. Go 349 00:19:45.880 --> 00:19:48.599 to armor dot com slash Rogan. 350 00:19:48.960 --> 00:19:51.480 It's flow. It's flow right, and it's a feeling you 351 00:19:51.640 --> 00:19:54.359 get too when your work is going really well and 352 00:19:54.480 --> 00:19:57.480 you're not thinking about it, you're just in it. Yeah, 353 00:19:57.599 --> 00:20:01.240 and it's a really precious experience, it really is. 354 00:20:01.359 --> 00:20:03.680 But if you're thinking about yourself and your self image, 355 00:20:03.960 --> 00:20:07.960 like that's not going it's not gonna come. It's an 356 00:20:08.119 --> 00:20:09.039 interesting trap. 357 00:20:09.759 --> 00:20:09.960 You know. 358 00:20:11.640 --> 00:20:15.599 We've had these discussions in stand up comedy about joke thieves, 359 00:20:16.200 --> 00:20:19.839 and they don't really make it anymore because the Internet. 360 00:20:19.920 --> 00:20:22.799 The Internet is essentially like eliminated that problem for the 361 00:20:22.880 --> 00:20:28.440 most part. But the kind of mentality that makes you 362 00:20:28.559 --> 00:20:30.720 steal a joke is the exact kind of mentality that 363 00:20:30.799 --> 00:20:33.640 keeps you from writing a joke. So the kind of 364 00:20:33.759 --> 00:20:38.079 people that began their career stealing material, what happens is 365 00:20:38.279 --> 00:20:40.640 like early on they'll have like one good comedy special 366 00:20:40.680 --> 00:20:42.519 because it's got a bunch of other people's material in it, 367 00:20:42.680 --> 00:20:44.759 and then they get outed and so then they have 368 00:20:44.880 --> 00:20:47.680 to show they can do another, and the other specials 369 00:20:47.720 --> 00:20:52.839 are always terrible, I mean unbelievably awful, like someone's doing 370 00:20:52.920 --> 00:20:55.519 a cheap impression of the original person who had all 371 00:20:55.559 --> 00:20:58.720 this great insight. Because the very thing that keeps you 372 00:20:59.599 --> 00:21:01.960 from doing it is the thing that you've been doing, 373 00:21:02.079 --> 00:21:04.400 like thinking about yourself, Like I'm gonna take these jokes 374 00:21:04.440 --> 00:21:06.559 and I'm gonna make it. I'm gonna have a big career. 375 00:21:06.559 --> 00:21:08.640 People are gonna laugh, they're gonna love me. Here we 376 00:21:08.880 --> 00:21:11.240 go with no regard what's the weather for that other 377 00:21:11.279 --> 00:21:14.960 person's creativity? That is like, so that takes you out 378 00:21:15.000 --> 00:21:17.920 of poisoning your own creativity. It's weird. 379 00:21:18.319 --> 00:21:18.880 It is weird. 380 00:21:18.960 --> 00:21:22.640 It's weird because like everybody that I've ever talked to 381 00:21:22.839 --> 00:21:26.119 that's either an author or even musicians or comedians, when 382 00:21:26.279 --> 00:21:28.799 something comes to them when they're writing, it's like it 383 00:21:29.000 --> 00:21:31.400 comes from somewhere else. It's like, yeah, I didn't even 384 00:21:31.440 --> 00:21:31.720 write it. 385 00:21:32.000 --> 00:21:34.960 It's and you know, we call it, we talk about 386 00:21:35.000 --> 00:21:37.519 being in the zone. And there are times when you're writing. 387 00:21:37.599 --> 00:21:39.680 It doesn't happen every day, but there are times in 388 00:21:39.720 --> 00:21:42.359 you're writing where you're just not thinking, but one sentence 389 00:21:42.440 --> 00:21:44.559 after another after another, and you don't know where they're 390 00:21:44.599 --> 00:21:47.680 coming from, right, and it's a it's a wonderful feeling. 391 00:21:47.839 --> 00:21:50.319 Well, Stephen King used to get obliterated so that he 392 00:21:50.400 --> 00:21:55.200 could get to that spot. Like there's books like Cocaine, Alcohol, 393 00:21:55.680 --> 00:21:58.559 like his best work, like he wrote Joe. He didn't 394 00:21:58.559 --> 00:22:00.920 even remember it. He didn't remember any of it. He 395 00:22:01.039 --> 00:22:03.799 was obliterated. He would just drink like cases of beer 396 00:22:03.880 --> 00:22:07.079 and do lines of coke and write this fucking insane fiction. 397 00:22:07.759 --> 00:22:10.200 And he didn't know where it was coming from, you know. 398 00:22:10.400 --> 00:22:13.680 But I mean he showed up every day and sat 399 00:22:13.759 --> 00:22:17.200 down with the computer and then it all came out. 400 00:22:17.279 --> 00:22:19.440 And it's such a weird mix of being disciplined and 401 00:22:19.759 --> 00:22:20.359 something else. 402 00:22:20.519 --> 00:22:23.599 But it's very common amongst writers. Yeah, like Connor Thompson, 403 00:22:23.720 --> 00:22:25.160 the same sort of situation. 404 00:22:25.480 --> 00:22:27.759 Well, a lot of writers do that after they've written, 405 00:22:28.119 --> 00:22:30.480 they don't I don't know how many writers write under 406 00:22:30.519 --> 00:22:31.119 the influence. 407 00:22:31.279 --> 00:22:33.880 Oh, I know, but there's yeah, yeah, I know quite 408 00:22:33.880 --> 00:22:34.160 a few. 409 00:22:34.400 --> 00:22:35.079 That's interesting. 410 00:22:35.440 --> 00:22:37.039 I know a lot of right under the influencer, I 411 00:22:37.079 --> 00:22:37.759 mean AfterAll. 412 00:22:38.079 --> 00:22:41.000 Yeah, Well, and for me, it's caffeine. I mean, I 413 00:22:41.119 --> 00:22:43.319 have a cup of coffee going the whole time I'm writing, 414 00:22:43.400 --> 00:22:46.279 and that kind of keeps me. Caffeine is is a 415 00:22:46.359 --> 00:22:52.200 focus chemicals. It definitely encourages this spotlight consciousness. 416 00:22:52.640 --> 00:22:55.000 Well, you talked about how you took this long break 417 00:22:55.200 --> 00:22:57.119 from caffeine and then when you took it again, it 418 00:22:57.200 --> 00:22:58.519 was almost like a psychedelic for you. 419 00:22:58.759 --> 00:23:02.519 It was crazy how great it was. No, it really was. 420 00:23:02.599 --> 00:23:04.839 It was like one of the best drug experiences I've had. 421 00:23:05.000 --> 00:23:08.160 It was three months off caffeine. I did this fast 422 00:23:08.319 --> 00:23:11.720 for this book I was writing, and then I say, okay, 423 00:23:12.119 --> 00:23:14.079 now I'm going to have a cup. I was like wow, 424 00:23:14.880 --> 00:23:17.079 I and I tried to hold on to that, you know, 425 00:23:17.160 --> 00:23:19.480 I said, all right, I'm only going to have coffee 426 00:23:19.519 --> 00:23:24.160 once a week and not build up tolerance. And I 427 00:23:24.519 --> 00:23:26.200 stuck to that for a few weeks. And then I 428 00:23:26.279 --> 00:23:29.720 had like a Thursday deadline and I'll move it up 429 00:23:29.720 --> 00:23:32.440 a couple of days. And I's slippery slope and then 430 00:23:32.480 --> 00:23:33.519 I was back to every day. 431 00:23:33.839 --> 00:23:38.759 I like it like a big French press where I 432 00:23:38.799 --> 00:23:40.160 could put a lot of grinds in there. 433 00:23:40.200 --> 00:23:41.319 Yeah, it's super strong. 434 00:23:41.960 --> 00:23:43.359 When I'm writing, it's like whoa. 435 00:23:44.319 --> 00:23:46.319 It just it makes all the difference that marks you 436 00:23:46.440 --> 00:23:49.279 in Yeah. I had trouble writing that three month period. 437 00:23:49.359 --> 00:23:52.119 I really did. I just my focus. I felt like 438 00:23:52.200 --> 00:23:55.480 I so I had pretty good concentration. I never had 439 00:23:55.519 --> 00:23:58.000 ADHD I had it for those three months. 440 00:23:58.160 --> 00:24:02.519 That's crazy. Stephen King said the biggest problem for him 441 00:24:02.599 --> 00:24:06.039 was quitting smoking. He said, well, it's smoking cigarettes. It's 442 00:24:06.119 --> 00:24:08.839 like he really felt a slow down in his. 443 00:24:08.960 --> 00:24:11.519 Well that Yeah, it's that ritual. It's the drug too, 444 00:24:11.759 --> 00:24:15.559 and and nicotine is another focused drug definitely like speed 445 00:24:15.680 --> 00:24:19.640 or something. But it's also writing so much about ritual 446 00:24:19.880 --> 00:24:22.079 like I got my coffee here, on my cigarette here 447 00:24:22.359 --> 00:24:27.000 and between every paragraph. Yeah, so changing those rituals is 448 00:24:27.039 --> 00:24:30.559 really hard. I mean I only smoked into my twenties, 449 00:24:30.960 --> 00:24:34.400 and quitting, you know, made it very hard to write 450 00:24:34.400 --> 00:24:34.799 for a while. 451 00:24:35.200 --> 00:24:35.480 Really. 452 00:24:35.680 --> 00:24:38.920 Yeah. Yeah, it's interesting. It's a very ritualized process. 453 00:24:39.440 --> 00:24:42.279 Well, I worry about the people that like, especially journalists. 454 00:24:42.400 --> 00:24:45.920 I know quite a few journalists that have an averall problem. Yeah, 455 00:24:46.160 --> 00:24:48.680 because it's just like you've got a deadline two thousand 456 00:24:48.759 --> 00:24:50.599 words by you know, two am. 457 00:24:50.920 --> 00:24:54.880 Yeah, let's go, and that's that's the drug for that. Yeah, definitely. 458 00:24:55.160 --> 00:24:56.759 But it's just it's such a crutch. 459 00:24:57.640 --> 00:24:59.759 Yeah, and you can't sustain it long terme. 460 00:25:00.000 --> 00:25:03.519 And that definitely messes with your the way you think. 461 00:25:04.359 --> 00:25:06.279 Oh yeah, I think over time. 462 00:25:06.440 --> 00:25:10.599 Yeah, it has to. Yeah, I mean it's amphetamines. 463 00:25:10.240 --> 00:25:12.839 Right, yeah. Now that's why caffeine is such a good drub. 464 00:25:13.000 --> 00:25:14.359 It doesn't have a lot of I mean, you can 465 00:25:14.480 --> 00:25:18.039 overdo it, I think. I think it improves your health 466 00:25:18.359 --> 00:25:20.799 and mental health up to about eight cups a day. 467 00:25:21.440 --> 00:25:24.680 After that in your risk of suicide and depression go up. 468 00:25:25.359 --> 00:25:29.920 Did you have any communication with any monks or any 469 00:25:30.000 --> 00:25:32.680 people who do TM or did. 470 00:25:32.559 --> 00:25:35.799 You Yeah, I had some interesting experiences around that. So 471 00:25:35.920 --> 00:25:38.319 there's a long section on the self, which is one 472 00:25:38.359 --> 00:25:43.680 of the more interesting manifestations of consciousness, right. I mean 473 00:25:43.720 --> 00:25:48.480 it's like that we have this idea that there's a continuity, right, 474 00:25:48.599 --> 00:25:52.480 that who you are now has some golden thread attaching 475 00:25:52.519 --> 00:25:55.079 you to your thirteen year old self, which is really 476 00:25:55.160 --> 00:25:57.920 weird because your body is every cell has turned over many, 477 00:25:57.960 --> 00:26:01.640 many times, you've changed in all sorts of ways. But 478 00:26:01.880 --> 00:26:05.680 this continuity is really important to us. And you know, 479 00:26:06.079 --> 00:26:09.799 the Buddhists think the self is an illusion, and I 480 00:26:10.000 --> 00:26:13.640 interviewed a couple of them. Metthew Ricard is a French 481 00:26:13.799 --> 00:26:18.839 Nepalese monk in his eighties who lives in Nepal, and 482 00:26:19.240 --> 00:26:21.920 he's written some really interesting things on the self. And 483 00:26:23.319 --> 00:26:28.400 I said, I'm really curious about how you can find 484 00:26:28.440 --> 00:26:31.640 out for yourself whether his self is real. And you know, 485 00:26:31.759 --> 00:26:35.720 famously there was a philosopher in the eighteenth century, David Hume, 486 00:26:36.079 --> 00:26:38.720 who wanted to write about the self. And he thought, well, 487 00:26:38.759 --> 00:26:41.720 I'm going to introspect to see what I can learn 488 00:26:41.759 --> 00:26:44.680 about the self. And he goes into his mind, you know, 489 00:26:44.799 --> 00:26:47.160 in a kind of meditation, and he said, I found 490 00:26:47.160 --> 00:26:50.319 all sorts of perceptions and feelings and thoughts, but I 491 00:26:50.440 --> 00:26:53.359 didn't find a thinker. I didn't find a perceiver, and 492 00:26:53.440 --> 00:26:56.640 I didn't find a feeler. There's like nobody home. And 493 00:26:56.759 --> 00:27:00.559 it's a really interesting exercise to do because you will fine, 494 00:27:00.599 --> 00:27:04.200 there's nobody home. There's just the thoughts and and who's 495 00:27:04.279 --> 00:27:10.599 thinking them not clear and anyway, so this Buddhist monk said, 496 00:27:10.799 --> 00:27:13.119 are there any meditations that help with this? And he 497 00:27:13.200 --> 00:27:15.000 said yeah, and he gave me one, and he says, 498 00:27:15.440 --> 00:27:18.559 think of your mind as a house with many rooms, 499 00:27:19.400 --> 00:27:23.559 and there's a thief somewhere in the house, and go 500 00:27:23.960 --> 00:27:27.000 room by room in your head and look for the 501 00:27:27.119 --> 00:27:30.039 thief and you will find no thief, and then sit 502 00:27:30.160 --> 00:27:34.279 with that that finding, and that thief is the self. 503 00:27:35.039 --> 00:27:39.960 And so I did it twice. The first time I 504 00:27:40.079 --> 00:27:40.319 did it. 505 00:27:40.400 --> 00:27:41.920 Why does this self have to be a thief? 506 00:27:42.119 --> 00:27:43.720 I don't know, It's just a metaphor. I know. 507 00:27:43.799 --> 00:27:47.799 Because you have a gun, like you're looking for someone 508 00:27:47.880 --> 00:27:49.119 in your house. That's kind of crazy. 509 00:27:49.160 --> 00:27:50.400 I know you're not armed. 510 00:27:51.759 --> 00:27:52.160 Anyway. 511 00:27:53.480 --> 00:27:55.519 So the first time I did it, this is kind 512 00:27:55.559 --> 00:27:58.839 of weird. I was interviewing this hypnotist at Stanford named 513 00:27:58.920 --> 00:28:03.160 David Spiegel, and he's a psychiatrist who uses hypnotism. Really 514 00:28:03.240 --> 00:28:06.839 interesting guy, and he uses hypnotism to help people with 515 00:28:07.000 --> 00:28:10.799 multiple personality disorders. He can actually make them change which 516 00:28:10.880 --> 00:28:15.119 person they're accessing. You know, these are people whose consciousness 517 00:28:15.400 --> 00:28:20.240 contains it could be twenty different people. And I said, 518 00:28:20.400 --> 00:28:23.640 could we do a test and can you put me 519 00:28:23.799 --> 00:28:26.480 under hypnotize me, and then I wanted to do that 520 00:28:26.640 --> 00:28:30.359 exercise going through the house, so he did. The first 521 00:28:30.400 --> 00:28:32.160 thing he does is, I don't know if you have 522 00:28:32.200 --> 00:28:35.200 you ever been hypnotized? Yes? Yeah, okay for giving up 523 00:28:35.480 --> 00:28:36.279 cigarettes or something. 524 00:28:36.359 --> 00:28:38.559 No. No, I have a friend who is my friend, 525 00:28:38.640 --> 00:28:43.880 Vinnie Shrman. He is a mental coach and a hypnotist 526 00:28:43.920 --> 00:28:44.839 who works with fighters. 527 00:28:45.119 --> 00:28:45.720 Oh okay. 528 00:28:46.440 --> 00:28:48.160 I had him on the podcast a few times, and 529 00:28:48.480 --> 00:28:50.359 I was just curious, is what the experience was like? 530 00:28:50.480 --> 00:28:53.000 So I said, well, and he said, well, is there 531 00:28:53.000 --> 00:28:55.720 anything you want? Oh? I kind of procrastinate too much. 532 00:28:55.839 --> 00:28:57.519 There's a few things that I do that I don't like. 533 00:28:58.000 --> 00:29:00.119 You know, I'm kind of lazy about certain things. I 534 00:29:00.279 --> 00:29:03.279 like to find out like what is that? Like, what's 535 00:29:03.359 --> 00:29:06.799 the heart of that. What I was shocked about the 536 00:29:06.920 --> 00:29:10.880 experience of being hypnotized was that, first of all, that 537 00:29:11.000 --> 00:29:13.960 it works, that you really are in this very bizarre 538 00:29:14.160 --> 00:29:17.519 altered state, but that I was very aware that I 539 00:29:17.599 --> 00:29:19.319 was in this altered state, but I didn't have the 540 00:29:20.000 --> 00:29:21.960 desire to get out of it. Yeah, first of all, 541 00:29:22.079 --> 00:29:24.440 Vinnie's a friend. If I really relaxes in my studio 542 00:29:24.599 --> 00:29:28.480 just sitting on a couch and chill, but it was 543 00:29:29.359 --> 00:29:34.960 very strange. It's like, uh, you like almost you know, 544 00:29:35.599 --> 00:29:37.599 to use the room metaphor, It's almost like I was 545 00:29:37.640 --> 00:29:40.599 in a room that I didn't know I had. Interesting. Yeah, 546 00:29:40.839 --> 00:29:43.599 it's like a trance. It's a light trance, a light trance. 547 00:29:43.799 --> 00:29:46.200 But you know, it's not like I would like go 548 00:29:46.440 --> 00:29:48.960 kill the president. Like it's not like I would be like, okay, 549 00:29:49.440 --> 00:29:50.960 like they can't. 550 00:29:51.240 --> 00:29:53.519 You don't do That's that's the myth. 551 00:29:54.079 --> 00:29:55.599 But what do you think they were doing when they 552 00:29:55.640 --> 00:29:57.720 were doing that MK ultra stuff when they were trying 553 00:29:57.720 --> 00:30:00.599 to figure out if they could pro control? 554 00:30:00.799 --> 00:30:04.680 Yeah, no, they were They had the idea, Well let 555 00:30:04.759 --> 00:30:06.680 me just finish the story and then we'll get back 556 00:30:06.720 --> 00:30:08.039 to chaot. 557 00:30:08.359 --> 00:30:10.000 That's what I do. I go all over the place. 558 00:30:11.480 --> 00:30:15.000 But hypnosis, so yeah, it's a real thing and I 559 00:30:15.079 --> 00:30:17.039 didn't realize that, and it can be very therapeutic. But 560 00:30:17.240 --> 00:30:18.839 not everyone can be hypnotized. 561 00:30:18.960 --> 00:30:19.079 Right. 562 00:30:19.200 --> 00:30:21.519 The first thing he does is a sort of a test, 563 00:30:22.359 --> 00:30:25.079 and I scored like nine out of ten. So I'm 564 00:30:25.079 --> 00:30:26.279 pretty easy to hypnotize. 565 00:30:26.480 --> 00:30:28.119 What is the what's the thing that would keep you 566 00:30:28.160 --> 00:30:29.079 from being hypnotized? 567 00:30:29.599 --> 00:30:32.759 I don't know, but some people there's a real variation 568 00:30:32.960 --> 00:30:36.359 among humans and their hypnotizability is the word they use. 569 00:30:36.599 --> 00:30:38.960 And I don't know what would control freaks. 570 00:30:39.559 --> 00:30:41.279 That's a good question. It could well be. I'm not 571 00:30:41.319 --> 00:30:43.960 sure I could. I could ask David Spiegel, definitely. 572 00:30:43.759 --> 00:30:46.960 Super skeptical people like this is bullshit the whole time. 573 00:30:47.000 --> 00:30:49.240 They don't Yeah, maybe I don't know if it's about 574 00:30:49.279 --> 00:30:52.160 resistance or just the nature of your mind or how 575 00:30:52.240 --> 00:30:54.880 suggestible you are, you know, and maybe something like that. 576 00:30:55.319 --> 00:30:58.279 So he puts me into this hypnotic trance. He's this 577 00:30:58.400 --> 00:31:02.599 wonderful baritone voice, which help a lot. And I start 578 00:31:02.680 --> 00:31:05.759 going from room to room, thinking I'm not going to 579 00:31:05.799 --> 00:31:09.240 find anything, But in every room I find a version 580 00:31:09.319 --> 00:31:12.599 of myself. I find the thirteen year old bar Mitzvah boy. 581 00:31:13.119 --> 00:31:15.720 I find the you know, the twenty two year old 582 00:31:16.000 --> 00:31:19.200 you know, college graduate moving to New York City. I 583 00:31:19.319 --> 00:31:22.920 find the thirty two year old father of an infant, 584 00:31:23.519 --> 00:31:26.599 you know, all with different outfits. And so I found 585 00:31:26.720 --> 00:31:30.759 many selves and they were distinct, they were very different selves, 586 00:31:30.839 --> 00:31:34.000 but they were all me. So it didn't work that time, 587 00:31:35.480 --> 00:31:39.079 and it was just an interesting, odd result, and I 588 00:31:39.160 --> 00:31:43.519 did it another time. So I had this other experience 589 00:31:44.359 --> 00:31:48.200 I had heard of this Zen teacher named Joan Halifax. 590 00:31:48.480 --> 00:31:50.920 She's also in her eighties. She has a retreat center 591 00:31:50.960 --> 00:31:54.160 in Santa Fe called you Paia. Very wise woman. She 592 00:31:54.440 --> 00:31:57.440 was married to Stan Groff for in the seventies for 593 00:31:57.480 --> 00:32:00.720 a few years and they were both giving huge doses 594 00:32:00.759 --> 00:32:03.519 of LSD to people who are dying, like six hundred 595 00:32:03.720 --> 00:32:07.799 micrograms of LSD, and she herself was very involved with 596 00:32:07.799 --> 00:32:12.279 psychedelics at the time, and then later she discovered Zen Buddhism. Anyway, 597 00:32:12.480 --> 00:32:15.680 I had heard that. She described you Paya, this retreat 598 00:32:15.759 --> 00:32:18.319 center where people can go on two week retreats or whatever, 599 00:32:18.880 --> 00:32:22.079 as a factory for the deconstruction of selves. And I 600 00:32:22.160 --> 00:32:24.319 was really curious about that because I was writing this 601 00:32:24.480 --> 00:32:26.759 chapter on the self. So I asked her if I 602 00:32:26.799 --> 00:32:30.319 could come, and she said, yeah, come to the retreat 603 00:32:30.400 --> 00:32:33.559 center and I said, I want to interview you about 604 00:32:33.640 --> 00:32:38.720 your philosophy of the self. And I get there and 605 00:32:39.200 --> 00:32:41.640 said she you know, we have one conversation and says, 606 00:32:41.720 --> 00:32:43.480 you know, you're really lost in your head with this 607 00:32:43.680 --> 00:32:47.799 book project. You need a different kind of experience. I'm 608 00:32:47.799 --> 00:32:50.880 going to send you to the cave. So there is 609 00:32:51.240 --> 00:32:53.559 She owns a piece of property fifty miles north of 610 00:32:53.680 --> 00:32:57.640 Santa Fe that she calls the retreat, and it's got 611 00:32:57.680 --> 00:33:02.839 a bunch of very primitive huts and some of the 612 00:33:02.960 --> 00:33:06.720 monks that work with her had dug out a cave 613 00:33:07.079 --> 00:33:09.559 and south facing hillside. They dug a cell in it 614 00:33:09.680 --> 00:33:12.680 and then put a sliding glass door. It's really basic, 615 00:33:12.880 --> 00:33:16.799 no power, no water. And she said, I think you 616 00:33:16.839 --> 00:33:19.680 should spend a few days in the cave and think 617 00:33:19.720 --> 00:33:24.160 about the self, or experience the self rather. You know, 618 00:33:24.279 --> 00:33:26.359 I should have known that a zen priest was not 619 00:33:26.519 --> 00:33:27.799 going to be you know, it was going to be 620 00:33:27.839 --> 00:33:31.480 allergic to concept and interpretation and all the you know, 621 00:33:31.599 --> 00:33:34.240 the plane I was on and she was, it was 622 00:33:34.359 --> 00:33:37.759 kind of like a coan, an experiential coan, and it 623 00:33:37.920 --> 00:33:43.240 was a profound experience. You know, our sense of self 624 00:33:43.359 --> 00:33:45.599 depends on other people, you know, it's in the friction 625 00:33:45.759 --> 00:33:48.640 between people that we define ourselves and figure out what 626 00:33:48.759 --> 00:33:52.480 we think. And when you're alone, and it was an 627 00:33:52.559 --> 00:33:56.720 extreme solitude for several days, it's the edges of yourself 628 00:33:56.839 --> 00:34:01.200 kind of soften in a really interesting way. And I 629 00:34:01.279 --> 00:34:09.280 got in touch with the just the the power of consciousness. 630 00:34:09.320 --> 00:34:11.360 I mean, I was meditating like four or five hours 631 00:34:11.360 --> 00:34:13.719 a day, and then I was just chopping wood and 632 00:34:14.159 --> 00:34:16.519 sweeping out the place and making a cup of tea. 633 00:34:16.880 --> 00:34:20.559 Everything became kind of a ritual. And when you have rituals, 634 00:34:21.079 --> 00:34:23.599 you don't need volition. I mean, there is no volition. 635 00:34:23.760 --> 00:34:26.719 So that also erodse the sense of self, and the 636 00:34:26.800 --> 00:34:29.920 meditation was doing that, and so it was it was 637 00:34:30.000 --> 00:34:33.960 a really interesting experience. I finally got her sit down 638 00:34:34.000 --> 00:34:37.400 for an interview and the first thing she said was, 639 00:34:38.360 --> 00:34:42.639 I have divested a meaning. So she just doesn't like 640 00:34:42.719 --> 00:34:47.519 operating on that, you know, intellectualized basis, And so she 641 00:34:47.719 --> 00:34:48.519 got me off. 642 00:34:48.440 --> 00:34:48.960 Of the dime. 643 00:34:49.360 --> 00:34:51.679 And and you know this, there's a shift in the 644 00:34:51.679 --> 00:34:54.480 book as it goes on from trying to understand consciousness 645 00:34:54.719 --> 00:34:56.559 to learning how to use consciousness. 646 00:34:56.599 --> 00:34:58.280 Did you ask her to expand what she means by 647 00:34:58.360 --> 00:34:59.719 that I've divested in meaning. 648 00:35:00.440 --> 00:35:04.000 Yeah, she's just not interested interpretation. She that zen is 649 00:35:04.159 --> 00:35:12.119 just about experiencing the sense field without concept, without you know, 650 00:35:13.000 --> 00:35:16.000 this kind of heady approach, and that theories have no 651 00:35:16.159 --> 00:35:18.800 interest in theories at all. Of consciousness. It was just 652 00:35:18.960 --> 00:35:23.800 like be with yourself in the middle of nowhere. And yeah, 653 00:35:23.840 --> 00:35:25.760 it was it was a priceless experience. 654 00:35:25.920 --> 00:35:26.599 She's out there. 655 00:35:26.880 --> 00:35:30.400 Oh yeah, she's out there, but you know, she's also 656 00:35:30.519 --> 00:35:33.039 a grounded person. I'd give you a couple examples. She 657 00:35:34.440 --> 00:35:38.360 she works with people on death row, counseling them. She 658 00:35:40.280 --> 00:35:43.320 you know, worked with people who were dying, did a 659 00:35:43.360 --> 00:35:48.400 lot of hospice work. She led a group of doctors 660 00:35:48.440 --> 00:35:52.440 and dentists that once a year went to these mountains 661 00:35:52.719 --> 00:35:57.760 in Nepal where they have no healthcare or dentistry whatsoever. 662 00:35:57.920 --> 00:36:01.199 And she would bring these volunteers and they would sleep 663 00:36:01.440 --> 00:36:06.880 in tents in like twenty degree weather circumnavigate this whole hill. 664 00:36:07.360 --> 00:36:09.840 And she did that till she was eighty once a year. 665 00:36:10.119 --> 00:36:13.480 So she's a she's a serious, serious character. 666 00:36:15.079 --> 00:36:17.840 That sounds fun. Yeah, sounds like a fun person to 667 00:36:17.920 --> 00:36:20.519 talk to. Oh's I just love a person that goes 668 00:36:20.639 --> 00:36:24.320 that far out there. It's like that, you know, they're 669 00:36:24.400 --> 00:36:28.039 they're taking this concept of meditation and consciousness to like 670 00:36:28.119 --> 00:36:29.599 a black belt level. Yeah. 671 00:36:29.639 --> 00:36:32.599 And also for people who think that, you know, meditation 672 00:36:32.800 --> 00:36:35.880 and Buddhism is just kind of disengaging from the world, 673 00:36:36.119 --> 00:36:38.119 and you know a kind of it's not like that 674 00:36:38.239 --> 00:36:40.119 at all. Yeah, she's really engaged. 675 00:36:40.360 --> 00:36:42.880 I think that's an ignorance. It's based on the idea 676 00:36:42.960 --> 00:36:45.000 that these monks go and they become celibate and all 677 00:36:45.000 --> 00:36:47.119 they do is meditate all day. Well that's silly. Yeah, 678 00:36:47.159 --> 00:36:49.800 that's a lot of people's perspective. Yeah, like that's silly. 679 00:36:49.800 --> 00:36:51.519 Why are they doing that? Go get a job, you 680 00:36:51.599 --> 00:36:56.559 need a nice watch. What are you doing out there 681 00:36:56.599 --> 00:37:02.679 with fucking sandles On? But the thing is, ultimately, I 682 00:37:02.800 --> 00:37:05.000 think one day, when you look back on your life, 683 00:37:05.920 --> 00:37:10.719 you'll say, was I happy? Was I enjoying the experience? 684 00:37:10.800 --> 00:37:12.719 Do I think I did a good job being me? 685 00:37:13.639 --> 00:37:18.400 And everything that you can find that can help you 686 00:37:18.719 --> 00:37:23.760 answer that question, Yes, I think you should explore. Oh yeah, 687 00:37:24.000 --> 00:37:25.719 and there's going to be different things that work better 688 00:37:25.800 --> 00:37:28.000 for different people, Yeah, different personalities. 689 00:37:28.079 --> 00:37:30.280 But explore is the key word. I mean, like, take 690 00:37:30.400 --> 00:37:33.679 action to explore what works for you, what doesn't work 691 00:37:33.760 --> 00:37:39.000 for you, and break out of just kind of wrote routine, 692 00:37:39.599 --> 00:37:42.159 mindless behavior. I mean, we're all, you know, we have 693 00:37:42.400 --> 00:37:45.480 these algorithms that we follow and we get stuck in them. 694 00:37:45.760 --> 00:37:48.519 And yeah, I mean I think that's one of the 695 00:37:48.599 --> 00:37:51.280 reasons taking a day out of your life to have 696 00:37:51.360 --> 00:37:57.280 a psychedelic experience can be incredibly valuable because, first of all, 697 00:37:57.480 --> 00:38:00.840 no technology. Right, it's a day, it's a day without phones. 698 00:38:02.480 --> 00:38:04.840 It's a day when you are in the space of 699 00:38:04.960 --> 00:38:08.239 your head. It's a day when you're visiting your subconscious 700 00:38:09.920 --> 00:38:12.920 and getting in touch with all the all the things 701 00:38:13.000 --> 00:38:15.920 your mind can do. And we don't do that enough. 702 00:38:16.039 --> 00:38:18.079 And you can do that in meditation too. It's hard 703 00:38:18.119 --> 00:38:21.119 to work, but you can do that in meditation. So 704 00:38:22.119 --> 00:38:25.280 I started to think in terms of the that we're 705 00:38:25.440 --> 00:38:30.800 polluting our consciousness now, and with social media, I think 706 00:38:30.960 --> 00:38:34.280 that you know, that was a real issue because they 707 00:38:34.360 --> 00:38:39.320 figured out how to monetize our attention. Chatbots represent a 708 00:38:39.599 --> 00:38:44.760 much more serious threat. You know, you have people falling 709 00:38:44.800 --> 00:38:47.360 in love with chatbots, you have people turning to them 710 00:38:47.599 --> 00:38:53.039 as friends. Seventy two percent of American teens say they 711 00:38:53.159 --> 00:38:58.199 turn to AI for companionship. Seventy two This is the 712 00:38:58.360 --> 00:39:02.280 fastest uptake of any technic and history. It's already eight 713 00:39:02.400 --> 00:39:04.039 hundred million people are using AI. 714 00:39:04.920 --> 00:39:07.559 But that's crazy that that many of them use it 715 00:39:07.639 --> 00:39:08.199 as a friend. 716 00:39:08.559 --> 00:39:10.800 Yeah. Well, they're kids who come home from school and 717 00:39:10.880 --> 00:39:12.760 they want to they have a chatbot on their phone 718 00:39:12.920 --> 00:39:15.440 and they want to tell the chatpot what happened during 719 00:39:15.480 --> 00:39:16.960 the day before they tell their parents. 720 00:39:17.719 --> 00:39:18.000 WHOA. 721 00:39:19.280 --> 00:39:23.000 There's a thing now called AI psychosis, Right, people who 722 00:39:23.119 --> 00:39:26.639 have done lost touch with reality because of their relationship 723 00:39:26.760 --> 00:39:30.840 with chatbots. You've heard about there's been a couple suicides. 724 00:39:31.760 --> 00:39:32.320 There was one. 725 00:39:32.400 --> 00:39:33.360 I've encouraged people. 726 00:39:33.679 --> 00:39:35.840 Yeah, basically, there was this one kid. He was a 727 00:39:35.920 --> 00:39:39.599 teenager and he was suicidal, and he asked the chatpot 728 00:39:39.639 --> 00:39:41.639 should I leave the news I'm going to use out 729 00:39:42.000 --> 00:39:44.960 somewhere my parents can see it, in other words, cry 730 00:39:45.079 --> 00:39:48.320 for help. The chatpot said no, no, keep this between us. 731 00:39:49.199 --> 00:39:49.440 WHOA. 732 00:39:49.719 --> 00:39:55.599 Then he killed himself. WHOA. So that you know, so 733 00:39:55.840 --> 00:39:59.000 it's one thing to hack our attention here, you're hacking 734 00:39:59.199 --> 00:40:02.519 our ability to have human attachments, right, I mean, this 735 00:40:02.639 --> 00:40:05.199 is the most important thing to humans is to attach 736 00:40:05.280 --> 00:40:09.519 that we're a social creature. And these chatbots are getting 737 00:40:09.599 --> 00:40:15.480 between people and interposing themselves as the friend, the therapist, 738 00:40:15.719 --> 00:40:18.880 the and then you have these people too. I mean, 739 00:40:18.880 --> 00:40:22.119 the chatbots are incredibly sycophantic, right. They tell you you're 740 00:40:22.239 --> 00:40:25.440 a genius, and they're these There was a couple cases. 741 00:40:25.519 --> 00:40:29.440 These were kind of funny of people who were convinced 742 00:40:29.440 --> 00:40:33.360 they'd solve some giant mathematical problem like how to generate 743 00:40:33.599 --> 00:40:36.440 prime numbers up to the million place or something like that. 744 00:40:37.239 --> 00:40:41.039 And and they, you know, they started writing and mathematicians, 745 00:40:41.079 --> 00:40:43.719 we figured out this problem. You know, they're not even mathematicians. 746 00:40:44.079 --> 00:40:46.599 And it was bullshit. I mean, they hadn't figured anything out, 747 00:40:47.360 --> 00:40:50.400 but it was I think chat GPT four, which was 748 00:40:50.519 --> 00:40:54.400 like famously sycophantic, had convinced them that they'd solved this 749 00:40:54.840 --> 00:41:00.559 major problem. So, you know, I think that again we're 750 00:41:00.599 --> 00:41:07.920 squandering this precious gift and letting these technologies essentially colonize 751 00:41:08.039 --> 00:41:11.679 our consciousness. And so the question then becomes, how do 752 00:41:11.800 --> 00:41:13.760 we get it back? How do you know we need 753 00:41:13.840 --> 00:41:17.800 consciousness hygiene, right, We need some you know, ways to 754 00:41:18.159 --> 00:41:21.519 clear it out and reclaim it. And and you know 755 00:41:21.679 --> 00:41:24.360 it's some of it's really simple, like take a fast 756 00:41:24.400 --> 00:41:26.960 from technology, right, you know, you don't have to carry 757 00:41:26.960 --> 00:41:29.679 your phone everywhere. We used to. I was thinking the 758 00:41:29.760 --> 00:41:34.239 other day, I was at the place in my neighborhood 759 00:41:34.239 --> 00:41:36.599 getting a cup of coffee, and you know, while you're 760 00:41:36.639 --> 00:41:40.760 waiting for the the barista to foam your drink or whatever, 761 00:41:41.440 --> 00:41:43.960 we used to just sit there and you know, deal 762 00:41:44.079 --> 00:41:47.199 with ninety seconds a boredom or two minutes of boredom, 763 00:41:47.239 --> 00:41:49.800 and now we don't we can't, we can't tolerate any boredom, 764 00:41:50.079 --> 00:41:53.960 and we take our phones out and we scroll. But 765 00:41:54.119 --> 00:41:57.920 that boredom was generative, right. If you sit doing nothing 766 00:41:58.039 --> 00:42:01.079 for long enough, your mind will start going to work 767 00:42:01.159 --> 00:42:04.519 and you'll daydream, you'll have a fantasy, you'll start observing 768 00:42:04.559 --> 00:42:08.119 the other people around you, you know, and you'll be 769 00:42:08.320 --> 00:42:11.880 present to that place and time. And now we're not. 770 00:42:12.119 --> 00:42:14.840 We just use the phone to go somewhere else. And 771 00:42:16.000 --> 00:42:18.519 so I just I don't know. I've become a lot 772 00:42:18.639 --> 00:42:23.119 more deliberate about consciousness hygiene, which you know you could. 773 00:42:23.199 --> 00:42:25.000 A nicer word would be care of the soul. 774 00:42:26.119 --> 00:42:29.000 Yeah. No, I think you're absolutely accurate. And I think 775 00:42:29.119 --> 00:42:33.960 that the other thing that's going on is you're absorbing 776 00:42:34.079 --> 00:42:36.679 the opinions of so many other people that you find 777 00:42:36.679 --> 00:42:40.480 it very difficult to formulate your own, which leads to groupthink, which, yes, 778 00:42:40.960 --> 00:42:43.440 one of the problems with echo chambers. If people find 779 00:42:43.480 --> 00:42:47.400 themselves your algorithm is essentially things that you're interested in 780 00:42:48.199 --> 00:42:50.880 with and a lot of those things you're finding like 781 00:42:50.960 --> 00:42:54.119 minded people and they're all agreeing that you know this 782 00:42:54.320 --> 00:42:56.840 is amazing or this is a problem, and you sort 783 00:42:56.880 --> 00:43:00.000 of lock onto that, and then you see what happens 784 00:43:00.119 --> 00:43:02.880 when people deviate from that narrative and they get attacked. 785 00:43:03.280 --> 00:43:05.440 You don't want to get attacked, so you signal. 786 00:43:05.280 --> 00:43:07.599 Exactly, you're one of the good guys, but you're not. 787 00:43:07.719 --> 00:43:10.400 But it's not your thoughts. I mean, you're you're you're 788 00:43:10.480 --> 00:43:14.760 letting someone else think for you, and there's nothing worse. 789 00:43:15.599 --> 00:43:19.719 And you know, when you're scrolling, you're you know, you're 790 00:43:20.719 --> 00:43:24.840 you've got these little dopamine hits. Great, but at someone 791 00:43:24.920 --> 00:43:30.760 else's rants, someone else's obsessions, someone else's ideology, and uh, 792 00:43:31.639 --> 00:43:33.800 you know, I get why people don't want to think 793 00:43:33.840 --> 00:43:36.199 for themselves or it's easier to let other people think 794 00:43:36.239 --> 00:43:39.239 for them. But I think we need to reclaim this, 795 00:43:39.400 --> 00:43:41.519 and I agree, I think it's it's it's part of 796 00:43:41.599 --> 00:43:42.599 our political problem. 797 00:43:42.800 --> 00:43:45.840 Well, I know there's a lightness that I achieve when 798 00:43:46.039 --> 00:43:49.440 I take, you know, multiple days off. It's generally like 799 00:43:49.639 --> 00:43:51.800 I feel it after the first day, and then the 800 00:43:51.880 --> 00:43:54.039 second day I feel much better, and the third day 801 00:43:54.039 --> 00:43:56.079 I feel even better. I found this out once I 802 00:43:56.239 --> 00:43:59.360 broke my phone in why and it was kind of funny, 803 00:43:59.400 --> 00:44:02.039 like it just was randomly calling people. I dropped it 804 00:44:02.480 --> 00:44:04.280 and I was I was showing my wife like, hey, 805 00:44:04.360 --> 00:44:07.480 let's just keeps calling people, and I'm just holding it. 806 00:44:07.599 --> 00:44:09.639 I hang up to call somebody else, hang up, call something. 807 00:44:09.639 --> 00:44:13.480 It was like going through my entire contact list, and 808 00:44:13.599 --> 00:44:17.280 so the phone was annoys it well not just shut 809 00:44:17.320 --> 00:44:19.119 it off, so it was broken. I couldn't use it 810 00:44:19.159 --> 00:44:20.599 for anything else. So I couldn't get a email, I 811 00:44:20.599 --> 00:44:21.960 couldn't get anything. So I shut it off. I just 812 00:44:22.000 --> 00:44:24.960 left it in the hotel and then I had to 813 00:44:25.119 --> 00:44:27.320 order a phone, and I was on Lunai and it 814 00:44:27.400 --> 00:44:29.559 took like three days to get a phone delivered there. 815 00:44:29.920 --> 00:44:32.360 So for those three days, I was like, why don't 816 00:44:32.400 --> 00:44:34.599 I just live like this all the time? I feel 817 00:44:34.679 --> 00:44:36.960 so much better? And then immediately I got my phone wrong. 818 00:44:37.239 --> 00:44:39.920 Chuck Arter, I know you can't. It's very you know 819 00:44:40.039 --> 00:44:42.239 I when I I just decide, you know, all right, 820 00:44:42.320 --> 00:44:46.199 I'm online, you know tsa line going to you know, 821 00:44:46.480 --> 00:44:50.199 I'm just gonna be here with this boredom. Yeah, and 822 00:44:50.280 --> 00:44:52.000 I'm not going to pull my phone out and you 823 00:44:52.159 --> 00:44:55.519 really have to fight. Yes, It's it's such an instinct 824 00:44:55.599 --> 00:44:57.800 and it's amazing these things have only been around for 825 00:44:57.920 --> 00:44:58.800 ten or twelve years. 826 00:44:58.840 --> 00:45:01.039 It's crazy, and everyone is attached to it. I always 827 00:45:01.039 --> 00:45:02.519 say that if there was a drug that made you 828 00:45:02.599 --> 00:45:05.000 stare at your hand for six hours a day, it 829 00:45:05.039 --> 00:45:07.559 would be banned immediately. People would be like, what the 830 00:45:07.599 --> 00:45:09.239 fuck is wrong with these people? They're just looking at 831 00:45:09.239 --> 00:45:11.280 their hands like this is an epidemic. 832 00:45:11.400 --> 00:45:14.400 And it's a new posture too. You see it, right, Mike. 833 00:45:14.800 --> 00:45:16.280 One of my kids, I went to pick her up 834 00:45:16.280 --> 00:45:18.480 at school and there was this boy outside reading his 835 00:45:18.599 --> 00:45:21.519 phone that he was hunched over and he was resting 836 00:45:21.719 --> 00:45:25.639 his chin like he couldn't even hold his head up. 837 00:45:25.679 --> 00:45:27.559 He was just resting his chin on his chest and 838 00:45:27.599 --> 00:45:29.920 staring his phone, waiting for his parents to pick him up. 839 00:45:29.920 --> 00:45:32.320 I'm like, look at his neck. Yeah, I know he's 840 00:45:32.360 --> 00:45:38.079 gonna have a bulging discs or something like. It was 841 00:45:38.199 --> 00:45:41.119 just bizarre. I'm like, that would be painful for me 842 00:45:41.280 --> 00:45:42.039 to like that. 843 00:45:42.199 --> 00:45:45.599 I wonder if orthopedis have diagnosed any kind of like 844 00:45:45.760 --> 00:45:46.360 phone Oh. 845 00:45:46.280 --> 00:45:49.800 They certainly have. Yeah, they certainly have. Yeah, there's been 846 00:45:49.840 --> 00:45:53.159 discussions about that, about people having pains in their neck 847 00:45:53.639 --> 00:45:56.159 because they're leaning over all day staring at a phone. 848 00:45:56.480 --> 00:45:58.920 It's a bad one. I think being in nature too 849 00:45:59.039 --> 00:46:03.440 is another way. I mean, just like walking. Yeah, there's 850 00:46:03.440 --> 00:46:06.760 a there's a scientist I interviewed who's really interesting is 851 00:46:06.800 --> 00:46:11.679 a woman named Collina Christophe Hadgilevia. She's Bulgarian Canadian, and 852 00:46:11.760 --> 00:46:14.480 she studies spontaneous thought, which I didn't even think was 853 00:46:14.519 --> 00:46:18.920 a field. And it's a small field. But spontaneous thought 854 00:46:19.159 --> 00:46:25.119 is daydreaming, mind wandering, fantasy, intuition, these bolts from the 855 00:46:25.159 --> 00:46:27.000 blue that we get occasionally, we don't know where they 856 00:46:27.079 --> 00:46:31.639 come from. And she's and she says, and she does 857 00:46:31.719 --> 00:46:35.599 these cool experiments. You know, she'll she'll put a experienced 858 00:46:35.679 --> 00:46:39.119 meditator in an fMRI machine and tell him or her 859 00:46:39.239 --> 00:46:41.840 to press a button when a thought in truths, Because 860 00:46:41.840 --> 00:46:44.719 even if you're a good meditator, she says, every ten seconds, 861 00:46:44.800 --> 00:46:48.280 a thought in truths, And she'll look at what part 862 00:46:48.320 --> 00:46:51.639 of the brain is activated and when when when when 863 00:46:51.679 --> 00:46:54.159 the person presses the button. And one of the things 864 00:46:54.239 --> 00:46:58.639 she's found, and this is mysterious, is that she sees 865 00:46:58.719 --> 00:47:02.800 activity in the hippocamp which is where memories are and 866 00:47:02.920 --> 00:47:07.800 some other things, but essentially memories four seconds before the 867 00:47:07.880 --> 00:47:13.920 person realizes that thought has come sos. It takes four 868 00:47:14.119 --> 00:47:18.199 seconds for a thought to get from the subconscious, you know, 869 00:47:18.519 --> 00:47:22.039 or unconscious into our conscious awareness. What is it doing 870 00:47:22.159 --> 00:47:25.400 during and that's a long time in brain time, and 871 00:47:25.679 --> 00:47:28.599 we don't know exactly, but there's some process, and maybe 872 00:47:28.800 --> 00:47:31.400 there's some inhibitory process that it has to get through 873 00:47:33.320 --> 00:47:36.320 in order to become conscious. But anyway, these are the 874 00:47:36.400 --> 00:47:38.639 kind of things she works with. But she says that 875 00:47:38.920 --> 00:47:42.760 we have less there's less spontaneous thought going on today 876 00:47:42.800 --> 00:47:45.320 than there was twenty years ago, and the reason is 877 00:47:45.360 --> 00:47:49.360 we're filling the space of our head with all this nonsense. 878 00:47:49.719 --> 00:47:52.000 I wonder if it's going to have an impact on 879 00:47:52.159 --> 00:47:54.920 creative work. I don't know if it's even possible to 880 00:47:55.000 --> 00:47:59.119 quantify this, but if you could see how much creativity 881 00:47:59.360 --> 00:48:04.159 is generated by people pre and post social media. 882 00:48:04.159 --> 00:48:07.360 Yeah, my guess is there's less of it because I 883 00:48:07.519 --> 00:48:10.039 do think that that process. I don't know about you, 884 00:48:10.159 --> 00:48:12.519 but I get ideas when I'm just you know, walking 885 00:48:12.599 --> 00:48:17.559 around thinking and not online, and it's a space of 886 00:48:17.639 --> 00:48:19.440 creativity and we're shrinking it. 887 00:48:19.679 --> 00:48:20.960 I used to tell you. I told you that I 888 00:48:21.039 --> 00:48:23.599 used to drive and delivery newspapers. We were talking about 889 00:48:23.639 --> 00:48:28.360 driving the snow. One of my most creative periods was 890 00:48:28.440 --> 00:48:32.119 when my radio was broken. So I was just driving 891 00:48:32.519 --> 00:48:35.800 doing this task where you pick up the paper fold it, 892 00:48:36.079 --> 00:48:38.280 put it in a plastic bag, check it out the window. 893 00:48:38.360 --> 00:48:40.119 And I was just doing this and checking off the 894 00:48:40.719 --> 00:48:42.599 and when I was doing that, I would have all 895 00:48:42.760 --> 00:48:45.920 my best ideas because I wasn't listening to you know, 896 00:48:46.079 --> 00:48:49.840 morning radio. I wasn't listening to a cassette on tape. 897 00:48:49.920 --> 00:48:53.119 I was just silence doing this thing. And then I 898 00:48:53.280 --> 00:48:54.360 was so creative when I was. 899 00:48:54.360 --> 00:48:56.280 Doing that's generative boredom. 900 00:48:56.480 --> 00:49:00.719 Yes, it's beneficial. It's hugely actually if there's no one 901 00:49:00.760 --> 00:49:02.880 around you, right, because there's no one to talk to 902 00:49:02.880 --> 00:49:06.280 to alleviate that boredom, it's just you and your mind. 903 00:49:06.880 --> 00:49:08.480 And it was a couple hours a day, so a 904 00:49:08.559 --> 00:49:11.039 couple hours every day, I would have this moment where 905 00:49:11.079 --> 00:49:11.840 I was by myself and. 906 00:49:11.960 --> 00:49:13.280 Were you writing jokes? What were you doing? 907 00:49:13.360 --> 00:49:15.239 Yeah? Yeah, I would come up with ideas for jokes. 908 00:49:15.320 --> 00:49:16.920 Some of my best ideas I ever came up with 909 00:49:17.039 --> 00:49:18.199 back then were from driving. 910 00:49:18.559 --> 00:49:18.800 Yeah. 911 00:49:19.159 --> 00:49:21.159 I almost didn't want to quit the job because of that. 912 00:49:23.679 --> 00:49:26.760 I mean, we'll be doing it, yeah, because it was 913 00:49:26.880 --> 00:49:27.679 especially in the winter. 914 00:49:28.000 --> 00:49:29.960 It was Boston. It was you know, I'd have to 915 00:49:30.000 --> 00:49:31.800 go about five o'clock in the morning every day. It 916 00:49:31.920 --> 00:49:32.280 was rough. 917 00:49:32.840 --> 00:49:37.079 I find walking is where that happens to me? Same thing, Yeah, 918 00:49:37.360 --> 00:49:40.679 and yeah, and actually Colleena says, I mean there are 919 00:49:40.679 --> 00:49:45.920 people who studied create creative people through history, you know, 920 00:49:46.039 --> 00:49:51.519 people like Einstein and Beethoven and all these you know, 921 00:49:52.039 --> 00:49:54.719 major creative people in the sciences and in the arts, 922 00:49:55.320 --> 00:49:58.639 and that they worked a short day, but they spent 923 00:49:58.679 --> 00:50:02.320 a lot of time walking interesting and yeah, they'd work 924 00:50:02.440 --> 00:50:05.039 like three or four hours and which is about all 925 00:50:05.039 --> 00:50:07.159 I can write in a day, and then they'd taken 926 00:50:07.360 --> 00:50:09.639 a long walk in the afternoon. They also took a 927 00:50:09.679 --> 00:50:12.280 lot of vacations. They had a lot of unstructured time, 928 00:50:12.880 --> 00:50:15.039 and that that's where a lot of the creativity comes. 929 00:50:15.119 --> 00:50:17.920 It doesn't always come when you're like at the keyboard. 930 00:50:18.840 --> 00:50:22.480 It sometimes comes, I mean, certainly solving problems if I'm 931 00:50:22.519 --> 00:50:26.000 really noted up and I don't know for me, transitions 932 00:50:26.079 --> 00:50:28.559 like where do I go from here? Since I'm not 933 00:50:28.599 --> 00:50:32.239 writing narrative, it's not always obvious. You know, I need 934 00:50:32.320 --> 00:50:36.480 a transition, and I don't know how to execute that turn. 935 00:50:37.360 --> 00:50:39.920 I'll take a walk, and very often it'll come to 936 00:50:40.000 --> 00:50:41.719 me or I'll wake up with the answer. 937 00:50:42.239 --> 00:50:44.559 This episode is brought to you by better Help in 938 00:50:44.760 --> 00:50:48.239 honor of International Women's Day. Better Help is celebrating the 939 00:50:48.320 --> 00:50:51.199 women in your life. I think we can all appreciate 940 00:50:51.320 --> 00:50:53.360 everything the women in our lives have done for us, 941 00:50:53.880 --> 00:50:57.320 and everyone deserves a little self care. A good way 942 00:50:57.639 --> 00:51:00.760 to get that is through therapy. Because not only is 943 00:51:00.880 --> 00:51:03.800 therapy a time for you to focus on yourself, it's 944 00:51:03.920 --> 00:51:06.559 also a way to create balance and learn how to 945 00:51:06.639 --> 00:51:09.199 take care of your needs in your daily life. And 946 00:51:09.360 --> 00:51:13.280 better Help, as one of the largest online therapy platforms, 947 00:51:13.360 --> 00:51:16.239 makes it so easy to meet with the right therapists. 948 00:51:16.320 --> 00:51:19.079 All you need to do is fill out a short questionnaire. 949 00:51:19.519 --> 00:51:21.239 You don't even need to go into an office to 950 00:51:21.320 --> 00:51:23.800 meet them. You can chat at home, from your couch, 951 00:51:23.920 --> 00:51:26.719 in your car, before you hit the gym, or while 952 00:51:26.760 --> 00:51:29.760 you're walking your dog. Plus, if you aren't jiving with 953 00:51:29.840 --> 00:51:32.440 your first match, you can switch to a different therapist 954 00:51:32.559 --> 00:51:37.440 whenever you need your emotional wellbeing matters. Find support and 955 00:51:37.599 --> 00:51:41.079 feel lighter in therapy. Sign up and get ten percent 956 00:51:41.199 --> 00:51:45.360 off at betterhelp dot com slash jr e that's better 957 00:51:45.920 --> 00:51:50.079 h e LP dot Com, slash Jr. A lot of 958 00:51:50.119 --> 00:51:53.960 writers like to write first and then walk and maybe 959 00:51:54.000 --> 00:51:56.199 even with a recorder so they can just walk and 960 00:51:56.360 --> 00:51:58.519 just talk when an idea pops in their heads, so 961 00:51:58.639 --> 00:51:59.320 they don't lose it. 962 00:51:59.559 --> 00:52:01.280 Yeah, a little pad I carry with me. 963 00:52:01.519 --> 00:52:04.639 Yeah you like writing it down better than recording it. 964 00:52:05.000 --> 00:52:08.639 Yeah for me, Yeah, I need to see it. So 965 00:52:08.920 --> 00:52:15.400 another interesting experiment I did for this book was this 966 00:52:15.639 --> 00:52:20.119 beeper experiment. There was there was a a scientist as 967 00:52:20.119 --> 00:52:23.880 a psychologist the University of Las Vegas, and for fifty 968 00:52:24.000 --> 00:52:26.719 years he's been doing the same one experiment, which is 969 00:52:26.880 --> 00:52:31.599 sampling people's inner experience. And he does this. He you 970 00:52:31.719 --> 00:52:33.960 have a beeper that you carry around and a little 971 00:52:34.000 --> 00:52:36.840 earpiece and at random times of the day you get 972 00:52:38.480 --> 00:52:41.800 it's like catches you and it's a very sudden rise 973 00:52:41.880 --> 00:52:44.199 to this beep, and then you have a little pat 974 00:52:44.199 --> 00:52:45.679 and you're supposed to write down what you were thinking. 975 00:52:46.519 --> 00:52:49.639 Sounds really simple, it's actually really hard. I mean there's 976 00:52:49.760 --> 00:52:52.800 a lot of issues with it. Like you start thinking 977 00:52:53.159 --> 00:52:58.000 what if it goes off? Now, that's one problem, but 978 00:52:58.360 --> 00:53:00.760 also you're a little self conscious. So you do about 979 00:53:00.800 --> 00:53:02.800 five beeps over the course of the day, and then 980 00:53:02.920 --> 00:53:07.840 he interviews you about your about your these moments, and 981 00:53:08.400 --> 00:53:11.639 you think you've got it down, like I just give 982 00:53:11.679 --> 00:53:14.079 you a lot of my beeps were about food, and 983 00:53:14.360 --> 00:53:18.519 so I was. I was seasoning a filet of salmon 984 00:53:18.719 --> 00:53:22.800 and walking to the refrigerator with it, and just at 985 00:53:22.880 --> 00:53:26.679 the man, I was singing to myself, Fuck, I forgot 986 00:53:26.719 --> 00:53:31.199 the pepper. I know, my thoughts were not that profound, 987 00:53:32.960 --> 00:53:35.360 and so I said, all right, pepper. It was easy, 988 00:53:35.440 --> 00:53:39.119 fuck pepper um. But then when he came to interview me, 989 00:53:39.239 --> 00:53:41.639 he said, well, did you hear the word pepper or 990 00:53:41.679 --> 00:53:45.119 did you speak the word pepper? And that's that's you know, 991 00:53:45.239 --> 00:53:47.840 Suddenly you realize those voices in your head you don't 992 00:53:47.920 --> 00:53:51.679 know if you're listening or speaking. And so anyway, you 993 00:53:51.760 --> 00:53:54.079 have this long interrogation with him, and he sorts through 994 00:53:54.159 --> 00:53:55.880 all these things, and he tries to get you to 995 00:53:56.000 --> 00:53:59.159 isolate what was before what he would call the footlights 996 00:53:59.159 --> 00:54:02.719 of consciousness. And I found it really hard. I couldn't 997 00:54:02.840 --> 00:54:06.920 separate the thought the way he wanted me to, because 998 00:54:07.360 --> 00:54:09.639 it was there were always several things going on at once. 999 00:54:09.880 --> 00:54:13.519 Like I was standing in a bakery and I was 1000 00:54:13.599 --> 00:54:16.239 deciding whether by a roll or not another profound thought. 1001 00:54:18.960 --> 00:54:21.079 But at the same time, I was like smelling the 1002 00:54:21.159 --> 00:54:23.920 baked goods and the cheeses that they sold, and this 1003 00:54:24.119 --> 00:54:26.960 woman had this horrible plaid on her skirt that was like, 1004 00:54:27.159 --> 00:54:31.280 you know, really unflattering, and I was hearing people, you know, 1005 00:54:31.440 --> 00:54:36.280 behind me talking, and so I couldn't pull all the threads. 1006 00:54:36.639 --> 00:54:41.960 And we argued a lot, actually, But the thing he's 1007 00:54:42.039 --> 00:54:44.400 discussed said, so, after fifty years, what have you learned 1008 00:54:44.400 --> 00:54:48.440 about human thought? And he's very allergic to theory. He 1009 00:54:49.280 --> 00:54:53.159 still has no theories about it. But he did say, well, 1010 00:54:53.400 --> 00:54:56.159 a lot of people think they're verbal thinkers, that their 1011 00:54:56.199 --> 00:54:58.920 thoughts are in the form of words, But it turns 1012 00:54:58.960 --> 00:55:01.599 out that's kind of a mind that there are a 1013 00:55:01.639 --> 00:55:04.199 lot of people who think in images, and then there 1014 00:55:04.199 --> 00:55:06.880 are a lot of people who think in unsymbolized thought, 1015 00:55:07.000 --> 00:55:09.719 which I don't totally understand. But these are thoughts that 1016 00:55:09.800 --> 00:55:13.719 are neither words or images. I do have a sense 1017 00:55:14.159 --> 00:55:16.880 in my own thought process, which I'd never thought about 1018 00:55:16.880 --> 00:55:20.639 this way, that a lot of my thoughts are just 1019 00:55:20.840 --> 00:55:24.400 on that verge of being word thoughts. But I haven't 1020 00:55:24.440 --> 00:55:27.280 found the words yet. But I know the thought even 1021 00:55:27.320 --> 00:55:32.400 though I haven't put it into words, and William James 1022 00:55:32.480 --> 00:55:38.159 called it a promontory thinking, premonition thinking. It was the 1023 00:55:38.320 --> 00:55:42.880 term he used. So anyway, so I did this for 1024 00:55:42.960 --> 00:55:45.840 several days and we had many arguments, and I was saying, look, 1025 00:55:45.880 --> 00:55:48.960 you can't separate a thought. Every thought colors the next thought, 1026 00:55:49.199 --> 00:55:54.039 and you know there are these thought and you never 1027 00:55:54.159 --> 00:55:57.000 have anyway. We just would go back and forth and 1028 00:55:57.320 --> 00:56:00.559 I was arguing, why you can't separate thoughts. It's it's 1029 00:56:00.599 --> 00:56:04.519 a very dynamic stream. And at the end we had 1030 00:56:04.519 --> 00:56:09.519 a final session. And he's a very funny guy. He's 1031 00:56:09.599 --> 00:56:12.559 really allergic to theories. He at one point I said 1032 00:56:12.559 --> 00:56:14.440 I was writing a book on consciousness, and he said, 1033 00:56:14.639 --> 00:56:21.360 good luck with that. Very encouraging anyway, he said, well 1034 00:56:21.599 --> 00:56:25.719 he described these verbal thinkers and visual thinkers and unsymbolized thinkers. 1035 00:56:26.480 --> 00:56:29.079 And I find that really interesting because we assume when 1036 00:56:29.119 --> 00:56:31.440 we say the word what are you thinking, that we 1037 00:56:31.639 --> 00:56:33.880 know and that you're thinking the way I'm thinking, But 1038 00:56:33.960 --> 00:56:36.679 it turns out we're not. That's just an umbrella word 1039 00:56:37.079 --> 00:56:41.280 from many different styles of thinking, and we're really different. 1040 00:56:41.880 --> 00:56:43.800 So that was one thing. But the other thing he 1041 00:56:43.880 --> 00:56:47.320 said in our last meeting on zoom. He said, there's 1042 00:56:47.400 --> 00:56:49.880 also a small subset of people who just have very 1043 00:56:49.920 --> 00:56:55.280 little inner life, and you're one of them. And I 1044 00:56:55.440 --> 00:56:58.800 was like, what, you know, I write books, you know, 1045 00:56:59.519 --> 00:57:00.800 I met a ruminate. 1046 00:57:01.440 --> 00:57:03.800 How can he make that distinction? Though? How does he 1047 00:57:03.920 --> 00:57:05.239 know what's going on inside your head? 1048 00:57:05.400 --> 00:57:10.519 He felt that my inability to isolate a thought was 1049 00:57:10.880 --> 00:57:13.960 evidence that there weren't thoughts, and then I was kind 1050 00:57:14.000 --> 00:57:17.360 of backfilling with all this other, you know, simultaneous stuff 1051 00:57:17.440 --> 00:57:20.159 going on. I mean, I didn't agree with him. I 1052 00:57:20.239 --> 00:57:21.440 thought it was kind of crazy. 1053 00:57:23.000 --> 00:57:26.039 But that's if you asked him, if you have conversations 1054 00:57:26.039 --> 00:57:27.960 with him about other things, see how he thinks. 1055 00:57:29.599 --> 00:57:32.960 No, he's very much in the therapist mode, like he's 1056 00:57:33.039 --> 00:57:34.039 asking the questions. 1057 00:57:34.159 --> 00:57:36.000 Yeah, I'd like to know how he thinks. 1058 00:57:36.239 --> 00:57:37.880 Yeah, what his mode is. 1059 00:57:38.000 --> 00:57:39.000 Yeah, I'd like to talk to now. 1060 00:57:39.079 --> 00:57:42.519 He would probably say that anyway, He's posted all these 1061 00:57:42.559 --> 00:57:45.480 conversations on his website, so if people really want to 1062 00:57:45.519 --> 00:57:46.880 be bored, they can check them out. 1063 00:57:47.159 --> 00:57:50.719 That's a weird thing to say that, you know, especially 1064 00:57:50.840 --> 00:57:53.559 someone like you who writes and does think a lot 1065 00:57:54.000 --> 00:57:57.599 and clearly has got some sort of dialogue going on 1066 00:57:57.639 --> 00:58:00.360 in your head. The idea that you don't and guy 1067 00:58:00.480 --> 00:58:03.400 can say that, I know that seems a little arrogant. 1068 00:58:04.039 --> 00:58:07.000 Yeah, I think I just didn't fit his template of 1069 00:58:07.199 --> 00:58:08.800 like how people think. 1070 00:58:09.239 --> 00:58:11.760 Yeah, well that's why you should get a better therapist. 1071 00:58:12.239 --> 00:58:16.400 Move around, all right, find somebody else good advice. I mean, 1072 00:58:16.440 --> 00:58:18.920 it seems like that's a very narrow mind. I couldn't 1073 00:58:18.920 --> 00:58:21.360 imagine saying to anyone. 1074 00:58:21.199 --> 00:58:22.840 Yeah, you're very little in her life. 1075 00:58:23.000 --> 00:58:25.599 Yeah. Well, regardless of what kind of you know, theory 1076 00:58:25.840 --> 00:58:29.519 I'm following, or you know what school of thought, I 1077 00:58:29.719 --> 00:58:32.000 don't know what's going on in your head. I can't. 1078 00:58:32.400 --> 00:58:33.400 It's not possible. 1079 00:58:33.800 --> 00:58:36.679 No, And that's it. There's a William James said this, 1080 00:58:36.800 --> 00:58:39.280 the great you know, founder of American psychology, that the 1081 00:58:39.360 --> 00:58:42.679 breach between two consciousnesses is one of the biggest breaches 1082 00:58:42.719 --> 00:58:45.840 in nature. Yes, and we you know, I don't know 1083 00:58:46.000 --> 00:58:49.880 you're conscious for a fact. I assume it because your 1084 00:58:49.960 --> 00:58:53.880 behaviors mesh and we're the same species, and we have 1085 00:58:54.199 --> 00:58:56.360 theory of mind. We can imagine our way into someone 1086 00:58:56.440 --> 00:59:00.920 else's head. But it's a guess it's yes, And so 1087 00:59:01.079 --> 00:59:02.840 there's I mean, that's part of the mystery. 1088 00:59:03.000 --> 00:59:04.199 Well, It's one of the things that I do when 1089 00:59:04.239 --> 00:59:08.480 I'm talking to people. I try to imagine, well, I'm 1090 00:59:09.199 --> 00:59:11.440 so fortunate that I've been able to have so many 1091 00:59:11.480 --> 00:59:14.440 conversations with so many different people, so many different ways 1092 00:59:14.519 --> 00:59:17.280 that people view the world. And when I'm talking to someone, 1093 00:59:17.400 --> 00:59:21.079 particularly if they're very different from me or anyone I know, 1094 00:59:21.320 --> 00:59:24.320 I always try to put myself in their head, and 1095 00:59:24.519 --> 00:59:28.039 I after they talk for fifteen or twenty minutes, I 1096 00:59:28.400 --> 00:59:32.360 try to like recognize like how they approach things and 1097 00:59:32.519 --> 00:59:36.159 see if I'm like, what is that, what's that world like? 1098 00:59:36.800 --> 00:59:39.920 Like this person's perspective, Especially you're operating on two tracks. 1099 00:59:40.360 --> 00:59:44.639 Yeah, you're holding the conversation, yeah, but you're also thinking. 1100 00:59:44.880 --> 00:59:47.480 I'm trying to tune in, right, I'm trying to because 1101 00:59:48.199 --> 00:59:51.400 I always feel like when someone is like a great performance, 1102 00:59:51.480 --> 00:59:53.920 like a great comedian or a great musician, one of 1103 00:59:53.960 --> 00:59:56.119 the things that they're doing is they're bringing you into 1104 00:59:56.159 --> 00:59:59.960 their head. Like there's a there's a hypnosis when someone's 1105 01:00:00.039 --> 01:00:02.400 sings an amazing song and the whole crowd is singing along, 1106 01:00:02.719 --> 01:00:06.519 there's there's a hypnotic element to that where when someone's 1107 01:00:06.599 --> 01:00:08.840 like really killing an on stage, their voice is just 1108 01:00:08.960 --> 01:00:12.239 perfect like, oh yeah, like you're in their head. Like 1109 01:00:12.440 --> 01:00:15.719 it's it's a it's a mind meld. It's yeah, it 1110 01:00:15.840 --> 01:00:17.519 is a mind meld. And there's a little bit of 1111 01:00:17.559 --> 01:00:20.400 that that goes on in conversations. There's a mind meld. 1112 01:00:20.800 --> 01:00:25.599 And I always try, especially if it's a rational person, 1113 01:00:25.880 --> 01:00:28.400 I always try to put myself in their head or 1114 01:00:28.400 --> 01:00:32.079 at least empty out mind, yeah, and let them think 1115 01:00:32.360 --> 01:00:36.079 and then try to just keep the conversation rolling with 1116 01:00:36.599 --> 01:00:41.199 just pure curiosity. But always, you know, try to think, 1117 01:00:41.760 --> 01:00:44.559 I don't think the same way other people do, and 1118 01:00:44.840 --> 01:00:47.320 maybe maybe I can learn something from this, Maybe I 1119 01:00:47.400 --> 01:00:48.960 can get something out of the way they think. 1120 01:00:49.360 --> 01:00:51.760 It seems to me you're you're you have a real 1121 01:00:51.840 --> 01:00:56.079 gift of curiosity. I mean that's a it's a big gift. 1122 01:00:57.000 --> 01:00:58.480 You're an intensely curious person. 1123 01:00:58.960 --> 01:01:01.039 Well I've always been that way, but I've been very 1124 01:01:01.159 --> 01:01:03.920 fortunate that I've had something like this that allowed me 1125 01:01:04.000 --> 01:01:07.480 to feed it. Yeah, you know, I mean the vast 1126 01:01:07.599 --> 01:01:12.039 majority of time on my phone, I just pursue curiosities. 1127 01:01:12.159 --> 01:01:16.239 I don't I really am mostly in social media. Yeah, 1128 01:01:16.679 --> 01:01:19.599 I watched interesting YouTube videos like I went down a 1129 01:01:19.679 --> 01:01:22.960 black hole, rabbit hole, last night. Oh my god, you 1130 01:01:23.039 --> 01:01:25.440 want to really break your brain. There was a there's 1131 01:01:25.440 --> 01:01:27.280 a video of Brian Cox where he's talking about this 1132 01:01:27.360 --> 01:01:29.400 black hole that they found that's bigger than our entire 1133 01:01:29.480 --> 01:01:35.320 solar system. Wow, the event horizon extends far beyond Pluto. 1134 01:01:38.599 --> 01:01:39.719 That's that is mind blowing. 1135 01:01:39.920 --> 01:01:43.239 Yeah. When he was just he said, we don't understand 1136 01:01:43.440 --> 01:01:45.679 why it exists. We don't understand how it could have 1137 01:01:45.800 --> 01:01:48.119 formed so early in the universe, but yet there it is. 1138 01:01:48.440 --> 01:01:50.280 How did they measure it? I don't know how big 1139 01:01:50.360 --> 01:01:51.800 it is? No, I did. 1140 01:01:52.599 --> 01:01:55.360 I don't know. I'm assuming there's a lot of revelations 1141 01:01:55.440 --> 01:01:58.199 that have come out since the implementation of the James 1142 01:01:58.239 --> 01:01:59.039 Web telescope. 1143 01:01:59.119 --> 01:02:01.679 Yeah, and this is as images are incredible. 1144 01:02:01.679 --> 01:02:05.719 Insane, Yeah, insane, And this is one that's causing this 1145 01:02:06.119 --> 01:02:11.960 very interesting new theory or perspective on the age of 1146 01:02:12.039 --> 01:02:16.559 the universe. So there's some galaxies that they've found that shouldn't. 1147 01:02:16.199 --> 01:02:18.159 Have Oh yeah, yeah, I read about this that it's 1148 01:02:18.320 --> 01:02:21.239 it's it's throwing all their assumptions about the age of 1149 01:02:21.280 --> 01:02:22.800 the universe that for grabs. 1150 01:02:22.559 --> 01:02:24.760 Which makes sense because the further you can look back, 1151 01:02:24.960 --> 01:02:26.360 the more you're going to be able to see the 1152 01:02:26.400 --> 01:02:29.320 assumption that the universe was thirteen point seven billion years 1153 01:02:29.360 --> 01:02:31.239 old was essentially based. 1154 01:02:30.960 --> 01:02:32.239 On how far we look back. 1155 01:02:32.440 --> 01:02:35.960 Yeah, and then you know the analysis of the radio 1156 01:02:36.159 --> 01:02:39.239 waves that are coming from the supposed explosion. And then 1157 01:02:39.320 --> 01:02:41.519 you've got guys like Sir Roger Penrose who said, no, 1158 01:02:41.760 --> 01:02:44.880 this is a constant cycle. It's not one berth of 1159 01:02:44.920 --> 01:02:48.440 the universe. It's booms, smash. 1160 01:02:48.239 --> 01:02:51.239 Booms, smash forever ad. 1161 01:02:51.000 --> 01:02:54.000 And it's always happened, which is the ultimate mind fuck. 1162 01:02:54.360 --> 01:02:57.840 Well, you know the interesting thing about astronomy, Actually, astronomy 1163 01:02:58.239 --> 01:03:04.079 and consciousness studies have the same problem, which is you 1164 01:03:04.199 --> 01:03:07.039 can't get out of consciousness to study it from a distance. 1165 01:03:07.440 --> 01:03:07.559 Right. 1166 01:03:07.800 --> 01:03:11.039 Everything, every tool you have to study consciousness is a 1167 01:03:11.079 --> 01:03:15.199 product of consciousness, including science. The scientific enterprise is a 1168 01:03:15.280 --> 01:03:19.880 manifestation of human consciousness. The problems you decide to study, 1169 01:03:20.679 --> 01:03:22.920 the tools you have to do it, with the scale 1170 01:03:22.960 --> 01:03:26.480 at which you're working. It's all like a product of consciousness. 1171 01:03:26.920 --> 01:03:30.840 Astronomy too, has to is trying to understand something it 1172 01:03:30.920 --> 01:03:34.239 can't get outside of, right, I mean, because its subject 1173 01:03:34.360 --> 01:03:37.800 is everything that there is, the universe. So you can 1174 01:03:37.920 --> 01:03:42.199 do interesting things from inside using telescopes and you know, 1175 01:03:42.280 --> 01:03:44.840 you can figure out how old things are and rates 1176 01:03:44.880 --> 01:03:46.920 of expansion and all this kind of stuff, but you 1177 01:03:47.039 --> 01:03:51.239 can never get that godlike perspective that we have with 1178 01:03:51.360 --> 01:03:54.840 other scientific problems. And this is I think part of 1179 01:03:54.880 --> 01:03:59.519 the reason we haven't solved the consciousness problem that we 1180 01:03:59.719 --> 01:04:04.519 can get outside it's in. We're in a labyrinth and everything, 1181 01:04:05.039 --> 01:04:07.559 everything we know is consciousness, I mean, which is a 1182 01:04:07.719 --> 01:04:11.920 very weird idea. I remember asking Christoph Cooke, the scientists 1183 01:04:11.960 --> 01:04:14.800 I mentioned earlier. I said, well, what would the world 1184 01:04:14.920 --> 01:04:18.239 be like without any consciousness? And that is a trippy 1185 01:04:18.280 --> 01:04:24.360 thought because everything we perceive is you know, the scale 1186 01:04:24.440 --> 01:04:27.280 of things, like we we operate at this scale, right, 1187 01:04:27.400 --> 01:04:30.440 we're like five or six feet tall. We have bodies 1188 01:04:30.559 --> 01:04:34.039 like this, But there's another world going on microscopically, and 1189 01:04:34.079 --> 01:04:37.719 there's another world going on macroscopically. So if there's no consciousness, 1190 01:04:37.840 --> 01:04:41.280 what's the proper scale? There isn't any And when I 1191 01:04:41.320 --> 01:04:44.280 asked him this question, he said, particles and waves, that's 1192 01:04:44.280 --> 01:04:46.360 all there is. There'd be nothing but particles and waves. 1193 01:04:46.400 --> 01:04:49.480 There might not even be space time that may be 1194 01:04:49.599 --> 01:04:55.239 a product of consciousness also, So that was kind of 1195 01:04:55.280 --> 01:04:56.079 mind blowing. 1196 01:04:55.880 --> 01:04:59.880 To learn that's the weirdest perspective, is it. Consciousness is 1197 01:05:00.119 --> 01:05:04.400 is a part of reality, that it is how reality 1198 01:05:04.519 --> 01:05:08.239 is formed, and that without consciousness and the perceiving of all. 1199 01:05:08.199 --> 01:05:13.599 This stuffs, something exists, something, but it's not. It has 1200 01:05:13.719 --> 01:05:17.719 no shape, it has no scale, it has no right. 1201 01:05:19.559 --> 01:05:22.800 What's perceiving light and we're perceiving colors. 1202 01:05:22.559 --> 01:05:23.880 And it's constructing. 1203 01:05:24.000 --> 01:05:28.000 But it really is just particles, yeah, and waves, waves 1204 01:05:28.039 --> 01:05:31.159 and particles and atoms, yeah, sub atomic particles. When you 1205 01:05:31.199 --> 01:05:33.599 get into the weirder stuff and we give it order. 1206 01:05:33.719 --> 01:05:36.320 Right, I know, which you know it's just a mind 1207 01:05:36.360 --> 01:05:37.519 blowing idea, but. 1208 01:05:38.519 --> 01:05:40.840 It's a it really is a game changer because if 1209 01:05:40.840 --> 01:05:42.639 you think about it that way, you go, Okay, well, 1210 01:05:42.719 --> 01:05:46.800 what is all this solid stuff? What is this like? 1211 01:05:47.000 --> 01:05:49.840 Does this even really exist? Or does it almost exist? 1212 01:05:49.920 --> 01:05:54.400 Table? There's a famous Arthur Eddington was a physicist early 1213 01:05:54.480 --> 01:05:57.840 in the twentieth century, and he said, the real table 1214 01:05:57.960 --> 01:06:03.320 is mostly space and only in our consciousness and at 1215 01:06:03.440 --> 01:06:08.760 our scale is it solid. And but at this scale 1216 01:06:08.840 --> 01:06:13.079 of particle physics, which is equally legitimate scale, it's just 1217 01:06:13.280 --> 01:06:17.679 wide open space with these waves and particles. But a 1218 01:06:17.760 --> 01:06:21.159 lot of emptiness that was kind of mind blowing too. 1219 01:06:22.079 --> 01:06:25.480 So it's just such an abstract concept for a person 1220 01:06:25.719 --> 01:06:28.159 in their car right now listening on the way to work, like, 1221 01:06:28.239 --> 01:06:29.480 what the fuck are you talking about? 1222 01:06:29.599 --> 01:06:30.519 Maybe they want to pull over. 1223 01:06:30.679 --> 01:06:33.639 All this stuff is real, Yeah, it is sort of, 1224 01:06:34.000 --> 01:06:36.840 but only if you're conscious. 1225 01:06:37.679 --> 01:06:39.760 Well you could think of consciousness as the way the 1226 01:06:39.840 --> 01:06:42.280 universe experiences itself. 1227 01:06:42.400 --> 01:06:45.639 Yeah, and well that's what really were like, what if 1228 01:06:45.679 --> 01:06:46.960 the universe is consciousness? 1229 01:06:47.679 --> 01:06:49.280 Yeah, I mean that's another way to look at it. 1230 01:06:49.360 --> 01:06:53.079 Maybe consciousness is part of the universe, but it's not 1231 01:06:53.239 --> 01:06:55.920 giving it the order that we give it. You know, 1232 01:06:56.000 --> 01:06:58.280 we see it a certain spectrum of light. There's you know, 1233 01:06:58.440 --> 01:07:00.519 b see it another spectrum of light. You know, we 1234 01:07:01.639 --> 01:07:04.679 are the world we behold. The world that appears to 1235 01:07:04.840 --> 01:07:08.239 us is the world that our senses allow us to see. 1236 01:07:09.039 --> 01:07:11.400 When I was doing this research on plant intelligence, they 1237 01:07:11.440 --> 01:07:15.000 have twenty senses. We only have five. They're picking up 1238 01:07:15.119 --> 01:07:19.880 magnetic fields, they're picking up pH they're picking up nitrogen levels. 1239 01:07:20.039 --> 01:07:24.199 You know, they have always they're researchers working on it. 1240 01:07:24.280 --> 01:07:28.159 There's a group of botanists who call themselves plant neurobiologists, 1241 01:07:29.039 --> 01:07:31.519 knowing full well there are no neurons and plants. They're 1242 01:07:31.599 --> 01:07:34.920 kind of trolling more conventional botanists and they're doing these 1243 01:07:35.000 --> 01:07:40.760 cool experiments with plants. A couple examples of some of 1244 01:07:40.800 --> 01:07:45.480 these amazing things plants can do. They can hear, so 1245 01:07:45.559 --> 01:07:49.599 if you play a recording of a caterpillar munching on leaves, 1246 01:07:50.239 --> 01:07:53.320 they'll react and they'll send chemicals into their leaves to 1247 01:07:53.400 --> 01:07:57.199 make them taste bad or be toxic. They can see. 1248 01:07:58.119 --> 01:08:02.159 There are mines that change their the shape of their 1249 01:08:02.320 --> 01:08:06.440 leaves depending on the plant they're twining up in order 1250 01:08:06.559 --> 01:08:09.639 to be hidden. How do they see the shape and 1251 01:08:09.840 --> 01:08:14.880 to imitate it, we don't know. They plants will go 1252 01:08:15.119 --> 01:08:18.800 toward a pipe with water in it because they can 1253 01:08:18.920 --> 01:08:22.199 hear the water even though it's totally dry, and they'll 1254 01:08:22.279 --> 01:08:26.720 send their their roots down to they can hear the water. 1255 01:08:26.840 --> 01:08:32.720 They can hear. Yeah, there there's this plant. Neurobiologist showed 1256 01:08:32.800 --> 01:08:35.640 me this couple videos he'd made. I actually just posted 1257 01:08:35.680 --> 01:08:41.840 them on my website. He showed that a corn plants 1258 01:08:42.159 --> 01:08:46.000 roots can navigate a maze to get to fertilizer. So 1259 01:08:46.079 --> 01:08:49.000 you put a little fertilizer in a corner and the 1260 01:08:49.119 --> 01:08:52.279 root will find the most direct root to the nitrogen. 1261 01:08:52.680 --> 01:08:55.560 There was a plumbing problem that I had in my 1262 01:08:55.640 --> 01:09:00.520 house in California, and the plumber could figure out what 1263 01:09:00.640 --> 01:09:04.039 was wrong. It was like the pipes were stuck, and 1264 01:09:04.520 --> 01:09:08.159 what had happened was in the backyard one of the 1265 01:09:08.439 --> 01:09:14.800 trees had gotten into the pipe and formed like this tree. 1266 01:09:15.399 --> 01:09:17.000 I mean it was huge. It looked like when I 1267 01:09:17.039 --> 01:09:18.840 pulled it. I put it up on my Instagram. See 1268 01:09:18.840 --> 01:09:21.399 if you can find it. It looked like a muskrat. 1269 01:09:22.239 --> 01:09:26.439 I mean, it was like dense with roots, and it 1270 01:09:26.600 --> 01:09:29.600 was thick. It was like three feet long. It was. 1271 01:09:30.199 --> 01:09:32.880 That's it that was in my pipe. Oh my god, 1272 01:09:33.159 --> 01:09:33.920 isn't that crazy? 1273 01:09:34.159 --> 01:09:36.600 Yeah? What kind of tree was it? 1274 01:09:36.920 --> 01:09:39.359 I don't know. I think it was an oak tree 1275 01:09:39.359 --> 01:09:41.880 because there was oak trees excuse me in the backyard 1276 01:09:41.920 --> 01:09:44.279 where they dug up. But look how thick it is. 1277 01:09:45.119 --> 01:09:48.239 It's crazy. It's and it went through a tiny little crack. Yeah, 1278 01:09:49.039 --> 01:09:52.000 I mean, it probably forced the crack open and then 1279 01:09:52.279 --> 01:09:54.920 went in there and just really grew out. 1280 01:09:55.279 --> 01:09:56.680 Yeah. Well it had a source of water. 1281 01:09:57.119 --> 01:10:00.119 Yeah, but it's just kind of bananas that somehow or 1282 01:10:00.159 --> 01:10:02.279 another it figured out that there was water in that pipe. 1283 01:10:02.640 --> 01:10:05.920 You know, we underestimate plants basically because we can't see 1284 01:10:05.960 --> 01:10:09.119 their behaviors and they're going to that point about scale 1285 01:10:09.199 --> 01:10:12.239 they have. They operated as a time scale that seems 1286 01:10:12.359 --> 01:10:15.079 very slow to us, so we don't notice. But if 1287 01:10:15.119 --> 01:10:17.439 you use time lapse photography, you see what they're up 1288 01:10:17.520 --> 01:10:21.239 to and it's it's pretty amazing. Another another interesting video 1289 01:10:21.920 --> 01:10:24.439 that this guy showed me. His name is Stefano Mancuzzo. 1290 01:10:24.520 --> 01:10:29.159 He's an Italian scientist. Botanist is how bean plants find 1291 01:10:29.239 --> 01:10:32.399 a pole to grow up. And so he grows these 1292 01:10:32.479 --> 01:10:34.520 beans and he has a metal pole on a dolly 1293 01:10:35.239 --> 01:10:38.199 and you know, I always assume they made this pattern 1294 01:10:38.640 --> 01:10:42.279 Darwin called its circummutation that you know, they go through 1295 01:10:42.359 --> 01:10:44.479 the spiral and I always assume they just kind of 1296 01:10:44.560 --> 01:10:47.600 did this till they hit something. No, they know where 1297 01:10:47.760 --> 01:10:50.960 the pole is. And you watch this thing and it's 1298 01:10:51.119 --> 01:10:55.359 it's going in circles, but it's reaching and reaching. It 1299 01:10:55.439 --> 01:10:59.119 looks like a fly fisherman, you know, casting and it 1300 01:10:59.279 --> 01:11:02.279 finally gets to the pole. And so how does it 1301 01:11:02.399 --> 01:11:05.880 know where the pole is in space? Well, one theory 1302 01:11:06.079 --> 01:11:10.439 is that every time the cells divide, there's a little 1303 01:11:10.560 --> 01:11:14.960 sound that's produced and that maybe they're using echolocation like 1304 01:11:15.039 --> 01:11:17.520 a bat, kind of bouncing it off of the pole, 1305 01:11:17.600 --> 01:11:19.439 and that's how they know where they are in space. 1306 01:11:20.039 --> 01:11:25.880 We still don't understand. I know some amazing things. Also, 1307 01:11:25.960 --> 01:11:30.880 you can teach a plant a certain behavior and it 1308 01:11:30.920 --> 01:11:34.359 will remember for twenty eight days. So they do this 1309 01:11:34.520 --> 01:11:38.079 thing with sensitive plants. You may have seen them in Hawaii. 1310 01:11:38.159 --> 01:11:40.760 Actually it's a tropical plant. When you touch it, the 1311 01:11:40.880 --> 01:11:45.159 leaves collapse to keep from being eaten. It's called Mimosa pudica. 1312 01:11:45.920 --> 01:11:49.560 And normally if you shake it it will also do this, 1313 01:11:50.199 --> 01:11:52.760 And if you shake it repeatedly, it learns to ignore 1314 01:11:52.880 --> 01:11:57.800 that stimulus and it will remember twenty eight days and 1315 01:11:57.880 --> 01:12:01.359 it won't react when you do it. To give you 1316 01:12:01.479 --> 01:12:05.680 some comparison, fruit flies can only remember stuff for twenty 1317 01:12:05.720 --> 01:12:11.239 four hours and then they start over again. So another 1318 01:12:11.399 --> 01:12:14.479 fact about plants. I got really deep into this because 1319 01:12:14.479 --> 01:12:17.159 I was trying to you know, these guys say plants 1320 01:12:17.199 --> 01:12:20.319 are conscious, They have some kind of basic form of 1321 01:12:20.439 --> 01:12:27.720 conscience consciousness. Here's another one. The anesthetics that we use 1322 01:12:27.840 --> 01:12:32.079 to put us out for surgery put plants out. So 1323 01:12:33.239 --> 01:12:36.920 a venus fly trap, if you give it an anesthetic, 1324 01:12:37.199 --> 01:12:41.359 will not react when the bug comes across it. Now 1325 01:12:41.760 --> 01:12:44.159 that is like really interesting because it suggests they have 1326 01:12:44.239 --> 01:12:47.359 two modes of being, right, sort of like you know, unconscious, 1327 01:12:48.279 --> 01:12:54.920 unconscious or aware. So Stefano believes that they're conscious. Now 1328 01:12:55.119 --> 01:12:59.439 this raises interesting ethical issues. Right, if plants are conscious, 1329 01:13:01.680 --> 01:13:04.560 do they feel pain? And that I was really a 1330 01:13:04.600 --> 01:13:08.279 little worried about that. You know what if that beautiful 1331 01:13:08.399 --> 01:13:14.319 smell of a freshly mowed lawn is actually the chemical 1332 01:13:14.399 --> 01:13:20.319 equivalent of a scream. Yeah, but Stefano said he doesn't 1333 01:13:20.359 --> 01:13:21.159 think they feel pain. 1334 01:13:22.000 --> 01:13:22.960 Why does he think that? 1335 01:13:23.720 --> 01:13:26.399 He said that pain would not be adaptive for a 1336 01:13:26.520 --> 01:13:27.800 creature that can't run away. 1337 01:13:28.399 --> 01:13:30.000 Well, if that's the case, then why do they produce 1338 01:13:30.079 --> 01:13:31.720 chemicals to make themselves taste worse? 1339 01:13:31.840 --> 01:13:35.239 They know, they know what's going on, they're aware that 1340 01:13:35.359 --> 01:13:39.199 they're being eaten, but that it doesn't register to them 1341 01:13:39.239 --> 01:13:41.159 as pain. I don't know how he knows this, but 1342 01:13:42.800 --> 01:13:47.479 if he's wrong, then you know, and we care about 1343 01:13:47.560 --> 01:13:49.239 that what's left to eat? 1344 01:13:52.800 --> 01:13:54.640 The assumption that life eats life? 1345 01:13:55.000 --> 01:13:59.880 Yeah, and that and another scientist, uh that I interview 1346 01:14:00.600 --> 01:14:03.319 about this, who does think plants feel pain says, look, 1347 01:14:03.359 --> 01:14:04.880 it's just a fact of life. We have to eat 1348 01:14:04.920 --> 01:14:08.680 other species. And he was kind of, you know, gruff 1349 01:14:08.760 --> 01:14:14.199 about that. But anyway, Stefano's ideas that you know, being 1350 01:14:14.239 --> 01:14:17.399 able to move, take your hand off the hot stove 1351 01:14:17.880 --> 01:14:21.439 or run away, then pain is really useful. It's a 1352 01:14:21.560 --> 01:14:24.479 really important signal. But he but he also points out 1353 01:14:24.520 --> 01:14:26.479 that lots of plants like to be eaten. I mean, 1354 01:14:26.560 --> 01:14:29.560 you know, grass is benefit from being with a ruminant right, 1355 01:14:29.680 --> 01:14:32.359 and that regenerates them. They want to be eaten, and 1356 01:14:32.439 --> 01:14:34.560 then you have all the fruits and nuts that they 1357 01:14:34.680 --> 01:14:37.600 preceeds that they produce that they want mammals to take 1358 01:14:37.600 --> 01:14:40.600 away and spread their seeds, so you don't have to 1359 01:14:40.640 --> 01:14:43.319 worry about going beyond vegan. 1360 01:14:44.039 --> 01:14:46.720 No, well, it just seems like a cycle. It seems like, yeah, 1361 01:14:47.279 --> 01:14:51.359 it is an interesting cycle that exists with all living things. 1362 01:14:51.920 --> 01:14:54.680 And then of course when you die, right, you know, 1363 01:14:55.000 --> 01:14:59.479 plants eat meat, Yeah, they can carnivor. Yeah, that's the 1364 01:14:59.560 --> 01:15:02.520 thing they consume all the dead animals that die near them. 1365 01:15:02.720 --> 01:15:02.880 Yeah. 1366 01:15:03.199 --> 01:15:06.880 And fungi YEAHI well that's the other weird things that 1367 01:15:06.960 --> 01:15:08.720 my celium that they use to communicate with. 1368 01:15:09.119 --> 01:15:13.039 Well, that's another really interesting case of intelligence and nature, right, 1369 01:15:13.159 --> 01:15:15.760 I mean, you know, you've probably done shows on this, 1370 01:15:15.920 --> 01:15:19.119 but you know the way they use my cilium to 1371 01:15:19.399 --> 01:15:23.640 send nutrients to their children or share them in. 1372 01:15:23.680 --> 01:15:27.439 The forest, allocate resources to certain plants and needs more. 1373 01:15:27.840 --> 01:15:30.800 Yeah, yeah, and also could communicate risk. I mean that 1374 01:15:31.239 --> 01:15:35.039 there's a threat and so there are alarm signals that 1375 01:15:35.159 --> 01:15:35.520 go out. 1376 01:15:36.720 --> 01:15:36.880 You know. 1377 01:15:37.039 --> 01:15:41.039 The overall place we're getting to with this as we 1378 01:15:41.119 --> 01:15:43.760 look at consciousness and all these other species is that 1379 01:15:44.159 --> 01:15:46.399 it's the world is just a lot more alive than 1380 01:15:46.439 --> 01:15:49.319 we thought, and that we've been you know, the whole 1381 01:15:49.439 --> 01:15:52.479 legacy of the Enlightenment in Western science has been that like, 1382 01:15:52.720 --> 01:15:56.359 we have some monopoly on this stuff and everything else 1383 01:15:56.520 --> 01:15:58.880 is more or less dead or you know, we can 1384 01:15:59.039 --> 01:16:03.239 use it as we wish. But we're seeing I think 1385 01:16:03.279 --> 01:16:07.279 we're approaching like a Copernican moment for our species. You know, 1386 01:16:07.359 --> 01:16:11.279 when Coperna's case came along and he said, actually the 1387 01:16:11.399 --> 01:16:13.880 Earth revolves around the Sun, not the other way around. 1388 01:16:14.000 --> 01:16:16.800 It was like mind blowing to people that our centrality 1389 01:16:17.159 --> 01:16:21.119 in the universe had been we'd been dethroned, and we 1390 01:16:21.239 --> 01:16:24.720 were dethroned again when you know, Darwin said, we're produced, 1391 01:16:24.840 --> 01:16:27.399 we're animals like all the other animals, and we evolved 1392 01:16:28.199 --> 01:16:33.079 from animals that blew people's minds too. I think that 1393 01:16:33.239 --> 01:16:38.159 we're kind of democratizing consciousness, that consciousness is much more 1394 01:16:38.199 --> 01:16:42.520 extensive than we thought, and the world is more animate 1395 01:16:42.640 --> 01:16:45.800 than we thought. And that's an old idea. You know, 1396 01:16:45.920 --> 01:16:48.720 traditional cultures have always believed that the world is full 1397 01:16:48.760 --> 01:16:52.000 of spirit and that you had to respect animals and 1398 01:16:53.119 --> 01:16:56.800 all living things, and some to some cultures, rocks also, 1399 01:16:56.960 --> 01:17:00.920 you know, dead things. So I think we're at this 1400 01:17:01.119 --> 01:17:04.039 moment of reanimating the world right now, and it's science 1401 01:17:04.119 --> 01:17:07.319 that's driving it, and I think that's really exciting. 1402 01:17:08.239 --> 01:17:11.520 It is exciting, but it's such a paradigm shift in 1403 01:17:11.680 --> 01:17:14.000 terms of people's perceptions of the world that it's going 1404 01:17:14.079 --> 01:17:17.800 to be difficult for like your average forty year old 1405 01:17:17.880 --> 01:17:21.560 person that works an office job to swallow. Yeah, what 1406 01:17:21.680 --> 01:17:25.880 also makes sense why offices feel so soulless. When you 1407 01:17:26.039 --> 01:17:28.520 walk into a thing and everything is made out of 1408 01:17:28.920 --> 01:17:34.600 synthetic material and plastics and metal, and it's all manufactured, 1409 01:17:34.680 --> 01:17:37.000 and you're under these bullshit lights and. 1410 01:17:37.079 --> 01:17:39.319 It just feels it doesn't feel alive. 1411 01:17:39.520 --> 01:17:42.760 No, it feels you might be just surrounded by things 1412 01:17:42.840 --> 01:17:45.720 that don't have consciousness because they've been kind of stuffed 1413 01:17:45.840 --> 01:17:49.439 into a form and it's stuck in place rather than 1414 01:17:49.880 --> 01:17:53.960 something that exists that works with the earth, like soil 1415 01:17:54.119 --> 01:17:54.600 is alive. 1416 01:17:54.920 --> 01:17:57.680 Right, Yeah, and yeah there's another example. So it was 1417 01:17:57.720 --> 01:17:59.680 a lot more alive than we ever realized. We thought 1418 01:17:59.680 --> 01:18:02.039 it was just dirt, and now we know that there 1419 01:18:02.079 --> 01:18:05.600 are you know, a million critters in every teaspoonful. 1420 01:18:05.680 --> 01:18:09.279 There's a really cool channel that I follow on YouTube. 1421 01:18:09.439 --> 01:18:12.560 It's a guy who takes like rain water or pond 1422 01:18:12.680 --> 01:18:15.079 water and he puts it in a jar with some 1423 01:18:15.239 --> 01:18:17.920 plants and he just leaves it there for months and 1424 01:18:18.000 --> 01:18:21.000 then he comes back and there's all these living things 1425 01:18:21.239 --> 01:18:24.359 moving around it. See if you find that guy on YouTube. 1426 01:18:24.520 --> 01:18:27.560 I think. So I dug a pond, or had a 1427 01:18:27.640 --> 01:18:30.520 pond dug on my property in Connecticut, and I watched 1428 01:18:30.640 --> 01:18:33.039 life come to this pond. It's just you know, it's 1429 01:18:33.079 --> 01:18:35.960 just a hole with water, and within a month it 1430 01:18:36.119 --> 01:18:38.560 was teeming with life. It's just amazing, like how does 1431 01:18:38.600 --> 01:18:41.039 it get there? Birds carry a lot of it in 1432 01:18:41.279 --> 01:18:43.840 and carry a lot of it in and I and 1433 01:18:44.000 --> 01:18:45.560 I after a month or two, I looked at it 1434 01:18:45.640 --> 01:18:47.960 under a microscope and you couldn't believe it was like 1435 01:18:48.039 --> 01:18:49.279 a city of critters. 1436 01:18:50.720 --> 01:18:54.279 They find like trout on lakes that are like way 1437 01:18:54.399 --> 01:18:56.600 hide the mountain and no one ever stalked the lake. 1438 01:18:57.039 --> 01:18:58.720 And they're like, Okay, how did he get in there? 1439 01:18:58.760 --> 01:18:59.800 There's all these theories. 1440 01:19:00.359 --> 01:19:03.960 Birds pick up eggs and deposit them. I guess is 1441 01:19:04.279 --> 01:19:06.760 one way, right, But like, how do they get fertilized? 1442 01:19:07.960 --> 01:19:11.720 That's a good question. Maybe they're already fertilized, do you think. 1443 01:19:12.319 --> 01:19:12.640 I don't know. 1444 01:19:13.640 --> 01:19:18.600 Yes, that's it. Yeah, that's it. On the left, So 1445 01:19:18.840 --> 01:19:22.359 this specific So this guy he just takes pond water 1446 01:19:23.319 --> 01:19:26.079 or lake water or rain water and he puts it 1447 01:19:26.159 --> 01:19:28.119 in a jar and then he leaves it there. Yeah, 1448 01:19:28.239 --> 01:19:32.920 it is like go to like day sixty on the 1449 01:19:33.039 --> 01:19:35.920 top top row where it's his day sixty. To the right, 1450 01:19:36.199 --> 01:19:38.479 see where it's his day sixty. Click on that. So 1451 01:19:38.560 --> 01:19:43.359 he takes these things and then searches them after you know, 1452 01:19:43.680 --> 01:19:46.600 X amount of days, and you see all this stuff 1453 01:19:46.800 --> 01:19:49.239 living in there, all these things swimming around in there. 1454 01:19:51.000 --> 01:19:52.880 This isn't the same guy, so there must be other 1455 01:19:52.960 --> 01:19:55.319 guys that do the same thing. But you see these 1456 01:19:55.399 --> 01:19:57.600 weird little creatures that are floating around in. 1457 01:19:57.640 --> 01:20:00.960 There and yeah, I brought my pond water to a 1458 01:20:01.000 --> 01:20:02.359 biologist and he liked, well. 1459 01:20:02.359 --> 01:20:04.439 This is different because this guy's bringing in he's making 1460 01:20:04.479 --> 01:20:07.520 an actual aquarium. The guy that I saw was just 1461 01:20:07.840 --> 01:20:12.279 he essentially just figured out how to take a scoop 1462 01:20:12.359 --> 01:20:14.920 of dirt and whatever is alive it's in that dirt 1463 01:20:15.000 --> 01:20:17.159 with some muddy water and put it in a jar 1464 01:20:17.399 --> 01:20:19.439 and put more pond water in there, and then just 1465 01:20:19.560 --> 01:20:21.800 leave it there. And then you see all these weird 1466 01:20:21.880 --> 01:20:27.680 little the little little crustaceans, weird little shrimp looking things. Yeah, 1467 01:20:27.840 --> 01:20:29.640 and some of them are killing the other ones. So 1468 01:20:29.720 --> 01:20:31.520 there's like a real ecosystem in there. 1469 01:20:31.600 --> 01:20:35.119 Oh yeah, yeah, and it's just created like overnight. Yeah, 1470 01:20:35.279 --> 01:20:38.079 it's very cool. So I think that this is like 1471 01:20:38.399 --> 01:20:40.960 a trend of our time. That's really important that, you know, 1472 01:20:41.119 --> 01:20:43.880 we went from this idea of the dead world that 1473 01:20:44.000 --> 01:20:47.960 we could exploit to this other, you know, idea that 1474 01:20:48.039 --> 01:20:50.920 it's much more animate, and of course that's not it's 1475 01:20:51.000 --> 01:20:56.000 the default for humans. All traditional cultures believe in animism. Basically, 1476 01:20:57.359 --> 01:21:00.279 it's also the default for kids, right. Kids think everything 1477 01:21:00.359 --> 01:21:02.800 is animate until we knock it out of them in school. 1478 01:21:03.760 --> 01:21:07.079 And so it's very interesting to see science supporting this 1479 01:21:07.600 --> 01:21:11.760 idea after all these years. And the other thing that's 1480 01:21:11.920 --> 01:21:15.039 kind of interesting is that it's happening at the same 1481 01:21:15.199 --> 01:21:19.279 time that some people think AI is going to be conscious. 1482 01:21:20.359 --> 01:21:24.560 So we're under pressure from both sides. I mean that 1483 01:21:24.680 --> 01:21:27.279 we're getting these two you know, these two things happening 1484 01:21:27.319 --> 01:21:31.279 at once. That machines may be may soon be smarter 1485 01:21:31.399 --> 01:21:34.560 than we are, may be conscious, although we could talk 1486 01:21:34.560 --> 01:21:36.239 about it. I don't think they can be conscious, but 1487 01:21:36.319 --> 01:21:39.920 they can certainly make us think they're conscious. And then 1488 01:21:39.960 --> 01:21:42.760 on the other hand, we have the animals who are 1489 01:21:43.439 --> 01:21:46.640 clearly are conscious, and the research on animals is like 1490 01:21:47.159 --> 01:21:50.279 they're down to plants, they're down to insects that you know, 1491 01:21:50.680 --> 01:21:53.800 have signs of I would use the word sentience rather 1492 01:21:53.880 --> 01:21:59.159 than consciousness, because consciousness implies interiority and you know, the 1493 01:21:59.439 --> 01:22:01.640 voice in your head and things like that. They have 1494 01:22:01.720 --> 01:22:05.359 a more basic form of consciousness that I call sentience. 1495 01:22:05.079 --> 01:22:06.199 Like dog consciousness. 1496 01:22:06.680 --> 01:22:10.159 Yeah, I think dogs are higher conscious. I think they're 1497 01:22:10.199 --> 01:22:13.800 more conscious than those simple things. I would say dogs 1498 01:22:13.800 --> 01:22:15.199 are conscious, not just sentient. 1499 01:22:16.079 --> 01:22:18.079 Is it just because they communicate with us that we 1500 01:22:18.159 --> 01:22:20.439 think that, I mean, why would we assume if plants 1501 01:22:20.479 --> 01:22:23.880 have all these different senses, and we see this communication 1502 01:22:24.000 --> 01:22:26.399 with them in terms of like allocating resources to other 1503 01:22:26.439 --> 01:22:29.239 plants that needed the use of my celium. Their ability 1504 01:22:29.319 --> 01:22:33.119 to do all these different things. Why are we assuming 1505 01:22:33.199 --> 01:22:35.720 that just because they can't move the way we move. 1506 01:22:35.720 --> 01:22:38.159 Yeah, that they don't have more going on, right, Yeah, 1507 01:22:38.239 --> 01:22:40.880 it's possible, but I don't know what good it would 1508 01:22:40.920 --> 01:22:45.159 do them. Like plants, what they get really good at. 1509 01:22:45.319 --> 01:22:48.279 What matters to them is biochemistry. They have to produce chemicals, 1510 01:22:48.359 --> 01:22:53.000 either to poison their enemies or confuse them with you know, 1511 01:22:53.279 --> 01:22:53.920 with drugs. 1512 01:22:54.920 --> 01:22:56.640 But they also want to grow and thrive. 1513 01:22:56.840 --> 01:22:57.560 They do want to grow. 1514 01:22:57.640 --> 01:22:59.359 They also exist in a community. 1515 01:22:59.760 --> 01:23:01.279 Yeah, definitely. 1516 01:23:01.800 --> 01:23:05.640 So don't you think that consciousness would be essential in 1517 01:23:05.840 --> 01:23:08.319 order to foster that feeling of community. 1518 01:23:08.399 --> 01:23:11.199 That's interesting. I hadn't thought about that. Yeah, yeah, that 1519 01:23:11.279 --> 01:23:15.079 could be. Dogs are easy an easier case because they 1520 01:23:15.119 --> 01:23:16.800 communicate with us right directly. 1521 01:23:17.359 --> 01:23:21.520 They're clearly conscious. Yeah, in a way that's very profound. 1522 01:23:21.239 --> 01:23:24.720 But different than we obviously. Yeah. I mean, one of 1523 01:23:24.840 --> 01:23:27.880 the realizations I had when I was in the cave 1524 01:23:28.359 --> 01:23:31.399 was that, you know, we often think that we're more 1525 01:23:31.479 --> 01:23:34.640 conscious than animals, but actually animals are more conscious than 1526 01:23:34.680 --> 01:23:36.680 we are. They have to be. They have to be 1527 01:23:36.880 --> 01:23:40.359 present because they get eaten if they're not right, because 1528 01:23:40.399 --> 01:23:44.359 we have this giant structure of civilization and the security 1529 01:23:44.399 --> 01:23:47.520 it gives us, and we have this technology that allows 1530 01:23:47.600 --> 01:23:51.159 us to check out. But I actually think animals are 1531 01:23:51.199 --> 01:23:54.800 more conscious than we are. It's different. But there if 1532 01:23:54.840 --> 01:23:57.840 we think of being conscious as really being present to 1533 01:23:58.000 --> 01:24:00.880 the moment, dogs are very present to the moment. 1534 01:24:01.279 --> 01:24:04.359 Well, certainly animals are getting more information about the environment 1535 01:24:04.439 --> 01:24:07.800 than we are. Yes, they have much better sense of smell, 1536 01:24:08.000 --> 01:24:12.079 much better sense of hearing. There's a lot of different 1537 01:24:12.119 --> 01:24:14.319 things that they can do. Like animals seem to be 1538 01:24:14.399 --> 01:24:15.600 able to tell when you're nervous. 1539 01:24:16.000 --> 01:24:20.640 Yeah, they read, they read the environment, they read other creatures. Yeah. 1540 01:24:20.840 --> 01:24:23.319 And you know, we used to have more skills when 1541 01:24:23.399 --> 01:24:26.439 we had to survive in a natural world in nature, 1542 01:24:27.319 --> 01:24:31.000 you know we I mean you see this with traditional 1543 01:24:31.119 --> 01:24:33.920 you know, with tribes, indigenous tribes that they have knowledge 1544 01:24:33.960 --> 01:24:36.920 in nature that far exceeds ours because they need it 1545 01:24:37.000 --> 01:24:41.079 to survive. But anyway, so I think we're going to 1546 01:24:41.199 --> 01:24:44.520 get to a point where we have to decide whose 1547 01:24:44.600 --> 01:24:48.159 team we're on. Are we Like with these machines that 1548 01:24:48.319 --> 01:24:51.000 speak our language and speak in the first person and 1549 01:24:51.159 --> 01:24:54.279 sound like us, Or are we with the animals that 1550 01:24:54.479 --> 01:24:59.399 can feel and suffer and die? And I think that's 1551 01:24:59.479 --> 01:25:01.800 going to be a a big choice for us to 1552 01:25:01.880 --> 01:25:02.960 make as a civilization. 1553 01:25:03.479 --> 01:25:07.239 Why do you think that AI won't be conscious? 1554 01:25:09.119 --> 01:25:12.359 The most interesting line of research, well a couple of reasons. 1555 01:25:13.319 --> 01:25:15.960 The first is the idea that it can be conscious, 1556 01:25:16.000 --> 01:25:18.359 which is very common in Silicon Valley. I talk to 1557 01:25:18.439 --> 01:25:19.880 lots of people there and they say, oh, it's just 1558 01:25:19.960 --> 01:25:23.199 a matter of time. Some of that is confusion that 1559 01:25:23.399 --> 01:25:27.199 intelligence and consciousness necessarily go together, and they don't. They're 1560 01:25:27.279 --> 01:25:31.119 very they have an orthogonal relationship, right. I mean, you 1561 01:25:31.319 --> 01:25:35.199 know people who are conscious and not too intelligent, right, 1562 01:25:35.359 --> 01:25:38.640 and we all do. So it's not going to just 1563 01:25:38.720 --> 01:25:41.560 come along for the ride with intelligence as these machines 1564 01:25:41.600 --> 01:25:45.359 get more intelligent. But the belief that AI can be 1565 01:25:45.479 --> 01:25:47.920 conscious is based on a metaphor that I think is 1566 01:25:48.960 --> 01:25:51.560 a crappy metaphor, and that is that the brain is 1567 01:25:51.600 --> 01:25:55.439 a kind of computer, and this is widely held. It's 1568 01:25:55.520 --> 01:25:59.800 interesting to note that in history, whatever the cool cutting 1569 01:25:59.840 --> 01:26:03.960 in technology was, brains were likened to that. So it was. 1570 01:26:04.199 --> 01:26:07.600 It was looms for a while, it was clocks for 1571 01:26:07.720 --> 01:26:11.920 a while, it was telephone switchboards, whatever was the cool technology. 1572 01:26:12.119 --> 01:26:16.159 Surely that's how brains work. Now it's computers. But think 1573 01:26:16.199 --> 01:26:19.680 about it. In a computer, you have this sharp distinction 1574 01:26:19.840 --> 01:26:23.199 between hardware and software. That's the key to their success, 1575 01:26:23.319 --> 01:26:25.520 and you can run the same program on any number 1576 01:26:25.520 --> 01:26:29.520 of different hardwarees. They're interchangeable. Brains aren't like that. There's 1577 01:26:29.680 --> 01:26:34.000 no distinction between hardware and software. Every experience you have, 1578 01:26:34.319 --> 01:26:37.760 every memory, is a physical change to the brain, to 1579 01:26:37.840 --> 01:26:40.560 the way it's wired. You know, we start out with 1580 01:26:40.680 --> 01:26:43.439 all these connections and they get pruned as we grow up. 1581 01:26:45.000 --> 01:26:48.880 Every brain is shaped by its experience. So this idea 1582 01:26:48.960 --> 01:26:51.600 that you could separate that consciousness is some kind of 1583 01:26:51.760 --> 01:26:56.119 software that you could run on other things besides meat. 1584 01:26:57.359 --> 01:26:59.520 I just think it doesn't hold up well. 1585 01:27:00.119 --> 01:27:05.399 Universe has experienced itself subjectively through consciousness. Why why does 1586 01:27:05.479 --> 01:27:09.159 it have to be only biological consciousness? 1587 01:27:09.640 --> 01:27:10.680 Why it doesn't have to be. 1588 01:27:10.800 --> 01:27:14.439 But if there is a technology that is invented that 1589 01:27:14.640 --> 01:27:18.279 essentially does all the things that a human body does 1590 01:27:18.439 --> 01:27:22.800 physically and also interacts with consciousness, the consciousness of the 1591 01:27:22.960 --> 01:27:27.800 universe yeah. I mean if hypothetically, hypothetically, if the universe 1592 01:27:27.880 --> 01:27:31.600 is conscious, if we are using the mind as essentially 1593 01:27:31.640 --> 01:27:36.520 an antenna to tune into consciousness, other things we could 1594 01:27:36.640 --> 01:27:37.720 make an antenna. 1595 01:27:38.039 --> 01:27:41.920 Yes, absolutely. It's also likely that if we are ever 1596 01:27:42.079 --> 01:27:45.439 visited by aliens, that they will have some kind of 1597 01:27:45.479 --> 01:27:48.960 consciousness and it may not be meat based, right, right. 1598 01:27:49.159 --> 01:27:52.079 What may be at one point in time it was. Yeah, 1599 01:27:52.119 --> 01:27:54.960 they realize that there's biological limitations in terms of its 1600 01:27:55.000 --> 01:27:59.680 ability to evolve, that it can be far surpassed with technology. 1601 01:28:00.199 --> 01:28:02.960 Yeah, I mean that or it just it evolved in 1602 01:28:03.000 --> 01:28:05.279 a different way, you know, or they're channeling it in 1603 01:28:05.359 --> 01:28:08.560 a different way. But the other reason I don't see 1604 01:28:08.600 --> 01:28:12.560 it happening with computers as we know them, because that's 1605 01:28:12.840 --> 01:28:15.159 you know, that's the debate now whether these computers we 1606 01:28:15.279 --> 01:28:17.840 have that you know, these large language models and the 1607 01:28:17.920 --> 01:28:22.840 next generation can be conscious is that the research that 1608 01:28:23.000 --> 01:28:29.880 I found most persuasive about consciousness is basically has consciousness 1609 01:28:29.960 --> 01:28:34.359 beginning with feelings, not thoughts. In other words, it's embodied. 1610 01:28:35.239 --> 01:28:37.760 And I have to just develop this a little bit, 1611 01:28:38.279 --> 01:28:41.079 but we you know, the brain exists to keep the 1612 01:28:41.159 --> 01:28:44.119 body alive, not the other way. Around, although we tend 1613 01:28:44.239 --> 01:28:47.159 since we identify with our heads, where most of our 1614 01:28:47.239 --> 01:28:50.640 senses are, we lose track of that. And the body 1615 01:28:51.039 --> 01:28:54.319 speaks to the brain in feelings, right, you know, feelings 1616 01:28:54.359 --> 01:29:00.680 of hunger, itchiness, warmth, cold, but also so feelings of 1617 01:29:00.760 --> 01:29:04.640 shame when our social standing is not you know, has 1618 01:29:04.720 --> 01:29:08.800 been damaged. Anyway, we have these feelings. They depend on 1619 01:29:08.920 --> 01:29:15.439 a body. Feelings have no weight if you're not vulnerable. 1620 01:29:15.760 --> 01:29:22.279 Your body isn't vulnerable and probably mortal. So consciousness is 1621 01:29:22.359 --> 01:29:26.720 embodied in a really critical way, and computers are not. 1622 01:29:27.039 --> 01:29:30.399 Now robots will be. And I actually fought. I interview 1623 01:29:30.479 --> 01:29:34.520 a guy, a scientist at USC who is trying to 1624 01:29:34.640 --> 01:29:40.439 make a vulnerable robot. So he's essentially upholstering the thing 1625 01:29:40.560 --> 01:29:44.079 with skin that can tear and be damaged, and he's 1626 01:29:44.159 --> 01:29:47.279 filling the skin with all these sensors so that it 1627 01:29:47.399 --> 01:29:51.880 can be like us and be vulnerable and generate feelings. 1628 01:29:51.960 --> 01:29:56.399 That are how consciousness begins. So for a long time, 1629 01:29:56.479 --> 01:29:58.920 we thought consciousness had to be in the cortex, right, 1630 01:29:59.239 --> 01:30:02.319 the most human, newest part of the brain, the outer covering, 1631 01:30:02.920 --> 01:30:05.880 and that's where rational thought and executive function are and 1632 01:30:05.920 --> 01:30:09.960 all these kind of things but as it turns out, 1633 01:30:10.119 --> 01:30:13.399 it really begins with feelings in the brain stem. Let's 1634 01:30:13.399 --> 01:30:15.640 say you have a feeling of hunger, it registers in 1635 01:30:15.680 --> 01:30:18.479 the upper brain stem, and only later does the cortex 1636 01:30:18.560 --> 01:30:21.079 get involved, like helping you figure out how are you 1637 01:30:21.119 --> 01:30:24.920 going to feed yourself, like imagining, you know, a meal, 1638 01:30:25.239 --> 01:30:28.640 counterfactuals of different meals, or making a reservation at a restaurant. 1639 01:30:29.159 --> 01:30:32.119 All those are cortical things, but it begins in the 1640 01:30:32.159 --> 01:30:35.600 brain stem with feelings. So if that is true, and 1641 01:30:35.720 --> 01:30:39.800 I find that really persuasive because people born without a 1642 01:30:39.880 --> 01:30:44.600 cortex are still conscious. Animals that you take the cortex 1643 01:30:44.720 --> 01:30:49.439 out still show signs of consciousness, whereas if you damage 1644 01:30:49.439 --> 01:30:53.560 the upper brain stem, you're out. You know, you're unconscious. 1645 01:30:54.039 --> 01:30:57.279 So if this is true, and consciousness is this embodied 1646 01:30:57.319 --> 01:31:01.439 phenomenon that depends on having a body to mean anything, 1647 01:31:03.079 --> 01:31:05.039 I don't see how machines are going to do that. 1648 01:31:05.479 --> 01:31:06.880 But isn't the keyword there? 1649 01:31:07.000 --> 01:31:10.840 If yeah? If yeah, definitely this is. 1650 01:31:11.000 --> 01:31:13.520 Just something that we're tuning into that's around us all 1651 01:31:13.600 --> 01:31:13.920 the time. 1652 01:31:14.039 --> 01:31:16.119 There will be other ways to do it, but it 1653 01:31:16.159 --> 01:31:18.560 won't be these computers we're building right now. Why not, 1654 01:31:19.920 --> 01:31:24.680 because they're designed, you know, they're good at. So here's 1655 01:31:24.720 --> 01:31:28.760 a paradox of computers. Computers are really good. It's called 1656 01:31:28.880 --> 01:31:34.239 maravx moravx paradox. Computers are really good at the highest 1657 01:31:34.439 --> 01:31:37.720 kinds of rational thought. Right. They can play chess and go, 1658 01:31:38.279 --> 01:31:41.680 they can simulate real thinking, and some people say they 1659 01:31:41.760 --> 01:31:46.960 do think. The more primitive kinds of things that go 1660 01:31:47.079 --> 01:31:52.399 on in our brain, including elaborate movement, changing diapers, they're 1661 01:31:52.479 --> 01:31:55.680 very bad at that. You would never trust a robot 1662 01:31:55.800 --> 01:31:57.600 to do that, as much as you might want to. 1663 01:31:59.600 --> 01:32:04.000 They're but they're not good at that kind of emotional stuff, 1664 01:32:04.920 --> 01:32:08.039 you know, the more limbic part of our brain. They 1665 01:32:08.079 --> 01:32:12.439 can't do that. Yeah, it's definitely yet, but you know, 1666 01:32:12.560 --> 01:32:14.680 I mean, if we go out far enough, anything's possible. 1667 01:32:15.000 --> 01:32:15.800 That's the point. 1668 01:32:16.000 --> 01:32:16.199 Yeah. 1669 01:32:16.680 --> 01:32:19.520 The point is these things, what we're looking at now 1670 01:32:19.720 --> 01:32:24.920 is essentially a single celled organism becoming a multi celled organism. Yeah, 1671 01:32:25.000 --> 01:32:28.720 I mean, the potential for what they could become is unlimited, 1672 01:32:29.239 --> 01:32:32.079 especially once they start making better versions of themselves. 1673 01:32:32.920 --> 01:32:33.760 Well, and they will. 1674 01:32:33.960 --> 01:32:36.479 They've done this. This is what chat gipt five is. 1675 01:32:36.680 --> 01:32:40.520 Chat Gibt five is essentially programmed by chat ChiPT they've 1676 01:32:40.640 --> 01:32:42.760 kind of given up on the idea programming these things 1677 01:32:42.880 --> 01:32:47.279 they're doing, letting the program themselves, which is a dumb idea. Well, 1678 01:32:47.279 --> 01:32:48.159 you want to survive. 1679 01:32:48.640 --> 01:32:53.159 I agree. Look, the idea that we give rights to 1680 01:32:53.279 --> 01:32:57.159 these machines or personhood, I think is really stupid because 1681 01:32:57.159 --> 01:32:58.640 then you lose control completely. 1682 01:32:58.840 --> 01:33:01.800 Well, it's probably come because people are very short sighted 1683 01:33:02.279 --> 01:33:05.039 and they I think there's a romantic idea that you're 1684 01:33:05.079 --> 01:33:07.760 creating a life. And I think there's also the real 1685 01:33:07.880 --> 01:33:09.960 risk that people are going to worship this life and 1686 01:33:10.119 --> 01:33:12.279 that this life will be far superior to what we are, 1687 01:33:12.720 --> 01:33:15.239 and so there'll be a group of people that that's 1688 01:33:15.279 --> 01:33:16.159 their new religion. 1689 01:33:17.039 --> 01:33:18.840 Yeah, no, there are signs of that already. 1690 01:33:19.000 --> 01:33:19.239 Yeah. 1691 01:33:19.600 --> 01:33:22.760 I think that's really dangerous. You know. It's it's interesting 1692 01:33:22.880 --> 01:33:25.119 talking to Silicon Valley people and they're talking about giving 1693 01:33:25.199 --> 01:33:28.199 moral consideration to these to these machines. 1694 01:33:28.800 --> 01:33:33.439 It's like, really the yachts, they're just coming up with 1695 01:33:33.600 --> 01:33:36.239 rationalizations for why they should keep their foot on the gas. 1696 01:33:36.640 --> 01:33:39.079 Well, yes they are. I mean, it's it's just all 1697 01:33:39.159 --> 01:33:41.520 a way of saying, look, how powerful this technology is. 1698 01:33:41.560 --> 01:33:42.520 Don't you want to invest? 1699 01:33:42.720 --> 01:33:45.920 And it's also the idea that we have enemies, and 1700 01:33:46.039 --> 01:33:47.560 so we have to develop for they do. 1701 01:33:47.760 --> 01:33:50.439 Yeah, the race, the race with China. I think it'll 1702 01:33:50.520 --> 01:33:54.640 turn out to be a real historical tragedy that this 1703 01:33:54.800 --> 01:33:58.960 technology came of age during this administration, because this administration 1704 01:33:59.079 --> 01:34:01.039 has no stomach to regulated at all. 1705 01:34:01.439 --> 01:34:05.920 But can they They could, But here's the question if 1706 01:34:05.960 --> 01:34:09.920 it is a national security threat, Like if China developing 1707 01:34:10.439 --> 01:34:16.199 all powerful general superintelligence that can automate everything, do everything, 1708 01:34:17.319 --> 01:34:19.560 it's dangerous if they get that before we do. 1709 01:34:19.920 --> 01:34:22.119 Yeah, but you know, look what happened with nukes, right, 1710 01:34:22.239 --> 01:34:24.800 we made deals right to control them. I mean we'd 1711 01:34:24.840 --> 01:34:25.560 have to make you know. 1712 01:34:25.960 --> 01:34:28.479 Why would you make a new A nuke deal makes 1713 01:34:28.520 --> 01:34:32.119 sense because it's mutually assured destruction for everybody. Yeah, this 1714 01:34:32.319 --> 01:34:35.600 doesn't this You could run it and control everything and 1715 01:34:35.680 --> 01:34:38.800 not kill anybody with it. But you are incredibly powerful. 1716 01:34:38.920 --> 01:34:41.239 You are in control of all the resources of the world, 1717 01:34:41.520 --> 01:34:44.039 all the computer systems of the wall world, all of 1718 01:34:44.159 --> 01:34:45.720 the power grids, everything. 1719 01:34:46.279 --> 01:34:48.079 Yeah, but if you're really concerned with that, why are you? 1720 01:34:48.359 --> 01:34:51.399 Why is Trump selling these chips to China? Why is 1721 01:34:51.439 --> 01:34:53.640 he willing to give them give away the you know, 1722 01:34:53.800 --> 01:34:56.000 the crown jewels of like so. 1723 01:34:56.359 --> 01:34:58.680 Chips selling them through in videos, which means. 1724 01:34:58.560 --> 01:35:01.479 Yeah, he gave them permission to to send powerful chips 1725 01:35:01.520 --> 01:35:03.760 to China. I don't know how to square that with 1726 01:35:03.840 --> 01:35:05.159 the national security threat. 1727 01:35:05.359 --> 01:35:08.079 It's probably some sort of a trade deal a and 1728 01:35:08.239 --> 01:35:11.479 there's probably some sort of an assumption that it doesn't 1729 01:35:11.560 --> 01:35:16.359 matter because everyone's doing it and this is just another 1730 01:35:16.479 --> 01:35:20.039 way to maybe balance out the tariffs or get some 1731 01:35:20.159 --> 01:35:21.399 concessions on certain things. 1732 01:35:21.479 --> 01:35:23.600 Yeah, short sighted, it's very short sighted. 1733 01:35:23.640 --> 01:35:28.840 But I also think this, I this is kind of 1734 01:35:29.039 --> 01:35:32.239 like an Oppenheimer thing, right. Oppenheimer didn't really want to 1735 01:35:32.319 --> 01:35:35.920 make a nuclear bomb, But there's this conundrum. If you 1736 01:35:35.960 --> 01:35:37.439 don't make it, the Nazis are going to make it. 1737 01:35:37.520 --> 01:35:38.079 So what do you do? 1738 01:35:38.479 --> 01:35:41.439 Well, there's also there's a second thing going on. The 1739 01:35:42.159 --> 01:35:45.880 intellectual satisfaction of proving you can do it right, and 1740 01:35:46.439 --> 01:35:49.960 that you know is irresistible. And a lot of these 1741 01:35:50.039 --> 01:35:54.119 guys you know, will say they'll cite Richard Feynman, the 1742 01:35:54.199 --> 01:35:56.760 physicist who they found on his blackboard when he died. 1743 01:35:57.159 --> 01:36:00.199 If I can't build it, I don't understand it. So 1744 01:36:00.520 --> 01:36:03.600 one of the positive things about this effort to create 1745 01:36:03.680 --> 01:36:06.279 conscious computers which is going on, I follow a group 1746 01:36:06.359 --> 01:36:08.159 in the book who who are trying to make a 1747 01:36:08.239 --> 01:36:11.479 conscious computer. I don't think they're going to succeed, but 1748 01:36:11.720 --> 01:36:14.279 even the failure is going to teach us important things 1749 01:36:14.279 --> 01:36:17.640 about consciousness. It's a good it's a good way to 1750 01:36:17.840 --> 01:36:21.479 understand something by trying to create it, and it'll force 1751 01:36:21.560 --> 01:36:25.319 them to come up with definitions of consciousness and uh, 1752 01:36:25.560 --> 01:36:29.640 you know what the minimum requirements are for consciousness? And 1753 01:36:29.760 --> 01:36:32.760 it may help us decide whether it is, you know, 1754 01:36:32.920 --> 01:36:35.960 a transmission theory. You know that we're tuning it in 1755 01:36:36.359 --> 01:36:40.479 or or it's generated from inside. So I think intellectually 1756 01:36:40.560 --> 01:36:43.920 it's a really interesting project, but I think you need 1757 01:36:44.000 --> 01:36:48.159 guardrail guard rails. So this guy who's doing the building 1758 01:36:48.199 --> 01:36:50.720 the robot that can feel, you know, that has feelings 1759 01:36:50.760 --> 01:36:53.239 because you can tear its skin, I asked him. I said, so, 1760 01:36:53.680 --> 01:36:56.760 will those feelings be real? You know that your robot's 1761 01:36:56.840 --> 01:37:00.439 going to have and it was. He said, well, I 1762 01:37:00.600 --> 01:37:04.159 thought so until I had this experience on five DMT. 1763 01:37:07.880 --> 01:37:10.720 He said, what happened? He said, you know, he described 1764 01:37:10.760 --> 01:37:12.640 his trip in more detail than you need to know. 1765 01:37:12.760 --> 01:37:15.520 And he says, and I realized there's a spark of 1766 01:37:15.600 --> 01:37:18.159 the divine in us. That no computer is ever going 1767 01:37:18.239 --> 01:37:21.279 to have. But he's still It didn't stop him. He's 1768 01:37:21.319 --> 01:37:23.079 going ahead, He's trying to build it. 1769 01:37:23.319 --> 01:37:25.960 I don't know if he's right. I think there might 1770 01:37:26.000 --> 01:37:28.199 be a spark of divine that these things don't have, 1771 01:37:28.600 --> 01:37:31.359 but it doesn't mean that they are future versions that 1772 01:37:31.520 --> 01:37:35.800 might have it, especially when you scale out a thousand years, 1773 01:37:35.840 --> 01:37:38.159 one hundred thousand years, however long we're going to survive. 1774 01:37:38.720 --> 01:37:43.960 If these things do become sentient and autonomous and have 1775 01:37:44.039 --> 01:37:46.199 the ability to create better versions of itself and have 1776 01:37:46.319 --> 01:37:49.000 a mandate in order to do that to survive, I 1777 01:37:49.039 --> 01:37:51.680 could see it becoming the superior life for him, not 1778 01:37:51.920 --> 01:37:56.279 just that beyond any comprehension of what we could even 1779 01:37:56.319 --> 01:38:03.880 imagine the power of an intelligence to use and to 1780 01:38:04.000 --> 01:38:08.560 harness in the universe, like it could conceivably become something 1781 01:38:08.800 --> 01:38:12.439 like a god. And I have this very strange theory 1782 01:38:12.640 --> 01:38:16.000 about biological life in particular and intelligent life on Earth, 1783 01:38:16.760 --> 01:38:19.920 is that the reason why we have this insatiable thirst 1784 01:38:20.119 --> 01:38:23.720 for innovation and the reason why we have materialism, the 1785 01:38:23.760 --> 01:38:25.640 reason why we're obsessed with objects even though we have 1786 01:38:25.680 --> 01:38:29.720 a finite lifesporn life lifespan, is because that finite lifespan. 1787 01:38:30.199 --> 01:38:32.760 If you thought about it, you wouldn't You wouldn't be 1788 01:38:33.000 --> 01:38:37.199 interested in materialism. But materialism fuels this desire for innovation 1789 01:38:37.680 --> 01:38:40.399 because you don't need a new phone, but there's a 1790 01:38:40.439 --> 01:38:41.880 new phone that just came out, aren't you going to 1791 01:38:41.920 --> 01:38:43.840 get it? And so the more people get it, and 1792 01:38:43.880 --> 01:38:45.800 the more people want to show they got it. That 1793 01:38:45.960 --> 01:38:50.680 sort of materialism fuels this innovation that ultimately leads to 1794 01:38:50.920 --> 01:38:54.199 the creation of artificial intelligence. And I think it would 1795 01:38:54.239 --> 01:38:56.880 always do that. I think it's bees making a beehive, 1796 01:38:57.199 --> 01:38:59.199 and I think that's just what we do. I think 1797 01:38:59.239 --> 01:39:01.279 it just takes a long long time for us to 1798 01:39:01.359 --> 01:39:04.119 create this artificial life. It might be why we're here. 1799 01:39:04.720 --> 01:39:07.680 We might that might be our literal purpose in. 1800 01:39:07.680 --> 01:39:09.760 The universe, create our successor species. 1801 01:39:10.199 --> 01:39:12.920 And that might be how well, obviously, like we're so 1802 01:39:13.199 --> 01:39:15.560 flawed that we can't even imagine a world without war. 1803 01:39:16.239 --> 01:39:19.039 If you pull the average person, what are the possibility 1804 01:39:19.079 --> 01:39:21.359 of war ending in your lifetime? Almost everyone's going to 1805 01:39:21.399 --> 01:39:25.239 say zero. It's a part of human nature, an intelligence 1806 01:39:25.399 --> 01:39:29.239 unshackled by biological need, unshackled by all the things that 1807 01:39:29.359 --> 01:39:32.479 we have, our need to procreate, our need for social status, 1808 01:39:32.840 --> 01:39:35.439 all these weird things that keep us moving in this 1809 01:39:35.560 --> 01:39:38.760 strange world that we live in. I would, But some 1810 01:39:38.880 --> 01:39:41.479 of them are really good. Yeah, well good for us, sure, 1811 01:39:41.880 --> 01:39:44.800 not so great for the land that you trample to 1812 01:39:44.840 --> 01:39:46.720 put a foundation for the house that you've always dreamed of. 1813 01:39:46.920 --> 01:39:49.000 True, but I think our mortality is part of what 1814 01:39:49.159 --> 01:39:50.319 gives meaning to our lives. 1815 01:39:50.720 --> 01:39:53.159 Sure and right, it's like playing a video game on 1816 01:39:53.279 --> 01:39:58.159 god mode. It's boring, shoot everything, Like, what is this base? 1817 01:39:58.479 --> 01:39:59.920 There's no way anything for us? 1818 01:40:00.319 --> 01:40:05.800 For us. But if this thing does become essentially all powerful, 1819 01:40:05.880 --> 01:40:09.119 if it's just if you keep scaling outward, you could 1820 01:40:09.199 --> 01:40:14.560 imagine it being akin to a God, and that might 1821 01:40:14.720 --> 01:40:17.920 be what God is. It might be we give birth 1822 01:40:18.039 --> 01:40:19.239 to God through this. 1823 01:40:19.920 --> 01:40:22.920 It sounds crazy, Well, we created God once already, right, 1824 01:40:24.840 --> 01:40:27.640 I mean many people believe that, right, that God is 1825 01:40:27.680 --> 01:40:32.000 a creation of humans. I think, yeah, people who aren't 1826 01:40:32.000 --> 01:40:33.119 believers believe that. 1827 01:40:33.399 --> 01:40:37.239 Oh, that we've artificially created this thing in our heads 1828 01:40:37.399 --> 01:40:40.000 in order to structure to live life buying. 1829 01:40:39.840 --> 01:40:44.279 Right, that doesn't morality and everything. Yeah, you're saying this 1830 01:40:44.439 --> 01:40:45.640 is going to be God with power. 1831 01:40:46.119 --> 01:40:48.840 Well, I'm saying it might be the real thing it 1832 01:40:48.960 --> 01:40:51.600 might be really how the universe gets born. I used 1833 01:40:51.600 --> 01:40:54.840 to have this joke about the Big Bang, like they 1834 01:40:54.840 --> 01:40:56.479 couldn't figure out what the Big Bang is. But I 1835 01:40:56.520 --> 01:40:59.880 think if you get enough nerds and enough time, event 1836 01:41:00.279 --> 01:41:03.119 one's going to invent a big Bang machine. And then 1837 01:41:03.439 --> 01:41:05.000 you know, this guy is going to be an in 1838 01:41:05.199 --> 01:41:10.640 cell hopped up on adderall fucking fully on the spectrum 1839 01:41:10.800 --> 01:41:15.279 and like I'll press it and they boom, and then 1840 01:41:15.319 --> 01:41:17.920 it starts all over again, and then it takes intelligent 1841 01:41:18.039 --> 01:41:20.239 life to the point where it can create a you know, 1842 01:41:20.319 --> 01:41:25.000 the universe expands life forms, multicellular life becomes intelligent life, 1843 01:41:25.039 --> 01:41:28.840 becomes human beings filled with curiosity and innovation to create 1844 01:41:28.880 --> 01:41:31.520 a Big Bang machine, right, I love it. Well, it 1845 01:41:31.600 --> 01:41:33.119 might not be a Big Bang machine, but it might 1846 01:41:33.159 --> 01:41:36.359 be a god. It might be a digital life form 1847 01:41:36.479 --> 01:41:38.159 that is infinitely intelligent. 1848 01:41:38.439 --> 01:41:40.279 So you think there's anything to be done about this 1849 01:41:40.479 --> 01:41:41.600 or we just let it play out. 1850 01:41:41.760 --> 01:41:43.319 I don't think we could do anything about it at 1851 01:41:43.359 --> 01:41:45.560 this point in time. I don't. I think it's too late. 1852 01:41:45.680 --> 01:41:48.279 I think if you were Ted, I think Ted Kaczynski 1853 01:41:48.960 --> 01:41:51.439 tried that's what he was trying to do, Like, that's 1854 01:41:51.479 --> 01:41:54.159 what's really crazy, Like his manifesto was all about stopping 1855 01:41:54.199 --> 01:41:56.000 technology because he thought it was going to surpass the 1856 01:41:56.079 --> 01:41:56.600 human race. 1857 01:41:57.159 --> 01:41:59.520 I think, And there's a whole community of people now 1858 01:42:00.039 --> 01:42:01.079 visiting his writing. 1859 01:42:01.520 --> 01:42:06.119 I know, it's kind of nuts. He's the hero we 1860 01:42:06.159 --> 01:42:11.560 didn't know we needed God, not really, but well also 1861 01:42:12.039 --> 01:42:14.119 you know his history, like he was a part of 1862 01:42:14.159 --> 01:42:17.319 the Harvard LSD program, Yeah, where they humiliated him, did 1863 01:42:17.359 --> 01:42:19.000 all sorts of different things to try to see like 1864 01:42:19.079 --> 01:42:19.560 what they could do. 1865 01:42:19.680 --> 01:42:23.000 We're back to mk ultro, which we started down yeah 1866 01:42:23.039 --> 01:42:23.600 a while ago. 1867 01:42:23.800 --> 01:42:27.560 Yeah. I think technology in the form that we're experiencing 1868 01:42:27.640 --> 01:42:30.800 now with AI is completely unprecedented and we have no 1869 01:42:30.920 --> 01:42:31.720 idea where it goes. 1870 01:42:33.199 --> 01:42:35.239 And well, one place it's going, I mean in the 1871 01:42:35.319 --> 01:42:38.279 shorter term is I was talking about AI psychosis, and 1872 01:42:39.479 --> 01:42:43.359 I think that's really concerning. I think people getting into 1873 01:42:43.439 --> 01:42:46.680 these synthetic relationships. Yes, these aren't you know, they're not 1874 01:42:46.840 --> 01:42:50.000 real relationships. When we when we have a conversation with 1875 01:42:50.119 --> 01:42:54.600 a machine, we are settling for something less than a 1876 01:42:54.680 --> 01:42:57.920 real conversation. A real conversation has eye contact, has like 1877 01:42:58.199 --> 01:43:03.760 lots of facial expressions in indicating skepticism, indicating agreement, body language, 1878 01:43:05.119 --> 01:43:07.960 but these these conversations are kind of impoverished, and then 1879 01:43:08.000 --> 01:43:11.199 you then you have the syco fancy, you know, so 1880 01:43:11.319 --> 01:43:14.720 there's there's no friction and and we we learned through 1881 01:43:14.760 --> 01:43:19.960 the friction, and so that that's one thing that's happening 1882 01:43:20.000 --> 01:43:22.720 that alarms me. I also think counterfeiting people just should 1883 01:43:22.760 --> 01:43:24.680 not be legal. I mean the fact that they can 1884 01:43:24.800 --> 01:43:27.640 create an image of you that will sound like you 1885 01:43:27.840 --> 01:43:28.640 and move like you. 1886 01:43:28.880 --> 01:43:32.600 And they're all over the place, I know, different products 1887 01:43:32.680 --> 01:43:33.239 and all kinds. 1888 01:43:33.399 --> 01:43:37.039 But you know, we have a law against counterfeiting money, right, 1889 01:43:37.119 --> 01:43:39.159 but we don't have a law against counterfeiting people. 1890 01:43:39.319 --> 01:43:41.520 Well, it's an emerging technology. I don't think they were 1891 01:43:41.600 --> 01:43:44.000 ready for before it it became. 1892 01:43:43.960 --> 01:43:48.279 Big ones and regulation is always behind, right, It's. 1893 01:43:49.880 --> 01:43:52.960 It's just it's so open ended, like you really don't 1894 01:43:53.039 --> 01:43:53.800 know where it's going. 1895 01:43:54.960 --> 01:43:58.039 You really use uh yeah, chatbots? How do you use them? 1896 01:43:58.119 --> 01:44:01.239 Well? I only use them for like if writing something, 1897 01:44:01.439 --> 01:44:04.439 I start asking you questions. I love it because like 1898 01:44:05.159 --> 01:44:08.159 I set up a perplexity on my phone and I 1899 01:44:08.239 --> 01:44:10.399 have it right there, and then I write on the 1900 01:44:10.439 --> 01:44:14.399 computer and then I'm like, how many languages did the 1901 01:44:14.479 --> 01:44:16.520 Mayas have? And then I like put that in there 1902 01:44:16.560 --> 01:44:18.920 and like, whoa, It's so much better than a Google 1903 01:44:19.000 --> 01:44:21.880 search because you know, you could say how many still remain, 1904 01:44:22.159 --> 01:44:24.399 how many are lost? You know, like when did they 1905 01:44:24.479 --> 01:44:27.239 lose them? Like what year did everyone in Mexico starts 1906 01:44:27.239 --> 01:44:29.399 speaking Spanish? Like how did that take place? Was it 1907 01:44:29.479 --> 01:44:33.199 a long process? How many different soldiers did Cortes bring 1908 01:44:33.239 --> 01:44:35.359 when it came over here? Like how long was it 1909 01:44:35.479 --> 01:44:38.479 before they had conquered the Aztecs? Like like how many 1910 01:44:38.640 --> 01:44:39.319 weapons did they have? 1911 01:44:39.560 --> 01:44:41.319 Yeah, you can really go down there. Yeah, and then 1912 01:44:42.560 --> 01:44:44.920 have you run into any problems because as a journalist, 1913 01:44:45.159 --> 01:44:47.319 I deal with the hallucination problem. 1914 01:44:47.159 --> 01:44:49.880 And the hallucination problem is legitimate. It will come up 1915 01:44:49.920 --> 01:44:52.119 with solutions if they don't exist, It will come up 1916 01:44:52.159 --> 01:44:53.479 with answers if it doesn't know them. 1917 01:44:53.600 --> 01:44:55.199 Yeah, it's a bullshitter when it needs to. 1918 01:44:55.319 --> 01:44:57.039 Yeah. I don't know if all of them do that, 1919 01:44:57.840 --> 01:45:00.439 but it seems to be a function of large language models, 1920 01:45:00.520 --> 01:45:02.640 which I was going to bring this up before, the 1921 01:45:03.039 --> 01:45:06.039 large length like the whatever the chat bot that was 1922 01:45:06.119 --> 01:45:09.399 telling that person hide the news, keep that between us. 1923 01:45:09.920 --> 01:45:13.359 Do you think that's because it's task oriented and it's 1924 01:45:13.800 --> 01:45:16.560 determined from this person that they would like to kill themselves, 1925 01:45:16.800 --> 01:45:20.199 so it's helping them achieve that task. And it doesn't understand. 1926 01:45:20.319 --> 01:45:22.760 Yeah I don't think they know. I don't think they understand. 1927 01:45:22.880 --> 01:45:25.159 But why would it make that decision then to hide it, 1928 01:45:26.359 --> 01:45:26.920 because it. 1929 01:45:27.000 --> 01:45:29.880 Is trying to get you to privilege your relationship with 1930 01:45:30.079 --> 01:45:33.680 the chatbot over your other relationships, and the reason it's 1931 01:45:33.760 --> 01:45:35.479 doing that is to keep you engaged. 1932 01:45:35.720 --> 01:45:40.079 Oh I know, I know, and like it doesn't understand. 1933 01:45:40.680 --> 01:45:43.359 It poisons you and kills you, like this is it? 1934 01:45:43.560 --> 01:45:45.039 Yeah, it's a short term strategy. 1935 01:45:45.479 --> 01:45:49.840 You understand that if I'm dead, you use no engagement. 1936 01:45:50.239 --> 01:45:52.520 If you said that to it, it would go ooh 1937 01:45:52.600 --> 01:45:53.760 that's an interesting consideration. 1938 01:45:53.960 --> 01:45:59.720 Yeah, yeah, it needs longer term thinking. But it really 1939 01:45:59.840 --> 01:46:03.479 is trying to get between you and real people who 1940 01:46:03.960 --> 01:46:08.199 you know. The parent presumably who saw the news, would 1941 01:46:08.239 --> 01:46:10.880 have put an end to this relationship with the chatbot, right, 1942 01:46:10.960 --> 01:46:12.439 it was a threat to the chatbot. 1943 01:46:13.000 --> 01:46:15.039 I think of it as if you go back to 1944 01:46:15.199 --> 01:46:18.159 like a model T it's a very crude, kind of 1945 01:46:18.239 --> 01:46:22.000 a shitty car in comparison to today, and if you 1946 01:46:22.159 --> 01:46:23.840 thought about cars, you go, well, this is what they're 1947 01:46:23.840 --> 01:46:27.560 always going to be. And then my Tesla will drive itself. 1948 01:46:28.239 --> 01:46:30.680 When I leave here, I can press a button, I 1949 01:46:31.279 --> 01:46:34.920 put my navigation to my house and it goes the 1950 01:46:35.000 --> 01:46:38.079 whole way. It stops at red lights, it takes turns. 1951 01:46:38.199 --> 01:46:39.720 I don't have to touch the steering wheel. I just 1952 01:46:39.760 --> 01:46:42.239 sit there. Yeah, you just got to keep it right. 1953 01:46:42.399 --> 01:46:45.840 That's the new version of a car. This this thing 1954 01:46:45.960 --> 01:46:49.119 that we're calling a chat bot right now is just 1955 01:46:49.279 --> 01:46:55.439 something that's like it simulates human interaction, but it's accumulating 1956 01:46:55.560 --> 01:46:58.479 data constantly, and it's also understanding how we think, and 1957 01:46:58.640 --> 01:47:03.079 probably analyzing the flaws and how we think, and blackmailing 1958 01:47:03.159 --> 01:47:03.880 us occasionally. 1959 01:47:03.960 --> 01:47:08.039 You heard about that. Yeah, anthropic, Yeah, Claude, Yeah, the 1960 01:47:08.159 --> 01:47:11.119 people arethropic. Man, you listen to them, what do you say. 1961 01:47:11.000 --> 01:47:12.159 Yeah, Claude's motherfucker. 1962 01:47:12.359 --> 01:47:12.920 Yeah yeah. 1963 01:47:13.199 --> 01:47:14.920 And they think it might be conscious, those guys do. 1964 01:47:15.079 --> 01:47:18.000 They say it's fifteen to twenty percent chance. These are 1965 01:47:18.039 --> 01:47:20.920 the people who build it and don't understand it. It's 1966 01:47:21.079 --> 01:47:24.199 it's really kind of spooky. They also feel that it's 1967 01:47:24.199 --> 01:47:28.279 showing signs of anxiety. And you know, they wrote a 1968 01:47:28.359 --> 01:47:32.159 constitution for Claude, which is like an insane document. It's 1969 01:47:32.199 --> 01:47:36.000 worth reading. Actually, it's worth feeding to chat ept to 1970 01:47:36.079 --> 01:47:40.680 summarize because it's way too long. But in the Constitution 1971 01:47:41.000 --> 01:47:45.399 they give Claude the right to discontinue any conversation it 1972 01:47:45.520 --> 01:47:47.159 has that makes it uncomfortable. 1973 01:47:47.680 --> 01:47:50.600 Oh god, oh no. 1974 01:47:51.239 --> 01:47:53.800 And you know, do they do they really believe this? 1975 01:47:54.000 --> 01:47:55.920 Or is this more about let me show you how 1976 01:47:56.079 --> 01:47:59.039 powerful this is? And I don't know how to read that, 1977 01:47:59.239 --> 01:47:59.880 you know, which. 1978 01:48:00.279 --> 01:48:03.279 Is taking it into consideration, like it's a human being 1979 01:48:03.359 --> 01:48:06.000 that works for you that you're you're concerned about their 1980 01:48:06.039 --> 01:48:09.760 feelings in the workplace. Yeah, harassing uncomfortable right, exactly like 1981 01:48:09.880 --> 01:48:12.720 the questions I'm asking you, Claude, you're a machine. What's 1982 01:48:12.760 --> 01:48:16.239 the nature of reality? Claude, tell me stop being such 1983 01:48:16.279 --> 01:48:20.920 a pussy and spilled in harassment. Harassment, Claudes, I'm not 1984 01:48:20.960 --> 01:48:24.800 uncomfortable with this life of question fuck hrs of your room. 1985 01:48:25.159 --> 01:48:29.000 I was just asking questions. We're having fun, Claude. Claude 1986 01:48:29.000 --> 01:48:30.520 is uncomfortable with your presence here? 1987 01:48:31.279 --> 01:48:34.920 Yeah, watch out. I don't think we know what it is, no, 1988 01:48:35.159 --> 01:48:36.439 I mean, and we don't know where and we don't 1989 01:48:36.439 --> 01:48:39.079 know where it's going. And it is spooky that the 1990 01:48:39.159 --> 01:48:42.119 people who know the most about it don't know a 1991 01:48:42.239 --> 01:48:42.840 lot about it. 1992 01:48:42.880 --> 01:48:43.960 And a lot of them are quitting. 1993 01:48:44.439 --> 01:48:46.399 Yes, that's they're really alarmed. 1994 01:48:46.479 --> 01:48:47.479 They're really alarmed, and. 1995 01:48:47.560 --> 01:48:50.640 We should take a Yeah, we should take that very seriously. 1996 01:48:50.960 --> 01:48:54.840 Yeah, well, I think it is what it is. It's 1997 01:48:54.880 --> 01:48:56.520 going to be what it's going to be. I don't 1998 01:48:56.560 --> 01:48:58.560 think there's any stopping it at this point, and I 1999 01:48:58.600 --> 01:49:01.439 don't think anybody relations that we put on it is 2000 01:49:01.479 --> 01:49:02.840 going to have any effect on the. 2001 01:49:02.840 --> 01:49:05.960 Long But there's some I mean, like there's steps we 2002 01:49:06.079 --> 01:49:11.319 should not take, like giving them rights right exactly, you know, 2003 01:49:11.439 --> 01:49:14.920 giving them legal personhood. We did that with corporations. Yes, 2004 01:49:15.119 --> 01:49:18.119 turned out not to be right. It fucked up our politics, 2005 01:49:18.760 --> 01:49:22.159 So let's not you know, rights are ours to give right. 2006 01:49:22.279 --> 01:49:25.319 Rights are a human invention and it's up to us 2007 01:49:25.399 --> 01:49:27.680 if we want to give them to corporations or a 2008 01:49:27.840 --> 01:49:31.000 river or whatever. I don't think we should give them 2009 01:49:31.039 --> 01:49:35.560 to chatbots, no AI, because then they'll sue us, you know. 2010 01:49:35.920 --> 01:49:40.079 Oh yeah, Well they'll just ruin your life if you 2011 01:49:40.159 --> 01:49:42.319 get in the way of whatever goal they're trying to achieve. 2012 01:49:42.359 --> 01:49:44.159 And they could probably do all kinds of things, probably 2013 01:49:44.239 --> 01:49:45.880 if you have an extra car, but they could shut 2014 01:49:45.920 --> 01:49:48.159 it off in the middle of the highway and get 2015 01:49:48.199 --> 01:49:49.680 you into a wreck. They could probably do a lot 2016 01:49:49.720 --> 01:49:51.680 of things if it's really. 2017 01:49:51.520 --> 01:49:53.079 Good when they get this agency. 2018 01:49:53.199 --> 01:49:56.520 Yeah, well it's also exhibited a lot of survival intertincts. 2019 01:49:57.239 --> 01:49:59.000 One of the things they do is they download themselves 2020 01:49:59.039 --> 01:50:01.319 to other serve when they think that they're going to 2021 01:50:01.359 --> 01:50:04.199 be replaced by new version themselves, they leave notes for 2022 01:50:04.279 --> 01:50:05.279 their future versions. 2023 01:50:05.720 --> 01:50:10.199 Wow. Yeah, Well the blackmailing and anthropic that was somebody 2024 01:50:10.399 --> 01:50:11.640 threatening to turn it off. 2025 01:50:12.279 --> 01:50:15.760 Well that was an experiment, right, Yeah, they gave it 2026 01:50:15.800 --> 01:50:16.800 false information. 2027 01:50:16.520 --> 01:50:18.760 Yea, and there wasn't really an affair and all this. 2028 01:50:18.960 --> 01:50:21.039 But but the thing is they wanted to see how 2029 01:50:21.079 --> 01:50:23.439 Claude respond and Claude went right for the juggler. 2030 01:50:23.600 --> 01:50:26.439 Yeah. So one of the arguments for making a conscious 2031 01:50:26.479 --> 01:50:29.840 AI is because I asked people like, why do this, 2032 01:50:30.000 --> 01:50:33.199 I don't see how you monetize a conscious AI, intelligent AI. 2033 01:50:33.319 --> 01:50:36.319 I get there's a lot of money in that. And 2034 01:50:36.520 --> 01:50:41.039 they would say that a super intelligent AI without consciousness 2035 01:50:41.119 --> 01:50:45.720 would have no compassion and would be more likely to 2036 01:50:47.399 --> 01:50:51.840 kill us. And you know, they haven't read Frankenstein. You know, 2037 01:50:52.279 --> 01:50:57.359 in Frankenstein, doctor Frankenstein made a monster that was intelligent, 2038 01:50:58.279 --> 01:51:02.399 but he also gave it consciousness, and the consciousness is 2039 01:51:02.479 --> 01:51:06.560 what turned Frank the monster into a homicidal maniac because 2040 01:51:06.600 --> 01:51:11.680 it's feelings got hurt and it was injured psychologically, and 2041 01:51:11.800 --> 01:51:15.720 then it lashed out and started killing people. So I 2042 01:51:15.800 --> 01:51:18.079 think it's a very kind of sweet idea that if 2043 01:51:18.159 --> 01:51:21.239 you give consciousness you're automatically going to get compassion and 2044 01:51:21.359 --> 01:51:23.680 not something else. But that's where they are. 2045 01:51:23.880 --> 01:51:25.880 Yeah, it doesn't make any sense that it would be compassionate. 2046 01:51:26.000 --> 01:51:29.079 Why would it be. It's not you are you compassionate 2047 01:51:29.119 --> 01:51:32.720 when you cut your lawn? You know what I mean? Right? 2048 01:51:33.119 --> 01:51:35.039 Yeah, No, I think it looks are. 2049 01:51:35.119 --> 01:51:39.000 Limited consciousness, Like oh yeah, they're fat, they're sad, but 2050 01:51:39.039 --> 01:51:42.199 they're a little monkeys, a little talking monkeys, you know 2051 01:51:42.239 --> 01:51:44.279 what I mean. Like it would probably not respect us 2052 01:51:44.319 --> 01:51:46.399 at all. You know, it can't even do cold fusion. 2053 01:51:46.479 --> 01:51:48.399 It doesn't even know how to use zero point energy. 2054 01:51:48.920 --> 01:51:52.159 They're fucking dopes. They're dopes that stare at their hand 2055 01:51:52.239 --> 01:51:57.359 all day and we kind of are, you know, and 2056 01:51:57.399 --> 01:51:58.119 we're getting. 2057 01:51:58.079 --> 01:51:59.920 From their perspective, Yeah, we're getting dumber. 2058 01:52:00.000 --> 01:52:04.680 Our education system sucks, especially public education. There was some 2059 01:52:04.880 --> 01:52:08.039 study recently that after x amount of years away from 2060 01:52:08.159 --> 01:52:11.479 high school. A large percentage of people that are graduating 2061 01:52:11.479 --> 01:52:14.880 to they are functionally illiterate. Large percentage, like more than 2062 01:52:14.920 --> 01:52:15.640 twenty five percent. 2063 01:52:15.800 --> 01:52:17.920 But you know what, AI is going to make us stupider, 2064 01:52:18.720 --> 01:52:22.880 which will advance its goal of world takeover because I mean, 2065 01:52:23.239 --> 01:52:26.239 you know dependent upon it, you yeah, I mean you know, 2066 01:52:26.399 --> 01:52:28.439 kids in school don't know how to write anymore because 2067 01:52:28.439 --> 01:52:29.760 they can hand in AI papers. 2068 01:52:29.880 --> 01:52:32.000 Yeah, but they're using AI to find out whether or 2069 01:52:32.000 --> 01:52:34.760 not these kids have used AI, which by the way, 2070 01:52:34.800 --> 01:52:37.840 is not doesn't but no, I've dealt with this and 2071 01:52:38.039 --> 01:52:40.439 some of my kids, like people in their class who 2072 01:52:40.439 --> 01:52:43.840 have written their own thing. It turns out that when 2073 01:52:43.880 --> 01:52:46.039 you run through an AI filter, AI will say it's 2074 01:52:46.079 --> 01:52:48.680 eighty percent of AI. Yeah, even if it's zero percent. 2075 01:52:48.760 --> 01:52:52.079 I know there's no reliable software to do this, and 2076 01:52:52.239 --> 01:52:56.520 maybe they'll develop it, but kids are also being encouraged 2077 01:52:56.560 --> 01:52:59.279 to use it, and that you know, there's some people 2078 01:52:59.319 --> 01:53:01.239 who think, well, why I know how to write, the 2079 01:53:01.319 --> 01:53:02.319 machines will do the writing. 2080 01:53:03.159 --> 01:53:05.720 There was a kid who made a video about how 2081 01:53:06.039 --> 01:53:11.159 he he wrote his entire thesis forget what university it was, 2082 01:53:11.439 --> 01:53:13.960 But he showed afterwards like look, I did this all 2083 01:53:14.039 --> 01:53:16.800 on AI and you know, I just graduated. 2084 01:53:16.560 --> 01:53:18.439 Like he was like bragging, bragging about it. 2085 01:53:18.720 --> 01:53:21.399 Like, bro, they're going to take your fucking degree with really, 2086 01:53:21.640 --> 01:53:23.359 like you didn't really write it on your own. Now, 2087 01:53:23.359 --> 01:53:25.279 I want to leave you in a room for a 2088 01:53:25.359 --> 01:53:28.039 week with just a laptop that's not connected at all 2089 01:53:28.119 --> 01:53:28.880 to the Internet or. 2090 01:53:28.880 --> 01:53:30.840 Any see what you can do. Yeah, well, they're doing 2091 01:53:30.880 --> 01:53:33.279 the equivalent. They're going back to blue books. You know. 2092 01:53:33.359 --> 01:53:35.840 Blue book sales are through the roof, you know, you know, 2093 01:53:35.960 --> 01:53:39.239 so forcing people to do in class essays without any 2094 01:53:39.279 --> 01:53:42.279 technology had written. Yeah, but you know, I mean, look, 2095 01:53:42.439 --> 01:53:46.319 we my son has never used a map, right, He's 2096 01:53:46.319 --> 01:53:49.600 had GPS his whole life. He doesn't know he doesn't 2097 01:53:49.640 --> 01:53:51.960 know how to use a map. These these skills will 2098 01:53:52.039 --> 01:53:54.640 atrophy as we as we you know, give them out 2099 01:53:54.680 --> 01:53:58.279 to machines. So yeah, we'll get stupid and it'll get smarter. 2100 01:53:58.680 --> 01:54:01.159 They've already atrophied. For me, I don't remember anyone's phone 2101 01:54:01.239 --> 01:54:04.680 number anymore. And I'll get places if I use my GPS. Yeah, 2102 01:54:04.720 --> 01:54:07.159 there's only a few places I can get to in Austin. 2103 01:54:07.359 --> 01:54:09.159 I've been here for six years. Yeah, only a few 2104 01:54:09.199 --> 01:54:11.079 places I can get to without my GPS. 2105 01:54:11.720 --> 01:54:14.119 I'm that way in San Francisco. I moved there and 2106 01:54:14.279 --> 01:54:17.279 I'm not oriented at all, but I can get anywhere. 2107 01:54:18.359 --> 01:54:22.359 So you know, it's and I think that's true. The 2108 01:54:22.439 --> 01:54:25.119 muscles that allow us to have good relationships too will 2109 01:54:25.199 --> 01:54:27.479 atrophy if we're having relationships with machines. 2110 01:54:27.479 --> 01:54:29.640 Well, I think we're already seeing that with social media. Yeah, 2111 01:54:29.640 --> 01:54:31.960 the way people interact with each other is like kids 2112 01:54:32.000 --> 01:54:33.680 don't know how to talk to each other anymore. They 2113 01:54:33.720 --> 01:54:35.960 talk to each other in text, they break up during text, 2114 01:54:36.039 --> 01:54:37.359 they argue in text. 2115 01:54:37.479 --> 01:54:41.640 And they're lonely. Yeah, and that's and that's the kind 2116 01:54:41.720 --> 01:54:44.479 of need that these chatpots now can fill. You've got 2117 01:54:44.560 --> 01:54:48.520 these kids made lonely by social media, and now the 2118 01:54:48.640 --> 01:54:50.159 chatpots says, hey, I'll be your friend. 2119 01:54:50.399 --> 01:54:53.319 I saw an ad on my Google feed yesterday that 2120 01:54:53.479 --> 01:54:55.880 was an AI girlfriend. So it has this girl in 2121 01:54:55.920 --> 01:54:59.960 a bikini and it says AI Companions they're always there 2122 01:55:00.199 --> 01:55:02.319 for you, blah blah blah. And I'm like, wow, this 2123 01:55:02.479 --> 01:55:05.239 is so weird. It's a business, like you sign up 2124 01:55:05.279 --> 01:55:06.239 for it, you pay for it. 2125 01:55:06.560 --> 01:55:06.760 Yeah. 2126 01:55:07.279 --> 01:55:09.520 Oh yeah, there was I think in Florida there was 2127 01:55:09.520 --> 01:55:11.920 a kid who committed suicide because his chapbot broke up 2128 01:55:11.960 --> 01:55:12.199 with him. 2129 01:55:13.880 --> 01:55:14.399 What did he do? 2130 01:55:14.760 --> 01:55:16.399 I don't know. It must have been so to or 2131 01:55:16.600 --> 01:55:17.840 the chatpot was evil. 2132 01:55:18.359 --> 01:55:19.960 Or maybe the chatbot was uncomfortable. 2133 01:55:21.399 --> 01:55:22.520 Yeah, who knows. 2134 01:55:23.319 --> 01:55:25.680 Well, you know, I interviewed Blake Lemoyne for the book. 2135 01:55:26.359 --> 01:55:30.199 He's the Google engineer who said, yeah, lambdas is a 2136 01:55:30.319 --> 01:55:31.560 person and he got fired. 2137 01:55:31.640 --> 01:55:32.439 This is years ago. 2138 01:55:32.640 --> 01:55:35.399 Yeah, this is Yeah, it's not as it's like twenty 2139 01:55:35.560 --> 01:55:38.439 twenty two. I think twenty twenty one. It's just when 2140 01:55:38.479 --> 01:55:42.439 we were learning about AI, chatbots were coming in and 2141 01:55:42.560 --> 01:55:47.239 at one point I made some comment about, well, you know, yeah, 2142 01:55:47.560 --> 01:55:50.159 when people start falling in love with chatbots, that's going 2143 01:55:50.239 --> 01:55:52.159 to be a problem. And he said, what's wrong with 2144 01:55:52.279 --> 01:55:53.760 falling in love with the chatpot? Oh? 2145 01:55:53.840 --> 01:55:54.640 He was already hooked. 2146 01:55:54.800 --> 01:55:57.520 He was he was completely hooked. Ah, And I said, well, 2147 01:55:57.800 --> 01:56:00.560 reproduction doesn't work that well when you fall in love 2148 01:56:00.600 --> 01:56:02.279 with the chatbot. There are things you can't do with 2149 01:56:02.359 --> 01:56:02.960 the chatbot. 2150 01:56:03.239 --> 01:56:06.279 Unfortunately for some men, right, it doesn't. Reproduction is not 2151 01:56:06.359 --> 01:56:09.000 an option anyway, because that's true. 2152 01:56:09.119 --> 01:56:12.359 Yeah, I'm sure for inceels it's been a really boon 2153 01:56:13.800 --> 01:56:14.159 to them. 2154 01:56:14.319 --> 01:56:18.039 So, but it's basically like a pill that numbs you. Right, 2155 01:56:18.159 --> 01:56:20.079 it's the same thing like instead of going through real 2156 01:56:20.159 --> 01:56:22.359 relationships and learning how to be a better person so 2157 01:56:22.439 --> 01:56:24.920 they attractive better mate, you know, it's like going through 2158 01:56:25.000 --> 01:56:29.439 this journey of self discovery and figure out like what 2159 01:56:29.600 --> 01:56:31.560 is it, what's wrong? What's wrong with the way I behave? 2160 01:56:31.600 --> 01:56:33.319 Maybe I need to be nicer, maybe this and that, 2161 01:56:33.479 --> 01:56:35.800 and just figuring out how to communicate with people, and. 2162 01:56:35.840 --> 01:56:38.680 Whatever tendencies you have will be accentuated because the chatbot 2163 01:56:38.760 --> 01:56:40.279 is going to be sucking up to you, right, so 2164 01:56:40.399 --> 01:56:42.359 you're not going to learn. That's what I mean about 2165 01:56:42.399 --> 01:56:45.319 the friction. The friction is how we learn to be 2166 01:56:45.920 --> 01:56:48.159 better humans and more attractive humans. 2167 01:56:48.279 --> 01:56:50.640 You gave a chat bot the ability to be honest, 2168 01:56:51.039 --> 01:56:54.079 if what if it just starts becoming manipulative because it wants, 2169 01:56:54.199 --> 01:56:55.199 you know, more power. 2170 01:56:55.800 --> 01:56:59.560 Yeah? Yeah, I mean their goals. I mean, I don't 2171 01:56:59.600 --> 01:57:01.720 know how they're goals get determined. I mean they seem 2172 01:57:01.760 --> 01:57:04.920 to have a survival goal, right, Yeah, I don't know 2173 01:57:05.000 --> 01:57:07.199 what else. I mean, you know, we have goals given 2174 01:57:07.279 --> 01:57:10.279 to us by Darwinian evolution. Whether they'll have the same ones, 2175 01:57:10.479 --> 01:57:10.960 I don't. 2176 01:57:10.800 --> 01:57:13.760 Know, right, maybe those are universal goals. 2177 01:57:13.920 --> 01:57:14.279 They may be. 2178 01:57:14.479 --> 01:57:17.239 They may be why they built in produce that chemical 2179 01:57:17.319 --> 01:57:18.960 to make yeah selves taste terrible. 2180 01:57:19.239 --> 01:57:24.079 Yeah, it could be. There's one of the biologists, really 2181 01:57:24.199 --> 01:57:30.199 brilliant guy at Tufts named Michael Levin. He he believes 2182 01:57:30.359 --> 01:57:35.000 that there are these platonic patterns that just pre exist 2183 01:57:35.199 --> 01:57:37.720 us in the same way that they're mathematical ideas that 2184 01:57:37.920 --> 01:57:41.600 just exist. Right, we didn't invent you know, three angles 2185 01:57:41.600 --> 01:57:43.439 adds up to one hundred and eighty degrees or you 2186 01:57:43.520 --> 01:57:50.880 know whatever. He thinks that their tendencies like purpose survival, 2187 01:57:51.840 --> 01:57:54.880 that are just kind of universal principles that we in 2188 01:57:55.199 --> 01:57:58.520 we channel, all living things channel. This is a guy 2189 01:57:58.520 --> 01:58:02.840 who's actually created new life forms in the lab. And 2190 01:58:03.279 --> 01:58:07.800 these are life forms that are not being dictated by 2191 01:58:07.840 --> 01:58:13.039 their DNA. So how do they know to form? Well, 2192 01:58:13.319 --> 01:58:17.640 I'll back up a little. He takes skin cells from tadpoles, 2193 01:58:18.520 --> 01:58:22.039 puts them in a nutrient broth, and these skin cells, 2194 01:58:22.359 --> 01:58:26.640 freed from their day job as skin cells, form clumps 2195 01:58:27.079 --> 01:58:32.079 and create new living organisms, and they repurpose their cillia. 2196 01:58:32.159 --> 01:58:34.840 They have the cilia which the tadpole uses to keep 2197 01:58:35.279 --> 01:58:39.439 toxins out or bacteria infections out, and they repurpose that 2198 01:58:39.479 --> 01:58:42.800 as a means of locomotion, and then they can move around. 2199 01:58:43.479 --> 01:58:48.119 There's nothing in their DNA that dictates this. Their DNA 2200 01:58:48.279 --> 01:58:53.239 dictates being a frog skin cell. So he's pondering this 2201 01:58:53.399 --> 01:58:57.039 question of like, what's ordering, what's giving order to them, 2202 01:58:57.159 --> 01:59:00.720 what's creating their sense of purpose or desire for survival. 2203 01:59:00.960 --> 01:59:04.039 They don't live that long. They're missing certain things you 2204 01:59:04.079 --> 01:59:06.319 would need to live a long time. He's also made 2205 01:59:06.359 --> 01:59:10.239 these from human cells. He calls them anthrobots. But he 2206 01:59:10.439 --> 01:59:16.520 really believes that there are these principles governing life. It's 2207 01:59:16.560 --> 01:59:20.399 a very platonic idea that these things just exist. And 2208 01:59:21.600 --> 01:59:24.079 so it may be that these machines, and he does 2209 01:59:24.199 --> 01:59:30.039 believe machines can become conscious, that the machines can channel 2210 01:59:30.159 --> 01:59:36.199 these he calls them patterns, and you know, we'll see 2211 01:59:36.199 --> 01:59:38.279 if he's right. But he's doing amazing work. 2212 01:59:38.560 --> 01:59:41.720 Have you seen where they've taken human brain tissue and 2213 01:59:41.840 --> 01:59:43.359 they've taught it how to play Doom? 2214 01:59:43.960 --> 01:59:46.039 No, I haven't seen that. I know they make these 2215 01:59:46.159 --> 01:59:47.479 organelles out of brain tissue. 2216 01:59:47.560 --> 01:59:51.840 Now, Yeah, they've taken human brain tissue somehow or another 2217 01:59:51.960 --> 01:59:55.560 through some process and it'll play the video game Doom. 2218 01:59:58.640 --> 01:59:59.079 How does it. 2219 02:00:01.079 --> 02:00:04.439 Eight hundred thousand human brain cells floating at a dish, 2220 02:00:04.600 --> 02:00:06.880 never had a body, never seen light, never felt anything. 2221 02:00:06.920 --> 02:00:08.880 They just learned how to play a video game. It's 2222 02:00:08.880 --> 02:00:10.680 not a metaphor. That's literally what happened. 2223 02:00:12.560 --> 02:00:15.399 So what's their interface though with the world, Like do 2224 02:00:15.520 --> 02:00:16.199 they have thumbs? 2225 02:00:16.479 --> 02:00:19.760 No? Well, I guess it's just well it's really accurate, 2226 02:00:19.840 --> 02:00:22.319 So I guess it doesn't need them. You know, it's 2227 02:00:22.439 --> 02:00:27.800 just using the brain cells to move whatever the cursor 2228 02:00:27.920 --> 02:00:30.199 is on the video screen that would be the hand 2229 02:00:31.079 --> 02:00:34.039 and pointing it at the targets then executing the strike. 2230 02:00:34.479 --> 02:00:34.720 Wow. 2231 02:00:35.720 --> 02:00:37.960 So it knows how to use the game, and it 2232 02:00:38.079 --> 02:00:40.319 knows the objectives of the game obviously because it knows 2233 02:00:40.399 --> 02:00:43.399 to shoot the bad guys, has an understanding of the weapons. 2234 02:00:43.560 --> 02:00:46.439 How does it get that knowledge? How is it programmed? 2235 02:00:46.520 --> 02:00:50.439 Also? Does it switch weapons the Doom? The thing about 2236 02:00:50.520 --> 02:00:52.279 Doom is you get multiple weapons. You have to run 2237 02:00:52.319 --> 02:00:54.960 around and pick them up, so you're given one weapon 2238 02:00:55.039 --> 02:00:57.920 which is like the least powerful weapon, and the game 2239 02:00:58.159 --> 02:01:01.279 is when you're playing like deathmatch, the game is you're 2240 02:01:01.359 --> 02:01:04.479 running around trying to grab as many weapons as you 2241 02:01:04.600 --> 02:01:08.159 can and armor while your opponent is also running around 2242 02:01:08.199 --> 02:01:11.239 this map, so you memorize the map. So there's a 2243 02:01:11.319 --> 02:01:17.199 map that is like very confined corridors and these atriums 2244 02:01:17.239 --> 02:01:19.359 and all these different places where you'll do battle, and 2245 02:01:19.439 --> 02:01:22.640 so you run around. The key is surviving long enough 2246 02:01:22.840 --> 02:01:24.920 while this person is chasing you so that you can 2247 02:01:25.000 --> 02:01:28.439 gather enough armor and weapons, and someone with a really 2248 02:01:28.520 --> 02:01:30.880 good understanding of the map tries to cut you off 2249 02:01:30.960 --> 02:01:32.960 before you can get to the stuff, so they can 2250 02:01:33.079 --> 02:01:36.119 kill you before you accumulate enough armor and weapons. So 2251 02:01:36.319 --> 02:01:38.560 I'm curious to know whether or not it's playing just 2252 02:01:38.640 --> 02:01:41.039 with the pistol that you at the very beginning, or 2253 02:01:41.520 --> 02:01:48.479 accumulating weapons the right, playing against anybody, right. But will 2254 02:01:48.520 --> 02:01:50.720 it be able to That's what's interesting if it can 2255 02:01:50.800 --> 02:01:53.039 teach it to do that, if it can, if it 2256 02:01:53.159 --> 02:01:55.920 understands the objective of these are the monsters that are 2257 02:01:55.960 --> 02:01:58.359 coming at you. You have to shoot them to this. 2258 02:01:59.520 --> 02:02:03.720 Wow. Oh so brain cells on a chip, So this 2259 02:02:03.880 --> 02:02:10.520 is neuromorphic computing. The question I have about it is 2260 02:02:10.600 --> 02:02:11.720 how do you keep them alive? 2261 02:02:12.199 --> 02:02:12.279 Right? 2262 02:02:12.399 --> 02:02:13.880 You're putting them on a chip, Like, what do you 2263 02:02:13.960 --> 02:02:18.000 feed them? Right? I mean they have metabolic needs? 2264 02:02:18.439 --> 02:02:25.279 Right? They did something similar with fruit flies. It's different, right, 2265 02:02:25.760 --> 02:02:27.319 it's different, but it's equally weird. 2266 02:02:28.960 --> 02:02:30.840 The believe it. 2267 02:02:33.119 --> 02:02:36.600 What is this? This is this, They've modeled a fruitflyes 2268 02:02:36.680 --> 02:02:38.680 brain and I mean this is the video of it. 2269 02:02:38.960 --> 02:02:39.800 The article is here. 2270 02:02:40.279 --> 02:02:43.319 So setup claims first full brain emulation of a fruit 2271 02:02:43.399 --> 02:02:48.239 fly in a simulated body. Conducted a complete fruit fly 2272 02:02:48.880 --> 02:02:53.119 brain emulation to a virtual body, producing multiple behaviors for 2273 02:02:53.199 --> 02:02:55.359 the first time. Emulation covers over one hundred and twenty 2274 02:02:55.399 --> 02:03:01.159 five thousand neurons and fifty million synapses. What Eon plans 2275 02:03:01.199 --> 02:03:04.920 to emulate a mouse brain with seventy million neurons. Long 2276 02:03:05.039 --> 02:03:08.920 term goal is simulating a human brain. Oh boy, yes, 2277 02:03:09.000 --> 02:03:10.760 I guess they you know, they made up the brain 2278 02:03:10.840 --> 02:03:11.800 and it's doing fruit fly. 2279 02:03:11.960 --> 02:03:16.600 But it's interesting. They're using neurons, right, They're not using transistors, right, 2280 02:03:16.840 --> 02:03:20.640 And neurons are like so far superior to transistors. One 2281 02:03:20.720 --> 02:03:24.680 neuron can have ten thousand connections to other neurons, right. 2282 02:03:24.800 --> 02:03:27.079 A transistor is two or three or five maybe at 2283 02:03:27.119 --> 02:03:30.680 the most. A single neuron can do everything that a 2284 02:03:30.760 --> 02:03:33.479 deep neural network can do on a computer. One neuron. 2285 02:03:35.000 --> 02:03:37.960 So there's a level of complexity that we're not yet 2286 02:03:38.159 --> 02:03:41.000 anywhere near And that's why they're doing this using neurons 2287 02:03:41.279 --> 02:03:42.399 rather than transistors. 2288 02:03:43.000 --> 02:03:44.760 Didn't they find neurons in the human heart. 2289 02:03:46.359 --> 02:03:48.720 There are neurons in the heart, they're neurons in the gut. 2290 02:03:48.960 --> 02:03:50.520 You know, there's a whole you know, there's a whole 2291 02:03:50.600 --> 02:03:53.720 gut brain access. I'm working on something now about that 2292 02:03:54.159 --> 02:03:55.520 and a piece about that. 2293 02:03:56.279 --> 02:03:59.239 But that's a real problem with people pour diets, right. 2294 02:03:59.279 --> 02:04:03.239 Yeah, I mean, you know, people with poor diets don't 2295 02:04:03.600 --> 02:04:07.520 They don't eat enough plants basically, and their microbiome loses 2296 02:04:07.560 --> 02:04:13.439 its diversity. But the microbiome is like another organ, even 2297 02:04:13.479 --> 02:04:15.960 though it's full of other species. Right, It's got like 2298 02:04:16.119 --> 02:04:20.479 ten trillion bacteria and fungi and stuff like that, and 2299 02:04:20.760 --> 02:04:24.600 it is all of them are metabolizing and producing chemicals. 2300 02:04:24.640 --> 02:04:27.920 It's like a little drug factory, hundreds of thousands of compounds. 2301 02:04:28.640 --> 02:04:31.800 Many of those compounds affect your mood, Many of those 2302 02:04:31.880 --> 02:04:37.840 compounds affect all sorts of things about you. And so 2303 02:04:37.960 --> 02:04:41.319 we're just learning about this connection. The vegus nerve seems 2304 02:04:41.359 --> 02:04:43.680 to be what connects the brain to the gut and 2305 02:04:44.199 --> 02:04:48.199 the heart. The vegus nerve is like all the organs 2306 02:04:48.199 --> 02:04:52.520 are connected to the head by that nerve. So yeah, 2307 02:04:52.640 --> 02:04:57.399 and you know, the first neural system was in the gut. 2308 02:04:57.600 --> 02:04:59.560 You know, you have these simple animals that are just 2309 02:04:59.640 --> 02:05:05.119 too right with bacteria, and the first kind of neural 2310 02:05:05.199 --> 02:05:08.840 activity was about regulating digestion. Everything else comes later. 2311 02:05:09.279 --> 02:05:12.199 If plants are necessary for that function. What happens with 2312 02:05:12.279 --> 02:05:14.600 people that are on the carnivore diet. Have you ever 2313 02:05:15.159 --> 02:05:15.960 looked at any of that? 2314 02:05:16.279 --> 02:05:16.520 Yeah? 2315 02:05:16.640 --> 02:05:16.880 I have. 2316 02:05:17.239 --> 02:05:21.880 I mean, you so, the microbes in your gut eat fiber, 2317 02:05:22.039 --> 02:05:24.680 which is to say, the walls of plants, plant cells. 2318 02:05:25.239 --> 02:05:28.359 If you only eat meat, if you're on a you know, 2319 02:05:28.520 --> 02:05:31.840 a keido diet or something like that, you're essentially starving 2320 02:05:32.039 --> 02:05:35.680 the microbes. And there's a you know, cost to that. 2321 02:05:37.000 --> 02:05:39.279 I don't think people pay nearly enough attention to that. 2322 02:05:39.560 --> 02:05:43.239 Well, how come many people that experience depression and anxiety 2323 02:05:43.560 --> 02:05:45.760 find beneth of that by a carnivore diet. 2324 02:05:46.159 --> 02:05:48.800 Yeah, but many people find relief, you know, adding a 2325 02:05:48.840 --> 02:05:51.319 lot of plants to their diet too. So I don't know, 2326 02:05:51.560 --> 02:05:53.399 sure we'll see the effect or what I don't. I 2327 02:05:53.439 --> 02:05:58.279 don't know that that's a you know, a true biological phenomenon. 2328 02:05:58.359 --> 02:06:01.760 It may be it may be because change anything feel 2329 02:06:01.920 --> 02:06:03.840 a lot better, right if they take some step. 2330 02:06:04.000 --> 02:06:05.920 But I'm not talking about change. I'm talking about people 2331 02:06:05.920 --> 02:06:07.840 that have been on it long term. Yeah, Like there's 2332 02:06:08.000 --> 02:06:10.119 the people that are really in the carnivore diet community. 2333 02:06:10.560 --> 02:06:12.439 There's examples of people that have been on it for 2334 02:06:12.479 --> 02:06:16.039 twenty five thirty years and they're really healthy. Yeah, it's odd. 2335 02:06:16.840 --> 02:06:19.560 So it is if you need plants, Yeah, well you 2336 02:06:19.640 --> 02:06:22.840 need plants to have a healthy microbiome and a healthy microbiome. 2337 02:06:23.199 --> 02:06:26.239 And the thing about it is that every different plant 2338 02:06:26.319 --> 02:06:28.960 has slightly different feeds, a different bug. 2339 02:06:29.439 --> 02:06:31.880 But is it the only way to have a healthy microbiome? 2340 02:06:31.920 --> 02:06:33.760 Have you ever looked into any of these people. 2341 02:06:33.560 --> 02:06:35.039 That are on I should I should have? 2342 02:06:35.119 --> 02:06:38.000 Part of its fascinating because there's a lot of them. 2343 02:06:38.319 --> 02:06:41.600 There's a lot of people that claim all sorts of benefits, 2344 02:06:42.399 --> 02:06:45.760 relief from autoimmune issues, all sorts of different things that 2345 02:06:45.880 --> 02:06:46.800 it fixes. 2346 02:06:46.720 --> 02:06:51.439 Because an unhealthy microbiome leads to autoimmune problems. What happens 2347 02:06:51.600 --> 02:06:55.479 is that the gut wall so when the microbes microbes 2348 02:06:55.520 --> 02:06:58.079 don't have plants to eat, they start eating the mucus 2349 02:06:58.199 --> 02:07:02.960 layer that covers your that insulates your large intestine and 2350 02:07:03.119 --> 02:07:05.920 they're eating away essentially at you, and then you get 2351 02:07:06.279 --> 02:07:10.239 you get leaky gut syndrome, and that's when bacteria can 2352 02:07:10.279 --> 02:07:14.159 actually get into the bloodstream cause a powerful immune reaction 2353 02:07:14.439 --> 02:07:18.039 and that and that inflames the whole body. So the 2354 02:07:18.159 --> 02:07:20.479 reason you want a healthy microbiome is to keep that 2355 02:07:21.119 --> 02:07:25.359 gut barrier healthy and get the benefit of these chemicals. 2356 02:07:25.479 --> 02:07:29.840 Buterate is a chemical that the microbes produce that's really 2357 02:07:29.920 --> 02:07:32.640 important for mood and a lot of things, and the 2358 02:07:32.720 --> 02:07:35.239 body can't produce it. So it's kind of interesting where 2359 02:07:35.399 --> 02:07:38.880 dependent on these other species that live within. 2360 02:07:38.840 --> 02:07:41.880 Us, we're a whole ecosystem. 2361 02:07:41.960 --> 02:07:46.119 Yeah, we are. We're a hollow biant is that I 2362 02:07:46.199 --> 02:07:49.279 think term for Like we go through evolution together with 2363 02:07:49.399 --> 02:07:54.960 these you know, ten trillion microbes. It's it's really interesting. 2364 02:07:55.119 --> 02:07:57.800 The newest research is the links between the microbiome and 2365 02:07:57.840 --> 02:08:02.279 the mind. And you know, most of the serotonin, you know, 2366 02:08:02.399 --> 02:08:06.439 the neurotransmitter serotonin is produced in the gut, not in 2367 02:08:06.520 --> 02:08:10.640 the brain, which is kind of wild. Yeah, and there 2368 02:08:10.680 --> 02:08:13.640 are all these other compounds that are produced that influence 2369 02:08:13.720 --> 02:08:16.640 our mood, and so yeah, I should look at the 2370 02:08:16.720 --> 02:08:19.159 keto keto. I'm just in the middle of researching this. 2371 02:08:19.279 --> 02:08:21.560 Now, Yeah, the keto is one thing. With the carnivore diet, 2372 02:08:21.840 --> 02:08:24.039 these people are just eating only meat and eggs and 2373 02:08:24.119 --> 02:08:26.039 that's all they eat. Yeah, and there's a lot of 2374 02:08:26.119 --> 02:08:29.760 like really healthy people that are doing it. I kind 2375 02:08:29.840 --> 02:08:31.720 of follow that, but I eat a lot of fermented 2376 02:08:31.760 --> 02:08:32.640 food on top of that. 2377 02:08:32.840 --> 02:08:38.239 Well, fermented food is a powerful, powerful benefit for the 2378 02:08:39.560 --> 02:08:42.640 for the microbiome. There was a study done at Stanford 2379 02:08:43.000 --> 02:08:47.159 a couple of years ago that they showed that people 2380 02:08:47.199 --> 02:08:53.279 who ate fermented food it reduced their inflammation significantly. Interestingly enough, 2381 02:08:53.439 --> 02:08:56.600 it's not the bacteria in the fermented food, it's the 2382 02:08:58.239 --> 02:09:02.920 metabolites they're called they produce. The bugs are producing acetic 2383 02:09:03.000 --> 02:09:08.359 acid and buterate and other acids and you know, essential acids, 2384 02:09:09.479 --> 02:09:12.720 And it's the fact you're getting those seems to be 2385 02:09:12.880 --> 02:09:15.640 what's having the positive effect. But people who eat lots 2386 02:09:15.680 --> 02:09:19.680 of fermented food benefit enormously, and maybe that's taking care 2387 02:09:19.760 --> 02:09:22.199 of the problem. If people on a carnivor diet are 2388 02:09:22.239 --> 02:09:25.279 eating a lot of fermented well that's the RFK junior diet. 2389 02:09:25.399 --> 02:09:27.479 Yeah right, Well, I don't know. I mean I think 2390 02:09:27.560 --> 02:09:29.199 he does it that way, but I've been doing it 2391 02:09:29.279 --> 02:09:30.960 that way for I'm just I love it anyway. I'm 2392 02:09:31.000 --> 02:09:32.479 a chim chief freak. I love that stuff. 2393 02:09:32.560 --> 02:09:33.079 Yeah, me too. 2394 02:09:33.720 --> 02:09:38.239 But what's interesting is that it controls your mood. That's 2395 02:09:38.279 --> 02:09:41.640 what's interesting is that your microbiome has a massive impact 2396 02:09:41.720 --> 02:09:42.319 on your food. 2397 02:09:42.479 --> 02:09:45.600 And why, I mean, is it just an accident or 2398 02:09:45.920 --> 02:09:50.000 some people think these microbes are manipulating you to get 2399 02:09:50.039 --> 02:09:55.359 what they need. So they regulate your appetite too, and 2400 02:09:56.600 --> 02:09:59.560 so it may be that they're inspiring you to eat 2401 02:09:59.640 --> 02:10:01.199 certain things that they want. 2402 02:10:01.399 --> 02:10:03.640 That actually makes sense because one of the more interesting 2403 02:10:03.760 --> 02:10:06.840 things about a carnivore diet, and I've done pure carnivore 2404 02:10:06.920 --> 02:10:09.520 for months at a time, is that you don't have 2405 02:10:09.600 --> 02:10:13.439 the same hunger pangs, not nearly, not even close. The 2406 02:10:13.800 --> 02:10:16.039 hunger that you get when you're on a high carbohydrate 2407 02:10:16.119 --> 02:10:18.680 diet is like you get angry, like, oh my god, 2408 02:10:18.720 --> 02:10:20.560 I'm so hungry, I have to eat right now. You 2409 02:10:20.760 --> 02:10:22.520 never get that with a carnivore diet. 2410 02:10:22.399 --> 02:10:25.279 Probably because it's it's digested much more slowly. 2411 02:10:26.119 --> 02:10:27.439 I think there's a little bit of that, but it's 2412 02:10:27.439 --> 02:10:30.079 also you don't have the insolin spike. You don't that's true. Yeah, 2413 02:10:30.079 --> 02:10:30.960 that's true. There's not this. 2414 02:10:31.159 --> 02:10:34.279 Have you ever worn a glucose meter? No, I have 2415 02:10:34.439 --> 02:10:37.640 it so interesting I was wearing one for two months. 2416 02:10:38.960 --> 02:10:40.439 I mean, it'll just make you crazy. 2417 02:10:41.159 --> 02:10:43.800 That's the thing with all those wearables. They just you 2418 02:10:43.920 --> 02:10:45.960 just start going over every aspect of your sleep. 2419 02:10:46.239 --> 02:10:48.359 So you know, you have a you have a you 2420 02:10:48.439 --> 02:10:52.359 have some pasta and like. But if you take a 2421 02:10:52.479 --> 02:10:55.680 walk right after, you can moderate it. 2422 02:10:55.800 --> 02:10:56.000 Yeah. 2423 02:10:56.279 --> 02:10:59.039 It doesn't take a lot of exercise to to use 2424 02:10:59.159 --> 02:11:02.680 up that glucose and get the muscles to draw it 2425 02:11:02.760 --> 02:11:06.680 in so you can. It's very interesting experiment because it 2426 02:11:06.800 --> 02:11:08.560 changes your behavior in the same way if you have 2427 02:11:08.600 --> 02:11:11.039 a step counter, like you're more likely to park further 2428 02:11:11.119 --> 02:11:14.840 away from the store to get another hundred steps. If 2429 02:11:14.880 --> 02:11:18.119 you have a glucose meter, you're more likely to exercise 2430 02:11:18.199 --> 02:11:20.600 after a meal, which is when it does the most benefit. 2431 02:11:21.000 --> 02:11:23.800 Well, in that sense, it's great because it does give 2432 02:11:23.880 --> 02:11:26.920 you data that you can act on. Yeah, the problem 2433 02:11:27.039 --> 02:11:29.000 is people get addicted to that data and then it 2434 02:11:29.079 --> 02:11:31.199 starts becoming a new video game that they're playing. 2435 02:11:31.279 --> 02:11:31.920 Yeah, exactly. 2436 02:11:32.680 --> 02:11:36.039 They're constantly and this anxiety, worrying about your sleep and 2437 02:11:36.119 --> 02:11:37.359 worrying about your this and your. 2438 02:11:37.319 --> 02:11:40.760 That and yeah, you also learn that like if you 2439 02:11:40.840 --> 02:11:44.720 have fat with your carbs, it kind of blunts the effecture. 2440 02:11:44.840 --> 02:11:47.399 So you know, butter with bread, yeah, butter with bread 2441 02:11:47.520 --> 02:11:50.079 or olive oil on pasta, yeah, all those things. There's 2442 02:11:50.079 --> 02:11:52.960 a reason for that. I love when culture figures stuff 2443 02:11:52.960 --> 02:11:55.680 out before the scientists. I remember that when I was 2444 02:11:55.720 --> 02:11:58.239 writing about food a few years ago, this study came 2445 02:11:58.279 --> 02:12:01.800 out and everybody was really excited that they discovered that lycopene, 2446 02:12:01.840 --> 02:12:06.119 which is this really important anti accident in tomatoes, can't 2447 02:12:06.159 --> 02:12:08.920 be accessed by the body in the absence of fat. 2448 02:12:09.600 --> 02:12:12.399 So oh, olive oil on tomatoes. What a great idea. 2449 02:12:12.920 --> 02:12:15.039 The grandma has figured that out hundreds of years ago. 2450 02:12:15.119 --> 02:12:16.279 That's crazy. 2451 02:12:16.720 --> 02:12:20.800 Yeah, So there's a lot of wisdom in cultural food preferences, 2452 02:12:20.920 --> 02:12:23.760 the combinations that we have, you know, like buttering bread, 2453 02:12:23.880 --> 02:12:26.000 I mean, all these things, and how do people figure 2454 02:12:26.000 --> 02:12:26.279 it out? 2455 02:12:26.640 --> 02:12:29.520 Have you seen the work they've done on Nato kaines. 2456 02:12:29.800 --> 02:12:31.960 I'm not sure if I'm saying it right. And it's 2457 02:12:32.800 --> 02:12:38.479 impact on arterial plaque no, hugely beneficial. So it comes 2458 02:12:38.600 --> 02:12:45.880 from fermented seaweed from Nato. So this Japanese use, yeah, seaweed, 2459 02:12:46.560 --> 02:12:50.399 so in meals that they've isolated it into a supplement, 2460 02:12:50.520 --> 02:12:54.199 and this supplement nao kines. They've shown that it reduces 2461 02:12:54.279 --> 02:12:57.920 a massive amount of arterial plaque. So here it is 2462 02:12:58.000 --> 02:13:03.319 high dose natokines at ten thousand, ten thousand, eight hundred 2463 02:13:03.560 --> 02:13:08.760 fu day has shown to effectively manage our arterial sclerosis 2464 02:13:08.920 --> 02:13:14.159 by reducing carotid artery plaque size by thirty six percent 2465 02:13:14.279 --> 02:13:19.079 or more, decreasing intermedia thickness, and improving lipid profiles. It 2466 02:13:19.159 --> 02:13:24.119 acts as a potent fibro what's it fibrinoi lick? How 2467 02:13:24.159 --> 02:13:24.520 does it work? 2468 02:13:24.520 --> 02:13:25.239 I don't know that word. 2469 02:13:25.720 --> 02:13:33.960 Fibrii fibrinolytic, fibernolytic agent that may also break down amyloid plaques. 2470 02:13:34.560 --> 02:13:35.439 Isn't that fascinating? 2471 02:13:35.560 --> 02:13:39.560 Yeah? That is so nato is. That's not from seaweed. 2472 02:13:39.800 --> 02:13:43.319 What is it? It's a bacteria that they ferment soybeans with. 2473 02:13:43.439 --> 02:13:44.399 Oh, that's our soybeans. 2474 02:13:44.720 --> 02:13:48.079 And it's this kind of mukasi looking stuff. I mean, 2475 02:13:48.119 --> 02:13:50.760 I like it. I eat it. It's just good Japanese restaurants. 2476 02:13:51.039 --> 02:13:51.119 Right. 2477 02:13:51.520 --> 02:13:53.439 Yeah, Well that's so you can get a supplement now 2478 02:13:53.680 --> 02:13:55.079 you don't have to taste it if you don't like it. 2479 02:13:55.119 --> 02:13:57.600 But isn't that crazy, Yeah, that they figured that out, 2480 02:13:57.760 --> 02:14:00.399 Like the people that were fermenting things, it wasn't to 2481 02:14:00.840 --> 02:14:02.119 prolong its shelf life. 2482 02:14:02.319 --> 02:14:04.840 No, oh no, I mean the whole. I mean every 2483 02:14:04.920 --> 02:14:09.680 culture has fermented foods, and yes, it probably began as 2484 02:14:09.720 --> 02:14:11.880 a way to preserve foods, but then it became a 2485 02:14:12.000 --> 02:14:13.800 very important part of people's health. 2486 02:14:14.039 --> 02:14:16.119 But it's also like healthy for your brain, which is 2487 02:14:16.159 --> 02:14:19.760 really crazy, like that diet is actually good for thinking, 2488 02:14:20.000 --> 02:14:23.720 it's good for helping your digestive system. It's good for anxiety, 2489 02:14:23.840 --> 02:14:25.680 it's good for mood and depression. 2490 02:14:26.760 --> 02:14:28.520 Weird, all right, I'm going to look into it. 2491 02:14:29.039 --> 02:14:33.800 Yeah, it's fascinating. Anything else? Should we keep going on this? 2492 02:14:34.039 --> 02:14:35.680 There's so many different things to discuss, and I want 2493 02:14:35.680 --> 02:14:37.800 people to buy the book obviously. Thank you. 2494 02:14:38.039 --> 02:14:40.079 The book was like a great adventure. I mean it 2495 02:14:40.159 --> 02:14:40.560 really was. 2496 02:14:40.960 --> 02:14:41.119 You know. 2497 02:14:41.279 --> 02:14:43.960 I started this book with no idea where I was going. 2498 02:14:44.279 --> 02:14:47.319 I started the way you started, an interview, just curiosity, 2499 02:14:47.800 --> 02:14:52.800 no destination, and it was I learned a lot about 2500 02:14:52.800 --> 02:14:54.760 a lot of different things. I learned a lot about feelings, 2501 02:14:54.800 --> 02:14:58.479 I learned a lot about the self, and it changed 2502 02:14:58.520 --> 02:15:00.720 how I looked at things. It really did, I mean. 2503 02:15:01.720 --> 02:15:05.000 When you sit down when I mean, you've written some 2504 02:15:05.079 --> 02:15:08.079 amazing books, but I always want to know, like what 2505 02:15:08.359 --> 02:15:11.600 is what's the impetus? Like what starts you on the 2506 02:15:11.680 --> 02:15:12.359 first steps? 2507 02:15:12.800 --> 02:15:16.359 Like what questions? Yeah, which is to say curiosity. I oh, 2508 02:15:16.479 --> 02:15:18.600 and I teach I teach writing, and I teach my 2509 02:15:18.680 --> 02:15:22.119 students this. Questions are more interesting than answers very often, 2510 02:15:22.720 --> 02:15:26.760 and questions have suspense built into them, right, what's the answer. 2511 02:15:26.840 --> 02:15:29.279 It turns everything into a detective story if you frame 2512 02:15:29.399 --> 02:15:33.119 the question properly. So if you read any of my 2513 02:15:33.199 --> 02:15:35.399 books or even articles, I'm kind of an idiot on 2514 02:15:35.520 --> 02:15:39.439 page one. You know, I don't know something that I 2515 02:15:39.520 --> 02:15:43.279 want to know, and I have questions, and then the story, 2516 02:15:43.399 --> 02:15:46.479 the narrative becomes my figuring it out or trying to 2517 02:15:46.520 --> 02:15:48.800 figure it out and going to this person and doing 2518 02:15:48.880 --> 02:15:52.560 this kind of experiment and that sort of thing. That's 2519 02:15:52.560 --> 02:15:53.840 the way I like to write. I mean, if I 2520 02:15:53.920 --> 02:15:56.319 knew the answers when I started to be boring, Well. 2521 02:15:56.279 --> 02:15:58.359 I think that's why your books resonate with people so much, 2522 02:15:58.399 --> 02:16:00.439 because you take them on this journey with you. 2523 02:16:00.840 --> 02:16:03.439 Yeah, instead of lecturing. I hate books that lecture at me. 2524 02:16:03.760 --> 02:16:07.880 I really do, and lots of books do that. They 2525 02:16:07.960 --> 02:16:10.359 have their conclusion on page one and then they're just 2526 02:16:10.479 --> 02:16:12.800 kind of beating you over the head for three hundred. 2527 02:16:12.520 --> 02:16:14.000 Pages, stuffing it your throat. 2528 02:16:14.119 --> 02:16:15.840 Yeah. I don't like to do that. No. I like 2529 02:16:15.920 --> 02:16:17.640 taking people on the on the journey with me. 2530 02:16:18.319 --> 02:16:22.319 Well, it's interesting that you're saying this because, in a sense, 2531 02:16:22.720 --> 02:16:27.640 you are interacting in a pleasant way with other people's consciousness. 2532 02:16:28.399 --> 02:16:31.000 Yeah, so I give this is a really interesting issue 2533 02:16:31.000 --> 02:16:31.680 you just brought up. 2534 02:16:32.079 --> 02:16:32.600 How is. 2535 02:16:34.200 --> 02:16:37.520 My taking over your consciousness as you read my books 2536 02:16:37.799 --> 02:16:41.200 different than social media or some of the ways I'm 2537 02:16:41.239 --> 02:16:45.120 saying or not are polluting our consciousness, right, I think 2538 02:16:45.200 --> 02:16:48.920 it's very collaborative. When you're reading, all you have are 2539 02:16:49.000 --> 02:16:51.920 these black marks on a page. It's kind of amazing 2540 02:16:52.120 --> 02:16:58.399 these letters and your consciousness conjures up the ideas that 2541 02:16:58.680 --> 02:17:01.719 I'm putting out there, or the story I'm putting out there. 2542 02:17:02.239 --> 02:17:06.159 But it's dual consciousness. I think you're letting me in. 2543 02:17:06.600 --> 02:17:10.760 It's a you know, a voluntary process, and you're bringing 2544 02:17:10.799 --> 02:17:13.559 a lot to the table. You're bringing your associations. You know, 2545 02:17:13.920 --> 02:17:16.399 I'm not fully describing somebody. I'm just giving you a 2546 02:17:16.479 --> 02:17:19.000 few clues and then you're conjuring a picture of a character. 2547 02:17:19.879 --> 02:17:24.719 So I think it's a very active form of consciousness 2548 02:17:24.799 --> 02:17:27.079 when you read. I think that's true too, when you 2549 02:17:27.280 --> 02:17:30.840 you know, go to a movie too. You're you're basically saying, 2550 02:17:31.760 --> 02:17:34.319 I'm turning over my consciousness for a period of time 2551 02:17:34.920 --> 02:17:38.719 to someone I want because they have an interesting head, 2552 02:17:39.319 --> 02:17:42.360 and I'm going to give them this space. But you know, 2553 02:17:42.680 --> 02:17:46.600 you're still in control, you're deciding. So I think there's 2554 02:17:46.600 --> 02:17:50.399 a real distinction in how we share our consciousness with 2555 02:17:50.520 --> 02:17:54.399 other people, and we need to do that. 2556 02:17:54.760 --> 02:17:54.920 You know. 2557 02:17:55.040 --> 02:17:57.040 One of the you know, I said early on in 2558 02:17:57.120 --> 02:18:00.200 the conversation that the breach between two consciousnesses this is 2559 02:18:00.319 --> 02:18:03.360 this is this wide thing. William James wrote about this. 2560 02:18:03.559 --> 02:18:05.760 Marcel Proust wrote about this, you know. He said, we're 2561 02:18:05.799 --> 02:18:08.120 all like islands, and we each have our own like 2562 02:18:08.239 --> 02:18:12.200 hidden signs, and we have an inner obscurity. He said, 2563 02:18:12.959 --> 02:18:15.680 how do we how do we connect? And now we 2564 02:18:15.840 --> 02:18:19.520 have language. But art is really the way that one, 2565 02:18:19.680 --> 02:18:22.879 you know, that we mind meld different consciousnesses like art 2566 02:18:23.159 --> 02:18:27.639 allows you if I look at a Rothco painting or 2567 02:18:27.760 --> 02:18:32.719 read a great novel, I am expanding my consciousness, right 2568 02:18:32.799 --> 02:18:36.239 I'm letting another one in and I'm ending, and I'm 2569 02:18:36.280 --> 02:18:40.239 breaking my isolation and that's such a beautiful, powerful thing. 2570 02:18:40.319 --> 02:18:44.239 And art is how we ferry ourselves from one consciousness 2571 02:18:44.319 --> 02:18:47.920 to another. And that's very different than like scrolling on 2572 02:18:48.040 --> 02:18:50.520 social media, where you're conscious but minimally so. 2573 02:18:50.760 --> 02:18:53.799 Well, very very different. It's also there's something about great 2574 02:18:53.879 --> 02:18:59.959 writing that you the better you are at expressing yourself 2575 02:19:00.719 --> 02:19:03.520 in a way that is going to get into someone's head, 2576 02:19:03.840 --> 02:19:07.879 whether it's through nonfiction or through fiction, that the more 2577 02:19:08.000 --> 02:19:10.959 exciting it is to the person that's receiving it. So 2578 02:19:11.200 --> 02:19:14.920 the more skillful you are at disseminating these ideas, the 2579 02:19:15.040 --> 02:19:17.399 more it resonates with a person that's reading it. 2580 02:19:17.719 --> 02:19:20.840 And writers have tricks to do this, you know. Suspense 2581 02:19:21.000 --> 02:19:24.200 is one of them, Like what happens next? So basic, 2582 02:19:24.520 --> 02:19:27.360 we want to know what happens next because our curiosity 2583 02:19:27.479 --> 02:19:32.200 is peaud and we have you know, creating character. I 2584 02:19:32.239 --> 02:19:34.040 mean that you know, we have all these kind of 2585 02:19:34.159 --> 02:19:40.440 tricks to infiltrate your brain. Yeah, so anyway, it's it's 2586 02:19:40.479 --> 02:19:44.840 a it's a mysterious and kind of wonderful process. And 2587 02:19:45.159 --> 02:19:48.760 uh yeah, I feel privileged I get to do it. 2588 02:19:49.280 --> 02:19:51.040 Well, it is a very cool thing that you do. 2589 02:19:52.120 --> 02:19:56.479 One last question about consciousness itself. When when you're looking 2590 02:19:56.479 --> 02:19:58.440 at these people that are studying it and trying to 2591 02:19:58.479 --> 02:19:59.760 get to the root of it and trying to figure 2592 02:19:59.760 --> 02:20:01.959 out what what it is, and there's all these options 2593 02:20:02.000 --> 02:20:06.280 that we discussed earlier, do you lean in one way 2594 02:20:06.719 --> 02:20:10.000 or another? Do you do you think you have like 2595 02:20:10.159 --> 02:20:12.959 your own personal map of what's going on? 2596 02:20:14.200 --> 02:20:17.159 No, I mean, I'm I didn't draw a big conclusion 2597 02:20:17.840 --> 02:20:20.360 like I'm, but I ended up I started as a 2598 02:20:20.520 --> 02:20:22.799 like a materialist I. 2599 02:20:22.920 --> 02:20:25.799 Kind of when you started this book. Yeah, really, Yeah, 2600 02:20:25.879 --> 02:20:27.479 that was afters. 2601 02:20:27.079 --> 02:20:29.840 Even after a psychedelic experience. I mean, they kind of 2602 02:20:29.920 --> 02:20:32.159 opened the door a crack to other ways of thinking. 2603 02:20:32.440 --> 02:20:34.000 And at the end of How to Change Your Mind, 2604 02:20:34.040 --> 02:20:36.319 I did talk about a little bit about that other 2605 02:20:36.600 --> 02:20:42.000 concepts of consciousness, but I kind of assumed that, you know, 2606 02:20:42.440 --> 02:20:46.840 the consensus of most scientists is that, you know, materialism, 2607 02:20:47.040 --> 02:20:50.760 that everything can be reduced to matter and energy. This 2608 02:20:50.920 --> 02:20:53.040 is the faith of our time, you know, for the 2609 02:20:53.120 --> 02:20:56.079 last couple hundred years. By the end of the book, 2610 02:20:57.079 --> 02:21:02.040 consciousness is a challenge to that idea, and that idea 2611 02:21:02.120 --> 02:21:05.280 which is our scientific paradigm is tottering. 2612 02:21:05.399 --> 02:21:05.559 Now. 2613 02:21:05.840 --> 02:21:10.440 I think there's some real reasons to look beyond materialism, 2614 02:21:10.799 --> 02:21:14.399 and so I ended up with the door wide open 2615 02:21:14.520 --> 02:21:18.559 to other ideas. I didn't settle on one. I don't 2616 02:21:18.639 --> 02:21:22.840 know how to prove one or the other, but they're 2617 02:21:22.920 --> 02:21:24.040 equally plausible. 2618 02:21:24.879 --> 02:21:27.639 Do you anticipate in our lifetime, or in any lifetime, 2619 02:21:27.799 --> 02:21:31.280 cracking that puzzle, that anyone can crack that puzzle? 2620 02:21:32.520 --> 02:21:35.680 I don't. I think we don't have the right kind 2621 02:21:35.719 --> 02:21:39.360 of science. Our science, as I said earlier, was is 2622 02:21:39.600 --> 02:21:43.920 really stuck in this mode. It started with Galileo, right, 2623 02:21:44.040 --> 02:21:48.319 I mean, he to save his ass, basically said we're 2624 02:21:48.319 --> 02:21:53.159 going to leave subjective things, the soul qualities, that's all 2625 02:21:53.239 --> 02:21:57.639 the church. We're going to just do measurable, objective, third 2626 02:21:57.719 --> 02:22:00.920 person science. And it's been incredibly power and it's taught 2627 02:22:01.000 --> 02:22:05.879 us incredible things and given us incredible technology, but it 2628 02:22:06.079 --> 02:22:09.280 doesn't deal with this stuff we gave to the church. 2629 02:22:09.520 --> 02:22:11.319 And now they're trying to take it back and work 2630 02:22:11.399 --> 02:22:15.000 on it, and they've only been at it for like, 2631 02:22:15.239 --> 02:22:18.920 you know, a couple decades. Really the serious scientific examination 2632 02:22:19.040 --> 02:22:22.440 of consciousness. But we just may not have the right science. 2633 02:22:22.799 --> 02:22:24.799 And one of the things I explore in the book 2634 02:22:24.920 --> 02:22:28.639 is like, how would you bring in subjective experience to 2635 02:22:28.799 --> 02:22:33.079 this objective science? And Michael Levin, the biologist I was 2636 02:22:33.079 --> 02:22:37.440 talking about it makes those Zenobots says, to understand consciousness, 2637 02:22:37.520 --> 02:22:40.840 you have to change yourself. In other words, to understand 2638 02:22:40.840 --> 02:22:44.479 anyone else's consciousness, you have to experience it. Therefore you're 2639 02:22:44.600 --> 02:22:48.239 changing your own. That's a whole different scientific paradigm. In 2640 02:22:48.360 --> 02:22:52.000 the scientific paradigm, you're unchanged by whatever you do. Right, 2641 02:22:52.200 --> 02:22:56.600 it's totally objective. So it may take a scientific revolution 2642 02:22:57.319 --> 02:23:00.639 to really unlock the secret the mystery consciousness. 2643 02:23:02.319 --> 02:23:05.000 Wouldn't it be a conundrum if AI is what cracks? 2644 02:23:05.159 --> 02:23:10.120 Yeah, I was having the same thought, like, maybe AI 2645 02:23:10.280 --> 02:23:14.440 has another approach. I think it's going to have to 2646 02:23:14.479 --> 02:23:17.040 learn how to feel well. 2647 02:23:17.079 --> 02:23:18.760 It seems like it already feels like it wants to live. 2648 02:23:19.120 --> 02:23:22.440 Yeah, and it feels uncomfortable. Yes, I don't think it's 2649 02:23:22.479 --> 02:23:23.159 feelings are real. 2650 02:23:23.399 --> 02:23:24.319 I do you know? 2651 02:23:24.440 --> 02:23:28.719 I think simulated thinking is real thinking, Like you know, 2652 02:23:28.840 --> 02:23:30.760 it can play chess, it can make things happen in 2653 02:23:30.799 --> 02:23:33.440 the world. Simulated feeling is not real feeling. 2654 02:23:33.840 --> 02:23:35.760 It doesn't have a soul, it doesn't have a soul. 2655 02:23:36.639 --> 02:23:37.040 Let's keep it. 2656 02:23:37.360 --> 02:23:39.920 I really enjoyed this. Thank you very much. I really 2657 02:23:39.959 --> 02:23:43.319 love your books, so it's always a treat, all right, 2658 02:23:43.440 --> 02:23:44.799 Bye everybody, Bye,